Episode 224: The Las Pegasus Front

“What do you mean he’s not here?” Wounded and tired from the night’s exertions, Sombra could only teeter on the edge of exasperation as he tapped a hoof with nervous impatience with the still burning ache of barely healed injuries making his body want to drop dead there on the airship deck. The fleet of civilian vessels ferrying Klugetown’s population southward to Mt. Aris was making fast progress towards the coast, but apparently someone had decided to jump ship.

The Reigai of Captain Platinum, the rendition of the human Soul Reaper’s younger self, was somewhat recovered from her inebriated state, but only barely, and quite frankly being sober wasn’t making her easier to deal with. They stood on the top deck of the largest cargo ship, a long, wide bodied vessel with twin zeppelin balloons lashed together by thick rope bridges. She was leaning over the side, letting the air fan her hair and keep her focused in between vomiting over the rail, which could explain her cranky mood as she groaned and made a ‘shoo’ gesture at Sombra, “I mean he isn’t here, pony. He left. Departed. Hopped off with barely a word of farewell.”

“And you did not think to, I don’t know, stop him?” Sombra inquired with the kind of growing fury that would have, in the past, made ponies quale. This younger replica of Platinum’s unimpressed expression wasn’t hard to read, even if the flat, blunt faces of humans were still an oddity to Sombra’s eyes.

“I’m not Starswirl’s keeper, nor his mother. He’s free to come and go as he pleases, as far as I’m concerned, and it clearly pleased him to go.”

Frustration bubbled up like sour tar in Sombra’s mind, just thinking of the kind of damage Starswirl’s Reigai had casually done when raiding Canterlot’s public library, let alone to think what he might do when let loose across Equestria at large. And with the present danger and chaos of the Hollow Chrysalis’ hordes assaulting different cities, it would be all too easy for Starswirl to just vanish amidst the confusion, leaving a dangerous and unpredictable individual to just wander freely.

“I suppose it did not occur to you the man might cause trouble? That indeed given what you Reigai have aided in doing, we’ve little reason to trust you already?”

For all of her carefree and antagonistic attitude, there was a note of seriousness that crept into Platinum’s eyes as she pushed herself back from the railing and adjusted the black robes of her faux Soul Reaper uniform, straightening herself up as if collecting her pride, almost resembling the real Platinum, if only for a moment, “Did it occur to me? Yes. You want to know what else occurred to me? That ‘stopping’ Starswirl, even making the attempt, would likely result in another battle, on very fragile airships packed to the gills with innocent people. Now, I’m no saint, but I still thought it better to let the man go his way rather than make a fuss that may well have cost a lot of lives, including the weaker Reigai with me whom I consider my responsibility now that Zecora is gone. So, Sombra, any further questions you’d like to lob at me, hmm?”

He paused, soaking in her words, which after a minute of thought he couldn’t find a fault of her logic. With a hefty sigh and shake of his head, he said, “No, no you made the right choice. I... apologize for grilling you.”

“Forgiven and forgotten,” Platinum’s Reigai said, grunting and going back to the railing, “For what little it may be worth to you, I do plan to go looking for him, once things settle down, and I’m not quite so... dizzy. Airships... ugh... I never knew I could get airsick until now. I do hope my adorable Capper is faring better.”

“Fear not my frozen flower,” said the suave tones of the very Abyssnian cat in question as he sauntered up to the deck, looking livelier and more chipper now that the danger of Klugetown was sinking into the distance behind them, “I’ve spent plenty of time on airships and this cat has the legs for it.”

“Mmm, you do have legs,” Platinum said with a pleasant smile and made Sombra feel like he really needed to be somewhere that wasn’t here. Instead he turned to Capper, trying not to look nearly as grumpy as he felt.

“Is Radiant Hope still treating the injured?” he asked. This particular ship, being the largest of the fleet moving the civilians, had also taken on the majority of the injured folk from Klugetown. Radiant Hope had gone below deck to help tend to those injured alongside the Reigai that had training in their own healing Kido arts.

“Yup, you’re marefriend is quite the busy bee down there, hardly taking a break and keeping all the healing efforts nice and organized,” Capper said, “Mare’s got a talent for it. Ought to be running a hospital.”

“We’ve been busy with too many things to think much about careers,” Sombra said, the very notion feeling almost foreign to his mind. Sure, Radiant Hope he could see in such a position, pursuing a line of medical work, once they finished finding all the pieces to Amore’s crystalized form. What he might do after that quest, or the current crisis, was over with... well, Sombra had never had the luxury of even considering what a ‘normal’ life might be like. What would he even do? He somehow doubted there were many career opportunities for dark magician ex-tyrant unicorns with a heavy background in villainy and empire conquest. It just didn’t seem like the kind of thing you put on a resume.

Putting the thought aside, he looked back at Platinum, “We should be at Mt. Aris by morning. Once there, I’ll have to explain to Queen Novo about you and your fellow Reigai. Then, perhaps, you’d be willing to join me in trying to track down your wayward comrade? Do you even know what he might be planning to do with his newfound freedom?”

Platinum frowned, idly going over to Capper to lean on him and scratch his head behind his ears, which the humanoid cat man seemed to rather appreciate, while she said, “Knowing Starswirl? Research. Into anything and everything that catches his eye.”

“Do you think you’re being treated unfairly, brother? I can assure you, it pains me to have to keep you in chains like this.” Nidhogg’s voice echoed over the cold ceiling of stone and ice, the chamber reverberating with the dragon’s heavy footsteps as he paced around the center of the circular space. Here, suspended from chains thicker than trees, Spike growled as he followed Nidhogg’s movements as best he could, despite his bindings. The chains wrapped his limbs, his wings, his neck and snout, all dangling from thick pillars of stone that went from floor to ceiling and surrounded the center area where Spike was bound, hanging some twenty feet off the ground.

He could still speak, despite the chains around his mouth, “You better not be hurting Ember, or I swear to Celestia I’m going to do things to you that might make Twilight kinda unhappy with me, what with her being the Princess of Friendship and all.”

Nidhogg looked at him with what Spike figured might have been pity tinged with distaste, “The Equestrian fledgling is unharmed, if less than comfortable. Her shrieks keep her guards up at night, that much I can tell you. I’ve never known a dragon who could shout as continuously as her without rest. At the moment being assigned to watch her is considered a punishment among Lord Jormungandr’s faithful. But again, we’ve done nothing to harm her. She wasn’t even meant to be here, but her foolish act in trying to save you has landed her in this predicament.”

“If you don’t want her here, just send her back to Equestria!” Spike demanded, struggling in his chains, despite knowing full well after many attempts to break free that the metal was a lot stronger than any iron or steel he’d run into back home. “Seriously, dude, I don’t care what you want with me, just let her go already!”

Nidhogg drew back slightly, peering at Spike with a glint of realization, “You have feelings for her?”

“What!? No, nothing like that, man. We’re friends. Totally platonic friends.”

“Hmm, you were not a very good liar even when you were your old self, Fafnir. Now, child that you are, you wear too much of your heart on your scales. Sadly I cannot grant your request. Lord Jormungandr seems to think she is better suited as a hostage to your good behavior.” Nidhogg approached Spike, reaching one of his long, black scaled talons up to grip Spike’s chains right above his neck, “Which brings us to why I am here. Since you’ve proven quite stubborn in listening to your own brother, Lord Jormungandr wishes to talk with you himself. I am to bring you to him. With the understanding that if you attempt to escape or cause trouble in any way, the punishment will not fall on your head, but your dear Ember.”

