Rainstorm wiped the sweat from her forehead without letting her opponent out of sight. Only the rest of her broken spear stood between her and his sharp fangs. Their eyes met, and he smiled. He spat out a few pink feathers.
"Tastes like chicken," he said as he licked his lips.
She grit her teeth together. She could still feel the pain from where he ripped her feathers out of her wing.She could still fly, but only barely. Not that it was any help - her opponent was much faster than her.
Suddenly one of his claws jabbed forward, almost too quickly for her to deflect. Another blow pushed her back. She had to come up with something quickly. If only she could reach his wings - one good hit and she would be out of danger.
More blows followed, coming faster and faster. She tried to figure out his timing as she blocked and dodged his attacks. She almost had it - only a few punches more. Left, right, left, short break, left. With a tight twist of her barrel she escaped his third attack and jumped forward, her weapon whizzing down on his wing joint and... a sudden blow hit her in the ribs like a hammer. She crashed into the wall a few meters away like a sandbag, sliding down into a heap.
Dazed, she saw him come closer... That bastard! He was playing with me the whole time! He had set a trap with his attacks and she had walked right into it. She reached out with her foreleg and grabbed uncertainly after her spear, her breath quickening as she could not find it.
Dammit!
His steps were now right next to her.
Rainstorm was left with no time, powerless. She let herself fall back.
Slowly, almost tenderly he stroked her neck with his claw, "I do hope you did not hurt yourself?" he sneered, before he grabbed her by the neck and lifted her up from the ground.
She kept her body limp and let her eyes uncertain walking back and forth. And she was awarded for it - his look lost some of his confidence. Had he broken his toy already? He brought his head closer to her and gave her a better look. That was exactly what she had been waiting for.
With all the strength she had left she sent her hoof straight to his face.
He roared, his voice full of surprise. He let her fall and before she could hit the ground, she catapulted herself with a powerful flap of her wings over his shoulder. With a howl she slugged him as hard as she could in his right wing joint.
Another cry of pain escaped him and Rainstorm sprinted as soon as she had ground under her hooves again. Her goal was just a short distance away. Another spear was on the ground in front of her. As she approached it, she heard him chase after her. One last time she mobilized her remaining forces and sped up again. She dove towards the weapon, falling into a smooth roll. Rainstorm felt the breeze of his claw when he jumped over her so she grabbed the weapon as quick as possible and pointed it towards him.
His smile was gone and his bare fangs glittered threateningly. All playfulness had disappeared from his look and had given way to something else. Something dangerous.
The new weapon in her hoof brought her back a little confidence to face him again. But when she tried to fend off his claws with the spear again, he simply grabbed it. Rainstorm shifted her posture to try and fend him off, and the two of them grappled over the long weapon. Her opponent shoved against her with inequine strength, slowly pushing her back, and with a sudden move, he released the weapon and ducked underneath its arch. He grabbed her barrel lifted, her up and slammed her into the ground.
Rainstorm lay on the ground, as the light waves of pain spread out from her back. The mare attempted to stand, but a force shoved her back down. She tried to free herself but her opponent was far stronger than her. Slowly, inexorably a black scaly face came into her view. It paused briefly and approached her neck. Rainstorm could not suppress a shiver as his tongue slowly slid over her neck along her main artery. Her instincts screamed that she should buck and kick as much as she could, but her strength had left her. Even before the battle she knew the stakes.
So she just closed her eyes as three sharp claws were wandering slowly down her belly ...
***
Waterwall ran down the steps, always two or three at a time. Even before she had reached the bottom of the stairs she heard it - the screams of her comrade. She was too late! Damn, she thought, and ran on faster. Out of breath, she reached the door at the end of the floor that followed the end of the stairs and pushed it open.
What she saw stunned her for a brief moment. Rainstorm, helpless, on the ground, held down by a pony-sized black dragon. Her screams echoed through the room. Screams of pleasure, not pain.
While Nightflame held her down with the one claw, he kept his other one very busy between her hind legs.
With a disapproving look, he looked up at Waterwall, "What's up Sergeant? You see we are busy.
"Sir," she stammered uncertainly, "a message from Princess Celestia, sir. We are commanded to go on a mission, so Captain Dancing Leaf had us all ordered to the meeting room.”
“... we'll be there in twenty minutes, “ Nightflame said, “I hate to have to hurry.”
