The steep darkness of the Everfree Forest remained unchanged even though Luna could feel—with the abstract, tumultuous link she had never truly understood—that the moon had sunk beyond the horizon and the sun was already peeking out. Yet no sunray would penetrate the roof of skeletal branches and dark, almost black, green leaves. The cold fog radiating off the ground would not dissipate, and the shadows would only become fiercer.

She stood near the precipice of a deep, irregular hole that led beneath to what she would always think of as the true Everfree. Her armor, so rarely worn, grated at her. She never bore its burden enough times to become accustomed to it, unlike Raegdan or her Lunar Guards. It was plain and pragmatic as theirs was: curved sheets of steel that hugged her form with barely any decoration apart from her sigil and the scuff marks that hadn’t been beaten out. Part of her was glad for the underlying runework that kept it as light and comfortable as it was. The rest of her despised its existence as it was one more reminder of her weakness. She hated that she needed that magic to help her, that her own was so greatly diminished.

Raegdan stood still near her while her gaze was locked to the entrance they would make use of, on guard for movement beyond it. He was watching the forest around them, his eyes dancing from stirring leaves to shaking branches. His armor, black and mute, almost made him another of the shadows lurking under the gnarled treescape. His cloak, identical to the one he gave to her, a composite of dark earth and forest colors, converted his silhouette to a piece of the landscape, a tooth of darkness that jutted out of the earth.

So simple and elegant the camouflage that their enemies also employed. She hoped that when the moment came she and Raegdan would prove they had more tricks up their sleeves than they did.

Every now and then his hand would dance over the bandolier strapped across his breastplate, the weapons hooked around various belts across his waist, arms, and legs, and the straps of his backpack, recounting his weapons and supplies, and making certain of their hold. When the running started they would not have the luxury of stopping to replenish anything they lost.

Minutes passed, and Luna was certain, as far as she could be, that the sun had completely risen. “The sun is up,” she let Raegdan know. The darkness around them remained as it was, wrapping itself around Luna, and it would until the sun rose in a more optimal angle.

Her companion gazed around him even so, taking in the frigid blackness and nodding as if he could tell the difference already. He paused for a moment, staring behind him with his torso twisted, but shrugged in indifference when Luna questioned with a glance what he had taken notice of.

“What are the chances this works?” Luna asked after a few more minutes of silence, tasting the bitterness still lingering on her tongue. She couldn’t focus as Raegdan did. All she could think of were her guards, their names blazing across her mind like ephemeral, fragile fireflies, off to complete their perilous objective somewhere north-east of them. Sent off as if they were disposable. Just like she had done herself when she knew but a sliver of what she did now.

The response was immediate: “It will work.”

“They won’t be ready for what they face. We may return to see none of them again,” Luna said, disguising her dismay as a statement of fact.

The breeze picked up in strength. An eastern wind, streaming across the backs of tortured trunks with a serpent’s hiss. Raegdan raised his arm, watching the cloak caught on the thick, metal bars on his forearm flutter with cold professionalism and nodded, satisfied.

“Maybe,” he allowed and lowered his arm. He stepped closer to the gap, his fingers opening and closing with impatience. “But it will still work,” he continued.

She knew that it would. All Raegdan’s simple plan required was blood and flesh. It did not matter whose. She hated the callousness of such decisions, almost as much as she hated how well acquainted she was with them.

Hate so strong it almost surpassed how she hated her own lying.

Luna wasn’t afraid of revisiting the depths of the Everfree Forest simply because of the dangers it hid. She was afraid because that was where she had broken.

She didn’t want to go back to that.

Fear is an honest beast. It’s ponies that ain’t.

Leaf Stream remembered the twinges running across the back of her neck when she was picked to fight in the arena. She remembered the moment as she looked through the exit and out at the dust dancing on the edge of the sunlight, when she realized that she was sent out there to kill or die because of… she didn’t even know. Pride? Faith? Simple old stupidity? She went nevertheless. She ignored the possibility of her own death and the truthfulness that she was being ordered to murder with ease. So much ease.

It’s three versus one. We are trained by the best. We have right on our side. He’s evil and we’re good. Every possible excuse to hide behind, to convince themselves their loss was impossible, that there was nothing to fear. Then she went out in the arena, with hundreds watching her and cheering her on like a hero, and two minutes later she was much wiser than she was two minutes before.

Numerical superiority doesn’t equal victory. Training doesn’t make you invincible. Righteousness won’t stop your bones from breaking into dozens of razor-sharp shards. The good guys bleed as much as the bad guys.

And fear is an honest beast. When the lies break apart it is there to remind you of reality: You could die. You might die. You will die.

But ponies don’t like being as honest as fear, so they bury it under lies again.

