Book 3 The Shadows: obscured by the shadows

At that moment, instead of seeing only the open floor, a swarm of creatures melted into view.

“Invisibility shields, I see,” Tempest said, “Clever.”

Now that the creatures were in sight, the two could get a good look at them as the two sides circled each other.

There were a few lizards holding more of those strange weapons like the guards outside. These were somewhat slimy looking fellows, hunched over and crooked. There were a few creatures that even Tempest and Edgy couldn’t quite place, holding a various assortment of weapons. There was a deer or two. And over them all was another large hedgehog with a mace.

“This reminds me of what happened at Applejack’s...” Tempest felt herself mutter, but Edgy didn’t stop to question her.

He was trying to look around them to see where Starry’s cage was, but all he could see was bits and pieces of the edges of the cage’s frame.

Neither side seemed to want to make the first move, until one of the deer produced a small cloth bag from its cloak and slammed it onto the ground in front of them, covering the whole warehouse in a dark mist.

But soon a large blast came flying at the two rescuers, knocking them both over and causing the darkness to fade away. The cloaked characters were up for battle.

One of the ugly looking thugs lunged out of the receding darkness and grabbed Edgy by the throat and lifted him up. Edgy could feel its paws gripping tightly around him.

“Second, use your shadows!” Tempest hissed toward Edgy’s direction.

But whether because he didn’t hear or because he wanted to ignore it, he didn’t respond. Instead, he frantically started kicking his back legs toward his attacker.

Another one of the thugs attempted to toss Tempest onto the ground before she leapt out of the way, only to be knocked down by another.

“Stupid ponies,” the one holding Edgy said before his head cocked to the side a bit to look at Tempest awkwardly rising.

“You all act like you aren’t flesh and blood, like the rest of us, that can just snap, and rip, and tear.”

He emphasized each verb with pounding Edgy’s body into the nearby wall. Each crash punctuated with Edgy’s brain begging him to gasp for more air but with him knowing full well he could not.

Thankfully, Tempest leapt to her hooves, bowling her opponents over and releasing a blast of energy toward Edgy’s.

The villain caught it in his hands, causing him to drop Edgy, who weakly limped away, eyes narrowed more with vengeance than pain. The villain toyed with the energy blast like it was a ball.

“Now, now, who wants to play catch?”

Tempest pushed Edgy aside and just barely caught the edge of the impact as it grazed her shoulder. It would have left a deep scar to match her other one if she had caught it full on.

The two continued battling their way through. Edgy finally was able to keep most of the members distracted while Tempest found her way toward Starry’s cage.

But Starry was gone.

Tempest had no time to figure out what happened when she heard a loud call.

Looking up, she saw one ugly cloaked badger holding something yellow and purple in his claws. Tempest didn’t think twice. Dodging past Edgy going one against ten, she made her way toward the upper deck, ricocheting off attackers, objects, and the walls until she was face to face with their leader.

He drew out some sort of blade from his cloak. It had purple lines weaving around it that looked like they were made from amethysts. He brought it up to Starry’s head with a snicker.

“You want her, eh, little pony?”

Tempest gritted her teeth.

She charged toward the two and watched as the blade turned toward her. With a flick of the creature’s wrist, Starry was dropped toward the ground below, and Tempest was busy deflecting blows and aiming to land her own onto the brute.

From below, Starry had managed to create a small bubble below her of a force field to soften her landing. All around her was Edgy fighting off the cloaked invaders. He seemed amazing. And Starry could just faintly remember the time he had saved her from the storm guards when they first met in Canterlot.

She pulled out her rusted nail, which was now shaped like a fierce knitting needle.

And once again, they were saving each other.

The two took on their own enemies, landing cuts and punches and kicks as if the enemy were on an erratic assembly line to be finished off.

Tempest was still above fighting off the badger when she found herself knocked toward the railing and looking out at the scene in front of her.

Edgy was finally fighting with his shadowy minipones and taking out those who were trying to close in around him, ambushing them with his own ambush. Starry was too busy fending other cloaked figures off with her makeshift weapon to seem to notice the added help, and Tempest could see Starry’s eyes glowing a brilliant blue, instead of its normal green, at each slash.

To Starry, for some reason, Edgy seemed to be handling everything just fine. It seemed like every time she glanced back, there were less attackers and more room.

Everything was going fine, until one deer managed to evade all of her needle attacks.

Starry felt his presence as he launched himself and his antlers at her. She only had a second to react, and all she could do was wince.

But Edgy saw it.

Starry wasn’t sure what happened. One minute, everything in front of her went dark and she braced herself with a small gasp, wondering if the deer had hit her already. But soon the darkness was gone, and in front of her was the deer, looking pitiful on the floor.

