"What?" Chester says. "No no no no no."

He has some semblance of a plan for The Chryssa-swamini Problem—stealthily escape the compound; get reinforcements from Twilight* and Luna* and villain hunters worldwide; somehow convince the authorities that the world is under attack by an unstoppable, undetectable foe—but it requires a substantial head start. If their deadline has moved up from Morning to Now, they're doomed.

He forces a couple of breaths in and out and takes stock. They've got to give something a shot regardless.

Fact: All they've got now is Ember and Holds-the-Fire.

Chester is tapped out. He was already tired before sorting out them and their bloodstones, and now fatigue is crushing him. Now that he's got a couple of emotional transfers under his belt, he's pretty certain he could put more juice into what he did with Sunset earlier—but the energy to do so is the energy that's keeping him upright. So, effectively, she's down, Celestia can't move, and—oh, heck, Esau.

He staggers out to the main room. His brother is breathing, colors weak and still, with fresh blood under his face. Alive, but probably down for the count—bloodstone zombie Holds-the-Fire did a number on him.

"It's fine," Ember muddy-green-says, loping over to examine the door. "We've just gotta bust out before Chrysalis drags herself out here."

Fact: They don't even have that much time.

"It's worse than that," Chester says urgently. "Anton's like 15 seconds away."

Even better, Holds-the-Fire says with a spike of caramel spyfeel. Then we do not have to worry about opening the door.

Fact: The girl raised by wolves, and the dragon about to give in to roaring instinct for the first time, are about to square off against a homicidal rage-bomb.

"Listen," Chester says, feeling the clock ticking. "Can we handle this without killing?"

Ember and Holds-the-Fire exchange a glance. Peach, quickly receding into black. "Didn't Anton almost shoot you in the truck?" Ember says. "Neither of them are going to hold back."

Did you not beg me to shoot Chris-sa earlier? Holds-the-Fire adds with light violet curiosity.

Chester winces. "I did. But I was afraid, and I thought that was our only chance." He can't think of how he could have done it differently, but he's ashamed regardless. If he had done better, they wouldn't have been in that corner to begin with.

And if they can't do better this time… well. The image of Ember and Holds-the-Fire succumbing to sparkly red, on a blood-spattered rampage through their slaughtered enemies, is bad enough in his brain. If it becomes reality, they'll lose something more important than saving the world.

"Maybe it was even the right option," he adds. "But it's never safe to assume that. Shooting Ember felt right to you in the forest, but if you had, we wouldn't have the bloodstones back now." Holds-the-Fire hesitates at that one, and he can tell by both of their whirling colors that his point landed.

"Seconded," Celestia says. "I don't have the authority to tell any of you to solve this the pony way. But I beg you to try."

Before anyone can reply, there's the sound of the door's crossbar scraping, along with muffled cursing. Ember and Holds-the-Fire shoot each other a synchronized glance, then crouch and tense, the sparkles around their bodies igniting into a glimmering brown. They both sidestep to one side of the front doorway, out of the direct light from the bathroom.

The deadbolt grinds and chunks. Chester, too, realizes he'd better scramble into the shadows—but stops dead, because Esau's lying right there in the center of the light beam. He grabs Esau instead, and is still struggling to tug his brother toward cover when the door creaks outward.

It happens so fast that Chester sees most of the motion in afterimages.

Brown-blurred Ember bursts out through the doorway at an upward and sideways angle, fangy end first, at red Anton's readied pistol. He yelps, flaring yellow, as jaws clamp around his wrist, and there's a loud crack as light flashes from the barrel, with an almost immediate echo as the bullet ricochets harmlessly off the outer wall. Simultaneously, brown-blurred Holds-the-Fire dives into a feet-first slide just wide of Anton's left leg. She grabs his ankle as she zips past, kicking hard upward to shift her momentum, riding his leg around him like a rope swing. Ember yanks Anton's right arm sharply down as Holds-the-Fire swings his ankle up, the combination sending him into a somersaulting spin.

