The princesses and the beast

Today is a special day for you and for which you have worked tirelessly over the last few days, apart from the visit you made with the wonderbolts. You, along with a sizeable part of Equestria's Royal Guard, are visiting the peninsula of the Argate Lands, a vast, seemingly barren expanse of land east of Equestria.

To get there, you have to cross the sea, which you have favoured with a few heavy boats belonging to the Royal Guard and the princesses. And speaking of princesses, one of them has decided to join you on this journey, your greatest protégée, Princess Twilight. Even though it was only an additional danger for you to take her to a faraway and hostile land, you didn't question her word. She reassured her friends, as well as your teammate and her older brother Shining Armor, who had a hard time resigning himself to staying, before setting sail. She hoped to talk to the commander of the minotaurs and reach a peace or even a trade agreement with them.

The presence of this race was the only thing you knew about these lands, which was enough to prepare a defensive strategy. All you knew about their people was their impressive strength and their strange physique, a buffalo head with hind legs but front legs with five toes. Many have already remarked to you that your appearance could make you think of this species, which was another good indicator to settle this issue quickly.

Princess Twilight, like her friends and the people of Ponyville, lived in the least disturbed part of the world according to you, which makes you all the more cautious of her safety here.

It was when you ran aground on the coast that you launched your plan, sending a squad to each side of the ships. While some should stay to look after your shipping, the main squad, consisting of Princess Twilight, yourself and about 40 armed Pegasus, moored and lowered down to the burning sand at your hooves.

"Here we are!" Said the Princess Twilight as she landed beside you, not wanting her to come within three feet of your position from here. "You don't have to worry Leonidas, I'm sure the commander of his lands will be able to receive us, promise me you won't launch any attacks for the time being!" And then she asked you, not wanting to be in the middle of a battlefield, especially if she was in the middle of it, you thought.

"I already promised you, Princess Twilight, I'd keep my promise as long as I felt no animosity towards them." Did you confirm. "Squadron 6-7-8, airborne." You're calling loudly.

At your call, three rows of Pegasus in golden armor flew off at the same time as you and Princess Twilight, encircling you in a plan to protect the royalty present left, right and above her. You have placed yourself below her to protect her from any attack from below, even offering her not to get tired by landing on your massive back. Which she politely refused.

"Her land is barren, I wonder how minotaurs can live there without food problems." The princess agreed, noting inwardly to ask the commander for details.

Unlike the attacks you and your father faced in the past through portals, the minotaurs lived in the same world as yours, just hours from equestrian civilization. It was therefore essential to know what they were capable of, and if their physique corresponded to yours, was it as strong as you individually. That was the thing you feared the most.

"Commander, a structure is visible at 0300 hours." Informed a guard on your right, giving you an indication to turn your head.

In the vastness of this stifling sandy desert, a rock formation was the only thing that stood out from the usual landscape. It was not like what you had seen in the enclosed world of the Draconians, but rather at a temple of ancient civilizations of which Twilight knew some things.

"This looks a lot like Aztec structures!" She said she noticed. "We should check it out."

"Formation, movement!" Did you order by rising closer to the Princess to follow your movements, not knowing all the military dialect you use.

You and the entire formation moved to the temple by tilting your wings to the right, with the Princess Twilight in the center.

"Squadron 6 on lookout, the rest: land!" And then you say.

While the upper part of the squad stopped to watch the surroundings, the rest of the squad landed in front of the temple. The burning sand wasn't a problem for your armor or your men's armor. Only the Princess Twilight remained a few meters above the ground, still floating beside you.

"Princess Twilight, I'll go in first, and then you follow me once you've received the request, then the rest of the troops will close the march. Is that clear?" You inform him strictly.

You can't give orders to princesses from their position as the ruling royalty of the realm. You then stare at her with your eye and wait for her to nod. You notice that because of the overwhelming heat, her cheeks turn red as her eyes cross yours.

"Princess Twilight needs water!" Think highly of it, a guard bringing a canteen filled quickly. "Hold!"

"Oh t...thank you Leonidas, and I get the plan." She nods in agreement, turning her head and taking a few sips.

You just nod your head and walk up the ten steps to the main entrance. A long corridor descending and lit by lighted torches offers itself to you, giving you the indication that it is not abandoned. You sniff the fresh air that so clears and penetrates your lungs before inhaling it serenely, no poison on the horizon.