Broken Gust landed next to Gobrend. She ignored the griffin and his mumbling as his talons dug inside his medical satchel, and trotted her way to Leaf Stream. The wingless pegasus saw her marefriend-out-of-duty-hours-only coming, and shooed Tick and Tack away with a flex of her hoof. She even had Trixie, who was serving as her personal nightlight, make herself scarce.

Minus the light, of course. The whole mapping business would be quite tricky without it.

“We found another entrance,” Broken Gust reported, a little out of breath but smiling in satisfaction nevertheless. Her Thestral eyes were alight in the gloom like a feline’s, fitting all too perfectly with the suspicion Leaf Stream harbored; namely, that she had become her chew toy.

Leaf Stream nodded sternly and gazed at the front of her hooves. She had laid open the map she made of their relative position and a few landmarks. Two empty circles were already marked down, with the addition of one large cross that mocked her. She glared down at the offending symbol as she asked in a bitter tone:

“Are we sure it’s an entrance and not another dead-end cave?”

“Of course not. But signs point to yes,” Broken Gust said with the gusto of a fortune ball, and she turned to display a series of shiny scratches on her armor. They were deep, far deeper than Leaf Stream was fine with. She hoped that had been a solid strike and not merely a glancing claw mark.

Broken Gust continued on, with a smile on her face that made Leaf Stream seethe. “If you check my... tail you might notice a couple hairs missing.” She winked and shook her behind as if it was a joke, as if Leaf Stream really had the capacity to feel more loss. It made her blood boil.

She scowled, unable to admonish Broken Gust in any other way. “That was… boss’ level of stupid.”

Her marefriend shrugged, uncaring or unaware of how alarmingly easy it was for Leaf Stream to picture those claw marks on her soft body rather than the armor. “We need to be fast, we check fast. Have we got enough?”

Leaf Stream fought off the urge to narrow her eyes or scowl. Instead, she kept her expression carefully neutral as she examined Broken Gust. She was too… chipper, overly so, and darting in her movements, but it was more like she was snapping into place rather than moving naturally. And her eyes…

“Yeah, you’re fine.” Leaf Stream acquiesced, reinforcing the lie, and Broken Gust’s posture eased up. “Tell me where it is,” she ordered softly, and marked her map according to Broken Gust’s instructions.

Three entrances were found so far, spread from south to north. It would have been the best scenario possible if it wasn’t a nightmarish one from the beginning. Dawn would come soon, and the Princess and Raegdan would begin their insanity just a few minutes after the sun had risen. They were cutting it close enough as it was. Good or bad, time was running out.

That bucking cross mark. She swore, if it infected the rest and they turned out to be crosses as well she’d do... stuff. Horrible stuff. With matches and— and she was threatening a piece of paper.

“Everypony, gather up. We got all we’re gonna get,” she called out.

The team leaders came from around, leaving the guards they were in charge of to cover their perimeter. Sunrise Storm, Eventide, and herself were all that remained with the absence of the two minotaurs. With two of their heavy hitters gone, and not just of their team but the Guard as a whole, Short Order took charge of the four ponies left as a temporary measure, seeing he was the most experienced one. He shuffled along as well, his good eye striking from one edge of the clearing to the next.

Leaf Stream struck her hoof against the metal of her opposite foreleg as a call to attention. “Plan time. We got three positions scouted out. You all ready to deal?”

The silence betrayed the sentiment: Nopony was.

Not that it was hard to miss. A cursory glance and she could see her fellow guards sweating in their armor despite the magic weaved in them and the cold morning air. The way everypony’s eyes flickered at the slightest creak of the gnarled branches around them, the way their heads hung low on their necks and their hooves shifted restlessly. The same sense that was crawling up Leaf Stream’s spine had already deeply embedded itself in theirs.

Leaf Stream spat the kind of curse that, had she a horn, would make cow milk curdle for the next decade.

Instead she opted for politics. She went over the plan once more, praising the simplicity of it. All they had to do was go to the entrances that led to this ‘under-forest’ and saturate them with the smell of blood, leading as many monsters out as they could, and then let their blood frenzy make short work of each other. She made no mention of how extremely outnumbered they would be if this worked or that the plan in simpler words had them bringing half the Everfree’s monsters on their heads.

She reminded them of the training they underwent, the gruelling months they persevered, with most of it under live fire. No one brought up how it was only that—a few months—or that they focused on ambushing and ending fights quickly, not open confrontation.

Magic, armor, weapons, their unique equipment and tactics. She brought it all up, one by one, reminding them of how much they had but not of how much more they needed. More bodies, more time, more help. Their magic was mostly utility, their armor nowhere near invulnerable—as Broken Gust had exhibited—their equipment mostly in Canterlot, and their tactics ill-suited for the task at hand.

