Author's Notes:

I've become extremely self conscious about the way I describe the environment and weaponry in this story, as I've been made aware that a scholar of medieval history has just started reading it. Don't know why, but now I'm scared...

The glow of the crackling torches guided them when they walked the labyrinthine cellars of Sombra's palace. It was a dim, dreary place, compact and suffocating with the acrid stench of smoke and mold. Twilight Sparkle, despite her predicament, could think of nothing else but getting to the ground level, where the sunlight could once again warm her face, where she could drink in the cool, brisk northern air. When they ascended the steps and reached the ground level, however, she found the sub-levels to be a paradise in comparison. The broken windows and smoldering gaps that had been blown into the walls gave them a perfect view to the carnage outside: The burning structures, the pillars of smoke extending to the sky, the griffons and pegusi falling to the earth, their bodies perforated by shafts and ravaged by steel volleys of shrapnel. The warm blood of terrified noncombatants sprayed the snowy roads as they were being cut down left and right whilst they fled. Figures clad in cloaks of crimson and indigo clashed with griffons armed with cutlasses, spears and bombs. "Sombra has brought war to the Northern realm, just as we all knew he would," Twilight said bleakly. "This is all happening because we failed to stop him."

The apothecary kept her eyes forward. "And what do you suppose things would be like if you had succeeded in your little assassination attempt? I'm curious."

Twilight absolutely loathed, loathed, loathed being called an assassin. The term was an obscene embellishment, a disparagement which served only to omit the context surrounding her actions. One might as well be named a burglar for forgetting to turn in a library book. "Well," she replied, "for starters, none of this would be happening!" She gestured to the tempest of violence roaring beyond the palace walls.

"You're right," Winter Lilac allowed. "Don't forget about the part where mares and children would still be passed around like currency, and there'd definitely be a lot less food to go around. Worst of all, I'd be out of a job."

"How can you be so flippant about such things?"

"Who's being flippant?" replied Winter. "Just the thought of having to stand in line at the unemployment office with the rest of those scumbags."

Twilight was about to deliver a reproach, when Sunset Shimmer nudged her. "Yeah, what?" she said with an unintended harshness in her tone, Winter Lilac's irreverent comportment ebbing away at her patience.

Sunset paid no mind to the flair. "Put your ears on," she instructed, vague. "You too, Moondancer. I hear something."

Ears? Twilight might have said, but then she understood. Focusing, she channeled the magic into her body to enhance her senses. For that moment everything around her sounded as if she was submerged under water. She could see sounds, hear smells, and taste sites as all her senses intermingled into a radically efficient super radar. Everything that disturbed the environment around her carried an echo like the ripples of a pond's surface. Sunset pointed far down the hall in indication to where she would need to direct her focus - and Twilight did - and this is what she heard:

Someone was sobbing softly. A girl. Young, from the sound of her voice, just barely in her teens.

"Betha'll have our balls bronzed if she learns we been rapin' while there's still fightin' to be done," one voice said. It was deep, heavily accented, brutish and cockney.

"That's why she ain't gonna be findin' out, now is she?" said another, in a high, celtic brogue. "You only live once, boyo. Gotta enjoy the fruit while it's ripe."

"Well said, mate, well said," another thundered with approval. "Now, get outta my way, I'm goin' first."

"Why do you get to go first?"

"Someone's gotta teach you lot o' hatchlings how it's done."

The girl's sobs became heart rending screams - the kind of screams that rendered anguish and horror indistinguishable from one another. Intermingled with the sounds of her distress was the fiend's vulgar laughter.

Twilight had heard enough. "Scoundrels!"

"I heard it too," said Moondancer. "What are we waiting for?"

Sunset already had a head start on them. "I don't know," she shouted back at them, "what are you waiting for?"

"You idiots, don't just leave me behind!" Winter Lilac yelled after them.

With their magic enhancing their physical abilities to super equine levels, the three rushed forward at a speed that turned the passing wall sconces into bronzed blurs. They were at the scene of the atrocity within seconds, ripping through the hall like a trio of shooting stars. Twilight gave the oaken barrier in front of them a blast of magic to weaken it, then Sunset Shimmer threw her shoulder in front of her and crashed into it like a bronze battering ram. CRUNCH The top half of the door was sent flying whilst the bottom half swung open, warped, and just barely hanging on by its hinge.

The windowless chamber was lit by a chandelier hanging from a high ceiling. The first griffon they noticed, a burly brute with a black headscarf knotted at the side of his head, released the female griffon he was coupling with. She immediately took advantage of the confusion and scurried out from under him. She fled to the far end of the chamber, as far away as she could get from her assailant, where she pressed her back up against the wall and sank to the floor with her arms tightly crossed over her chest, shaking and crying and watching with hopeful, tear-stricken eyes.

Once the lull of surprise ran its course, the event unfurled in an instant. There were four of them in all. One griffon was beginning to stand up, the other two made for their swords. The raper with the headscarf reached for a studded club lying near him.

Twilight, Sunset, and Moondancer announced claims to their targets before they divided and conquered.

