-???, Oleander-

“Hey Spyro… Dulcy what are you doing here, please don’t tell me you got into trouble again!” I stopped noted the odd dragon out here. “We’re in a bit of a hurry, so out with it what’s the problem this time.”

“Oh… uh… well…” Dulcy was rubbing at her fin and looking sheepish after we helped her several times over, one would think she had plenty of help being in the Dragon Realms and being right next to the world hero Spyro.

“Well if you haven’t noticed, she isn’t a ‘dragon realm’ dragon specifically… though she is welcome here after getting lost. She needs help getting back to Mobius, lots of bad stuff happening with some guy called Naugus… sounds like someone I’d beat up multiple times.” The purple dragon Spyro was a quadrupedal dragon friend, though I’d never see him in the Dragon Lands on Equus given he’s still trying to work out the kinks in the mystical world teleportation network. Saw him on Foenum and in a few other worlds. Also something about Bahamut and Tiamat having a sibling fight or something like one. “I really don’t sorcerers on principle of how annoying they can be.”

“That guy again, CAN’T WE KILL HIM ENOUGH TIMES?!” Fred grumbled about hearing Naugus was around again.

"One would think once would be enough." Wrex commented dryly.

“Fine we’ll get you back to Mobius, but we’ll make it quick, we have to get back to Equus.” We were taking a detour through the Dragon Realms to avoid trouble since Spyro was usually on top of things.

Unfortunately we got Dulcy’d quite hard.

-Tambelon, Equestria Military staging grounds, Fizzlepop ‘Queen Tempest Shadow’-

“So Magic Corps is doing a good job despite the turnover rate.” I grumbled as my Storm Creatures were guarding the prisoners and holding the zone while ponies went out to fight and came back injured in varying degrees of ‘tis but a scratch’ and ‘we can quickly reattach this limb with some minor issues’. Medical Unicorns in the Royal Guard, the MURG, were actual miracle workers. “Then again they are in the thickest of the fighting, Shady’s units are doing the best work they can despite the limited numbers… guy deserves that promotion for keeping everyone’s morale up.”

“Truly.” Truly Noted stated with a nod, the unicorn was a by the book guy and would always be one of Celestia’s biggest fans. One of her two most competent guards too for all the good two brothers can do when most of the Royal Guard had problem, they had one until it was fixed and now… I don’t think even Jaded will joke about the Royal Guard not being able to do much more than keep the peace after this. “Though the injuries are mounting and the less said about Discord’s fun at our expenses, the better.”

“Truly Noted, Duly Noted, Fizzle!” Huffing and puffing Flamberge ran up to us with Skelly and Fortitude ‘the fantastically fragrant TM’, oh great now it’s trademarked in my mind. Fortitude offered a small smile towards me as if reading my thoughts directly.

“What’s the problem Airship Wemauliya volunteers?” Yeah, almost forgot about that Duly Noted, thanks for reminding me that Jaded destroyed the world economy trying to do math and somehow it ended up with Airship Mauled being a nation unto itself. Technically it’s got the alliance of my people the Storm Creatures, and why wouldn’t it be in alliance with the Storm Creatures since I lived there, but we did need to eventually fix it so we’re back together with Equestria officially.

“Skelly has detected the stench of necromancy most foul!” Did Flamberge just say what I thought he said? “Pray this doesn’t end in black tentacles and eldritch monsters, that’s usually how it goes with us!”

“Everyone, get to working on consecrating the grounds around us right this instant, we do not want to deal with a mass skeleton attack out of nowhere!” I shouted and started to move through the camp yelling for the anti-necromancer specialists in the royal guard. Also all the salt for our meals was now going into consecrating as much of our surroundings as feasible. “Everyone start consecrating the campsite this instant, emergency necromancer protocols, this is not a drill!”

Not everyone could drop what they were doing immediately, but the injured certainly were in motion as soon as the necromancer protocols went into effect. We started spray salt and sanctified water everywhere, we wouldn’t have enough for all of Tambelon, but we’d be able to secure our position at least.

-Castle Tambelon, somewhere in the middle of the sewers, Pom-

“You know, I figured you would be more lovey-dovey with Tianhuo.” Gallus stated as we continued making our way towards a staircase leading up into the castle through the sewer maze full of Froglins.

“Well…” I was about to say something when my ears twitched, as did that of my four boys, Dormarch and Dolly.

“Incoming, four.” Ocellus stated we all tensed up and four splashes erupted from the sewage two on the left and two on the right.