Anton does nearly a full rotation before gravity smashes him face-first into the gravel path. He lands hard, with a yellow crunch, Stetson spiraling down to land alongside his balding head. He's squirming to get an arm out from underneath his body when Ember lunges in, clamping her jaws around the back of Anton's meaty neck.

Anton freezes, a vivid and raw orange.

Holds-the-Fire, who had launched herself into midair at the tail end of her swing, finishes an arching backflip and comes down lightly on her feet. Then it's silent outside except for Ember's muffled growling—her muzzle stuffed with flesh, tiny dots of blood pooling where her fangs are making light contact.

Holds-the-Fire whirls around, smoothly crouches, and pries the pistol from his hand (being careful to keep the barrel pointed away from the cabin). I suggest you do not move, she broadcasts, a gloating puce. She is looking for an excuse to bite.

Chester stares, open-mouthed, having managed to tug Esau a few inches to one side during the entirety of that fight.

Anton—not daring to move his head—cranes his eyes upward to stare at Chester, blotting out his fear with muddy red outrage. "I fracking knew—" he snarls, a sentiment cut short by a pink warning growl from Ember.

Holds-the-Fire turns the enormous revolver over in her hands—with a flash of cream amid black—then shifts into a grim khaki as she thinks. Abruptly, she walks into the cabin to hand it to Chester. You should take this, she says, a brief flutter of chartreuse inadequacy marring her brown. If it comes to a moment when the bloodstones are insufficient… I would rather you have it than I.

Chester accepts it on autopilot, letting the weighty hunk of metal drop into his cradled hands. His mind's still trying to catch up to what he just witnessed. He had been figuring that maybe, with a universe's worth of luck, they could distract Anton, grab his keys, and drive out of the ashram with pursuit at their heels. But the sheer effortlessness of that takedown is making him wonder…

"Listen," he says. "Do you think we might actually have a shot at stopping Chryssy?"

Ember's eyes flick over to him and she goes dark gray. Are you kidding me right now? she broadcasts, switching over to telepathy with her mouth full.

… Yeah, that was asking too much. He'd better start sorting out the logistics of a quick escape—

That wasn't your plan all along? Ember finishes.

Oh, right. That was what she had assumed back in bloodstone space, too, and there hadn't been an opportunity to correct her.

Creamsicle stirs up in Holds-the-Fire. Are you truly that afraid of Chris-sa? She does not deserve her power, or her pack, much less the world. She will befoul much more than her own hunting grounds. Do not back down now.

Guilt twinges at Chester's stomach. "I'm just saying—she stole the power to move the sun. All we've got are two bloodstones. We are way outclassed."

Ember and Holds-the-Fire glance at each other, sharing that creamsicle for a moment. Then colors blitz back and forth, and they both burst into lilac.

Holds-the-Fire snorts, bringing the back of a hand up to her mouth. Ember chuffs, the points of her fangs digging slightly into Anton's neck, making him wince.

Is THAT what you're worried about? Ember lilac-says. Chester, how do you think we EARNED our bloodstones?

He has to give them that one.

"If I might interrupt," Celestia says as Chester is revising his plans, "I applaud your takedown, but that's the second time now you've let loose a surge of power, so if the Holy Mother was paying attent—ah. Big magic. Main building."

A loud, low, echoing boom punctuates her warning.

Chester startles and refocuses, looking outside. The main hall's roof has been blown apart, and the night sky around it set afire, with a little black knot hovering at the center of the flames. Even at this distance, a warm wind is stirring up through the cabin door, and the air shimmers and distorts as the ominously demonic silhouette hovers in their direction.

A similar shimmer ignites in wolf and girl, their colors intensifying. They exchange a rapid pattern of colors which rapidly coalesce into caramel—and then their forms ignite and they burst away in different directions, leaving brown afterimages behind in Chester's vision.

We first must draw Chris-sa's attention far from the cabin, Holds-the-Fire caramel-says as she circles toward the Holy Mother, a bounding pseudo-quadrupedal sprint. There is nothing we can do to save you if she repeats from close range what she did in her sleep-chambers. Can you protect yourself from the cow-man?

