Bloodlines

A pedestal with a mannequin, that wore a shredded armor was next in line and Celestia’s elation disappeared. This might have been the second hardest battle, she had ever fought against a mortal. Iron Crest did not count, as it had not been a fight, but more a poor excuse.

But this armor brought back some unpleasant and painful memories. More physical than mental in this case though. And as she looked over the metal shell of the dummy, she could not help but admire it. A crooked blade hung by its side, similar to a glaive.

She assumed that there were still some marks left in the mountains of the southern border. Well, at the feet of one mountain, but it sounded more epic in her mind, to think that her battle had scarred the mountain range.

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Year 12, 2 days past the even day.

Spring was usually a rather happy and beautiful time in Equestria, with blooming flowers, awakening animals and more and more greenery. It was a nightmare for any military movement though. Rain, lingering frost and thawing snow turned every meadow and every road into muddy traps.

But luckily for Celestia, the roads to the southern mountain of Equestria, the barren hills, which marked the southern end of the badlands too, were set with stones. The trading route had been properly reinforced, so that merchants may travel at any time of year, unhindered throughout the lands and to the southern neighbours.

Shamefully the roads were blocked. The merchants from the western coast cities, who had survived and fled had joined up with the remnants of the east, which had been driven south by Luna’s campaign. Which left the south the last bastion of the rebels, nobles and their soldiers.

But those were only partly the concern of the two alicorns. No, right now they were faced with something.. Louder and more obnoxious. A few of their personal guards laid bruised and battered, with slightly torn apart weapons on the ground, mostly dazed, some unconscious.

“Step aside, you pesky verbs! I am here to challenge your rules!” came the voice of a stallion, from within a very intricate suit of armor. Tons of small, moving parts and larger plates, that covered the mystery pony from head to toe. It was not shiny, but it was not shabby either. It just had a dull tone to it, making the guessing of the metal difficult.

The alicorns had been witnesses of the fact, that this one pony had taken out their guards swiftly and methodically, from front to back. Magic had not shown any effect and each blow seemed to get shrugged off without much care. In his grasp was a glaive, with a single line of the same metal going down the handle, and then another coming up in a narrow spiral.

There were a lot of these lines. All over the armor. They looked a little like decoration, but by now both Celestia and Luna had discerned, that it was in fact a Spellblade before them and the armor was probably his Spell Blade. Luna had come up with the name and Celestia had rather liked it, while Ink had protested against it. He simply claimed it was more of a hex or a curse, than a spell.

“I change Celestia, ruler of the gay!” the stallion declared suddenly, bringing both Luna and Celestia out of their musing. While they had initially felt worry and panic, from the fact that a pony was dismantling their army, they had soon noticed, that their troupes had not been harmed too badly and that the stallion just shouted that he wanted to fight Celestia. Or celsius or celery, it was not always clear.

The stallion seemed to either be rather dim, have a speech impairment or something down the line. And no matter how good an armor or a weapon was. When the one wielding it was an idiot, one could win mostly by wits and tactics. Additionally they had gotten to see the way the pony fought. Rather mechanically, with each attack coming in a certain angle and rather telegraphed.

Still, neither of the alicorns let down their guard fully, as the stallion now stood before them, motionless. “Ah, Celesteel! There you are! I charge you, who has beaned my one advertisement, Iron Crust! As the one who has eaten the only one, who has ever testet me, I will take your defeat as my own dictionary.”

As he spoke he angled himself a little backwards, which caused his arm with the glaive to raise up into the air, as a form of challenge. The alicorns looked at another, Luna giving a shrug and then whispering.

“If anything happens, I will aid you, but this is the declaration of a duel. It is only fair that you accept it. He has proven himself as strong and if you reject it now, you might appear as cowardly. Especially with how close your fight with the Spire was.” Luna had refused to change how she addressed the stallion. It suited her more.

With a nod, Celestia turned back to the stallion. “Very well. But I am at a disadvantage already, for I do not know your name.” She spoke out and summoned her weapon. She was already clad in her armor and the soldiers who came to aid her were now clearing out the wounded guards, while Luna teleported the tent away and turned to the side as well, giving the two combatants a wide arena.

“Why yes, of cost! I am the honor table sir Silk Strom. And I am here to delete you. For you must have heated, when fighting my arbiary.” he declared and he started to swing his weapon mechanically from left to right, seemingly nearly falling over with each motion.

By now Celestia was going through her options. She still thought that her opponent was so far just pretending, as the goofy way he talked and the mechanic was he moved were screaming fake to her. Still, for now she could only work with what she had and that was, that her opponent was a bumbling, melee bound idiot.