Dolly slung her board and a blast of wind knocked a Froglin back into the muck, she was very much in tune with her element and that looked to have used as much magic as her flow motion thing generally does. Dormarch barked a blast into the one on the right. The other two were swiftly taken care of by Tianhuo blasting it with flames and Sandbar slamming a hoof shaped mass of sand into the last one. All four flopped into the water with pained croaking noises.

“You were going to say something Pom?” Ocellus stated looking nervous and a little beleaguered, how bad was the malice of this place? At least she wasn’t positively paralyzed.

“We’re friends first most of all, we’re also content as a pack and we haven’t had too many issues living together.” I had enough dogs coming to me already, now I had to worry about interdimensional canines too… not that Dormarch wasn’t my cuddliest traumatized digital son in the whole wide world. “Also is it me or are the attacks getting far more frequent, how many of them are there down here?”

“The entire remaining Froglin population probably so several thousand and we’ve dealt with… seventy six. Which reminds me, why are they letting us kids do this?” Sandbar looked nervous. “I mean why did they allow us to walk right into the most dangerous place around?”

Sandbar and Silver Stream both had problems with being aggressive, Smolder and Ocellus had no issue as they were here for me and had worked on skills to defend themselves, Gallus was apparently trained to well beyond Equestrian Royal Guard standard or hopefully the new standard. As for Yona… I have no clue what she went through, but she apparently enjoyed being able to smash her way through Froglins when ten attacked us at once she plowed into them with her shield without a scratch to show for it.

“Well it’s not like you’re down here alone, you have Arizona, Tianhuo, Foenum Velvet and me as responsible and capable adults. Plus we did volunteer for this...” More like I couldn’t do anything other than volunteer, I had several good reasons to be here and not out supply hunting like Foenum Pom and her canine cadre. Those sheep dogs were not nearly as ridiculously strong as my good boy Canis Minor were, but they looked tough all the same… their Pom raised them right. “We’re not here to beat Grogar, given how fast he took us down… that’s not something I think we could do even with all of the Equestrian Royal Guard dogpiling him all at once. We’re here to rescue Starswirl, Shanty and any others that may need our help to escape from the castle.”

“We also need to find the thing preventing us from leaving this dimension.” Tianhuo was always on task as usual and I felt the usual warm spot in my chest with just having her here and lighting our way. “Also I need to state how much I appreciate you and the stuff you do for me when you were cooking, cleaning and taking care of our home…. and me. I feel like I have neglected your efforts and wish to eventually make amends Pom.”

“Oh you don’t need to worry about any of that Tianhuo!” What she needs to worry about is whether or not I’ll likely survive running into Grogar after he knocked me out in a single hit and lightly cracked my skull. Sure the kitsune healing fixed the injury, but he could do that to me again.

“For the time being yes, for I am more worried about you and you’re current state of being.” Tianhuo was talking about the golden wool up to my neck as we walked along the path with rivers of toxic sludge on both sides of us with T shaped junction coming up, we’re going to go left here. We had seen the staircase a while ago and it was in an ominous big open area. “I don’t mean just appearance and physically, I mean mentally and spiritually as well. I care about your health in all forms and I’m aware of your many concerns you told me of in the past day we’ve been trapped here in Tambelon.”

“Yep, that’s true love with a Longma. They may still seem highly stoic, but they do have emotions and they show it in their actions more than words. Rare do they show it emotionally in and outward manner.” Smolder didn’t spend a lot of time around Longma, but she wasn’t wrong in that Tianhuo was sounding a bit emotional there and was blushing faintly at Smolder’s light needling.

“While I have concerns, I’d rather not talk in circles and actually be doing something about a few of them since I can’t deal with all of them.” The look I received from Tianhuo was actual genuine concern about my mental state. “We’re taking a left here and we’ll be closer to those stairs we saw earlier.”

“We’ve taken down a lot of Froglins Pom, but I can still feel that there are a lot more of them around here and they are moving towards us in an odd way. They can move in the sewage so easily, why aren’t they swarming us constantly with much larger numbers?” With how weirdly the sewers have been designed Ocellus, I wouldn’t want to know what you’d define as odd movements since there’s probably something worse than Froglins down here and the purple muck full of eyes and mouths was one of them that we met at the entrance of this insanity. We’ve been attacked by small groups at a time never more than four or five, sometimes six or seven, but never overwhelming numbers. If they were trying to wear us down, it wasn’t a very effective way of doing it when they gave us opportunities to rest. “They seem to be avoiding where we’re heading.”