Leaf Stream didn’t lie once. All she did was not reveal her inner worries and what fear whispered in her ear. Little by little, her words drowned out the whispers the Lunar Guards heard themselves and soon they were strumming along, lying to themselves on their own.

The dark was now imagined as their ally. The clawing trees and thorned roots were now places from where they’d spring, not the monsters. The fog snaking and weaving around them, muting their senses, worked for them. The opposing view was unthinkable now.

It was exactly what should be done in order for them to have a chance and it was one of the worst things Leaf Stream could think she’d ever do in her life. How appallingly easy was it to become monstrous?

As easy as nodding when they ordered you to kill because that was the right thing to do.

“Raven!” Leaf Stream yelled, and the wolf-like Diamond Dog came to her side like a… well, a trained, eager soldier. That’s what any smart pony would say. Not the other thing.

“How are we doing on beasties around here?” she asked, tucking her map away. Behind him, ponies were gathering their gear, filled with determination and bravado.

Raven raised his helmet’s visor, uncovering his long snout in order to sniff. He grimaced in distaste at first, but kept going despite the aroma he must have been assaulted with. The Lunar Guard needed to operate in the bucking Everfree Forest at night, and they simply didn’t have the luxury of time to deflect constant attacks. So measures had been taken. Measures that would assure that Timber Wolves would stay away in the very least, and hopefully more than just them.

Leaf Stream hadn’t been exactly ecstatic when she had been given the pot, and she was hitting a bullseye on the ‘mortified’ scale of emotions when Princess Luna explained to her what she should do with it. Leaf Stream would rather contemplate suicide rather than go ahead with it, but knowing she was sharing the pain made it easier. She gathered the Lunar Guards, lined them up, picked up a branch, dipped it in the horrid, horrid liquid… and proceeded to ‘bless’ them all, sprinkling them with delight. She explained the smell, source, and reason right after as a special alchemical potion made by that crazy zebra that lived in the Everfree.

Hopefully, nopony would ever guess the real source.

Raegdan le wee-wee. She was so glad she wasn’t a Diamond Dog.

The visor came back down, sliding smoothly on its well-oiled hinges. “I can’t tell,” Raven gruffly said. “The way the wind blows, everything east of us knows where we are, but we won’t get any warning.”

“It will make things easier,” Sunrise Storm spoke up, overhearing. “It will carry the scent of blood further east, covering more of the area we need.”

Leaf Stream scoffed. “More effective, sure.” But not easier at all. “Alright, time to get serious. We are gonna start from the southernmost entrance and make our way north. That way we won’t accidentally pull anything too close to Ponyville. Sunrise,” she commanded, her confidence rising at the way the tall earth pony mare straightened, “I want you and Eventide to form up our arrow. Get the twins, Smoke Ring, and Stalwart Shield ready with the blood packs. Red Dawn, Snared Wish, and Blank Slate will be our wind, so I want them covered while they do their thing. Short Order, that’s your task. Everypony got all that?”

They all nodded, resolute.

“Then let’s pick up the rest of our crap and get going!”

As ponies worked, losing themselves in the thick underbrush, Leaf Stream got a hold of Broken Gust. She bit on her wing, firm yet softly as to not break the thin skin, and dragged her a little way off. Someplace near where they could have more privacy yet still be close enough to the rest of their fellow guards in case of an emergency.

Broken Gust looked around with interest, her lit eyes flickering with amusement. “As much as I would love to, I don’t think this is the time or place for a quickie—”

A hard shove interrupted her and a fuming glare silenced her. “I want you to go back to Ponyville. Now,” Leaf Stream ordered, inciting the last word with as much urgency as she could.

Her order, a demand really, was met with a blank blink. “But… I can’t,” Broken Gust flustered out. “We’re all needed here.”

“That isn’t true though, is it?” Leaf Stream forced herself to pause for a deep breath. “I want you to go and stay back with the others.”

Broken Gust wrestled with confusion for a moment before speaking up, pleading almost. “What? Why? Did I do something wrong? If this is about this scratch, the armor still works fine, it didn’t hurt the enchantments, I swear—”

“I want someone competent back in Ponyville in case any critter manages to slink its way over there. Stampede might have stayed back to help keep some order while we’re gone,” Leaf Stream said, icily and quietly, “but like it or not he is too old. I want you to bring Limit Breaker with you as well. He’s too young for this.”

“That… doesn’t sound quite right…” The perplexion on Broken Gust’s face faded away under a stream of intense reasoning going on in her head.

Leaf Stream scoffed. “Why not? If Solid Charge can lounge around worthlessly, just being a beefy, sullen blood bag for Cast Iron to suckle on when he needs inner moisturizing, then why not let you—what?”