Twilight blasted the cudgel into cinders just as the raper was wrapping his claws around its handle. The pirate then went for his knife sheathed at his ankle, when a magical shackle suddenly formed around his wrist. Black and purple, hissing and crackling, the griffon studied it, perplexed. His other wrist was ensnared, then a collar formed around his neck. Twilight manipulated her manacles to drag him over to the corner of the chamber as he thrashed wildly against his binds, while letting fly with one of the nastiest, albeit creative, expletive-strewn protests The Princess had ever heard. The pirate was making rude comments directed toward Twilight Sparkle's grandmother's Hearths Warming Eve dinner as she conjured unbreakable magic chains to tether him firmly to the wall. "Serves you right, you filth!" Twilight snarled at him with all the disgust and contempt she could muster. "That's one."

The two griffons rushed Sunset Shimmer with cutlasses raised. Calmly, she studied the iron chandelier overhead, then struck it with a powerful negative charge of electric magic. Her attackers thought that funny, as if they had assumed the projectile was meant for them, and simply missed. That made Sunset Shimmer smile, not knowing if she should mock them for their lack of foresight, or if she should lead them along and play the damsel in distress. However, sadly, she simply wasn't allowed the time for such an amusing game. Her attackers were rather intent in their decision to make a hasty end to her, and that was precisely what they presumed to do. As her foes were advancing, she ringed the area around herself with a circle of positively charged electric magic. The chandelier overhead began to pull toward her, its chain creaking in protest to the powerful force. Predictably, the pirates breached the parameter of her magic field, activating her trap. The magnetic steel of their weapons absorbed the charge. Their blades were wrenched from their grasp and sent clinging to the chandelier high above with a strident report. The pirates could only gawk upward in awe and wonderment at how and why the metallic fixture above commandeered their weapons. Sunset, deciding to strike while they were dismayed, turned her back to them, and the kick she delivered to them with a magically augmented surge of strength was like a blast from a cannon. The pirates were sent reeling into the wall across the chamber. One lay motionless, as the other struggled to rise ... but his will diminished, and he sagged back with a groan of agony. "Three," came Sunset's confirmation.

The manner in which Moondancer dispatched her foe was far crueler than Twilight's, and much less elaborate than Sunset Shimmer's, but, for what her tactics may have lacked in creativity, they more than made up for in brutal efficiency. The fight had ended just as it begun, with the griffon encased in an aura of telekinetic magic. The dagger was still raised in his talon. The pirate's threats and vows of retribution became screams when Moondancer contorted his knees to an unnatural angle. His screams turned to desperate pleas for mercy as she did the same to his elbows, his wrists, and finally his fingers, for good measure. Once Moondancer had manipulated and snapped enough joints to eliminate even the slightest possibility of him being a threat, she released him, and the griffon flopped boneless to the floor, weeping. "Baby makes four."

Twilight Sparkle would have chided her for such brutal methods, but when she directed her gaze to the crying girl hugging herself on the floor, with her innumerable contusions, her bloodied beak, her swollen eye, anything she would have felt resembling even the slightest ounce of sympathy for the bastard evaporated. The Princess approached the girl, ignoring the incoherent blubbering of the pirate Moondancer had just twisted up like a pretzel. She placed a hoof on her shoulder to calm her. "Hey, are you okay?" she said sweetly. The girl looked up at her. Her eyes were so beautiful, a hypnotically deep scarlet, like shimmering pools of liquid ruby. "My name is Twilight Sparkle."

The girl wiped those gorgeous scarlet eyes of hers with the back of a talon. "Nocturna," she sniffled.

"That's a pretty name," Twilight trilled. It was a fitting one at that. Nocturna's avian features were more akin to a raven than an eagle, her feline side more panther than lion. Her black feathers were accented with purple tips, and had a sheen like moonlight glinting off of polished coal. Her bottom half was the type of dark blue that could pass for black in a dim light. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen," the girl stammered.

She was responding to the questions quickly enough. For as much as the girl had suffered, her faculties seemed to be in order. "Do you have any family near bye, somewhere safe we can take you?"

"Me, my ma and my da were running to the throne room when the attack started, but we got separated on the way. That was when I was captured, and they... They were going to just kill me at first, but the one with the scarf on his head had other ideas. That's when they carried me off to this place, and..." Shuddering, the girl hugged herself so tightly one might think she was trying to keep herself from falling apart.

Twilight Sparkle took her in her arms. "Your parents must be worried sick. We're on our way to the throne room ourselves. We'll take you with us."

With a sob and a sniffle, Nocturna nodded a wordless thank you into her bosom.

"She's just upset 'cuz you interrupted our fun is all," laughed the pirate The Princess had left shackled to the wall on the other side of the chamber. "Mares. Prudish bunch'a bitches, the lot 'o ya - and probly dry as a desert between the legs, besides. Stallions, I feel bad for em."

"You be silent!" Twilight demanded. "I'll make those binds tighter, see if I don't."

"What, these pretty bracelets you was kind enough t' give me?" mocked the pirate as he rattled the phantom chains tethering him to the wall. "Good, they was startin' to feel a bit loose, anyway."

