Advent of Victory

What was I supposed to do? Was I really supposed to go and risk my life for ponies that I didn’t even know in a pointless struggle against a giant snake? The screaming and the fires all around me mixed with the sounds of the battle that was unfolding before my eyes sent me into a near panic. My heart started thundering in my chest as I stood frozen in place with no idea what to do.

One thing did occur to me, and I started working to get my breath under my control. I pulled a long slow breath in and let it out just as slowly. This did little to slow my heart rate, but I managed to get a modicum of control over myself as I reached towards the swirling ball of energy I could feel at the back of my mind. I made contact with the energy, and the world around suddenly came to a halt.

I continued to hold my breath as I had found that it was what allowed me to stay in this state the day before. The snake was lunging at the red pegasus that was circling it and splashing fire onto its scales with minimal success. From my vantage I could see that it would miss, and she would be able to dodge it easily. Learning from my previous attempts with this state I held off moving, and instead used the time that I had borrowed to think.

I had a choice before me that would have dire consequences if I chose wrong. On one hand I could race forwards and try and help the ponies fending off the monster, and on the other I could turn tail and run away. Deciduous was frozen at the base of the snake with a snarl on his face as he leapt forward to attack. What would he think of me if I ran from this fight?

His words rang in my mind making the obvious choice of abandoning these ponies all the harder to make. I had no real ties to them so there was really no reason for me to die for them aside from it being the good and virtuous thing to do. Dammit, why did he have to say that before he raced off?

If I left now I doubt that the snake would catch me as I made my getaway. Leaving Deciduous behind would mean that I would have no future destination, and I would just end up wandering Equestria aimlessly. While that is not necessarily a bad thing it isn’t really very good either.

If I went to help then we would either succeed or fail. In both of these outcomes there was a high chance that I wouldn’t survive the encounter. If I didn’t survive then I would just simply be dead here, and no one would mourn me. If I survived however I might be able to achieve hero status, and keep Deciduous as a traveling partner assuming that he lived as well.

Going to help had both the best and worst possible outcomes while desertion was essentially neutral. Why did this have to be so hard? I let out the breath I had been holding for a while, and watched as the world slowly sped into action. The snake lunged and Scarlet dodged just as I had expected. It seemed that it was time to use an old and tried method of making a choice that you don’t want to; the imaginary coin toss.

It is pretty simple really, you toss a coin in your head and whatever side lands up is what choice you make. This helps to show me what I really want to do sometimes when I just can’t decide on something. I closed my eyes and assigned heads to helping and tails to running away. The toss lasted nearly ten seconds before I watched the quarter fall to the ground heads up, and with a sigh I immediately sprinted into action.

The snake had caught a pedestrian and was currently swallowing the pony as I arrived at its base. It flicked its forked tongue out of its mouth and turned its attention back to the pegasi that were doing an excellent job at being a distraction.

“What can I do to help?” I asked the unicorn guard that I had met earlier that day, who I had run up next to.

“Why don’t you cut this thing up until it doesn’t move anymore,” she snarled back as she finished charging a spell and let it loose at the snake. The spell struck its base where it began to rise into the air and blew off a good amount of scales, leaving behind a fleshy layer of skin.

Not wasting a second I dashed forward and sliced along the exposed area with my claws leaving a deep gash behind. Blood seeped from the wound, and I struck again and again trying to dig deeper and deliver something more than a superficial laceration. The massive beast shifted ever so slightly drawing my attention away from where I was attack, and up to the head that was barreling down at me.

Something struck me from the side pushing me out of the way of its teeth. The remaining pegasus guard swooped down and nailed the snake just above the eye, turning its attention away from my prone form on the ground. I blinked a few times getting my bearings and noticed a green mass lying on top of me. I shoved it off to discover that none other than Deciduous had saved my life.

“Come to help I see.” he said with a smile as he also picked himself up off the ground.

“If we live through this I am going to fucking kill you!” I yelled back as I moved to the side.

This time it didn’t seem like he was bothered in the least by my swearing or my threat, and he also moved back to get ready for another attack. While we were all inflicting wounds on the serpent we really didn’t penetrate its skin much, and just weren’t hitting anything vital. We would need to change up strategy if there was to be any chance of victory.

