The sight of Shirley’s decapitated remains prompts Hangaku to jump into action as she picks up the largest fabric amongst the brigands’ coverings from the ground and proceeds over to the camel’s head.

With gentle and tender care, the pegasus lifts the head and wraps it almost ceremoniously within the fabric.

“Hey!” A brigand roars out from nearby. “That’s mine, you bitch! Get that fucking camel’s hea-”

[KBLOOMTH]

The brigand’s words are abruptly silenced as Radahn slams his left hindleg down upon their head with frightening force and the unmistakable signature of his gravity prowess. And when he lifts his hind hoof, only a hole remains where the sand-bound saddle arabian once was, which began to fill with grains of sand in the seconds that passed afterward.

“Does anyone else wish to be disrespectful?” The titanic stallion asked, earning immediate silence as the five remaining Zawaqil members turned their heads away—Galib muttering a curse.

“That’s what I thought.” Radahn looks over to Hangaku, “Please, continue. Oh, and you dropped this, ma’am.” He floats the artificial vial-feather over to the flyer, having caught it with his powers.

“Arigatou gozaimasu,” she voiced her gratitude while looking back at him over her shoulder, taking the feather and reattaching it to her wing.

Despite the presence of giant insects lurking below the desert around them, the purple stallion saw great honor in the flyer’s actions.

The pegasus sets her sights on the wrapped remains. She closes her eyes and bows her head.

“Ten ha towa no heiwa no naka dea na tano tsukareta tou o yasumaseru basho o teikyou su ru koto ga de ki masu.”

Hangaku mutters a solemn prayer in her native tongue, honoring the camels’ departure from this world and those who accompanied her. But Shirley and Herbert’s passing brought with it a disturbing reality: she would have to be the one to break the unfortunate news to their now-orphaned son, Caleb.

The pain that the poor young camel will come to endure…is one Hangaku understood all too well.

Suddenly, the earthly-grained landscape began to shake and shift as the insectoid members of the Scourge moved beneath the surface, drawing the neighponese pegasus out of her post-prayer trance.

“Hangaku!” Radahn called out to her, standing near the remaining brigands. “You have far more experience dealing with these bugs than I do. What’s the plan?”

She nods in urgency and picks up the cloth-covered head as the quaking sands around them grow in intensity. “Listen to me, Radahn: I need you to pinpoint their location with your connection to the earth. It’ll give us fair warning should the Scourge try any more surprise attacks.”

The large stallion blinked. “...I can do that?” He asked in genuine confusion.

“Seriously?!” Hangaku shouts with flared wings, absolutely baffled as even some of the brigands shared her stupor. “What do you- what kind of earth pony are you?!”

“Come now, give me a break, will you?” Radahn boisterously yet awkwardly laughs. “I wasn’t always an earth pony, you see! Hahah!”

His laughter dies down, allowing silence to take hold, even amongst the raging sounds of shaking sands.

“WHAT?!” Hangaku and the members of Zawaqil shout in unison.

‘The fuck does that mean…?!’ Galib roars inwardly, shock present on his features. But that is soon done away with as he feels another commotion rising up from below, smirking contentedly at his formulated plan. ‘Fuck it.’

“Not that this hasn’t been fun and all.” Galib’s outward words draw Radahn and Hangaku’s attention. “But I’ve had just about enough of this shit!”

The duo were about to voice their demands, but the vibrations in the earth steadily grew as if being directed up from below. Or, in this instance…

Thinking quickly, Radahn rushes toward Hangaku, grabs onto the pegasus—who tightens her hold on the wrapped-up remains in her grasp—and leaps backward, at which point an explosive pillar of sand erupts from where they once stood and encompassed the brigands as a whole.

Another antlion behemoth had emerged, but Radahn and Hangaku noticed something notably different about this emergence than the last as they recovered at a safe distance.

The Zawaqil leader is protectively held within four of the large insect’s forefront legs, its’ flesh-rendering mandibles reaching for the sky. The other members of the brigand band are harshly littered about the general vicinity of the antlion, having been uprooted due to the being’s surfacing.

“H-hey, boss!” One of the brigands began after recovering from the sudden eruption. “How about a little warn-!”

The stallion’s eyes shot wide open as another Scourge member emerged to his left, where another band member was. But rather than save his fellow brigand like that which held up their leader, the insect had devoured them.

“Wha…” He was at a loss for words as the insectoid retracted into the sand, leaving a fresh pool of blood behind from its’ victim that streams and drips into the resulting hole.

Another member cries out to his right, causing him to look toward them as they’re pulled under by fearsome mandibles, a fountain of blood shooting up from the hole and raining down to bathe the desert sands.

He was simply at a complete loss for words… Their leader, now former leader, had-

“Unfortunately for you, my good stallion.”