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "Or, I could just let her borrow you for a while." She indicated Moondancer with a nod.

The manacled pirate studied his broken, twisted comrade as he lay weeping on the ground, then his eyes went to Moondancer. She was cleaning the lenses of her glasses, humming to herself with an impish little smile on her face. Suddenly the pirate seemed to forget how to make words come out of his mouth, though he still remembered how to sneer.

"You morons!" Winter Lilac's voice served as a reminder that she existed. She shoved passed Sunset Shimmer and Moondancer when she came blustering into the chamber. "I could have been killed if any passing enemy had discovered me alone in that hallway!"

"There was a situation." Twilight gestured to the girl she had just saved.

Winter studied the griffon's wounds, and was almost placated. With a sigh, she went to her side, set her satchel down, and got to work. "You still shouldn't have left me behind without saying anything." She soaked a tiny patch of cotton with a clear fluid. The girl started wincing when she used it to dab at her bruises and abrasions.

"It was an emergency," Twilight insisted. "Besides, look at you, you're fine."

"Fine," Winter snorted derisively. "Are you familiar with the first three rules of Ogres and Oubliettes?"

Twilight's nose wrinkled. "No," she said, anticipating that a rant was coming.

"Well, then, shall I illuminate you?" offered Winter Lilac. "First rule is: Keep the healer alive. Second rule: Keep the healer alive. Third rule, and pay attention, because this is the most important one: Keep the Celestia-damned healer alive! Now, I know what you're thinking: 'But, Winter, you sexy bitch, my intellectual range falls slightly below that of pig shit, I'm an idiot, a troglodyte, such understanding is far beyond my lexicon; I don't think I'm capable of such an insurmountably complicated task.' Well, here's some advice, if you want to keep the healer alive, don't freaking ditch her!"

Nocturna cringed back.

"Lower your voice!" Twilight demanded. "The girl's suffered enough without you shouting in her ear."

Winter didn't respond to that. Instead, she studied the girl's talon. It looked swollen at the wrist. "Flex your fingers for me."

The girl did.

"Try raising your talon... No, not your arm, just your talon."

The girl did as she was instructed, but with some effort, and it was obvious from the face she was making that it was causing some discomfort.

"Sprained," Winter confirmed. "Give it here, I'm going to wrap it."

Nocturna's voice was a quavering whisper. "It happened in my haste to get away from him." The girl wouldn't raise her eyes to him, but everyone in the room knew who she was talking about.

Winter Lilac spared the manacled pirate a glance when she finished wrapping the griffon's wrist.

"What you lookin' at, bitch?" His sneer became a smirk. "What's the matter - jealous?" He laughed that nasty, vulgar guffaw of his. Nocturna firmly pressed her talons over her ears, trying not to hear it, trying not to remember.

Winter's expression was inscrutable through that milk white film over her dull, expressionless eyes. "Kill that one. Or, better yet." She looked down at Nocturna. "Let her do it. It won't remove her scars, but it will fade them somewhat."

"No!" Princess Twilight punctuated her response with a stamp of her hoof to illustrate the firmness of her stance on the matter.

"Oh, so, now you're above killing?"

"I'm not a killer."

"No, you're right. You're an assassin. Huge difference."

Winter Lilac might as well have lit a fuse. "Stop calling me that!"

"You carried out an organized attempt on someone's life. I'm not making any judgments here, I'm just saying, there's a word for someone who does that. I wonder, what were they called again?"

"That was different!"

"How?"

"Sombra is evil!"

"As opposed to the choir boy over there?" Winter jabbed a hoof in the direction of the pirate Twilight had anchored to the wall. "What makes him so special that he gets to live?"

"He's been eliminated as a threat. Killing him won't undo any of the horrible things he's done. What you're asking me to do is indulge in killing for nothing more than gratification, and that's a line I will never cross. Never!"

"And what happens when he slips out of those fancy magical irons and escapes? He'll rape again. He'll kill again."

"He won't slip them," Twilight assured. "When this situation is all over and done with, I'll see to it that he's..." The Princess's words caught in her throat. What should she do? What could she do?

"You'll see to it that he's what? Taken into custody? Given a trial? You refuse to kill him, but that's exactly what you'd be doing if you turned him over to Sombra. The King and Queen would probably have his head. The one between his legs for the rape. Then the one between his shoulders for being a pirate."

"That's utterly barbaric!" Twilight spat. "Fluttershy would never approve of something like that!"

"So you say," Winter replied, with an insufferable sureness to her tone. "If that's truly what you think, you may find to your woe that the queen who sits upon the throne is not the mare you once knew." The apothecary helped Nocturna up to her feet as she let Twilight Sparkle ponder on that.

The scenery in the palace was grim and growing grimmer with every hallway and chamber they left behind. Pieces of mortar from blown out walls dominated the floors in some of them, while others were host to more macabre sights, cadavers strewn about like confetti, pirates and guards alike, their visages forever frozen in grimaces of agony. Nocturna formed the habit of closing her eyes upon entering a new area, awaiting Twilight's report on whether or not it was safe to open them. If any sight was deemed too grisly for the poor girl to witness, The Princess would guide her through the obstacle course of bodies and rubble by her talon. There didn't seem to be anymore pirates to fight along the way, no innocence to whom they could offer assistance, just viscera, mortar, turned over furniture, and other signs of all the scuffles and skirmishes that had occurred.