“Dude, we’re just friends, but either way, can I just say you jerkwads aren’t exactly selling me on anything by threatening her. Kinda just makes me want to punch all your lights out even more,” Spike snarled, trying his best to rest the urge to just try and breath fire all over Nidhogg's rather close, and stupid, face. He also considered trying to make use of that Anima stuff that was swirling around inside him, figuring he might be able to wreck the stone pillars holding up his chains.

But, cliché tactic as it was to threaten a hostage, it did the job. Spike didn’t want to risk anything happening to Ember. At least, he didn’t want to take that risk until he felt confident he could rescue her before anything bad was done to her. Much as the last thing he wanted to do was chat it up with Nidhogg’s boss, it was possible that on the way to and from that talk Spike could learn more about the layout of where he was, or even find out where they were keeping Ember.

When they’d first arrived via the portal that Nidhogg had used on him, and Ember had gotten caught up in, they’d landed in the middle of a huge upper platform on what looked like an enormous castle of dark metal and ice. Spike and Ember had gotten swarmed by dragons before they’d even gotten a chance to blink, overwhelmed by numbers and quickly separated from one another. He still vividly recalled Ember shouting his name as she’d been dragged off, he himself being manhandled (dragonhandled?) by at least six other dragons, including Nidhogg, into the very chamber he was now imprisoned in.

He wasn’t sure how long ago that had been. A couple of days? The only window in or out of this chamber didn’t show much light, the weather outside seemingly eternally dark and overcast. Time didn’t feel quite right, here.

Nidhogg watched Spike carefully, running a claw over the chains, “Perhaps, but it remains the truth that if you do anything other than behave yourself, there will be consequences.”

As if to show how little he cared what Spike chose to do, Nidhogg drew a series of runes in the air from a sparkling flow of Anima that wafted from his claws. As if in response to a spoken password, the chains around Spike came alive and rattled, loosening until they withdrew from around him like reluctant snakes letting go of their quarry. Spike flopped to the ground with an unceremonious ‘Oof!’, and glared up at Nidhogg as he stood. Nidhogg stared back, as if daring Spike to try anything. After a moment Spike growled and looked away, “Let’s just get this over with.”

Beyond his prison chamber, Spike was led through high arched corridors of ice and black stone, wrought in a circular climb past what Spike could only imagine were dozens if not outright hundreds of other cells. The air was cold and dry, mist clinging to the walls and support pillars that ran up large stone steps that curled ever upward. Spike heard faint wailings from some of the other cells, all barred by thick doors of dark metal. Guards, either dragons of various shapes and sizes, or beasts of even greater variety, stood ready at regular intervals. Spike saw everything from enormous, armored bears, to stubborn, violent looking mammoths or even walrus’ the size of houses. Other creatures were less familiar, trolls with gangly, clawed limbs of ice, or tall, blue skinned people that looked human but with vast white manes and giant, muscular bodies.

“You seem surprised, brother,” Nidhogg commented as he led Spike onward, “Do you not remember Niflheim at all? Nothing of your home?”

“Equestria is my home, and we’ve got a lot of different creatures living there, too. Just... stop acting like I ought to know this place because I used to be this Fafnir dude. I’m not him anymore.”

Spike avoided answering the question directly, mainly because he did remember, more and more as he followed Nidhogg along the sharply turning corridors of the fortress. Fafnir’s memories may have been disjointed and fragmented in his mind since he’d awakened as an Inheritor, but being here in Niflheim was doing a lot to jostle those pieces into something resembling senses. He knew many of the species he saw, including the frost giants and ice trolls that made up the bulk of Jormungandr’s forces aside from the many flights of dragons that clearly still owed Jormungandr loyalty. His memory sparked with knowledge of the Beast Realms ancient Clan structure and the web of rules and rituals that governed interactions between the Tribes.

He also remembered how much he, or Fafnir, had come to loathe being here. It wasn’t just Jormungandr’s mad quest to destroy Yggdrasil that had created all but a mindless death cult from the once noble Clans of Niflheim, it was the fact that so many had gone along with it, including himself. Fafnir’s memories painted Jormungandr as one who could convince many with passionate words, and it twisted Fafnir’s guts to recall how he’d believed in the cause, up until he’d been up to his horns in death and destruction and realized that even if Yggdrasil was in need of healing, this wasn’t the way to get it done.

“You still think, after all this time, that the only way to save Yggdrasil is to kill it?” Spike muttered, almost surprised at the bitterness in his tone, blinking and shaking his head to banish the specter of Fafnir’s voice from his own mind.

Nidhogg looked back at him. They were now climbing the exterior of the fortress castle’s main tower, a spire of black iron and solid ice spikes that ran up and down the tower like needles. The exterior stairways were narrow but navigable. Down below Spike could see the huge ravine in the frosty glacier where thousands of resident beasts clawed out their lairs. His memory told him Jormungandr’s main lair was actually down below, in the bowels of the castle, so if Nidhogg was leading him up, that meant they were likely going to the tower’s very apex.

“Of course I do, Fafnir. I have never wavered. Jormungandr has always had the right of it. Ragnarok must come, for our corrupt world to be healed, born anew from the flames of destruction. You believed, too, once.”

It took no small effort to force back phantom memories from Fafnir’s past, for Spike to remember he was himself and that this nutjob dragon wasn’t some long lost brother. “If you say so, dude, but last time I checked, killing the world kinda falls in the ‘bad guy’ end of the spectrum. Whatever’s wrong with your big tree, I think you ought to find a way to deal with it that doesn’t involve destroying everything.”

“If it were so simple, do you not think we would have pursued other paths? Do you believe we came to our cause out of some ill-conceived obsession with destruction, rather than the only resort left to us?” Nidhogg scraped the wall with an angry claw, growling under his breath, “But we’ve argued this before, and stubborn you remain. No matter, it is for Lord Jormungandr to decide your fate, brother, not I.”

Spike wasn’t planning on letting anyone decide his fate but himself, although the situation wasn’t giving him a lot of possibilities to work with. The trip up had not given him much insight into where Ember was being kept, other than a gut instinct she wasn’t in the same pit of cells he’d been in. Somehow he felt sure he’d have heard her shouting and making a ruckus, if she’d been in any of those cells. The landscape around the glacier canyon and its towering castle consisted largely of vast fields of snow, with mountains tall and dark in the distance to the north and an equally vast and cold gray ocean to the south. Not much to go on, so even if he could find Ember and they both escaped, where they would even go was debatable.

He wasn’t about to lose hope, but Spike felt like he could have really used Twilight’s advice right about then, or any of his other friends for that matter. Starlight was pretty smart, too, and almost as good at getting out of trouble as she was at getting in to it. He wondered what they were all doing right now, anyway? Were they looking for him and Ember, or did they have other problems on their plate?

I might have to just rely on myself this time. Well, me and Ember. She’s probably not taking this lying down. Not a dragon as cool as her...

Spike didn’t overly think too hard on the admiration he had for the relatively newly minted Dragonlord. She was just... cool, and totally just a friend.

His thoughts on Ember were interrupted by a gust of wind from above. They’d reached the top of the tower, which was deceptively wide, given the tower’s size. Shaped like a flat triangle, with tall, inwardly curved stone monoliths at each tip, the area was wide enough for hosting a gathering of a dozen adult dragons or more. The hefty wind came flowing down from above, where Spike could see the overcast sky of charcoal gray clouds churning as something moved among them. The sky itself seemed to stir, the clouds dripping down like water as a humongous object descended.

