purple.teal

Seeing the newest entrant into the cave, Everlast moved forward, he was relatively unscathed compared to the others, so he put himself right in Royal Flush's face. "If you want to fight, fine, but to fight now is to die. Even if you were to win, defeat us, kill us, whatever would satisfy your reason for hunting us, the end would be nothing more than mutually assured destruction. Fight us, and if nothing else, we would tire you, making it impossible to defeat what would come next. The same logic would apply if we defeated you. We're already in bad shape, odds of finishing you aren't great, the fight after that even less so." Everlast paused, trying to gauge Royal's thoughts. He measured his own resolve, and thought of the outcome of all this. As a safety precaution, he used his magic to latch on to Royal Flush, making sure he felt the surge. "If you want to survive, I offer a truce. We all work to find a way to repel the shade that haunts us, and then you can continue your own hunt. If we fight, I will make sure that you suffer whatever fate you force upon us."

@@Lightning Bliss "I'm not sure that would be a good idea." He was happy that someone was listening to reason, at least in part, but he wasn't sure about sending a group out. "Where could they go to get help and be back in a reasonable amount of time? The closest settlement are the Hippogryph caves we angered, I doubt they would help us. If a team is sent out much farther, say to the Gryphon lands... We can't be sure that any help they are able to obtain will return in time to be useful for any of us left behind." He dug his hooves in the dirt, sighed, and glanced at the two children. "If we do split into a team and a base, which group would get the children? I am loathe to leave them here with the threat of the keeper looming. If we send them away with the rescue team, and if they are his primary target, it may be just as likely that he would end up going around our fortified base and chase them down."

Able to think clearly now, everlast straightened and left the wall. he saw Hurricane attempt to fly. "Guess you are stuck on the ground like the rest of us. and bandaging a cut of that size won't do a thing. It needs to be closed." He sat down again and rubbed his temples with his hooves. "All the same, I don't think walking or flying is going to be useful at this point. Every time we attempt to travel we make a new enemy and come out worse for it. We need to settle down, rest, and heal. Fortify if we can, it will come back."

Everlast felt the oppressive air of the keeper dissipate, and slumped. He was free from the nightmare again, so he quickly swiped all his belongings back into their bag and hoped everypony would be to busy tending their own wounds to notice him. He staggered to his hooves, leaning against the cave wall for support. Silently, he counted heads to make sure the keeper didn't take ponies with him. "I'm alive." He replied to the voice asking if everypony was alright.

Blood on his hooves, Mostly changeling's, but also hers... It was crazy what we had attempted to do. We were insane for trying. How did we expect any other outcome? At the back of his mind, Everlast knew it was just a nightmare, a flashback of the worst kind, but as he was forced to relive the worst moments of his life over and over, each time seeming more real than the last, the voice of reason slowly lost its grasp on his mind. He was there, in the ditch with her, those from afar might have mistaken them for lovers, but the blades they were brandishing would prove otherwise. He was here, charging at the damned changeling, gouging out the eyes. He was asleep. Tormented, a nightmare within a nightmare. He was studying, reversing all the knowledge of healing he had accumulated. The final experiment. The eye. The last thread of sanity was snapping when he felt the nightmares retreat. The knowledge of it all being a dream returned. Love. Love, the joyous memories... Everlast laughed, not knowing whether in his own mind or in the real world. He felt the struggle of the others against the nightmare, and redoubled his efforts. Granted some measure of control, he began to think of his own treasured moments. The first time he saw her, their first 'adventure'. Peace. "The reaper shall not take us today!" he shouted, this time certain it was a real physical cry.

Everlast watched as everyone seemed to be attacked mentally. to protect himself he drew something in front of him, he assumed it must be the pony of souls that they were just mentioning, that was attacking them. He scooted all of his equipment out of the way, to keep any of them from tripping over it. He opened up his bag and pulled the orb out of it. He stared at it, fighting with it. I've got bigger problems, I can't deal with you now. Eventually he was able to wrench his eyes away. This, is going to end terribly. With the eye held in both hooves, he waited for the next surge. He didn't have to wait long before Lightning Bliss fought back. PERFECT! Let's get a look at what this guy really looks like. Attaching his magic to Lightning, he searched for a point of the attack, when he found it. He wrote a second character in the ground before him. Once he was anchored to the Pony of Souls, he let go of Lightning and stared once more into the eye. As soon as he did, he lost consciousness. His mind was being pulled into the eye toward the source of the attacks. When the pain was over, he was able to see the pony of souls, slowly making its way to the party.

