Once the area was clear of injured ponies, the guards gathered in point formation around Luna. A rather small looking pegasus began to panic, his thoughts were racing crazily to death. They weren’t going to survive this monster. He had to run! He had to get away! “We, we’re going to die aren’t we?! She even said it! She said we would die! I can’t stand here and die with all you idiots! I gotta get out of here!” He tore the bandage off of his injured wing and took off shakily for the sky. The other injured ponies watched with hope as he climbed higher, until he got to the tree tops. A shrill shriek could be heard as his body, wings, and legs were all torn to bloody shreds that rained down onto the ponies below. Everypony screamed as their coats were dyed red. Luna and her guards looked disheartened and sick.
The pregnant mare’s stomach went sour. She would’ve thrown up if she could. “How horrifying!”
Her husband grimaced and rubbed her back. “Very.”
The pony’s head rolled to Harpoon. He shrugged and picked it up. “Well, he was warned.” Harpoon hurled the head like a baseball at one of the guards.
The head struck the guard in the snout and fell to his hooves. He locked eyes with its cold glassy and turned pale. He hurriedly rubbed at the blood on his nose and began to tremble, if Harpoon could tear a pony to bits in an instant the guard could only imagine what would happen to him. The horrors that came to his mind must have been overwhelming because his shaking legs carried him down the path in a few seconds.
Harpoon shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d pick a pony with such nonexistent resolve to guard your life, Princess.”
Luna sighed. “I can’t expect them all to stay in the face of such a nightmare.”
Harpoon chuckled. “Weren’t you once a nightmare yourself? Honestly, how could they stand by you knowing what you’re capable of?”
“Enough!” Captain Phalanx stomped his hoof. “Our Princess is noble and fair, past be damned! She has grown out of the nightmare and into the dream she is today, not so much can be said for you!”
Harpoon clutched his chest as if he had been stabbed through the heart. “Oh! You’ve pierced my heart with your harsh words! Go now, you’ve clearly won!”
Luna held a hoof up to silence the Captain. “Please, don’t play in to his mind games. We have a more serious game to win.”
The Captain nodded and begrudgingly settled back into place. “Yes, Princess.”
Captain Phalanx ordered the guards to draw their swords. They stood and waited for Harpoon’s attack. After a few minutes of unbroken staring Luna whispered to the closest guard. “Though a defensive strategy might be best, it seems that we will need to make the first move.”
Harpoon cocked his head to the side. “Well this isn’t a very interesting fight, is it?”
The guard swallowed hard and nodded at Luna. “Yes, Princess, it would seem that you are right.”
“I know that you are afraid, you are not alone in that; but if we do not play his game more innocents will die. We are so sorry that you must be involved in this, but your Princess cannot take care of this without help.”
The guard looked back at Luna. She nodded with tears in her eyes, and whispered “go.”
All but Captain Phalanx charged toward Harpoon. He was the most qualified to guard Luna, and would be the last resort before she had to take matters into her own hooves. Luna’s heart was pounding harder and faster in her chest with every beat. Everything seemed to slow in front of her. Harpoon just stood, Luna was surprised when she suddenly lost sight of him.
The guards charged in full force, strength resonated in every inch of them, but there was no way that would be enough. Harpoon took the biggest guard first, Broad Sword, and bucked the hock of his hind right leg. The joint went sideways with a loud pop. Harpoon had kicked so hard that Broad Sword’s cannon bone broke skin. The sight of exposed bone and fresh blood made Luna sick. Broad Sword fell with a cry of pain and shock; but took his sword up again between his teeth as soon as he regained his wits. He pitifully steadied himself on his three good legs.
Harpoon turned his attention to two more guards, Cavalier and Armor Edge. Armor Edge had his sword poised perfectly to strike Harpoon through his chest and into his heart while Cavalier attempted to hold him still. Harpoon’s eyes flashed a bright blue before he wiggled out of position and was rammed through the stomach. “Oops,” Harpoon smiled, “looks like you missed.”
Armor Edge growled and swung at Harpoon, effectively missing and slashing Cavalier’s foreleg open causing him to lose his grip on Harpoon. Harpoon stood between the guards, free from hold. “Come on now, I’m right here. How hard could it be?”
Broad Sword and the rest of the guards joined Cavalier and Armor Edge and circled around Harpoon. Armor Edge grabbed Harpoon tightly, the rest of the guard stabbed Harpoon in a frenzy. Seeing the damage they had done to him, and considering his lack of movement, Cavalier thought it would be the perfect time to strike Harpoon in the heart. As he was moving his sword to strike, a low chuckle sounded from Harpoon, blood stained from head to hooves, and he was laughing. His eyes were glowing when they should have been glassy and dead, or at least crying for some mercy. Cavalier was fear-stricken, as were the other guards, how was Harpoon still so chipper?
Luna and the crowd looked on the incident with confusion. Captain Phalanx was trying hard to avoid watching the embarrassment before him. Luna looked at the guards, gathered in a circle, they had obviously attacked something, but it wasn’t Harpoon. Luna looked between the group of guards and Harpoon, who was standing not far from them, grinning from ear to ear, and eyes ablaze. “Guards! What in Equestria are you doing?!” Luna shouted.