Spike gulped. He was big, in this adult dragon form he’d become since awakening as Fafnir’s Inheritor. Nidhogg was bigger still, rivaling Torch for sheer mass. Yet the dragon that was descending from the sky now could barely be described as anything other than utterly enormous, and even that felt like it felt short as a phrase to encompass it. Spike had never seen another living being of flesh and blood that was this big, to the point his mind hurt a little trying to look from one end to the other of this mountainous dragon.

Dragon didn’t even feel quite right as a word, for this one’s body was long and serpentine, although a set of six long, bulky legs hung down from his body of rigid and overlapping black scale plates. The ridges upon his back were like small, jagged cliff peaks. Multiple sets of wings, long and leathery and wide enough to be like black swords cutting the sky, spread from various points across the dragon’s coiling back. A head of curling black horns and a set of jaws large enough to swallow an airship whole looked down with intense eyes. The wind Spike had been feeling came from the dragon’s wings, passing over head like a sky of dark scales.

Then, while Spike stood gaping, the dragon’s titanic form became coated in deep purple and black aura. He began to circle the top of the tower, his body actually growing smaller, while maintaining the same basic shape. Spike watched in mute amazement as within a few heartbeats the dragon that dwarfed all other dragons became a size more akin to Nidhogg’s, and landed with incredibly smooth grace for such a bulky creature in the center of the tower’s roof.

Nidhogg bowed his head low, kneeling, “My Lord Jormungandr.”

“Rise, Nidhogg,” rumbled Jormungandr’s voice like a velvet coated avalanche, “I am pleased to see our guest has given you no trouble.”

“He values the Equestrian female,” Nidhogg replied, as if that was explanation enough. Spike growled, his long tail giving an agitated twitch as he yearned to attack, and kept his anger under control. Jormungandr raised his long neck high and gazed down upon him, lips curled back in what could have been equally a smile or a barring of fangs.

“I see life in your chosen home has treated you well, Fafnir. Equestria... we call it Asgard, but for your sake I’ll use the name its inhabitants call it. Long ago you abandoned your family and your loyalty to me to lead a flight of deserters there, convinced my course was the wrong one. I trust you still feel this way?”

It was with a very fed up, ragged groan that Spike gave the hardest roll of his eyes that he had ever rolled and glared up at the larger dragon, “First off, call me Spike, or I’m going to tie you into a pretzel, you oversized edge-noodle. Second off, yeah, I may not be this Fafnir guy anymore, but sounds to me like he had the right idea ditching your club of loser nihilists. Seriously, I don’t care what your excuses are, ‘destroy the world’ is always going to be a bad idea.”

“And I have no intention of trying to convince you of the necessity of what we must do, Fafnir. I allowed Nidhogg his chance to convince you, and now that time has passed,” Jormungandr said, with a meaningful look at Nidhogg, who reluctantly bowed his head once more. Returning his gaze to Spike, Jormungandr flashed his fang-barring smile once more, “That said, that does not mean I cannot make use of you.”

“Like how? I mean, I’m not in any rush to die, but if I’m not going to cooperate, you really got no reason to keep me or Ember around...” Spike said, feeling more and more nervous under Jormungandr’s unrelenting gaze. There was a disturbing presence to the dragon, even in his reduced size, as if he still bore some unimaginable force of will that was larger than his true immensity. Spike didn’t like it, and something inside him, probably Fafnir, was entirely too familiar with this sensation of being made to feel small.

“It is true that if Nidhogg had brought you alone, as he originally intended, and failed to convince you to join our side once more, I’d likely simply have you killed. I do not need distractions at this juncture. However, your brave young Ember has inadvertently saved your life by tagging along. Your feelings for her make her a lever I can use to make you, in turn, useful,” Jormungandr explained with the casual tone of an individual used to doing horrible things as long as he thought they served his greater ends, “Do you understand, Fafnir? As long as you cooperate, she lives. If not...”

“I get it, I freakin’ get it, you don’t need to paint a picture,” Spike grumbled, barring his own teeth at Jormungandr, rising to his own full height, which still only got up to the other dragon’s chest, but it made him feel a tiny bit better, regardless. “You’d better not touch a scale on her. I don’t care how stupidly ginormous you can make yourself, I’ll ram my claws right down your throat if you hurt Ember.”

“Then, for both of us to avoid something neither of us would enjoy, I trust you’ll do the intelligent thing and cooperate?” Jormungandr said with a dead serious look in his eyes, showing zero concern over Spike’s threat. At the moment that was the only advantage Spike felt he had right then. No matter how powerful Jormungandr was or what cards he felt he had in his grimy claws, he was underestimating Spike, and Spike had learned plenty of times already that the bad guys eventually slipped up when it came to dealing with those they thought weren’t a threat. He just had to string things along until that opening presented itself.

“You’ve made your point. What is it that you want from me?”

“As it happens, there’s a group of individuals from Midgard, what you call Earth, running around the Beast Realm. You probably are familiar with some of them, and one of them happens to resemble you quite a lot, even if he isn’t you,” Jormungandr said, lowering his head to get on eye level with Spike, his gaze colder than the ice spires covering the tower, “You’re going to help me deal with them and recover someone important to me. Specifically, you’re going to kill your Midgardian counterpart. I am given to understand he also goes by Spike these days.”

That had not been on Spike’s bingo card for this conversation, or lifetime, quite frankly. He took a moment to close his jaw, blink the confusion from his eyes, and respond with a faltering, “What?”

“Spike. Looks like you, but small and canine. Shouldn't be difficult to miss,” Jormungandr stated with flat amusement, “Also my half brother’s reincarnation, but that’s a whole different story.”

“Again with the crazy, and again I say; WHAT!?” Spike felt like he’d somehow gotten into that stash of special ‘potions’ Zecora kept her hidden drawer that she thought Spike didn’t know about, the ones that supposedly helped one synergize one’s essence with the cosmos but far as Spike could tell mostly just made you hallucinate your tail off, “Can you say words that actually make sense?”

A deep growl from beside him came from Nidhogg, “Do not insult Lord Jormungandr, brother.”

“It's not important, Nidhogg,” assured Jormungandr, “His confusion is... understandable, given how much he’s forgotten. Fafnir, or Spike if you so adamantly prefer, I’ll spare you the long version and keep this brief. You are already aware of the existence of ‘counterparts’, individuals who have similar versions of themselves living both in Midgard and Asgard. This phenomenon is caused by Yggdrasil and the process by which it rebirths souls from all of the realms. Essences intermix in this process, sometimes creating souls that resonate with one another and form ‘mirrors’ of each other. In the past, this was relatively uncommon, but a combination of the strain from the ancient wars between gods in Midgard, and alicorns in Asgard, along with Zero Division’s eventual meddling with Yggdrasil itself, resulted in many more of these mirror counterpart souls being made as too many souls were forced to intermix in the rebirth process. This included your soul, Fafnir, and that of my half brother Fenrir. Two distinctly separate entities, mixed together and reborn as echoes of one another.”

“Uhhhh... gonna just say most of that went over my head, but I’m sure it made sense to somebody,” Spike grumbled with a disbelieving shake of his head, “Honestly more concerned with the whole ‘kill my counterpart’ bit. Like, I get you’re the local big bad, and are strong-arming me into helping you, but why try to arrange a Spike vs Spike scenario? Not that I want you to hurt anyone, jerk, but why not just go after them yourself? Or send your draconic cheerleader here?” He cocked his head towards Nidhogg, who blew a snort of smoke from his nostrils.

