We stand together

The 8 ponies had gathered their things and were ready to head out towards Bloodstone falls. Each bearer of the elements brought along their element of harmony, and Applejack brought along Twilight’s too.

The trouble was, nopony really knew where Bloodstone was. It was once a large town, similar to ponyville, but in the first rising of Nightmare it was contaminated with such evil that Celestia was forced to lock it in a temporal rift inside the Everfree forest. This rift moves about every now and then, so that ponies can’t stumble upon the corrupted town more than once.

They’d need to fly to find it properly and the ‘only’ one who had powerful enough magic to cast a wing spell was Twilight. Bowdler, Dasher and Bluewing knew differently, but they couldn’t tell the ponies about it for fear of any tensions or uncertainties it might cause. Therefore the only means of flight were either Pinkie Pie’s balloon, which was slow and cumbersome, not to mention easily spotted, or Dragons. As soon as they mentioned dragons though, Fluttershy seemed to melt.

‘Y-y-you can’t g-get me to r-r-ride a d-dragon!’ she whimpered, ‘They’re so sc-scary!’.

Rainbowdash sighed, she knew what was coming.

‘Fluttershy, we’re going to have to, unless you think you can keep up with a fully grown dragon’ said Bowdler apologetically.

Fluttershy looked at the ground and tears began to form in her eyes.

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ shouted Pinkie Pie, ‘The fanbase is going to hate you!’

‘Fluttershy...’ he pressed, ‘Don’t cry over it, we all have to face our fears someday’

‘I already d-did’ she blubbered pitifully, ‘Th-there was this b-big dragon up on top of the m-mountain and I told him to go away because he was b-b-being a meanie!’

‘And I bet it felt good didn’t it? Not being scared of that dragon.’

‘I... I guess...’ she looked up at him and smiled faintly.

‘You don’t have to be scared of these dragons either! Even less so! These dragons are our friends, like Spike, not wild forest dragons or something’

‘Well... If-If you put it that way...’ she sniffled a bit and smiled at him.

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘O-okay...’. Rainbowdash looked at him as if he’d just achieved the impossible.

‘How did you...’ she pointed at Fluttershy, then at random places whilst mouthing random words.

‘Bowdler, you need to remember to turn off your swag more often’ said Pinkie Pie sternly.

‘Pinkie, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘Oh, don’t mind me, just breaking the fourth wall, you know, completely uninteresting. Oh hey look! The Hub logo!’ She stared at a patch of grass to her left. The other ponies began to back away.

‘Does she do this a lot?’ he asked Applejack.

‘Yep, all the time’ she sighed.

‘Do we have to take her? She doesn’t seem mentally stable enough for military actions to be brutally honest with you’ asked Dasher, but this was met with a death stare from Fluttershy. ‘I’m just saying!’.

~

Princess Celestia had approved of the ponies choice to use dragons to find Bloodstone and Fáfnir the stone dragon offered to take them.

They hovered around Everfree for a while, trying to catch a glimpse of the infamous Bloodstone falls, which were made of red water. Every now and then Bowdler thought he’d seen something in the distance, but it was always a feral dragon or a bird.

‘Mobi’ yelled Fáfnir suddenly, and he began to fly towards a point in the distance that they could just make out to be a red blob. Luckily, he was correct that this was Bloodstone falls. Unluckily, however, the cultists were prepared.

A volley of flaming arrows flew up from the wrecked buildings of Bloodstone. They bounced off of Fáfnir like they were hitting a stone wall, mostly because they were.

‘vinxa mabliki, si jahus persvek rigluin di vi mot’ he sneered, then sent a bolt of fire down on one of the buildings, destroying it utterly. A few ponies clad in black robes ran out of the wreckage, their robes alight. Fáfnir let out a deep booming laugh. ‘vhira yth gethrisj hak, mabliki!’

He landed on top of the smouldering ruin that was once a house and let the ponies off of him.

‘si geou hetha wux de wer thrae, gethrisj!’ he took off again and drew the fire of the archers. Dasher immediately took charge.

‘Get in cover everypony!’ They dived behind one of the broken walls and drew their weapons. The 5 civilian ponies had been given weapons of their choosing. Applejack had a hefty mace, Rarity had a butterfly knife, Pinkie Pie had two cleavers, Rainbowdash had a pair of shortswords and Fluttershy, who had refused to pick a weapon, had a medipack.

Pinkie had developed a maddening tic in one of her eyes.

‘Are we gonna kill us some traitors? Are we? This is gonna be so fun!’ she giggled.

‘Quiet down you psycho’ whispered Bluewing, sounding genuinely scared.

‘Imma gon’ kill ALL the things’ ‘Pinkie...’ Her hair deflated and her pupils became incredibly small. ‘Eheheh!’ she squealed.

‘Pinkie, quiet down!’ said Bowdler sternly, as a few fire arrows had just bounced off of the wall that they were hidden behind.

‘Fine... But I still get to kill stuff right?’

‘Only if we really have to’

‘Okay...’ Suddenly, there were some more voices.

‘Anypony there?’ somepony whispered.

‘No you moron!’ came another voice and the sound of a hoof to the face, ‘We’ve got to actually check it out!’

‘Do we have to?’

‘Yes!’

‘Alright then, but if I die, I’ll kill ya!’

