Praxilus flailed helplessly, plummeting from the broken city and into the rapidly approaching sea of dark forest below. Bright sparks of magic trailed from his antlers as he tried in vain to will himself back to solid ground with a desperate teleportation, cursing and pleading with tears in his eyes for the ancestors to hear his prayers. Panic overcame him as he looked around for something, anything to grab onto, some rocky outcropping or ancient escarpment he could use to save himself, but the sheer face of the mountain may as well have been on the other side of the world. He screamed in fear and in hopelessness, his voice lost to the roaring wind, one of hundreds who were falling through the freezing night to smash into the broken rubble of Canterlot's former southern platform, while the forest was slammed and pulverized by massive chunks of shaped stone that threw up violent eruptions of snow and soil.

He could not bear to watch the ground rush up at him, and so he shut his eyes and prayed he would feel no pain at the end.

The entire mountain seemed to shake under his hooves. Cold air rushed up from below, accompanied by a sound like a thunderclap that rolled and rolled with an uncountable number of smaller, thudding impacts. Corvalix watched in nearly slack-jawed shock, bordering on terror, as an entire section of Canterlot simply ceased to be. What remained behind was a scattered, broken series of marble and limestone railings, edges and small segments of sheared-off housing blocks that clung to the mountainside in a half-melted mass of burning buildings. It was terrible and glorious to behold, destruction unseen since the explosion that had claimed much of Evinwiir -- only this time, it was his sister's doing.

She stood beside him in silence, jaw set and eyes locked on the ruins she had created. The foul potion had taken its hold and muddied her bright green eyes with vines of dark magic, while the arcing power around her antlers flitted and crackled. Here, among the shocked exclamations of her soldiers who beheld the dying throes of the firestorm, she had given herself fully to her ambitions. An aura of incorporeal wisps of black magic radiated from her body, darker even than the night itself, sending a chill down Corvalix's spine. The others must have felt it as well, for when he looked out upon his bucks he saw thousands staring back. Low murmurs spread among the ranks. Nobody wanted to move for fear of drawing Elinwynn's wrath.

Swallowing back a lump of uncertainty in his throat, Corvalix raised his voice. "Your Empress has provided you with the greatest of advantages, soldiers of Ochrourus! Do not squander it! Reform your lines and continue your advance, for the time of Equestrian oppression is at an end!"

The crowd remained still. In the distance, at the edge of the front line, healers worked as quickly as possible to ease the suffering of those who had been the most badly burned. The agonized screams of the wounded and dying were the only sounds to be heard above the hot, roaring wind of the towering hellfire that silhouetted the royal siblings against the mangled city.

"Quickly, now! We must carry on while the damned ponies are on the back hoof! Do not let our sacrifices be in vain, lest we--"

"MOVE."

The solitary word boomed in his ears, and he did not so much hear it as he felt it. Elinwynn took a step forward, planting her lance into the ground. The message was clear: there would be no hesitation now. Do as commanded, or face the fury of the Empress. The bucks immediately scrambled to get into position, nearly tripping over one another while the officers jumped to action.

Corvalix wondered what must have been going through the minds of the does of the Imperial Protectorate who were now taking cautious steps back. They had not objected further, and he doubted they would if they valued their lives, but there was no mistaking the fear that they were trying so hard to suppress. Their beloved Empress had become something else. Something terrible. For any other deer it would have been a one-way descent into uncontrolled power, a suicidal act taken at only the most desperate of times. Small sips of the so-called glimmer potion had been sufficient to accomplish their goals at the retaking of Quillyyn Keep without losing themselves, but to drink an entire vial...

He pushed the thought away. Perhaps Elinwynn would be strong enough, both in mind and in body, to keep its effects from consuming her -- or, he thought dourly, she could willingly give in. She had already embraced the power it gave her.
"The whirlwind is nearly gone now," she said in the closest thing to a normal voice he'd heard yet. It was coarse like gravel, yet recognizably her own. He hoped it would not grow worse.

"Your quick thinking was quite effective at breaching their defenses," Corvalix said, attempting to sound even and controlled. "An entire section of the city lost to the wilds? We could not have asked for a better outcome." He pointed to the end of the broken path. " There is sufficient space along the eastern side of the mountain to allow passage for our soldiers. I expect we will meet stiff resistance at that point, but it will be a pittance compared to what it could have been. Well done, my sister. You are as sharp as ever."