Broken Gust’s expression became soft as the confusion simply sloughed off her at once. There was something approximating pity in her eyes. Leaf Stream barely had time to consider if it was worth working herself into a state at what that might be about when Broken Gust quickly nuzzled her. Her lips caught the edge of her muzzle in a quick, barely-there, yet so tender, kiss.

Broken Gust pulled away all too soon. “Cast Iron and Solid Charge don’t share blood types,” Broken Gust said with a brittle smile. “And you’re too obvious.”

It took a second for Leaf Stream to realize that Broken Gust knew of the deception they had put over Cast Iron. Her throat gurgled with a nasty, choking feeling. She gulped it down along with the rest.

“Alright, then. If you ain’t going back… then it’s off to getting killed for the both of us.”

Broken Gust chuckled. “It won’t be that bad!” she said, ever the optimist. She sobered again. “You really worry that much over me?”

Leaf Stream shrugged. What was there to say? Apart from trivialities which, let’s face it, neither of them would want to dawdle in right now. Last thing Leaf Stream needed was getting another slice of humble pie.

It was overrated.

“You know,” Broken Gust slowly said as she secured her helmet tighter and made sure the straps around her wings were secure, “I only ever got with you because I’d either get in between somepony’s legs or steer myself crazy at some point.” It was very matter-of-factly spoken. “It’s not like you were the best catch personality-wise.”

Oh, hey, remember when we thought getting our wing bones slowly grinded down to confetti was the worst torture imaginable? Good times, jolly good times! We should have another go.

Leaf Stream told her inner jerkwad to shut up. She was busy as it was with not flinching back in pain. She didn’t need the sass, thank you very much.

She knew, of course, and she had never been under the assumption that it had been anything else than what Broken Gust described. Still, it was nice to pretend, wasn’t it? She hoped it could have lasted longer though.

All Leaf Stream wanted in return for being Broken Gust’s night ride was to be able to cuddle with her. To cuddle and pretend that the warm body she was clinging to could hear the words she mouthed but never voiced.

“Yeah, I know.” Leaf Stream put up a lazy grin. Thankfully, it didn’t crumble instantly.

She wouldn’t let herself be pitied, and she wouldn’t let Broken Gust harbor any guilt for breaking it off. She was a bucking saint for keeping up with somepony as… as little and petty and broken as Leaf Stream for as long as she did. She would have the jugular out the ass of anypony who said otherwise!

Broken Gust’s Thestral wings spread again as she turned away, ready to fly off and join her group. “I’m just telling you so you know how stupid that whole deal was,” she said, her wings starting their first flap and raising her in the air. “Telling me to leave and playing the ultimate jerk when I’ve already fallen in love with you? You’re a few weeks too late for that to work, sweetie buns.”

Lips met lips in a fickle, brief kiss that meant all too much for how short it was.

Somepony in the distance was scratching the metaphorical vinyl to oblivion.

Broken Gust blew a kiss and… vanished. Like a dream. She just went poof. Or at least that’s how it looked to Leaf Stream. Brain felt wonky.

Leaf Stream took a step. Then another. Then she opened her mouth and shouted, as loud as she dared in this grim, dark forest. The only answer possible to the fulfillment of her deepest desire:

“You damn moron! You jinxed us both!”

The roots delved deeper than mere hunger.

Hunger was the faint outline before the true need that cast that pale shadow. The mad, scrambling nails in its head that urged it forward with a purpose beyond satiating itself weren’t starvation. It was engulfed in phantom sensations of bones crunching between its teeth, of blood flooding the inner walls of its bleating mouth, of its stomach gurgling lovingly in an all too brief sensation of fullness. But it wasn’t hungry!

It didn’t want to feed to satiate the hunger. It wanted to feed for the sheer act of it.

The putrid scent, with its metallic undertones and sweet bitterness, was howling out for it to come. It was flowing all around it; encompassing it. It inhaled deeply, the crusted orifices of its nose pulsing along with its weak heartbeat. It had to follow or the scratching nails in its head would drive it beyond the madness it lived in and to death. It had to. The body was weak and couldn’t hope to support its head, but the weakness of its legs and torso wouldn’t stop it or slow it down.

It had dreamed of stronger legs once. Of muscled appendages, a strong body, and the absence of its cravings. When it awoke, it had found itself being attacked. It relished the mewlings that predated the gnashing. It had been a good feeding.

Its mouth opened, and as the tongues lashed out for purchase among the rocks above, it couldn’t help a strangled cry. It had heard the same from the tiny ones, those that had almost no flesh and such brittle, snapping bones, make that noise when it took them in its mouth. It felt it fitted it. That this was the sound it should make. It made it almost constantly, repeating it, its own song.

