"Chi! Wake up, big crystal thingies are attacking Canterlot!"

The sound barely registers to my ears.

“Just five more minutes Ribbo-” Wait… “WHAT!?” I somehow manage to roll out of bed onto my hooves, only just processing what I had heard. “Can we not have sex without something wrong?!”

"We need to go, now!"

“Alright, just let me…” I focused, willing my miasma to condense around me into a familiar set of armor. “And I’m ready.” I heard Ribbon mutter something, as I steeled myself as I felt Akumu waiting beneath my wing.

“Go ahead and help the guards, I’m going to head to the armoury and get my stuff.” Ribbon headed for the door with me behind her. We split up, going down different tunnels as I headed for the surface. The sounds of fighting getting louder, alongside screams of panic.

“Just bloody wonderful…” I muttered as I rushed towards the surface. what I saw upon exiting the caverns was complete chaos. The changeling guard, with the aid of the lunar guard, where fighting black crystal hounds, while the solar guard was trying to aid in evacuating everyone. To my horror, I saw one of the hounds detonate and impale the guard that slayed it one spikes of crystal. The guard was dead before he even knew what hit him.

One of the ones still standing looked at me, and howled, creating a sound that sounded like grinding glass, drawing the attention of every other hound in ear shot.

Having no choice, I drew Akumu and stood my ground as they rushed me, and decapitated the first one to reach me, swiftly dissolving into miasma to avoid impalement from the detonation, and reforming mid air, dodging out of the way of one that tried to leap at me, and kicking as hard as I could, sending flying into the side of a building , where it detonated into more crystal shards.

“god….”

Another dodge.

“fucking.”

A clean bisection and teleport.

“DAMNIT!”

I ducked under another hound.

“This is why…’

Kick another away.

“I can’t…”

Cleaved another in hal- DOOOODGE!

“HAVE NICE THINGS!”

Another one leapt on top of me and plowed me into the ground, an-

Why is it glowin-

The next thing I knew, I was flat on my ass, against a wall,my ears ringing, and a searing pain in several areas. It felt like I was caught on something as I tired to stand up, which sent even more pain shooting through me as the hounds closed in on me.

A green glow in the corner of my eye alerted me to a bolt of magic that blew the head of one of the hounds, setting off a chain reaction taking out half a dozen of them. “I know you can’t die, but could you be a little less reckless? I don’t want you having to regenerate in the middle of a fight!”

“WHAT!?” I shouted, trying to hear myself over the ringing from the one hound having detonated in my face. Ribbon was pushed back.

‘Enough with the shouting!’

I tried to shake the ringing out of my head. “How was I supposed to know they exploded!?’ I retorted, before trying to get to my hooves only to realize I couldn't move from my location. “What the hell am I stuck on, anyway?”

“You… have a spike sticking out of your stomach.”

“...Shit. Can’t exactly pull that out without bleeding out. Gonna need your help with this.”

She yanked it out.

“YOU COULD HAVE WAITED UNTIL I WAS READY!” I screamed in pain. “And now I’m bleeding out….”

“Ok, I’m going to cauterize the wound.”

Before I can say anything, a sudden pain filled my mind and I nearly blacked out. Ribbon helped to my hooves where I struggled to remain standing, holding a hoof to the wound and wincing. “Thats gonna hurt…”

“I don’t think you can keep fighting, can you put up a shield? Help keep the citizens safe while we evacuate them?”

“Shields never were my thing… But, I think I have something that can keep them safe.” I said, managing a grin despite the pain I was in. “you’d be familiar with it, too.” I glanced at my shadow.

“Yes, you’re subtlety needs work.”

“Who said I was being-” I groaned as a muscle in my stomach spasmed. “...Subtle?” The hounds were starting to overpower the changelings that were keeping them at bay.

“I need to go. Go help the captain get the citizens some place safe.”

“Okay then, just, stay safe.” I asked, before dissolving into a cloud of miasma, as it was less painful this way. It was fairly easy to locate the guard captain, I just had to head towards where most of the fighting was happening, in the city square.

It was pretty gruesome, they were clearly losing the fight here. I swooped in time to pull a guard away from a crystal hound about to explode, I set him down and he seemed a bit more weary of the hounds. I floated up to the captain and reformed, before helping him fend off ones that were getting to close to the civilians.

