The Templar's Fury

Rainbow Dash twirled through the sky, a grin of delight on her face.

It was a beautiful summer’s day and she was making the most of it. Her wings closed to her side as she dropped rapidly, enjoying the rush of air pressing against her face. She opened her wings and swooped forwards, drinking in the sunlight drenched landscape beneath her. Everything was touched by the beautiful light of the sun, from horizon to horizon, and the entire world was…

Indescribably gorgeous.

Drunk on happiness, she laughed and began to climb again, trying to find her limits. She pushed herself into a rapid descent, folded her wings at her side and let out a yell as she shot down at a dizzying speed. Her heart still beating with excitement, she reclined on a tiny cloud and began to relax.

Her head lay back on her forelegs as her chest heaved with heavy breaths. She let out another laugh and stood up, looking down at the distant land again and letting herself feel awe at the sheer magnitude of the land that reached from horizon to horizon. With a deep sigh, she let the excitement of the last moment pass and relaxed within the depths of the sky.

Looking at the land again, her face fell as she saw pillars of smoke climbing far into the sky from the direction of Ponyville. Already forgetting the fun of the previous moments, she soared towards the disaster with no hesitation.

**********

The first thing she came across on her flight was a fleeing band of ponies on the outskirts of town.

She touched down on the dirt road slightly ahead of the group and observed them for a moment. Their faces were struck with a horror that she had only rarely seen before. Their eyes were wild and crazy, filled with panic. Several of them were covered in dried blood.

“Hey, what happe-” Even as she tried to talk to them, they shoved her aside.

After she tried and failed to engage one of the survivors, somepony stopped to offer a breathless explanation. The blue-coated stallion was out of breath and tears glistened on his face, his purple eyes swimming with terror.

“It’s...big…”’ he muttered breathlessly.

“Is it a dragon?” Dash briefly thought of leaving to go find Twilight, or maybe even Celestia, but dismissed the thought.

“It’s as strong as one and it breathes fire-or if it isn’t fire, it sets things on fire.” spat the pony. “I-I have to run, but it’s not that far from us. Just go towards the screaming.”

Before she could ask anything else, the pony galloped away.

A moment passed as she listened for the promised screaming and surely enough it came. Followed by the screams were impossibly loud blasts that reminded her of a sonic rainboom.

Are they being attacked by evil pegasi? she thought to herself. The idea was crazy to say the least, but she was sure she could fight them off.

She took flight again and soared towards the sounds of battle.

It only took her a brief moment of searching before she came upon a garden of equine annihilation. The broken bodies of dead ponies littered the bloodsoaked ground. Mares and children had not been spared, lying dead alongside their husbands and fathers. Picnic cloths fluttered in the wind, baskets of food strewn across the grass.

The Ponyville annual family picnic gathering, she recalled with a start. She had meant to attend it with Scootaloo, but decided to ditch it to slack off as she usually did.

If I had gone to this, would I have?... she pushed the thought from her mind.

She descended into the wave of mangled bodies, frantically searching for any survivors.

At first, she found nothing. Whatever beast had been responsible for the horror unfolding before her was an artist of death that left no survivors, or so it seemed.

It was the bodies that disturbed her. She was no stranger to the site of massacres and bloodbaths; there were more than enough terrifying creatures within Equestria to ensure that her innocence had been long since stripped from her. However, these corpses were like nothing she had seen before. They weren’t burnt or hewn by some blade or claw, but appeared to have popped, like pinatas full of guts.

She briefly thought of Pinkie Pie. Would she find some humor in comparing the bodies to meat pinatas? As Dash walked around in a daze, her hoof brushed the decapitated head of a colt and she vomited on the ground, the terror of the scene finally penetrating into her mind.

At once, she heard a weak cry for help and trotted towards it.

The red-coated mare was so soaked in blood that Dash couldn’t tell if red was even the original color of her coat. The tattered remains of a sundress drenched in feces and urine hung off of her frame. She weakly tried to sit up as Dash approached her. Once she was close, she muttered something incomprehensible.

“What was that?” asked Dash gently.

“run...it’s close…” whispered the dying mare.

She suddenly noticed the looming presence of a massive beast which lurked in the middle of the bloodbath. It was a strange, hairless creature that stood on two legs. Dash quickly looked it over and balked at the size of its armor and at the sheer quantity of blood it was drenched in. Yet, despite the violence the beast had clearly participated in, it showed no sign of bloodlust in its grim, stern face.

Clutched in its right hand was the tattered body of a stallion wearing the armor of an Equestrian soldier. The creature wordlessly raised the body in the air and locked eyes with Dash.

“Did you do this?” Dash tried to control her voice but rage was beginning to overtake her. She shook in fury and a sea of red obscured her vision. Her ears flattened instinctively and she bared her teeth at the silent, gore soaked sentinel before her.

