Luster's Knee Deep in the Dead

After getting whipped for eight times, Twilight couldn't tell if she wanted to cry or grunt in pain. However, she still did her best to stay strong despite that she got dragged down to hell. With every crack of the demon's whip, Twilight could feel the pain of the whiplashes burning through her skin and underneath her flesh. Even though her tears came coming down from her eyes, Twilight's anger is still flowing within her mind. She hoped that one day she'll make the Dark Lord pay for everything he did to her and to her palace. Before the demon could make the ninth whip, the Dark Lord ordered him to stop, which is what he did without question.

Just when Twilight no longer feels her back getting whipped, the board that she was strapped to moved back onto the floor. By the time the shackles came off, Twilight attempted to pounce on the demon whipping her only to get restrained by two huge, tall and brute looking demons from behind. Before she knew what was going on, the Dark Lord appeared before the alicorn Queen once again and this time, he cast a binding spell on her horn, stripping Queen Twilight of her magic.

"It seems that you protege and her friends have arrived in my realm to find you, eh?! Well, I doubt they'll ever find their way here because I have plans for them all. Not too mention that another alicorn princess is accompanying them here."

"Flurry Heart?!" Twilight gasped as she was strapped onto a metal post with all of her hooves clapped in irons and tied around behind her back.

Upon realizing that her niece is in the Demon Realm with Luster, Twilight snarled at the Dark Lord with merciless anger in her eyes.

"If you hurt her, I am going to kick your damn flank once I get out of this mess!!!!"

The Dark Lord started bellowing with laughter after hearing what Twilight just said to him.

"She won't get far anyway!! Neither will your protege student!! In fact, I have a lot of surprises for her to show!!"

The Dark Lord cast another spell in front of Twilight. This time, he summoned a huge projection screen which shows Flurry, an earth pony, and a female yak inside an arena. Upon seeing this, Twilight's eyes widened with horror as she is about to witness Flurry getting caught in a fight for her life.

"I wonder how will she survive in the Arena of Blood when I'm hosting a pack of Pinky demons there. Let's find out shall we?!"

Back in the Coliseum, Vecra, Flurry Heart, and Bright came face to face with a pink demon that is seen with big tusks and horns on its head, razor sharp teeth, thick plates of armor on its skin, and a relentless desire for fresh meat from the oven. As it circled around the trio, Flurry activated her dna scanner from her helmet to see what kind of demon they're dealing with right now!!"

Pinkie: A hulking, demonic-like boar that charges at full speed, mauling and mutilating its prey with horrendous ease. Most of its body is protected by a thick set of bone-like armor and can gouge its enemies with its tusks while they're down.

"If Pinky Pie heard about this, she would've been thinking that we just had run into another of her clones when it isn't!!" Flurry thought.

The Pinky made a bellowing roar before it charged straight into the group. While Flurry and Bright attempted to make a run for it, Vecra stood her ground as she dropped her chain-gun.

"Vecra, what are you doing??" Bright gasped in shock. "That thing is going to kill you!!!"

"Did you forget, that we yaks also charge too?!!" Vecra hissed as she lunged at the charging Pinky.

In sheer force, Vecra and the Pinky rammed each other with their hard skulls, with Vecra piercing one of Pinky's eyes with her yak horns, making him roar in pain. With such strength, Vecra lifted the Pink demon off the arena floor and hurled it into the crowd of imps. Just when the Pinky collapsed, beaten. Several more Pinky Demons appeared from the very same gateway that the first one came out from. Despite being outnumbered by a pack of charging Pinkie's, Vecra refused to back down as she continued to charge at the Pinkies head on.

Since Vecra made her move, Flurry and Bright decided to back her up as they opened fire with their ion cannon and assault rifle. At the same time, they both shot at the Pinkies while on the move all over the arena. Apart from the alicorn and the earth pony, they both noticed that the female yak is having too much fun, smashing headbutts into every single Pinky Demon standing in her way.

Every time Vecra headbutts a Pinky, their armor breaks off, giving the yak the opportunity to pound in their weak spots. In a gory fashion, Vecra drew out her wrist-blade from her armored gauntlet and stabbed it into the one of Pinky's eyes, killing the demon in the process. Behind her, another Pinky tried to charge at Vecra only to see the yak jump over the demon. Before the Pinky could even react, he was met with a powerful body slam from Vecra. Thanks to Vecra's armor durability, the spikes on the Pinky's back did little damage to the yak as they only made minor scratches on her Praetor's breastplate. After getting pounced by Vecra, the Pinky slammed flat on its stomach while grunting in pain coming from its back.

