Fall of the Rightful King

Chapter Twenty-One

Nick

We got ready to leave early the next morning.

Erin hugged me. "Please be safe," she said.

"Hey, I'm coming back," I said. "We're just going to find her and see how she can help us."

"Be safe," she said again.

The safe house was in the suburbs. Traffic was very light, but I saw a few unicorns starting to use magic to drive, and there were a lot of pegasi flying around. People were learning pretty quickly. The house looked normal from the outside. Except for the open door.

Manuel parked and we got inside. The place was a mess, but you could call it an organized mess. It didn't look ransacked. More like someone had cleaned out the place in a hurry.

"Damn it!" Manuel said. "They knew we were coming."

"How?" I asked.

"I don't know. Still, let's search the home so we can find any clues left behind."

Manuel went one way and Paper Back and I went another. We went upstairs and started looking around. Problem was, the place was clean of anything obvious.

"You can't sense anything magical, can you?" I asked Paper Back as we checked the bathroom.

She shook her head. "Nothing special. I can tell unicorns lived here recently."

"There's got to be something," Alan said. "I mean, fuck, even the government can't be perfect. Look for anything personal or something that looks like it shouldn't be left behind. Especially anything you can hide something in."

We went into a bedroom. There were a few more personal touches here. Flowers in a vase. The adjacent bathroom had a toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter. I opened the drawers, but they were empty.

"Hey, Nick!" Paper Back said behind me. "There's something magical in the mattress! Come lift it up."

I turned around and lifted one end of the mattress. "How'd you tell?" I asked.

"There's a kind of afterglow," she said. "Hold on a sec..." Her horn glowed as she walked into the kitchen. She came back holding a knife, and cut a hole in the mattress. After it was a few inches long, she pulled out a small leather book with a lock on it. I grabbed it. It was a journal.

"Holy shit," I said. "It's her journal. This is huge.”

“Shit, does it say anything about Equestria?”

She raised an eyebrow. "When the fuck did you start to swear?" Alan asked.

"You're rubbing off on me, dork," she answered, smiling. "Anyway, the journal."

“There’s a lock on it,” I said. “We can break it off at the hotel pretty easily, though. Do you think she left it here for us to find?" I asked.

Alan shook his head. "Nah, I think she stashed it so the g-men wouldn't find it and take it, and they got outta town so quickly she didn't have time to get it back."

Manuel burst into the room.

"We have to go, now! Derek's creatures are approaching."

We got to the door and Manuel held up a hand.

"Do you feel that?" he asked Paper Back.

"Yeah," she said, her eyebrows narrowed. "That... it makes me feel sick."

"Derek," Manuel said like it was a curse. "That's his dark magic."

"Come on out, old man," Derek yelled. "It's time we talked about your future."

Manuel clenched his fists and sighed. He glanced back at us, a sort of sad and disappointed look on his face. Something in his eyes hardened. "Be ready," he said, and opened the door. Paper Back and Alan ran past me.

Alan

Derek stood next to a circle filled with symbols, all black. Something dark and cloudy was inside and getting darker. Next to him stood his two metal bodyguards. Manuel thrust out his hand and yelled something. A blue-grey circle appeared around his hand, flared, and shot a bolt of lightning into the cloud. It disintegrated. Derek turned towards us, his features hard and his face red with exertion. Our legs pumped against the ground, moving us to the side. Manuel went right, we went left. Derek and two of his metal things went right. One started running at us, purple lines pulsing like a heartbeat.

I was freaking the fuck out inside. We were under attack by a fucking evil sorcerer. I mean, come on. But Paper Back was controlling the panic, turning it into energy to move us. I saw flashes of light from Manuel’s direction. We could feel different kinds of magic fighting there.

Then we were moving at the golem. We dodged to the left as it punched down. I felt sudden sharp jabs of pain on my legs and back as we kicked up against the thing’s head. The head twisted back and we hit it again, from the other direction. Dust mixed with sweat in my nose and mouth. Our forehead hit the ground, our tail was pulled up, and we looked the golem in the face, upside down. We struggled and bucked against its hand. We fell and rolled away. We glanced back and saw brown hair falling out of the golem’s grip. It started running at us, dangerously fast.

It’s going to crush us! She yelled.

The golem kicked and we twisted to the side letting it move us instead of slam into us. Metal slammed into the ground next to us, filling our lungs with dust. We saw its fist coming at our left. We managed to jump over it and roll along its arm, then kicked its wrist. We might as well have kicked a wall.

Metal closed around our right front leg.

“FUCK!” one of us yelled. Not sure who.

Light washed over us from Manuel’s direction. The golem let go of us and slumped. We took several steps back and looked at Manuel. He was still fighting Derek and the other golem. Derek looked pissed. The other golem was standing up from a prone position. Derek twisted around a blast of lightning from Manuel and slammed a knife into his back.