“Then we might be going the right direction.” Smolder surmised as she glanced at the bubbling gunk to our left as we had a wall to our right after taking a left at the junction.

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.” Looking to Silver Stream who was staying the middle of the group, she wasn’t a fighter and while she could use a bow she was working with limited ammunition and aside from that she had a combat knife strapped to her right hip. She was nervously petting Edith who was clucking gently at her from the quiver she was riding in and likely wouldn’t be willing to use the knife even if she had some training in wielding it from a professional rogue.

One would think we’d have Edith just petrify everything with her gaze, but there’s a few problem with doing that on top of it being a moral ambiguity of whether or not we should since we ‘functionally’ could. We were kind of on an unknown time limit for bad things happening all around here and slowing down to turn every Froglin into stone would take forever.

Not all creatures are effected by a cockatrice’s magical petrification gaze in the same way and it is not actually a very powerful magical ability either if your hide was like rubber. It’s on the lower end of power as far as wild magic is concerned, when simple willpower can eventually beat the effects and the stone gaze is ‘technically’ temporary and then there’s the ease of not meeting the creatures gaze in the first place or blinding them with a bright light mid gaze to cancel the effects. There’s also the problem with dealing with multiple attackers and how quickly the stone gaze can effect a single target at a time in the first place.

Edith was definitely a ‘stone stare’ variant that required line of sight, the other two kinds of her species were a little more dangerous and could breathe magical petrifying gas or has to peck and claw you to start the slow petrification process.

The ‘petrify pecker’ variants that have to peck or claw you had a relatively easy cure for their petrification, which can be as simple as pulling out the infecting stone at the root point of where the beak or talon poked you quickly enough. They quite were dangerous in packs though when you get pecked in multiple places at once and miss pulling out a bit of stone due to the numbing effects of their beaks, the beak and claw variant were the most chicken like of cockatrices and they didn’t have stone gazing so could be taken down at a distance. They were also larger than the stone stare variant, so they were fairly dangerous to run across in large numbers. Less dangerous alone, but can still be plenty lethal outside of their petrifying beak and claws for their size, you would not likely bleed to death though considering how the petrification method helps wounds scab over quickly and slowly petrified you over time.

The ‘grave gas’ variants were the most dangerous variant of cockatrice as they were the largest and more dragon or reptile like with barely any chicken based attributes, just one was dangerous on its own. Their gas can get into your lungs and can cause fatal rock lung poisoning that only earth ponies were generally safe from. I’m somewhat thankful that I can breathe fire now as the ‘grave gas’ breathers are afraid of any kind of flame when they know their gas is highly combustible and they are generally surrounded by a field of said gas almost constantly by existing. You would never want to fight one of these close up or inside enclosed spaces, they were fast and quite lethal once their gas slows you down. They generally lived in cave systems that Diamond Dogs were known to frequent for a variety of reasons and were said to be on par with Grue’s in lethality when fighting in the darkness.

As for Edith’s variant the ‘stone stare’. Again you can beat them in a staring contest, don’t look at their eyes in the first place and or just fight them if you are larger than them. They are generally as physically strong as oversized chickens would be, a single one is easy to deal with and a cluster of them might be a bit more problematic but still relatively easy to deal with by yourself if you keep your eyes averted. They were usually a decent mix of half chicken and half serpent, but were the smallest and easiest to deal with variant and the most common. Numerous stone stares working together can speed up the effect of their gaze, but if you have more than one being meeting the gaze of single ‘stone stare’ at the same time, it outright cancels their magical effects.

Basically if you have three people you can fight off two ‘stone stares’ easily. As long as you always have one more person than the number of ‘stone stares’ present, they weren’t a big threat in that case even if you only knew minimal danger involved. Stone stare cockatrices avoid heavily populated areas as their best defense and offense mechanism works the best on dangerous solitary predators or prey that are alone.

“Is it too quiet?” Finally stopped thinking about the stuff I read about repti-birds like Edith, I glanced about as we took a right. Aside from the bubbling muck and the crackling flames coming off of Tianhuo’s beautifully flowing orange mane, tail and wings, it was almost silent with our hooves or claws making the only noises we heard.

“If you have to ask…” Gallus muttered with his spear tapping against his armored right shoulder as we moved, he knew how to use that thing and neither Tianhuo nor I had any pointers to give him. “Ambush?”

“The ones coming towards us just disappeared… why can’t I sense them?” Ocellus then paused and looked thoughtfully at us. “Oh… right… they adapt to things. So they are beginning to tell I can feel them and are adapting by becoming positively emotionless, no bloodlust… no detection.”