"Spare me your empty platitudes, Corvalix," Elinwynn said in turn. Already the redtail army was on the march once more, visibly shaken but committed. "The Equestrians nearly brought our war of righteous vengeance to an end in one fell swoop. No matter how many times you encounter the pegasi you continue to underestimate them, and we have suffered yet more losses as a result. I did what was necessary." She yanked the long lance from the rocky soil and slid it back into the ring holsters at her side, then began to follow behind the deer formations.

Corvalix hesitated to join her, sticking his foreleg out to stop her. "Elinwynn. Look at me." When she would not, he grabbed her by the helm and forced her to. "Look at me!" The whites of her eyes were growing cloudy, like a rolling fog before a storm, and the emerald gaze that had captivated so many was all but gone. A faint stream of translucent darkness rose from the corners of her eyes like candle smoke. He struggled to find the words for the turmoil in his heart, and in defeat he pulled back from his beloved sister.

"We have a city to take," Elinwynn said, her voice an emotionless monotone. The magii shared a moment of silent regret with him before he hefted his sword in a flash of magic and carried onward.

The wind rushed by Praxilus' ears, bitterly cold, as he awaited his death. In the distance he could hear the final pleas of the ponies who were sharing in his fate. At least, he thought morbidly, he would not die alone.

Something slammed into him from the side, roughly sending him tumbling end over end. Taken by surprise his eyes shot open, stinging and blurred, searching frantically as he spun around. An armor-clad figure swooped below him, sticking out a pair of forelegs to latch onto his own. Steel plates scraped against his skin and drew thin lines of blood, and he heard a swear come from the figure as it tried again, this time catching firm hold of his left foreleg and winter tunic. Only now did he notice the wings that were frantically flapping against the fall, and for a brief moment a spark of hope appeared within him. The pegasus grunted with exertion, yelling in Equestrian with words that Praxilus could not make out, struggling to stop their fall yet making little progress. An armored hoof slipped from his tunic and sent them off balance, and he grabbed onto the pony as tightly as he could. The cliff sides were giving way to looming tree tops, their dead branches like skeletal fingers reaching skyward and rattling in the wind, while the tips of evergreens waited to spear them in a messy, painful end.

The pegasus yelled in pain, and Praxilus jerked upward as their fall slowed enough to allow the uncontrolled tumble to become a rapid, sweeping glide. His heart dropped. They were still moving far too quickly. He covered his head with his forelegs, prayed that the pony knew what it was doing, and braced himself. Together they skimmed the tops of trees, knocking loose sprays of snow and pine needles, before slamming into the canopy with a crack of snapping branches. Sharp pains slashed into him from all sides, and he felt himself knocked loose from his savior's grasp when his antlers caught a tree limb, sending him twisting to the ground below.

Slowly, painfully, Praxilus opened his eyes. It was so...quiet. A gently blowing breeze rustled the branches above and blew flakes of snow against his face. Somewhere behind him a fire popped and sizzled. Everything hurt at once, a dull, throbbing pain that pulsed through him with every beat of his heart. At last it dawned on him, slowly and almost dream-like.

I'm alive.

He was lying in a crumpled heap on his side, half-way into a snow drift at the base of a tall pine tree. A thin trail of his own blood was smeared across its protruding roots. He followed the crimson path up to the canopy, where it was lost among the shattered branches, bringing about the rapid memories of his last seconds of consciousness. He'd fallen free of the pony, too afraid to cry out, and somewhere along the way he'd hit his head against a particularly thick limb. As if it were waiting for that very moment his head started to pound like hammer blows against the left side of his face and down to his neck. The flesh above his eye was swollen to the point of restricting his view. He wanted to reach up and touch it, but found he could not muster the strength to do so. Perhaps if he were to just lie here, for a moment or two, and rest...