"We're near the foyer," Winter Lilac announced, almost cheerful. "From there it will be a clear shot to the throne room."

"What are you going to do once we're there?" asked Twilight, as she was helping Nocturna through an improvised shortcut that had been blasted into one of the walls.

"My job," replied Winter, "Judging from what I've seen so far, there's likely to be a lot of wounded. I'll be more useful there than I would be rotting in my laboratory."

"You're sure Fluttershy will be there?" Twilight Sparkle asked anxiously.

"Most likely. The throne room is the designated area for both The King and Queen during emergencies. Its walls are heavily fortified. The door is sturdy enough to withstand cannon fire. Even the windows are unbreakable."

"That's good," Twilight said, hoping. "So long as she's safe."

The archway bestriding the opening to the next area they would need to access was located under a section of ceiling that had been collapsed by a bomb blast. Broken but sturdy-looking wooden beams and a barrier of debris flecked with large pieces of heavy masonry acted like a barricade against any who would attempt to gain entry. Winter Lilac took one look at it and cursed. "Well, what do we do now? We're not going to have to backtrack to that shortcut we took and take the long way around, are we?"

"Not necessarily," said Twilight Sparkle, stepping forward. "You girls ready to get your hooves dirty?"

"By 'hooves' I hope you mean horns. It'd take all day to manually move all that crap out of the way," said Moondancer.

Sunset Shimmer smirked. "Yes, but, 'Let's get our horns dirty' carries some bizarre connotations, does it not?"

Despite their dire situation, the comment prompted a snort from Twilight.

Winter Lilac rolled her eyes. "Would you three just shut up and get to work already?"

The task was a middling effort. Twilight and Moondancer used their telekinesis to clear the obstruction, ripping out the heavy beams, plucking out the large chunks of stone, then finally parting aside the mound of charred rubbish that once was the ceiling and second tier floor. Sunset Shimmer conjured and maintained a support barrier, to keep the rest of the ceiling from caving while the beams and debris were being shifted out from under it. It required some focus on her part, but she'd be able to release it once they've moved on. If they were an ordinary blue collar cleaning crew it would have taken hours, but with their magic the task was done in mere minutes.

With the obstacle no longer impeding their path, they could see that the archway opened up to what could have been a library, or perhaps some sort of study. It was a long room, a good eighty or so meters, with a high ceiling. Desks and chairs had been pushed around in a disorderly fashion. Dozens of trampled books lay scattered on the floor from turned over bookcases here and there, and scraps of virgin parchment littered the floor. The path to the next door was a straight one, lined with a long carpet that spanned the length of the chamber. It was dark, the only source of light a few candles. There were no windows, as the long room was located within the inner recesses of the palace. The walls on either side and the ceiling high above were shrouded in the gloom, like something out of a horror movie. Twilight nominated herself to be the first one to step across the threshold of the high arch and look around... It looked safe enough.

Sunset Shimmer was finally able to release the barrier that held the collapsed ceiling in place once they were all in the next chamber. With a sigh of relief she released the magic, and immediately the rest of the ceiling collapsed behind them. The entryway to the long room was once again blocked by a new pile of debris, only, Twilight and her party were on the other side of it. There was no going back from this point.

Winter Lilac kept her head on a swivel as they advanced at a methodical pace. "So," she said, seemingly to anyone who would be willing to reply, "are you guys going to keep trying to bring The Queen back home with you, or what?"

It was a question The Princess had been asking herself since she had awoken, yet she wasn't quite sure how to answer it. Would she have to go through Sombra to get to Fluttershy? She already tried that once, and she failed horribly at it. Could Sombra somehow be reasoned with to just let her go? The Princess doubted it. "I don't know," she admitted. "I just need to see her. That's all I want." For now.

Sunset Shimmer, eager to join in on the conversation, fell in between them. "Tell it true," said she, "Sombra hasn't been keeping Fluttershy locked away, has he? He hasn't hurt her in any way?"

They were questions that seemed to be on everyone's mind. Winter Lilac's cold expressionless eyes were unreadable as always when she said, "Remember back in the lab when I said one question at a time? That rule still applies."

Moondancer stepped in to simplify things. "Is Sombra holding Fluttershy prisoner?"

The silence between Moondancer's question and the apothecary's answer left everyone on tenterhooks.

"Prisoner?" Winter spoke the word as if it left a foreign taste on her tongue. "If prisoners where you're from are treated the same way your precious Fluttershy is, I'm booking a trip to the south and starting my crime spree tomorrow."

"Care to elaborate?" requested Moondancer. If she hadn't said it, Twilight Sparkle would have.

"She eats only the richest foods and drinks the finest wines. She has an army of servants at her twenty four hour beckon call. Sombra dotes over her, lavishes expensive gifts upon her. I've even heard tell that Sombra plans on presenting her with her own menagerie of exotic animals from all over the world for her birthday. Their expressions of public affection are nothing less than sickening to watch, and on cold northern nights, when the howling winds outside are supposed to dominate all other sounds, I swear I can hear him making her squeal all the way from my underground laboratory. Those assholes need to invest in some sound dampening equipment for that bedchamber of theirs."

