The information digested like a heel of moldy bread. "What do you mean you couldn't find her?"

"It's just as I said, My Queen," said the sentry apologetically. "We couldn't find her. As you can see, we've brought back many survivors." He gestured at the citizenry he and his company had discovered hiding in the various vaults and chambers and solars throughout the palace, mares and frightened children most of them. Some were wounded guards, others stewards and servants. Two were bakers who worked with Nevermore in the palace kitchen. "But we didn't find your Starlight Glimmer."

"Did you look for her where I told you she'd be?" Fluttershy looked back as the throne room door was being closed. It had been opened to admit the first company of soldiers bringing back survivors. The baton had been passed down to the second company, who were now closing the door behind them. When the door shut, the throne room echoed with a hollow boom.

"She wasn't there, My Queen." The soldier shifted his weight with a grimace. His helm had a few new scrapes and dings on it since Fluttershy had last seen him. His ringmail was slashed open in various places, and his left flank had been laid open, the flap of skin dangling loosely as it wept crimson tears. Clearing the palace and rescuing the survivors couldn't have been an easy task, it was clear to see. "The chamber was in shambles," he said. "Poor Joji was found with his chest opened up. We think he was trying to protect her; the brave, stupid fool."

Joji, too... How much more could she hurt? How many more would be lost before the day was done? Fluttershy's knees were shaking. They wanted to give out from under her, but she commanded herself to be strong. "What did you mean when you said you couldn't find Starlight? Do you think she managed to escape or hide somewhere?"

"She was taken, most like."

Fluttershy blinked at him, not understanding.

"There was evidence of a scuffle. The bed sheets were all turned up, the mattress half dragged from its frame, but there was no body, and no blood. None that would have been the lady's, at least. We found some wadded up tufts of feathers that looked like they were ripped from a griffon's head. There was that, and the window was busted out. Looked like some one snatched her up and flew the coop."

Fluttershy almost felt wicked for taking some small solace in that. Taken didn't necessarily mean dead. Yet, still... "I didn't think they were taking prisoners. Why would they have taken her?"

"Me and some of the other guards were talking, and..." He hesitated, shifting his weight away from his rent leg. "These pirates, they eat equines, do they not? Maybe they took her to be butchered."

As horrifying as the prospect of that was, Fluttershy doubted it. "You said the bed was turned up. There were feathers that looked like they were ripped out. There were signs of a struggle, but no blood."

"Aye," nodded the sentry.

"If Starlight fought with her abductor, don't you think he would have just killed her? If he was taking her just because he wanted to eat her, why would it have mattered if he took her alive or dead?"

"There's that," conceded the sentry, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, I doubt these pirates are here for meat. They tend to do their hunting along the shore, and I'm not seeing any of them fly off with their kills in their claws."

Starlight, Fluttershy thought. You're alive. You have to be.

"These pirates," grimaced the sentry. "What are they up to? If they're not here to hunt or plunder, what in bloody tartarus are they here for? They're just killing anyone who isn't fast enough to get away or strong enough to fight back. Doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it."

Fluttershy wished she knew. She glanced longingly at her husband near the dais, his subjects gathered around him, sobbing and muttering pleas to any god who may have been listening to them, as Doctor Patches worked tirelessly to keep him alive.

Her husband, Starlight, the others... Fluttershy didn't know what she would do if she lost anyone else. Would she scream until her voice gave out? Would she tear out her hair? Would she succumb to the madness and throw herself from the palace ramparts? She stroked her pregnant belly, frightened that such a thought could even cross her mind. No, not that, she told herself. Never that. Curse me for even thinking of doing something so cowardly.

"And that's exactly our issue."

The sentry's announcement pulled The Queen from the depths of her thoughts. "What's our issue?" she said.

"When fighting a battle, information is your most important resource. A famous general once said 'know thy enemy as thyself.' Fighting an enemy you don't know is no different than fighting blindfolded. We don't know their numbers, who's commanding them, where they're from, why they're here, their objective, their strengths, their weaknesses. We know nothing. We don't even know if the pirates outside our walls make up the entirety of their invading force. They could merely be a vanguard, or they could be harassing us as a distraction. There are so many strategies in the field of open combat, and, as of yet, we don't have even one." The sentry hung his head. "Who knows. Maybe they don't have a strategy either. Maybe it will all come down to attrition."

"You seem to know a lot about battle," said Fluttershy, impressed.

The sentry smiled despite himself. "Mr. Steelsong was a good teacher."