Chester glances at the peach Anton—abruptly free of the wolf jaws at his neck—then stares down at the pistol in his hands.

His throat tightens. His stomach curls into a knot. He can already see his hands starting to shake.

But he can't let them down on this.

I'll try, he replies, trying to muster up enough brown to give them the confidence to focus on their own much more substantial fight.

There's motion from the doorway. Anton climbs to his feet, his back turned to Chester as he takes in the scene outside. His eyes track in on the sprinting Ember's form, and his peach shifts into violet as he realizes Ember actually has left and set him free.

Chester jumps, fumbling with the pistol. He clamps both hands around the grip and wedges one trembling finger inside the trigger guard, as far forward as he can to reduce the odds of an accidental shot, then swings it up to aim at Anton's back.

"That's enough," he says, forcing his voice to drop register into something vaguely Chet Land-like, and projecting what he hopes is more menace than terror.

Anton freezes again, a sharp spike of orange dissolving into whirling colors. He slowly raises his hands and turns around, eyes zeroing in on Chester's gun, then at Chester himself.

Then he chuckles, colors mellowing into a confident muddy green.

"Ain't this a kick," he says. "Here I was worried maybe Brother Esau had picked the gun up. But you ain't up to take the shot."

Fact: Anton has got Chester's number.

As their paths have kept crossing, it's gotten harder and harder to fool Anton—and Chester realizes with a jolt of cold fear that he actually isn't ready for this. He had thought that maybe teaching Holds-the-Fire to shoot, and being at gunpoint himself several times, would prepare him to pull the trigger when it finally mattered—but the ugliness of the day's violence has only managed to reinforce how much he regrets ever touching a firearm in the first place.

However, if he can't convince Anton he's willing to fire, Anton will test him. Then Chester will either wilt and die, or forever have blood on his hands.

A puce smile spreads across Anton's face. Bluffs flash through Chester's mind, none taking root. There's no lie he can tell that Anton will believe.

So he tries the truth.

"You're right. Even after everything you've done, I don't want to kill you," he says, letting his voice climb back to its normal register, making no effort to hide his fear. "B-but what I am willing to do is protect my friends. A-and we both know that if you walk through that door and I don't shoot, they're dead."

Anton's smug confidence vanishes into a morass of black.

Chester slides his non-trigger hand up the grip and wrestles the hammer back with an ominous click, then looks up into Anton's eyes.

They stare at each other for long seconds. Various colors attack Anton's uncertainty and find no purchase, as orange and pink war beneath. The barrel of the revolver wavers as Chester's hands tremble.

Then, behind Anton, the sky repeatedly lights up, and there's a succession of distant roars as fire-bolts streak from the hovering Chryssy down toward the ground.

Anton breaks the stare first, twisting his head to glance at the scene behind him. Then he scowls, giving Chester a pink glare. "You ain't worth it," he says, and takes a deliberate step back, his hands still raised. "If we settle this she's gonna yell that I wasn't there to protect her."

For a moment, Chester considers brandishing the gun more aggressively, and yelling for Anton to get down on his knees like in some police show. He should—otherwise he's just dumping his problems on Ember and Holds-the-Fire. But that would also throw back into limbo the question of whether he might have to pull the trigger. And with that possibility looming, fear closes his throat.

Anton takes another step backward, keeping his eyes locked on Chester. At Chester's silence, his background orange dissipates into wine-red contempt. Then, abruptly, he whirls around and sprints away toward the distant fight.

An unstoppable tremble passes through Chester's body. He sinks to his knees and gasps for breath, nausea stabbing his stomach. He sets the pistol on the ground with the exaggerated care of handling an explosive, then jerks his hands back the instant they're clear of the metal.

He never, ever wants to do that again.

Chester pulls together what scraps of focus he can to send an urgent message to Holds-the-Fire. Anton's headed your way.