"Princess Twilight, stay behind me, and watch her back!" You've made your point.

You waited until the formation was in place before you moved inside. A few guards enjoy the air and coolness of this place as you move forward, listening carefully to the sounds around you. Apart from the many hoof footsteps, your ears can isolate a sound coming from your left, on the other side of the wall.

"Stop!" Order hastily, followed by a few clumsily clashing shards of armor.

"What's the matter Leonidas?" Ask the Princess Twilight as you see your gaze settle on the seemingly normal wall.

As you stop, sounds come to everyone's ears, sounds of pounding and low laughter.

"Princess Twilight, can you see through this wall?" You ask by detaching your double blade hanging from the waist of your prickly armor.

"Uh, all right!" Does she answer you before she lights her horn at the stones.

The princess reopens her eyes which now shine in the corridor, showing that she can now see through inorganic things. Only she can see what is happening on the other side, so you wait patiently for her facial expression to change or for her to start describing the situation to you.

You don't wait long, as the princess' lips separate and her eyes grow larger in an unquiet manner. This means she doesn't like what she sees. She ends up closing her eyes and covering her mouth with her clog, a sign of disgust as you remember.

"Princess Twilight, are you all right?!" Ask yourself, almost panicking at what she might have seen.

"I... minotaurs... can't argue with them!" Affirms her in a tight tone, as if saying her words was suffocating her.

"Princess Twilight, will you allow me to tear down this wall?" Then ask yourself, feeling that you had to act quickly, time to find the normal path surely too long.

Without changing her expression, she nodded her head and gave no further indication.

"Protect the princess, soldiers!" Order yourselves by turning to the wall behind which problematic things were happening.

The guard quickly surrounds the princess as you charge a magical attack with your blades, in the same vein as in the world of the Draconians. You waste no more time and nukes the wall with a sharp movement, the debris flying crashing through the new room.

The sun's rays are the first thing to appear, as the room seems to be made in a wide and deep crevasse, several dozen meters below the ground. Your vision clears up, letting you see the details of the scene that horrified the princess earlier. This place... is a prison. The rock walls on either side have dozens of holes blocked by iron bars, which imprison the non-Minotaurs. You see ponies, but also griffins, centaurs, dragons and all sorts of creatures reduced to slaves, some of them stopping their hard work to turn to you and your noisy entrance.

Then you see in the distance, about forty meters above you, the beings who were laughing here. Beasts of immeasurable stature and muscularity, with pointed horns and muzzles blowing at your coming. Finally, axes and hammers as utensils rest by their sandy throne. You physically resemble the minotaurs, the barbaric people who make fun of other races, capturing and killing them, judging by the bones in some cages and littering the ground.

So you have the same reaction as the princess, it disgusts you.

"HEY, WHO ARE YOU TO SMASH OUR CITY LIKE THAT!" You shout one of them and alert the rest of the crevice of your intrusion by ringing a bone as a loudspeaker, creating an echo throughout the temple.

Soon you see the horde descend the different floors built into the rock to form a group of nearly a hundred elements. Armed to the head and blowing aggressively in tens, you only pay attention to your troops for the moment, seeing that they were no longer approaching.

"All of you stay around Princess Twilight and protect her with your lives, understand?!" Order the battalion again from the corridor behind you.

"Understood, Commander Leonidas!" Confirm he's in unison by closing space and drawing their weapons, knowing their mission.

"What have we here?" Then a gruff voice reacts, giving you your attention now. "What exactly are you in your armor, a dragon perhaps?" He said as he stepped forward.

The mob of minotaurs fifty meters from your position let the speaker pass, another one of their fellows, even bigger than the others. His golden ring hanging from his snout as well as his various collars and rings show his posture as commander of this crevasse perhaps he is the prince of all his people.

That suits you, since killing him is your priority now.

"So, big fella, are you going to answer me or are you going to lose your tongue in front of me?" He then asks you, having never taken his eyes off you, though it's hard to tell in the massive armour that covers you.

"I don't talk to monsters like you!" You nod before raising your hind leg and striking the ground violently as you lay it down in front of you, a sign that you are ready to eliminate it by creating this slight jerk and raising dust.