So she took into the air and shot her spear down towards him at the same time, while already charging up her next attack. It was then, as her horn started to blaze and her eyes were cast upwards, due to her angle, that she was hit in the stomach by something. It was a far cry from the earth sundering impact, that she had been subjected to, under the hands of Iron Crest, but it was still an impact that told her a couple of things. One, her opponent had ranged attacks, two, they were able to hit through her enchanted armor and three, her foe was not a bumbling, melee bound idiot.

A curse came over her lips, as she looked down onto the stallion, right as the blade of his glaive returned and he caught it with the pole of his weapon. But it was something else that caused her eyes to widen in shock. Wenched under his arm and firmly in his grasp was her spear. And try as she might, it was not budging, as she tried to pull it back.

At least not until she teleported it away and back to her side, letting the arm of the stallion fall down a bit, before he moved a little and grasped his weapon firmly with both hands. Then he started to swing it in a wide arc and just as he was about to aim the weapon directly at her, he twisted his arm and the blade of the glaive shot off towards Celestia.

This time she saw it coming and avoided it, but just as it shot past her, did she notice a motion on the ground. And suddenly she was careening towards the ground, as her wings refused to open. And just before she hit the ground she felt the weight of the blade head hit into her side, digging through her armor and into her skin.

While the wound was shallow, Celestia was effectively grounded and she had no idea what happened. Just that no matter how hard she tried to open her wings, she could not. It was as if they were bound. Then she noticed it, just with that thought. A very, very fine string that had wrapped around her midsection and that was attached to the blade, that was dug into her armor, causing blood to leak from her side.

“No more flying for the little dove.” came it cheerfully from Silk. Gone the stupid way he intoned his words. His motions still came mechanical, but as he started to turn around and began to move the stick up and down, Celestia was pulled towards him. Immediately she brought her spear down onto the string, only for it to slightly bend under her attack, that could split an amboss apart.

“Nono, that is not something you are going to cut.” the way he said it was slightly amused, though, his voice was a little strained, which made sense, as he was fighting against the strength of an alicorn, who leaned herself against the pull.

“Sister! It’s a rope snare, like Discord’s!” That was Luna, and Celestia’s eyes widened. Pulling the blade out of her side, she quickly remembered what way it must have spun, before she started to spin. After a few quick spins she could open her wings and then she was free, swiftly darting back and casting a healing spell on herself.

“Thank you Luna.” managed Celestia to say on the side, as she readied herself again. Her foe was good at range apparently and had a string she could not simply cut, without a large channeling time. Something she could not afford. But something else she spotted, was that he hardly moved from his spot.

It seemed he was not the most mobile, or at least, that is what she hoped. His ranged attacks were now mangeable, but with how wide the range of attack one could have with such a flexible weapon. That left little choice.

One, was close combat. His attacks were still rather mechanical, the arms and upper body moving in the same patterns and ways again and again. So, as he shot his blade at her again she dove in, past the string, with her wings lightly spread. If it wrapped around her again she could just duck down and close her wings to escape it.

Though, as was expected, her foe was not going to just let her do as she pleased, as he took a step back and brought the handle of his pole weapon between the two and batted her thrusting shortspear aside. Another motion and the butt of the staff was thrust towards her knee, to hit into it from the side.

A good move, forcing Celestia to halt her attack prematurely and taking a lot of force out of her swing. A soft gasp told her all she needed and she ducked, before the blade managed to sink into her neck. The blade could not hope to cut deep, but a critical spot like that would be enough to disable her. Then her world started to tilt backwards.

Silk had somehow caught her between the butt of the weapon and the tip with the string and tugged, causing her left leg to fold in, which caused her entire body to fall backwards. Only for her enemy to tighten the rope, while the blade began to rapidly spin around the handle, along the spiral, basically dragging Celestia towards a meat grinder. Thinking quick, she lifted both legs and stepped against her smaller foe and started to stem against the pull of the cord.

The blade came to a stop and the entire weapon started to groan, as alicorn might battled unknown materials and craftsmanship unknown to the princess. What was surprising, was that Silk did not budge more than a little, his upper body only tilting slightly, as she drove her feet into him and pulled back. His arms too were barely buckling, Which either meant, her foe was as strong as she was, or even stronger, or something else was at work. Something she did not quite understand just yet.

But then came another, mechanical motion and Celestia basically shot up into the air from the pressure immediately vanishing and with a metallic sound, something happened. It was outside of her vision though, as she had basically thrown herself far up into the sky. But there were shocked gasps and as she managed to right herself in the air, she understood why.

The blade had split into an uncountable amount of small segments. It looked like a saw blade and it started to spin along the entirety of the staff, slowly. Each segment was pulled apart, more and more, like vicious, dangerous teeth, or claws. They spiraled and tore through the air, with a whirring sound.

