We stand together

Writer's note: This is where it gets interesting, prepare yourselves

The next morning, Bowdler rushed back to Canterlot to meet with Princess Celestia. What had she got in mind for today? He burst into the throne room, where Celestia was sat and Luna was sleeping.

‘Good morning Bowdler, up bright and early I see?’ said Celestia cheerily.

‘Mornin’ princess,’ he yawned, ‘what did you need me for?’

‘I’d like you to take a look at this’ she gestured to a large telescope, ‘it’s a magic telescope, capable of playing back what it has already seen, and it’s seen something very bad.’

Bowdler put his eye to the telescope.

‘Is it on?’ he asked, but the princess was giggling.

‘What? Oh, not yet, let me just turn it on for you’ she poked it with her horn and the golden decorations on it began to glow, ‘Nice monocle by the way, very fetching.’

Bowdler looked in the mirror of the throne room to see that there was a black ring of ink around the eye that he’d put up to the telescope. He forced a laugh and then wiped it off and put his eye back up to the telescope. He realised that that was a bad idea when Celestia burst out into a laughing fit.

‘Bowdler you’ve only just wiped it off! How’ve you managed that?’ she spluttered.

‘Ah, damn’ he said wiping the ink off of his eye and this time off of the telescope too.

He put his eye up to it and watch its recorded events unfold. Strange, beetle like things floated through space, past the moon and began to hover far over the surface of Equestria, more and more poured in from the void of space, until not even the stars could be seen through the telescope, just these beetle like transports.

‘Has it finished?’ asked the princess.

‘I’m not su- AUGH!’ he jumped back as a gory pony had popped up on the viewscreen right in front of his eye. Celestia fell on the floor laughing again,

‘I know this isn’t the time for joking but your reactions are so hilarious!’

‘Jesus, princess, you scared the life out of me.’

‘Yes, quite. But what do you think of the actual video in question?’

‘It looks like something is getting ready to invade to be honest.’

‘That’s exactly what my advisors said’ Celestia looked gloomily at the floor, ‘we’re not ready for an attack on this scale yet...’

‘I will do what I can to get into a defensible position.’

‘That will be a good thing. On a lighter note, would you fancy looking at an amusing video that I captured on the telescope of a cat with a pop tart on it shooting out rainbows?’

‘No thanks, I’ll be alright for now.’ at that moment, Lt. Dasher burst in. He had what appeared to be a small rainbow on his arm.

‘Sorry I’m late miss, I uh... overslept.’

‘I know exactly what you were doing Dasher, now, come and see this video.’ Dasher shifted uncomfortably and went to look through the telescope. Bowdler decided it would be a good time to leave before Celestia fell into another laughing fit.

~

Bowdler cantered down to ponyville to warn the mayor to set up the town’s defence system, but before he could get there, a familiar face popped up in front of him.

‘Hi!’ chirped Pinkie Pie, ‘How are you today?’ she bounced up and down in front of him

‘Not now Pinkie Pie, I’ve got something important to do.’ she stopped and looked at him awkwardly

‘Implying?’

‘No, you are important, but this is a matter of ponyville or no ponyville!’

‘Ooh! Adventure? Can I come this time?’

‘I’m not su-’

‘Please?’ her eyes seemed to triple in size.

‘Oh alright, follow me.’ He carried on running to ponyville, but with Pinkie Pie bouncing just behind him squealing

‘Adventure time! C’mon grab your friends!’

When they got to the mayor’s office in the town hall they found that she wasn’t there.

‘Where could she have gone?’ asked Pinkie pie.

‘I don’t know’ he replied, becoming increasingly worried, ‘How are we going to get the defenses up now?’

‘By ourselves of course silly!’ Pinkie picked up a megaphone somehow and began to walk outside, Bowdler followed not sure about what was coming. They stood in the center of Ponyville, the crowd was going about their normal daily buisness, oblivious to the enormous fleet of ships hovering just above the clouds. Pinkie pie raised up the device and turned it on. Her voice was amplified tenfold.

‘Hey! Everypony! Bad things are coming and stuff!’ she yelled through the speaker, ‘Help us fight them! Alright?’.

Everypony stared at her. Bowdler grabbed the speaker.

‘The aliens are coming back!’ he yelled, sounding a lot more serious than Pinkie (which wasn’t hard), ‘Gather all military personnel and get to the battle stations!’. This, Everypony did get.

They ran about everywhere, crashing into each other and into houses in the panic to hide from the swarm.