“I killed my brother with my own claws once already, I do not feel the need to repeat the experience. I also already have servants seeking to pin down my adversaries, and they may well be up to the task, but I do not presume victory, and hence will use any tool at my disposal,” Jormungandr stated, flexing his wings in a dragon’s version of a shrug, “If they know you, Spike, they’ll trust you, and hence not expect the danger you represent. And if you fail, it’s not a significant complication to my goals.”

Spike let out a long, low hiss, “And let me guess, if I don’t do this...”

“Ember dies, yes, we’ve gone over this. If it's any consolation, she’ll be well treated up until you give us a reason to execute her, and even then I can promise to make it a swift and clean death.”

“Riiiiight, evil, gotcha. But why do you want my counterpart, specifically, dead so badly? I mean, nothing against the guy, never met him myself, but isn’t he, like, a ten pound pooch? Not exactly a major league threat compared to what I hear Sunset Shimmer and some of those other Earth gals can do.”

Jormungandr went quiet and still for a moment before replying, “They are a genuine threat, yes. But Fenrir... I’ve felt his essence stir. Mere pup or no, my half brother is becoming something more than that, which may be an issue if not dealt with. Not for his power, but for... other reasons. Irrelevant to your task. My servants have narrowed down the location of Fenrir and the Midgardian party, and Nidhogg will take you there. Regardless of how other battles take shape, your sole task is to kill Fenrir, the other Spike. Do this, and I free Ember, and will take you both back to your Equestria. Fail, or balk at this duty, and, well, we’ve gone over the consequences.”

Twilight Sparkle’s breath came quick and shallow, not due to any physical or magical strain, but due to the growing pit of clawing frustration and worry in her chest. Even with things going according to plan, there was a part of her not wholly prepared for the realities of open warfare. Danger she was familiar with, certainly. Worry for her friends’ safety, pretty much typical at this point. But this was different. Ponies were dying, and despite her best efforts and immense power, there was only so much she could do to prevent the loss of lives.

And this was when everything was going nearly perfect, here in Las Pegasus. The Arrancar in this region had arrived in fewer numbers than anticipated. The enemy had split their forces, leaving behind a smaller group while the rest advanced right into the prepared defenses around Las Pegasus’ outlying suburban cloud formations. She and Rainbow Dash rapidly isolated and locked down the enemy leaders while the Solar Guard and Night Guard launched a textbook ambush, trapping the Arrancar between a swift hammer and anvil scenario in which they were surrounded and being hit from both the front and rear.

By the numbers, things couldn’t be going much better. Yet Twilight knew ponies were dying, Solar Guard and Night Guard alike taking casualties as the Arrancar released their dreaded Resurreccion forms and fought back with brutal ferociousness. Connected as she was via several magical spells to the command structure of the local regiments, she was being kept updated on the flow of battle, and so knew full well that despite the Guards best efforts, they were taking losses for every Arrancar brought down. Even with the artificial fog clouding the suburbs, thick with magic to confuse the Arrancars’ spiritual senses, the raw destructive force and wide explosive area of Cero beams was still deadly, as were the pure strength and speed of the enemy.

Twilight knew that she, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy had to get into the thick of things to turn the tide. But Rainbow was still dealing with the Arrancar’s apparent leader, while Fluttershy had snuck around behind the enemy’s line to deal with the pack left behind. That left Twilight to handle the second strongest of the Arrancar attacking the city, the aggressive female who’d charged in first.

Not that this was proving to be difficult, just annoyingly time consuming. Twilight had already hammered the female Arrancar with a barrage of magical bolts and trapped her within an enclosed sphere of hardened mana, but the monstrous Hollow still struggled with almost single-minded fury. Now in the form of something akin to an elongated centipede with the upper torso of a humanoid female bearing a mandible tipped shield of bone and a long glaive, the Arrancar repeated slashed the barrier around her with rapid strikes, alternating between both the sharp mandibles of her shield and the slashing blade of her glaive. The motions were so fast the roaring Arrancar’s arms were like a blur, and Twilight noticed the shield was actually consuming bits of the magic that comprised her magical barrier, which slowly started to show cracks.

“Not gonna keep me in this sparkly bubble forever, fluff-ball! Your soul smells so damn good I can’t stand it! So freakin’ hungry!” the Arrancar howled and streams of green tinted spirit energy flowed down the edges of her glaive and shield until they pooled into vaguely pick shaped protrusions that she then doubled-slashed into the crack. On impact two thin bolts, like corkscrewing versions of Ceros punched through and then twisted in the air to come right at Twilight, who’d been hovering at a distance at a higher angle.

Twilight slipped back with a swift use of her ‘Blink’ spell, and summoned an Astral Sphere in front of her where she’d just been hovering. The two unusually shaped Cero hit the Astral Sphere and vanished inside, trapped in place. Holding spiritual energy inside an Astral Sphere was a bit harder than with raw magic, but it wasn’t outside Twilight’s ability, and she was curious to analyze the structure of these Hollow energy attacks. She’d keep these as a sample for later, but she had to deal with this enemy first.

A glance showed her the Arrancar was no longer inside the crumbling shield bubble she’d created, and instinct well-honed after many adventures had her juking to the side, just in time for the edge of the Arrancar’s glaive to only catch the edge of her wing. Sparks flew, a shimmer of purple magic covering Twilight. She’d set up protective layers on herself already, so when the Arrancar’s follow up whip of her long centipede body caught Twilight in the gut, the impact was tremendous but to Twilight felt mostly like a stinging blow rather than the bone shattering hit it was probably meant to be.

She was still knocked back through the air, but Twilight recovered fast, wings spread, eyes narrowed with intense displeasure, “I don’t have time for this.”

“Don’t have time, eh? Then stop screwing around and crawl into my mouth for me!” the Arrancar shouted, flourishing her glaive one handed before rushing Twilight again, the buzzing noise of Sonido following her body vanishing from sight. Or rather, conventional sight. Twilight had more than protective charms running through her body. It was a heady sensation, in many ways, the amount of magic at her command right now, and she was deliberately holding a fair portion of it back. Not out of pity, per se, for the creatures were here to harm her home and people, but rather she just wanted to pace herself in case the night’s battles dragged on. These were just foot soldiers, after all. Chrysalis was still out there, somewhere, and who knew if other threats might emerge?

But she did need to pull a couple of stops out to end this fast enough to go deal with the rest of the Arrancar, so as the enemy flashed towards her, Twilight simply erected a spell that had served her well against the Bount, Trixie.

In that fight, Twilight had created a field of a hundred times the regular amount of gravity to pin Trixie down. Now, she cast not one, not two, but four different gravity spells. Large and complex circles of swirling, violet colored magical glyphs formed around the charging Hollow simultaneously and pinched the Arrancar female between the intense gravitational forces they formed from above, below, the front, and from behind.

The Hollow stopped dead in her tracks, her body suddenly crumbling up together like someone being molded into a basketball. She let out a hissing shriek, the white armor like plates across her chitinous body started to crack under the insane pressure of the conflicting gravity spells.

“I’m not in the habit of cruelty,” Twilight explained in a tone of calm she didn’t at all feel, “Far from it, in fact. But if you don't surrender, I’m going to tie off these spells so they stay active, even without me paying attention to them. You’ll stay put, slowly being crushed for... however long it takes for your version of life to end. Do you want that? Because I don’t. But I will.”

“F-fuck...yo...u...” the Arrancar tried to say, pulling off the herculean effort of raising her shield-bearing arm towards one of the magical circles. Twilight saw the shield try to begin consuming the energies of the magic circle, but the gravity was simply too much. Before the Arrancar could do an appreciable drain on even one of the magic circles, the shield cracked and bent, and the arm attached to it twisted back at the wrist until there was a bone snap as the limb bent backwards, eliciting a sharp shriek of pain. Twilight frowned. Were these Arrancar so insane they’d keep fighting even when this clearly outmatched?