The tongues pulled, and dragged its useless, half-blind carcass up the crevice and the larger spaces between rocks and ground. Its cloven feet pushed ineffectually against stone, trying to speed itself up. It was close, so close. It wanted marrow to spill over its teeth. The pain went away when bones cracked and their owners wept and cried and screamed and howled and gurgled and begged and died.

The wet muscles flexed and pulled taut. It slobbered all over, its tongues running over carcasses that it ignored. It didn’t want dead meat, it wanted live meat. Meat that could scream for it so it didn’t have to. It could sense them move, right there at the edge of its cragged vision, there where the darkness was not as dark.

Outside.

Had it ran at the outside once? Had it ever ran? Had it been able to look up? To stand?

So much of it. So much of everything. Of the upside and of bones dressed in their meat and drenched in blood, so much blood. It sensed, more than it saw, a whole bunch of its coveted morsels hover in the air, the flapping of their wings sending wafts of sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet bitter smells over it and down the dark world it never called home. Waves of its competitors made their way here from afar even now, the scratching of massive amounts of claws and more vibrating through the ground and up its distended belly that ran flat to the ground.

They couldn’t see it as it stood silent and immobile in the threshold of the cave, its zig-zagging waves of black and white on its coat, remnants of a past life, hiding it. Its tongues lashed out, and grabbed one of them, pulling it in immediately. The rest of them tried to hold it back, but it wouldn’t have it. It needed to feed, it needed to chew, it needed the scratching to stop!

They bucked up. They bucked up badly.

It wasn’t anypony’s fault. The only mistake was trying to do too good a job in too short a time. They ripped open packages of blood, flooding earth and rocks with litres of it. They did their best to funnel the smell down the craggy passages.

And they barely waited for a response. Like idiots.

Then they went to the next one. They had decided that the first one had been a fluke after all. Again, like idiots.

Two in a row, that’s what they believed after a few minutes of waiting at the second entrance. Either the plan wasn’t working or they were standing in front of dead end caves and tunnels. They laid all their hopes at the last of the three entrances. Like— you get the idea.

Third time in a row, and they grew complacent. What kind of smug idiots stand around in the Everfree Forest and gaze at a hole in the ground without paying attention to their surroundings? Nopony bothered remaining alert at the sounds around them any more, and Leaf Stream failed to think of putting up anypony as a sentry. She wasn’t alone there, sure, but like it or not she had been put in charge.

And she bucked it all up.

Leaf Stream had no doubt that the blood scent had reached down below. If she had to guess, it drove them to a frenzy. She imagined droves of them, trying to climb over one another in their fervor to reach their prize, oozing through the tunnels and underground caves like clogged arteries. By that point, the Lunar Guard had moved on, and the creatures below had a fresh scent to follow. And then a third one. While the Lunar Guard relaxed above, a swarm was gathering below their feet, bloating in size and ferocity.

They dug their way up to them.

That’s what they did, but it wasn’t how it happened. It was like an explosion, an eruption of a geyser of dirt and crumbled rock. Dust rose up like a volcanic cloud, descended like a torrentous wave, and hovered around them like poisonous fog, weaving around them in tangled shapes.

A deafening wail filled the silence, tearing it apart.

It wasn’t anypony of the Lunar Guard that screamed. It was the… the things that clambered out of the shattered ground. Some of them were freakish amalgamations that spat in the face of nature, stingers and claws and feathers stitched together in a single body. Scales glinting beneath thick fur, and venomous fangs dripping in beaked mouths. Toothless worms with fleshy, knotted snouts, and insects bred with reptiles and mammals.

Others were worse, recognizable by a single body part but leaving to imagination what the rest was. There was a pony’s face on one, but it was placed on a scabbed chest like a tumor, sporting jagged, broken teeth that should never have been in a pony’s mouth. She didn’t know what the second one she saw was supposed to be, but Leaf Stream immediately hated its mother for not drowning it in a river at birth.

A wave of sickness and diseased smell prefaced them along with the shrill screaming. Screaming as if they were in pain, piercing their ears. Or perhaps they were mocking the prey before them, giving them a glimpse of what was to come. They were climbing over each other—slashing, biting, stinging, tearing and shredding, killing and maiming each other in their bid to reach the ponies in front of them.

Leaf Stream shouted orders, failing to overcome the cacophony, but the Lunar Guard still performed as needed. They retreated among a denser patch of trees where each formed space could be defended by a single pony if need be.

The monstrosities and predators of the Everfree Forest streamed out of the ground like pus out of an infected wound. They covered every inch, slowly worming their way to them. Their numbers allowed the Lunar Guard the breather they needed to get in position; otherwise they would have been slain in seconds. For every pair—or more—of eyes that spied them there were a dozen claws and teeth ready to feast on an unaware target, slowing their advance.

All too soon, however, the lull before the storm passed. There was a moment of stillness as the coveted meal was discovered, and then the tide swelled and fell upon them.

