Vinyl Scratch’s magic sense alerted her to danger; or, rather, it could be said that her lack of magic sense warned her that something was wrong. She felt a magical deadzone approaching, a moving spot of magical nullification where her innate magic sense could feel nothing. This was quite alarming, but she didn’t have time to pull out her slate and warn the others. Ears pricking, she heard the sound of metal against stone.

She was well-armed. The needler pistols were all in fine working order somehow, she had an abundance of ammunition, and being well-rested, she had peak magical reserves. With the spiders come to party, it was time to throw a rave in a cave. Already, a swarm of tiny spiders could be seen emerging from the primordial darkness, but Vinyl knew that much larger spiders were coming. Sword spiders, by the sound of metal against stone, and something worse, something that nullified magic.

Tarnish and the others wouldn’t last long against a swarm of sword spiders. The slashing, stabbing legs would shred them into hash. Sword spiders required surgical precision; you had to remove their legs. She had the means and the methods and she hoped that Tarnish would catch on quick so that the nullifiers, in whatever form they took, could be dealt with.

It was time to set the mood. Bringing her magic to bear, she cast fireball once, then followed it up with a forcewave ripple that would slow the advancing horde, at least the ones who survived the fireball. She then made a decision that she hoped she would not come to regret; she cast a Hurry-Flurry spell on Tarnish, a spell that would increase his movement speed, his reflexes, and his ability to react. However, this would also leave him feeling fatigued once it wore off.

But while it lasted, Tarnish would be a dervish of destruction.

Vinyl’s fireball lit up the tunnel with a flash of light and then the explosion filled the tunnel with smoke. The pre-battle jitters were strong; Tarnish felt every nerve in his body was like a live telegraph wire that sent a message to his muscles that it was time to fight. He felt faster, stronger, and more capable.

“Flamingo, stay close. We need your light to hold the darkness at bay.”

“Sure thing, I can do that,” the sword replied. “Where does the dark go?”

“It runs away from Tarnish, if it knows what’s good for it!” Daring Do’s flippant remark, while out of character, was appreciated.

Tarnish felt his confidence grow tenfold.

Hefting his wrench and shield, he made ready to throw himself into the teeming horde, but was held back by Vinyl’s magic. She had hold of his tail—a sure means to get his attention—and he tried to figure out what she was up to. Another fireball was lobbed; no, not a fireball as Tarnish expected, but some kind of flame curtain spell that went from floor to ceiling in the tunnel. Anything passing through would be burned, horribly and terribly so.

A writhing wave of spiders spilled through the curtain of flame, penetrating Vinyl’s fiery defenses. Some were set ablaze, while others stepped on or stepped over those who failed to survive the flames. Hairy, wriggling bodies ignited, which filled the tunnel with the stench of burning hair, and some of the spiders set their fellow spider-kin ablaze as they skittered about. It was disconcerting that this merely slowed their advance, but did nothing to dissuade them.

“If necessary, we’ll retreat and go topside through the station.” The calm in Daring Do’s voice showed signs of strain, if not outright cracking, but she was holding it together. “Look, more are coming to our left. Steady! Remain steadfast! Stiff upper lip!”

Then, the very thing of Tarnish’s worst nightmares emerged from the smoke and flames. The ding-ding-ding of metal against stone could be heard as the sword spiders entered the fray. Organic-steel legs formed natural blades and these spiders ambulated about on terrifying swords that chipped the stone.

Still held in place, Tarnish grimaced when Vinyl vanished.

Vinyl was throwing a rave. Tarnish watched as she blinked in and out of existence, releasing fiery novas of flame with each brief blink. He could see her silhouette in the flashing, strobing lights and the smokey haze born of burning spiders. She would come into view for but a second, bring her guns to bear, and blast the legs right off of the sword spiders, neutralising the terrific tanks of the swarming spider menace.

Of course Tarnish worried about Vinyl, but for the moment at least, she was in her element, doing what she did best. But she would be weary after this, she would need rest, and probably lots of food. Which would be an issue, because there was no longer a way to return to their camp so they could resupply.

The corners of his mouth crinkling, Tarnished Teapot frowned.