“Look out!” came a shout to my right, but it was too late. As I had been lost in my planning the snake had taken the opportunity to strike out with its tail as Deciduous and I. The nimble earth pony that had actually been paying attention had dodged the strike with ease, but I hadn’t seen it coming at all.

I was sent flying into the support beam of the nearest building with enough force to snap it in two, and bring the floor above down on myself. The support beam wasn’t the only thing that had snapped, and I was able to distinctly hear at least three ribs do the same as I collided with the brick wall that stopped my flight. The floor above came crashing down into the first, but luckily enough I had landed against a load bearing wall meaning that I was spared from being crushed.

Dust and dirt filled the air for several moments as I whimpered in pain pathetically. I coughed to get rid of the air that was burning my lungs and tried to stand. The building around me was burning in a roaring inferno, and I needed to get out of there before the fires reached me and I died of smoke inhalation. Running was a bit beyond me at the time and I wasn’t doing much better with walking, so I crawled from my safe place against the wall to the nearest window.

Several jagged pieces of glass cut at me as I pulled myself up over the windowsill and flopped down to the ground outside. There was a ringing in my ears that wouldn’t go away, and the chronic chest pain that I had been feeling for the past few days had been replaced with millions of needles boring through my flesh. For I don’t know how long I wasn’t able to move from where I was lying on the ground.

There had to be something that I could do to get through this right? I reached towards the swirling mass of energy that I had felt earlier in a hope that I could stop time, and with it the pain that was penetrating me. It seemed to work, but I wasn’t exactly sure since with my eyes clenched shut tightly the only difference I was able to make out was the lack of screaming. I continued to concentrate on the blue energy that I was feeding from, hoping that I could do something else with it.

Just reaching out and touching the energy with my mind seemed enough to allow me to enter this state of timelessness. What I really needed though was a way to take out that monster, and if I could just figure out how to use this source of magic to do that I would be golden. I tried to grab the energy, but it quickly slipped from my mental grasp like it was water. I didn’t care and continued grabbing at it until I had pulled away a small bit that I thought I might be able to use, and did the only thing I could think to do with it. I put all of it into my claws in a hope that it would somehow supercharge them.

To my endless astonishment it seemed to work. I felt a warm sensation overcome my front paws and when I opened my eyes to look I saw that they were alight with a blue fire. The fire traveled halfway up my arms and seemed to bleed off into the air around me. The pain that I had been feeling before was almost completely gone, and I was able to make it back to my feet once more.

The alley I had landed in was dark, but by no means was it cold. Burning pieces of debris littered the ground around my as I quickly raced back into the open where I hoped the fight was still going on. I smiled as I sped into the open faster than I had been able to run previously, and saw the snake still trying to get at the ponies fighting it.

Luckily, it seemed that no more of the ponies had fallen to the beast while I was incapacitated so I ran to them to once more engage the enemy. The unicorn guard had just finished launching another spell, and sweat dripped down from her brow as she panted. Deciduous had more than one scrape on him from rolling around to get out of the way of the snake’s strikes, but other than that he appeared no worse for the wear. The pegasi above were moving slower, and taking turns resting for a few seconds on one of the nearby buildings that hadn’t collapsed yet.

“Vixen, you are on fire!” Deciduous yelled at me as I rejoined the fight.

“I know it’s fine,” I called back to him. I sprinted forwards and slashed at the snake’s body with my flaming claws hoping that I would have some sort of increased penetrating power. I was pleasantly surprised when it looked like that wasn’t all that I had gained with this new ability.

As I slashed into its flesh I distinctly noticed that I appeared to just cleave straight through it. The wound that I left behind didn’t bleed, nor did it seem to attract the attention of the serpent, as it was busy lunging at one of the unicorns, which was quite fortunate because I was just staring in awe. The wound was completely healed over with a mass of scar tissue that appeared to have been there for years. Being as dedicated to the scientific process as I was I repeated the experiment and cleaved into the beast once more though I took this strike far deeper. I carved out a good twenty pounds of flesh and marveled as once again the wound that I left behind which should have been bleeding an incredible amount just appeared as a deep and vicious scar.