Well, I was originally planning on useing this for something else, but this is pretty good time to use it. Focusing, I drew forth an abyssal creature from my shadow, and the Keeper emerged, followed by another. I had used this one once before, albit in a different context, but this time, it was a full fledged construct, awaiting input. At first glance it looked similar albeit slightly smaller than the Keeper, but if one looked closer you would see that it had a thin skin that kept it together, thin tail with a spade tip, sharp claws and a mouth full of shark teeth.

What concerned me was that they looked like they were steaming as large wisps of abyssal were coming off of them. And I don’t know why. Regardless, I sent the new construct to fight the hounds while the Keeper would protect the civilians. I noticed most of the guards had a rather startled expression on their faces, clearly having not expected me to do that.

“You guys have a plan? I don’t think those are going to last.” I warned, Desperately hoping they had some kind of evacuation plan, especially since this was ground zero for Chrysalis' invasion.

“We’re trying to clear out the main roads and move everypony to the train station, we have two trains there right now, one’s primed to leave for Ponyville and the other to Manehatten.” The captain told me.

I groaned internally, this was not going to be easy. “Okay, we got two options, we can stick to the open where they won't be able to ambush us, but we’ll be under attack from nearly every direction, or we can stick to the alleyways, but if one of those things do get in the middle of us, well, it's not going to be pretty, considering they explode with more than enough force to cleanly pierce armor and impale you to a wall.”

“Probably safer to stay on the main road for now.”

“How many pegasi and thestrals do we have who can still fly? those things can jump, but they don't seem to be able to fly, so we have practically unopposed aerial superiority, we should be exploiting that for all its worth.”

“Planty, but our bolts are useless. If we had more of those rifles that our pegasi could use we’d be better off, but as they are right now only the unicorns or the changelings can use them.” The captain stomped his hoof in frustration.

“So? it doesn't matter if it hurts them as long as it draws their attention away from the more vulnerable.” I suppressed a wince as another jolt of pain came from my new scar.

-Hey, Ribbon?- I mentally inquired over our link.

‘What is it?’

-I need a rifle, it isn't exactly going to be easy to fight with a patched up hole in me.-

‘I can try and get a few over to you but no promises. There’s a lot of them!’

-That all I can ask of yo-

“Duck!”

When someone says to duck, you goddamned duck, so i hit the floor before a shard of one of the crystal hounds whizzed right over my head, before embedding itself in a wall.

“Alright ponies, we have an opening, let's move!” the captain shouted, before a group of rather terrified looking ponies emerged from the building behind us, the guards gathering around them as we began moving towards the train station. I knew I wouldn't be able to do much with Akumu due to my injury, so I resorted to the next best thing.

Liberal application of excessive magical force. I basically blasted any hound that got to close into the ground, leaving a shrapnel filled crater behind, while the Keeper and its companion made quick work of any that tried to come from behind. they were really starting to look bad though, I could swear it looked like they were boiling.

“How much further do we have to go!?”

“Can’t be that much farther, we should be able to see the station around the next corner ma’am!” One of the soldiers answered. Before we managed to get to the street corner however, some of the taller buildings exploded. Rubble and debris filled the streets blocking the main road.

“Well fuck.” I was running on fumes in terms of magic by this point, so moving that mess or blasting through it wasn't an option.

“Quick, the alleyway!” one of the guards shouted, pointing to path between two buildings.I was one of the last one to funnel into it, followed by the Keeper and my other creation. Once we were in the darkness of the alleyway, whatever had been happening to the two seemed to begin to settle down. They honestly looked like they were going to fall apart. while the guards were taking a quick headcount, I took the opportunity to extend a tendril of abyssal from my shadow, and join it to my other creation, pushing more abyssal into it and restoring it to its original shape. The Keeper seemed smart enough to draw out abyssal on it’s own. Emergent behavior? Maybe I should test how far it’ll go to do what it’s told or how much it can learn, it’s clearly capable of learning.

“Behind us!” A guard shouted in panic. Whipping my head around, I saw a hound charging right at me, already glowing.

Author's Notes:

boom headshot