"If battles are won by the side with the most intel..." The beginnings of an idea bloomed in Fluttershy's mind. A morally ambiguous idea, but it was an idea. Starlight, you called me a monster. Fluttershy looked around at all the uneasy eyes in the throne room, listened to the sobs of children, heard their mothers attempting to calm them with soft words of frail hope. The fear was palpable, the uncertainty looming over the throne room, thick and heavy, like a phantasm. She looked again at her dying husband. If I am all that stands between us and them, so be it. 'Monster.' I'll armor myself in the title. "Sentry!" she suddenly said.

Startled, the guard snapped into attention, taught as a bowstring. "My Lady?"

"You went above and beyond the call of duty this day. If we get out of this alive, if there is a tomorrow for us, I promise you, a reward will be in order."

"Serving you and The King is all the reward I could ask for, Your Highness."

"None the less, you and the rest of your company will be well compensated. Now, go rest and have your wounds treated. That is an order."

The sentry lowered his head. "Aye."

"I need the next highest ranking guard to step forward," Fluttershy commanded, loud, so everyone in the throne room could hear her.

A raptor with blood crusted talons and a tattered red cloak stepped forward. His beak was chipped and one of his legs was bound in bloodstained linen, but his eyes were bright and eager. Fluttershy could immediately tell that he both lived to serve and loved to fight. A griffon, thought Fluttershy, studying his finely corded frame, his handsome, angular features. And a zesty one at that.

"My Queen," said the griffon. "how may I be of service?"

He spoke with the sure, easy confidence of one who had seen many battles. Fluttershy liked that. "I need you to round up a few volunteers to comb the palace."

"The second company left when the first returned, Your Highness," the griffon informed her, though not in a defiant way. "They're looking for more survivors and mopping the halls of any pirates they find on the way."

"I know that," said Fluttershy, "but I'm not sending you on a search and destroy mission. This is wound and retrieve. I need you to bring me a live one."

"A live one?" The griffon blinked. "A pirate?"

The Queen nodded. "And don't injure him too badly while apprehending him. He'll be useless to us if he's dead or goes into shock. Can you handle that?"

The griffon smiled eagerly at that, like a boy being invited to play his favorite game. Lions enjoyed nothing half so much as hunting, and eagles had the proclivity to keep their prey alive until they've brought them back to their nests. Perhaps griffons had that in common with their cousins. "Aye," he said, "Let me round up my boys, and we'll be back before you've even realized we're gone."

Moments later Fluttershy was watching them depart. I hope that one returns safely. No female griffon in New Haven will forgive me if I've sent that one off to his death. She gave them one last salute before the door was shut, then she turned and went to go be with her husband at the foot of the dais. "Please, tell me there's good news," she pleaded to the doctor.

Patches looked up at her, his face obscured by his mask. A silent shake of his head was his only response. The King was a horror to look upon. His lips were rimmed with pink froth. His face was drawn, his flesh pale and burning. The black veins extending from the gaping wound in his chest were expanding along his torso. There were dead, blackened leaches gathered in a pile from Patches' attempt to purge the bad blood from him. The King's eyes were open, but they did not see. Every once in a while he would let out a weak, rasping moan, but those were the only sounds he made.

Fluttershy had become proficient at holding back her tears. It was a skill that came easier with time. But she was unable to force them back whenever she looked upon him in the state he was in. She cradled her husband's massive head, wiping the froth from his lips whenever it came up. Violet Viola sat on the steps of the dais, weeping silently to herself as she played her violin. No matter what she played it would always sound sad. The somberness and uncertainty that hung over the throne room was suffocating.

"Would My Queen like to make a request?" Violet Viola was smiling down at her from the steps.

Fluttershy kissed her husband on the brow. "I do, in fact."

Violet removed a silken square from her bodice and dabbed at the tears below her eyes. "What would My Queen like to hear?"

"I doubt it's a song you've heard before, but I can teach it to you, if you play along while I hum it."

"Of course, my love." Violet Viola lifted her bow. "It has been so long since I've played a new song."

"It is a lullaby my mother taught to me when I was very young." Fluttershy looked down at her king. "I hummed it to my husband once, when the terrors of his past were haunting him. It seemed to put him at ease."

"What is the song called?"

"That's the funny thing. It doesn't have a name. It was merely a composition my mother improvised one night, when it was storming outside, and I was too frightened to go to sleep."

Violet rested the butt of her violin against her shoulder and ran her bow across the strings. "Well then, what shall we name it?"