“Which they basically confirmed in that last attack until they were right on top of us.” I said quietly. “Ready yourselves to start moving… quickly. Stick together fight to disengage.”

“Your mind is still one of the most beautiful things about you.” Tianhuo complimented as she turned her back to us and faced the darkness on the pathway behind us.

It wasn’t seconds after Tianhuo complimented me that twenty or more Froglins burst from the caustic sewage, multiple tried to drop down on us from the ceiling and several surged out of the shadows behind and in front of us. The ones above us were swiftly deflect to the side with a quick ‘Aero’ from Dolly.

“Enough of your smelly and vile ugliness, tornado!” We would have been completely swarmed down had Foenum Velvet went into a rapid spinning motion, the winds didn’t touch us as she twirled forward in front of us… she cleared the path forward. The frozen Froglins were not nearly as luck to not be caught in the blasting blizzard, they didn’t certainly like cold temperatures and almost froze solid immediately.

“Blizzard!” Dolly called out and created a wall of ice to block the makeshift stabbing knives, spears and rock hammers coming at us from behind. She even froze a small area of the sludge solid.

“I’ll take lead, follow me quickly I think I have this place entirely mapped out!” Dormarch had been fiddling with his digivice for a while now, good to know we now know for certain we were heading in the right direction.

We quickly ran after Dormarch who had to stop to knock a few Froglins out of his path with blasts of energy from his mouth, even with Froglins constantly coming at us from the front they weren’t exactly any more difficult to get through.

I deflected a few attacks with a few Thousand Spears blasts, Tianhuo and Smolder aided with bursts of flames as they took to the air above us, Gallus protected a slightly cowering Silver Stream, Foenum Velvet was rapidly firing shards of ice everywhere to keep the path clear as she stuck close to Arizona who was crack rope whips to keep our path clear.

Sandbar and Yona on the defense made sure nobody got hurt as we rushed along attacking where needed and kept pushing Froglins aside or knocking them out quickly. At least Arizona was making sure the path ahead was clear with quick uses of her rope magic.

We continued along the twisting pathways and Dormarch made sure we weren’t losing him as he moved forward and continued to blast away at the aggressors with Wild Barks while my good puppies Puff, Tuft, Ruff and Woof protected him. It was cute that they were starting to call him and Dolly cousins.

We came to a four way intersection where Dormarch and my Canis Minor God Puppies were holding off some froglins. I leapt over Puff and lashed out a right hind leg buck to the chin of the nearest Froglin, okay my hind leg was still sore from being broken, but it was good it enough to put down one of these frogs.

“Come on!” Dormarch took off to the right, but I followed after him trusting he knew which way we were going.

At the next four way intersection, which is strange considering how many walls we’ve ran into down here in the sewers whether the sewage was gated with heatproof bars or we were prevent from going in a certain direction.

Ocellus had turned into a second Tianhuo, blue scales and yellow flames to blast the froglins charging down the path we just came from. Tianhuo personally blasted a wall of flames to the left and I exhaled a mass of flames to the right as Dormarch went straight through the intersection.

Yona leapt forward over Dormarch and then ram her way through a large number of Froglins to knocking them all out of the way charging with her shield held aloft and giving off a battle cry reminiscent of Fortitude ‘The Fantastically Fragrant TM’.

“We’re almost there!” Dormarch announced, the whole group followed after while Tianhuo started flinging fireballs at the Froglin’s using makeshift bows… what were they even using for the strings on those things, other Froglin’s guts? It was hard to get a smell of anything down here without my nose wanting to, pun definitely intended, really croak.

We could hardly see the arrows coming from the surrounding darkness, but Sandbar managed to get his sand in the way and bar them from slamming into us painfully as we continued forward.

I leapt and thrust my left hoof into the face of a Froglin and stomped them into the floor as I kept running following after Dormarch and my god puppies. Dolly slapped a Froglin’s spear upward before it could stab me in the side and then performed and horizontal swing into an overhead skull smash with the edge of her board to take the offending Froglin down.

There were so many of them, where were they all coming from?!

Arizona performed a flying buck and lassoed a poor Froglin with a magic rope she pulled out with her teeth as soon as she landed from sending a Froglin flying. She started to use the poor thing as a living flail to sweep an entire side path clear of Froglins with a few swings. Eventually she let the rope go and the battered female Froglin groaned.

Foenum Velvet sealed off another side path we were passing by with a quick wall of ice, several spear rammed through it a second later as the Froglins on the other side of the ice wall slammed into it face first.

