Clyde watched the window slowly fall away from him as he descended to the earth, his lifeless wings hanging uselessly at his sides with no bone left to hold them in place.

The world around him seemed to move in slow motion. There was no noise, only the faint trickle of air past his ears as he gained speed in the free fall. He felt so weak, and didn’t struggle on the way down; he didn’t turn and writhe in the air, he didn’t scream, he didn’t try to look around. He only breathed in the cold, dark atmosphere.

He didn’t see the ground coming.

His insides were jolted around his skeleton and most of his bones broke when he hit a few feet from the base of the tower. He blacked out on impact.

He reanimated after a few moments, weakly spitting out a mouthful of thick, dark blood. His chest struggled to fill itself with air, and he sobbed in pain as he choked on the warm liquid in his throat. He clung to consciousness, though barely, and was able to see a burst of light come from the tower.

"We did it," he thought to himself, “They did it.”

Clyde could feel his life draining. The pain was unbearable; he could see the skewed bones in his legs, his back was excruciating, and he could feel the sharp prods of fragmented rib bones in his breast. He could only think of one thing to do with his shattered body.

Adjacent to the tower, he propped his head up against its ivory exterior. He used only one limb; the others he dragged behind him. Most of the armor adorning his body was ruined, either by the fall or from the day’s fighting. His helmet was still up in the tower, but the rest of his sterling armor was cracked and warped, either around his body or in the palace’s lawn.

He could feel the warm release of his blood from cuts and compound fractures all over his body, as well as a heavy feeling in his chest. More blood seeped from his mouth, and he knew he was bleeding internally; how could he not be after a fall like that?

The sky was dark from its layer of storm clouds and the absence of moonlight. Lightning flashed above, a weak report of thunder trailing the bolt. Clyde looked to the diminished formations of Equestrian warriors to the west. The changelings had killed thousands of them, and only a few specks in the distance were all that remained of their once proud garrisons. The changelings were gone, expelled by the elements, but the toll for their eviction had been paid in blood.

Somehow, there, beneath the thundering sky, choking on his own blood and suffocating from his crushed organs, he felt peace. He had done his job, he had saved those that could be saved, and he knew death was coming for him; he recognized a hooded figure above.

Slowly, and with shallow, labored breaths, he reached inside his crushed breastplate and removed the picture of his friends. He held it tightly with his one good forelimb. He didn’t move; he only let the memories of the photograph accompany him on the cold, lonely ground.

As he looked at the photograph, his friends’ and his own smiles so prominent on the paper, he found the corners of his mouth drawing up into a diminutive smile. Right now, he wasn’t dying, he wasn’t struggling to breathe, he wasn’t in pain; he felt as if he were with them, memories of the times he spent in Ponyville flooding his eyes as they flashed by.

He saw a panorama of beauty beneath him as he sat on his perch at dawn, the day’s first rays of light touching the golden tertiary world below. He saw the beauty of Sweet Apple Acres in fall, the canvas of nature painted with warm yellows, oranges and reds. He saw the sky as the moon rose to kiss its face, the blue and white of the air’s domain changing to pink, then to deep, peaceful blue.

He saw himself in a barn at a party, Pinkie Pie bouncing around him as she joyously welcomed him to Ponyville for the first time. He saw his wing around Dash as they sat on the precipice over the valley on the night he left the hospital, the luminous moon and stars smiling down from above. He would have laughed if he had the strength when he recalled the time Rarity had employed him as a model, and the unfortunate situation that accompanied it.

He saw Twilight the night he had invited them over for dinner the first time, her ever-present curiosity interrogating him for any information about every little thing she didn’t know. He saw Applejack in the park chasing a toss of the Frisbee, and focused on her wonderful smile. He saw Spike, beaming up at him and the other Guardians at the ball when they accepted him into their group. And, he saw Fluttershy, coyly tucking a few strands of her beautiful mane behind her ear, the same ear adorning a yellow rose, as he took her hoof to dance.

He saw the exchanging of gifts beneath a pine tree on Hearth’s Warming Eve, a ridiculous red stocking over his own head. He saw each of their faces as they cooed and giggled over stallions in town on Heart’s and Hooves Day, and the looks on their faces when he prompted the same stallions to approach them, which they willingly did. He saw the awe on their faces when he demonstrated his capacity for strength on Winter Wrap Up, lifting more snow from the frozen ground than anypony in town ever had prior. It was hard to believe he ever held such strength now.

He saw Fluttershy’s face buried in his once mighty wings, crying, from the time she had had a nightmare in which he went off to war, and never came back, and the reassured look she sent up at him when he told her he would never leave her alone. He saw the talks he’d had with Spike about what being a stallion, or a dragon, meant, and how he had become the closest thing to a brother the drake ever had. He saw all the nights he had stayed up to make sure his friends were safe, and all the days they had spent together in the peace he maintained.

But, more important to him than all the others, he didn’t see, but felt a memory. He felt his coldness being replaced with warmth when he hugged any of his friends, the light feeling within when he danced with them, the feeling he would get when he dried tears or routed fears, or lit up the face of somepony with a kind deed. He remembered the love he had found in Ponyvile, the love that had changed him for the better, the love that was previously absent within him, the love he had died for.

He felt his strength give, and he dropped the picture. He reached for it, but he was too weak. Everything was fading to blackness, and the figure above him seemed to come closer, but a familiar voice called him back.

Rainbow Dash found him first, her cries and desperate shouts calling the others over in haste.