Everlast listened to them all express disbelief in the keeper of souls. "I've seen some pretty terrible things in my time, And they all taught me a lesson, Nothing is 'just a mare's tale', Seeds of truth are in every story." He backed away from Lightning Bliss now that she was being taken care of by Clover, and went back to open his book. "I don't doubt the existence of the Soul keeper, I've heard too many similar myths to do so. I don't know much more about it than any of you, there aren't any confirmed facts on it. In any rate, I'll be keeping a watch." He felt into his bags to make sure the orb was still there. Everlast glanced at Artemis and the other Hippogryph child. "In any rate, it brings up my next topic. We need a plan. If this thing does exist, I don't want to be bringing two children right to it. But do we have any alternatives to bringing the children along?"

@@Lightning Bliss Everlast heard his name being called and looked up from his scrawls. in front of him was a grotesque mess of feathers. He cringed, wondering how painful the experience must have been. Torture from the hippogryphs I'd bet. A way to keep the mares from flying away. "What happened?" He stood up, closed his own book, and began gently feeling around the wing. "doesn't feel like anything is broken. They just ripped the feathers, didn't hurt anything?" He paused, and realized what he had said. "I mean, not that it didn't hurt, I'd expect something like this to be very painful..." He fell silent and focused on the wing, not wanting to dig himself into a hole. After a few seconds more he fell back. "Alright, this is a bit tricky, normally when I tend to clients, I'd just take the damage onto myself, instantly fixing the problem for the client. However, this time, I don't have wings, so with out my own pair of wings to damage, I can't do it that way." He cleared his throat and continued. "There are three ways of doing this. The first being that I could create surrogate feathers until your real ones grow back, the problem with doing it that way is that the new feathers may not be as strong, being as they weren't naturally strengthened, meaning that after they are fully grown, they won't be as effective at catching wind. The second, Is that If I had someone else willing to loose a few feathers so that you both could fly, albeit temporarily less effective, I could quickly split it between you two. The third, is to use some medicine to help the feathers strengthen and grow back faster, but I don't have any of the proper ingredients at the moment to create such a salve. I could see what I could find to make the best I can, but... I can't make promises on that account."

Everlast saw Raze open his book and couldn't help but peer over his shoulder to read. When he had finished the passage, he backed off. Well, I had I read that before, I would think that there wouldn't be a problem, we could try to avoid the thing. However things changed. He turned to Lightning Bliss and her adopted Hippogryph, and then to Clover's friend and her child. We're dragging two beacons right to it. He held up his hoof, realizing he still had clover's charm. He put it into his saddlebag and began formulating a plan. While in thought, Royal Flush came to mind, one more problem they would have to deal with again. Chased by a mercenary, possibly a flock of angry Hippogryphs, and running into the arms of a grim reaper. Personally, the last one seemed the least frightening to him, but he pretty sure the other's weren't going to feel the same way.

@@Lightning Bliss,@@Pripyat Pony,@ Everlast shuddered at the powerful magic Clover used. I must never make a princess mad. Turning away from that scene and back to the task at hand, he pointed back the way he had come. "We should go back that way. It leads straight out of here." He began a head count, including the new hippogryph they seemed to be taking along. Blaze, Hurricane, Quickdraw, Bliss. Didn't Blaze enter with me? "Hold on, We can't leave yet. Hurricane is still in here somewhere. The others seem to have gone after her already." He turned to Clover and the Hippogryph. "If you want out, Follow the lights down that way. It might be safer to get her out of here if she is coming with us."

@ Everlast saw the light of Blaze's blades behind him, and felt a little relieved. If they did run into a hippogryph, it would be nice to be with someone who knew how to fight. Speaking of the devils, where are they all. There were five that assaulted us and kidnapped the mares, Steel got one, but I don't think it was one of the five. He was pulled from his thoughts by Blaze's yell. He especially didn't want to split up now, as it would mean he would lose his protection. But he was not going put his own cowardice above the safety of three mares. "Let's make it up to the light ahead, see what it is, and then if nothing important, we'll split." @@Pripyat Pony, @@Lightning Bliss Thankfully the light was important. It was emanating from Lightning Bliss's horn. "Princess! Are you all right?" He saw the baby and Clover behind her, and behind Clover, even further back, at the edge of the light, was a Hippogryph. He lowered the totem, it being useless now that they had found the princess it belonged to.

Everlast heard an explosion and felt the ground shudder. "Alright then, no time to loose!" He took off, hoping Blaze would stay with him. While splitting up would be good to cover more ground to find everyone, It would be counter productive to gathering the group. As he ran, He dropped orbs of magical light to show which way he came from. As he went, he would watch the totem. As it dimmed, he would turn around to another path until it brightened again. Eventually he could see another light up ahead. He sprinted to it, not caring what the source was, anything to escape the darkness of the caves. Watching that as he did, the charm became exponentially brighter. "Looks like we found someone."