They tried to hold on, to do some damage, to cut, wound, and slay, before they retreated. To follow the plan. But, like an oozing sludge, the horde was spilling to their sides. Slowly, their left and right were being closed off.

Leaf Stream was ready to call for a retreat when she realized too late that they had expected their opponents from the wrong side. Their back was now to the eastern edge of the Everfree Forest. They could run, and they could, with luck, make it out on the fields where they could outrun any pursuers.

But then this ravenous mob would aim for the closest hub of activity. Leaf Stream could almost see the sparkling lights of Ponyville and how it would attract these things like moths to a flame.

She didn’t give the order.

Spells flew over their heads from the back and side, crashing among the horde with varying degrees of success. Horns sparking like fireworks, and tongues of flame and pure magic raining in various colors. Somepony—she only saw the flicker of a silhouette—tried to cast from up close to make their spells count.

Fickle fireflies of silver and gold gathered around a horn, a pale light that barely illuminated the focus of magic it was being absorbed into.

A humongous head, pale and skeletal, pushed itself out of the darkness and fog. A giant of dull bone and sharpened edges, made out of rot and the remains of death, clamored for the living. Branches snapped as it made its way to them from its great height, scratching ineffectually at its milky, blind eyes. It roared in madness, opening a lipless, gaping maw of jagged teeth. Noxious green fumes of decay and poison exhumed with each breath, and the giant reached to tear down the trees that gave them their defence and stopped the tide from falling on them with all its weight.

The unicorn stood its ground.

There was a single burst of magic. It was a braid of light, silver and gold melding into each other and spreading apart. The motes of light and magic centered on the gigantic shambling corpse, some of them landing on the monsters that dared to stand too close to it. Smoke rose from flesh, scales, and bone. The dead thing, white, gaunt and powerful, tried to wipe the magic off its torso, only managing to spread it further. The magic ate its way inside it, and, like a tree splintering apart, the giant came crashing down.

The magic flared for a second. There was a small point of light, a horn bathed in the purest and most powerful of magics. It lasted for a few moments, full of glory and power, before the horn broke apart.

The tide surged anew.

She didn’t give the order.

Leaf Stream heard a pained scream, and no more magic was cast from that side. She didn’t see anypony run back. Only Tick and Tack trying to cover one more side, stop one more wave, and nopony bothering to call for help for the wounded that did not exist.

Red Dawn, large and strong, now paid the price for his gifts; his size stole some of the speed and agility other, smaller pegasi had, and he was cut down by a scythe-like appendage. He fell down, gazing in shock at the eviscerated remains of his wing before screaming in horror and agony.

Gobrend fought to drag him away from seeking talons and back to safety. Red Dawn’s right wing had been split apart, hanging in place by a half-serrated muscle and left a dull, red smear on the ground behind him as he was dragged. The griffin was also covered in blood, but Leaf Stream had doubts that it belonged to him. She knew Red Dawn wasn’t the only injured.

Her own side burned, blood blinded her right eye, and her back was torment. The weight of the armor was pressing upon the remains of her wings, and she knew that the runes had been destroyed, that she had been cut deep enough that the leather beneath was ruined. She didn’t dare think of what the pain meant. She kept fighting, hoping that the tightness of the padding she wore would slow the bleeding, or keep things that were meant to be inside, inside.

Two paces west from her was Limit Breaker. The young pony’s mouth was biting down on the handle of a back lance. It was a heavy, solid piece of metal, covering the pony’s back like an extra layer of armor and coming to a wicked point a couple of feet beyond the pony’s head. It was made to turn an earth pony into a charging blade, letting them dispose of its weight easily if they had to.

Limit Breaker growled a battle cry through his teeth and charged. Unlike most, the Lunar Guard had theirs made less like a lance and more akin to a wide, wicked sword, meant to slice and open wounds left and right instead of only piercing a single target.

Limit Breaker was lit like a red torch, black spots flickering and rising in the fiery aura of his extension of earth pony magic. His hooves broke the ground beneath him. With his erratic strength he drove deep into the side of a scaled beast resembling a humongous snake with its spine outside its body, almost cutting it in twain.

The serpent shrieked and flailed, crushing the monsters close to it, but Limit Breaker held onto the back lance a second too long. He was thrown into the air, amid a crowd of grasping appendages. Leaf Stream expected to see the young pony—only a colt, truly—ripped apart. He would land in the snarling sea that tried to swallow them all, and he would be devoured in a gory fashion in seconds.

Eventide appeared in the last moment. She weaved like an aerial dancer between blades of keratin. A screech of metal ruled over the battlefield as she failed to dodge all of them. A rain of blood and torn metal splattered over the raging horde. Her flight almost faltered. Only grim determination pushed the aged Thestral ahead, her wings pushing her forward even as her eyes rolled to the back of her skull and her jaw slacked, coughing blood.