"HAHAHAHA! You're lucky I love a good duel. I'll show you who's got the strongest hooves before I turn your guard over to my army." Is he laughing when he rereads the same gait you did.

Except that his hoof hits the ground with much more force due to his concentration, creating a crack in it, and shaking even the limbs of fellow hoofers. He probably wanted to intimidate you by showing the extent of his brute force. He then eventually pulled two bones out of his back, huge bones, much bigger than a pony, which must belong to a gigantic creature. He held them like hammers, spanking you wondering if they were that effective.

"Come on, boy! I'm waiting for you!" Is he taunting you with his despicable smile.

You don't listen to what he's saying and instead think of the countless lives this people have had to destroy in the past and right now. If you are fighting, it is also to free the many specimens still alive from this ordeal, all of them watching you from their cells or chains on their feet.

You soar with your wings, leaving a tornado in your wake and strike your blades at the Minotaur's rudimentary weapons, creating a wave by your simple brute forces colliding with each other. Your momentum gives you the advantage and makes him slide a few meters on his hind hooves before stopping so that he doesn't reach the horde of his species.

You only see his keen gaze for a millisecond before one of his bones leaves the impact to rise up on you, which is dodged by your air control. He doesn't seem to want to argue any more, nor does he seem to want to take you lightly or enjoy the fight to the death.

It leaps forward again and knocks down a swarm of quick blows that you always manage to dodge or parry more or less effectively. Staying close to your opponent will give you more opportunities to hit him, convincing you that taking to the air is not the best strategy against him, even if it means facing him on his ground.

As you stop backing up and put your hooves firmly on the sand, another shot goes off from the height. You only had the reflex to move your bust because of your subsequent movement, leaving your knee at its mercy. The bone eventually falls explosively above your knee, in the same position as a hammer beating a nail to drive it into the wood.

And the same effect happens, despite your armour. Your paw digs itself halfway into the ground more easily than expected, the blow even creating cracks in all four corners of your hoof and creating a deafening sound throughout the crevice. Neither of you reacts to this action yet, keeping your concentration steady.

All you hear is a vague call behind you in a broken voice, but pay little attention to it, concentrating instead on the new pain in your knee. You are not so lucky since the minotaur's other weapon is aimed at your head, which you block with your two blades without staggering a millimetre.

He loses his balance trying to attack me at all costs, deduce by seeing that your opponent is standing thanks to the support he exerts on his weapons.

You take the opportunity to aim at his own head with your left arm, only managing to cut his horn dry while he dodges. He brings his weapons back to him too slowly to parry your offensive, giving you the opportunity to take your hoof out of the ground with a bang, your blades finishing their run in his chest. Penetration makes him scream as he defends himself by striking in front of him, forcing you to drop your weapons too deep into his body to remove them quickly enough.

You are now unarmed and your enemy begins to bleed out through his rib cage and mouth. You just hope that the Princess Twilight isn't watching this scene with her harmless eyes, and you want to make sure she doesn't.

"Princess Twilight, close your y..." you try saying.

You regain your concentration as your opponent races towards you with the blades still inside his abdomen. He knocks his bony masses down on you and they are stopped by your hooves before crashing into his target.

He is enraged by this turn of the fight, think of it as having a close-up of his cruel bloody body and his eyes filled with glowing red veins. A fighter who loses his patience is a dead fighter, and you will prove it now.

Lacking strength now, you push the masses away from both sides of you before grabbing the Minotaur by his now unique shoulder and horn, and eventually sending him to the ground with a hoof on his chest and your other leg against his, preventing him from moving.

Never underestimating an opponent, especially one of this build, you quickly pick up your blades and force them out of their flesh sheaths, giving his body two huge gashes, the blood still coming out and soaking both weapons. You don't even take the time to see if the Princess attends this disturbing spectacle, hoping that the guards will keep her away from the scene, and shoot your weapons into her neck again.

You have been trained to respect powerful opponents, especially in single combat like this, but exceptions must be made. For all the abominations that her people have subjected countless creatures to to this day, you decide not to leave her any last words.

With a strong movement to cut the raw tendons and muscles, you separate the head from the rest of his body and let it roll a few times, representing for you the worst insult that can be done to a warrior.

You raise your head and see that the guards in front of you cover the princess, without being insensitive to it themselves. Some of them seem sick to this vision, almost ready to vomit, and you understand them.