The reply comes after a pause of several seconds, and it's equally diffuse with distraction. Good. You did well to drive him away.

"Damn it," he says faintly, out loud. No, he didn't.

"For what it's worth," Celestia quietly says, "thank you."

"Don't," Chester replies, not disguising the bitterness in his voice. The others seem to think that was a victory, but right now all he can see is how his friends needed Chet Land when everything was actually on the line, and he flinched.

"You thanked me for helping when all I did was make you feel better," Celestia says. "I think you've long since lapped me there."

Chester stares out the doorway at the hovering demon Chryssy. Her hands are a blur of red motion, flinging fireball after fireball down to the ashram grounds. The earth is shivering with blast after blast, an almost constant tremor, as her missiles make contact. On the ground, two brown blurs circle her, weaving erratic paths through the explosions.

"Yeah, but they're out there fighting to save the world," Chester says, "and I couldn't even keep one captured bandit down."

"So? Those bloodstones didn't repair themselves, Chester." Celestia blinks slowly, keeping eye contact. "Perhaps someday you'll make peace with how much of a battle is fought before the first blow. I still struggle with that, myself."

"But I can't just sit and watch."

"It's not easy, I agree." There's a dryness to the paralyzed Celestia's voice that Chester catches an almost lilac quality to. "But let's talk through it. What can't you do?"

Chester braces himself against the floor as a stray fireball explodes in the fields in the near distance, sending a thin hail of dirt clods against the front porch. "Basically nothing. That's the problem."

"Can't," Celestia repeats.

Chester blinks and mentally readjusts. Right. She's getting him brainstorming.

"Ah," he says. "For starters, I can't shoot anyone. And I don't have the energy to help you or Sunset get up. Maybe Esau, but I won't ask him to fight against Swamini-ji."

"Well," Celestia says, "you are a changeling. You could recharge by draining love from people, like Chryssy did."

"What?" Chester recoils. "I'd never do that!"

"Good," Celestia says. "I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise. But consider this, Chester. You could do any of those things." Her thin voice doesn't have the strength for emphasis, but Chester swears he hears it anyway. "Meaning, you have lines you won't cross even to save the world. That's why I thanked you."

Chester considers that as he watches the fight.

There's a break in the fury as Demon Chryssy lets up in her barrage. He gets his first solid look at her as she pauses, and the changes are subtle enough it takes him a moment. There are two gemstones gleaming in her chest now, apparently fused fully into her form—the small geode he once saw on Sunset which is nestled into her jugular notch, and a chunk of obsidian at her solar plexus. Both are pulsing with energy above and beyond her own formidable physical aura.

The last of the midair fireballs streaks to ground level with a succession of booms, and then it's quiet enough to hear the patter of debris showering down. Wolf and girl slow, their brown afterimage trails resolving back into glowing forms.

It signals a major shift in tempo, and it feels like the moment for a counterattack—but none is immediately forthcoming. Chryssy's hovering too high for them to reach, and Holds-the-Fire appears to have been too busy dodging to find anything to use at range.

Ember and Holds-the-Fire circle Chryssy at a cautious distance, unscathed but without good attack options. They're both panting from exertion, but glowing heartily. Meanwhile, Chryssy's blazing red aura is visibly diminished. Briefly, at least. She gasps for breath for a few moments—then snarls, spreads her arms in her statuesque transcendent pose, and reignites.

"Pathetic insects!" she shouts, her voice echoing through the night with otherworldly distortion. "Is this the best that two worlds can do? Two enemies led by greed to become parasites upon true greatness? You are nothing! The parlor tricks which hid your powers from me are nothing! I will suck you dry and make you beg!"

Ember and Holds-the-Fire don't respond, but Chester knows there's much more going on than their words. He can see them alter their circling, with Ember speeding up slightly and Holds-the-Fire holding back until they are tracing paths on exact opposite sides of their opponent. Chryssy snarls, repositioning herself out of the center of the circle, but the two reignite their auras and pace her, smoothly coordinating their motions to keep one of them in her blind spot.