“Shall we get serious?” Came the nonchalant question of Silk and he spun the weapon around himself and for a moment Celestia doubted her eyes. With a simple twist, the blades seemed to easily detach into a string midair and then slid into one of the lines along the armor and dragged around it, like a wave. And as the weapon began to spin around him, he let go of it and it easily enough folded along several spots, against his side and the rotating blades started to slide all over his body. they had to be hundreds, if not thousands and they sped up more and more.

The whirring increased, becoming nearly unbearable and the blades all melted together into a shine, so fast were their motions by now. The very ground seemed to vibrate and as Silk slowly raised his arms, the pitch of the sound changed, becoming higher, painfully so, but at least bearable and not too loud. “COME! SHOW ME THAT MY BROTHER DID NOT DIE TO A COWARD!” he yelled and then pointed at her, one finger at a time clenching into a fist, with the blades even running along his knuckles.

Celestia was speechless. This was impossible. The other weapons and such were masterpieces for sure, but this one. She could not even begin to fathom how much craftsmanship and time was nescessary, to create something so intricate, so exceptional. But she had no time to consider it, as a silver line blurred through the air at an incredible pace and as she ducked down, dropping like a rock, her shoulder pauldron was lightly nicked. A vibration ran through her entire upper body, causing her teeth to rattle.

The tremor passed in a moment and as she looked, she could see the enchanted, reinforced metal had been cut like warm butter, the piece missing small, but she could see her padding under it. The wool was not frazzled. It was cleanly cut. Her eyes opened, as she understood. Just a single bad touch of this, a bad angle, and she was done for. A similar fear to the time she fought Iron shot through her. But she managed to stay more level headed now.

She could not afford to get close. Another whirring, from behind and she shot upwards, barely dodging the chain of blades. Calm. She had to stay calm. As she looked she noticed, that whenever her attacked and shot a string at her, his armor stopped being covered in the blades. So again, attack and defense were divided and if she watched him carefully, she could clearly see where his attacks were coming from, as well as hear it.

She was in good condition, she knew what she was up against. Her foe had to have already played most of his cards and now it was a matter of who made the first damning mistake. And Celestia decided it not to be her. Breathing out calmly, she did think about trying to intercept the sawblades with her spear, but not even she had full trust into her enchanted spear. No, dodging and waiting for attack windows.

And so she dodged. The crown was constantly on their toes, as they could see what destruction Silk wielded and the circle, already large at the start of the duel, had turned into a massive, vacated area, with cut down tents, destroyed barrels and other pieces of the camp.
Metal, wood, stone, it apparently did not matter, as Silk tore through it all, as if it was air. Like a whip of destruction. But Celestia was by now not worse for wear. No, instead she managed to get some attacks in. Pointless blasts of kinetic magic at first, but soon she began to cast more complex spells, as she grew more used to the robotic pace her enemy set.

Without the erratic motions, her observation skills and time, she learned a few things. He could only attack in 4 angles. It was ridiculous, but now, that she was not so panicked, she could clearly see it. Diagonal in 4 ways and horizontal and vertical, creating an 8 pointed star.All cuts were diagonal, in a 45° angle, or even.

It was such a simple thing, that Celestia nearly stopped, when she noticed it. Something that cost her another shorn off piece of armor, sending another rattle through her. The shock was enough to remind her of her position. And as she swiftly started to work on that information, she formulated a plan.

After a few more seconds of dodging she decided to bait his next attack to be a horizontal slide and as she saw the metal rushing towards her she barely moved out of the way. The whirring line shot over her and despite her not being able to see her foe, she liked to imagine that his eyes widened at that, as she charged forward, her spear starting to glow with charged magic.

Time seemed to slow down, as the whirring behind her grew louder and her weapon started to close in on the stallion’s chest. Closer and closer and everything but the sight and the sound of her enemy bled away around Celestia. She had to land this and duck. there was no other way. He only could attack in certain ways, there was plenty of room to dodge from this.

Only, that something odd occured to her. A little detail, that she just now noticed. For some reason, his entire body looked somewhat tilted. As if someone had taken him and bent him perfectly at the hip. It was then, when her mistake became clear to her. He could only attack in 4 different angles. He could rotate those angles.

And as her mind started to work in overtime, trying to calculate the new angle, not knowing if it was still horizontal or now diagonal, she came to a horrifying result. just as her spear was about to make contact with the chest of her foe. There was not enough space for her to dodge, from this close, without accurately knowing the angle the blade took. So she could either risk a fifty percent chance of getting mortally wounded or.