Fluttershy stroked her husband's pale face and said, "Let's call it, 'The snake, the mouse, and the mongoose.' "

Self awareness seeped slowly into Twilight's mind, and she remembered. She remembered everything. She remembered the pain, the fear, the despair, the dismay. "I'm going to finish this," she had said, before ordering Starlight to go in search for help. The King looked so vulnerable as he lay there dazed in the snow; killing him should have been the simplest thing. The concussive blast Starlight Glimmer had struck him with was so powerful it would have decapitated anyone else. Twilight remembered pulling for the magic that she would use to deliver the finishing blow, and that was when The King opened his eyes and began to rise, slowly but surely. Twilight, panicking, knew there wouldn't be enough time to charge her spell to its intended strength. It might not have been powerful enough to fell him, but she hoped that it would at least be enough to knock him back down. With desperation in her heart and a silent prayer she loosed her spell. It struck true, but it was no good. Sombra bulled through the blast like a freight train, the magic fizzling impotently upon his breast plate in a strident bloom of sparks. It wasn't until then when Twilight truly realized what she was up against. She only had enough time to scream before the black behemoth was upon her.

The chamber was dark, her vision blurry, the world around her swirling like a starless night reflected upon the surface of a murky pond.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit," came the panicked voice of a mare. The voice was to the right of Twilight Sparkle. Then it was to the left of her. Then it was at her feet. Then it was near her head. There was the frantic, arrhythmic knock of hooves on a stony floor, a constant stream of muttered curses. Twilight's head felt heavy as she lifted it to look upon the mare through the gloom of the dimly lit chamber. She was running this way and that way, gathering things here and there into a tanned leather satchel. Well, what one might call 'gathering,' Twilight would have called it 'haphazardly stuffing things into a pack like a burglar realizing that the owner of the house had just come home.'

Twilight's first words came in rasps. "You... Who are you? Where am I?"

The Unicorn spared her the briefest of glances before she swept an assortment of small tools into her bag from the surface of a wooden table. "Winter Lilac - The Apothecary, and we're in the mouth of bloody tartarus. At least we might as well be."

A weak and withered voice to the right of Twilight Sparkle said, "Tartarus... Always thought... That place would.... Be a little warmer."

"Moondancer?" Twilight turned her head and saw that it was. She recognized those glowing veins from anywhere... Wait, glowing veins? She then looked down at her own body and beheld that she too featured the same spectacle of pulsing emerald lines beneath her dermace.

"Twilight," said Moondancer in a weak croak, "why are we glowing?"

"That'd be the stimulant." Winter Lilac was still running about like a chicken with her head cut off, throwing this and that into her satchel.

"Stimulant?" Came another voice somewhere farther down from Moondancer.

"Sunset Shimmer?" Twilight Sparkle called out to her.

"Good," said The Apothecary, "you're all awake."

Twilight attempted to sit up, and found to her bemusement that she could not. Her body was lead, her muscles soft as raw dough. Just lifting a foreleg was a strain. "I can't get up," she said in a way that sounded more like a question than an observation.

"The stimulant needs more time," Winter announced. "Rub your arms and legs if you can. It will get that juice in your system faster."

"Stimulant?" After failing another attempt to rise, it was all Twilight Sparkle could do to just lie back and stare at the ceiling above her as she struggled to make sense of her situation. "What's happening?" she said. "Where are we? Where's Fluttershy?"

Winter Lilac climbed a wooden step ladder and began sifting through an assortment of flasks and tubes containing unknown liquids of various colors on a high mounted shelf. Some she would place in her pack after a cursory inspection, while others were returned to their respective racks. "One question at a time." She uncorked one bottle, gave its contents a sniff, made a face, then placed it in her pack. "And make them quick. We're getting out of here as soon as you three are ambulatory."

"Three?" Echoed Moondancer. She looked around, then said, "Where's Starlight?"

All three of the bed bound mares were looking to Winter Lilac in anticipation for her reply.

Winter's answer was succinct. "She was awakened three days ago. Don't ask me where she is right now, because I don't know."

The girls exchanged looks. "Three days ago?" said Sunset Shimmer.

Winter looked over her shoulder to cast a frown down upon her from atop the step ladder. "Okay, new rule: no parroting my answers back at me. That's going to get irritating really fast."

"Just how long have we been here?" Twilight broke in.

"You've all been sedentary for about six moons and some change," said the mare while studying a flask of clear fluid.