@ "If we find them-" Everlast turned to his Alicorn friend. "I think we run. We can't fight them. Hopefully even the pegasus knows fighting is suicidal. However, if he can distract the guards and buy us all enough time to regroup and find each other, then we can get out of here together, safe and sound. Regarding the kidnapped child... Steel says it already ran off to find Lightning Bliss." He held up the charm in front of him. "First off, it should be easy to find Clover with this thing, and hopefully she will have more information on where the other mares are."

Everlast took the charm from the gunslinger and lit it up. It guided him up the mountain side until he could see steel fighting. He hid behind a snowbank watching the action, a certain piece was missing. "Where is the damn baby?!" Thinking about saving the hippogryphs their trouble he charged out to steel. "Your honor may have killed an innocent child! Where is it?" He saw the light grow brighter. "Fine, Deal with your fight. If I find that child with even a scratch, I'll give you a whole new fight." He dashed into the cave following the increasingly brighter light. He was hoping that he wasn't going to meet anything aggressive. If only this meeting wasn't so violent. Study opportunity wasted.

Everlast had been galloping alongside Quickdraw but stopped short when he heard the shouting. "That's Steel. What is he doing!?!" He began sprinting again and caught up to Quickdraw again. Everlast saw him messing with something. @ He looked closer and saw the totem. "Here, can I see that?" He doubted it would be necessary anymore. He would just look for circling hippogryphs. they would probably gather around Steel. "He's not only going to kill himself, but the little one as well."

Still standing at the edge, shouting uselessly at the pagasus, Everlast watched the Quickdraw run past him after Steel. "We can't all go running blindly!" He stomped his hooves and shook his head. No one seemed to be patient enough to figure out a solid plan. "We've already thrown reason away. No use trying to pick it up now." With that he jumped after the gunslinger.

He watched the little one, and followed it outside but found that steel had gotten to it first and carried it away. "NO! Get back down here! What do you think you are doing!?!" He screamed after the escaping pegasi. "Bring him back! What are you doing with the little one? You can't go after them now. We just finished with them. We need a plan! Get back here!"

When the other stallions backed down, Everlast sighed and with a heavy heart, watched the mares get taken away. We can make it through this. Once he was sure, that they were gone, he opened the bag to let the baby out. "Alright little guy, it is safe now. Stay by me. Turning away and getting up, He scanned the remaining stallions. "Well, What now?"

Everlast, unable to protect against wind, was blown back, he fell on the hard ground, and hit his head against a rock again. He was able to catch the bag before it hit the ground. He laid there, stunned, holding the squirming bag tightly to himself, hoping to anything that it didn't scream. "Stay quiet please... It will all be okay, we'll make it through." He attempted to sooth the hippogryph inside. He was going to get up again to rescue the mares, but then read what clover wrote. We outnumber them, we can fight back. We have several trained fighters. His will to fight dissipated when two more hippogryphs entered. I'm going to hope we all know what we are doing here, princess. He continued to lie in his corner, hoping that they wouldn't notice him. He opened the bag a little to peer into the wide eyes of the baby. He smiled. The scared, but nonetheless cute face, was shivering "Hang in there buddy, you've done good so far. Just a little longer." He looked at Lightning Bliss and the others about to be taken. Oh, what am I going to tell the little guy...

Everlast was hurt, but not bad enough that he couldn't think, he was scared though, and couldn't think with the weight of the Hippogryph on top of him. When it finally let up to catch blissy again, He inhaled loudly, catching his breath for the first time in what felt like eternity. He saw the sack she tossed hit the ground and squirm. By Celestia's mane, protect the little one. With an adrenaline rush, he rolled to place himself between all the attackers and the bag. He jumped to his feet, and used his magic to pull his tools to him while he backed up to stand over the baby hippogryph, and gently push it's head back into the bag. The success of his previous maneuver gave him confidence. "You don't like to think too hard friend?" He shouted to the one who crushed him and held Lightning Bliss. "Well, You will never go anywhere in life if you don't think, So let me see if I can hit that lesson home." With that, he used his magic to swing his journal and smack him across the face. Let's see how angry I can make him then, big words always hurt little minds. "Since you don't really have a comprehensible vocabulary, I'm going to see if I can teach you by osmosis." He continued to beat the hippogryph with his book. "You know, I think it is time for a test, to see how much you learned." Everlast levitated a nice sized rock in the cave, and used it to hit him once more. "Clearly that rock understood more than you did." He heard Blaze shouting and agreed. @ "Point one. Don't let them escape. Beyond that is beyond me." He then returned to facing his opponent, waiting for a counter attack, using his body as a shield over the struggling bag. Realizing then, that it had been separated permanently from its real mother before it even saw her, and was about to loose the mother that it did know, made him resolute. "It'll be alright little one, please trust me, I will never let harm come to you."