The motion of her red aura goes from a simmer to a boil as their dance intensifies, and then overtops. "Longhorn!" she shouts. "These vermin are beneath my notice. Fix the problem."

Anton pops his head up from the cover of some jagged piles of charred metal, which Chester realizes used to be the storage shed he once helped paint. "Of course, Chryssy," Anton says, starting out with cyan that amber quickly joins. "But I'm gonna need some of that power you keep talking about."

She wheels on him. "They're a child and a dog! Can you not handle something so simple?"

Speaking of which.

As the villains bicker, Chester reaches back into the increasingly familiar bloodstone link to put in a mental word to Holds-the-Fire and Ember. Not to interrupt, but shouldn't you be finding a way to attack her while she's distracted?

Not directly, Holds-the-Fire gray-says, keeping her focus on her foe. Chris-sa is big prey, and there is too much fight in her right now. We will harry her until she stumbles.

Chester chews his lip. I wouldn't count on running her out of energy, he says. (Bloodstone-says? That seems like a good term for their telepathy, now that he understands its source.)

Probably, but her plan's still the right play, Ember bloodstone-says with brown resolve. The other Chrysalis is cunning but she goes on tilt super easy. Even if we don't tire her out, we can keep throwing her more and more off balance till we find a better opening.

Though if you are aware of any of Chris-sa's weaknesses— Holds-the-Fire gray-says, then cuts herself off. A moment.

Chester blinks and returns his attention to the villains. Chryssy is hissing, a dark, curdled sound that roils the red glow of her aura. "Say it, Longhorn. 'Yes, Chryssy'."

"I just want the power to help you!" Anton protests, cyan and amber warring. "The two of us should—"

A brown blur rushes at him, and he's interrupted by a sharp crunk. He spikes orange as a large piece of rebar punctures the metal siding at his neck level, slamming him back to the shredded wall.

It takes Chester a moment to realize that Holds-the-Fire didn't actually stab Anton through the throat, but rather took a bar bent in half and stapled him to the wall. By the time he's parsed that out, she's already dashed back away from Anton into cover. Ember follows that up with a sprint behind Anton's wall, pausing for just long enough to bite the hanging rebar ends and bend them with her jaws, locking him in.

Chryssy screeches, re-igniting and flinging a new succession of fireballs as wolf and girl dance away again.

"Really?" Ember puce-shouts as she sprints, effortlessly dodging Chryssy's hasty shots. "You're too chicken to take us on, and also stupid enough to think he can stop us?"

"Showing how useless he is proves nothing!" Chryssy shouts, throwing down a particularly intense barrage that forces Ember to double back.

Okay, Ember peach-says as she dodges, I expected that to go differently.

How? Chester bloodstone-says back. Anton is just convenient muscle to her. Did you expect that to threaten her ego?

No, Ember pink-says. But we just made her deal with us personally again. She should be taking us more seriously right now, but she barely reacted.

Holds-the-Fire's mental voice shades into pale orange concern. If we are to keep pressing her, we need her to escalate. If this stalemate continues, she may decide you are easier targets than us.

Chester thinks for a moment. Then point out how you outnumber her because she can't work with anyone else. You need her upset? Remember, she can't handle not being the best.

Holds-the-Fire feints a rush inward, taking a turn drawing Chryssy's fire to give Ember a chance to back off. "Speaking of useless," Ember caramel-shouts from a safer remove, "I thought you were supposed to have an entire cult or something?"

Chryssy whirls back to the wolf and scoffs. "Merely the earliest to recognize my glory, as the world soon will."

"Yeah? Cause what I see right now is a fraud who doesn't even have enough power to share," Ember says. "I'm fighting you at just half my strength, because I'm giving half to the wolf-kid, and you still haven't laid a finger on either of us."

Chryssy stares down at Ember, roiling in fury. Then there's a shift in the depths of her red that Chester notices but can't emotionally name. Her smile slowly returns, cruel and fangy.

