Author's Notes:

One of the insults used in this chapter was coined by the user Estee. It has been used with her permission.

Discord struck first, his body a coiling blur as he closed the distance between himself and Anna. The crazed mare jumped back, eyes wide with surprise as the sledgehammer came crashing down onto her front left knee. As the attack struck with enough force to break her stance and send her sprawling to the ground, the house's topmost crevices of the roof opened up in twin hatches to launch blazing fireworks shaped like chairs that trailed rainbows in their wake.

These fireworks homed in on Anna with alarming speed and accuracy, and it was all she could do to stand up and take the blow. Confetti and cotton candy-smelling smoke erupted around her as scalding, raw pain danced upon her hide. "At the very least, you could've given us a nice housewarming party!" he chirped as the fireworks kept on raining, their vibrant explosions pushing her closer and closer to the edge of the plateau.

Luna took a moment to make sure the spell circle she was casting was stable, before briefly facehoofing at that one. Grumbling about terrible puns under her breath, she waited until the explosive reverie concluded with its smoke clearing before aiming her horn and enlarging the runes circling it. They expanded to about the neck-height of Celestia as did the circle containing them, and from between them a rain of silver, hollowed-out stars sprang forth in an upwards arc to twinkle in the moonlight as they cascaded down on the prone Anna.

This kicked up more dust, disturbing the runes carved into it and obscuring Anna in a sweltering cloud that did not settle until the last star struck somewhere in the confusion. She raised her head to survey the scene, tempted to fan the cloud away with her wings when Discord held up a paw with one digit extended straight up.

When the cloud cleared, though, Luna's jaw hit the floor. Anna had vanished from where she had fallen. She glanced around, looking for any signs of foul play when a close, oddly serene giggle hit her ears.

"Come on, Crater-Ass, you didn't expect me to actually fall into the magma, didja?" Anna taunted from somewhere nearby, her mere voice seemingly enough to cause the remaining runes in the soil to crackle to life. Ivy and bamboo sprung up at an alarmingly swift rate, and it was all Luna and Discord could do to backpedal over the edge and fly away before they could be snagged.

Once out of the danger, Luna's brow furrowed. "Only my sister can call me that!" she barked indignantly, face turning a slight shade of red as she scanned the plateau's underside for any signs of her opponent cheating.

"Oh please," Discord said, elbowing Luna in the shoulder without the force needed to unbalance her flight, "I called you that several times before being stoned the first time." When she glared at him, he rolled his eyes and swung his house-hammer at his side lazily. "Besides, I've found that insulting the other party during combat is a Fantasian custom. Helps to channel anger or some poppycock like that."

Luna groaned and turned back to the island, before her eyes gravitated to the moon overhead. Igniting her horn and letting her magic lance out to it, she pulled it across the sky until it hovered directly over the plateau, then over her and Discord when its light revealed nothing amidst the ivy and bamboo.

When its light shined upon the cavern sitting on the winding road, its surface rippled erratically before viridian dust fell off of something standing right in front of it. Luna smirked; those colors certainly didn't match the ashen hue of the structure. "Do you also know that the Moon represents illusions?" she mocked, smile widening as she saw Anna stomping a claw and swearing under her breath. "You couldn't cheat me like that even if I were blindfolded."

Discord chuckled. "Sneaky sneaky," he muttered, aiming his house-hammer at Anna before letting loose another cascade of fireworks that homed in right away. Anna's response was to gallop into the cavern without hesitation, and the fireworks skid to a halt right outside that same opening before rotating towards it and following.

Silence held for a moment before the top half of the spire, and thus the plateau, were sent flying into the air by way of explosions—along with Discord and Luna's petulant quarry, who went back to being airborne without the aid of her faux wings. Discord curled his tail around his weapon so he could free his hands to clap. "And there's our prima donna!" he howled, eyes glinting as his magic worked on the plateau to turn it upside-down right as Anna started to scrabble for it. "And now for the Dizzitron's inbred cousin, the Dizzy Delight!"

The plateau's top slammed into the broken bottom half with force, rocking itself with a jolt as Anna faceplanted into the underside's surface. This sent her bouncing momentarily prior to finding the surface rotating slowly. Unsure as to what was happening, she dug her claws into the soil and anchored herself further with vines when she contemplated getting her legs back beneath her.