In an instant both her anger, frustration, and fear all crystalized into a moment of decision. She wasn’t going to abandon her principles, not and still look at herself in a mirror, but she could still bend a little when necessity demanded it. Rather than tie off the gravity spells to let them keep crushing the Arrancar into what would likely turn out to be an inevitably fatal pretzel, she re-aligned the four magical circles to all be layered on top of the Arrancar, pushing all their amplified gravity downward, all at once. Like a ball shot from a cannon, the Arrancar plummeted down hundreds of feet to the ground below, hitting with the kind of impact that took a hill and turned it into a small valley.

Whether or not that impact was survivable or not, well, Twilight didn’t know. She wasn’t out for blood. But this fight had to end, one way or another.

With that thought in mind, she briefly examined the battlefield, chose the largest concentration of Arrancar she could sense, and with a flick of her horn she teleported right into the middle of the fray.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t used to sensing magic, but it was a skill she’d been rapidly developing ever since gaining her powers as an Inheritor. She clearly felt Twilight lay the final smackdown on the Arrancar she’d been tangling with, and couldn’t help but grin a little, “Looks like Twi’s really getting into the swing of things. At this rate we’re gonna have you Hollow boneheads put away by dawn.”

She had to admit some small part of her felt kind of bad. There was something weirdly genuine about the worry on the face of this Arrancar dude, who’d transformed into a sort of weird, half guy, half jumping spider centaur, with an admittedly cool looking armored jacket. If he wasn’t leading his people here to, well, eat souls, Rainbow Dash might’ve cut him some slack.

He was keeping half an eye on her as she cast that concerned gaze over the fog strewn battle area. The Night Guard had been pouring out more fog into the sky, creating more space to mask their movements, and by the sound of things were giving the other Arrancar way more of a fight than they’d been expecting. The constant crack and thunder of Solar Guard magic cannons added to the din, and each bellow of pain from one of the Hollows was proof positive the night wasn’t going the enemy’s way.

“Running is always an option,” Dash reminded her opponent, but he only leveled his weird bone hook weapon at her and tensed his eight, hairy legs.

“Not yet it isn’t. You laid a nice trap for us, but we can take your regular soldiers once we clear the fog. Real problem is you and your purple friend. You two are the leaders. You fall, the rest will break, I’m willing to bet.”

Guess I won’t bring up Fluttershy, but Shy’s being all stealth mode, so I’ll let her be a surprise, Rainbow thought, and braced herself before the Arrancar moved on her. She barely even needed to think about her movements anymore. Tachys’ memories helped, of course, but they blended into her own lifetime of training to fly faster than any pegasus alive.

Sure, the Arrancar was a swift fellow. To normal eyes he’d look like he was instantly crossing the space between them, his weapon a pale ghost of lightning fast motion. Yet for Dash it was almost like he was the one moving in slow motion. Her body moved with the wind and air currents as easily as she breathed in a slow, steady rhythm. Her swordbreaker cut a curving series of parries, timed almost perfectly to turn the bone hook aside inches from her flesh. She led him on, drew him into her rhythm, her wings beating slowly as she hovered backwards from his assault. Probably, to him, it looked like he was driving her back, forcing her on the defensive.

But this was just where Rainbow Dash wanted him to be. She was pulling him away from the houses of cloudwork, and into an open space that was usually a ‘cloud park’ for the local foals. It was littered with little obstacle courses for young pegasi to practice and play flying games. Dash had grown up spending hours in parks just like this one. Oddly, and perhaps reassuringly, she found memories among Tachys’ past of the same. Apparently even ancient alicorn foals liked to play in parks.

For her purposes, the more open space let her draw on the sword arts of the long gone alicorn warrior without as much fear of damaging ponies’ homes. The park could be rebuilt on city funds, but personal houses, she didn’t want to see any more of those get wrecked because of these Hollow bastards.

The male Arrancar, apparently frustrated he hadn’t broken her guard yet, leaped over her and aimed all eight of his legs down at her. She saw them thrust out and extend, the pointed tips at the end also extending in piercing flashes of motion. Her own body flickered with prism coated wisps of wind as she juked through the tangle of strikes. His legs cut through cloud with ease, and Rainbow Dash took note of the way his body dipped in the air before he hardened the little particles of spirit energy under his limbs to remain steady in the air. She had more or less figured out Arrancar didn’t really fly so much as just stand or leap about on air hardened by that spirit particle stuff Flash Sentry had explained once upon a time.

This probably meant he was thinking of all this cloud stuff differently than she was. He saw her walking on it and likely figured the cloud was solid for her. Which it was. When she wanted it to be.

Seeing her evading his attacks with such windborne speed, the Arrancar’s eyes hardened and Rainbow Dash could see the frantic thoughts in his eyes. He swung down behind her, crackling bands of red energy forming around the tips of his pointed legs. Raising them in a smooth, alternating pattern like a wave, he began firing small, crimson energy orbs that Dash noted were a lot faster than those Cero beams. Yet he wasn’t aiming them at her, but instead they bullets of spirit energy would fly out and then stop dead to hang in the air.

It didn’t take her long to work out what he was trying to do as he hooked his weapon into one of the orbs and from that contact a series of red strands formed between the other orbs, creating a tightly woven net of violently vibrating spirit energy. He yanked down with his hook weapon, drawing the net down around her, but Rainbow Dash was already in motion before he’d twitched his arm. She dropped through the cloud, willing herself through the soft substance the way any pegasus could. However, she did so so swiftly, and waited until the very last millisecond before the net of Hollow orbs collided with her, that to the Arrancar’s eye it would have looked as if she would most certainly be struck.

Deliberately leaving an afterimage of herself probably helped with that, and Rainbow Dash felt as much as heard the concussive blast as the combined orbs struck where she’d just been and created an explosion that blew a huge, spherical hole in the loud park.

The Arrancar moved forward, peering around the wispy hole, likely looking for any sign of her body. Instead he saw nothing, if only for a split second before he’d feel the wind at his back. He spun, raising his hook weapon instinctively as Dash burst up from the cloud, flashing past him faster than a beam of light, leaving a prism colored wake as she landed on the opposite side of the hole in the clouds. He turned to face her, raising his weapon to charge, but then blinked as he noticed her flourishing her swordbreaker and mimicking the motion of sheathing it at her flank.

“Septimus Ventus: Vacuum Caelum.” (Seventh Wind: Empty Sky)

Upon her words the Arrancar’s hook shaped Zanpaktou split in half, a result of her initial strike that had passed by faster than his senses could follow, but that was just the prelude to the full brunt of the attack. That came an instant later when the delayed blade of pure wind pressure formed in her wake descended on him from behind like the falling blade of a giant, exploding upon him and demolishing the rest of the cloud park in a focused point of cutting wind force stronger than several combined hurricanes.

It was probably the second strongest maneuver from the list of Tachy’s ancient blade arts that she’d absorbed into her mind from his memories. A bit overkill, perhaps, but at the same time it was actually pretty easy to dodge if an enemy saw it coming, so it helped to be able to manufacture the element of surprise by taking advantage of the fact the Hollow didn’t fully grasp how pegasi interacted with clouds.

She glanced over her shoulder, looking to see the Arrancar spinning down to the distant ground, his broken Zanpaktou vanishing as his form reverted to its original humanoid shape. Alive or dead, that one wasn’t going to be returning to the fight.

