An entire town. Thousands of them. Galloping and trotting. Doing horse things.

Innocent

The word echoed with a presence that could quite possibly be more forceful than the blast of a cannon, a small bit of irony given that I was greeted by a battalion of the little horses on the outskirts of the town wearing their gold armor and sporting what I assumed were grim expressions, though because of their somewhat comedic exterior the "ready for war" look was more akin to a "ready for naptime" look.

Perhaps it was luck that I stumbled upon these tiny horses or perhaps it was merely chance or perhaps something less substantial but my "passenger" was taken almost immediately by several of the horses ranging in color from dark blues to bright yellows, though the snow white ones seemed more interested in the female that had followed me.

One of the horses that came over seemed almost to exude authority, despite the fact that it chittered and chattered like the others. Strangely enough, it seemed to have a picture on it's flank of an old fashioned wall made of stones that almost blended in with its grey coat.

Without the ability to understand what they were discussing and no pressing moral dilemma involving a shotgun, a rocket launcher and anything to shoot, my attention drifted. The town seemed to be a thriving community - a small marketplace in the middle of town was bustling with horses of all the colors I could possibly imagine and then some that I could only describe as glassy, though one thing that all of them seemed to have in common was the presence of a picture in the same place as Old Stonewall seemed to have and they seemed to be matched only to a picture on the opposite flank.

My inclination towards exploration drew me to wander the town scrutinizing the horses and surveying the buildings, though the former was significantly harder as the horses tended to flee from me like my presence was indicative of the approach of some kind of apocalyptic plight and a several of the more battle ready ones seemed to be following me with the intention of babysi-err, foalsitting.

I entertained myself by taking note of how far back the horses were and everytime that I turned a corner, sprinting as far as I felt possible and slowing down to make it seem like I had teleported away from them. When that ceased to amuse me, I flipped around a corner and down the first alleyway that I saw. Imagine my surprise at seeing one of the minihorses being attacked by a tall creature wearing a hood. Imagine it's surprise at seeing me armored head to toe in a suit of battle armor.

I supposed that I could have alerted the armored horses, who at some point I had decided must be soldiers, but with a language barrier that would have needed a Rosetta Stone to bridge, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

A sprinting dropkick was how I began the conflict, as well as how I hoped to end it. Alas that the hooded beast anticipated my movement and dodged before launching a vicious slash that scratched the paint on the hell-forged steel of my suit as I attempted to free my boot from the segment of wall that had become dust, completely unrelated to any action of mine of course.

The creature jumped at me attempting to slice me open as I was recovering, and would likely have succeeded but for a chunk of stone that had miraculously escaped the sledgehammer blow of my boot and provided a decent alternative to a chunk of lead, and though it didn't do as much damage as I would have hoped, it did slow the creature for long enough that I was able to finally get to my feet.

Unsure of each other's abilities, I focused on blocking and dodging blows from the creature. Its weapon dug into my armor, but didn't manage to penetrate it in more than a few spots which completely repaired in seconds from the massive overload of Argent Energy stored wherever the armor stored it.

The creature moved in sharp jerking movements reminiscent of a hawk with massive strength behind each blow and it seemed extremely proficient at hand to hand combat. What it wasn't proficient in was how to deal with a sudden influx of golden armored horses wielding spears and neighing at it. The creature stalled for several seconds as the soldiers surrounded it while attempting to communicate with me in a series of chirps, squawks and caws before yanking something from its cloak and throwing it at the ground.

A cloud of smoke exploded from the object and the soldiers began coughing, gagging and in one case, vomiting profusely as the creature ripped its cloak off, revealing what could only be a griffon who proceeded to spread his wings and ascend in a few slightly undignified but nonetheless effective flaps that conveniently cleared out most of the smoke in a hurry and brought it above the roofline of the building across the street which I only now took time to read: "Tsing Shi Tao's Jade Jewlery," a pun not lost on me.

I yanked one of the soldier's spears from the wing holding it since it wasn't using it anyways and took several running steps forward before throwing the spear. I clipped the griffon with that spear and missed with the next, but the third was a bull's wing and the griffon tumbled out of the air before crashing into a building several streets away.

I attempted to sprint after the griffon, but somehow my feet seemed to be anchored to the ground which resulted in a mach 2 faceplant

What the hell? Why can't i move my feet

Ensnaring my boots like vines were tendrils of red crystal. After several seconds of pulling and pushing and even firing my Delta V boots, I had the bright idea to try breaking the crystals with a spear. As soon as the spear touched the crystal, the entire thing melted from point to aft all the way down the shaft. A sneaking suspicion of mine told me that if I weren't wearing boots forged from Hellsteel, my feet would be burnt to cinders and the rest of my body would be baked.

That particular dark thought was interrupted as a CRACK echoed throughout what was most likely the entire town and a unicorn wearing a black robe with a double lined cross appeared just a few feet away from me. Every one of the horses who had been standing hit the ground with their eyes shut tight, except for "Old Stony" who had somehow procured a lemon and was in the process of masticating it rind and all.

The black robed horse approached Stony while around a dozen horses appeared with their own cracks and proceeded to examine the soldiers. Something told me that I should be paying more attention to the first horse but I couldn't help but watch as the others traveled around to the soldiers. The strangest thing happened when their horns glowed: scars on their luminescent white coats would evaporate, massive blisters from their armor would vanish and in one case, an entire ear sprung back from a nasty gash.

Several of the dark horses approached the civilian who I had actually forgotten was there. The horse's brown coat was so stained with blood that it took several minutes before it occurred to me that it was brown and covered in blood rather than red and covered in dust. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf, likely in shock and fainted as the hooded ones approached it. Their horns glowed and the brown one's wounds healed followed by a flash of light, its disappearance and a roar of the air rushing into where it had previously been.

With nothing else for them to do, they surrounded me in a rough circle as the first one turned away from Stony who also averted his eyes, though he didn't bow down like the others had. I felt the tendrils of crystal travel farther up my armor until they reached my head.

An echoing voice rumbled through my head "The abomination will come with us"

It seemed to be boring into my eyes as I thought Stupid horse.

"And stop calling me a horse. I'm a pony."

Author's Note

from "mach 2 faceplant onwards had to be rewritten since my laptop decided a BSOD was in order. I'm a little salty because i was really liking how it was turning out and it killed my good mood.
on an unrelated note, hopefully it lives up to the expectations. i know that these 4 days must have been absolute torture and i apologize for that.
on a side note, and also something that occured to me, would the four horsemen of the apocalypse be centaurs like tyrek or would they be actual horses?
on a slightly more serious note, this is now the longest thing i have ever written apart from an end-of-quarter paper for college