She never got the chance to stand back up though; the plateau-turned-top began to spin faster and faster, tilting more and more to the sides as it rotated on its axis. As it did not have a sharpened tip in the center to balance it, it wobbled more as it gained speed. It wasn't long before Anna was screeching again, clinging for dear life as the top turned about unsteadily.

Then Discord procured a downscaled, palm-sized version of the top with a proper central pike balanced on the very tip of his claw. He let it gain speed for a few more seconds, then used his paw to strike the spire in a way that made it jolt sharply to the side. The larger version tipped as well, the sheer suddenness of it more than enough to launch Anna into the air for a second time—and she went careening right towards them.

Oh well, as good an opportunity as any to bring out a giant paper bulls-eye, Discord figured. He moved to the side and conjured the bullseye, its center emblazoned with his face and a caption reading "Hit me here for 100 points!" in ugly pastels that would have made most sane ponies' eyes burn from just looking at it. The minute he conjured it was the same minute that Anna crashed through the center, leaving a massive tear in her wake as the chunk she struck clung to her face.

In taking her time to remove the obstruction, which was less graceful and more scrambling to get her claws to grip it first, she forgot to flap her faux wings. When she realized this, she was already inches from the magma, and began shouting swears before being swallowed up by glowing crimson with a disturbingly water-like ripple emerging to commemorate her impact with its surface.

Then she was launched a third time, in this instance by the magma forming a spout and firing her out of it like a cannon. That time, though, she flapped to become airborne, and once she steadied herself she started to froth at the mouth as her more colorful oaths began racing out her brain and from between her teeth. "I fucking swear I'll rip your horns off and shove them up so far up your cockhole your balls will rupture!"

Discord lifted his paw and flung it down on his wrist with a pshaw! leaving his mouth. "And what good would that do you?" he retorted, returning his house-hammer to his claw to ready it for round two. "If anything, you'd probably get creamed with the effort. I doubt Lance would like that."

That made Anna's face turn three shades redder, and her vines grew a magnitude of thorns upon their surfaces that lashed out irritably. Her front claws clenched and a snort came from her snout. "Don't you dare—" she started, spittle flying out her mouth as her frothing continued.

"What's wrong, afraid of a little accident?" Discord teased, pumping his house-hammer and producing a click that only a cocked gun would have produced. "Or worse yet—having it wither on you?"

That was all it took to get Anna racing to him with claws outstretched and a cry of primitive fury emerging from her throat. Luna winced at the shrillness of it; were glass present, it would have cracked by now. Discord yawned, sidewinded out of the way of the initial strike, and proceeded to thwack her on the back right between the faux wings with the hammer before she even turned around for a second attempt.

She plummeted back down to the magma in short order. Luna looked at Discord with wide eyes and a wrinkled snout. "How did you know that would set her off?" she demanded.

Discord grinned. "I took a few liberties around Irongrey Aerie while I was exploring Fantasia; turning invisible, just doing the usual stroll, seeing what else about the diplomats I could dig up." He pointed downwards to indicate Anna and added, "And it seems the child soldier has a bit more that she'd rather not discuss with anyone—even mentioning it most days is enough to get an arrow up the derriere." When Luna continued to look at him questioningly, he added, "Overheard a few soldiers talking about it, and did some snooping around to find some ash urns in a graveyard."

Luna sighed with a nod. "The ashes of…?" she pressed.

Discord shook his head, glancing down as Anna came flying back up with another wail of rage as her vines extended exponentially. "That, well… it's one of the reasons Lance has his reservations about foal-diddling," he said, dodging out of the way of the initial strike, only to have thorny brambles lock themselves around his wrists and ankles to draw them together. He attempted to pry his limbs loose, but more and more coils of ivy wreathed him in a blanket that soon smothered him.

Luna frowned, and conjured up another spell circle around her horn, backing off to set some distance between her and Anna as she cast. She did not cease her spellcasting as the vines entangling Discord had snapped off of their quarry, withered, and then turned into impressive lengths of rainbow-colored taffy that sprung off of the chaos entity with nothing more than some minor perforations decorating his body.