Just then she felt Twilight’s magic intensify, and heard the distant impact of force on the ground some distance away. Flying up a bit, Rainbow saw the magical circles of Twilight’s magic vanishing from the sky, where down below the rising dust of a massive crater indicated where Twilight had taken down her own opponent. Rainbow Dash could feel an almost erratic buzz to Twilight’s energy, as if her friend was as riled up as a thunderstorm. This was only further confirmed as Rainbow saw Twilight’s distant form pop-flash in a burst of violet teleportation magic, and then sensed her appear in the center cluster of Arrancar still fighting the Solar and Night Guard amid the nearby suburbs.

“Good grief, Twilight, and you and the other gals call me reckless?” Rainbow Dash sighed, trying to ignore her own jitters. Twilight wasn’t the only one who was agitated by the fight, even if things technically were going well, at least compared to the alternatives.

Because no matter how well the battle was faring, the scent of blood still hung heavy in the air, a smell Dash had never wanted to become so unpleasantly familiar with. She had to actively push down the empathy that made her wonder why that male Arrancar had looked so worried, or why he’d ordered the younger Hollows of the pack to stay behind. That couldn’t interfere with her ability to fight, to strike with full intent to win. And something about that fact was rubbing the wrong way in her head, even as she took to flying full speed towards Twilight’s location, determined to continue fighting full-force to drive these invaders from the city before any more ponies lost their lives.

I hope Fluttershy is doing okay.

“No, no way, what the hell is going on!?” Weave was frantically pacing about on the air, grabbing at his scraggly head of white hair. He’d been keeping his cool for the sake of the other, younger Arrancar in the pack, because big brother Spinel had left him and charge and Weave didn’t want to let Spinel down. But now Weave had felt Spinel’s spiritual pressure all but vanish after that giant blade-like blast of wind had exploded somewhere in the pony cloud city! On top of that, barely a moment later Mandis’ reiatsu also dipped to practically zero when there was a purple flash of light and an impact on a hill miles away.

Had both of the pack’s strongest been taken out, just like that!? Worse, Weave could still feel the ominous pressure of strange energy coming from the ponies that had just beaten Spinel and Mandis. Magic was so hard to properly get a gauge on, but everything about those pressures made Weave’s skin crawl with danger instinct. Why hadn’t mother warned them the ponies were this dangerous? She’d made it sound like this land would be easy pickings!

Feeling a tug on his long, baggy white sleeve, Weave turned to see one of the youngest of the pack, a tiny boy with a moth-like Hollow half mask covering the left half of his face. “Weave, why are you shouting? Is it time to eat, yet?”

No way the littlest of the pack could have the refined Pesquisa senses to even tell that Spinel and Mandis were down, or that the rest of the pack still in the fight were in a pinch. Most of them couldn’t think much past their hunger, essentially a pack of little kids. Normally back in Hueco Mundo food was easy enough to come by with Spinel, Thorax, or Pharynx leading hunting parties to round up lesser Hollows. Spinel had taken up the responsibility of looking after Weave and the other youngsters of Chrysalis’ horde while Thorax and Pharynx were still back home. None of this was supposed to go this way. It seemed insane that these little multi-colored horses could fight back so hard.

Now the whole group of about twenty or so Arrancar children were looking to Weave, the oldest of the kids, who Spinel had left in charge, to explain what was going on or what they should do. And all he could do was stare at them with the pit of his stomach falling out, because he had absolutely no clue what to do. Should they run? But he could still feel small, barely perceptible flickers of Spinel and Mandis’ reiatsu! Should he try to go help them? But if the ponies were actually this dangerous, that big brother Spinel and big sister Mandis could lose so quickly... what chance did Weave even have of making it to where they fell?

He was still frozen in fearful indecision when a terrifyingly sweet voice spoke from behind the group, smooth and kind as silk, yet somehow making Weave’s breath halt as his throat clenched up.

“Oh, you’re all just... children. That’s not right at all. Sending children into such a terrible battle. You poor things, you’re all hungry, aren’t you? But I can’t let you eat souls. That’s just not going to happen. But, if you all promise to behave and agree to come with me, maybe we can find something else you can eat.”

The other children all made yelps and yips as they spun about to see that, somehow, a pegasus mare had gotten behind the group. She was hovering there on lazy flaps of her wings, her lithe form covered in disturbingly sharp ridged armor of ruby red, almost every inch of it having a sharp edged curve like blades. She carried a shield upon her right foreleg that was as crimson as the rest of her armor. Her eyes were glowing red, her long mane of soft pink wafting in an unseen wind and trailing far longer than it should, like it was bleeding into the air itself, woven through with dark vines bearing white flowers. Weave had not sensed her approach in the slightest, but now it was like her aura was flowing out in a wave like a cold claw pressed to the core of his Hollow hole.

She was smiling, and had such a pleasant, warm look on her face, yet Weave knew down in his bones that he was looking at an apex predator on an order of magnitude higher than himself. Yet, fight or flight responses were powerful things, and knowing his little brothers and sisters were right there was motivator enough to act. Granted, he hadn’t meant to scream with quite that much fear as he ripped his short bladed Zanpaktou from its sheath and charged the pegasus with a fast forward thrust.

He heard the loud clang of metal and felt his arm go numb as the pegasus used a gauntlet covered right arm to deflect his sword upward and away from her while simultaneously spinning him around with graceful ease so he went stumbling over the air a few unsteady steps. She didn’t strike him, however. She just turned to look at him, while keeping one eye on the rest of the Arrancar kids, now behind her. Her voice remained as frightfully kind yet unsettling at the same time.

“I really don’t want to hurt any of you. I mean that. Whatever your siblings have done, none of you kids have joined the fight, and so that means you haven’t hurt anypony, yet. That means I can probably convince Twilight you’re not a big threat, and maybe she can find a way to feed you that doesn’t mean eating souls. She’s very smart like that. Please, just surrender peacefully.”

Breathing hard more out of growing panic than exertion, Weave grit his teeth and tried his best to use Sonido. He wasn’t very good at it like Spinel and Mandis were, his form barely flickering as he tried to zip to the pegasus’ left side and jam his blade down at her back. This time when she deflected his Zanpaktou, she let her hoof grip around his wrist in what to him looked like a rather awkward arm throw for an equine’s anatomy, but the pegasus’ wing also wrapped his back and added to the leverage and he found himself being slammed downward into a raised knee. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, and he felt his arm being bent back, the pegasus not relinquishing her grip as she held him in a strong arm-bar.

“G-get her!” one of the other younger Arrancar shouted, “She’s hurting Weave!”

“Oooh,” Weave heard the pegasus whine, “This isn’t going well at all. I sooooo don’t want to hurt any of you children.”

Was she actually being serious? Weave could barely think past his fear as he watched four of the braver of his tiny little siblings yank out Zanpaktou and begin leaping at the pegasus. None of the blades touched her as the mare seemed to vanish in a flash of red, mist-like energy. Weave was let go, but had to roll aside as his sibling’s swords all haphazardly clashed around him as they stabbed at empty air. The Arrancar youngsters all blinked, looking around.

“Where’d she go?”

“Was that a Flash Step?”

“No, you dummy! Ponies can’t Flash Step.”

“Well how do you know, dummy, maybe they can!”

“Quiet, all of you!” Weave shouted at the arguing kids, gulping in uncertainty as he tried to use his Pesquisa to feel out the pegasus’ spiritual, or magical, energies. Spinning around, he sensed her nearby, and saw her standing still as a statue some thirty feet above them, looking down with her gleaming red eyes while the moon eclipsed her in the sky above. Was it just his imagination or had her wings turned into something more like a bat’s, now? And were those... fangs poking from her mouth?

