Wrath of My Righteous Little Ponies

“Thank you Cranky,” Gold stepped up to the donkey who was critically examining the still bones. “I completely forgot about that holy water, if you hadn’t said-”

“Forget about it kid,” Cranky said picking up a gold tooth that had fallen untouched from the creature’s dissolving skull. He bit down onto it testing its quality and seemed to find it satisfactory as he tucked it away in one of his pockets. “Forget all that stuff I said too while you’re at it.”

Gold’s mouth twitched with a smile for a moment, but she doubted the grumpy old donkey would appreciate her grinning at him and kept her face neutral. She wondered briefly how he’d known it was holy water at all, but then she remembered one of his more profitable business was supplying crusaders, he probably knew more about holy water than Greenery.

Stepping over the pony bones she shone her light into the room the pony skeleton had come from finding it, unsurprisingly, to be the nave of the temple. She stepped inside feeling the cold stale air within and looked up and down to see the room lined with broken stone benches leading up to an altar, everything covered in a thick layer of dust. Leaning back out of the door Gold called to Twilight, “I’m just going to see if there’s anything in here Twilight, then we can move on, if that’s good with you?”

“Yes thank you Gold, that would be perfect,” The blinded unicorn called back clutching her staff to her chest with one leg. She breathed a sigh of relief, her companions could be too quiet at times.

“Hmm, don’t think we’ll find much of anything in here,” Cranky grumbled fallowing Gold into the room and trotting down the side opposite of the nave. His hoof didn’t agree, as it kicked something that clanked across the floor, coming to rest as an indeterminate shadow near a bench. Move up to it Cranky picked up the object and lifted it into the light revealing a well-crafted set of hoof blades.

“Whoever that pony was must have lost them along with this,” Gold noted looking from the weapon Cranky held and lifted up a pouch handing off a still looped belt. She opened the pouch, extracted a couple of potions, and confirmed their healing nature with a careful test. “You want one?”

“What for?” Cranky muttered back as he used his mouth to tighten the straps of the weapon he’d found around his hoof. Once it seemed secure he flexed his hoof back and forth before lowered it back to the floor satisfied it’d been secured properly. Gold again hid her grin as she slipped the potions into her own saddle bags, thankful Cranky wasn’t demanding they waste the potion on his scratches and bumps any more.

“It’s too bad we can’t clean this place up a little, I wonder why it’s down here and who that pony was?” Gold puzzled when they had come around and were standing before the altar together.

“I don’t care and I ain’t staying here while you clean the place kid, so let’s go!” Cranky barked, pointedly turned and started for the door, the steps of his fore legs a little more careful to avoid dragging the hoof blades on the ground. Gold watched him go then turned back to the altar, she carefully sat herself before it, avoiding positioning her leg the wrong way. She made the sign of Torag’s hammer across her chest with a hoof and muttered the only short pray she could think of. As she finished Cranky appeared at the door again and told her to hurry up.

They left the temple behind and continued through the tunnel in the same silence as before, but each found it a little less oppressive than before. Twilight sought to make sure Gold was still nearby with less frequency than before trusting she was not being abandoned. All three noted with satisfaction that there was a slight incline in their path and took it as a good sign it was leading them slowly up to the surface.

At a bend, the tunnel unexpectedly opened into a wide cavern. Gold moved to shine her light against the walls, her face hinting at fresh worry that they would become suddenly trapped with nowhere to go. To her much greater surprise Gold found that the walls were lined with carvings of stone ponies. Each clearly distinct, clad in the armor and weapons of crusaders and all with an expression of sadness across their stony faces.

“Why are there crusaders carved into these walls?” Gold asked aloud as she moved from one to the next peering into their faces.

“What?” Twilight grabbed Gold around the shoulders and pulled her in closer, “Carving, there are carving of crusaders here, show me!”

Gold hesitated not knowing how to show the blind mare anything. After a moment she took Twilight’s hoof off her shoulders and touched it gently to face of the nearest carving. Twilight felt the face of the carved pony and followed the line of its neck tracing the outline of armor and weapons. “Oh~ Yes, yes, yes!” Twilight cried hopping around in a little circle as if she suddenly forgot that she was blind and threatening to crash into something if she continued. “This could help prove my theory!”