Anna's eyes twitched at this development, as did one corner of her mouth. "Oh, right, chaos…" she grumbled irritably, watching as Discord healed his wounds with nothing more than a snap of his claw before he charged her again with the house-hammer raised. She lit her horn and teleported out of harm's way, reappearing above the now-ruined rock outcrop prior to summoning the wood-and-vines harp in one barky crook.

Luna turned to Anna and tilted her head, holding her spell for just a moment longer. "A harp? But I thought—" she started.

Discord finished for her, "She had a flute?" He huffed and cocked his hammer like a gun once more, causing the roof hatches to open up in preparation of dispensing another payload. As he did that, both saw her plucking a few strings with her other claw experimentally. "Well, nevermind what instrument the spoony bard over there wields—mind what she's going to use it for!" He charged once again, eyes glinting as chair-shaped fireworks erupted from his weapon to flank him on all sides in a colorful array that would have put even the Wonderbolts to shame.

Anna responded by conjuring a triad of arrows, each crystal a different color as she loaded them into one of the strings of the harp and angled the instrument like a makeshift bow. As soon as Discord got himself in range, she fired the triple shot point-blank in his face. Teleporting to dodge the hail of fireworks and burning agony, reappearing at a safe distance to watch Discord's expression shift to wide-eyed surprise as the trifecta of crystalized pain began to spread across his body from the snout downwards.

Flames sprouted from crimson growths, more glowing arrows of pure ice thunked him in a myriad of places and spread their icy tendrils, and lightning danced around him to the extent that his skeleton blazed pure white from within. Even partially stiffening with frost, Discord did a little unwitting jig, contorting into a myriad of poses in rapid succession that had Anna smirking with delight. Even his hammer danced, twirling and throwing itself in the air to match its master's movements.

Luna noted this, worry flashing in her eyes at the spectacle. "... somepony taught her crystal magic…" she muttered in dismay, sighing in preparation and anticipation of finding herself turned into a pincushion. "Normally, side-effects manifesting like that tend to run on a roulette's principle…" Nonetheless, she fired off her spell, and a much larger, more spread-out shower of hollowed-out silvern stars rained down onto the scene, each and every one turning to convene upon Anna.

Too distracted with her amusement at Discord's plight, Anna had left herself open for another attack that she took the brunt of. The stars hit fast and hard; one wing was clipped to its wooden ulna with prejudice, and the bark on her legs was sheared off in a myriad of places. She tumbled out of the air, unable to steady herself with only one fully functioning faux wing, and yet the stars continued to fall down on and with her as strikes kept landing swift and true. Down, down, down she went into the magma with twinkling comets still following her through the descent to what seemed like the inevitable landing.

But before she could splash into it, she enveloped herself in a green light and vanished mere inches from its surface, leaving the stars to explode as they struck the burning sea below. Luna's expression soured; frown deepening and eyes narrowing, she scanned above and below to see where the petulant Fantasian had gone off to this time. She felt a gust of wind blowing against her back, and turned around almost immediately.

There, in the distance, was Anna, self-levitating as her faux wings started to regenerate. Harp in claw and strings being plucked almost carelessly, her eyes twinkled in what Luna could only determine was demented delight. Wind pulsed from the instrument, the air distorted with each fresh note, and the entirety of the object glowed with vibrant viridian runes that seemed alive. "You wouldn't mind a little cold here, would you? It would certainly be a nice change of pace," Anna teased with a smug grin, as the light from above dimmed suddenly.

Luna and Discord looked up and gaped. Clouds were gathering above, thick and dark as coal, crackling with lightning and already letting down heaps upon heaps of snow. The gales picked up in seconds, and so did the snow that rode them. Within a minute, even the glowing crimson sea beneath had dimmed considerably as the frozen particles impacted its surface again and again, sending steaming vitriol back up that made Luna think of a duality when she felt it.

Barely able to see the other, Luna and Discord then shared a glance. "She can manipulate the weather?!" Luna barked, lifting a hoof to point at where Anna had last been seen before she called down the storm.

