Black Aether

Starlight Glimmer was close to death, and whether that was temporary or not would still be a pain. The mystical fire of Magic in her blood had cooled, with most of it having been spent to save her life during the maelstrom that had thrown her ashore where she’d awoken amongst boulders. Had the last spark been gone, she wood be either awakening in Tartarus or somewhere with the same amount of charm.

The Shimmering Wave had been caught in a tempest that had doubtlessly been sent by the Dark Powers, and she did not yet know where her two main comrades had gone. But she was sure that they were alive.
If she could make it through this, so could they.

The rescue, unlikely as it was, came thanks to the vices of Pony greed and stupidity. The birds did not sing here at all since she’d awoken earlier evening and there were no deer or wolves about to be heard or smelled, having clearly not decided to come or stay here, and the ground had a certain unwelcoming feel to it.

Clear signs to the Preyer that this was the realm of the Witch, even if only the very borders.
Starlight knew it well, but the band of what were clearly desperate bandits concealed in the rugged roadside bushes understandably did not.
Even in her weakened state, Starlight could still sense each and every one perfectly. She moved forward, pretending she knew nothing of their presence.

Shrieking in intimidation, they leapt out onto the road, excited by the prospect of easy prey. Sick and famished, crippled and filthy. Poor wretches ready for anything, just seeking to survive another day in a world that hated them.
The dark ornate hood on Starlight’s head seemed to confuse them, but only for a brief moment. Their chief was the first to regain his resolve. Must be why he was their chief.

“I do not know what kind of unicorn you are, ma’am, but you do not look poor. So, you will share with those in need… And get that thing off your body. We’ll melt it down and sell it – should be enough for some bread.”

A moment later, he seemed to come to a realization about his comrades, and spoke up again.
“And no, we won’t slay you or violate your body either. It’s clear that you can fight, but just give us what we need and be off on your way. They say a Witch is nearby to this broken land, so I’d advise you to go back the way you came and not proceed any further.”

It crossed the Preyer’s mind that
removing her robes entirely could easily serve her purpose whilst being a less violent solution.
Then, the usual story would unfold.

Panic and flight upon seeing the numerous scars crisscrossing her form, enhanced more so with a simple Spell.

The terrified bandits would scatter, with some of them going deeper into the Witch’s realm, where the beasts and wraiths would take care of them.

But no, that would be wasteful. She needed to be in complete control of where the bodies would be. It was for the best in her case.
Besides, the leader seemed to be a surprisingly reasonable and somewhat moral stallion despite being a thief and clearly a murderer, and she decided that he deserved a quicker and less horrifying death. Maybe the others too, if her gut feeling was right… And it always was.

“I strongly must object to that idea, and must not do so. The sight of my true form cannot be forgotten. Or endured. Crawl back into the bushes, we will pretend you have not seen me, and all will be well.”
Starlight lied, just to ease her conscience slightly when they inevitably refused. She knew they were too desperate, she could see it in their eyes.

Smell it from their bodies inner chemical signals.

Hear it in their hearts and flowing blood.

The leader shook his head with a deep inhalation. He looked around and sniffed the air, confirming that this Unicorn was alone, and his own companions numbered half a dozen. Even if she knew a Spell or three, she was still far from invincible.

“Well, miss, you were meant to die quickly, I would prefer to slit throats real quick and so on, with no pointless bucking struggle which only prolongs the pain. But in this case, it seems there’ll be an exception. Get her!”

They all ran around the Preyer and came in from several sides while an archer launched his arrows to distract her as they used one of the standard tactics of taking down a Mage.

The fight did not last long.

Whether half a dozen or two it made no matter – they were a meagre challenge for even an exhausted Preyer. Just before death, each of the thugs had a chance to see wonders they had never before experienced.

Her metal-clad leathery foreleg boots, suddenly spitting out flashes of hot metal as she raised them up.

The sight of her teleporting from one lethally blasted chest or head to another.

Her horn casting freezing and burning spells one after the other in flawless form, for it is the common idea that Magic typically is used to that degree by either Ponies who have made dark deals for power or the more experienced elder Pony Mages, not one who LOOKED like she was young and in her prime.

It ended quickly, but the price was very noticeable. Starlight felt just a little dizzy and somewhat out of breath. However much cursed Magic she still had in her, it certainly would not be enough for another encounter.

Starlight began to search the bodies and found a small amount of rope belonging to one of the thugs and used it to tie the leader tightly to a thin tree. She piled the bodies of the others around another wider thicker tree and arrayed each in a sitting-up position.
The Preyer than sat nearby and waited for nightfall, keeping her senses carefully sharp for any other intruders.

As always in the lands overrun by the Dark Powers, it grew steadily more noticeable in the air itself. Either chilly or having a hint of sulfur, there was always something wrong with the air.