"If you can't hold it, don't look!" You tell yourself when you see their faces not happy.

"HE KILLED OUR LEADER!! VENGEANCE WILL BE DONE !!!" Then shouted a minotaur into the crowd behind you, quickly followed by incessant hoofbeats destroying the earth and annihilating any attempt to be heard. They rushed towards you like a noisy, hairy wave, carrying dozens of heavy weapons brandished in the air or in front.

It was without further remembrance that you stood up, armed and determined to silence this herd that obeyed a tyrant. You respected a fair fight without using your magic, but it is a question of protecting the princess, and that calls into question this idea of bravery.

They are monsters, and they will die like this, did you express inwardly before gathering your weapon into a single double blade, carrying it with a hoof. With the still warm body of the leader on the ground, you shifted so that you could see the horde arrive madly with your one eye, not even spanking them in the face.

As the screams covered the area, probably heard throughout the desert above the crevasse, you raised your weapon to the level of your neck, your right paw. You tilted it towards your enemies, this one being as straight as your paw and ready to use all its power at the sight of the azure glow that was coming from it more and more.

"WE'RE GOING TO RIP YOUR HEAD OFF AND PLANT IT ON A SPIKE!"
"YOUR BODY WILL BE USED AS CATTLE FEED!"
"WE'RE GONNA LEAVE YOU ALIVE SO YOU CAN WATCH YOUR GUARD GET DISMEMBERED!"
"AND YOUR PRINCESS WILL BE THE ONLY ONE LEFT ALIVE, WE'RE GOING TO..."

You wouldn't let them finish that last sentence and unleashed all the magic you'd developed. Wanting to kill you and your guard is normal from them, but no evil spells should be peddled to your princess. It is to this extent that your movement of the right front paw has released a wave of colored energy as fine as a thread.

Due to the speed of your roll and the minotaurs' stubbornness in not giving up, the azure line eventually reaches the crevice wall behind them, before causing the expected damage. At the same time as the rocky word was pierced several meters deep, the dozens of heads and raised weapons separated from their owners. Body parts and the bits of axes, hammers and spears fluttered as the heavy masses of muscles lost their balance and fell on top of each other, stopping their advance definitively in a loud sound.

You wanted to see the damage you could cause on your own, as your guard and Princess Twilight could no longer rely on their eyes to understand what was happening. Being able to see your current power is an integral part of your training and function, and you had little expectation of such a result. You might have been shocked to see so much death by your front arm alone, but you were only doing justice to the victims.

Even if that meant you were the monster right now...

Soon the flying heads land on the tide of lifeless bodies, along with the weapons. The din ends and the guard gradually begins to open their pupils, swallowing at the new, even more chaotic sight. Some of its recruits are younger, some older than you, but none of them are used to such massive killing.

You fight to keep it that way.

"Go free the prisoners from this place, we're going back to the Crystal Kingdom so we can get them to safety and report to Princesses Celestia, Luna and Cadence, execution!" Did you order.

Your earnest and high gaze giving you the advantage, they listened to you and quickly flew off to the various non-empty cages. You too want to leave here as soon as possible, this place cursed by its inhabitants is not fit for a princess.

She had seen the only severed head of the head of the minotaurs rolling a few meters away from her. Leonidas reacted and hid his sight from his right hoof, the one he had not used to perpetuate his mass slaughter.

"I'm sorry, Princess Twilight, we couldn't properly negotiate with them!" Apologize, his hopes of cohabiting with this race going up in smoke.

All Princess Twilight could do was start crying, which soon brought her tearful face to your chest. You made sure to cover her with your arm without hurting her because of your many spikes.

"Why did you... Why does this kind of thing have to happen..." she managed to express before sobbing a little more every second, every minute that passed against the blackened steel of your armor.

"Not all people are good Princess Twilight, that's why the Kingsguard exists!" Did you respond by placing your hoof on her mane and stroking her slowly, doing your best to calm her down.

As all the soldiers helped the prisoners out and handed them the hoof towards the end of this nightmare with false smiles, the Princess realized that she would probably see this kind of action from her position, and that she had to take her role from another angle.

"Let's go home, we don't belong here anymore!" She said as she stared at you and dried her last tears.

"Yes, Princess Twilight!" Just answer yourself.