"Apparently so!" Discord yelled back as the storm around them rose in pitch until the din was almost deafening. "But she doesn't do it often because of the ectoplasms on Fantasia! Those little buggers can turn volatile towards even their benefactor!"

"Then what, pray tell, do we do!?" Luna called, yelping and darting away from Discord as an arrow sailed right across her snout, carried by the fell winds. In doing so, she realized she was struggling more and more to see Discord's distinct form as snow and steam worked in tandem to blind her with each and every second.

Discord tried snapping his talon's digits, but another arrow sailed from the gloom to strike him in the side of the palm. He grumbled as red crystals began sprouting once more to immobilize the limb, and simply turned to study the instrument he held in his paw. Grinning, he waved the house-hammer in an arc, letting loose another torrent of flying chairs that twisted to aim behind him. Turning in that direction as his claw exploded into flames, he watched as the prismatic trails of his little rockets dimmed and dimmed into the gloom.

Yet amidst the howling winds, much to his delight, were the tell-tale explosions that came a second later. He whirled as the sound came from his left, and saw light flashing in that direction—muted light, but present nonetheless. He shifted his burning talon to angle the house-hammer in that direction and called out, "Looks like we found her, Hellen! Time to give her the Discordian Diplomacy!"

The house-hammer reacted instantly, growing boosters on its underside as mechanical arms flopped out from the sides and a mechanical dragon-like head from the front that roared like a lich-wyrm with its emergence. As the boosters ignited with fire, Discord shifted to stand on it and balance himself in a way that would have made Pinkie Pie proud. The weapon launched with a whistle, and Discord steered it like a surfboard as he used the very winds to help guide him to his target.

The explosions of light and sound grew brighter and louder as the gales tried to sweep him into their turmoil, but Discord rode them high and low without losing his balance. As he did this, he clapped his hands to conjure winged pigs bearing knightly armor and halberds that also zeroed in on the colors and noises filtering through the snow-filled smog.

The pigs flew fast and true, disappearing into the gloom before the distinct crackling of bark and shrill screams of bloody murder pierced the white vortex all around them. Seconds later, he came upon the reason for the screeching: the pigs had skewered Anna's faux wings as well as right through her legs, with one even using its halberd to remove the harp from her claws while another used the groove between axehead and speartip to hold Anna's horn by the spiral. She thrashed her head, trying to cast, but all her magic did was make her do a rather shoddy jig with limited movements as lightning coursed her body.

He grinned widely. "And now for the coup de grâce, don't you think?" he cheered as the pigs oinked and squealed in his direction, eyes and halberds far too focused on their now-immobilized quarry. With the OK of his winged hogs, he swung the house-hammer again and struck right between the immobilized wings with a blow hard enough to dislodge them clean from their scarring. The hogs let go, and Anna plummeted once more into the gloom.

Then, the winds shifted and the air distorted beneath his tail. Discord looked down and grinned upon seeing a black sphere growing steadily in size, shrinking slightly before re-expanding at every other increment. Seeing it contract and undulate as it grew in mass and strength reminded him of the irregular beating of a labored heart. Still, as it started to suck snow and air inside, he noticed it wasn't shrieking—in fact, the sheer silence it produced had started to drown out the fell winds that Anna had summoned forth.

The orb kept expanding, a veritable void that only hungered for anything and everything within its grasp. Discord peered a bit closer, lifting both paw and talon to extend his eyes between the digits into crude binoculars that enabled him to witness the moment that Anna was swallowed up by the distortion that hadn't been there moments ago.

And only when she was swallowed up had the sphere stopped growing. It held still for a moment, then exploded with enough force to send a wave of darkness all around its circumference that knocked even Discord and his flying pigs right out of their aerial balance. He tumbled out of the air, and fell down with all the grace of a wet noodle split in twain as his wings flapped for dear life.

He didn't know how long it took for him to land on his face upon suspiciously solid ground, or how badly his spine had turned itself into an accordion, but when he was able to lift his head up to glimpse his surroundings, he found Princess Luna alighting to land in front of him with her horn glowing in a black aura that reverted back to its natural blue in seconds. "I didn't know you could pull black holes out from under your tail," he grumbled as he struggled to get decent footing for a moment. He yelped as his spine cricked in places, but soon enough he was over the minor agony of having to straighten his body out. "Can we not do that in these dreamscapes?"