And here, it tasted like cold sulfur.

When the shadows were thick and the dreadful time of night known as The Witching Hour struck, the air altered again more noticeably now and now sparked with invisible Magic. The corpses slowly opened their magic-infused eyes, and began to turn their heads and look at the unicorn who had slain them. The ghouls growled and started to rise up fast, and the leader himself began shifting and kicking wildly, seeking to free himself from his bonds.

Starlight waited until they had clearly regained all of their strength, and several were now only a few feet from her. She aimed one of her Gun Gauntlets at each forehead and let fire more magical bullets. Their heads erupted immediately into thousands of particles of Black Aether, which hung in the air like a cloud of orange-red fireflies and began to wisp around and into Starlight. The Preyer warmed herself in this supernatural glowing embrace, recovering stamina with each passing moment.

There was nothing she could do for the former bandits now. As long as the Witch was alive, they would continue to reanimate indefinitely. They were now from Black Aether, and would be reborn from such.

Starlight narrowed her eyes,
The Witch must have already known that the Preyer had come. A normal pony should have already been dead and become another of her minions. And yet this one still roamed free, with her insolently unperishable soul.

Oh yes, it was indeed clear now the dark mistress knew, and the forest was no longer silent. From both near and far, and from every direction, Starlight could hear the growls and howls of undead, both physical and corporeal.

Their merciless intentions for her were all too clear, but her own were no different for them. And being a class of Preyer known as an Arcanist, she especially could use more mystical fuel for her arsenal of Spells and incantations.

Starlight turned in the direction of the nearest approaching monsters and felt the newly gained Magic sparking and crackling along the length of her horn, then focused her power on a stronger spell than usual.
Her horn flashed ever so slightly, and a great ball of magical fire engulfed the trees and misshapen forms that were shambling and flying towards her.

-

Rainbow Dash leapt quietly over the shallow waters and onto each slightly raised mound of grassy soil, eyeing the deceptively peaceful water suspiciously as she could feel something dangerous within them. She was in a more swampy area that was near to the ocean, and nearby were a series of cliffs.
She could feel the darkness growing stronger as the witching hour drew near, but there weren’t any detectable undead or other monsters. That meant she wasn’t detected yet, but she could practically feel the Witch’s attention on her.

Rainbow finished clearing the swampy area and made her way to the small wrecked cabin she’d spotted a little earlier, and there discovered a genuinely esoteric chest with a Tome as its lock.

“Hmm, I’ll need to check on this later…”

She memorized the location of the chest and continued on, covering more dry grassy and hilly terrain as she left the swamp and headed further inland, the many live or dead trees getting a bit more dense as she flew between them, being careful not to be too easily visible to the pine trail hostile eyes that were still beyond her current senses in her weakened state.

“I know you guys are alive out there, I can feel it.”
She said aloud to nothing in particular, but addressing her fellow Preyers.
“Come on, give me a hint about where you each are.”

Dash didn’t have to wait too long for an answer, as she soon had to sit down in a small clearing to rest and wait for the witching hour to fully come… and soon enough could feel the air thicken with Magic and the afterward she could sense the release of a particularly strong Spell being cast not that far away.

“Wow, was that… nah, it can’t be the Witch. It’d be more frightful and intimidating, not as awesome as what I just felt! Must be Starlight, AJ can’t do stuff like that.”
And with that, Rainbow Dash leapt up and began to run quietly through the dark woods towards the source of the immense power that he just been unleashed, but soon caught sight and sound and scent of numerous other creatures manifesting as well.
Of course the Witch could now detect them, and so she was sending her minions to snuff out the souls of the Preyers, and that realization made Dash grin fiercely.

“About time, you ugly waste of Aether! Come on now, ya rotters! I’ve been getting a third-degree level of boredom!”

And then, Dash leapt up and flipped to avoid the flash of bloody light that zipped towards her from the nearest tree and the equally crimson arc that suddenly was sliced through the air!
Upside down in midair, the Pegasus saw the unnatural blackish-red blade of the hideous winged creature that had ambushed and attacked her. Completing her leap over it’s form and twisting to land on her hooves, Dash threw out her arms/forelegs and from her gauntlets came a pair of curved, gray blades about half the rest of each limbs.

The monster whirled around to face the Preyer, and she could see more clearly now that the black creature was a Changeling Duelist. It’s main front limbs were long and slightly curved razor-sharp blades that had a reddish hue along the edges, and it also had two smaller hooked limbs on its chest.
The hind legs were similar to her own, but the hooves were instead curved claws, and the head was a savage thing with a mouth full of sharp light gray fangs, with a pair of shredded insect-like wings on it’s back.
The worst aspect of a Duelist, however, was its ability to learn. The longer a battle went on, the more it adapted itself to the flow of the fight and it’s moved became more fluent and better at picking apart the flaws in an opponents fighting style, whether it be offense or defense or even both.