She blinked and winked from place to place, blasting off legs, releasing fiery pyrokinetic blasts that scorched the tiny swarmers, she whittled down their ranks and slowed their advance. Flashes of orange, red, yellow, and white illuminated the haze and Tarnish could imagine the music that would accompany such a scene.

One by one, the sword spiders, the most dangerous foes that posed the worst threat to them, were laid low by Vinyl’s showy rave-in-a-cave-tactics. But Tarnish somehow knew this was just the first wave, and that more were coming. Something worse lurked on the very edges of his perception, something foul. The very fact that these spiders were organised and worked as a group was a clear indicator of something wrong—something unnatural.

Surely, Vinyl had felt it first, but Tarnish felt it now. An abomination approached and the very wrongness of it caused his blood to curdle in his veins. Vinyl was clearing out the trash and Tarnish knew that dealing with the abomination would fall on him. Gritting his teeth, he prepared himself by thinking about those he loved, those at home, and those right here with him that were counting on him to do his thing—that is to say, bash the abomination into oblivion with a bloody big wrench.

Spurting ichor was obscured by the smoke and looked more like festive party streamers launched for celebratory glee. Dismembered bits and severed limbs tumbled to the ground as Vinyl made her rounds, and the clever mare never stayed in any one spot for longer than an eyeblink. She worked at strobelight speeds and never gave the enemy a single second to recover, to organise against her.

Vinyl Scratch was a perfect example of why unicorns won wars.

“This is kinda awesome!”

“Yeah, Rainbow, it rather is.”

“Hey, Daring, will this go into your book?”

“How could I possibly describe this in a book?”

“You’ll figure something out. Because, hey, you’re awesome too, in your own way. Just not as awesome as Vinyl at the moment.”

“Why thank you, Miss Dash.”

Daring Do’s sardonic deadpan lightened Tarnish’s mood—just a smidge—and helped to take some of the edge off. As a group, they really did specialise in witty banter and the books reflected that to some degree. Tarnish, watchful, saw that some of the spiders were getting closer now, the rare survivors of Vinyl’s onslaught.

When a melon-sized spider drew a little too close, he scalded it with steam.

Then, just as suddenly as she had vanished, Vinyl was beside him again. She was grinning, foolishly so, the sort of reckless, feckless smirk that would set Octavia off on a lecture. Heaving a soft sigh, he missed Octavia’s lectures, and wondered if Vinyl did too. Octavia had a way of setting a pony straight and this made it easier to be good, because good was a struggle sometimes. The stern earth pony had a way of inspiring one to be better, to do better, to fight against one’s own base instincts and be a pony of exceptional quality.

The first of the behemoths came into view and the mere sight of it left him queasy. His vision blurred, as if he was viewing the world through greasy glass, and as it drew nearer, Tarnish felt weaker. The bloated, misshapen body was pale—a creature that had never seen true sunlight—and bizarre crystalline growths protruded from its bulbous, wrinkled abdomen.

Where it went, the fire died, and Tarnish understood why Vinyl had retreated.

Knowledge percolated through the folds and creases of his grey matter, strange knowledge. This was a null-spider, a creature that weakened magic around it. It’s purpose was as a repair drone and a janitor, something that could go into magical hot zones and perform clean up in the event of an accident or an unexpected scientific success.

Those happened a lot, here in Skyreach.

Tarnish also knew that his talent, his unique magic, would protect him. He and the null-spider would cancel each other out in weird, unfathomable ways. Within the null radius, he would become a perfectly normal pony who wasn’t afflicted with a magical anomaly, while the null-spider’s nullification would no longer cause magic to falter.

More of the behemoths were coming. They were huge, the size of a buffalo or larger. Raising his wrench, Tarnish knew what had to be done, and that he had to be the one to do it. Ponies were magical creatures, and as such, susceptible to variances in magic. It was a terrible weakness for his species, and Tarnish had seen with his own eyes what happened to ponies when magic went from one extreme to another.

He thought of Snowy Summit.

Howling, Tarnish launched himself into battle.