Luna flinched, frowning sheepishly. "Well… I wanted to remove the bark without burning it off of our petulant Fantasian…" she muttered.

Discord stood up, a paw to his back that pushed against himself until another crack between his bones sang out its last breath and enabled him to stand straight again. He waved his talon and conjured his house-hammer, gripping its shaft as he saw a decidedly smoking crater behind Luna, and more magma beyond its edges. "Well why couldn't you just tear it off her body with your levitation gimmick? It's what her other two compadres do if she gets out of line," he said, walking around Luna to peer at the destruction she had wrought.

Luna sighed and cantered over, taking a moment to look up to confirm if the snow was still swirling above her head. It was, and with a muttered curse she glanced to the crater as she neared its edge. In the center, looking as though she had been flattened into the ground by an anvil larger than her body, was a barkless, harpless Anna with all four of her legs bruised and bloody and her face smashed into the dirt.

Another winged pig was summoned with a snap of a paw, and Discord directed it to the prone Fantasian. The hog squealed, flew down, and poked her head with a hoof. There wasn't a response. The hog squealed and poked again, garnering nothing. Then it threw its front hooves in the air, oinked a curse in suidae, and began pronking along her backside with all four hooves jabbing quite firmly into and around her spine and scars with the ferocity of a bucking bull and the patience of a hunting honey badger.

Even then, Anna had yet to move, as more new bruises started to decorate her body thanks to the pig's hooves. The pig snorted in agitation after a good ten minutes pronking to no avail, and flew off into the gloom with a sour frown on its face.

Discord whistled, impressed that little tinny seemed to have had a meager effect in waking Anna back up. "Well now… looks like that did the job alright," he muttered. "Looks like she's now in super dreamland."

"Super dreamland?" Luna asked.

"It's when you pass out in the dream world," Discord replied with a sigh. Then he saw a twitching, bloodied hoof and perked up. "Oh?" He watched as, shakily and with a suffering groan half-muffled by dirt, Anna rose back up with her legs almost buckling from her injuries. Her head rose as she steadied herself, and much to Luna's dismay and Discord's curiosity, her eyes were still crimson even as murder flickered within their changed spheres. What's more, the scowl had returned on her now-muddied face, only accentuated by the few bruises that managed to peek through the second coating of grunge.

She trembled as one hoof almost slipped out, stopping its course just as abruptly when a stray rock stood up to bar its path. This made that leg ooze out more blood as she promptly righted it again to ensure that her body wouldn't sway. "Oh ha ha, very funny," she snapped, grunting as another hoof tried to slip on the bloodied grime beneath her. She steadied again, managing to keep her gaze locked onto Luna and Discord. "Just rip the wood right off me why don't ya? Well, that horseshit's getting old really fast now."

"Took her long enough to start tiring of it," Discord mused, unable to hide the slight grin on his face. It wasn't like his life depended on it right this moment, and in fact it only broadened when the wood and vines began to reemerge on Anna's body, starting with the wings and this time skittering across her body to reform its previously-shattered armor. "You do know you're setting yourself up for infection, right?" he taunted.

"Oh please, it's not like I'm immortal over here!" Anna barked as her mask came next, regrowing its horns and this time arcing about to cover her cheeks and merge with the web-like pattern that came to cover her neck once more.

Discord shook his head. "On the contrary, you still have the Greenwood Blight. Twilight Sparkle filled me in on aaaaaaaall the sordid details. So, you are," he said bluntly, maintaining his smile. "You just don't have to worry about permanently becoming a whole tree anymore." His smile widened further still, and outside of these circumstances would have made his mother happy. "It's also a side-effect of, well, being a descendant from an absolute fucking lunatic."

That made Anna's faux wings bristle. "And how are you so sure I'm related to that hexed bundle of charcoal?"

"Alicorns only beget more alicorns most of the time, so… somepony down his family tree was bound to have both wings and a horn," Discord responded, tail swishing and wings fluttering as he spun his house-hammer lazily in his grip. "Assuming somepony wasn't born with either, and managed to weasel their way out of fueling a geas." He cocked his head. "A bit of eavesdropping helped me learn that little detail."