Moondancer cocked an eyebrow. "The bit about the squealing seemed a bit superfluous."

Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle were trading incredulous looks with each other when a sound from above jolted them to attention. They threw their heads back like two howling wolves, and saw nothing but the faintest hint of rafters concealed within the shadows of the high vaulted ceiling. There were no windows here, no chandelier, no torches, just a few candles flickering here and there. Twilight Sparkle could have kicked herself for not realizing it earlier, this was the perfect spot for an ambush. "Stay close," she whispered to Nocturna. As if she had to, the frightened girl was already close enough to rub sides with her.

"Why are we stopping?" Winter Lilac demanded, annoyed. "We're almost—"

Twilight sharply shushed her, then indicated the rafters high above. "Whoever's skulking around up there," The Princess said into the shadows, "we mean you no harm."

Winter Lilac scowled. "Unless you're one of those shithead pirates," she added unhelpfully, "then you can prepare your pelvic orifice for the prolapsing of a lifetime."

Twilight shot the apothecary such a nasty look, but Winter could not have looked less apologetic.

There was whispering, which indicated that there had to be at least two of them. Then, "And how do we know you ain't pirates, sha?" said a voice laced with a conspicuously prominent Cajun accent.

Winter Lilac tilted her head to the side. "Shantae?"

Twilight shushed her again. In response to the voice's query Twilight said, "Well, first of all, we're girls."

"There do exist female pirates, monami," the darkness put to her. "Heck, their queen, or cap'n, or whatever she likes to call herself, just happens to be one."

"We're mares, dumbass!" The apothecary finally shouted. "Shantae, quit screwing around and get down here."

There was a bout of silence. Then, "Miss Winter Lilac, da love of my life, do Shantae's ears trick him?"

"So, you do say that to every mare you see!" said another voice from the twilight. Female. Young. Younger than Nocturna.

"Don't be jealous, sha. You is da belle fleur of Shantae's life, and you always will be."

"Gee, what an honor."

"Ethey?" said Winter Lilac, perplexed. "Ethereal Moon, is that you? Why aren't you in the throne room?"

"It's a long story," said the voice belonging to the one named Ethey. "Just a sec."

Twilight Sparkle, Nocturna, Moondancer, and Sunset Shimmer all jumped with a start when a bronze earth pony emerged from the lofty shadows with a boisterous "Aiyeeeee!" Grinning, he landed before them with all the languid grace of a seasoned acrobat, then looked up. "Okay, sha, you is next."

Twilight Sparkle studied the curved blade sheathed at the stallion's flank, the whip loosely coiled about his neck, his various scars crisscrossing up and down his body like striped leather stretched over lean sinew. A bandoleer of pouches hung loosely across his chest, and a crossbow was slung at his back ... and his cutie mark. A bullseye?

"You better catch me, Shantae!" threatened the voice above.

"Trust Shantae, sha!"

"I trust you about as far as I can throw you."

Shantae snickered at that. "You should trust Shantae as far as he can throw you." He spread his forelegs out in a beckoning manner. "Now, come to Shantae. His embrace calls to you."

"Just shut up and catch me, you ass." And with that, a tiny white unicorn came plummeting from the black. She curled into a ball and let out a sound that was half a squeak and half a grunt when the earth pony caught her.

"Admit it," Shantae purred, cradling her, "you just like bein' in Shantae's arms."

The filly pushed his face away before wriggling out of his arms.

"Have you two been hiding here the whole time?" Asked Winter.

Ethereal Moon pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I was out on official business when the attack started. Shantae scooped me up off the streets and brought me to the palace. There was too much fighting near the front doors for us to sneak by unnoticed, but a section of the East Wing had been blasted open, so we gained access through there. When we got here, Shantae thought we'd be safe if we obstructed one of the entrances and set up a defensive position."

"That was you who blew up the ceiling?" Winter's eyes went wide. "Sombra's going to be pissed."

A vulpine grin spread across Shantae's face as he sang, "Not when da adviser spins him da tale of Shantae's dashing rescue~"

Winter rolled her eyes. "So, you assisted the adviser in hopes of a reward. Typical."

"What's all this about a defensive position?" Twilight queried, curious that the pair hadn't made a straight shot to the sanctuary of the throne room.

Shantae's grin bordered the line between roguishness and deviance. "Shantae demolished da hallway through dat arch y'all came through, to limit intruders to only one point of entry." He drew his blade with a leathery rasp and used it to direct Twilight Sparkle's gaze to the far wall. "Look over yonder, sha. Like a spider, all Shantae had to do was wait for dem pirates to wander into his web. One entrance. No escape." He punctuated the end of his explanation by pantomiming slitting his own throat with his kukri.