‘Everypony stay calm! We’re better than them!’. Through the seething crowds of ponies, he began to be able to pick out a few trying to make their way towards him. They were all wearing combat armour, ranging from standard guard armour to master crafted Cirrus City armour. One of them started yelling towards him,

‘We fight by your side Bowdler!’.

He nodded at them and took off towards the edge of ponyville, but then remembered Pinkie pie was with him, and she didn’t have wings. He turned around.

‘Pinkie w-’ he began.

‘I can jump silly, don’t worry!’ she chirped. He raised his eyebrows but turned and flew to the edge of ponyville anyway. Somehow, Pinkie was there waiting for him.

‘How did you...’ he started, but then shut up, deciding that it was better not to ask. The sky was already beginning to darken, signalling the coming of the creatures. Armoured ponies gathered around him and began to set up their weaponry, Battle-axes, swords, maces, staves, pretty much everything. They were all there. Lieutenant Dasher landed beside him, holding his shortsword in one hand and his knife in the other.

‘You ready for whatever comes?’ he asked looking him over.

‘Yeah, I’m ready’

‘You don’t seem to have any weapons’ he laughed.

‘Trust me, I’ll have them when I need them’. A black dot appeared on the horizon.

‘That it?’ shouted one of the guard ponies, ‘I could take that any day!’. Another dot appeared and another, until the whole horizon was blacked out by the oncoming swarm.

‘You just had to open your big mouth didn’t you Leroy!’ another pony yelled.

‘Quiet in the ranks’ Dasher bellowed. A few dragons had begun to land behind them, erecting their claws and spines.

‘yth slathalin ulnaus, schakri ir’ a large red one said. Bowdler nodded, not quite understanding.

The black dots began to get closer, their shapes now visible. It wasn’t just the little bug ones this time, there were towering, tank-like things among their ranks.

‘Brace yourselves!’ Dasher yelled. The creatures picked up speed, coming towards them faster than Bowdler thought possible for such large things. A smaller one jumped ahead of the group and charged, headlong at the line of pony guard. It took the guards by surprise and managed to claw at one of them before they impaled it with pikes. The main bulk of aliens screeched and began to charge, just as fast as the small one.

‘ihk wer darastrix daar!’ the dragons yelled and began to surge forwards, through the ranks of the ponies. Spears and flames flew towards the charging line of black creatures, but to no avail. They bounced off of them like they were a wall of steel. The dragons and aliens collided.

Screams emanated from both sides as both elder dragon and alien were torn apart, torched or crushed. Some of the smaller beasts managed to weave through the dragons and throw themselves at the ponies. Most of these were met with a well disciplined stab to the face but some of them broke through the less battle hardened ponies. A few of them banded together on a small group of recruit guard, who just stood there, frozen with fear, but before they could get to them they were crushed utterly, beneath a giant silver foot.

‘thesek ekik ihk wer moxt iri! astahii shilta qe braneir!’ yelled Arth’alaki with a terrifying grin on his face. He whipped around and began to devour one of the larger tank ones.

Bowdler looked on over the battle. He was disappointed that he’d not got in on any action yet. He and Dasher had been stood right behind where the dragons obliterated the center mass, so no stragglers for them to mop up. Suddenly, he felt a nudge on his leg. He looked down to see a small, snakish thing with large eyes.

‘Hey there!’ he said to it, ‘what are you then?’. It looked up at him, its eyes bulging. Then it sank it’s teeth into his leg. ‘Gah!’ he screamed, ‘Get it off me!’.

Dasher’s knife plunged into the beast, which erupted into a small pool of green gore.

‘Don’t trust small, bug eyed snakes Bowdler’ he said as he cleaned the blood off of the blade.

Bowdler rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the main battle. He was just in time to see one of the major checkpoints of that day.

Arth’alaki was right in the middle of the alien horde, clawing and burning his way through anything which dared to attack him. But some of the tank creatures had wizened up and banded together to climb up onto his back. He roared and flailed around, but he couldn't dislodge the creatures. They were stabbing into his back and he couldn’t do anything about it. He screamed with pain and fell to the ground, his sacred blood spilling all over the field of battle. More of the creatures jumped onto him and began to stab at his head, but the job was already done.

The moon dragon meets his end...

~

Of all the dragons witnessing that fateful event, none screamed for longer than the silver dragonkin. They had just lost their aspect and by extension, their father. They turned back the the swarms of aliens and began dismembering them with double the vigour. But now that the beasts had figured out how to slay a dragon, they weren’t going to stop at Arth. More dragons fell to the ground, screaming in pain as the aliens ripped their heads and backs to shreds.