“I’m really sorry about this, but if you can’t behave, I’ll have to be a little rough with you.”

Not wanting to find out what that meant, Weave gripped his Zanpaktou with shaking hands and started to utter its release phrase, “Pilfer-”

Before he could finish speaking and get his Zanpaktou’s name out, she was moving through the entire pack of Arrancar children like a blood red ribbon of blinding motion. Her eyes left trails of scarlet light faster than lightning, and Weave felt the smallest brush of pain across his arm before he had time to blink. From the cries of the other youngsters, they must have been struck as he, and he whirled about, trying to track her movements and simultaneously see how bad the damage was.

In truth, it was... nothing but scratches. His left arm, just below his shoulder, had been given the lightest cut, and he saw similar small wounds on his fellow pack mates that had drawn their Zanpaktou. The mare was standing among the rest of the group of children, who were all backing away from her. She was lowering her sturdy shield, which had now grown razor-like blades along its edge, the weapon she’d no doubt used to strike so fast, yet cause such tiny wounds.

“What the...? You barely touched us?” Weave muttered, shaking his head, then throwing out his palm. If he couldn’t get his Zanpaktou’s release phrase out, maybe he could fire a Cero fast enough-

“A scratch is enough, fortunately. I’d hate to hurt you more,” the mare said, and Weave felt as if a plug had been opened up in his soul, where all his strength was draining out. The first flickers of his gathering Cero orb died out like gutted flames, and to his horror he saw small streams of blood wafting from the cut on his arm, and the wounds on the other’s who’d been struck. That blood, along with streams of their spirit energy, flowed to the mare and entered her shield as if the shield was drinking it.

He suddenly could barely lift his sword, yet he did still try to do so, “Who...what... kind of monster...?”

The mare looked at him with unflinching eyes glowing like red moons, her voice so soft it was as if it was carrying him off to sleep, “My name is Fluttershy. I am not a monster. I don’t think you children are, either. I think that fault lays with your mother. I’ll have some very stern language for her, if I happen to meet her. Now, sleep...”

And so Weave did, dreamless and empty, and uncertain about a lot of things.

The rest of the battle was a mental blur for Twilight. Explosions, spells, shouts, the occasional flash of pain when an Arranar’s blade got in a lucky hit or a Cero struck harder than she expected. But with her loosening her grip on how much magic she was holding back, it was less a question of if they’d win, but when, and with how many casualties. Rainbow Dash joining the fray certainly helped turn the tide, the pair of them forming a near unstoppable spearpoint that drove a wedge right through the remaining Arrancar forces and both the Night and Solar Guard units could fully capitalize on.

It might have only taken an hour, maybe two, before things were mopped up, more or less. Not every Arrancar was accounted for, with some fleeing faster than any of the Night Guard could logically pursue, and Twilight, being nominally in command as the Princess on site, had issued orders to avoid pursuit. She didn’t want to risk weakening Las Pegasus’ defenses in case another wave of Chrysalis’ horde showed up. For all they knew this was just the first attack, after all.

As for the Arrancar defeated, Twilight hadn’t really been keeping count of which were alive or dead. Somewhere amid it all she’d focused entirely on hammering them as hard as she could with whatever spell came to mind. In the depths of her memories, Astra still had a ready list of spells that could make any creature have a very unpleasant day. The sad thing was that as exhausted both physically and emotionally as she was, this feeling, this sense of chaos and losing oneself in the grinding mess of large scale warfare... for Astra it was familiar. Twilight felt a deep pang of sympathy for her past self.

This was Twilight’s first real taste of war. Astra had lived through one even worse, filled with dozens of similar battles having to fight against and take the lives of her fellow alicorns. At least here, much as Twilight felt sick inside, there was a certain simplicity to understanding the Hollows were a threat that had to be met with force, otherwise innocent lives, and souls, would be lost.

“Princess, ma’am?”

Twilight looked up with bleary eyes. She’d found a cloud fountain to sit on, enjoying the coolness of the watery mist it produced on her back. She was covered in sweat, and there was blood on her, some of it hers, some of it not. She’d never felt so... dirty. She really wanted a hot shower or bubble bath right now, she didn’t even care if somepony made fun of her for it. Standing in front of her was a Solar Guard pegasus mare, looking no less clean than her, offering a polite and crisp salute with a wing.

“Yes...?” Twilight said, blinking several times.

“I’m Lieutenant Lightfeather, ma’am. With Major Rain Seeker wounded and unconscious, I’m currently in temporary command of the Guard units present, directly under you, Princess. I needed to seek your orders, now that the enemy has been driven off. Especially concerning the taking of prisoners.”

She slowly moved off of the edge of the fountain, trying to get her thoughts in order. Casting a wane gaze at the surrounding suburban cloud, she could see more clearly now that the fog had been lifted. Clouds didn’t really burn, so there were no fires, but she could see entire sections of the cloud that had been blown apart by both Solar Guard cannon fire and Arrancar Ceros. Areas where ones gorgeous and pleasant cloud houses had been, homes to numerous pegasi families, were now just ragged chunks and holes.

She quietly thanked Celestia and Luna both for having such thorough evacuation plans in place, so that it was just homes destroyed, and not the families that lived in them. Shaking her head at that dire consolation, she cleared her throat, her mind kicking back into gear, “How many prisoners do we have?”

“We’re still scouring the area, including the land below,” Lightfeather said, frowning with a disbelieving glint in her eyes, “These Hollows are insanely tough, with a lot surviving impact even after falling from such a height. We’ve got mage teams deployed to create holding shields for now. So far we’ve captured thirty four survivors. The rest fled, or perished in the fighting. We still don’t have solid numbers on how many actually got away. What are your orders concerning the prisoners?”

Scrambling to think, Twilight rubbed her head with a hoof, “If we have mages capable of sleep spells, use them. It's a waste of energy to maintain the shields, and it's entirely possible for them to break out, especially if kept in a group. As long as they’re kept sedated, unconscious, that’s far easier until we can work out a longer term solution. Where’s Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy?”

“Yo, Twi!”

Twilight nearly leaped out of her fur, turning around to give Rainbow Dash a powerful stink eye as the other mare flew down and landed, looking irritatingly fresh compared to how utterly wrung out Twilight felt. Not that Dash was unscathed, coated in a few burn marks and cuts that marred her fur, and if Twilight looked closely enough she could see the same strain in her friend’s eyes. Rainbow just... wore it better than Twilight did. Could still manage a smile. A flash of Astra’s memories showed Twilight that this was also a trait of Tachys, always keeping things light after a long battle, to keep the other’s moods up.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Twilight said, reaching out to briefly pat her friend’s shoulder, to which Dash briefly hesitated before giving a slightly too fast laugh.

“Hah, yeah, what’d you expect? Not going to get taken down by anything short of an apocalypse, and given our track record, I'm pretty sure I can live through one of those, too.”

“Now we just need to confirm Fluttershy’s also alright. She said she was going to try and subdue the group that was left in the Arrancar’s rear line...” Twilight said, looking southward, and soon found her question answered. A group of Night Guard were flying escort in a rough circle around a cluster of downtrodden, young Arrancar, with Fluttershy flying along at the head of the group. On Fluttershy’s back were balanced about five Arrancar bodies, carried as if they weighed practically nothing. Twilight could feel their energies, and knew they were unconscious rather than dead. Lacking any obvious wounds, Twilight assumed Fluttershy had used her Inheirotor powers to drain the Arrancar’s energy.