While Bright continued to fire his assault rifle at the charging Pinkies, Flurry unfurled her wings and took to the skies above the bloodied floor of the arena. During her flight, Flurry opened fire at the Pinky demons that are still chasing the orange-mane earth colt. Unfortunately, after delivering two or three shots at the demon boars, one Pinky sneaked from behind the white alicorn and attempted to leap at her, trying to pin her down by the wings and back. Luckily, Flurry flew upward in a fast reaction, missing the leaping Pinky by a mere hoof. In a split second, Flurry aimed her rail-gun right on top of the Pinky's head and blasted his skull in a bloody paste, slamming him straight down into the arena floor.
Due to the resulting impact, a shock-wave struck the entire Arena in which made Bright, Vecra, and the Pinky demons nearly loose their balance during the effect. After a few seconds of getting stunned by the small quake on the arena floors, Vecra saw that most of the Pinkies are completely disoriented and took advantage in ramming one of them. This time, Vecra smashed her horns straight into the Pinky's jaws, having them pierce its throat with the horns coming out of the back of the demon's head. As soon as Vecra pulled her horns out of the Pinky's skull, he collapsed to his side before Vecra turned her attention to the other remaining Pinky Demons.

"WHO'S NEXT??!!!!" Vecra roared in triumph.

At first, Vecra thought that she may have the upper hand in winning this arena fight. However, Flurry spotted something break out from the ground behind the female yak. It was another Pinky who is getting ready to strike at Vecra.

"VECRA, BEHIND YOU!!!!" Flurry yelled in fright.

The moment Vecra turned around, she was met with a big whack across her head, knocking her out into submission as the yak was sent flying across the arena. As she slammed into the wall, it made a huge crack before Vecra gets knocked out cold.

In a rage, Flurry blasted the Pinky with her magic at full power, sending him flying into the red sky before she and Bright decided to check up on Vecra. Unfortunately, when Bright and Flurry reached by her side, they get surrounded by another pack of Pinky demons.

"There is just no end to these monsters!!!" Bright said in horror.

To make matters worse, both Flurry's weapon and Bright's weapon are all out of ammo. However, since Vecra didn't even fired any shots with her chain-gun or rocket launcher, Flurry and Bright need to grab those weapons when they still have ammo in them. But Bright is still cornered by the Pinky demons so he can't leave Vecra for one second or else they'll finish her off while she is out cold. So, Flurry used her magic to teleport herself, Bright, and Vecra away from the Pinky herd all the way to Vecra's discarded weaponry. The moment Bright picked up the chain-gun and mounted it onto his armored back, the Pinkies continued to charge at the trio without delay. Thankfully, Flurry formed a shield barrier around her and the two before the Pinky demons continued to pound on it nonstop. Unfortunately, Bright is having trouble trying to load the chain-gun with his bare hooves. Since he doesn't use magic, loading a gun may be more harder to do than that of a unicorn or a yak. As the pounding continues to batter down onto Flurry's shield, it started cracking up, much to the horror of the young alicorn. At every crack, Flurry's eyes widened with horror that her shield is not going to last much longer.

"I'm sorry everyone!" Flurry whimpered, realizing that she is heading towards her doom along with Vecra and Bright. "Mom, dad!! Please forgive me!!!"

Just before one of the Pinky demons attempted to break through Flurry's shield barrier, a huge pillar of dark fire erupted from underneath the Pinky herd. In such a unexpected sight, all of the Pinkies went sent flying away from Flurry Heart and her group. As soon as the pillar of fire disappeared, Luster, Spring Light, and Rubeth appeared in the arena.

"Luster, guys!!" Bright exclaimed, feeling relieved that his friends finally caught up to them. "Thank Celestia you all finally made it. We were about to get mauled!!"

"I know!!" Luster acknowledged. "We just saw Flurry's magic shooting up into the sky from a mile away. We ran as fast as we could only stumble into another swarm of Lost Souls. Since we didn't have time to deal with them, Spring teleported us all the way into this arena but rather through a fiery entrance."

"Vecra is knocked unconscious!! We need to get out of here!!!" Flurry told the group.

"Let's head to that arena exit!!" Luster ordered her group as she picked up the unconscious yak with her magic.

As Luster's group made their way towards the exit of the arena, the Pinky demons finally got back on their feet again and attempted to chase after them. However, as soon as Luster and her friends left the arena, she cast a spell on a nearby switch, closing the gate in front of the Pinky herd. After ramming themselves on the gate in futile efforts, the demons finally gave up and left the arena.