A right turn, a left turn, another left and… there I could faintly see some stairs and through the constant fight for the last few minutes things suddenly stopped cold after I slammed an upper hoof into a Froglin’s chest.

We were no longer under constant attack by the Froglins.

In fact… it was suddenly almost dead silent.

Not that the Froglins were making much noise in the first place, but it was still quite disturbing how quickly the noise of many webbed toes coming at us just stopped.

The only remaining noise was Gallus disarming and knocking the last Froglin onto its backside, it looked… frightened? It scrambled up onto its webbed feet and quickly ran away.

“On a scale of one to ten how frightened was that Froglin in particular Ocellus?” Depending on the answer I think I might know what’s up those stairs.

“That rated at least an eight on the scale of horrified…. But why? All the Froglins seem to be receding from my ability to sense them.” Good point Ocellus, I too was wondering what made them back off.

“There had to be at least several hundred of them, they had an advantage of numbers yet they are not pursuing us any further.” Tianhuo’s eyes narrowed and she glanced at me, I nodded at what her suspicions may be.

“Let’s keep moving.” We came up to the stairs, but it didn’t lead out of the sewers. Instead at the top of the stairs we were at a cistern, lots of thick metal grating everywhere along with stone path leading through the center of the two massive round half circle bits of grating that had three large holes in them and numerous smaller holes. What was rare was that there was actual water in the cistern and not caustic or toxic goo, said water was slightly churning. “Watch the water for any movement… those Froglins weren’t scared off by nothing. Everyone still here?”

“Yep, spent most of my time deflecting the arrows Sandbar and Yona didn’t.” Dolly stated with her board on her back and the mystical stone bone in her right paw. Ready to throw at a moment’s notice. “Not a scratch on me Pom.”

“Cure Liquor… I’m fine mom.” Dormarch called out with his three wagging tails looking healthy.

“We’re okay Baa-baa!” Woof and his brothers clustered together near my hooves affectionately.

“I’m here, flying in armor isn't easy, but I make it look good.” Gallus announced.

“Yona is okay!” Yona stated cheerfully.

“That was totally scary.” Sandbar stated with a shiver.

“I’m fine.” Smolder stated with crossed arms.

“I am uninjured.” Tianhuo to a moment to check me over and nuzzle my cheek affectionately.

“I’m good.” Arizona called out.

“Thanks for the snacks.” A voice stated.

“No problem… wait a minute…” I looked around, as did Tianhuo. We were both quite alert now.

Where were Silver Stream, Foenum Velvet and Ocellus? Also who was it that just spoke to us?

“HELP-mf!” Our attentions were drawn upwards by Foenum Velvet to the ceiling. The danger was not in the waters of the cistern... it was above it.

“Ah, I’m so sorry, I usually have a better grip on my snacks heh-heh-heh.” It was a massive red octopus monster sticking upside down on the ceiling, he was grinning with a toothy mouth that was decidedly not beaked as he finished successfully stuffing Velvet into a clam with Ocellus and Silver Stream. “Allow me to introduce myself, my name is ‘Squirk the Immortal Octopus Sorcerer’, I believe you have entered my domain and as an ally of Grogar that means you ultimately forfeit your life. As did this poor soul for coming near me… I’m quite hungry, famished actually.”

In one of Squirk’s tentacles, this octopus reminded me of faintly of Ultros, brought a struggling Froglin up to his mouth with a grin and then bit its head off in a nasty crunching noise, a splash of blood and ripping flesh. The Froglin hadn’t even had a chance to scream or make much noise before it was dead.

“Mmm-mmm good… Froglins are always quite a delectable taste, I especially like their legs and their toxicity is quite a spice.” The octopus proceeded to rip off one of the dead bodies legs and chew through it noisily with an open mouth. He swallowed more destroyed bits of that unfortunate soul. “Want some?”

“That was an intelligent being!” I shouted utterly horrified at what we were witnessing, we have knocked around a lot of Froglins, but I don’t think we killed any of them.

“Couldn’t have been that intelligent, it was caught by me after all.” The octopus’s sickening grin disturbed me on a number of levels given the grey matter coating his teeth. “Oh the joys I had before the land overtook my kingdom of the sea… changing a fish into having lungs instead of gills so far underwater to simply watched as they drowned was one of my more fun pastimes. Unfortunately Gusty the great destroyed my magical amulet of power, so I’m sorry if I’m a little weak in the magic department as I’m quite out of practice. Still it was nice of Grogar to offer me sanctuary in the most putrid of places I can carry out my whims, it has been so long since I’ve had fresh meat to play with. If you want to throw a party in Castle Tambelon, then you’ll need to deal with the doorman… me. Since that's impossible, I can’t wait for Grogar's plans to succeed so I can sink half of Equestria into the sea!”