"You wish to see power?" she says, the reverb in her voice deepening. "Very well. I am power. I can take whatever I want from whoever I wish, and distribute it as I wish." Black begins to pulse within her red aura, centered around her obsidian chest-chunk. "I am the one true goddess!"

That black overtakes her red, and the world itself begins to distort. Chryssy seems to get closer without moving, the void of her aura magnifying her as everything else suddenly recedes.

A thin cyan halo encircles everything. Chester feels a physical pull toward the door, as if gravity itself has begun tugging in her direction, and leans back to compensate—and then sharp vertigo passes through him, and the cyan evaporates. The ground reasserts its pull, and he overbalances and topples backward, windmilling his arms.

I think you got her upset, he broadcasts as he picks himself up—and freezes. Colors are streaking towards her, a spectrum of greens and blues, from the main hall and the barracks and their cabin and the destroyed shed where Anton is pinned, all of them swirling and vanishing into Chryssy's void. Anton thrashes against his neck-manacle as his aura is ripped away, mouth open in a silent scream.

Holds-the-Fire and Ember back away uncertainly, their forms wrapped in a rigid, shimmering transparent red not dissimilar to the weird gemstone forms he saw in mental space. Apparently the bloodstones have stepped up to protect them now that the voidstone has escalated into all-out magic war.

At first Chester assumes that's why the pull on him stopped, too—but if anything, the bloodstones feel like they've drawn back, concentrating their power on their wielders. The link to Ember and Holds-the-Fire seems quieter, the colors of their crosstalk more muted.

Worry gnaws at him. If they're under that much pressure, he's got to figure out some way to help.

Chester glances around the cabin. There are definitely weird smeary color-streaks—albeit faint ones—going from Sunset and Celestia toward Chryssy. But he doesn't see that effect around Esau, and his own cyan halo hasn't returned.

Fact: Feeding a love overdose to Chryssa-swamini is off the table.

His heart sinks. Despite how long a shot it had been, some tiny part of him had been brainstorming how to make Celestia's plan work. But now the lack of a massive power source isn't the only thing killing that idea. Chryssy has now twice gotten so rattled by his color-sight that she's deliberately excluding the two people with it from her ashram-wide love drain.

… Though perhaps that's something he can use?

Outside, the streak of color connecting Anton and Chryssy ebbs into a thin, dull line of blue as the last of his power is drained away and his frenzied thrashing ebbs into stillness. Then the line solidifies into something thin and taut, and the black distortion fluctuates, disgorging a green flame which courses back down the line like a spark igniting a gasoline trail.

The fire reaches Anton and vanishes inside his body, causing him to spasm. Then his body starts to expand.

It's like watching a series of tiny explosions go off under his skin. Suddenly, his legs and his arms and his head and his torso sequentially bulge to comical proportions. His body arches outward, then folds back inward, and there's a scream which turns into a bellow as his six feet of height become twelve bent double. His head bulges even further, nose distorting into an enormous muzzle, giant horns bursting from the sides of his temples.

He straightens tree-trunk legs. There's a groan and screech as tortured metal protests and finally gives way, and the entire wall he's pinned to breaks free of its foundations and dangles from his neck like a metal cape. And a figure stands up, no longer Anton—devoid of any internal color which might have come from his mind—but some enormous minotaur, gray-blue-furred with eyes of sickly green flame, attached back to Chryssy with a leash of that same hue.

The thing bellows a war-cry to the heavens, lowers its horns, and charges Holds-the-Fire.

Author's Note

Fact: When Chester guessed way back in Chapter 4 that Holds-the-Fire succumbing to the bloodstone's power would make her fly and shoot fireballs, that wasn't just there as a throwaway gag. Even back then, he had a pretty good read of the one person he knew with access to any level of power.

Chryssy's going to be a tough nut to crack, especially with a voidstone zombie minotaur at her disposal. Tune in Sunday, Sept. 29 for "Feeding The Need"! We'll be going back to our regular Sunday-Wednesday schedule for the final stretch.