Shadowmere

Discord was laughing. Celestia had forgotten about him during the evacuation, and now Canterlot was his new playground. Even if it was occupied by creatures that kept ruining his fun.

"Have some cheese, damned thing!" he yelled at a scamp as it dove towards him. The scamp soon became a cheese statue. "Ah, much better."

He tore the cheese scamps head off, and tossed it at another scamp, which ate it happily.

Four scamps had started wandering around following him for no apparent reason. They didn't do much, but were rather entertaining to play with, especially after he dumped one about 40 metres above hard cobbles and it had survived the fall.

From that point onwards, he treated them as perfect playthings, they didn't have the same physical or mental fragility the ponies possessed. Or the desire for freedom.

A Clanfear charged out of a alleyway at him, and from nowhere he produced a red bullfighters cape and cleanly spun out of the Clanfears path, shouting "Toro, Toro!"

The Clanfear almost went straight down another alleyway, until Discord turned it sideways, causing it to crash into a wall.

He made the cape vanish and reappear on his antler like a flag before he concluded not enough chaos was being created.

A large amount of mental acrobatics and punching whichever idiotic pony discovered the 'laws of physics' later, Canterlot was throughly improved.

The castle was now floating on its own little island of earth above the mountain and many other buildings were arranged on other bits of floating earth, linked by paths that would randomly change destinations.

Even the city itself was lifted slightly off the mountain.

"Much better. Now," Discord snapped his talons, causing a very tall observation tower made out of chocolate to appear under him and a large box of popcorn to appear in his paw. "And now for tonight's entertainment- ponies vs things from somewhere other than Equestria!"

"Round 1...Fight!"

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Shadowmere woke up, as per usual after he suffered intervention in death from Sithis or a Daedric Prince, normally Mephala, with a splitting headache and a open bottle of skooma in front of him that he would down in order to wake himself up.

He tore the stopper out with his jaw, and downed the bottle in one. The skooma hit him almost instantly. He got to his hooves, stretched a bit before he checked he had everything.

Blade of Woe... Check. Wabbaspear? Check. He had no idea what the Wabbaspear could do, but it could probabaly do everything the Wabbajack did with some extras stuck on.

He looked around, trying to get his bearings. Canterlot was to the east and from the large amount of occasional explosions from the city, somepony was putting up a large amount of resistance.

He drew the Wabbaspear from it's resting place across his back with his left hoof and adopted a stance like he had seen the Argonian soldiers in Morrowind use along with their distinctive black, spiked shields that earned them the nickname Blackshields.

"And now to test out the extras..."

Shadowmere didn't know much about magic, being a horse. What he did know after years of hunting down wizards was that you had to visualise the spell, without any doubt in your mind, and if you had enough of a draw on your bodies magicka or the magicka overlying the world, you would cast the spell.

Staves were easier to use though as you just had to put a small amount of your own magicka into the staff and it would do whatever it did- you just had to point the staff.

Here, the staff did everything for you. Telekenisis, teleportation, conjoiration, the whole lot. Unfortunately, being created by Sheogorath, it had a small fault. Namel, the user would have no idea what spell the staff would cast. The white unicorn horn provided basic spells like telekenisis and other mundane spells but anything resembling complicated magic was completely random at best and exactly what you didn't want at worst.

A few fiery explosions, summoned scamps and turning a wandering pack of weird wooden wolves into sweetrolls later, Shadowmere was confident that he could properly use the Wabbaspear.

And with that, as the heavens began to open, Shadowmere began the long journey south , judging by the fact the sun was beginning to set in the west. He just hoped Connor wasn't a lycanthrope. That would be a prank worthy of Sheogorath when he was in a trolling mood.

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"When do you expect the rearguard to arrive, Captain?"

Celestia asked Shining Armour as she made her way through Ponyville, accompanied by the Element Bearers, Luna, Cadence and a small group of the Day Guard, heading towards the train station.

"I don't know Princess, it depends on things such as how many enemies they were facing, where they came from, how many ponies died.. Were lost in the initial assault of the... What were they called?"

"Daedra?" Twilight supplied helpfully.

"Thanks Twily, the initial attack of these Daedra. We have almost no infomation except what Connor" Shining motioned back towards the library, where Connor was currently passed out for no apparent reason and nopony saw any reason to move or help him, if the large amount of empty bottles around him labeled 'Nordic Ale' were anything to go by. "Has told us and I don't view a drunk mercenary as a reliable source." Shining sighed as they entered the station which was beginning to fill with Guard field medics and doctors from the Canterlot hospital, ready to treat the rearguard when they eventually arrived.

"And how many survivors?" Luna asked the one question everypony had wished to avoid.

"Survivors, Princess? I have no idea. Losses could be anywhere from the rather low level the Guard suffered during the Changeling invasion to complete anhnillation of the rearguard. We'll find out soon enough."

A loud whistle that could only be the train echoed out from the darkness, and soon enough, everypony could see the lights of the train approaching.

The train was not in the best condition- large burn marks were visible in the sides of the carriages and almost all the windows were broken. Iron Wheel, the Trotish driver and ex-guardspony waved a hoof to them as the train came to a slow stop and the rearguard began to limp off the train.

Celestia looked for any of her Day Guard who had survived, but only spotted one who upon walking unsteadily over to the field medics, promptly collapsed onto a stretcher, a large, crudely bandadged claw mark over his Cutie Mark of a spearhead.

Luna looked for any signs of Shadowmere, a massive, black pony shouldn't be that hard to find in a crowd like this, should he? She did spot Captain Nightwing however, who was using his spear as a crutch to avoid walking on a obviously injured leg and motioned for him to come over.

Nightwing, hesitantly began to walk towards Luna through the crowd of ponies. When Nightwing eventually reached the cluster of guardponies surrounding the Princesses, Luna could see a slight look of fear etched on his face.

"Where, Captain, is my Spymaster?"

Nightwing shuffled uneasily.

"I ask again Captain, where is Shadowmere?"