I smiled and started to strike in frenzy at the monster leaving behind scars all over its body. This time I caught the subtle movement it made as it turned to strike at me and lunged out of the way in time to dodge it. As I retreated I struck out with my claws and managed to gouge it in the eye. The creature roared in pain and pulled its head back away from me quickly.

As I looked up at it once more I saw that its eye was now white and milky. I laughed at it as I moved back to catch my breath before I would start attacking it again. The strikes that I had been causing were deep, but they wouldn’t bring it down in time at the rate that the ponies around me were tiring out. I ducked as its tail came at me and Deciduous once more, and watched him leap forwards once again with his sword and slice into the snake.

What were the vital points on a snake? There weren’t many since it was essentially just a long spinal cord with a head at the top. An idea came to me and because of how ridiculous it was I found myself immediately wanting to try it out. I ran back to the hulking python and used my flaming claws to slice into and crawl onto its back. The scars that I rended in its flesh made excellent handholds, and I was soon atop of the thing.

It squirmed around as it continued to strike at the others without so much as acknowledging me. I smiled as I ran along its back towards its head that was high in the air. I dug into it once again as I started to climb towards my objective while happily causing as much damage as I could as I went.

The snake lunged forwards at one of the unicorns on the ground nearly causing me to be thrown off as it did so. My front paws cleaved through its scales as its head shot forwards leaving me with just my back legs to keep me in position. Miraculously I was able to keep hold, and used the opportunity of its lowered head to run towards my destination. I made it to the base of its skull just as it lifted its head once more into the air to get at the pegasi above.

I dug in deep in order to keep hold and tried to locate my target. I freed one of my front paws and began slashing at where I assumed its spinal cord to be, and after tearing away a lot of muscle I found the bone I was looking for. The white of it peeked out at me, and I plunged my claws forwards like daggers in hopes of severing it.

The bone was much harder than the skin and muscle had been, and I wasn’t able to get a good cut on the bone. This didn’t deter me in the least and I stabbed at it over and over trying to paralyze the rampaging beast. I continued for what felt like several minutes before I was finally rewarded with a loud crack as the first vertebrae of its spine snapped and the entire beast fell to the ground limp.

This time I was thrown aside as the snake smacked against the ground wetly, and I landed on the ground next to its head with a thud. All of the beatings that I had been taking were starting to catch up to me, and I found it hard to bring myself once again to a standing position. I looked over to the snake’s useless eye that spun around blind in confusion. I smiled once again as I realized that it had no idea what was going on.

From here it was pretty much just clean up, and I really didn’t want to have to deal with that. I released the hold on the magic I had been maintaining in the back of my head ever since I had managed to learn this new ability. The first thing I noticed as the blue fire ceased was that the chest pain I felt earlier returned with renewed vigor in an attempt to barrel me over. I held my ground for a moment, but only because the cool numbness in my front paws was distracting me from the pain that I felt.

I slowly lifted one of said paws before my eyes to examine it, and saw that all of the fur that had covered them had been burned away, and left behind just skin. The skin itself was black, which hadn’t been what I had expected my skin color to be, but since I was completely covered in fur how was I to know. I tried to wiggle a finger to rid myself of the numbness that was penetrating me and watched in horror as the skin and flesh beneath it cracked and split open to reveal the white bone beneath that was trying to escape. That was when I started screaming.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by one that knew only pain and anguish. I fell to the ground and writhed in agony as more of my skin split open, and seemed to try and rid itself of the bones that held my frame together. The fiery fury of pain screamed through my legs and into my mind where I wasn’t able to shut it out. It was the most intense sensation that could possibly be felt, and as I felt something or someone try to push down on me I struck out reflexively and felt a new wave of pain wash over me as the blow landed.

I continued to scream and scream as my now ruined legs were forced down, and something was jabbed into my arm. I tried to pull away and do anything I could in the hopes of making the pain go away, but nothing helped in the least. Before everything disappeared into black either from the shock I was going through or the sedative that I had been injected with I was barely able to make out someone calling for a doctor and a stretcher.