Still, that rational thought process was mostly her analyzing to try and ignore how young all these Arrancar were; basically children.

Lightfeather looked nervous as Fluttershy landed, the young Arrancar gathered around her. “Um, F-Flutttershy, ma’am? You have a bunch of non-secure enemy combatants with you...”

Fluttershy gave the Solar Guard mare an odd stare, one that seemed to make Lightfeather shrink away. “They are behaving, and as long as they do so, they are under my protection. Understood?”

“Yes...er, yes ma’am.”

A few of the Arrancar children were shuffling near her, one of the smaller ones poking her leg, “Miss Fluttershy, is the purple one the friend you told us could give us yummies?”

Fluttershy patted the child’s head, careful not to let any of the sharp edges of her armor touch them, “Her name is Twilight, and yes, that’s her. Please be patient and we’ll see what we can do, but all of you have to keep behaving, okay?”

“Uhh, Flutters, did you seriously just adopt a bunch of soul-devouring monster babies?” Rainbow Dash said, voice utterly deadpan, while Twilight felt the pressure of a headache begin behind her eyes.

“More importantly, did you tell them I could get them food?” Twilight asked, “You do remember what they eat, right?”

“I know, Twilight,” Fluttershy replied with a small, apologetic look as she gazed at Twilight with an imploring look, “I was hoping that you might be able to look into a way to feed them without, you know, souls.”

Did Fluttershy even grasp the difficulty in what she was asking? Twilight wanted to groan, but the situation was too serious for any such display. Besides, beneath Fluttershy’s calm exterior Twilight could tell her friend was hurting. Fluttershy didn’t have a scratch on her, unlike Twilight and Rainbow Dash, but there was an underlying pain in the barely perceptible tremble in her wings that told Twilight how Fluttershy was feeling. Looking at the young Hollows once more, Twilight was struck by how young they were, and felt her own twist of pain and anger.

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to at least look into it, but we can’t just let these Hollows walk around free, even if they are children.

“I can’t make any promises, Fluttershy, besides that I’ll try and figure something out. Energy is energy, after all, so maybe a magical substitute can be found. But right now these kids need to be under guard, and I can’t spare you to foalsit them while we’re still in a crisis.”

Fluttershy shook her head, spreading her wings in a defensive gesture around the nearest of the Arrancar, “No, Twilight. I’m taking responsibility for them. I’m the only one who can safely subdue them if they get out of control.”

“You’re being unreasonable-” Twilight began, but Rainbow Dash lightly elbowed her.

“Twi, you oughta know you can’t change Fluttershy’s mind, now that she’s made it up. Besides, the battle is over, here. We’d want to leave at least one of us in Las Pegasus, in case more enemies show up, so might as well be Fluttershy.”

“Oooh... fine, fine, alright,” Twilight ran a hoof through her frazzled mane, “We still need an update on the battles elsewhere, anyway. Fluttershy, these Arrancar children are under your care, and if anything goes wrong, they’re up to you to deal with.”

“I understand,” Fluttershy said, her gaze moving towards a nearby building that looked to Twilight like a pegasus pre-flight school, the kind where pegasus foals would be taught the basics of flying. With the suburb evacuated, the building would be deserted. Given it was made of clouds, normally it’d be impossible for non-pegasi to regularly occupy, but as a concession to couples where one parent was an earth pony or unicorn, important buildings like schools were enchanted to be walked upon.

“Come, children, you can all rest in that building with me until your big brothers and sisters wake up,” Fluttershy said, ushering the little Arrancar along.

“Is there food there?” was the repeated question among many of them.

“I’ll see what I can find for you,” Fluttershy said, with an odd note that made Twilight wonder just what Fluttershy was planning to do to keep the kids in check. But she did fully trust her friend, and the more her mind began to dedicate thoughts towards what a Hollow might be able to eat besides souls, the more her inner researcher began to bubble up to the surface. In that regard, she and Astra were much the same, and with knowledge from the ancient alicorn, perhaps she could think of something? Soul energy and magic were different, but if she could study how a Hollow’s body absorbed the energy from a spiritual spectrum, it shouldn’t be impossible to calibrate magic to simulate a similar effect. From there, would it be impossible to create enchantments one could layer on drinks, or food, or heck even mundane objects like a rock...?

“-wlight! Hey, Twi, you in there!?”

“Gah! R-Rainbow, don’t scream in my ear!” she sputtered, to which Rainbow chuckled.

“You’re really out of it, aren’t you? I was trying to ask you what our next move is.”

Blinking a few times, Twilight looked over to see Lieutenant Lightfeather still nearby, waiting respectfully. Fluttershy was out of sight, presumably with her new gaggle of adopted Arrancar, a problem for later. Solar and Night Guard were gathering back up into units, some assessing damage, others rounding up the fallen. It was still the depths of night, with dawn a long way off. Twilight took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts.

“We find out how the fight goes in Manehattan and Appleloosa. From there, we send help where it’s needed. This night... it’s nowhere near over.”

“Yeah, felt like the attack here was lighter than what we were expecting, and we still don’t know where the big bad Espada is,” Rainbow Dash said, “I almost feel like the fight here was... too easy?”

Lightfeather frowned, her voice respectful, but firm, “We suffered some rough casualties, with all due respect, Miss Dash.”

Rainbow’s face colored, her ears flattening to her head as she nodded, “You’re right. Wasn’t trying to make light of it, but... like, what I mean is that this didn’t feel like Chrysalis’ best, you know? The dude I fought seemed like he was the leader of this attack, but he wasn’t that strong. Not to toot my own horn too much, but figured we’d have a rougher time.”

Twilight didn’t disagree. Not entirely. Compared to regular Guard troopers, the Arrancar were powerful, deadly foes. Had the Inheritor powers increased the strength of her and her friends so much that baseline Arrancar weren’t that powerful by comparison, or was it that this group in particular were the weaker of Chrysalis’ horde? Given this was their first fight with Arrancar, it was impossible to know for sure, not without a better point of reference.

“You might have a point, Rainbow, but the Lieutenant is also right. Regardless of how weak or strong this attack was, it showed the Hollows are dangerous, and it takes strength like ours to counter them. And this was just the start. Chrysalis likely has more forces to expend, and soon enough a much larger army with multiple Espada will be coming. Tonight we stopped them, but next time? Next time we may need help.”

“Torch and his dragons should be here within the hour,” Lightfeather offered, “We beat the Arancarr back, and with the dragons, we could potentially handle another attack.”

“True. I’m almost glad the dragons didn’t have to expend any strength this time. We’ll need them to reinforce Las Pegasus once Rainbow Dash and I leave,” Twilight said, lighting up her horn, preparing to cast a long-distance sending spell to the Equestrian command center back in Canterlot, “For now, I’m contacting Luna to get the current situation. Let’s just hope everypony else has fared as well, if not better, than we have.”

Author's Note

So much to get to, so little time in the day. I'd been meaning to get to Spike and Ember earlier, but it sort of just kept getting pushed further onward. Ember still technically needs a scene, but that'll probably be next chapter, along with shifting focus to Rarity. A part of me thought about taking even more time to flesh out the fighting in Las Pegasus, but part of the point of the chapter was to firmly establish that regular Arrancar just can't handle the Mane Six at this point. Or, well, in Fluttershy's case can't prevent themselves from being adopted.

As always thanks for reading, folks! I highly appreciate any and all comments, questions, or critiques. 'Till next time.