Twilight flinched when she heard a wet noise, like something spilling onto the ground.

She glanced up and saw the changeling that was to cut her earlier slashed open at the throat, still standing in shock. The hive warrior toppled over, painting the floor red. As it hit the ground, Twilight was blinded by a flash of color from the chamber entrance.

The Guardians stormed the room; Clyde, Persephone and Sebastian ambushed the changelings holding the mares, while Dawn and her respective doubles bombarded Chrysalis with blue beams of magic.

The queen turned in time to see a brown assailant send a burning bolt her way, and shielded herself with a verdant wall. The barrier kept Dawn’s magic out, but as Dawn’s duplicates fired again and again, the queen had to divert all of her energy and focus in protecting herself from the attack. Dawn kept the queen from fighting, keeping the changeling royal at bay, but she couldn’t keep her from commanding her changelings.

“Kill them! Kill them now!” she shouted.

Before the changelings could, Clyde and Persephone knocked the mares’ captors away and started combatting the numerous warriors in the rafters. Sebastian herded the mares into a group as several of the warriors threw themselves at them. He was the only thing standing between them and death; they were able to fight, but these changelings would have no trouble finishing them. The only reason they were still alive was that Chrysalis had tried to take them that way earlier.

Sebastian positioned himself between the changelings and the mares. They tried to go for the exit, but were stopped by a snarling black warrior in their path. The orange unicorn phased to the front of the changeling as it thrust its jagged horn forward at the mares, catching it in the brow.

With a spray of sparks, the horn deflected off of his helmet, and the Guardian brought his forelimb up in an uppercut. The blow met the much larger enemy’s sternum, cleaving his breast straight through the armor with the scythe-like knife on the stallion’s gauntlet.

Another changeling went for Rarity, diving from behind, but Sebastian again threw himself in harm’s way. The changeling’s horn plunged itself into his stomach, and he cried out in pain. The force of the impact jolted his helmet free, revealing his anguished glare. Retaining his spirit, he returned the gesture, stabbing the changeling’s underbelly as his foe’s momentum carried the two of them into the floor.

They brawled on the pearly ground in a death struggle, each savagely thrashing and goring his opponent while armor and bones snapped. Finally, Sebastian, bleeding and broken, rose above the changeling. It was softly gurgling through an opening in its throat, and Sebastian yanked his blades from his enemy’s lifeless body. He took an awkward, stumbling step towards the mares to try and continue his duty, but two more of the warriors descended from the fray above on him.

The unicorn was impaled on their warped horns, and he spat out a mouthful of blood as he felt his strength leave. They carried him to a broken window in a second, and tossed his motionless body from the tower. The pair then turned towards the mares, who were standing in shock a few feet from the vault. Dash bravely stepped forward, but the warriors only laughed as she took a defensive stance between them and her friends.

From the other side of the chamber, Dawn witnessed the death of her comrade out of the corner of her eyes. Her heart sank, and she lost focus for a second as she turned and watched Sebastian thrown from the world of the living. Her duplicates replicated her lapse in concentration, and stopped engaging Chrysalis for a moment.

Dawn and her clones avenged Sebastian, burning holes through his killers, inadvertently buying the mares a few more ensured seconds of life.

The queen seized the opportunity. Of the six unicorns in front of her, she guessed that the one to react to the pony’s death first was the leader. She lowered her luminous shield and sent a searing wave forth from her horn. The shot hit its mark, and the rest of her attackers conveniently faded into the victim of her spell.

Clyde heard the cease in magic burning through the air, and turned from the fray above to look back. He saw his friend, Dawn, lying on the white floor, a circular hole in her neck. Her eyes were open, but her ribs were motionless, the wound emitting a slow steady smoke into the air above.

“No!” he cried, and darted down leaving Persephone to fight the changelings alone.

He knocked the queen to the floor with a vicious impact as he drove an armored hoof down on her from above, opening a wound on her brow. She lay motionless, but her eyes remained open.

Thinking her dead, Clyde quickly turned back to fight with Persephone, who was being overpowered by her adversaries. The few of them remaining had learned that they were unable to hurt her with brute force, so they tried to detain her. As they immobilized the crystalline warrior and crashed through the unbroken section of one of the elaborate panes of glass, Clyde pushed off of the ground to come to her aid.

However, he found himself unable to move.

Clyde felt his bones being squeezed, and realized he was caught in the grips of a spell. He felt himself being turned in the air, and looked into the face of Chrysalis.

“You played dead?” he realized, “You conniving piece of…Ungh.”

He moaned as he felt his organs being pressed together in the vice-like grip of the queen’s magic.

Clyde heard a sudden exchange behind him, and the queen looked up from her captive. She turned her prey in the air, and Clyde saw his friends imprisoned in a clear encasing of green magic. A lone changeling in the center of the room had its horn aglow. The blood on its leg and Twilight’s smoking horn revealed what he had missed.

“How dare you attack me!” scolded Chrysalis as she turned him round in her magic, taking in every speck of blood, laceration and physical feature on his body, including his cutie mark, still bearing the stains of the manticore’s still present venom.

“A Guardian?” she said, shocked upon seeing his flank, “You and your kind have killed thousands of my children!”

“Yeah, today. Wonder what the number is at for the past year.”

He laughed in the face of the queen, but he was stifled by another constriction on his ribs, and he felt at least two of them give. He groaned and began to spit up blood.

“Clyde!” cried Rarity.

The queen raised an eyebrow at the six encased in her warrior’s spell.

“You know this stallion?”

“He’s our friend,” said Pinkie angrily, “and you’ll never take that from that us like you did to countless ponies in Equestria today!”

“I beg to differ,” added Chrysalis sarcastically.