“No!” we yelled. Manuel arched his back and fell. Derek started running at us, magic coming out of his outstretched hand and hitting the golem close to us. The other golem started running at Nick, who had kind of been hiding this whole time.

We leapt over Nick as he fell into a crouch and Paper Back brought a shield up. Something massive hit the shield hard. A golem was standing over us, pounding.

“Stop!” Derek yelled, and the golem stopped.

"What do we do?" Paper Back asked.

"I don't know!" I said.

Derek walked towards us slowly, smiling. "Well, that certainly was fun! But we don't have time for anything else. Drop the shield and come quietly. Believe it or not, I'd rather not kill either of you."

If anything, the shield got brighter.

"Why are you doing this?" Paper Back asked.

Derek sighed. "Take it down," he said. The two metal goliaths stepped forward and started banging on the shield. Each hit made it flare brightly in that spot, but left the shield dimmer after. Each fucking hit felt like it was hitting us. We started screaming. I felt something hot start dripping out of our nose. Then I tasted blood.

"Nick!" Paper Back gasped as she was forced to her knees. "I... I can't hold them back!"

The blows kept hammering down. Derek smirked.

"Come on," he said. "Just drop it and we can talk! Let's start with that journal of yours. The things I could do if it has what I think it has... give that to me and I'll let you two walk free!"

More blows smashed into the shield. We weren’t going to make it.

"No, no!" Derek yelled for no apparent reason. "Get back!" The metal things ran backwards surprisingly quickly, but Derek barely made it a step.

Time felt like it stopped. Every detail felt preserved in perfect clarity. We were screaming. Derek was screaming.

Something fucking hit me in the chest and threw us. Paper Back rolled when we hit.

Our magic was gone. It felt like suddenly having your legs cut off and your eyes gone. It was gone. Our magic was gone!

Nick was sitting up, staring at a black symbol on the ground. Just looking at it made me sick. Did he fucking do that?

Our magic was gone! Fuck! Shit! Are we dying?

I don’t know? What the hell did he do? Paper Back asked.

Ask him!

"Nick," she gasped, "what... what did you do? I can't feel... I can't feel my magic!"

Derek snarled and pointed at us, but the metal things refused to move. He shouted at them, ordering them to attack us, but they just stood there like statues.

"You idiot!" Derek yelled, clutching his stomach. "Do you have any fucking idea what you just did?" He pulled a knife from his belt and started to run at us. We sprung at him, but our magic wasn’t there to push us along, and we hit his legs instead of his chest. He fell, dropping the knife. He slammed a fist into our side as we started to beat our hooves into his chest. He grabbed our hair and tried to throw us off him, but we dug our hind legs around his chest and pulled him with us.

He tried again to throw us off and succeeded. We rolled on instinct and heard metal strike the road right where we had been. We stood back up and saw Nick moving towards Derek.

"Don't!" Paper Back yelled. "You'll just get us both hurt!"

Derek started to smile at us. "Oh, poor pony. What happened to you? Where's that ferocious fighter I just saw? Are you really this useless without your magic?" He struck again and we dodged. He kept walking forward.

"You see, it's not so bad for me," he said. "All Nick did was sever my connection to the creatures I've summoned. Magic's not a part of me - it's something I can recreate as soon as I get a moment." He suddenly tossed the knife at Nick. On reflex, we reached out to try and stop it, but we had no magic. Our head felt like it was exploding. Our ears were pounding. We heard the knife fall to the ground and something heavy hit the ground. I saw Nick painfully rolling along the ground.

Something in our horn started to tingle as Derek started to laugh. Our magic started to trickle back.

Oh thank Celestia!

"Poor girl," Derek said. "Betrayed by your friend at last. To think he'd take your magic from you."

"No!" Paper Back yelled. "He didn't take it!"

"Sure about that?" he asked. Nick stood up behind Derek and ran at him, tackling him. It didn't quite knock him over, but it distracted him and let us jump forward and hit his legs a few time. Derek swept a leg out and we dodged, watching Nick fall to the ground. Our magic wasn’t quite back yet.

Instead of fighting, Derek turned and started running towards his golems, which still stood immobile.

"Paper Back," Nick said.

"Not now, Nick!" she yelled. The pounding in my ears was getting a lot stronger. I could feel it in my chest and I could swear the ground was shaking in rhythm.

"I'm... I'm so sorry, I didn't know what it would- that it'd take your magic!"

"Nick, you didn't take my magic!" she said as our horn started to glow. Fucking finally.

"You scared the Tartarus out of me," she said, "but if you hadn't done it Derek would have gotten us both. Just don't do it around me, or warn me next time, ok? Now be ready!"

The golems started to run at us. Oh. If Paper Back's magic had come back, then that meant so had Derek's. The pounding started to shake the rocks on the road and I realized that it wasn't in my ears - it was coming from a point above us.

Derek looked up. So did we. Even the golems slowed and looked up as the sky started to tear open, pouring out light. There was a gold flash, a tremendous noise, and another shockwave knocked me onto the ground. God damn it.