The guards looked to Luna, then Harpoon standing a few yards off. “What sort of trick is this?!” Broad Sword’s voice was shrill, angry, and confused. They had been fighting so hard, and the first sign of victory turns out to be a trick. If it wasn’t Harpoon they were attacking, were they just stabbing air?
Armor Edge gave a gargled scream and cough. How did they not hear his cries when they were cutting and stabbing him? How could they do this to him? He fell to the wet ground in a crumpled heap. He was still alive, but his breathing was shallow and moving was rendered impossible. The last word to leave his lips, in a tone almost too faint to hear, before he passed out was “why?”
A pale earth pony with her hooves cracked started to fidget. The guards were cracking and the fight had barely started, she felt in her heart that they were done for. She didn’t want to die slowly and be tormented by this swamp creature’s games. No! She was going to take her life into her own hooves! “How can the guards keep us alive when they’re barely holding together themselves? I can’t stay here! Whatever happens off the path can’t be this bad!” She darted off the path and only ran a few feet when she burst into a pile of blood, bone, and skin. What was once a live pony had been reduced to nothing but a stain on the swamp soil.
The pregnant mare began to tremble. “H-how could he kill those ponies when he’s so far from them?! Are we next?!”
Her husband nuzzled her forehead in attempt to calm her down. “As long as we stay on the path, I think we’ll be fine.”
She nodded and cuddled up close to her husband, she secretly hoped this was just some nightmare, that soon she would open her eyes and wake up in a warm bed.
Harpoon clicked his tongue against his teeth in a disapproving manner. “Your citizens aren’t much for listening, are they?”
Harpoon walked over to Armor Edge, the guards were shocked by what they saw. Fireflies settled in to Armor Edge’s more fatal wounds and glowed to match the intense glow of Harpoon’s eyes. Discomfort took over Harpoon’s features for an instant. When the glow stopped, so did Armor Edge’s bleeding.
Luna watched in bewilderment. “Why, Sir, would you stop his bleeding?”
Harpoon gave a toothy grin. “I may be a nightmare, Princess; but I wouldn’t want to break the rules, would I?”
Luna’s hope was crushed. Harpoon didn’t heal her guard out of some hidden goodness. He only wanted to keep his little game going. Luna turned her head sharply when she heard a loud cry from a young unicorn, he was on the ground, his left hind leg missing from the patella down and what was left of the exposed joint was bleeding profusely. Apparently the poor thing had lost his balance and his hind leg slipped off the path, as a result it was blown to nothing. There were blood and bone fragments just off the path.
The pregnant mare cried out in horror. “A-a child! He took a child’s leg! He has no mercy if he’ll harm children!”
Her husband pulled her closer to him. There were no words he could think of to calm her down with because she was right.
Luna couldn’t stand to see her subjects and guards get beaten and killed right in front of her. She had to protect them, it was clear that they couldn’t do it themselves. She shoved Captain Phalanx away with her magic. He would only get in the way.
The Captain looked at her dumbfounded. “Princess?”
Luna pleaded with him. “I have to do something, Captain.”
Luna planted her rear hooves firmly in the mushy ground and reared up to charged her horn until it felt like it might explode. When she slammed her fore-hooves back down to meet the wet earth she let out the biggest, brightest, and hardest blast of magic straight at Harpoon.
Harpoon didn’t move or flinch. He just watched the bolt come toward him. The injured ponies, the guards, even Luna watched with pounding hearts and high hopes. The blast was a direct hit, and when the glare cleared, everypony was disappointed. Harpoon stood in the same spot, not phased in the least. He yawned. “Come now, I’m sure you can do better than that! Where’s that power I’ve heard so much about?”
Luna’s anger was rising. She let out a frustrated growl and several more blasts, none as powerful as the first, but each was more than enough to knock a normal pony off their hooves. They all had the same result, no effect. Harpoon started walking through the blasts toward Luna. “Is that really the best you can do?”
Luna let out a frustrated shriek and grabbed a boulder with her magic; she hurled it at Harpoon as hard as she could with a whip of her head. He moved just out of the boulder’s path, and instead of it hitting Harpoon, it hit Cavalier and sent him flying off the path. He couldn’t move much, all he could do was stare at Luna with sad laden eyes until he literally burst. His bloody helmet landed at Luna’s hooves.
The crowd let out a collective gasp. The pregnant mare looked to her husband, eyes wide as saucers. “H-how could she do that? Kill her guard like that?”
Her husband shook his head. “That wasn’t her intent. Look at her face. She’s just as shocked as you are. She looks like she’s fit to break down. This wasn’t on purpose.”
Harpoon smiled and looked over at Captain Phalanx. “My, my, my, Captain, are you sure she’s grown into a dream? Seems to me that only a nightmare would cause her own guard to be blown to pieces.”
Luna stared at the helmet, her face full of shock. “What have I done?”
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