A loud gasp ran throughout the entirety of the soldiers, as well as Luna. “No…” With a harrowing screeching of metal on metal and then a wet ripping sound, both Celestia’s left arm and half of her wing were separated from her body. Red sprayed in a massive arc over the ground, creating a crimson line, as the arm and wingpiece were thrown into the air from the friction of the blades and their speed.

Celestia herself was falling to the other side, a cry of pain on her lips, but her horn already ablaze. Despite her wound, despite her pain, she acted. The moment she had decided to sacrifice one of her arms, she had already thought about how to deal with it and even as her lifeblood poured from her, the alicorn managed to stumble back. Out of the imminent danger, away from Silk, who was now covered in red lines, as the bloodied sawblades ran over his body. He looked like a tapestry of war, made of blood and steel.

He did not pursue her though, not even as she started to mend her wounds with her magic, stopping the blood flow. The wounds were grave, but with Luna#s help she could later reattach her lost limbs. But for now she was crippled and needed to keep herself from dying.

A blue aura joined her golden one, as Luna landed beside her, anger and fear written on her face, as she aided her sister in her healing. “Are you mad?! Why did you dive in?” came the angry question and Celestia flinched slightly, then let out a grunt of pain.

“I.. I thought I had him figured out. His attack pattern is incredibly simple. Sure, he is fast and his attacks make blocking impossible, but.. they only come in certain angles. I thought I could get in, deliver a blow and duck back out. But.. He baited me in. He knew I saw through his weakness and just turned into his strength. At least for a bit.” it all was said with a pained tone, but she was allowed to speak, as Silk did nothing, except watching the two.

“He is still bound. He just adds new condition. He needs to turn his body. I fear that allows him for a 360° angle, without any holes, as he just has to lean lightly in both directions. Still, he has a window between each attack. That and his need to turn his body, it should give you enough time to land a few hits.”

“Wait.. ME?!” Asked Luna with disbelief in her voice, causing Celestia to chuckle.

“Of course.. I am in no condition to fight him seriously.”

“That is alright:” chimed Silk from his spot, as he suddenly drew his weapon with a flick and the blades ran over the unfolding staff, before settling back into a crimson blade.

“I will wait. I won today, thus you are not permitted to go past here.” there was a very faint chink and then he moved his legs, while his arms became static along his sides and he took a few steps back.

“Iron has not bearded me in one try too, though… He was fasting than you.” He stated and then turned around, walking off with a chuckle ringing throughout the camp, with the slightly stupid tone to it, that he had before the fight started. Even his speech pattern was back.

That left both Luna and Celestia speechless. But the white diarch was thankful at least, chuckling in defeat, falling onto her back. “I thought I was done for.. It would also have been the direction I had dodged to, if I had not decided to sacrifice an arm and a wing.” she stated, shaking her head, as tears started to stream over her face. Pain, fear, relief, it all washed over her, in a rare moment of weakness.

Luna for her part was speechless. Then, with a shake of her head, she went and collected her sister’s cut off body parts. It was not something she did lightly, seeing the maimed stumps. It filled her with anger and worry.

She too had watched the fight but had not spotted anything Celestia did, but she would not have allowed herself to get hit in such ways. Not even in the last, desperate moment. With a sigh, she retrieved both limbs and then the alicorns went to reattach it.

“You think we should fight him together? I hate to say it but you seem too slow to fully keep up with him.” asked Luna carefully.

“I am not sure, Luna. I am sure he has more tricks up his sleeve. He is easy to read, once he shows what he has. It is like watching a stone down a mountain. You know where it will end, if there is nothing in the way. Or even if you see different tracks. You can anticipate what comes next.

“But it seems he has always new tracks. It’s scary to think that he has even more. Alone his little tricks would mean nothing. Each motion is predictable, if quick. But he can combine them and he has not even brought his legs into it. I think once I have every information I can beat him. But as you saw, I might be done for, before I can see them all.” concluded Celestia with a bitter tone.

“I could fight for you, while you watch. I might not be able to read him, but he is not as fast that I could not avoid him. And now that you told me some of his weak spots, I could make him show another. And I should be fast enough to escape it, even if I am surprised.” After Luna’s proposal there was a bit of silence, as Celestia looked sternly at her sister.

Their eyes met and their gaze was held for a few seconds, before Celestia let out a soft sigh. “That might be for the best. We should rest today and challenge him tomorrow. He seems content with winning. Not that he goes specifically after our lives. If you feel like you might die, retreat.”

“Of course. I am no fool, who would throw away her own limbs.” said Luna with a scoff, causing Celestia to glare. The two were dealing with their shock and both knew it, so they remained silent.