"Six moons!" The exclamation came out in a synchronized trio before the collective of voices became a chaotic cacophony of whats, whens, wheres, whys, and hows.

"Silence!" the mare shouted over them. "Yes, six moons, you heard that correctly. Your muscles have atrophied over the long period of disuse. You see that green fluid coursing through your veins? That's the stimulant I injected you with. It will allow you to get around on your own until your bodies are strong again. Speaking of which, can you hurry up and metabolize that shit already? I need you on your feet and ready to fight as soon as possible."

Twilight Sparkle blinked at her. "Fight? Fight who?"

"It's Sombra, isn't it?" Moondancer let out a weak, humorless chuckle, devoid of joy, devoid of hope, sardonic as a nihilist. "Was breaking my ribs one time not enough for him?"

The statement made Twilight's stomach fall. She didn't want to fight Sombra again. Her party wasn't able to defeat him when they were in their prime. What could any of them hope to accomplish by fighting him in the state they were in now?

"Not Sombra, stupid." The mare jumped down from the ladder with a thud. "I don't know much about what's going on outside this chamber, but here it is: We're under siege, and if we don't move we're all dead." She drew the flap of her satchel closed, clenched its strap in between her teeth, then cinched it tight with a whisper of leather on canvas.

"Wait, back up," Moondancer said. "What do you mean 'we're under siege?' Who's 'we?' Where even are we?"

The mare sighed impatiently. "You're beneath Sombra's palace, you moron, and it's as I said: We're under siege. One of Sombra's sentries brought me the news about thirty minutes ago. He was vague, said something about a 'situation' going on up top - told me that I needed to lock the door and stay put." She scoffed. "Balls to that; I'm getting out of here."

"Since when does Sombra have a palace?" Sunset Shimmer came in.

"And he has sentries, too?" came Twilight. "Who would want to protect a monster like Sombra?"

"I doubt they actually want to," replied Sunset Shimmer. "Conscription and slavery is Sombra's MO, remember?"

A sudden quake put an abrupt end to the chatter. The chamber shook violently with the thunderous sound of a distant explosion. Winter Lilac lost her footing in the tremor and took a tumble. The shaking, however, ceased as sudden as it started, and the mare was able to get back to her feet. She looked around with a pensive expression, as if she was attempting to discern the direction from which the blast had occurred. "That's the third one today."

"What was that?" Stammered Sunset.

"Cannons," Winter replied, dusting herself off. "Or bombs, most like. I thought I'd be safe if I took the sentry's advice; hold out here, in my underground chamber, surrounded by stone walls, hunkered behind a sturdy door reinforced with thick bolts and a heavy oaken drop bar, but if they're using black powder weapons, all bets are off. That's why I'm headed to the throne room."

"You're taking us to Sombra's throne room?" said Twilight, uneasily.

"No." Winter Lilac pointed at her, and said in a tone that brooked no argument, "You're taking me there. You nearly fought Sombra to a stalemate; power like that could ensure my survival."

A sudden revelation popped up in Twilight Sparkle's head. Curiously it wasn't the first thing she realized upon waking to find that she was alive. "We attacked Sombra, but we're not dead. Was he, somehow, unable to kill us?" Twilight began to think that Celestia may have had something to do with that, but Winter Lilac's response tossed that theory to the wind.

"Unable to kill you?" she scoffed. "More like he decided not to kill you. In fact, It was Sombra who concocted the potion that's kept you all in a regenerative coma, so your bodies could heal after the trouncing he gave you, and it was I who administered the nourishing salves and potions to you that kept you all alive whilst you slept. You can thank Sombra next time you see him, but you can thank me right now. In fact, you can thank me by helping me get to the throne room. I couldn't care less what you do after that: Stay, leave, try and have another go at Sombra, whatever."

"You want us to be your bodyguards," Twilight concluded.

Sunset Shimmer was frowning. "You work for Sombra, don't you? Why would we risk our lives for one of his creatures?"

"Sorry," refused Moondancer, "that's not our vocation."

"You know what, you're absolutely right," Winter said mockingly. "You're not guards, you're assassins; you don't protect - you kill. All you need to do, though — and please, stay with me here — is think of protecting as the opposite of killing. Only, don't fail your mission, like you did with Sombra."

Twilight Sparkle glared at her, resenting the accusation, mostly because it was true.

"Besides," Winter added, with a malicious smile a chess player might wear while shifting their knight to checkmate, "you do want to see your dear friend Fluttershy, don't you?"