“Please let me come!” begged Rainstorm , but there was no mercy in his look.
“You will pay for hitting me… twice.” The dragon gave her an evil grin while he took her almost to the peak but still kept it tantalizing out of reach.
"Sir, yes Sir"
With a salute Waterwall quickly left the training room, abandoning Rainstorm to her fate.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading^^ I really would like it if you can comment and tell me what you think about this chapter. I am still at the beginning of the story so you can have influence of it a lot with your comments!
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Dancing Leaf touched her temple with a hoof, her head was pounding and her vision was slightly blurred. She carefully rose, wincing at the pain, and looked around."Where am I?" She thought. Before her stretched a dim lighted corridor.She couldn’t tell where the light was coming from, nor how long the corridor was. In both direction the corridor was dimly lit, foggy and covered in ice. The reflections made it difficult to see very far down it. Her blurred vision was helping matters any.
She didn’t know how long she'd been trotting through the corridor, but she suddenly felt a chill run down her spine. Something was wrong. She took another look backwards, but nothing had changed. There was still just dim light and murky fog.
"Is anyone there?" She called out. She received no answer.
Again, she touched her temples with a hoof and this time when she could see little drops of blood on her hair.
"Damn, what just happened?" she wondered.
Slowly she trotted, paying closer attention this time.. She had trotted only a few steps when she thought she heard something behind her. She stopped and listened, but there was nothing. She shook her head, immediately regretting it as a sharp pain raced through her skull.
Once again she took a deep breath, and as the pain began to ebb, she moved on. But it wasn’t long before she thought she had heard something again. “Steps? Yes, that must have been steps.” Again she stopped, spinning around in order to catch her mysterious pursuer. .
"Who's there?" she shouted into the fog. "I know you're here! Show yourself!"
The only answer she got was an icy draft.
Her coat along her spine bristled and the first stitch of fear spread through her heart.
"Show yourself!" she called out again, but everything remained still.
When it became clear that nothing would happen, she turned around and trotted along the corridor again, faster this time."How long in Tartarus is this passage?" She thought.
The uncomfortable feeling of being watched intensified and she quickened her pace until she finally burst into a gallop. She couldn’t say for how long she ran, but after the end of the corridor still didn´t came into view, she braked hard and spun around her own axis. And this time she succeeded. A split second after she had come to a halt, she still heard the unmistakable sound of steps behind her.
"Ha!," she exclaimed triumphantly, "Gotcha!"
But her joy was short-lived, and she took a few uncertain steps back as the light in the tunnel in front of her lose power and the darkness began to close in. Hidden somewhere in the shadows, two red eyes came to light.
The stare of them was sending her waves of fear across the back and the will to flee became overpowering. As a large mouth full of sharp teeth came into view, she snapped and broke into a run.
A deep growl followed by a icy drafts follow her on the hooves. Again and again she threw panicky glances backwards, only to see the approaching darkness. She desperately tried to speed up, but she was already at her limit, her lungs burning and her hooves slipping on the icy underground.
She fixed her gaze forward and did everything possible to be faster than her pursuer, but to her horror the stones beside her began to disappear into the dark.
"No!" she screamed in horror.
With her last strength, she dove forwards in a desperate attempt to escape the monster. . Unfortunately, the corridor before her also began to get darker, and she was very quickly surrounded.
She was trapped!
The realization hit her like a blow and she misstepped. Her right front hoof slipped and she felt, rolling several times before coming to a stop on the hard floor.
Dazed, she tried to get up again but the pain in her head drove her down. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she laboriously pushed against the wall and looked in the approaching darkness. With its prey now trapped, it could now approach at its leisure. It moved cautiously forwards.
Dancing Leaf screamed as two hooves wrapped around her from behind and through a hole in the wall behind her, which had just not been there before, pulled her through.
Dancing kicked and beat wildly, continued to scream like a fury until she finally was free.
Wherever 'here' was, it was dark and cold. Dithers urged her back into a corner and lifted the front hooves ready embark on anything approaching her.
A soundless voice spoke to her from the darkness, "Captain," she said slowly and sluggishly, "Is that how one thanks their rescuer?
Dancing Leaf answers between haggard breaths," W-who... who are you?”