In the aftermath, Luster's group and Flurry find themselves inside the arena breakroom where they decided to take a breather after struggling to find a safe place away from the mayhem. While they're taking a break, Flurry Heart lit up her horn and conjured a healing spell on Vecra, treating the yak of her physical injuries. Even though Flurry finished, the yak is still unconscious.

On the shelves in the break room, Luster found more ammo to load up her firearms, along with several extra medkits. Even though Flurry said it herself that her mother taught her on how to use healing magic, it still takes up most of her energy when doing so. It was decided that Flurry and Luster will be keeping the medical kits strapped to their Praetor armor just for emergency. After every pony and creature finished loading up their guns, Vecra finally woke up in a zealous fit as she blindly attempted to charge at Luster.

"COME HERE YA DAMN PINKY!! VECRA'S GONNA......"

"Vecra, please calm down!!" Luster ordered that female yak as she held her down with her magic. "The Pinkies aren't here anymore!!"

"L-Luster??" Vecra gasped, snapping out of her rage the moment she sees her female unicorn friend. "What happened, where did they go??"

"We ran in here as fast as we could before we closed the gate on them." Rubeth explained to the confused yak. "But they're still out there so we can't let our guard down yet. We have to leave this arena now!!"

"Rubeth's right guys. We just managed to find Flurry Heart before we stumbled into this bloody arena." Bright added in.

Before they could say anymore, Luster's group started hearing some loud growling coming from the shadows outside of the break room. It could only mean that the demons of hell are not far behind them, which made Flurry's and Luster's bones shiver in fear. For Vecra, however, the yak snorted as she is about to get revenge on the very same Pinky Demons that outsmarted her earlier. Unfortunately, Rubeth shook his head in front of Vecra, not wanting her to come up with anymore reckless ideas right now since she almost wasted her life when smashing through the Pinky ranks back there.

"We all have to stick together this time. No wandering off anymore!!" Luster told the entire group before looking at Flurry straight in the eye.

Without replying to Luster's decision, every pony and creature mounted up once again. For Vecra, Rubeth and Spring handed her chain-gun and her rocket-launcher back to the yak. The moment they exit out of the breakroom, Luster, Flurry Heart and the group are now making their way into another dark hallway within the Arena of Blood. As they went down, they see that the hallways are all covered in dried blood stains, spider webs, stone faces of demons, and ominous glowing chandeliers hanging all over the walls. At the end of the hallway, they find themselves in an large underground arena. Unlike from above, the underground arena had spikes stick out from the ceiling above them with pony skulls and dried flesh danging. When Luster looked down to where she is standing, she sees a circular lava flow outside of the marble floors and several foothills that are 15 feet tall.

Luster realized that this underground area is just another part of the Arena of Blood. There are two levels of marble floor: with the bottom level is surrounded by the circular lava stream and the upper level above is a huge marble platform. In the middle of the upper floors, in-between the two foothills, there is a orange demonic-goat silhouette that is lighting up in a dark red hue. For her friends, their blood started to turn frozen as they feel like they're still in a game between life and death. No pony or creature will ever make it out alive without dealing with the demons who want to kill them first. So, as of now, Flurry Heart was the first to draw out her Railgun and aimed it at right where the goat silhouette is at, sensing that it may be where the enemies will come out from.

In just one minute, the arena started shaking from below their hooves. The next thing they see is several pillars of orange lighting striking down in random spots all over the area the Luster and her friends are in. A squad of Guard-Revenants and Lost Souls appeared from the orange pillars and started attacking the group at will.

"Here they come, every pony!!!" Luster shouted as she aimed her Shotgun at a group of encroaching Lost Souls.
When Luster opened fire with her shotgun, Vecra started firing with her Chain-gun this time, not wanting to make the same mistake from earlier. At the same time, Vecra fired several homing rockets at the hovering Guard-Revenants.

Three more Pinky demons appeared out of the lighting pillars and lunged at Spring and Flurry Heart. Thankfully, Flurry cast a shield spell surrounding her and Spring. When the Pinkies started ramming their horns into Flurry's shield, Spring teleported herself behind them and opened fire with both her Plasma gun and flame belcher, setting the demons on fire as they all roared in pain. However, one of the Pinkies rammed at the kirin with its head and pinned her down before attempting gouge Spring with its tusks. But Spring transformed into a Nirik and blasted the Pinky with her dark-fire, sending it crashing into the ceiling as the demon gets impaled by several of its spikes.

After Flurry lowered her shield, she flew up into the air but not to high since she would risk getting hurt by the ceiling's spikes. While sweating inside her helmet, Flurry did some strafe-firing at the Revenants that were aiming their missile launchers at her. Even though she missed her shots, Flurry kept shooting at the Guard-Revenants until they dropped dead. But it didn't take long for the Revenants to ascend towards Flurry's position when they activated their jet-packs.

