The most worrisome thing about his companions was their silence and Tarnish’s concern grew with each passing minute. Rainbow Dash was clutching her head, cupping her hoof over her swollen eye. Vinyl appeared to be exhausted, but was trying to help Rainbow. Daring Do stood near the door, her ears pricked, listening for the sounds of trouble.

There had been a run of trouble. It seemed as though every half an hour or so a group of quadrupedal mechanoids arrived—three of them, each occurrence, without fail. At first, it was no trouble to dispatch them, it even became a little boring. But that had been hours ago. Each of them needed to rest, to recover, they needed sleep and sustenance.

Where there had once been a sense of conviviality with much verbal support of one another, now there was only shellshocked silence. Fatigue and exhaustion caused short-fuse tempers. Daring Do had shouted at and lectured Rainbow Dash for showing off and being careless in combat. In response, Rainbow Dash had hollered right back—and now, the two were not speaking. Not even looking at one another.

“Tarnish…”

He was glad to hear Daring’s voice, but also worried by the tone of it. “Yes?”

“How many hours has it been?” she asked and from the sound of her voice, Tarnish guessed that she was fighting to stay steady.

“I…”—he inhaled through his nostrils and his cheeks puffed out in concentration—“don’t reckon I know. More than twelve but less than twenty, maybe? Everything is starting to bleed together for me.” Tarnish found that his own ears were straining, as they were due for another attack at any moment now.

Blinking a little, he struggled to hold back a yawn and had another look around the tiny room they had holed up in. It only had one door—which Daring was guarding—and try as he might, he could not discern the purpose of it. It was just a room and the door opened up out into the swamp biome. There was no furniture, very little garbage, and the only light came from Vinyl’s floating light spell.

“Rainbow, how’s that eye?” Tarnish asked, because he felt the need to say something, and lacked anything better to say. He had already asked about her eye on multiple occasions now, but he could not remember when he had last asked was. Maybe before the last attack, or the one before that?

Whimpering, Rainbow made no other response, but rolled over while still clutching her head. When he turned to watch the door once more, Tarnish saw that Daring Do’s legs were shaky. Vinyl lifted her weapon and then sat there on the floor, waiting, patient, ready for another assault. One was due at any moment now, it seemed, and the back of Tarnish’s scalp was getting agonising muscle cramps because his ears kept pricking so that he could listen better.

“Maybe we should retreat. Get out of here. Go back to basecamp and take a little time to recover. We should leave right after the next attack, so we have time to flee.”

“No.” Daring Do shook her head and her weary voice sounded creaky. “No, if we get caught out in the open in our current state, it would be bad. We are under siege. At least here, in this spot, we have the narrow doorway.”

There was so much that Tarnish wanted to say, such as voicing his concerns that they would just keep coming, but words felt useless and he was certain that Daring already knew. His gut suggested that she was right though, if they were caught in the open, things could go wrong in the worst sorts of ways. Still, moving, doing something, it would be better than just chewing on brass, which was getting tiresome.

“Here they come,” Daring Do said in a voice of fantastic calm. “Tarnish, barricade the doorway with your shield. Vinyl, climb up on his back with your rifle. I want to try something different this time. Tarnish, if you can, let Flamingo rest. She was getting pretty weak that last time.”

“Right.” Hefting his shield, Tarnish moved into position to barricade the door.

The artificial sun was starting to rise in the swamp biome and Tarnish realised that they had survived the night. How long was the artificial night? He had no way of knowing. With his shield held out in front of him, he waited while gritting his teeth. The approaching mechanoid hunters were hugging the walls on either side of the short, narrow passageway, rather than approach in the open where Vinyl might shoot them.

When he heard a squish, every muscle in his body tensed to the point of causing him pain. It was difficult to keep his shield up and it was almost as difficult to keep his eyes open. Vinyl’s weight on his back was reassuring, comforting somehow, and she had a tiny bit of height advantage to fire over the top of his shield. Together, he was confident they could hold the door. Maybe. But for how long? Even if they came out on top in this encounter, there would be another one due in about a half-an-hour or so.

Out of sight, the automaton hunters did not seem to be in any big hurry. He considered pulling out Flamingo, but as Daring had said, she was getting exhausted and had trouble just remaining airborne. Even magical swords had limits and she needed to sleep in her sheath to recharge.

Just as expected, the mechanoid wolves came, their jaws snapping; they came all three at once with two coming from the right and one coming from the left. Vinyl fired—the sound reverberated in Tarnish’s ear, making an odd echo inside of his head—and then he used his shield to bash the two automatons as they lept at him. Tarnish was shocked and dismayed just how little force had gone into his blow, and he hardly knocked his attackers back at all.

Again, they came for him, and again, Vinyl fired. The shot tore off a lower jaw and tore a gaping hole in the body, but the terrifying automaton remained upright. As Tarnish braced himself for another attack, Vinyl’s weapon began to hum as it powered up once more. He didn’t need to be strong, he just needed to hold them off for a few precious seconds, so Vinyl could fire.

The damaged automaton lept for his shield while the other went low, for his legs, forcing him to retreat a ways. Almost into the room now, Tarnish knew that he had to hold the narrow doorway at all costs. Vinyl fired again, and the damaged automaton’s head exploded into chunks of brass and strands of crystalline fibre. Emboldened, Tarnish brought the hard, pointed tip of his kite shield down upon the other mechanoid—once, twice, a third time—and with the fourth brutal bash, the snapping, biting head was torn free from the body.

Panting, Tarnish looked down at the three twitching automaton bodies and wondered what the next encounter might be like. Already, he was too tired, too fatigued, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. Vinyl collapsed against him and wrapped her forelegs around his neck, squeezing him. He could feel her sobbing with relief and she made strange squeaky whimpers with each shuddering, hitching breath she drew.