"Me?"Asked the voice in it´s slow way. "I am disappointed that you do not recognize me, my Captain ... " with the last words, the voice come closer.
A small spark at the top of a horn of a white unicorn came to the fore with a purple mane. The face of the Unicorn was unrecognizable because it had lowered his head.
"Corporal Aurora?" exclaimed an incredibly relieved Dancing Leaf. "I'm glad to see you," she continued as she dropped her hooves again.
A lot of questions flashed through her head, but first the lantern in the corner of the small room caught her attention. The shock of the darkness... she could not help but to light it immediately.
"What were those... things in the passage?" Asked Dancing while she was busy with lightened the lantern.
"Only death," was the answer.
"What are you talking about, Corporal?" Dancing ask now with the lantern in the hoof. She turned her new light source to the corporal and saw her for the first time properly. Her normally white fur was dirty and red of dried blood, her mane hung in loose, individual strands of her head and deep wounds covered her back.
"Corporal!" Cried Dancing. "What happened to you?"
"Corporal?" she asked again after a short moment of silence and one thing came up to her mind which she didn´t noticed before and with it there comes a feeling of horror. Whenever Dancing spoke or breathed she made small clouds in the cold room, but Corporal Aurora produced not a single cloud.
Dancing reached for her soldier with her unsecure hoof, and in a trembling voice she said, "Corporal Aurora?"
Jerkily the corporal raised her head and looked Dancing in the face. And the captain screamed.
Like all monsters from Tartarus were behind her Dancing rushed out of the room and ran headless through the subsequent passages.
Merciful darkness veiled again the whitened skull which had once been the beautiful face of Corporal Aurora, paramedic under Captain Dancing Leaf's command.
***
Dancing Leaf woke up startled, her heart pounding and sweat glistening on her forehead. It took several panicky moment for her to realise where she was.
In the dim light she had some difficult to recognizing the outlines of her soldiers. The slow rise and fall of their chests were proof that they were all still breathing.
She wiped her hoof over her snout and closed her eyes for a few seconds while she took a deep breath. Just a dream, nothing more, she remind herself, trying to put her mind back in order.
For three days now, these nightmares had plagued her. They only got worse as they get closer to their destination. Damn it, this isn't’ my first mission, It wasn’t even first time that she was traveling in the icy wastelands of the North. Nothing about this mission was unusual in any way. Princess Celestia's instructions were quite simple; find the research facility, find out why the contact is broken and if necessary evacuate the scientists.
And yet it still sent an icy shiver down her spine every time she thought of her goal.
She knew that she would not find any sleep again that night,so she peeled out off her sleeping bag and slipped quietly into her Arctic suit. It took her some time to do so, but she carefully managed to do it without waking anyone.
She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Night Flame was watching her through a half opened eye. With a quick shake of the head, she told him that he should go back to sleep.She crept cautiously around or over the soldiers who lay around in the tent. The ubiquitous whistle of the wind intensified when she opened the tarpaulin at the entrance for a moment and woke some of her mares, but they cozied back down into the warm sleeping bags when they saw who it was.
The icy wind drove the last remnants of her sleep away and the usual clarity returned to her thoughts. With firm steps she climbed the few meters out from the small sink where they had pitched their tent and walked on to the small ice rock that Sergeant Swift Spear had chosen as a lookout.
"Captain," cried said sergeant out over the biting wind as Dancing Leaf came closer.
The Captain nodded and stood beside the sergeant. Swift Spear was shivering in the scant shelter of the rock.
Set up a guard would probably appeared some ponies, given the limited visibility caused by the driving snow and the long darkness, questionable, but for Dancing Leaf it was self-evident. Although there were no reports of dangerous creatures in this part of the world, that was no reason to become sloppy. They didn’t know what had happened at the facility and were only two days' march away from it. It was better to be on the safe side.
Dancing Leaf looked over the landscape moderately lit by moonlight and stars, but in every direction her view was obstructed after a few dozen meters by the weather and was lost after a few more eventually entirely.
"Any signs of life Sergeant?
"No Ma'am!" replied the yellow earth pony mare, "There’s nothing but ice and wind!”
Not that she had expected something else. "How long till sunrise?" asked Dancing Leaf.
"About two and a quarter of an hour, Ma’am. Two changing of the guard till then.”