Anna's face began turning a healthy shade of red beneath her bark and mud mask. Her horn started to spark fitfully. "Why I oughta…" Then, her eyes widened momentarily, and her lips pursed as she seemed to consider something which had not crossed her mind before. She eyed the house-hammer for a moment, before her muzzle split into a toothy, gleaming grin. She waved her horn and conjured some wood, chisels of various sizes, and sandpaper before going to work on the first chunk of wood that looked promising.

Luna was about to open her mouth, only to close it when Discord held his paw in front of her barrel. When she turned to him, he shook his head with his smile melting—"Watch," he seemed to say. She turned back to the crater and watched as Anna worked on crafting… something whose form she was unsure of.

Anna worked furiously, cutting new pieces, seeing if they would fit, and discarding and adding more to the fray as the chisels shaved wood with reckless abandon while the sandpaper smoothed out that which was forming between her front claws. Sometimes, she would break off pieces of vine from her own body to tie two stubborn parts together, and they burrowed into the wood of their own accord to fuse the pieces as though they were another fresh body ready to hex.

When the main frame had been made, Anna summoned forth some strings and smaller nubs of wood to fit into the configuration. Magic made quick work of this, almost trivializing it to the extent that Luna found herself a bit fixated with the woodworking skills being displayed before her. Already, she was making a mental list of a few craftsponies who specialized with woodcraft that would more than likely be jealous of the demented crafting taking place before her. But, that mental list was not without those who would scoff and upturn their own snouts at the effort—were Chanson Cheval to see this, he'd be amongst those throwing a hissyfit about it.

Luna scoffed to herself, wondering whose bright idea it was to include him in the Canterlot Orchestra and who deigned fit to let him out the same day the Fantasians arrived for their diplomacy session. She idly started to blame nepotism for that first one, when she noticed Anna was slowing down her workmareship by a considerable margin. She beheld the item in her magic, a second rune-inscribed harp as tall as she was without the faux wings and wood-lengthened tail impeding her efforts, self-levitating around with faux wings flapping as she scanned every piece and part down to the tiniest splinter.

When Anna was satisfied with it, she clutched it in her front claws and span around to face Luna and Discord again as she aligned her hind claws with the strings. "Let's see if I can do this with my back legs…" she muttered to herself, horn still alight as she put the remaining pieces of wood that hadn't gone into the final product into the aether, along with the chisels and sandpaper and spare strings that still hung around.

"The ambidextrousness of a gryphon?" Discord grinned as he made the remark. "Seems she has more surprises for us yet. Good for me—we can prepare easier now!" He readied the house-hammer in his grip, and the mechanical head popped out the front to start squealing and jabbering in protest. He turned to his weapon and shook his head. "Listen, Hellen, we've already gone over this—the Fantasians like to fight, and we might need to deliver another concussion soon."

Hellen responded by sprouting mechanical arms at the sides, and crossing them in a pout as gears span in its mouth to form something of an intricate swear in magitek. "I promise, I'll make this battle as quick as I can! Just stop being fussy!" Discord muttered, which caused Hellen to nod before it retracted its head and limbs into its house-shaped body.

Luna rolled her eyes and chose to ignore Discord's banter with his own weapon, and watched as Anna carefully played some of the strings with her hind claws. Magic coursed around her as the sound reverberated throughout the crater, pulsing in waves at first before musical notes began to coalesce into existence. With a nod, Anna conjured a small, leatherless composition book and started flipping through its pages to see what would fit best for her situation.

"A composition book…" Luna tilted her head, even as her inner cynic nodded in approval. Well, with a magical, freshly-constructed instrument it did make some sense to keep such a booklet handy.

But this only begged the question of what Anna was going to use it for.

It wasn't long before her unspoken question was answered, as an intricate spell circle was carved into the mucky earth with a hail of arrows that moved to their blighted mistress's will, each one moving to the surprisingly rhythmic plucking of the harp's strings and the beat of its magical pulses. Twin circles were hewn beneath her, right in the middle of the larger third as squares and stars were scrawled into the circumference. As far as runes went it was surprisingly barebones, just enough to contain the effects of what she was casting.