All in all, Duelists were fearsome foes who would give any skilled swordspony a potentially lethal fight, and the additional ability to faze in and out of reality in a form of teleportation made a fight all the deadlier, and often futile.

Rainbow Dash knew that she couldn’t just drag this out and let the monster get a proper read on her. She didn’t have enough stamina to take on a foe that only would trickier and more precise with every moment she took with it, and needed to end this fast before others arrived.

And so, Rainbow dashed!

The two fighters, one an experienced prodigious master and the other an unnaturally adaptive prodigy, clashed blades in a wild series of fiery red and icy blue arcs, and the air was filled with the ringing or their blades and the endless flashing of sparks in a grand display of speed and skill. The noise was unceasing, neither side giving the other a chance to pull back and change form or plan a strategy.
Rainbow was slashing almost mindlessly, but her foe was already capable of seeing how each and every blow was precise and focused on landing a crippling or even LETHAL strike and so it copied her strategy immediately, refusing to let itself be so easily overwhelmed and instead meeting her ferocity head-on, showcasing a Duelists frightening ability to copycat virtually ANY style and exploit it’s advantages to the fullest extent.

But this was what the Pegasus wanted, for her foe to copy her current skills set.
Now, she saw the right moment!

Taking half a second longer than usual to launch her next attack, Dash instead transferred much of her energy to her left hind leg and thrusted herself forward, and her right arm shot forward at blinding speed.
The Changeling was taken off guard by her sudden delay and change of form, but it reacted with pure instinct and lunged it’s on main right arm forward as well, the two smaller hooked limbs preparing to try whatever they could to balance this out.

The two weapons flew right last each other, speeding towards their destinations.

The smaller arms lashed out at Rainbow’s blade, aiming to grapple it down, and then…
Dash simply gritted her teeth and allowed the fearsome blade-limb to rip through the flesh on one side of her neck. If it had been a single inch more to the right, it would have impaled her through the throat.
But as it stood, she could survive this.

Her own weapon, on the other hoof, had also missed, and she cursed under her breath. The backup pair of smaller forearms of the monster facing her had down their job, yanking the tip of her sword just enough to avoid her hitting the lethal point of the Duelist’s throat. The blade now instead was imbedded into the chest of her foe, who let out a gasping gurgle for a second, but then she could feel its lifeless eyes suddenly regain their focus.

“Go to Tartarus…”
She hissed. Then suddenly lashed out with her other blade, sliding it along the other’s own as well as it too began to move, and stabbed upwards in an uppercut-style stab maneuver.

She could live with her own neck wound.

And she would… because her second strike had NOT missed the mark, and the Duelist simply spasmed for two seconds before Black Aether began to put out of its mouth and eyes, and from the impalement injury starting at its throat and ending at the top of its head as she yanked her weapon out and the Duelist fell into a crumpled heap.
Coughing a bit, the Preyer stood over the corpse of her opponent and simply breathed in the Magic energy sparks as they soaked into her body and her soul.

“Ahhhh, I love the feeling this stuff gives me. It’s like cider, but it actually makes me better than before.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and hummed as she got her first taste of her private addiction… well, not exactly, but she did love the feeling of Dark Aether flooding into her bloodstream and heart and mingling with the natural Magic flowing within her soul, almost as much as she relished the rush she got when she slew the abominable slaves of Witches and Warlocks, the Dark Powers as they were often referred for as.

And already, the Slayer-Class Preyer could feel her own deadly wound slowly closing up and her own power increasing slowly, promising that soon enough that she would be able to demonstrate her even more complex techniques and abilities, and the echoing haunting sounds of the other hordes of evil lurking in the shadows of the trees all around her for miles were now making themselves heard. They were converging on her and her comrade’s positions with murderous intent.

Rainbow Dash didn’t feel the slightest ounce of fear or uncertainty about this situation, nor did she need to wonder about what other more powerful monsters would appear who served the Witch. She was too excited.

The horrors of this realm were legion, and she herself was on the list to be slaughtered. They desired nothing more than to rip the flesh from her bones and test the scream from her throat. They were thirsty for her blood…

But she was thirsty for theirs, too.

“Like always, I can tell this is gonna be AWE.SUM!”
Dash spoke aloud to nopony and nothing.
Then she braced herself and waited, and only after the first hellishly glowing eyes appeared in the shadows did she lunge forward, her razor-keen blades on either arm making a sharp slicing sound through the air as she cried out and began her brutal work of butchery with a smile and a laugh.

-

Applejack pushed the barn door open and immediately raised her shield as she entered, her sharp senses easily picking every single sound from every corner of the farm building.