Anger pulsed through her, intertwining with her essence and driving the mere concept of rationality from her mind. If this was the creature responsible for the massacre, she knew that she didn’t have the self control not to kill it outright. A brief thought of what Celestia would think of her for the act killing crossed her mind, but she pushed it out.

Let her be angry. she thought to herself. I’ve held back before, but this is...this is too much.

Dash realized with a start that the stallion in the beast’s grip wasn’t dead. The beast whispered something in the pony’s ear and the pony parted his bloodstained lips to speak. “I...I am Greyson, the, uh, ex-ee-nose herald of this As-tart-ees.” Greyson coughed. “He comes to bring justice to foul...ex-ee-nos scum...such as you…”

His composure collapsed and he began to sob and writhe in the beast’s grip. “H-HELP ME! HELP-”

The Astartes remained silent, allowing Dash a moment to speak. She restrained her fear to produce a steady, confident tone, hoping to comfort the stallion. “Greyson, it’s going to be okay. I’ll save you.”

A little bit of the panic left his face.“Just don’t go easy on him.” Some confidence had returned to Greyson’s voice.

“I won’t.” She puffed her chest out and took a moment to think of something threatening to say to the monster.

Before anything came to mind, it threw Greyson at her with the speed of a cannonball. She barely had time to jump out of the way before Greyson splattered into a pile of shattered bones and guts on the ground near her.

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” The words leapt out of her mouth like embers from a raging fire.

The Astartes suddenly dashed towards her with a blinding speed. Dash yelped as she quickly flew in the air to escape its reach. Within the same instant, the beast drew a massive blob of metal from its hip and Dash suddenly discovered the source of the booms from earlier.

She arced gracefully in the air as she dodged the bolter rounds, one almost clipping her wing. Swooping back down, she delivered a fierce kick to the head of the Astartes.

It barely acknowledged the blow and grabbed her hindleg. Before it ravaged her, she twisted free and went for another kick, twirling around to strike it in the chestplate.

Their homicidal dance dragged on for several minutes. After many more blows against it, she ultimately realized her sheer weakness in comparison to the beast. Despite her strongest efforts, it didn’t seem remotely injured by her kicks and was even more motivated to fight.

There was a moment of fear and helplessness in her mind. Dash imagined this monster ravaging her friends, imagined the fear that Fluttershy would feel if she was before it. She considered flying off to warn the citizens of Ponyville about the black-armored threat and then considered the ponies it would slaughter before help arrived.

In that moment, she knew what she had to do.

More rounds shot past her as she flew and she grinned to herself every time one missed. Despite her elation at having survived for so long, a deep seated sense of panic tainted her actions. She knew deep in her heart that if she didn’t end this quickly, it would end with her death and the deaths of countless other ponies.

She was now so far in the sky that the monster below was a distant pinprick within the landscape. Even at that height, an occasional round flew past her. She tried to ignore the arcing rounds from below and focused her mind and body into one being. A deep breath entered her nostrils and she knew what to do.

She threw herself into a rapid descent. Her wings became a blur of sheer motion and sweat flew off of her body from the utter exertion of her task, forming a contrail that hugged her body closely. A feeling of determination suddenly blossomed in her heart and grew into a furious storm as her speed increased.

Throughout the land below, the rainbow streams of a sonic rainboom flowed through the windows of houses and filtered their way through the branches of trees. In the homes along the outskirts of Ponyville, windows rattled in their panes and ponies took cover from the sudden sensation of sound blossoming in the skies.

Another rainboom followed quickly after, their contrails blended together to form a dazzling contrail of lights. All across Ponyville, ponies stopped in their tracks to stare in gape-jawed amazement at the kaleidoscope of color that was blossoming across the heavens.

There was no longer a divisive concept in her mind between her and the blanket of utter speed she was enveloped in. The line dividing the pegasus and the motion of the pegasus was so blurred to her that she no longer felt like a pony moving quickly, but had transcended into something else entirely, something raw and primal and speedy.

Dash’s mouth opened to emit a roar borne of fear and euphoria. In a swift moment, she switched her position before she impacted her target, rotating her body so that her right hindleg was extended outwards, her head pointed towards the sky and her back towards the ground.

In the second before impact, her roar became something else entirely and she let out a sound that she never made before. It was the sound of pure, unrestrained exertion, the triumphant yell of an athlete at the absolute limits of what her body could achieve.

The Astartes had no time to dodge or even ponder his predicament before the impact came.

Her right hindleg struck the Astartes in its chestplate. Bodies flew from the clearing and tree trunks snapped as the force of the shockwave radiating outwards. Her entire form rocked with an incredible force and she rocketed across the clearing before coming to rest in a ditch.

The chestplate of the Astartes buckled and shattered under the force of the impact and the beast shot backwards with a force harder than it had ever felt against him, its body bouncing off the ground many times over before impacting a boulder and finally going still.

In the second before Dash reached unconsciousness, she saw Celestia herself descend into the clearing and knew she was safe at last.