He shook off the encroaching warmth. No, he would not await his death here, not after all he'd survived. Gritting his teeth and ignoring the pain as best he could, he forced himself to move, to live. A sharp jolt radiated out from his ribs every time he breathed too deeply. He dragged himself out of the snow, rolling onto his stomach and pulling himself up to his knees atop a chunk of broken masonry. The far end of it, perhaps ten paces away, was still burning a sickly green. It was not, he quickly realized, the only one of its kind; entire areas of forest had been flattened, creating gaping holes where trees and stonework jutted out at odd angles like the bones of some enormous, long-dead beast.

On shaking legs he stood up, one hoof at a time, and checked himself for wounds. A gash had been torn into his skin just beside his left eye, and though it was bleeding and painful it was not life-threatening. He counted himself lucky that he had not lost his sight. Another long, shallow cut stretched from his right shoulder down to his chest, with a bruised and spotted scrape trailing to his haunches. Torn fabric, pine needles and red-tinted snow obscured it in places. Weakly and with great effort he pulled a flask of water from a pouch that had been strapped to his side, using his hooves to pop the cork and wash the debris from his wound as best he could. Simple bandages were all that he had on him; they would have to do. With a stronger understanding of healing magic, he thought morosely, he could--

Praxilus reached for his antlers in a sudden fit of panic, expecting to find them in shambles. It was with no small relief that he felt them still where they should be, albeit with a pair of smaller prongs snapped off at their ends. Considering his violent tumble, it could have been far worse.

He looked up through the hole in the trees at the city above, transfixed by the destruction that had befallen it. The damned firestorm, at least, had been reduced to almost nothing, but it was the least of Equestria's problems now. A huge swath of Canterlot's majestic architecture was completely gone, as if a dragon had devoured it in a single bite, leaving jagged bits of stone and earth jutting from the edges. Was there even enough left for the redtail to march into the city? He tried to focus on the small bits along the mountainside, where the Coriander Road would be, but it was hard to do so without his vision blurring.

A sharp cough somewhere nearby made him jump in surprise. He scanned the area with his heart racing, feeling along his left foreleg for the dagger that was no longer there. If it was a redtail, or one of the traitor whitetail, he would have no way to defend himself. But what if it wasn't a deer? What if it was--

"Help," pleaded a weak voice. "Help..."

Praxilus hobbled toward the sound, favoring his right foreleg that ached with every step. It might have been broken, but the numbing throb that pervaded his every muscle made it hard to tell. He could still walk at the very least, albeit slowly.

"Hello?" he called out. His voice was raspy and dry. "Is someone there?"

An armored hoof stuck out from behind a rock. "Please...I can't move..."

Ignoring his aching body he moved as quickly as he could, rushing to the pony's side. The steel and gold plate was marred by numerous gouges and blackened by some unknown means, and small trickles of blood marred the pony's coat and matted wings. Praxilus saw that he was trapped under the boulder, right hind leg pinned in place, and with as much strength as he could draw forth he shoved the boulder away, using every bit of magic available to him. The stone crashed onto its side as Praxilus dragged the pony away, setting him against a fallen tree trunk despite the shouts and swears of misery. He collapsed next to the pegasus, utterly exhausted.

"Th...thank you, whitetail," the pony said between sharp inhales.

Praxilus nodded. "Of course. You're the one who saved me, aren't you?"

The soldier laughed weakly. "I suppose I am. Not one of my finer landings." He looked over. "I suppose we're even now."

Praxilus snorted as he let his head fall against the tree. "I suppose we are. Thank you, Equestrian. I owe you my life." Something about the pony was so familiar. He couldn't put his hoof on it, but...

He tilted his head as he studied the pegasus beside him. Could it be...?

"The valley. Your unit found me, after I defected. I...I think you were the one who spoke to me."

Victus cocked an eyebrow at him. "Wait...you're that senator, right? The survivor. Well I'll be damned. Gods, what are you doing here?"

"The same thing I've always tried to do: help my people. You?"

"Same."

Victus passed a flask over, and Praxilus took it with a wordless nod. Sweet, smooth alcohol flowed down his throat and warmed him from inside. Sighing with relief, he gave it back and stuck out a hoof.

"Praxilus, former Senator of Evinwiir and loyalist of the true Whitetail."

The pony bumped it in return. "Victus. Victus Krosus, of the Legion. Good to meet you again, Praxilus."