It took mere seconds for Luna to recognize the structure of the spell. She flared her wings, snorting as her head shook and her own horn glowed once again. More hollowed stars appeared at her side, and floated up above to draw an intricate runic circle in the snow-filled sky. Anna saw this and turned her head down with her spellbook moving to rest in front of her snout, faux wings ceasing their flapping to shield her head even as she continued to play.

Before Luna could cast her will upon the completing spell circle up above, Anna began… singing. An ancient, poisonous tongue started to emerge in a melodious series of syllables, its dialect lost to Luna and Discord as the harp's magical pulse started to strengthen. The circle within the crater had completed, arrows cementing its circumference and form by sprouting red crystals to keep the mud from distorting its carefully-etched shape.

Kræhasch melofumn astræ
Illeritom framalsh krunndu-æ

Grolm frakalsh esthrulla
hrafalkai remensch hrukulla

Vines erupted between the crystals, glowing with blighted power that pulsed through the earth and worked its way through the crater, halting only at its edges and forming an intricate web that continued to move with the foreign words that Anna had spoken. The red crystals moved to envelop the overgrown tangle of plants, reflecting the magma and whatever meager lights were above in a vicious sheen that would have looked beautiful if not for the fact that they seemed to have sinister purpose behind them.

The ground rumbled, and the crystals above it rattled dangerously as bit by bit, they began to erupt into flames. Spreading from the center out, they climbed higher and higher, spewing forth an ashen cloud that obscured Anna and her harp from sight as gales of wind moved into the crater to help kick them farther upwards. Luna scrunched her nose, eyes darting forth between her own runic circle and the phenomenon splaying out before her hooves.

At that point, Luna proceeded to will her runic circle to fire. Beams of light shot downward, glowing with raw power as they rained down onto the crater below. More ash was kicked up, and the fires began spreading faster to further spread their sooty mass that only obscured more and more of the impact zone beneath it.

Yet despite all this, Luna heard the beams impacting something before fizzling out against it. The only indicator was the brief flashes of light that emanated from the crater's center, blinding one moment and muted the next. The beams continued firing, yet whatever it was they were hitting had apparently held; not a sound of anything breaking was to be heard.

Only as the crystals finished immolating themselves and the runic circle lost its power did the ash cloud settle, revealing a red shield hovering above Anna—and the distinctly black-and-red, metal plated shield-arm that had conjured its field. Attached to it was a black torso with a stout head, and another arm carrying a sword as long as it was tall. Beneath that was a set of thrusters keeping the object aloft, and it tilted its stout head to direct a crimson visor towards Luna and Discord.

The thing lowered its shield, and Anna did likewise with her faux wings, sneering at the pair at the crater's edge. "If you're wondering where I got this hunk of magitek from, well… we were able to repair it after putting it down in what used to be a waste disposal facility," she said, patting the side of the magitek with her claw. "And then we had thaumatically converted it to make it so it comes whenever we want it to."

Discord smirked, tail swishing about more fervently now. "And it has its own AT field? Clever…" he mused, his grin turning toothy at this development.

"Whatever happened to 'leveling the playing field?'" Luna grumbled as the hunk of magitek brandished its sword, visor gleaming with intent.

"About that, I couldn't help but notice the underhoofed tactics you two had been using. So I figured, 'why not get down and dirty too?'" Anna retorted, grinning in a manner that had some smugness painting her features. "Besides, it's just the most convenient excuse I could have gotten to use the Praetorian, thanks for that by the way!" She waved a claw in the pair's direction, then curled all but one claw as she looked to the Praetorian and said, "Batter up!"

With that, the Praetorian moved—swiftly enough, with sword raised, that Luna and Discord could only see the crimson trail its thrusters were leaving behind. They had but seconds to duck out of the way, which they did not waste to scramble to either side of the magitek as it swiped with enough force to dislodge some of the magma at the crater's edge.

Luna and Discord both frowned, starting to reconsider their battle strategy as the Praetorian hovered back to regard them both. The two nodded to each other, and readied themselves once again for round three.