About three Revenants were opening fire upon the young alicorn, in hopes of blasting her sky-high. Ultimately, thanks to her flight training with her mother, Flurry was able to glide in a much more smooth, but faster pace. The missiles only hit the ceiling.

Down back on the ground, Luster saw that a falling spike came crashing straight down on top of a Pinky's head, puncturing his brain as he fell to his side dead. Sensing another way to beat the demons at their own game but in a much bigger risk, Luster raised her voice before calling out to the rest of her friends.

"EVERY PONY!!! TAKE SHELTER!!! Flurry, have them keep shooting the ceiling!!"

As soon as they all head with Luster told them, they all fled down below the bottom floor and underneath the top floor as Flurry started redirecting the Revenant's missiles towards the ceiling with holding up her shield. In such a display of chaos mayhem,a crack started to erupt all over the ceiling and the next thing Flurry saw is a massive shower of spikes falling right on top of the rest of the Pinkies and Guard Revenants. They didn't stand a chance as they all got impaled by the falling spikes. As for the Lost Souls, they all disintegrated as they feel their themselves break apart by the falling spikes. With Luster and all of her friends hiding underneath the platform, Flurry teleported herself away from the lethal shower of spikes and reappeared right where Luster's group is at.

As they struggled to stay underneath the platform, Luster's group could hear all sorts of painful, bloodcurdling screams coming from their enemies for several more minutes before the spikes stopping falling from the ceiling. Just as soon as Luster came out of cover, she was about to announce to the group that the area is clear. Unfortunately, the horror in the arena is just getting started. Right behind Luster, she heard another roar coming from a nearby sewer grate leading outside of the arena. Before they knew what it was, another demonic creature burst out of the sewer grate by force, along with a trio of his own kind.

Right in front of Luster's group, five huge, overweight demons are seen to have two huge dual-cannons with metal wires attached from their power packs and walk on two huge feet. As soon as they approached Luster's group, she activated her dna scanner from her helmet to analyze their bulky-looking foe.

Mancubus: A hulk-like demon that is seen in an obese manner. Even though they're the slowest of all demons in the Demon Realm, they are not to be underestimated with. Armed with massive, dual-cannon, these overweight monstrosities can unleash a barrage of flame balls that'll blast any foe apart in mere seconds.

Upon making a loud roar, one of the Mancubus started opening fire upon Luster's group with both of its dual-cannons.

"Watch out guys!!" Luster told the group as she aimed her shotgun at one of the Mancubuses. "They're firing on us!!!"

When the rest of the Mancubuses shot out a volley of cannon fire at them, Luster and her friends scattered from their cover, narrowly escaping its blast radius. Thankfully, Flurry and Rubeth flew up into the sky and became the first to fire back at the Mancubuses with their weapons. After shooting them with a dozen shots, the Mancubuses slowly collapsed as they fell backwards totally obliterated. However, three more teleported themselves in the underground arena and started letting loose a torrent of fire at Spring and Vecra. Luckily, Spring transformed into a Nirik once again and stood in front of their line of fire, undamaged as she shot back a huge beam of dark fire at the Mancubus in the middle of the demon trio, turning him into a huge pile of burnt flesh!!! For the two Mancubuses, Spring fired a wide, heat wave that made their heads explode in an instant before they both collapsed backwards.

After all of the enemies have been defeated in the underground arena, the wall north of Luster's group suddenly opened up, revealing a huge, wide staircase leading up back to the outside of the arena, or so they thought. On both sides of the staircase, a bottomless abyss lies below which gave Luster and her group a frightful chill in thinking that something scary is hidden somewhere in the darkness underneath the stairs. However, since Queen Twilight is waiting for them, Luster still needs to take terrifying risks as she went up the stairs first with the rest of the group following from behind.

"Don't let your guard down, every pony. These stairs may be leading us back to where we started from or worse!!" Luster warned the group as she held her shotgun close to her armor breastplate.

While heading up the stairs, Spring and Vecra held their weapons as they kept a close eye behind the group. Flurry ascended above Luster's group while aiming her rail gun at the top of the stairs. From a distance away, Flurry sees another doorway with a red goat-demon skull engraved on it. She aimed her rail gun at the door, just to make sure no enemies are going to poor out from it by the time Luster's group reached the top.