Starry wasn’t sure what to do next, until she heard the sound of metal screeching above her.

Taking a chance, she peered up and saw there was a dangling panel above Tempest and the badger’s heads.

In one huge effort, Starry made a decision, beginning to levitate the panel off the ceiling with her magic. With a yank and a creak, it began to slide downward with ragged jerks.

The two fighters directly below it briefly peered up to see the commotion, but they couldn’t stop what they were doing. It was life or death for them either way. They both tried to knock the other one to where the panel was about to fall.

Starry couldn’t take her eyes away from the panel now. She shuffled as best as she could to put Edgy at her back and focused squarely on the ceiling.

With one final tug, the panel sped downward. Starry felt like yelping as the badger made one last attempt to push Tempest in its way, but the whole floor those two were on crashed with the panel’s weight.

The two ponies on the ground suddenly felt their saliva stick in their throat. Seeing their leader fall, all the able bodied attackers remaining dissipated into the darkness.

Edgy and Starry found themselves running over to where their friend had fallen.

In the mess of wreckage, they could see the badger’s furry form looming, but not moving. They couldn’t see Tempest’s at all from where they stood. For a second, it looked like he was going to get up, and Edgy was about to pounce when the badger fell to his other side, just as disgusting but no longer breathing.

From over the top of the villain’s form, they saw a familiar face pop up. Edgy jumped in spite of himself, and Starry was even feeling a bit relieved.

“Well, that was nothing like that time we battled that stray griffin,” Tempest smiled weakly as she got up.

“He was definitely not as light as a feather,” Edgy replied, rotating one of his shoulders slightly to emphasize. Now that they stopped talking, they realized the silence reigning over the warehouse and turned to look at Starry.

Starry was surveying the whole place. She was looking back toward the cage they had kept her in, and back toward the door where the creatures had departed. Edgy noticed her silently trot over to one spot and stoop down to pick something up. It looked small from this distance, but he could see it sparkle.

Edgy felt just as concerned as he was earlier. Thoughts about the only other time she had done as much damage flitted across his mind, but only for a moment.

Tempest looked around the cloak of the badger and pulled out some sort of communication device and smashed it beneath her hooves.

“Now they can’t get a hold of us again,” she said, and indicated it, “Tracking device,” she added, as she noticed Starry’s staring.

Edgy felt uneasy. There was something that wasn’t quite right. His mind frantically searched itself before he realized Starry must have seen his minipones. He tried his best to study her face, still staring around blankly. After all that had gone on, it would make sense that she would be dazed, but he worried his own secret had added to it.

Tempest Shadow looked around, too.

“We need to leave here. Nopony here is safe if the Blood Moon knows we’re in Ponyville.”

“The Blood Moon?” Starry asked, still dazed.

“Yes. We only knew of them during our time with the Storm King. They were rivals we tried to take out many times. But these were just some mercenary rookies. If they were the actual thing, we wouldn’t have gotten off so easy.”

“Who says you’ve gotten off at all?” an indescribable voice called out.

The three of them looked around the wasteland of the old factory floor. There were several bodies scattered here and there and more rusted pieces of what was the staircase and the panel, but none of them could tell who had spoken until a glowing pegasus pony appeared over a pile of the wreckage.

“Missed me?”

Starry’s scream was stuck in her throat.

Because, it looked like Cass.

But her eyes were not Cass’s usual bright, mischievious eyes, but were instead cold, grey discs. Cass’s wings, too, normally free and flapping gaily, were poking through a heavy and oppressive black cloak with a blood moon on it.

“Who are you?” Edgy called out, sensing that something was wrong.

It giggled with very little expression on Cass’s face except a small wry grin. The hollow eyes, if they were eyes, were still resolutely facing straight forward. The voice had a hideous echo, but it continued with more calm.

“The Right Hoof of Grogar. But you peasants can call me Dingledein for all I care. I’ve been watching all of you for two years now through this disgusting pony. And you all are going to wish my mercenaries had finished you off before I got to you.”

“Yeah, well, funny thing is that I know that pony you’re controlling and she’s no match for us,” Edgy taunted, “So I think you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t hurt me; you’ll only be hurting her if you touch me. Besides,” and here the voice got excited again, “you wouldn’t want them hurt either.”

Suddenly, a levitation glow whipped out the clump that had been hiding in the upper room.

“Bee and Poster Stamp!” Edgy said.

Starry didn’t even correct Edgy.