“Quiet down you crazy mare!” Cranky snapped at the purple unicorn as Gold took a hold of Twilight and anchored her in place. “What in blazes are you going on about?”

“Oh sorry,” Twilight answered lowering her head and giving a faint blush. “This is just so exciting you see. There is an old legend that after the First Crusade a group of crusaders who had become infected by abyssal energies fled into the caverns under the city to raise their deformed foals in peace. Those decedents are supposed to have lived on to this day in these vary same tunnels. This proves it, why else would these statues be here or that church, they must have made them.”

“Great a bunch of half-demon ponies are waiting down here for us,” Cranky grumbled glaring at the statues.

“If they honor their crusader forbearers and built a church to Torag then they will probably be friendly and might even help to us.” Gold countered looking at the sad and heroic ponies lining the walls.

Suddenly, despite Gold’s lit horn, the room fell thick with impenetrable shadows obscuring the pony and donkey’s ability to see. Gold was instantly on guard pushing Twilight to the ground with a shove, “Twilight get down! Cranky hide!”

“What? What’s going on?” Cranky demanded, but Gold’s light suddenly cut out and the room as plunged back into darkness, “Turn the light back-” Suddenly there was a whoosh of air and the sound of slapping flesh. Cranky’s voice was cut off and all that could be heard was the sound of staggering hooves.

“What’s happening to the light?” Twilight nearly whimpered in confusion. Steeling herself she lit up her own horn for the others’ sake. The light shone from it in a wide circle around her unlike the long narrow beam Gold favored. A muffled cry came to Twilight’s ears, but she couldn’t see how Cranky now staggered around, a thick black leathered hood completely encasing his head.

Suddenly an arrow shot out of the shadows and stabbed the narrow top of the hood which seemed to let out a cry of pain and loosen its grip on Cranky. The donkey steadied himself and thrust his hoof blades up at the top of the hood stabbing into it as well. The hood’s hold suddenly went slack and Cranky tore it from his head. “What in the nine hells was that?”

“A darkmantle,” Gold answered hobbling from the shadows, bow held in her magic, “I’ve ran into them before.”

Before Gold could elaborate there was another whoosh of air this time above Gold. On instinct she thrust her bow over her head and a darkmantle dropped over it spread wide and open over the weapon. In an instant Gold’s sword was in her mouth and she thrust it up into the soft underside of the creature stabbing it through. The creature went slack, Gold yanked her sword back out of it before she tossed it off her bow.

“Gold, Cranky are you two ok?” Twilight asked, unsteadily getting to her hooves.

“Ya we’re fine,” Cranky admitted watching Gold ease her weapons back into place after wiping her sword clean. “Let’s get out of here, no point in standing around staring at statues.”

Cranky had only trotted a few steps when a pony appeared in the mouth of the tunnel leading out of the cavern. He stared down at the trio with wide mad amber eyes. His coat was blue and his mane an almost black shade of the same color. The stallion stepped forward and Cranky stepped back to maintain his distance from the mad looking pony who spoke as if to himself, “What do we have here Nightlight… enemies?”

“No we’re just trapped-” Gold’s explanation was cut off as Nightlight’s horn began to glow with his azure magic. Her own magic grabbed at her bow, but it was too late as Cranky bumped into her, the stallion having closed the distance between them to only a few short feet.

“I know how to deal with enemies, who won’t let me work!” There was a blast of rainbow light from Nightlight’s horn that enveloped the trio in a brilliant flash. The flash left Gold and Cranky’s eyes pale and sightless, but the pair didn’t seem panicked. Suddenly they heaved, shook, and collapsed to the ground.

“Gold! Cranky! What’s happening?” Twilight cried looking wildly from side to side unable to fight the useless impulse to try and see what was happening.

“Oh this enemy cannot see,” Nightlight said with a sorrowful tone and stepped towards Twilight causing her to step back. “That means she’s immune to my color spray spell.”