Normally, Dancing Leaf would have taken over one of the guards, but her nightmares had made her nervous and she was glad for the company. So she shared the lookout with Swift Spear for her remaining guard. After that, the sergeant went back to the tent to wake the next in line for the guard duty.
A part of her wanted to run after the sergeant and to crawl in the supposed safety of the tent, but she shook the thought off immediately. She was an officer of Equestria and the leader of these soldiers! She could not afford to lose her head because of a few bad dreams. Instead, she peered further into the semi-dark.
The wind raised again on strength and whistled around her ears. The whirling snow tried its best to take the rest of her sight completely. It was hard to concentrate on what was going on in the environment.
Suddenly, something caught her eye; a hint of movement. She turned her attention to the fissured ice, slightly to her left. She wiped over her glasses with her light brown fore leg and stared into the darkness between the crusts of ice. Wasn't there ... for a few seconds she looked intently in the direction from which she had seen the movement.
But no, there was nothing.
She relaxed again, and returned to staring across the empty tundra. The wind died down a little, and a relative stillness surrounded the camp. She smiled as she enjoyed the moments of solitude. Behind her, she could hear the crunch of hoofsteps as her relive came up to take her place. If she remembered correctly this has to be Corporal Tealight. With her black mane and coat offered this Unicorn a welcome contrast to the ubiquitous white.
As the Corporal silently approached, Dancing Leaf frowned. According to protocol, Tealight should greet her as she approached. It both showed respect and prevented her from surprising the guard on duty. Tealight had shown her very little respect from the beginning.
"Corporal," she remarked in annoyance without turning her gaze from the field.
When she got no answer she repeated again, this time louder, "Corporal Tealight."
Again, no answer. Surprised, she turned around.
There was no one.
She looked around in confusion, she had heard steps.
"Corporal? Where are you?" she asked, but only the whistling of the wind answered her.
My nerves must have played a trick on me, she thought uncertainly. Leaf took a deep breath and shook the queasy feeling away. She forced a smile and looked back at the direction of the sink. Why is she taking so long?
The renewed crunch of footsteps from behind her startled her. Immediately she spun around, her whole body tensed for battle.
"Who's there ?!" she exclaimed.
Yet again she saw no one. What in Tarnation is going on here?
"Whoever is here, show yourself!" she cried again.
Her nerves were stretched to rip, her ears twitched back and forth nervously to even locate the slightest sound, but there was nothing except the wind. Unsure, she turned her attention back and forth but it was the same. . No one was there.
Unable to find the source of the alleged steps, Dancing Leaf calmed a bit. She looked over the environment again, this time quietly and with perspicacity. But again, like the times before, she found no signs of life.
She breathed deeply and let fall the tension by itself, I'm just overexcited. She sat down and pressed her hooves over her eyes. Pull yourself together.
When she opened her eyes again, she turned around her gaze and eventually remained on the edge of the sink, where finally appeared the silhouette of Corporal Tealight. At last ...
"Captain," Tealight greeted politely over the howl of the wind.
"Corporal," was the terse reply.
Tealight conjured a small ball of light around the Captain to better inspect her. After a brief scrutiny she asked, "Everything ok, Ma’am?"
Dancing Leaf sighed, "Yes, I ... I'm just a little out of line. Bad dreams." She added explanatory after a short pause. "I thought I heard steps, but there was nothing."
"Steps? Who else but us would be out here?" Tealight´s disapproval about the, in her opinion, useless guard was clearly heard, "Perhaps you should go inside and lay down.”
"Yes, that will probably be wise, " agreed Dancing Leaf without responding to Tealight´s obvious disapproval.
After another short look around, Dancing Leaf made on her way back to the tent. When she reached the edge of the sink, she still threw a last glance to Tealight who stared back intently and then she re-entered the tent.
The black Unicorn shook her head disapprovingly, "and someone so sensible is our Captain," she snorted.
As if out here would be something else then rocks and ice, she thought briefly Just then, something pulled brutally on her tail and tore her backward into the darkness. Her sphere of light was extinguished and her screams were drowned out by the whistle of the wind, that had again grown stronger.
Author's Note
Hey everyone,
like you all can see this chapter was more focused on the horror and the plot of the storie.
So what do you think, should I write on this way and let the sex part only be a very small part of the story or do you like more the way the first chapter was written?
I am looking forward to read your comments about that, or if you prefer just write me a PM.
