Canterlot Academy Trials

Nebula quickly wrangled the group together with a strategy.

“I’ll take point and see what we can do to contain it,” the unicorn stallion began, “If this thing gets loose, we could possibly deal with the loss of lives or its corruption spreading.”

“You really think we can handle this ourselves?” Dawn sighed, “We’ve done quite a few missions thus far, but nothing involving demons.”

Nebula shook his head. “That’s irrelevant. We still need to give it a try. I know you’ve got plenty of power that can quell demons, Dawn. My magic is mostly focused around weakening and restraining.”

The griffon guy would speak up next while pointing both at himself and the changeling, “Then what should we do?”

“You’ve got your tomes, right?” Nebula asked, to which they nodded. “Okay then. You’re gonna serve as the offense to wear it down.” Then he turned to Dawn, “And you’re gonna banish it. You’ve got some sort of banishment spell in your kit don’t you?”

Dawn quickly adapted to Nebula’s plan and replied, “Yes. I’ve got just the thing for something like that.”

“Alright, then. Let’s handle this,” Nebula turned towards the castle entrance…

Where the demon would show itself: A multi-armed, octopus-like beast whose skin was black as coat and slimy as the sea itself. Its arms had actively begun to crush the surrounding ruins into nothingness, shaking the entire foundation of the castle itself!

“What in the cthulu-ian--?!” the griffon squawked.

“I’m up first!” Nebula shouted as he stampeded forward with his flute levitated to his lips. “You two, get behind me and attack it as soon as I give you the word!”

The unicorn stallion leapt over and ducked underneath one of the tentacles while playing various notes from his flute. A bass and treble cleft would fly into the air along with visualized sheet music that slowly wrapped itself around each of its tentacles.

Next, the changeling mare would show off what she could do with her tome. First, she transformed into a small hamster to avoid the large beast’s attacks. Being a small creature enabled her to get in close with a dagger held betwixt her teeth that she used to stab and cut at its various limbs.

The griffon would fly upwards and cast a handful of wind spells from his tome. Razor-sharp discs of green wind magic would fly out and cut through more of the demonic octopus’ arms which further disabled it.

Now all that was left was Luster Dawn’s role in the fight. The unicorn mare summoned various sigils around her body before a beam would attach itself to the demonic octopus. Before it could react, it was trapped within a small dome that fired blinding white chains that bound its limbs together.

“Get back!” Dawn shouted with a harsh grunt through her teeth.

Once her classmates got out of the way, Dawn used the chains to viciously rip the beast apart until nothing was left. It roared a painful roar until its body was in shambles all over the building--its beating heart having fallen out of itself.

“...whew…” Dawn took a breath, “That…took quite a bit out of me, I won’t lie.”

The griffon and changeling both hurried up to Dawn, followed by Nebula shortly after.

“Okay…that was a bit ridiculous,” the griffon huffed as he scratched the top of his head, “Where did that thing even come from?”

The changeling looked down at the floor, “You don’t think…”

With a flash of magic, Twilight Sparkle teleported back into the castle with them. “...you all did a great job working together. But to answer your question: No. I had nothing to do with this.”

“Wait,” Nebula stepped forward with an inquisitive tilt of his head, “You mean to tell me this wasn’t some test of our skills?”

“No. It wasn’t,” Twilight responded as she inspected the remains of the demonic creature. “This was summoned here by means of which even I’m not fully aware.” Her eyes darted around as she inspected the body of the creature with a quick flash of her horn. “...no…”

Dawn stepped forward with a hesitant frown on her face, “Wait, what do you mean ‘no’?”

“This…I can’t speak at the moment,” Twilight hastily replied, then turned to the students, “You’re all dismissed. I need to study this creature for a while.”

“Fair enough,” the griffon shrugged and flew out of the castle through one of its windows. “No feathers off my beak. We won.”

“Same,” the changeling added as she followed the griffon out, “I’m not even gonna question what happened here. A grade is a grade.”

Dawn wasn’t satisfied with this though. She wanted more answers as Twilight returned to inspecting the creature. “...princess?”

Nebula tapped Dawn’s shoulder with his hoof. “Let’s leave her be. There could be any number of reasons why this thing appeared. Let’s try and see what we can dig up.”

“...I guess…” she reluctantly followed Nebula out of the old castle, and the two would leave to make their way back to Canterlot.

Nearby in a group of trees…

A voice would mutter, “The summoning ritual worked. Inform the general.”

“Of course,” a second voice replied.

“With that being the perfect test run, they won’t have any way of supporting that group heading to the Wukong Province. All we need to do now is summon a few more…distractions,” a third voice mused with a wicked chuckle.