We have been running for what seems like hours. We still haven’t lost sight of these things. We did have to kill two stragglers that were about to give us trouble though. The air was getting colder and heavier, and was that a snow flake? The moon was no longer in the sky and was replaced by heavy clouds and chilling winds. I was about to collapse. Those mechanical wings would be nice right about now. Suddenly, we burst into a clearing. If being jumped by changelings sucked, running headlong into a castle of them was the next worse thing. We all stopped in our tracks and before we could do anything, everything went black with a hard thud.

I could feel a cold floor underneath me and hear the whipping of icy winds outside an open window.

“What are we going to do?” Storm’s worried voice cracked. “The Commander has been gone for over three hours!”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine.” one of the guards said.

I slowly sit up and open my eyes with a groan. All eyes are on me as I look around. Bared window, bared door, smooth stone in a nine foot by nine foot square. Definitely dungeon. Storm and the three guards were here but the Commander was nowhere to be seen. There were chains on the walls but nobody was attached to them, besides me of course. The chain was around my neck and only let me go four feet away from the back wall.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“We’re all going to die! That’s what!” Storm said panicked.

“The Commander?”

“They took her for questioning.” one of the guards answered.

“Any plans for escape?”

“None.” the same guard replied. I wish I had bothered learning their names.

It wasn’t long after that, the sound of hoofs being dragged along the floor started coming to us. A Changeling unlocked the door with its horn and anther tossed a bloody heap of a white Pegasus to the back wall of the cell.

“Oh Celestia!” Storm shouted. “Is she?”

I move over to her and place my hoof to her neck. The throbbing of a pulse was not existent and from the gash in her neck, I don’t think I would come back.

“Shit, dead.” I gasp as I back away from her.

“Who’s next in rank?” one of the things asked. The voice was high pitched, whiney and cracked.

I looked around the room and see that one of the guards is next but the Changelings didn’t seem to know the difference between the ranks. I knew Storm had a mare back home and I didn’t know about the others. With a sigh I answer. “I am. Captain Nexus.”

One of the things came into the cell and un hooked the shackles around my neck before prodding me in the back with its horn. They took me out of the cell and down a dark hall. I passed many more cells and saw nothing in them. Good, only three lives to save now. At the end of the hall, they threw me into a room covered in blood and body parts of other ponies. I was horrified by the sight but suppressed my lunch. The iron door was shut behind me and I saw a tall Changeling standing before me with two normal ones flanking her. Not the same ones that brought me here.

“Hello Captain.” the tall one said. “I hope you’ll be more cooperative then your friend.”

She had a long, oily looking mane, tall misshapen horn, insect wings, and fin-like tail. He voice, unlike the rest I had heard, was smooth and regal. From the top of her head, three tendrils stuck up like a crown. And her eyes, those, piercing green eyes…

“What do you want?” I ask.

I didn’t get an answer immediately. I was instead throw to the wall and chained up by my front hoofs before receiving one.

“Information. I only want to know how to get into Canterlot without being noticed.” the tall one told me.

“What are you?”

“I am Queen Chrysalis. And you now have one question left.”

“I have none to ask you. And I’ll never tell you how to get into the castle!”

“They all say that dear. But they are all dead.”

“Do what you want to me. You’re getting nothing!”

“Very well. I shall ask again when my children are finished with you.”

For the next hour I was beat to a pulp. They bucked me in the stomach, slashed at my legs and face with a rusty knife and Chrysalis even tried to take control of my mind. The more I resisted, the harder they seemed to hit and the stronger they got. I still didn’t talk. And I was expecting to be sliced up right after, but I was bucked in the head and awoke back in the cell an instant later with Storm standing over me.

“You’re alive!” he shouted.

“Of course I am.”

“Why didn’t they kill you?”

“I don’t know, but I know I’m getting us out of here right now.”

The Changelings made a mistake not chaining me back up. As one of the guards came by, I used my magic to bash its head into the iron bars and use its horn to unlock the cell door. I had the Commander’s body wrapped up and put on the back of the unicorn guard. I may have been leading the charge out, but I had little strength to be doing it. I didn’t know what time of day it was, but it felt like night. I was charging faster then I had ever dreamed and the lighting spell didn’t faze me. We had alerted some major attention, but my adrenaline turned me into a tank.