Including the very soft and sudden whispering crackle of Black Aether as some form of fell creature no doubt had manifested itself in the upper floor of this barn. Applejack merely narrowed her eyes and started for the ladder that led upstairs to the monster.

Since she’d forced herself ashore from the raging sea, the Preyer had immediately forced her weakened body to get out of the open and into the temporary safety of the trees and nearby bushes, where she’d forced herself to take a brief nap before awakening and starting inland to search for her comrades and the safe spot that had been place for them by The Church.

Indeed, the Crusher-Class Preyer had been trapped in the violent waves the longest, unable to force herself to teleport or fly like her fellow Preyers, and had been engaged in fending off Sea Phantoms in the black waters, dark intangible specters that lurked in the watery bodies controlled by the Dark Powers and tried to weigh down the mind with painful thoughts and induce suicide.

Long she struggled in the dark depths, battling both in body and in mind, and more than once was she almost consumed by the waves which seemed to have a mind of their own as they attempted to claim the Preyer at the behest of their dark mistress.

Minutes dragged into hours, but at long last Applejack found her hoofing and finally crawled onto the sandy beach, exhausted and battered, but still very much alive. As a result, she was more weary than the other two had been, and thus was just a tad more vulnerable.
But she was also the strongest physically, and thus not at all as vulnerable as others would have been.

Traveling slowly through the dark woods and feeling the ever-approaching Witching Hour getting closer and closer and promising to end her immortal life(at least temporarily and shamefully) unless she found a source of shelter to rest better and then recharge her Black Aether. So far she was seemingly out of luck, but then discovered this old structure on the burnt remains of a mysterious farm of sorts.
Now it was the dreaded hour of the night, and already a possible form of undead had found her.

“Yer most welcome, ya waste ah’ Magic.”
She growled in response to the gurgling hiss. Then the strong young pony simply prepared her hind legs a bit and m launched herself up and onto the second floor!
Spinning in midair as she heard the creature behind her just before she landed, Applejack now found herself facing a Hood Ghoul, a ghostly creature that could teleport to a certain degree in order to stalk and ambush it’s prey.
But this was no ordinary Pony it confronted. Exhausted beyond belief and having nearly drowned two dozen individual times while fighting endlessly in the grasp of the supernatural sea, Applejack was a Pony of well-nigh unmatched integrity and faith, a Preyer who’s strength of her powerful body, earned through a life of hard work and mystical enhancements, was only matched and exceeded by that of her heart.
Even if she was on the verge of death, it still wouldn’t be recommended for any minion of the Dark Powers who was not exceptional to try engaging her on hoof to hoof combat.

The Hood Ghoul lunged at her with a flying leap, almost gliding in the air. Applejack raised her shield and swung hard, but still, her depleted state left her unable to one-shot the monster’s like she would’ve been capable of normally, and instead it fell to one side and snarled before attacking again.

The Preyer forced herself forward, and the creature’s fang and sharp hooves clashed against the shield she brought up as she managed to duck down and move swiftly behind it to launch a kick, which thankfully managed to knock her foe off balance, but resulted in a vicious counterstrike which led to her leg getting a nasty scratch.

Drawing in as much breath as she could to keep going, Applejack now surged forward and managed to tackle the ghoul down. Her foe snarled and began to slash at her wildly with its clawed hooves, biting on the edge of her shield and striking her across the face, but the Pony now jabbed her left arm forward repeatedly with a growl of her own, and soon a *crunch* sound announced the shattering of the monster’s jaw.
The mighty Preyer then brought up her shield and used all her strength to swing down upon the undead’s face, and the sheer power of the impact was so great that it completely smashed the body through the upper boards and both beings came crashing down to the floor!

“Damn undead…”
She muttered, trying it stand and instead collapsing atop the fallen ghoul as it began to quickly leak out the much-needed Black Aether.
Lying there upon the body of her fallen foe, Applejack could feel the a silent exhaustion that now coursed through her, and her eyes were soon closed…
And then shot open again as she immediately felt herself becoming revitalized by the fresh Magic making its way through her bloodstream.

“It’s bout’ time.”

It wasn’t a lot at all, but enough to help the wounded, weary Preyer to stave off exhaustion and fight again. If more and weaker minions of the Witch came by soon(and she knew that they would, she could practically feel the darkness surrounding her from the trees) she would be infighting shape in no time at all.

Applejack rose to her hooves, taking a few moments to pant briefly, and then turned her attention to the faint sounds of growling and howling that started to come from the surrounding trees. Yeah, the Witch knew she was here and where she was, alright.

“Well, les’ git’ this sho’un’ the road!”

And with that, she started to walk rapidly, and then run, to the spot of the trees where she felt the nearest presence of Black Aether, and saw the hellish burning eyes rapidly coming into view. It was Preying time!