Twilight was squinting where Shantae's blade had been pointing, but the darkness made it difficult to see what it was she was supposed to be looking at. She produced a ball of light with her horn, and then she saw it. A pile of griffon corpses had been hidden in the dark. Most of them had black oaken shafts protruding from vital areas. The ones that hadn't been shot either had their throats opened or exhibited fatal wounds that looked as if they were inflicted from behind or above. The expressions on their dead faces varied from wide-eyed surprise to relaxed and searching, as if none of them had even seen their deaths coming. A tendril of ice crept down Twilight Sparkle's spine.

"Thirty two," Shantae said accommodatingly. "If you tryin' ta' count em."

"Twenty six," Ethey corrected him. "He likes to embellish."

"Embellish?" Twilight frowned, sickened by the stallion's boasting. "You're reveling over your bloodletting like it's something to be proud of."

Shantae was unabashed. "Indeed, Shantae is proud of his work, for he knows that every monster made dead makes the world a better place. Shantae is a warrior of justice, a lover of peace, and a maker of love. Dat last part especially."

"Bedding prostitutes—making love." Ethey lifted a hoof and turned it from side-to-side, as if to weigh their nuances. "Same thing, apparently."

"To a guy, yeah, it kinda is," supplied Moondancer with a congenial shrug.

Twilight ignored them. "Warrior of justice? You snipe and ambush unsuspecting foes from the shadows. You're not a warrior, nor are you an agent of justice. If anything, you're an assass—" she stopped herself just dead of the word. She avoided eye contact with Winter Lilac, but she could feel that sardonic smirk of hers undressing her.

"Ambushing unsuspecting foes from the shadows?" She looked amused. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Little-Miss-Lawful-Good?"

Twilight Sparkle pretended she didn't hear the sally. "Can we just keep going?" she suggested, hoping to change the subject. "We've tarried here long enough."

"Shantae thinks we should stay," suggested Shantae. "It is gloomy here, non? De better to remain unseen. Be not afraid, for Shantae shall keep you lovely ladies safe from de things dat prowl in de darkness."

Sunset Shimmer eyed the mound of pirate cadavers. "Isn't that you, though?"

Ethey gave the bounty hunter a suspicious look. "You're just trying to collect more bounties, aren't you? Isn't the big fat reward you'll probably receive from The King for helping me reward enough?"

"You wound me, mon cher," Shantae said, his greedy smirk saying otherwise. "Shantae only wishes to keep you all safe. Shantae is chivalrous as da night is long."

Winter Lilac sighed, which indicated Shantae was getting on her nerves. "Shantae's right, we should stay here, with him," she said. "Screw the heavily fortified surroundings of the throne room; we blushing maidens have this big strapping stud in shining scar tissue to protect us. Let's just lay low here until everything blows over. We can all pass the time by having sex with him - you know, to express our gratitude?"

Shantae hid his enthusiasm behind a dutiful mask of seriousness. "Dis is a good plan."

"He's deaf to sarcasm," informed Ethey.

"I gathered," replied Winter, rubbing her temples.

Twilight espied the double doors at the end of the long study. "Nocturna. Are you ready to go?"

The girl nodded eagerly. It had appeared that the pile of dead griffons had been putting her off as well.

Twilight smiled at her. "Alright, let's head out, then. I'm sure your parents will be overjoyed to see you." She turned back to the others. "Miss Ethey, it was a pleasure, and Shantae, meeting you was a..."

Shantae smiled expectantly.

"Experience," Twilight said, when no other word would come to surface, "but, we should really get going."

"Wait, you're going to throne room, right?" said Ethereal Moon. "Can I come with you? I know I'm small, but I promise I won't slow you down.

"It could be dangerous out there." Twilight weighed the odds. "But, then again, it's not exactly safe in here either, is it?" She resisted the urge to look back at the corpses. "Are your mommy and daddy waiting for you in the throne room?"

Ethereal Moon's cheeks assumed the properties of an incandescent pufferfish. "My 'mommy' and 'daddy' live in Equestria. I'm an adult, dammit, I'm probably older than you are!"

Twilight cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her. "Little girl, this isn't the time for games."

"She's telling the truth," Winter came in. "She's probably the oldest one in this room."

"Thirty six," coughed Shantae.

"Second oldest one in this room," Winter corrected herself.

Twilight looked at Ethereal Moon as if she was seeing her for the first time. "How old are you, exactly?" she had to know.

"Old enough to know where babies come from, now can we get out of here? I'm Sombra's adviser, I need to be with him."

"Adviser?" Twilight said, shocked. "You?"

Ethereal Moon's face did the pufferfish thing again. "I know it seems a tad queer that one such as I would not be consigned or content to spending my life being strutted about before a gaping audience at some grotesquery, but yes, believe it or not, I'm the royal adviser. Now, can you stop being so flabbergasted by everything I say!"

"Oh, oh, now tell her the world is round," Winter suggested. "Or that our planet revolves around the sun."

"No, thanks." The lenses of Ethey's glasses glinted when she slid them up the bridge of her muzzle. "I'm just trying to enlighten her, not get burned at the stake."

Moondancer snorted in her attempt to stifle a giggle. Twilight Sparkle loured at her. "You're not helping." She then turned to her pint-sized attacker. "Look, I'm sorry if I came off as patronizing, okay?" she said, not wanting to fight. "Did you wanna come with us, or not?"