Galib’s voice presented itself, and the last remaining member of Zawaqil, barring the dark-red saddle arabian, looked up to them.

“You’re just a liability. So sorry.”

Panic began to grow within the betrayed. “W-wait, b-boss, I-I-!”

Another burst of sand erupts into the air before Galib’s eyes, claiming another victim.

“Hmm. Pity.” He began after watching his former ally disappear, sighing in annoyance. “Looks like I’ll have to ask the boss for some new meat once I get-”

A thunderous [BOOM] suddenly presents itself, causing Galib and the insect holding him to turn toward the source.

“Fuck me!” He screamed as the stallion spots Radahn rushing toward them through the air like the unrelenting force of nature the earth pony controlled. “Dive, you idiot!” He ordered the antlion in a panic. “Dive!”

The large insect simply clicks its mandibles, unheeding the saddle arabian’s orders and choosing to meet the delectable morsel head-on. And all Galib could do was scream out in frustration as the two combatants lunged toward one another.

Another [BOOM] signals Radahn’s impact, and he effortlessly plows through the insect’s exposed portion that rose above the sand as green gore and twitchy chitinous body parts rain down all around Galib, who’s dropped onto the now insect-drenched terrain.

“Fuuuuck!” The traitorous stallion roars as he slams a forehoof onto the sand, “Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!” The dark-red stallion hurriedly rises up with a growl. “The rest of you, kill him!” He declares another order, calling out to the five remaining Scourge entities beneath the sand.

“KILL HIIIIM!”

He breathed in fatigue after giving the order as he watched Radahn hover over the antlion’s corpse in the sky.

An abrupt and sharp pinch caused Galib to slap the back of his neck reflexively, plucking a needle from his flesh. “What the…?” He inquired, but an answer presented itself as the stallion began to feel…drowsy.

His orange eyes threaten to roll back into his skull as he struggles to keep himself upright as if he’d just had a long night of fun back in their hideout.

“Wh…at…wah…” He slurred.

“Diluted hydra venom,” Hangaku answered on approach, dutifully holding onto Shirley’s covered head. But for Galib, the pegasus broke apart into several copies like a mirage as her voice began to echo and ring in his head.

“Typically, hydra venom can put down several elephants from Savanna. Lucky for you, I need you alive, but this variant will keep you under for nearly two days. Trust me. My mare Tzana and I tested it quite thoroughly.”

“Y…you…bi-huh…” He tries to take a swing at one of her mirages, only to fail, and tumbles to the sand before being immediately rendered unconscious.

Hangaku watched him go down joyfully. “Sleep tight, plothole.”

With that out of the way, the pegasus reassesses the situation as she observes Radahn engage with another Scourge entity, using only his gravity-bending hooves to strike at his opponent.

“Kurutta…” Hangaku comments in awe, her neighponese leaking out again.

The need to pry the red-maned stallion for more information only enhanced after his ‘wasn’t always an earth pony’ statement. But here and now, she needed to act, for there was a specific variable regarding the Scourge.

“Sorry about this, Shirley,” the pegasus apologized as she sets the head down gently alongside Galib’s comatose form. “I’d rather not leave you here with him, but it’s ironically the best place to set you down for now.”

Satisfied, the pegasus rises and distances herself from them. She unfurls her white and red-tipped wings, looking back to Radahn, who’s locked in combat with two Scourge members simultaneously, the other three undoubtedly lurking beneath the sands.

“Hold them off for just a little bit longer, big guy.”

With those parting words, the pegasus takes flight and rises up to the clouds above with every flap of her wings, being sure to thank the Maker for providing a somewhat cloudy afternoon over Saddle Arabia.

Three members of the Scourge lunge at their equine-shaped prey in unison and from three separate angles after two of their ilk had retreated underground. But a sudden gravitational force of black lavender repels their assault after the stallion spreads his forelimbs apart and howls.

The insectoid trio crash and ski across the sea of sand, only for the two Scourge members from before to launch out of the ‘ocean’ from either side, trying to cleave the purple equine with their pincers.

Seeing their approach, Radahn judges which one of the duo would reach him first. His target chosen, notably the antlion coming at him from the right, the stallion waits for the opportune moment as the insect’s pincers get closer, until...

“Now!”

Radahn quickly ducks and grabs onto one of the pincer’s digits. The black and purple aura surrounding his body becomes more vibrant as he roars out and starts to spin, pulling his foe along and slamming them into their fellow Scourge, both letting out a screech on impact.

As the antlions fall to the desert’s face on top of one another, the crimson-haired equine gathers his strength and zooms down after them with a force comparable to what had claimed the first of their initial Scourge number.