Vinyl Scratch watched in horror as Tarnish’s wrench connected with the spider’s glowing, pink-white eyes and was sprayed with streams of greyish ichor. The crunch of spider-chitin echoed weirdly through the tunnels and Vinyl had a horrible, terrible, most disturbing thought that she wished that she could scrub from her brain; did Tarnish just get spider-goo in his mouth?

She was distracted from her morbid fascination by a meaty splat. Tarnish’s shield smacked away spider legs seeking to club him and then he brought his wrench to bear, spearing a spider right in the chelicerae with the business end of the centaur steel monkey wrench. Vinyl cringed, her teeth bared, and from beside her, she could hear Daring Do gagging while Rainbow Dash cheered Tarnish on.

“Yeah! Give that spider what for! Go for the face! The face!”

The sounds were the worst part, as they echoed in unnatural ways, amplifying the horror-factor by a magnitude. Tarnish was holding his own against six of the nullifying behemoths and Vinyl was left wondering how me he might come out of this. Like herself, he would need time to recover, but time was not something they had. They were trapped, with finite supplies, in a place that was utterly hostile towards them.

“Behind you!”

Tarnish swung the wrench in a circle around him, sweeping his enemies back, and tearing off a few legs with blunt-force trauma. More steaming, streaming ichor drenched Tarnish, who was now more a glistening grey than chocolate brown. Severed legs kicked and wriggled, thrashing on the ground, and the first of the behemoths was laid low when Tarnish used the hard edge of his shield to sever the spider’s abdomen.

The stone floor became an ice skating rink that Tarnish struggled to stand on, but so too, did the spiders. Slick slime spread, oozing, making movement treacherous. But Tarnish, the improvisational wizard that he was, used this to his advantage. He slid about, a creature of marvellous balance, and somehow kept out of harm’s way while the spiders skittered all around him. All those dancing lessons paid off and Vinyl knew that if Maud was here to see this, she’d be proud.

“HICKORY, DICKORY, DOCK!” Tarnish bellowed as he cleaved downwards with the edge of his shield. It sheared off a leg and the spider was left off-balance. When it slipped in the slime, Tarnish used his shield to cave in the spider’s face while forcing the others back with a broad swing of his wrench.

“THE MOUSE RAN UP THE CLOCK!” A grotesque crunch could be heard when Tarnish’s wrench shattered a spider’s crystalline growths. Motes of energy went zooming off, each of them surrounded in a weird, glowing darkness, a blackness with its own impossible illumination, a sort of purple-green hue that made the eyes water when observed.

“THE CLOCK STRUCK ONE!”

In time with Tarnish’s rhyme, the centaur steel wrench impacted a spider, right where all of the legs connected to the body, and the force of the blow tore the abomination right in two. A shower of gore erupted and to Vinyl’s ears, it sounded like somepony who had partied a bit too hard and was now blowing chunks. The sheer wetness of the sound, the way the splattering suggested more than a hint of solid chunkiness—but Vinyl had no to time react because…

“THE MOUSE RAN DOWN!”

Another spider met a gruesome fate; it’s giant, distended abdomen was popped like a festering boil and sent curlicues of spider-innards spewing every which direction. Alas, poor Tarnish appeared as though he was festooned in ribbons and streamers, and Vinyl pitied him. He was going to be in quite a mood after this, and she wondered how she might comfort him.

“HICKORY!”

A spider was smacked with Tarnish’s shield, it stumbled into another spider, and both of them toppled over. Wiggly legs were cleaved away with dull-force trauma as Tarnish chopped at them with his shield, all while clubbing the null-spider that had tried to sneak up behind him with his wrench.

“DICKORY!”

It was over now, and it was mop up time. The spiders were done for, finished. Like everything else that had ever picked a fight with Tarnished Teapot, the spiders had learned a harsh lesson; don’t pick a fight with Mister Teapot. With a high overhead chop, Tarnish brought the wrench down upon the prone spider and it collided with terrific force. Blunt though it was, the wrench tore clean through the spider and struck stone, which shattered from the incredible impact.

“DOCK!”

Author's Notes:

They do call him 'Spider's Bane' for a reason...