The impudent, haughty look the adviser was giving her started to soften into something resembling remorse. "Y-yeah," she stammered. "Sorry if I got short with you."

Whether or not the pun was intended, it made Winter laugh.

"My mouth moves faster than my brain when I'm nervous," said Ethey. "I'm sure Winter's sorry too."

"I'm not."

"Well," said Twilight, "if you're ready, let's go. We may not all share the same priorities, but we have the same destination." Nocturna stayed as close as ever to The Princess, while Sunset Shimmer and Moondancer fell in beside her. Ethereal Moon and Winter Lilac trailed close behind them.

Shantae, a stallion of outrageously theatrical idiosyncrasies, saw them off with a wide sweeping bow. "Au revoir, mademoiselles! Shantae shall remain here, for he has much work to do."

Wetwork. Twilight kept the comment to herself, as she and her party strode toward the door at the end of the long study. "Be safe, Shantae," she called back to him.

"You too, sha," sang Shantae. "And, do take extra special care of Shantae's petite fleur, won't you? She is precious cargo."

"Shantae..." Ethereal Moon slowed to a stop. She stood there, hesitating, the tips of her ears turning the slightest shade of pink. Twilight, as well as everyone else, couldn't help but be curious as to what she was going to say to him. "I know you only helped me for your own personal gain, but I would still like to..." He was gone when the adviser turned back to look at him, a deadly phantom melted into the gloom. When Ethereal Moon whirled back around, Twilight saw that her cheeks were red and puffed out in that peculiar way they would get when she was agitated. "Typical stallion, can't handle the slightest bit of sincerity!"

With Winter Lilac as their guide, they made their way through a series of adjoining corridors. Unlike the cellars beneath the palace, with their blazing torches and acrid smoke, these halls were lit by scented oil lamps hanging from silver hooks ensconced along the walls. The sweet smell of ceder and spices they emitted was a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat and choking haze of the sub-levels.

The door to the first floor lobby of the foyer was finally coming into view. Winter Lilac grasped the heavy iron ring, pressed her shoulder to the wood, then pushed. On well oiled hinges it soundlessly glided outward, and opened up to what looked like the remnants of Armageddon. There was no wall or corner the eye could be directed to without seeing spatters or puddles of half-dried blood. The thick rush beneath their hooves made a sickening squishing sound, the red pooling around their hooves with every step, only to recede back into the intricately woven fibers of the once beautiful finery. The dead lay in two piles at opposite ends from one another in the first floor lobby. One pile was for pirates, their bodies haphazardly stacked to be unceremoniously burned. The other pile consisted of guards and soldiers, stewards and stewardesses and town citizens, to be sifted through and claimed by family, friends, or lovers, once the fighting was done.

The huge doors making up the main entrance to the palace were splintered and smashed inward at a thousand different places. A few hastily-conjured wards of magic made up the adhesive that held them together, while wooden poles were propped up against them to act as buttresses for additional support. The massive doors in the adjacent wall looked like they had taken quite a beating as well, but they were sturdy, and showed no sign that they would be yielding anytime soon.

"That's the throne room," Ethey indicated the doors. "Let me do the talking. The guards might not open up for any voice they don't recognize."

Twilight Sparkle filled her head with images of her dear friend as the little adviser went to go pound on the door. Fluttershy, she's just behind these doors. Fluttershy, at last... At long, long last. The memory of Fluttershy being taken away was maddening. She was so uncharacteristically brave that day. If Twilight recalled it correctly, Fluttershy was the only one who wasn't crying. 'I love you all,' she had imparted to everyone, before that repugnant bastard took her away, far beyond the frozen northern hills skirting the borders of the Chrystal Empire.

Twilight Sparkle wept inconsolably that night, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep, refusing to leave her private solar in the Chrystal Palace. It wasn't until exhaustion finally overwhelmed her, and sleep pulled Twilight into its embrace, when the seeds of her plan had been planted in the form of a dream. She dreamed of revenge. Sombra, bloodied and battered, too weak to even stand, groveled for mercy on his belly like the worm he was. Fluttershy came rushing into her arms after she tore his black heart out with her bare hooves, and exulted as the world was once again set right. It was upon waking from that glorious dream when she began writing out the letters. She would need to muster as much magical strength as she could.

Her friends were quick to assemble, and when Twilight had laid out her plan to them, they packed their gear and set out north. With the lunar and celestial bodies as her guide, as well as a compass, for when the sun and starts above were obscured by overcast, Twilight drove them forward through cutting winds and harsh tundra. They only had to stop twice to set up camp to eat, rest, and warm their extremities by a fire. It wasn't until the morning of the second day, after they rinsed their pots, doused their lamps, pulled their stakes, spooled their ropes, and filled their canteens with fresh fallen snow, when they had set out to discover the sight that was the keep, in all its grisly horror. It still made Twilight shiver when she thought of it. She knew it was only a sample of what was to come if Sombra wasn't stopped. It was then and there she had made her oath, before her friends, before any and all gods looking down on her, and before all the dead surrounding them: 'This is no longer just a rescue mission,' she had vowed. 'This is an assassination.' The hypocrisy was not lost on Twilight. She would never consider herself an assassin, but the need to put a stop to Sombra was far more than a necessity. It was as if fate itself had compelled her to carry out this task, cognitive dissonance be damned.