Eventide and Limit Breaker crashed behind the Lunar Guard’s dwindling, battered line of defense. A barked order from Gobrend sent Raven off to retrieve them and bring them medical aid.

She still didn’t give the order.

Leaf Stream rushed to fill the void that the Diamond Dog left. She swore unheard, the din of battle and eerie shrieks making it almost impossible to hear even herself. She wondered if she’d stay alive long enough to tell Princess Luna of the glaring oversight in their training and tactics.

The Princess and Raegdan managed to work together as one in fights, both of them always seemingly reading each other’s mind. That cooperation however came from intuiting what each would do through massive experience. They drilled their guards on how to move and when on certain occasions and with set strategies, true… but they never thought of another single, simple fact:

They had both been accustomed to working alone and it was all they knew. Working out a system for communicating in cases where they had to operate in silence or they couldn’t speak had never been so much as a passing thought.

Leaf Stream ran to where Raven used to be, and she had no way of telling Shaded Swirl to watch his left flank now that she was gone. She had no way of telling the others to cover them, no way of being heard over the dissonance of battle. There was no communication, no chance of working together apart from guessing and doing their best with that little slice of the battle each took in.

The monsters died almost as fast as they popped up out of the ground, mostly to each other. Scant minutes, and the air was already filled with putrefaction and the rancid stench of entrails gushing their secretions over the ravaged earth.

The former bartender was shocked to discover he had been without anypony at his side in the last few seconds. He searched for Leaf Stream instead of looking ahead, even as Leaf Stream tried to shout warnings that he would never hear. His eyes met hers and found her doing her best to warn him even as she tried to defend herself; and then slowly, as if in a dream, he turned to see ahead.

Leaf Stream backed off to another pair of trees, finally realizing that their ring of defence had shrunk even more than she had realized and was almost caught in the open. Shaded Swirl didn’t.

Jaws, powered by naked sinew and bleeding from self-made wounds, closed like a trap where Shaded Swirl’s head was.

They met a bubble of magic and stalled for a few moments before bursting it. Stalwart Shield’s magic only lasted for a second, but it was enough for the Royal Guard trained unicorn to throw Shaded Swirl to the ground. He tried to raise another shield to buy them another precious second of life, but the blindingly fast tendril of a vine-like creature knocked him unconscious, blood leaking profusely from his face. He fell over Shaded Swirl as if trying to defend him with his last conscious act.

His body trapped Shaded Swirl where he was. The earth pony tried to bring his legs down to stand, but Stalwart Shield’s weight pinned him to the ground. They would have died then and there if not for the magic that formed around them.

Short Order was shouting. His body trembled as he threw the weight of two ponies back to brief safety. He was bleeding from a hundred places, bearing a thousand wounds. One of his legs betrayed him. He fell to one knee. Leaf Stream was barely close enough to hear him now.

“Retreat! We have to get these youngsters out! We can’t hold, we can’t—”

Snarling jaws with teeth the size of fractured swords snapped around where Short Order was standing. Then they lifted, gulping in satisfaction, and Short Order was no more. The only sign that the old veteran had ever been there was a splash of blood and the lower part of a back leg.

She had to give the order!

But if she did this would happen to Ponyville or another innocent farmhouse that littered the fertile valley. Yet she could see their own fate if she didn’t, the bloodshed and screaming forming a pattern of such clarity that it was as trustworthy as when she was still whole; the way she used to be able to tell the currents of her flight, now she could see how this fight would end. She could see how nothing they threw at the baying tide would change the outcome. How running would end up with them dead either way and more death born from their actions.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

They needed a way out. Something they hadn’t tried, they hadn’t thought of. Fighting or running wouldn’t work—

The Thestrals and the pegasi that could still fly were trying to weave around and prod the horde’s attention away from them. Needing space, they flew around the treeless area near the cave.

Leaf Stream saw Snared Wish flying and fighting, sweat pouring from her mane and blood from her side.

And she saw her caught by fleshy tendrils, dragged into the mouth of a nightmarish face of a zebra-like mutation, just its mouth the size of a buffalo, the body itself the emaciated remains of a newborn foal. The teeth smashed down like gates, snapping through metal, flesh, and bone.

The scream of pain reverbated over the battlefield. One of horror echoed it from the line of ponies.

Mouth, my mouth, bones and teeth and blood and crunching, sweet crunching, can’t hear my screams over the crunching—

It could taste it. Metal and grime layered around it, the sour taste of sweat and skin underneath, and deeper, just a little deeper, the frantic beating of its heart and the blood swirling in its veins. Shredded fragments of hair and hoof danced across its taste buds along with the intoxicating promise for more lingering on them.