Another leg was ripped off and chewed noisily, I can understand why the Froglin’s didn’t want to come near this thing. This Squirk guy was horrific as he grinned as bits of flesh, sinew, bone and blood rained down from the ceiling coming from his teeth.

I looked at the large clam shell that Ocellus, Silver Stream, Edith and Foenum Velvet were trapped inside of and then slowly turned my sight back to the psychopathic octopus.

“I’ve been alive for oh so long, being immortal was quite boring for me after a while… these oh so wonderful moments of entertainment are few and far between.” As on Tentacle held the clam shut, his other seven tentacles released their grip on the ceiling and started to reach down for us. He was clinging to the ceiling with the suction cups near the base of his tentacle. “It’s oh so nice to have guests that might give me something to do, I certainly hope you struggle and scream more than that Froglin did!”

Tianhuo immediately spewed hot flames at him, I did too from my mouth hoping to burn this thing down off the ceiling and Smolder added even more heat to the streams of flames we were spewing. We were all of the same mind, we can’t let this monster survive meeting us.

“Aero!” Dolly added to the strength of the flames and I felt her get a headache from it as the inferno we were focusing on the octopus lit up the entire cistern and surrounding sewer.

Eventually we let up and all of us blinked at the sight before us.

“No way…” Arizona stated under her breathe. “Not even a little burnt?!”

Despite how powerful and stone melting the flames definitely were with Dolly increasing their strength overall… Squirk was unmoved and uninjured, he didn’t even burn or seem to have even felt the heat. We had warped the stone of the ceiling and scorched it... that was the extent of the damage we caused.

“Was that supposed to do something? My skin is hardier than mountain stone, but nice try, might have even cleaned some bacteria off the surface of my body. It’s been so long since I’ve felt clean… I hate that feeling and you have earned some of my ire!” Squirk stated haughtily as he stretched out a tentacle to take a swipe at us only for Arizona to rope it and started pulling on it. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to even put up a struggle against me as a contender for… huh?”

Squirk tried to yank Arizona off the floor, but found it quite hard to do so, he tried pulling on the rope around his tentacle with two other tentacles and found himself at a loss for words as Arizona stubbornly refused to be pulled off of the metal grating she was standing on.

“Hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hmmmm this might actually be fun, do you really think you can beat the immortal dread octopus that even a goddess like Queen Novo herself feared!” Squirk started laughing as he aimed his trapped tentacle at Arizona and sent a blast of magic out at her. “For I was once the octopus king of the seas!”

Arizona let go of her rope and dodged out of the way as a section of grating evaporated.

“Now come, entertainment, unless you want to watch me eat your friends in front of you too!” Okay, calling it now, Squirk deserved any amount of ire and was going to get what was coming to him even if we didn’t do it ourselves. “You’d do well to distract me from my boundless hunger.”

“Baa-Ram-Ewe!” I blinked and looked to Tianhuo as she had said it at the same time I did. Dolly, Dormarch and my four god puppies also barked it out as one. We as a pack and family were in agreement, this guy was not to be trifled with and we declared him an enemy of the Lambchop family collectively.

“You took on Longma traditions, I have taken up learning some Lambkin traditions in your absence.” Tianhuo said pleasantly with a faint smile. “Now how do we deal with this great monster?”

“Monster, are you not the ones that came into my demesne uninvited little morsels?” Squirk proclaimed loudly, before screeching out at us. “Though I do invite you to jump into my mouth, I wonder what you taste like now that you’re all under my...”

The screech shook us all to paralysis from the fear it caused, even my body locked up from something like absolute terror.

A second later my wool brightly glowed and gave off a powerful flash of golden energy, everyone around me could suddenly move again and the terror seemed to dissipate quickly from even me. This octopus could scream magic?

“Hmph… natural anti-magic, could be a problem.” Squirk grumbled with two crossed tentacles, before sending the five of them at us. He grinned broadly. “No matter if your trouble or not, I do like playing with my food after all!”

Author's Note

So supernatural weather that's been below freezing for most of the month, thankfully things are now back to being warmer and less cryogenic.

Sorry this is taking so long.

Introducing G1 villain Squirk the Sorcerer Octopus.