She turned her prisoner to face her. Clyde’s face was contorted in pain, but she knew he could hear him.

“Now, as much I hate you, you are a fine warrior. If you agree to serve me and me alone, I shall let you live.”

“I’d rather die you bitch!” he growled before having three more of his ribs broken.

“You will,” she said through a scowl, “but first, you must be punished for your actions. Death alone does not do you justice. I will finish what I started later; nothing here is a threat to me anyhow, and your armies are dying as we speak.”

Clyde felt his wings involuntarily unfurl to their full extent, and something gently grip their base.

Suddenly, they violently twisted and snapped back towards his flanks as the queen splintered their bones. Tears of pain that had formed when his ribs gave in began streaming down his face, and his breathing grew fast and shallow as he screamed and was turned in midair.

The mares screamed from within their verdant prison, and Dash began desperately bucking the case's interior to try and come to Clyde’s aide, but to no avail.

Chrysalis didn’t stop until she had pulverized his wings, mangling and twisting the bones to pulp. Clyde continued screaming, but the sound of his wings crunching was still audible through his cries.

Chrysalis turned to the horrified mares when she finished, an evil smile across her face.

“You monster!” scorned Twilight through her own tears.

The queen only smiled condescendingly, relishing in their hatred. She forced the bloody stallion to the floor, and held him up on his knees. She looked into his eyes, and was taken aback by their intensity. His spirit was still unbroken; she meant to change that.

Holding him still in her magic, she levitated the iron headpiece off of one of her dead changelings, and carried it to herself. She brandished the dense object in front of her, and slowly raised it above the pegasus. Maliciously, she brought the dull helmet down on Clyde’s brow, knocking his own helmet off. He recovered, sniffing in and picking himself back up on his own.

Clyde glared at the queen through gritted teeth, and she swung the helmet a second time, bludgeoning his jaw. He slumped over on impact. Again, but not without wincing, he picked himself back up, more slowly than before.

Again and again, the queen assaulted the Guardian, torturing him with blunt force until the pale iron of the helmet had turned red and Clyde’s scalp and face lay mangled. He tried to pick himself up, tears from his broken nose dripping down his snout, but he was devoid of strength.

His breathing was shallow and labored, and his blood dripped into pools as he lay on the cold floor.

The changeling leader looked to the weeping mares theatrically as she spoke, “And now, Guardian, for your crime of the murder of countless numbers of my children, your final verdict is death.”

Chrysalis centered her grip on the pegasus’s throat, a dull halo encircling the base of his skull, and lifted him from the floor. His wings hung limply at his sides as he was strangled by his own weight pulling down on his windpipe.
The queen levitated the broken warrior to the window, and suspended him in the cold outside air.

Night had fallen, and with no pegasi around to control the weather, dark storm clouds had rolled in over the kingdom.

Clyde struggled for air as the stinging outside wind blew his mane and lifeless wings about. Just as he thought she would drop him to the unwelcoming ground below, Chrysalis pulled him in close.

“You see them?” she asked, rotating his head for him to look at his friends encased in a verdant shell, “They say they were your friends, that you were their Guardian. It was your job to protect them, and you failed.”

The changeling purred her address to the stallion, relishing in the torment as he looked to her under his own power. His glossy eyes still flickered, but with only a remnant of their previous flame.

“You couldn’t even protect yourself,” taunted the queen, “How could you think you could keep them from harm. Not even through your death will they be saved.”

The queen pulled him in closer, and whispered, “Before you die, know that you failed them. I will enjoy seeing you perish, as much as I will enjoy cutting their precious throats.”

Clyde looked at the queen in horror.

“They think that in assisting me, I will let them live. But, there will be plenty of slaves once Equestria is thoroughly conquered. Their fate is sealed; after all, I can’t have hopeful spirits like them wreaking havoc with my oppression of this land.”

The broken warrior looked to his sobbing friends one last time. He knew they were crying for him, and despair set in as he came to grips with his and their fates.

Then, a movement caught his eye in one of the broken windows, and his brow descended in a determined, bloodied glare as he formulated what had to be done.

The queen levitated him a few feet over the ledge, and suspended him by his throat for a few seconds.

“Goodbye,” she mused, and then released him, but Clyde didn’t embrace death just yet.

As the spell faded, he lounged forward with the last of his waning strength. He pushed forward with his forelimbs, extending the daggers in his gauntlets, and drove the blades into the queen’s sternum. As he fell earthward, they dragged down through the changeling’s flesh, opening her breast. Then, they came loose, and Clyde dropped from the tower, his limp wings flowing above him.

The queen let out a panicked cry and Persephone burst back into the chamber. She had one eye remaining, the other a singed dent in her skull; the changelings had apparently found a weakness in her shell. She fell on the warrior imprisoning the mares and broke his neck before he became aware of her presence. The glow from his horn disappeared, and the mares were freed.

The crystalline pegasus, her brilliant coat sullied by her own blood, darted for the queen, but Chrysalis retreated. She hastily opened a portal big enough for only her, limped through, clutching her laid open flesh, and closed it behind her. Persephone set down on seeing her prey escape, and limped towards the six left alive in the room.

They started to go for Clyde, but Persephone stopped them.

“Wait,” she explained desperately, “make sure they didn’t die in vain.”

“She’s right,” pleaded Twilight in between sobs and gasps, “we have to use the elements, or this will all have been for nothing."

The mares ran back to the vault as Twilight reopened it, revealing the jeweled forms of the elements on a pedestal within. They each adorned their ornament, and unified the elements. A gust of wind and a flash of color swept out from the room, and the sounds of battle outside faded into the young night.

Then they darted for the palace lawn below.

Author's Notes:

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