Blood flowed from one of its tongues as the rest of the morsels tried to cut the other tongue loose, but it didn’t care. Blood was blood, pain was pain. It tightened its grip and pulled harder with the rest of its tongues. Almost there, almost there. Teeth clacked in anticipation, tight lips tried to reach for the succulent flesh. They struck and kicked and hurt, but it was so close to biting again, just one more bite. One bite through its spine, that’s all it wanted. It opened its mouth and cried, cried in need, cried for the food, cried for itself. Bones and blood, bones and death, death, death, it wanted death…

There was a flash of pain, and one of its eyes ceased its mad seizure. The other persisted for a second or two until it became too hard to continue. It was hurting, not much, but in a deep way, like… somewhere in its head. Almost as bad as the not-hunger—

There was a pony-sized morsel staring at it. Blue, a light blue, a blue that brought the sight of water and sound of wind in its mind, and a horn as broken as the last victim it tasted. The blue one was crying, and it wondered why since it wasn’t biting it. It wanted to bite it.

Something rose from the depths of itself. Not a thought, it wasn’t quite able to think like that, but an emotion. It wasn’t fear and it wasn’t hunger. It left it wondering what it was.

It saw one of them carrying a long piece of wood with a silver end. They dashed for it, losing them when they changed course for its blind side. The pain flared again. And then it died off. The pain was leaving, fading, fading just like its sight, like the tastes in its mouth, like the smells…

Shame. It is shame. Shame for thinking of hurting her.

The scratching faded too. It died off. It stopped.

Najee

Free at last…

“Burn it all down!” Leaf Stream ordered.

“What?” Trixie and Trailblazer were the only casters left. Stalwart Shield couldn’t be awakened—Gobrend had only shaken his head when she spared a glance at the fallen guard—and Short Order was…

They were the only two left. Tired and spent. But they were all she had.

She looked at the rest of their losses. Shaded Swirl was still wailing over the body of his wife. Luckily for Snared Wish, she had fallen unconscious at the first touch of the torch on the bleeding stumps that used to be her legs; Tidal Wave and Smoke Ring were both missing, having been lost somewhere in the fight. Leaf Stream knew what happened to one of them, but she didn’t know to whom.

Red Dawn wasn’t the only one whose wing had been mutilated. Blank Slate was in an almost similar condition, but the strange half-breed still had enough presence of mind to overpower the pain and fight, though grounded. Tick, however, didn’t, having gone to shambles and crying over the body of her twin sister.

A small trickle of blood poured from Tack’s neck despite the gauze meant to keep her torn, ravaged throat together. With a twinge of remorse, Leaf Stream wondered if they had actually left the hospital with any blood to use.

It didn’t matter. There wasn’t much of a chance they’d make it there, right?

“Burn it all down. Everything that is dry and can burn, must burn!” Leaf Stream insisted, knowing they only had a few moments left. There was nowhere to go, and any second now the stream of monsters would encircle them.

“We will be trapped with nowhere to go…” Trixie said, looking ready to cry.

“Better we burn to death than we let those things eat us or lead them to Ponyville! Burn it. All. Down!” Leaf Stream screamed.

Trixie turned to Trailblazer. He didn’t look scared, only exhausted beyond all reason. “Do you have anything left in you?” the mare asked dubiously.

Trailblazer’s smile was faltering and clinged to his face with great effort. “For fire? I got enough to wow you, my lady magician.”

The two of them stepped up together, their horns struggling to dredge up the remains of their magic. “If the great and powerful Trixie is to go—” Trixie swallowed the sob that climbed up her throat but let the tears fall free, “—then she’ll go as she lived.” The fireworks flew, brilliant flowers sparkling against bark and dried leaves, igniting flames of red, blue, and yellow.

“Encore.”

Twilight was too far away to see the blaze burning at the edge of the Everfree Forest and the smoke of dry kindling would not be seen from that distance. Pinkie had a bad feeling, but it was lost among the multitude she kept feeling ever since last night. Rainbow Dash had her eyes set straight to the east and the destination they would soon embark for.

Stampede saw, and the old, retired captain of Canterlot understood far more than the populace of Ponyville did. While ponies asked each other if they should get some pegasi to push some rainclouds over there, he was gathering carts and ponies who were fast and strong, along with doctors and medics.

Solid Charge didn’t see the smoke. He was holding a hand gone still, and weeping.

As for Luna and Raegdan, they didn’t either. They had already gone below, slowly and quietly making their way to the dark below.

And the two ponies who followed them didn’t see it either, though Fluttershy did think she caught a whiff of smoke. She wanted to mention it, but Applejack warned her to keep quiet. They went down the hole, and followed Luna and Raegdan into the belly of the beast.