"Who's there?" demanded a voice on the other side of the door.

"Ethereal Moon. Now, open up!"

"The adviser?" said the voice.

"No, moron, the pop singer—yes, the adviser, now get these doors open!"

"Yeah, that's Ethey, alright," said another voice from behind the door. "Just a second, Madam Adviser."

The sound of a massive wooden crossbar could be heard sliding from metal brackets on the other side. Slowly, the doors began to separate. Inward they moved, the hinges groaning as the gap between them grew wider. Twilight couldn't wait any longer. The moment there was enough space to accommodate her she rushed inside. "Fluttershy!" she cried.

A massive bull of a yak and a stallion hefting a heavy flail stepped in front of her.

"She's with me," Ethereal Moon told them. "Let her through."

"The Queen isn't seeing anyone at the moment," said the stallion.

"Why not?" said Ethey.

"Queen is busy," replied the yak. "If purple pony want see queen, she wait."

"She'll see me!" Twilight insisted. "Just tell her. Tell her Twilight Sparkle is here!"

Just then, Twilight heard her, that familiar voice she had been longing to hear, soft as a breeze, sweet as a songbird. "Sir," she heard Fluttershy say, "I warn you, if you make me ask you again, I won't be asking nicely, now where is she?"

"At a bloody whore house!" roared another voice. This one was male. "We got'r locked in a stockade out in front, to be used by any passing gent who fancies her and has two minutes to spare!"

"Well, you have two legs to spare. Sergeant."

CRACK "GGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Now, the other." Fluttershy's voice was cold in a way that Twilight Sparkle had never heard before.

CRACK "GGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"I'll ask again," said the voice that ... couldn't have belonged to Fluttershy. "Where. Is. She."

Twilight tried to maneuver around the two guards in front of her, but they shadowed her movements almost perfectly.

"You just broke both my legs, bitch! You broke my arms, slashed my wings, and cut out my eyes. What more can you do to me?" challenged the male voice, half snarling and half sobbing.

"I can get creative."

The male voice shuddered in anguish.

Twilight tried to arch her back and extend her neck to see over the guards, but they both dwarfed her in stature. Even the stallion was a good head and a half taller than her. She thought about using her magic to throw them aside, but the prospect that Sombra may have been somewhere nearby, and that he would more than likely view that as a provocation, stayed her. She had wings, but she wasn't the best flyer, and the guards would probably have her subdued before her hooves could even leave the ground.

"He really doesn't need his legs to talk. We might as well just saw them off. Sergeant, I need you to look for the dullest blade you can find, and—"

"The camp!" the male voice finally said in an agonized shriek. "She was taken to our camp! There, you happy? Now, get on with it. Just do what we both know yer gonna do."

"The camp?" the voice that couldn't have been Fluttershy's confirmed. "The one you told me about back when you still had your eyes—twenty or so kilometers North by North-East, correct?"

"What other camp is there, you poxy cunt!"

"I guess that's better to go on than nothing at all." The voice that couldn't have been Fluttershy's darkened. "Sergeant."

"My Queen." There was the rasp of steel on leather, then the squelch of steel parting flesh, then there was a deep, guttural gurgling sound.

"Guards," the voice that couldn't have been Fluttershy's said.

The bull and the stallion who had been blocking Twilight's path turned to face the source of the voice. "Take this one out to the lobby. Throw him to the pile with the rest."

"My Queen!" they responded with uniform synchronization. Just as they were moving to do as the voice commanded, the stallion in the tattered crimson cloak looked back at Twilight, and he said dryly, "She ain't busy no more."

Twilight Sparkle could only stand there, frozen. There was a griffon guardsman cleaning fresh blood off his dagger. A dead griffon pirate lay face down at his feet, a pool of red expanding beneath him where his throat had just been opened only seconds ago. The mare standing next to the guard with the dagger watched unflinchingly as the yak and the stallion carried the body away. The mare had Fluttershy's sunflower yellow coat, and Fluttershy's cherry blossom tresses, and Fluttershy's sapphire blue eyes. When the girl with Fluttershy's features turned and noticed Twilight Sparkle gaping at her, her eyes went wide, almost as wide as her... Her ... bulging ... belly.

The neurons were firing in Twilight Sparkle's brain, but they didn't seem to know where to go. Her mouth opened, but then it closed. Her mouth opened again, yet still no words would come out.

"Twilight!" the girl who looked like Fluttershy shouted, tears welling in her eyes. "Twilight!" The girl who looked like Fluttershy was bounding toward her. "Twilight!" The girl who looked like Fluttershy threw her forelegs around her. "Twilight!" The girl who looked like Fluttershy was screaming and crying at the same time. "Twilight!" she cried again, her voice growing more hysterical each time she said it. "Twilight! Twilight! Twilight! Twilight! Twilight!"