Two unicorns in black robes suddenly vaulted the wall and flew right over the ponies hiding there. Pinkie scrabbled to get up but Bowdler slammed her back down.

‘See! I told you! Nopony’s here!’ the one on the left said triumphantly, obviously he’d not seen them. Bowdler wondered if they could capture them, there were only two of them, they were outnumbered four to one, but then he noticed the long spellblades dangling from their legs and thought better of it.

‘Any exit from here? Or did that dumbass dragon blow it up?’

‘Don’t think so, back the way we came?’ the one on the right turned around, ‘Well fuck me...’

‘What?’ asked the left one, not turning round, ‘What is it?’

‘Don’t turn around, Voigan, there’s ponies here’ ‘You serious?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

The ponies got up, ‘Put down your weapons and surrender, cultists’ demanded Dasher as he drew his blades.

‘They outnumber us bro, better do what he says’ the one facing them unsheathed his spellblade and threw it to the other side of the room.

‘You imbecile! That’s a spellblade! You can’t get that back with magic!’ the other one yelled furiously.

‘I wasn’t planning to! There’s 8 of them!’

‘Really? Crap!’ He threw his spellblade away too.

‘Anypony got anything to tie them up with?’ asked Bluewing.

‘As a matter of fact I have!’ exclaimed Rarity, pulling some rope out of her saddle bags, ‘You never know when you’ll need some rope!’

Bluewing tied the two ponies together, back to back and gagged them with rope. He took the spellblades and put them in his saddle bag.

‘Let’s move out, the cultists will no doubt come looking for these two’ said Dasher, ‘I sure hope they won’t remember we were here’ he nodded at Bowdler, who understood and nodded back.

‘You guys go ahead, I just need to summon my stuff’. The other 7 vaulted the wall. Bowdler summoned his battle armour and turned to face the cultists. ‘Relax,’ he said reassuringly, ‘You won’t feel a thing’. His horn flashed and the cultists stared at him blankly. ‘You’ve been practicing taking prisoners and mucked it up, remember?’

‘Mmmph mmph’ one of them said, dumbly.

‘Good, see you later’. He vaulted the wall.

~

Bowdler looked up to see Fáfnir lazily swooping around the sky deflecting fire arrows on his stone skin, looking as if he was thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Dasher called to him, barely audible, from a building just to his left. He ran towards it and dived inside. It still had a sort of roof so it felt safer than any of the other wrecks. Pinkie pie was banging her cleavers together.

‘Why couldn’t I kill them?’ she wailed, ‘Couldn’t I have at least just cut them?’

‘We won’t harm anypony unless it’s absolutely necessary’ said Bluewing firmly, ‘besides, if you’re going into a bloodrage like this, we’d better not let you near anypony for what you might do to them’ he shuddered.

Suddenly, there was a large explosion outside. Fáfnir had destroyed another building.

‘We’d better get moving towards the falls’ said Bowdler, ‘We don’t want to be in here when Fáfnir destroys it’.

The others nodded and began to file out of the door, keeping to the shadows. They didn’t need to. Fáfnir had the total attention of the cultists.

‘Over there, at the edge of the cliff’ whispered Rainbowdash, pointing at a relatively new looking stone bunker.

‘That’s gonna be full of them cultists Rainbow...’ said Applejack, ‘You think we can take ‘em?’

‘Less of I think, more of I know’. The 8 ponies ran towards the bunker and slammed themselves against the side.

‘Door anywhere?’ asked Dasher.

‘There’s one here!’ chirped Pinkie Pie overexcitedly, obviously revelling at the thought of slaughtering a bunch of cultists.

‘I’ll go first’ said Bowdler before she could kick down the door, ‘I’ve got the hardiest armour’.

Pinkie frowned but saw his logic and let him past. He performed the same trick as he did on the walls of the old palace and ran into the bunker.

Inside were about 25 cultists, who had just stopped shooting at Fáfnir in a moment of shock. Without thinking, he charged straight at them, swords spinning. 6 cultists dropped dead, and a further 9 lost limbs. 10 to go then. The remaining cultists drew their spellblades, only to be jumped on by Pinkie Pie.

‘DIE YOU PARTY POOPERS!’ she screeched as she hacked at their skulls. She murdered all but one of them in the most brutal and imaginative ways possible in the amount of time she had. The last one backed up to the door.

‘What are you?’ he asked.

‘Who me?’ she replied sweetly, ‘YOUR UNDOING!’ But before she could jump at him, a butterfly knife plunged into the back of his skull.

‘Ugh!’ whined Rarity, ‘Now my hoof is all icky’

‘You stole my kill!’ Pinkie spluttered in outrage, ‘WHY DID YOU DO THAT? I HAD HIM FAIR AND SQUARE!’

‘Well I had to do something darling, or I would have felt useless, so to say’

‘Hmph!’ she snorted and decapitated one of the crippled cultists. The other 5 came in right afterwards, expecting a fight. What greeted them was a bloodstained room full of corpses.

‘Well that was easy’ said Bluewing, putting away his newly reforged battleaxe.

‘There’s a ladder over here,’ said Dasher, ‘It looks like it goes down behind the falls’

‘How can we use ladders?’ asked Pinkie Pie, ‘We’ve got hooves’

Rarity shrugged, ‘Magic?’