Torrential did not dare take his eyes off the pink abomination before him. His gut told him that dropping his guard for even a moment would end in pain and disaster. Still, he didn't need to look in order to sense the presence of both Star Dancer and Snow Tail. A part of him was quite literally with them after all and after spending some time with both of them he felt he had a fairly good idea about what the two mares would do in this situation, fool hardy through it might have been. Since it was clear that the two of them weren't planning on fleeing to safety, he would have to remove the source of the danger itself... For a split second, Torrential glanced towards where Star Dancer had been standing... Then there was pain. The movement itself would be next to impossible for the mortal eye to follow, but in the blink of an eye the pink mare had gone from where it had been standing to Torrential's side, beach umbrella back in hoof and the sharp, pointy end at the bottom clearly driven into Torrential's barrel, sticking out the other side and dripping golden blood into the water as the mare itself tried to bite the alicorn's horn off. Anyone who had studied pony biology and assuming that an alicorn would have something like it could tell from the angle of the umbrella that it must have passed through a lung at the least. For his part, Torrential had not been completely flat footed. He had shifted his body enough so that he would merely lose a lung to impalement instead of having a sharp piece of metal jammed through his heart, his front hooves locked onto the mare's body and preventing her from removing or moving the umbrella or herself away from him. Around his horn was the strong glow of magic, the only thing keeping it from being bitten off by the undead monster fighting him. Closing his eyes and forcing himself to do what needed to be done through the pain, the only regret that Torrential had was that he was going to live to regret doing this. Even as the mare focused her attention on trying to bite through raw magic and dehorn an alicorn, the air itself filled with the sound of crackling. Like a thousand angry birds singing off tune all at once into a microphone that wasn't working properly. Electricity snaked through the dark clouds above, gathering in a single stop above Torrential and the pink creature. It seemed to take forever to charge... For a moment, the world was silent. Then there was a flash of light so bright that it was blinding. While it might not have been at the same levels that a different alicorn had done mere days before, ponies for many miles around would see the flash of white light burn itself into the sky for several seconds. Some ponies would claim that it appeared to be a beam of white light coming from the sky; Some unicorn scholars would claim it was a kind of lazer spell charged to levels that were at the moment insane to be truly considered possible by anypony mortal and for them to continue living. In truth, it was a bolt of lightning. The full fury of a raging storm condensed into a single strike that lasted several seconds. Both Torrential and the pink thing vanished from view as both of them were standing at the point of impact. The lightning itself seemed to make the very waters of the lake that was on top of Ponyville glow white hot as the water started to boil and every water soaked thing that could burn was reduced to ashes under the intensity. What undead that had still been in contact with the lake they had been crawling out of when the lightning hit froze up and twitched uncontrollably as what could burst into flame did so, the parts of them that couldn't doing so seconds later. Soon enough, the endless moment of white would come to an end... and the shock wave that boarded the ear drum rupture mark consumed the world with its deafening noise, branches being broken off trees as the thunder roared in the aftermath of the lightning strike to end them all. The waters of the 'lake' formed great waves that crashed onto the shore. The sky itself once covered in dark clouds was once again sky blue as the storm itself was used up. The undead that had been walking the shore dropped to the ground like puppets that had had their strings cut, as lifeless as they should have been in the first place. A surprising victory for a Stormwing stallion that had charged into what would normally have been a suicidal battle of attrition. He had wounds that would really need to be looked at by a doctor before the rust and gods knows what else had been on the undead weapons that made the wounds, but with proper care he would have an amazing story to tell. And on the shore of the lake, washed there by the short lived but great waves lay Torrential, umbrella still piercing his body and hide as he struggled to breath with a lung filling with blood and water as he contemplated what he had learned in that final moment of the battle as his oppoant had been destroyed in a flash of white... [i]A powerful demon shaped and fashioned to look and act like its mistress to defend a site close to her heart... nothing more.[/i]