If they had been at this for at least twelve hours or so, with attacks coming every half-an-hour, and three automatons coming with each attack… Tarnish’s vision blurred as his brain rejected his attempt at complex mathematics. The bodies needed to be moved, to be tossed out into the swamp. There was work to be done, and then when the work was finished, he could rest—for at least a half-an-hour.

“Rainbow, we still have some of those healing fruits—”

“Tarnish, it’s just a black eye.” Rainbow held out her hoof in a silent demand for Tarnish to shut up and she stared at him with the one eye that remained open. “I have exactly one nerve left and I don’t need you stepping on it.”

Miffed, Tarnish let out a snort, but said nothing else. When he turned to look at Vinyl, he saw that she was asleep. He envied her—maybe even hated her just a little tiny bit—because she was getting about fifteen minutes of sleep. Maybe? It was hard to tell. She had her head resting on her forelegs and she seemed to be quite at peace. A part of him, a nasty part of him, wanted to shout and make a ruckus so that she would wake up.

Tarnish wanted nothing to do with that part of him.

“The next attack is coming soon,” Daring Do said and her words were slurred. “Now that the sun is up, I’ve been looking out the door. This place is huge… huge.” The exhausted mare closed her eyes and with her head bobbing, she continued, “If I squint just right, there is a door in the distance, along the wall, in the direction we haven’t gone yet. It is an actual door and we might be able to get it open. If we’re lucky, we might be able to get it closed again, and if our luck really holds out, we might have a safe spot to rest and recover.”

His own head nodding, though not entirely from agreement, Tarnish watched as Daring Do forced her eyes open. Endure the next attack and then strike out for the door in the distance. Anything was better than this. If the door didn’t open, they could always return here and wait for another attack.

“Grab your gear, we’re leaving.” Tarnish was shocked by the words coming out of his mouth, and he wasn’t alone. Daring Do was staring at him as if he had grown a second head. “With another attack coming, we’ll be motivated to move. Every minute we sit here just compounds our exhaustion and if I go through another fight, I might succumb to my exhaustion just as Vinyl has.”

“This is crazy,” Daring muttered, but she did not argue as she gathered up her gear.

Even after many pokes by Rainbow, Vinyl did not wake. Tarnish suspected that waking Vinyl was now a lost cause; it had been Vinyl who had carried them this far, with her targeting spells and careful shooting, both of which had to be depleting her magical reserves. It fell on his withers now to carry her, and so he did.

Hock deep in slimy muck, Tarnish had to fight to pull his hooves out of the mire. He was the heaviest, loaded down as he was with Vinyl on his back, and he sank in the deepest. Daring Do and Rainbow Dash were braced against his backside, trying to help push him along, with Rainbow darting around when necessary to unstick his front hooves from the mud. It felt like each step taken gobbled up far too many precious moments and another attack was due any second now. Vinyl was comatose and hadn’t even cracked an eye open during all of this.

Fighting against the guck was exhausting and Tarnish wasn’t sure if he could defend himself right now. This was a bad idea, just one of many bad ideas in a long series of bad ideas, the first of which had been coming to Skyreach.

“If I would have wanted to spend all of my time with your big brown hairy balls in my face, I would have married you,” Daring Do said, grunting out each word as she pushed and shoved at Tarnish’s backside. “I am now intimately familiar with you and your veiny scrotum, and I wish I wasn’t!”

“There’s still time to marry him—”

“Shut up, Rainbow Dash, and worship with me at the altar of balls!”

Stumbling ahead, Tarnish eyeballed the door and tried to determine if it would open. With a slurp, one hind hoof was freed and when he stepped forwards, it was swallowed up in the muck again. Blushing, he tried not to think about what the two mares behind him might be staring at, or how the stress and strain of his efforts might affect parts of his anatomy.

“We’re out of time!” Daring Do hollered, her voice a ragged shout. “Rainbow Dash, follow my lead! Now!”

The next thing Tarnish knew, Daring was beneath him and he could feel her brushing up against his belly. When she brushed up against his unmentionables, he let out a startled squeak, and then he felt Rainbow Dash pressing upwards against his ribs. What was going on under there? He felt himself being ripped out of the mucky goo and lifted into the air. The two pegasus mares had lifted him up onto their withers and were now in a bipedal stance, while holding him above them.

Stunned as he was, all he could do was marvel at their impressive strength.

With their muddy forelegs wrapped around his body, the two mares stomped through the mud, which made squishy farty sounds with each impact of their hooves. Tarnish desperately tried not to think about the fact that his sheath was resting on what felt like Daring Do’s cheek, or maybe her neck, with the bulk of his body resting upon her withers. Mud and slime dribbled down his legs and ran off of his hooves in rivulets. As impressive as this was, it was even more so when Tarnish remembered that Vinyl was strapped to his back.

Somehow, the two mares managed to sprint ten yards or so through the thick, soupy mud to reach the door with Tarnish held above them. Reaching out with his telekinesis, Tarnish applied pressure to the door, which didn’t budge. He pushed harder, and then harder still, and with a screech that made every ear twitch, the door began to slide along its track. This was far, far harder than it needed to be, because something fuzzy, something velvety was tickling Tarnish in the worst place imaginable, and this robbed him of his concentration.

With metal squealing against metal, the door shuddered open just enough for them to slip through, and the two mares bolted, somehow finding even more speed. Tarnish didn’t even realise that he was holding his breath at the moment, and as the companions slipped through the narrow entrance, Tarnish let out a foalish sob of relief.

Wasting not a single moment, he pulled the door shut behind him.

Author's Notes:

Of course, they don't know what is behind the door, do they?