I had Storm check every room we passed for our gear. Lucky us it was the last door before the outside. (convenient) With our saddle bags on at the door I gave the worst pep talk in history.

“Okay. This may seem stupid, but our only option is to run. I’ll help get the Commander’s body out and you two, fly as far away as you can. We might die, but make sure you die fighting.”

That didn’t even make me feel better. With that all time low instilled in us, I kicked the wooden door down and charged into a blizzard. An alarm went up as Storm and the other guard took off and soared south. The unicorn and I however had to bust through the gates and I could feel my adrenaline wearing off. I was able to blow a hole in the gates from a distance with a fireball, but we were cut off by more than twenty of them. I forced most of them out of the way, but I couldn’t keep them back long. Fatigue was taking its toll. By the time we reached the gates I could hear Chrysalis shouting to not let us get away. She even shot a bolt of green magic at us. We make it to the hole as more come to us.

“I can’t fit!” I hear the unicorn shout it me over the winds.

“Push her through first! Go, GO!” I shout waving my hoof as hundreds of the Changelings charge me. I let off four more bolts and turn forty of them to dust.

“Come on!” the unicorn shouts.

“Go! I’ll be right behind you!”

Now I am fighting hoof-to-hoof. And after breaking two necks and knocking out ten more.

“Come on! Is that all you bastards got?!” I shout.

They all stop attacking me for a moment and start backed away. I’m quickly engulfed in a green light. I grit my teeth trying to keep from screaming as I feel the light try and sap me of energy, but it’s no use. I fall to my side, defeated and barely alive as the world around me turns black.

I awoke with a powerful headache. I feel myself suspended in the air with shackles around my hoofs. I open my eyes and see I am back in the torture room with various sharp objects and a pinkish white pony with a red cross cutie mark. I also see Chrysalis and her two usual lakies.

“Well Captain Nexus. You seem to just have a death wish. Letting your friends escape and leaving yourself in self sacrifice. How noble.”

Her horn now glows and I feel the pressure in my head intensify. Her voice is now in my head.

“Tell me what I want to know or you will never see the ones you love again!” she demanded.

“I…will not….sell-out…my Princess.” I struggle to say under her powers. “I…will…not….BREAK!” I shout breaking her bond to my mind.

“Well, we do have a special one here. Take one of his legs and have her keep him alive. I wan to speak with him again after he awakes.” Chrysalis says leaving the room.

I am taken from the chains and held down by magic to the floor by one as the other brings over a table to lay me on. I struggle, but the magic force on my body is too strong for me to be able to escape. I see one bring up a rusted saw and telekinetically pull my left foreleg out over the side of the table. I grunt and try to escape but it’s pointless. I regulated myself to holding my breath and shutting my eyes.

I feel the teeth of the saw cut into my skin and chew through my muscles. Holding my breath isn’t an option anymore. I scream in agony as the saw slowly cuts into my leg. Now it’s to the bone. I feel it rattle my skeleton with every motion of the dreaded instrument of torture. Once it got through the bone and what was left of my skin, I feel them cleanly cut the stub from my torso with a smooth blade. After that I hear a medical pony tell me it will be okay and I fade into darkness.

It seems instantaneous. From being knocked out to waking back up. The past feels like a dream as I open my eyes. I can feel the blood soaked bandages wrapped around my torso and, for some reason, I can feel my left front leg tingling. After a quick look down, I see I have nothing there. It is gone and I can still feel it. They call them phantom pains. The feeling of your body part when it is long gone. I am against the wall nearest to the window and I need some air. I drag myself to the wall and start pushing myself up right. Lucky I have always had a stronger right leg then left. The window is high enough that I can’t look out standing up but is low enough that I can get to it on my hind legs.

The second I reach the window sill, I feel a sharp pain shoot through my torso coming from where my leg once was. I lay my face on my right leg and start panting in exhaustion from the physical effort it took to get up here and the suppression of the urge to shout in pain that is welling up inside me. Hold on, that’s not pain welling up from inside. I lean my head out the bars and hurl my lunch to the ground and cough up the rest. My breathing is ragged as I lean on the window looking over the snow covered field.

“Time for round two Captain.” a Changeling snickers behind me after opening the door.