“Clyde!” she sobbed as she knelt at his side, “Clyde, wake up!”

The stallion’s eyes weakly opened. Somehow, miraculously, he was still alive. His glossy eyes, still as green as before, looked up at Dash weakly as the others galloped up to him.

“You’re all ok?” he whispered.

“Yeah,” said Dash, trying to comfort the surprisingly calm stallion with a phony smile, “yeah, we’re fine.”

“Good,” he creaked, his mangled head nodding towards his breast.

“Twilight,” began Rarity, taking in the extent of her friend’s injuries, “fix him!”

A beam of purple took Clyde in its glow as Twilight tried with all her might to heal his injuries, but the spell which she could have performed successfully before had no effect. She tried again and again, enveloping him in her magic, but to no avail.

“Why won’t it work?” she yelled in frustration.

She saw the discoloration on his flank; the manticore venom. When he was stung all those moons ago, the doctor in Ponyville said that the venom had caused the hospital staff’s spells to be useless. They had to heal him manually. The venom had never come out; the operation to save his life was only to keep it from spreading, not to remove it.

“It’s no use,” she realized as she pointed to Clyde’s rear leg, the still visible dark poison seeming to pulsate beneath his skin.

The mares started to panic, and Pinkie Pie darted a few feet from Clyde’s side to Persephone.

“We need to help him! What can we do?” she cried.

The solemn look on her damaged face melted any hope Pinkie had retained. As her face contorted into an expression of despair, Persephone only nodded to Clyde’s body; Pinkie slunk back to her friend’s side, knowing there was nothing that could be done for him. His injuries were too great to be healed in time, and magic was no use. The only thing they could do now was to hold onto him while they could.

Pinkie bore the weight of depression as her mane straightened in the rain, and she led her friends to Clyde’s side. They knelt; Rarity took his hoof in hers while the others tried to hold him in one final embrace without hurting his broken body. It began to rain harder, the water mixing with falling tears in the grass. The precipitation washed some of the blood from Clyde’s body, and it collected in a pool on the ground around him.

“Hey,” started Clyde weakly, “you’re crying. Why?”

“You’re dying,” whispered Fluttershy through sobs and sniffles.

“And that’s a bad thing? We all die sooner or later. I’m just glad I died for something worth dying for.”

“And what was that?” asked Twilight, trying to feign a smile to console the fading stallion.

“You.”

His voice trailed off and he began to slump over.

“Clyde!” said Dash loudly, shaking him as he started to nod off, “Don’t go; come on, stay with us.”

He looked up at her as she continued. “We’ll go back to Ponyville; we’ll live together, we’ll be friends,” her tears blended with the rain, “we’ll be happy, and we’ll all die later, when we’re old, after we’ve lived full lives together.”

Her voice trailed off as she heaved, choking on sadness.

“I can’t,” he gurgled, “but you can.” Thunder rolled again, and the rain picked up its pace.

“You promised you’d never leave us alone,” whimpered Fluttershy, “You can’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, smiling consolingly.

“Even if you can’t see me,” he said soothingly as he used the last of his strength to gingerly place his hoof over Fluttershy’s shoulder, “I’ll always be watching over you.”

His eyes, somehow, still held that consoling strength, and as he looked to his friends’ faces for the last time, the flame within flickering, he asked, “Will you remember me?”

“We could never forget you Clyde,” lamented Applejack.

“Then all my dreams have come true. Now go chase yours.”

The flame began to die.

“I’m glad for the time we’ve had together. I love you all, and I will miss you.”

His struggling rib cage suddenly went still, his eyes looked to the heavens, his hoof fell from Fluttershy’s shoulder into the damp lawn, and the quality faded from his eyes as his soul escaped on one final breath.

The mares fell onto his lifeless body, crying into his damp hide and trying to hold onto the friendship they treasured.

Hours passed until the princesses returned to the palace with the remnants of the Equestrian military. The regales found the mares still crying over Clyde’s stiff body, the elements still adorned on their bodies. Luna approached Persephone, who was fighting tears a few feet from the solemn congregation.

Celestia came up from behind the mares, spreading her expansive wings around them, and tried to comfort them.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered maternally, “I’m so sorry, this is my fault. I’m sorry, but he can’t be helped. We need to move him.”

One by one, they released Clyde and clung to the princess. First was Applejack, then Rarity, then Rainbow Dash and Pinkie.

Twilight, as she came loose from the lifeless embrace, saw something on the ground at Clyde’s side. She reached down for it; it was the photograph from the first picnic they shared together. There was blood on it, and she could see by the wrinkles and bends that he had been clutching it before they arrived, and Twilight realized that as he was dying, he had been holding on to the closest thing he had had to them, and even more tears flowed from her eyes.

Each of them left Clyde’s side except for Fluttershy. She had to be pried from Clyde’s corpse. Crying, she released her friend, and wrapped herself around Celestia.

As the Princess of the Sun consoled them, Luna approached the body. She looked down on the Guardian, barely a remnant of his former self. He was bloody and stiff, his face expressionless and devoid of his common smile, and his once strong, gentle eyes were black in death.

She couldn’t bear to look at him like this; her former Guardian, her former friend, regressed to this state. She closed his eyes, and ordered three soldiers to move his shattered frame for burial.

The rain coming down, the dead littering the kingdom, and the tears of the living cursing the day, the ponies started to try and continue their lives, but how could they?

Author's Notes:

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