In the middle of the flight of stairs, Luster could hear rumbling coming from underneath where she was standing. Not wanting to fall into another trap, Flurry took flight and flew down below the stairs to see what is causing the immediate rumbling. The moment Flurry looked below, her eyes widened with horror that a swarm of huge tentacles came out from underneath the stairs, followed by a loud bellowing roar coming from the dark abyss.

"Every Pony!! RUN!!!" Flurry Heart shouted as she raised a shield bubble on herself, not wanting to get ensnared by the huge tentacles.

With every roar, the tentacles slammed onto the stairs trying to crush Luster and her friends. However, most of the Luster's group did their best to run as fast as they can up to the doorway leading outside, barely evading the tentacles. As the slamming intensifies, several huge cracks started churning all over the stairs, making the structure rip apart. Upon seeing the stairs breaking away from each other, most of Luster's friends were forcing themselves to jump over each standing rubble praying that they won't fall into the dark abyss and to their deaths. Thankfully, Rubeth was able to take flight while Luster and Spring both teleported themselves to the doorway.

However, the creature with the huge tentacles isn't giving up that easily as it reached towards Luster and Spring at the doorway. Luckily, Flurry blasted most of the tentacles with her railgun as they blew apart, making the creature roar in anger and in pain. For Bright and Vecra, they struggled to maintain their footing every time they jump from one remaining rubble to another. Horrifying enough, most of the stairs broke apart and fell straight into the abyss right behind the yak and the earth pony.

Thankfully, Luster was able to grab Bright and Vecra with her magic before they fell into the abyss too. After Luster lowered the two in front of her, the yak and earth pony moved ahead with the unicorn following from behind. As soon as they entered to the doorway, Luster and her entire group find themselves in another huge open circular area filled with a floor of dry dirt and cracks. In a more horrifying surprise, more tentacles came sprouting from the dirt and started whacking at Luster's friends more furiously than ever.

But Flurry cast a huge shield spell all over the group. For only a few minutes, the tentacles started whacking on top of Flurry's shield barrier before she expanded it very wide, smash the tentacles in such full force. After all of the tentacles disappeared back into the ground, Luster's group was about to advance only to see more possessed guard ponies appeared from the arena's bleachers and launched more fiery spells at them. In a fast reaction, Luster ordered the group to head towards the exit of the Arena of Blood which is right in front of them.

"GO! GO! RUN!!!" Luster shouted as she raised a shield spell of her own to block off the possessed guard's spells while running, with Bright and Rubeth coming up behind her for cover.

As for Spring, she returned fire with her plasma gun. Unfortunately, because the kirin is so far away from her firing range, Spring is not able to get a clear shot at any of the possessed unicorn guards. Instead, the Kirin put away her plasma gun and raised her own shield as well. Unlike Luster's shield, Spring transformed into a Nirik again before letting loose a fiery barrier surrounding herself with burning pikes jutting out of its exterior. With just one shout of the Nirik's belllowing voice, the burning pikes came shooting all all over the area penetrating every single wall and bleacher, impaling the possessed guards in a bloody, burning mess.

For Luster and her friends, they were running in a more terrifying manner than ever before, not just from the demons but also from a raging Nirik.

"GREAT SCOTT, SPRING!!! STOP THAT!!! YOU'RE GOING TO GET US KILLED!!!" Flurry shouted as she was forced to do all sorts of barrel rolls while in mid-air, trying to evade the burning pikes.

"YIKES!!!" Bright shrieked as a burning pike zoomed right past him by a mere inch of his body.

"EEEEEKKKKK!!!!" Vecra screamed while running and keeping her head low.

Up ahead, Luster sees a huge, blue portal appear at the exit of the Arena of Blood. Realizing that it may be their only way out of this death trap, Luster ordered her group to head straight for it without delay.

"Everypony!! This way!!!" Luster shouted as she was the first to jump into the portal before disappearing.

Once Luster left the arena, Bright went through second, followed by a terrified Vecra. For Rubeth and Flurry, they both zoomed into the portal at the same time while taking flight.

"RRRRRAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!" Spring roared, still shooting out burning pikes from her fiery shield blindly.

After screaming for 15 seconds, Spring finally exhausted herself as she dispersed her fiery shield and went back into her Kirin form. As she took several deep breaths, Spring looked around only to see huge gaping holes all over the dirt ground, the walls, and the bleachers, which were filled with bloody corpses of possessed guard ponies.

"Where did every pony go??" Spring asked in total confusion.

At first, Spring didn't see where did Luster and the others disappeared off to. However, just as soon as Spring saw the portal in front of her, the Kirin presumed that it may be where Luster and the other went. Wasting no more time, Spring drew out her Plasma gun once again before disappearing into the portal.