Color Spray! Twilight knew the spell it would only keep her friends stunned for a maybe half a minute. Twilight heard the scraping of metal on hard leather as the unicorn drew his dagger ready to slay her friends with a single well placed stab. Twilight knew she had to act, and wracked her brains for something she could do to overcome how useless she was with her blinded eyes. Then it came to her and Twilight quickly began chanting the incantation of a spell her horn glowing with magic.

Nightlight laughed, “What are you doing, that is no summoning spell and you have no line of sight to target me.”

“Sleep!” Twilight cried out and Nightlight mad eye filled with understanding as the magic of the spell radiated out in all directions. It struck him and suddenly he felt immensely tired. Twilight didn’t need line of sight to target herself as the center of a spell, one which she was immune to due to her extensive studies of it, but Nightlight had no such immunities. He staggered a few steps towards Twilight trying to fight the spell, but there was no use. The dagger dropped as his magic faded away and he slumped to the ground, eyes dropping close as he began softly snoring.

A few seconds later Cranky and Gold snapped out of the effect of the stallion’s spell and jumped back to their hooves eyes sweep the room for him. “Where is he?” Cranky snapped in frustration.

“Shh!” Twilight sharply hushed him and the donkey turned to her seeing the stallion laying on the ground between them. Twilight smiled and whispered, “He won’t be getting up for a while.”

“Are you ok?” Gold asked in a hushed tone rushing to the other mare’s side and looked her over for any new injuries.

“No I’m fine-” Twilight assured her. Suddenly the sound of a grunt followed by flesh giving way to steel and the heavy wet slap of hoof hitting soft wet flesh interrupted her. Gold looked back to see Cranky pull his hoof blades from Nightlight’s neck which gushed blood. The stallion’s eyes were open again as he silently gasped and twitched violently. It only lasted for a second before he fell still and dead.

“W-why?” Gold asked looking up at the donkey with quivering eyes.

“Now he won’t be getting up at ALL,” Cranky said quickly wiping the blood from his hoof and blades on Nightlight’s cloak and turned away from the mares. “You’d had done the same. It was too dangerous to let him go free, and that’s better than leaving him tied up to die of thirst. It had to be done, so it might as well have been done by an old donkey like me.”

Cranky glanced down at the unicorn again and noticed the saddlebags hung over his midsection. Turn back to the stallion Cranky grabbed the saddlebags in his teeth and tossed them towards Gold who caught them in her magic. “See if he’s got anything worth taking, I’ll go see what’s ahead.” Cranky said quickly and hurried to disappear up the tunnel.

Maybe he forgot that he couldn’t see without the unicorns’ light, maybe he just wanted to hide for a moment, either way Gold let him be. Twilight remained silent, a muted expression across her muzzle as she looked down literally at nothing. Gold sighed knowing there really wasn’t anything to say. Cranky was right after all, as much as she liked to think that could have turned the stallion in to the authorities she knew that was just Greenery idealness speaking through her. Gold knew the hard truth of survival better than most, and, despite her shock, if Cranky hadn’t killed Nightlight she would have.

Gold set the bag on the ground and examining the contents. There was another healing potion, bringing their total to three, and a second potion she identified as invisibility. She was a happy, despite everything, to pocket that one. There was a statue of a spear throwing earth pony, a few coins, arcane scrolls she couldn’t decipher and a book full of spell formulas.

“That sounds like a spell book,” Twilight finally spoke shifting over curiously breathing in the deep scent of the musty tome.

“You have a good ear,” Gold tried to joke with a half-smile.

“He was using advanced magic so he’d have to have one,” Twilight explained and felt around for the scrolls. “You can put them in my bags, the scrolls too. The library will be able to make some use of them.”

Gold nodded and loaded ill-gotten treasures into their bags, then lead Twilight around the fallen unicorn. They met Cranky as they entered the tunnel, the old donkey grumbling about being unable to see anything. Now with the unicorn’s light he lead them through the small cavern and back into the winding tunnels which, thankfully, continued to angle upwards.