‘Dasher!’ Bowdler yelled, ‘They just killed Arth’alaki!’

‘What, do you think I’m blind!? We’re charging for the beasts now!’ he turned and faced the guards. ‘You heard me! Charge!’

The ponies ran towards the creatures, yelling things like, ‘For Equestria!’ or ‘OH GOD I’M GOING TO DIE!’. Sadly, the beasts heard these battle cries and turned to face the charging ponies.

The first kill was of a smaller one whose head was torn clean off by the swing of Dasher’s sword, the second, a tank who was impaled with two swords, which had appeared from seemingly nowhere.

‘I told you I’d have them when I needed them’ Bowdler, who was now suddenly wearing full battle armour, yelled with glee.

‘What the hell?’ Dasher replied, whilst wrestling down another one of the small ones, ‘How did you do that?’.

He grinned, ‘I have no idea!’. His swords ripped out of the tank and cleaved another two small ones in half. ‘That’s three now! How’re you doing?’. Dasher quickly pulled his knife out of the tank he’d just killed,

‘Celestia damn it! I’m only on three as well!’. He threw his knife at one of the snake things. ‘Four!’. Suddenly, something happened. A huge creature, bigger than even the tank things, burst out from the ground. It whipped around to look at Dasher.

‘I’m sorry, was that your kid?’ he asked sarcastically, ‘Tough luck sunshine’. It stared at him, quickly stabbing a dragon in the face as it tried to tackle it. Electrical currents started running between it and the floor and small bolts of lightning fell from it’s head.

‘Want to get this over with or what?’ he shouted at it. A flash of red and purple shot over his head and collided with the creature. All Dasher could see was Bowdler slamming into the thing’s nose and starting to hack at it’s eyes with his swords. It screeched in pain and tried to rip him off. He took the distraction as an opportunity and charged at what appeared to be it’s torso, stabbing his sword and knife into it as hard as he could. The creature screamed again and fell to the ground. He pulled out his blades and turned to Bowdler, who had just landed beside him.

‘Bitch, you nearly stole my kill!’ he yelled. Bowdler quickly stabbed a tank in the head as it charged at him.

‘It’s called an assist mate, think about the odds for once’.

Dasher snorted and flew back off into combat.

‘OH CELESTIA!’ came a voice, ‘WE NEED BACKUP! SOMEPONY GET THE LIEUTENANT!’

Dasher and Bowdler raced towards where the it sounded like it was coming from. A brown pegasus was wrestling with one of the smaller ones, it’s teeth were getting dangerously close to his face.

‘Gah!’ he cried, ‘I can’t hold it off for much lon-’ he was interrupted by a flash of blue which practically tore the beast off of him.

‘Wha?’ he spluttered.

A blue pegasus had wrestled the creature to the ground and had got an axe held up against it’s neck. He quickly decapitated it.

‘Ah, Captain Bluewing, I was wondering when we’d see you’ said Dasher warmly, ‘How’ve things been holding up?’

‘Good,’ he said as he got up from the headless corpse of the creature, ‘I’ve got about 30, 40 kills to my name, how about you?’

‘Uh...’ Dasher started, obviously a bit embarrassed, ‘only 10 but we’ve only just started’

‘Who’s your friend?’

‘He’s-’

‘I’m Bowdler, nice to meet you’ he butted in, preferring to make his own introductions than have Dasher talk about him.

‘Good to meet you too Bowdler, may we yet meet on the field of battle, where I will destroy you utterly’ he laughed, ‘Jokes’.

Bowdler and Dasher forced a laugh, but their attention was soon turned back to the battle as another of the giant snakes had burst from the ground and had begun to strike the dragons with lightning. A shadow fell upon the battleground, darkening the night made by the hive ships even further.

‘wux mablik rekisixi tepoha xurwka vi phlita baclax!’ boomed the voice of a familiar dragon, ‘kiwieg wer skriiod di Rok'thalon wux ustdan!’. Rok’thalon himself descended onto the field and began to totally decimate the alien forces.

‘Berundur!’ came a screech from a bipedal alien. They began to run into the everfree forest to escape the wrath of the Dragon King. He stood for a second and smiled as the creatures surged back out of the forest, chased by Manticores, Chimeras, Lupises and Ursas. He took a deep breath and torched the last remnants of the alien attack force.

‘Oh Celestia!’ came a voice, ‘We’ve done it! We’ve sur-’

Rok’thalon sat down.