“Listen here, you ponies. I don’t care about your kind one bit. If you all don’t leave Starry here with me and my men,” and here suddenly several creatures from the floor around them rose up, and each of them had the same soulless eyes and eerie glow and hollow movements that left the others feeling sick, “I’ll kill all four of you. Take your pick.”

The other two ponies next to Tempest were dumbfounded. Outnumbered and jittery with the adrenaline rush from before, they could only stare.

Fizzlepop wouldn’t have known what to do. But Tempest didn’t even flinch.

“How about a new deal?” Tempest shouted, “I take all four of them off your hooves and you get the hay away from Ponyville!”

And with that, she aimed one of the weapons she had pulled off one of the outside guards and aimed it directly at Cass’s front.

Bang!

Starry screamed.

Even Edgy was shocked.

All the bodies in front of them with the soulless eyes fell face forward on the ground, and Cass’s body stopped glowing and suddenly fell onto the ground below.

Starry and Edgy both ran up to it. Her other friends found themselves landing on their feet on the ground below with Tempest coming up to calmly untie their bonds.

Starry could feel her warm tears dripping off the edge of her snout as she cradled her friend’s body in her hooves.

The body was face down, and Starry gently, carefully rolled her over.

Her friend seemed as heavy as Starry would have suspected. But as she moved her, she could hear a small sparking noise that got louder and louder.

And there, in front of her, Cass breathed!

Starry’s tears gave way to confusion and shock. Cass wiggled a little weakly and blinked up at her friend. And in the middle of her front, a small necklace was busted open with some wiring stuck out and sparking. Starry stared at it before she realized how familiar it looked.

“The necklace I fixed before we went to Canterlot!” Starry exclaimed.

Tempest nodded and walked up with the other two.

“Right. I noticed it hanging out of the cloak as they were laughing. I figured it would be the source of the control. That, or the cape.”

“Thank you so much,” Starry cried, and she hugged her friend, who was looking groggy but was starting to rise.

Edgy looked around at the reawoken enemies. No longer alive, their corpses rested peacefully where they had fallen.

“Whatever connection you cut off when you shot her must have shut them down, too.”

“Yes, but unfortunately we can’t stay here,” Tempest quickly glanced around, “We need to talk.”

Tempest went to pull Edgy aside as the other four ponies huddled together. She whispered to Edgy once they were out of earshot.

“Would you be willing to help me on one last adventure together, Second?”

Edgy looked at her.

“Not without Star.”

Tempest hesitated.

“Are you sure? She hasn’t been trained. She might get hurt.”

“She can handle it,” Edgy insisted, “She handled this.”

Noticing Tempest still hesitate, he added, “I promise you she can do it. She’s as much of a friend to me...as you are.”

Tempest could see a gleam in his eyes that she never saw in them before as she felt her orchid colored face grow warm.

“And it’s Edgy now, by the way.”

*** *** ***

The other four ponies across the room weren’t doing much better. They were comforting each other until Bee spoke up.

“Em, it’s not safe for you here anymore.”

Cass and Starry looked at her in surprise.

“Why not?”

“While we were trapped, whoever that guy was was talking to some of the others about you. He had a piece of parchment in his cloak somewhere that he kept looking at.”

Starry yanked the cloak off of Cass and began rummaging around in it before pulling out some sort of document.

Bee and Postage Stamp huddled up next to her as she carefully held it in the glow of her horn.

“No...I was sent to this orphanage,” she said, pointing out a name on the parchment, “and those are my parents’ names from what I was told. If they knew all this, who knows what else they know?”

Starry shuddered and rolled the paper up, slipping it over to Bee, who promptly stowed it away in her wings.

Starry, satisfied that it was secure, looked back at the heap with a shudder.

“I have to know what else they have been up to.”

*** *** ***

Edgy and Tempest walked back up to the crowd.

“Starry Emerald, Edgy” Tempest said, still unsure about the name, “and I have to seek out and defeat the Blood Moon. Equestria won’t be safe if they are still around. When we do, would you join us?”

“Are you all sure you can do it?” Bee hesitantly interrupted.

“I don’t know if we three can do it on our own, but I know of someone that can help us. But no matter what, we can’t leave Equestria unprotected.”

“Yeah, but Twi...” Bee began.

“Twilight Sparkle and her friends know nothing about this and they don’t have to,” Tempest informed her. “They have enough on their hooves. Second, uh, Edgy and I were trained to take down these sorts of groups. We are probably the only ones that can do this.”

“Well, I’m okay with it.”

The others looked at Starry. She looked back at them, unfazed.

“Starry, are you sure?”

“Yes, Edgy,” she placed a hoof on Bee’s wing as Bee put a comforting hoof on her shoulder, “I’m sure.”