A resounding [KBLOOMTH] ensues as a large wave of sand, dust, and insect gore is thrown into the air, the phenomenon being far grander than anything the antlions could ever manage when they had first emerged.

The dust soon clears, and within the resulting epicenter of green gore and sand is Radahn, standing tall and proud, the wind in his mane, along with some antlion, as he takes in a greedy surge of air through his nostrils...despite the odor.

“Ahhhh!” He breathed out, eyes closed in pure bliss, “That’s two down and three more to go!” The stallion was about to raise a forelimb triumphantly, that is, until his eyes opened while his head was facing skyward.

Due to his battle, Radahn hadn’t taken notice of gray clouds forming in the skies not too far away from his current location but still distanced enough for not a single shadow to be cast upon him.

“What the…?” He questioned. “That can’t be right… There’s no way a-”

The sands around him shook violently, indicating the approach of the last remaining Scourge insects. All the while, the clouds above had expanded rapidly while also taking on a shade of…

Red?

Radahn noticed the change, and the red coloration overtook the vicinity. In fact…it almost resembled the late afternoon scarlet skies over Caelid.

The recollection caused the stallion’s focus to waver for a moment, and it was then that the first of the three remaining antlions emerged from his rear with a ravenous screech.

He pulls himself together, rears up, and prepares to strike while looking back. But a swift and familiar pegasus lands between them, her back facing the antlion and creating a pause in Radahn’s actions.

“I’ve got your back,” Hangaku winked, “big guy.”

In one fluid motion, the pegasus claps her forehooves together, resulting in red sparks, while turning to face the behemoth and conjuring a spectral crimson bow along the way, and pulls back to form an arrow along an invisible bowstring.

“Omae wa mou shindeiru.”

The ‘arrow’ is let loose…and a red beam pierces through the antlion and enters the hole it emerged from, resulting in a grand explosion of magic and the painful cries of the other two Scourge entities being cooked below.

Meanwhile, the large stallion at Hangaku’s rear stares at her in shock as she approaches the body to ensure that the antlion at the surface is dead.

“Marika’s tits…” Radahn managed. “Did…you study under Royal Knight Loretta?”

Hangaku’s ears twitched upon hearing this, and she looked back at him inquisitively; the nearby insect’s remains churned and scorched.

“Lor… Who?” Yet another question for the neighponese mare to add to the already tall list of questions for the earth pony.

“You don’t…know her?” Radahn tried to make sense of this. “How could you not know her? You just used Loretta’s signature move, and I highly doubt that she’s the kind of warrior who’d steal someone else’s sorcery and call it her own.”

Now it was Hangaku’s turn to try and make sense of things as she cocks her head with a raised eyebrow.

“Then she apparently stole that technique from my village since ninjas are the ones who created it back in Neighpone. I didn’t earn the title Crimson Archer for nothing, big guy.”

Several inquiries arose on either side. However, before they could voice those questions, a buzzing sound was starting to be picked up by their ears.

“Wait…” Radahn said while turning his head. “Do you hear that?”

An annoyed sigh escaped from Hangaku, “I sure do…”

The stallion spots something within the tone of her delivery. “Care to elaborate?”

Hangaku points a wing at the sky above, “You see those clouds I gathered and embued with my village’s magic up there?”

“Oh? You did that?”

“Stay on topic, please? I know we both have a lot of questions, but we don’t have much time until they get here.”

“Until who gets here?”

“The Scourge, you big goof.”

“But…we just killed them all.”

“We killed some of them,” the pegasus corrects, “not all of them. And these were just scouts… Larval scouts.”

Radahn’s eyes shot wide open. “Did you just say…larval? As in…”

“Yup. Just like regular antlions, these guys are still in their larval state.” She spins a forehoof while flickering her ears, “That buzzing sound that’s been getting louder and louder? That’s the beating wings of the adults coming to tear us apart in one big swarm.”

On cue, the distant sun was being blocked out in Radahn’s peripheral vision, prompting the large stallion and his pegasus ally to slowly turn their eyes toward a massive swarm filled with titanic dragonfly-esque lifeforms, approaching them rapidly.

“Ah,” Radahn deadpans, “I see.”

“Naturally, I’ve got a plan,” Hangaku puffs her chest out confidently...only to falter and laugh sheepishly seconds after. “Of course, that depends on just how good you are with that gravity power of yours.”

Radahn throws his head back for a boisterous laugh. “I assure you, Crimson Archer, that I haven’t earned the title Starscourge for nothing.” He finished while flashing her a wink.

“Perfect. Then here’s your chance to prove it.”

They nod in agreement and turn to face the encroaching swarm in unison.

“Tell me, Radahn… Ever heard of a bug zapper?”

Next Chapter: Chapter 14~ Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes