Sunset
April 6th, 71 BNM
Citadel Valley, Citadel fortress
Upper towers

His wings rattled the air, while Iena’s magical ropes kept her secure against the tall tower’s walls, her other hand scything out large blades of dark blue magic to try and slice off any part of Golmov she could.
As his long form dove again, Iena fired off stinging and slicing spells from her free hand, as her claws and magic kept her naga/changeling hybrid body from falling away from range of Golmov. Sweeping past, his wing clipping a smaller tower’s roof in a way that chipped some roof tiles loose, Golmov grimaced as he felt a few of the slicing spells cut his skin and scales.
“I have no time for this, I will not be undermined by a former pony!”
Taking flight skywards, Golmov spread his 4 wings, hybrids of his draconian ones and new formed Gryphon wings with claws on the mid joints. Rolling as he looped around, Golmov’s magic surged outwards across his entire body, glowing bright.
At the same time, his mandibled mouth opened wide, fire surging from it. The yellow magic coaxed the fire out, engulfing his wings in its blazing light and devastation.
A massive trail of fiery clouds engulfed the skies where he flew, the former Dragon combining his newer magic and old strengths to terrible effect.
But Iena would not be intimidated, as Golmov surged towards her, massive claws outstretched. Extending numerous whips of dark blue magic, she leapt from the castle tower as his fiery wing melted and shattered its upper floor, before hurling out two whip spells to latch onto Golmov’s centipede like legs. His momentum yanked her along, the Naga/Changeling hybrid reeling herself in on the lines as her body sprouted more whip spells, the ones already latched on beginning to shock Golmov.
Grunting quite loudly, Golmov knew she was going to try and puncture him mid flight, but knew how to counter this. Pulling up, Golmov’s magic enhanced wingbeats took them upwards into the darkening cloud banks hanging over the Citadel’s sunset lit grounds.
Up in the clouds, Golmov whipped around, sending Iena yelling out to fly around him by her own whip spell. Seizing the ship spell, Golmov focused, and the whip spell turned yellow halfway along its length, at which point Iena realised she couldn’t break free.
Still in the skies, his wings blowing some of the clouds away as he span faster and faster, Golmov’s yellow eyes lit up with glee as he saw Iena strain harder and harder against the forces acting on her.
As the clouds pulled back, Golmov let the Naga/Changling hybrid go, the air snapping like a whip as she was launched southwards, screaming out as she had been electrocuted by the rebuked whip spell upon being launched by the spinning attack.
Cracking his neck, Golmov began to fly about the clouds, searching for the next one to deal with, Ave-Dol or Gaudium.

Meanwhile
Main courtyard gardens

The fire in the sky began to dissipate after Golmov vanished skywards, but for Teal Quirt, it was not her focus right now.
Green magic flew towards Satio in a hail of beams, the massive orange form rising up in a corner below the Citadel’s courtyard walls. The attacks were absorbed, forming ripples on the growing blob surface as it reared up to crash atop Teal Quirt like an ocean wave.
With little regard for the power she’d need, the scorpion/Ape hybrid’s hands and claws extended with a green burst, an umbrella like shield forming beneath Satio’s massive bulk as it began to engulf it and the gardens. But the massive shield, even as Satio’s consuming body began to drain its user’s magic faster than normal, began to fold upwards, curving slowly inwards like a reversing flower unfolding, until the vast orange bulk was engulfed in a sphere the size of a small manor house.
On the ground, as she strained with the immense magic requirements in wake of Satio’s body growing with absorbing the very magic holding him, Teal slowly brought him to hover around high above her, his shapeless eyes swivelling to glare at her from inside the now ball entrapped bulk of his body.
“No power of your own, only what you eat… At least I have great power that is my own… If we didn’t need to band together I’d see no need for you…”
“And given your rebellion and others, once Gaudium is under control, we’ll ensure wherever you run off to, we can bring you back for good…”
As she finished the last sentence, her magic flared one last time, green engulfing the shield trapped blob creature as it shot skywards to the south, arcing through the skies to come to a hard landing in the distant forests south of the lake shoreline.
Panting from exhaustion, Teal suddenly saw a yellow magical tendril peak out from the low lying sunset clouds, as Golmov’s massive form hurled Iena’s through the skies, before the whiplike magic strand flicked her loose, hurtling in roughly the same direction as Satio.
“They deserve each other…” Teal grimly remarked, but a shockwave from higher up the mountainslope caught her attention.
Turning around, she saw a light blue portal fading far overhead, as Odi-Viscer’s body slammed into the mountain slope, and a certain being of Sloth banking away in flight to a safer distance. The Citadel shook, as a few ramparts that had been shaken loose by her accidentally fracturing the castle’s magically enhanced foundations began to crumble.

A few minutes ago
Opposite lake shore

As the smoke and dust subsided from Odi-Viscer’s attack, Ave-Dol turned to see the wide eyed Draconeraqus peer around from a tree, clearly bewildered and fearful by the wide red and yellow eyes he had.
“Listen to me, you have to get out of here, now! You need to be safe, don’t make me go through all this for you for nothing! Go!”
Blankly staring at her, Gaudium only responded with an uncertain nod as he began to run, the Draconeraqus’s wings beginning to flap, the process of flying still somewhat foreign to him despite bodily instinct.
Behind him, as he tore off through the forests, keeping low as he flew and ran when he got too low, Ave-Dol’s light blue glow of magic accompanied her charging forwards, engulfing Odi-Viscer’s recovering body in a locked embrace as she powered them across the sunset lit lake waters.
He ran, into the forests and mountains far beyond the Citadel.
He ran, from beings, a place and a threat to him he was not fully certain of. To where, he was entirely uncertain.
But with his shattered mind, he would not recall this, unable to process it for long term memory still after being magically lobotomised less than a day’s length ago.
The Draconeraqus fled into the mountains West of the Citadel, the forests hiding him as he flew beneath the tree canopy. The first to flee the Citadel.
He would also be the longest lived by far.

Flying across the lake, her magic barely holding Odi-Viscer as she flew, she finally felt her hold on him snap as he span around mid flight to grip her like a vice, their flight beginning to drop quickly.
Right before they collided with the shoreline trees before the Citadel’s entry road, in a desperate bid, a light blue portal opened up behind the stone grey behemoth and the Alicorn/Windigo hybrid, as they powered through.
High above the Citadel’s upper mountain slope, a light blue portal materialised, Odi-Viscer and Ave-Dol plummeting out as the stone giant/ape shaped creature violently punched her away, his red fist nearly shattering her light blue shield as it cracked the air like a thunderclap.
As she went tumbling away, Ave-Dol saw Odi-Viscer in freefall before her, but his gaze was suddenly turned mid fall, 5 seconds from the ground, by something his red hued eyes seemed to train on, far away on the lake’s opposite shoreline.
Flying forwards, Ave-Dol proclaimed vehemently, a rare case of anger as she hurled a magic hammer like blow towards Odi-Viscer:
“You are a victim as he is, leave him!”
As her blow came down however, Odi-Viscer replied with a red glowing elbow coming around to shatter her magically formed Warhammer. But before he could do anything, he saw a light blue blast fire from Ave-Dol’s horn, through the mist of her shattered ‘light’ hammer.
Caught in the chest, Ave-Dol’s attack sent the being of Wrath hurtling to the Ground, her own wings catching the air as a massive crash rocked the mountainslope, a small landslide triggering where Odi-Viscer landed in the treeline above the Citadel’s now delicate structure.
As she hovered in place, a few crumbling tower ramparts on the Citadel echoing in the night, she heard an enhanced yell come from Teal Quirt as she came to hover in a magic assisted flight above the Citadel:
“We need them alive Viscer!”
Glancing between her distant form and the crater in the forest slopes where Odi-Viscer was, Ave-Dol then turned in horror to the sight of Golmov diving out of the clouds, coming right for her from the north.
But on the ground, a series of massive red cracks suddenly split the mountainside like shattered glass, as an earthquake began to build.
“NO! I, STAND, ALONE!”
As the bellow rang out, its tone grew more and more powerful in bass and volume, until it reached critical mass along with the massive amount of rage fuelled magic Odi-Viscer was putting out.
Turning slightly from his path to capture Ave-Dol, Golmov roared out across the grounds:
“Leave him, he’s too unhinged!”
Turning tail, the centipede like dragon flapped his wings to head north, to which Teal Quirt audibly roared in anger herself before she vanished in a green teleportation flash.
Turning her gaze towards the fracturing mountainside, Ave-Dol flew down, her light blue shield protecting her from the worst of Odi-Viscer’s now growing shockwaves of red energy.
Behind her, the first of the large towers began to finally crumble, as the entire mountainside began to heave, buckle, and even shift as entire sections began to slide around, thrust up and away by the red cracks erupting them outwards like hundreds of small explosions.
She landed upon the cusp of the crater inside the forest slopes. A bright red ball of energy pulsated like a heart, sending the fractures across the mountainside enough to launch large sections of rock into the lake, draining it as it displaced more water each time.
“I won’t leave you either!”
“Then you’ll die like everything else that lives better than I, starting with those who Siral feared...”
Inside the red sphere, Ave-Dol glimpsed Odi-Viscer’s massive form flex its large arms, before a blinding light left him with a roar of anger that defied comprehension erupted along with a single, massive shockwave.
Her blue magic formed a bubble around her, but she felt everything rush and burn as the energy slammed into her, consuming her and the mountainside around her.

Shortly after sunset
Citadel Valley, south lakefront

The red light of the late sunset was eclipsed by an even brighter red sun atop the mountain.
The blinding red explosion consumed the mountaintop above the Citadel, as an entire half of the mountain fractured and burst outwards by the extreme energy released by Odi-Viscer.
As the final parts of the mountain were ejected into the lake, damage was done to displace massive amounts of water, the lower river flooding and bursting its banks five fold as the output of the Being of Wrath altered the valley’s layout vastly.
As the rocks began to settle, the ‘valley’ of the Citadel was now much narrower, what was one a rearing up mountain ridge reduced to a more shallow, rubble constructed hill line, only a few skeletal towers remaining of the Citadel itself, some magic structural spells barely intact enough to save them from being crushed by the massive landslides and upheavals of rock that had consumed the Citadel.
Clambering to sit upright, Iena’s body dropped its dark blue shield, the only thing that saved her from dying on impact. Slithering to an upright stance, she saw the red glare of the explosion, and the distant rumbles and landslides now consuming the Citadel, and hung her head.
Off in a distant clearing, a recently deforested area, a large orange mass slowly oozed into a taller lump, shrinking as it did so. Out of the mound of gelatinous mass, a shiny skinned Minotaur with a large amount of fat on him simply stared in awe as he began to make his way over towards Iena.
Hearing him come over, as she turned to face him, she admitted softly:
“We have no more place here, Teal and Golmov fled too.”
“What of the others?”
“Odi-Viscer will walk that off, but Ave-Dol’s got enough to worry about with Gaudium… We’re better off leaving as well.”
As she turned to slither however, Satio asked quietly:
“What about us? Should we split up?”
“Why on earth would you think that? We both wanted to leave, and we both have somewhere we can go to, hide, anything we need to do.”
At Iena’s proclamation, Satio shuffled slightly, uncertain before he answered with similar uncertainty:
“We’re going back to Baltimare?”
“They’re right Satio, things will get worse across Equestria, for us in turn. If we can weaken the Nationalists, as the others likely go after Royalists, we’ll be safer.”
“So that’s it, we’re going to go about our plan as before after all this?” Satio remarked bluntly, to which Iena softly spoke, gesturing to herself and him in turn:
“Word will spread of what we are, and we have to make sure we’re ready when trouble comes. Shaping the leadership for our safety is the only way, I don’t want to run for the rest of my life.”
Slowly walking to come alongside Iena, as her body was engulfed in a dark blue glow, he remarked with a small smile on his face:
“If we do have to run, you’ll have me at least…”
Looking down, Iena gave a small sigh as she smiled, laying a hand on Satio’s fat orange thigh before teleporting them both south-east, a long journey to return to Baltimare ahead of them.
And from there, what had already been sown would be reaped before long.

Northern Citadel Valley

They were 3 miles away, but even from the mountain ridge they stood upon they could see the Citadel being claimed. The landslides filled in and displaced the lake in the valley, a few sizeable floods further south in Equestria would be the consequence of that.
But hardly anything of the Citadel’s above ground structure remained, only a few stronger tower structures jutting out of the churned up rock and ground remaining, poking out of the ground like old bones.
His magical enhanced vision fading, Golmov turned his large form to the smaller hybrid beside him, shaking his head as he ruffled his 4 large wings and centipede like legs, the 200 foot long dragon passive as he spoke:
“Gone, all of it.”
“And Odi-Viscer is clearly a rogue now… It was a fool’s hope to keep him in check after his outrage against Siral, he’s more a weapon now.”
“At least he will not go on another rampage for a while, not after a blast like that.” Golmov pointed out, to which Teal nodded in agreement before turning her gaze to the north, thinking aloud:
“It changes nothing, we have our priorities anyway. We can go it alone if we are careful. If all Alicorns are not destroyed, they’ll destroy us in time, that power they’ve unlocked will only grow easier to use. And knowing they may well turn on each other after death isn’t something I’ll settle for.”
“I want those arrogant ruling classes to see the frauds they are. Not gods, for they can be killed. We’ll remind them of that.”
Golmov’s yellow eyes narrowed as a slightly gleeful smile crept across his mandibled mouth, remarking to Teal Quirt as he slowly shuffled to peer his long head around to stare the ape/Scorpion hybrid in the face:
“If only you were born a dragon, you and I would have got on well before Siral had we met.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But we have to hit them where it hurts most…” Teal disregarded Golmov’s sadistic pleasantries, borderline flirt even. As she put an ape hand to her chin in thought, her scorpion claws raking the dirt in thought, it was Golmov who spoke, his yellow eyes narrowing as he spoke up:
“I know just the place, one left relatively untouched by the Civil War.”
Turning to him, her green eyes alight, she scowled at the prospect:
“A gambit to draw them out. But remember, we work together on this, are you clear about that?”
“Like glass, Teal.”
The pair were gone a few moments later in a flash of green and yellow, heading their own way to plot, to determine their next move.

2 hours later
Late Evening
Citadel Ruins, mountainside

Her eyes fluttered as she awakened, her joints aching as she saw she was buried under a large pile of rubble. Her body, as she noticed, had lost some of its light blue glow.
Shuffling, Ave-Dol’s magic began to move some rocks off of her, but as she moved the first, clearing her line of sight to the surface, something moving made her stop.
Her magic transformed her back into her light blue and blond maned Alicorn origin, as she stared out at something shuffling from further up the slope.
An Earth Pony stallion, bald all over, and a sickly grey, but with burning red eyes.
Odi-Viscer was weary as he staggered about, but as he stared around, Ave-Dol saw some stone spikes beginning to protrude through his shoulders and back ever so slowly.
Slowly he walked, so close to her hiding spot beneath rubble at one point that Ave-Dol had to hold her breath and still all movement, and suppress her magic somehow.
But as she began to suppress her magic, she recalled a curse Siral had put on her in her origin form. This time, it would be a blessing.

Unaware of Ave-Dol hiding within metres of him, Odi-Viscer scanned the ruins with bleary eyes, his shrunken form pushing aside a protruding stone tower staple as he looked around with bleary vision.
As he came to a stop however, his shoulders began to ever so slowly slump, and a light blue glaze shimmered through his eyes as he turned to face something slowly crawling from the rubble behind him.
Ave-Dol slowly rose to her full Alicorn height, her magic acting like a gentle breeze over him as she slowly approached Odi-Viscer, cautious as he seemed to grow slightly, stone and bone spikes growing as his spine also shifted to slowly begin turning him into his ape shaped true form.
But his red eyes remained calmer than normal, though they still regarded her with a hard look. Reaching out a hoof as she came to him, her lethargy inducing magic aura calming his savage state he felt all the time now.
Sparing a sad smile at him, Ave-Dol remarked with her deepest sympathies:
“I understand your hurt, your pain, but this isn’t the way. You may think you are just this now, but you can be more than this if you’re willing to try.”
As his eyes lit up a slightly darker shade of red, Ave-Dol paused, before she lowered her hoof, and her form began to shift to her Windigo/Alicorn form, the lethargy inducing magic vanishing.
“I won’t try to stop you, it is up to you from now on.”
Before her, Odi-Viscer’s body morphed, stone overtaking half of his body as it grew to triple her height, his red eyes burning like twin suns as he reshaped into a more upright, ape stance. As he looked at the being of Sloth before him, submitting to his actions to show she cared, he began to charge his fists, curled on the ground, in red energy.
Staring for a moment at her, as her light blue eyes met his, he raised a fist, eyes blazing as they prepared to fire his beam attack once again, though admittedly less fiercely than before by his exhaustion.
But to her relief, she saw his form shrink slightly, and his shoulders slump as the red energy faded.
Blinking a few times, the being of Wrath slowly back stepped, before he finally turned his back, and looked to the south west. His red energy charging, he leapt off the ground with enough force to crack the rock beneath him, soaring up and away as he began to trek across Equestria, away from the Citadel, as fast as he could muster.
Watching him leave, Ave-Dol could only sigh as she looked down in disappointment. He spared her, but he didn’t want her help.
“Gaudium…”
A single word left her mouth as she turned her gaze west, across the forests not hit by the displaced mountain forcing the lakewater out.
In time, this valley would have no lake, only a steep river, and the displaced rock and terrain would be grown over, a shallow hill hiding the catacombs of the fortress that had once stood here.
Ave-Dol took flight west, knowing Gaudium’s currently simple mind would take her order to run and hide as far as he could to heart.
She searched for the Being of Pride, as the others scattered to their own ends.

1 hour later
Night
Citadel Ruins, Catacombs
Ruined hallways.

Behind him, the tunnel had collapsed, as Tacit Scrivener had heard the cries of the 3 following him silenced under the collapsing roof of the catacombs.
Overhead, the rumbles had long ceased, but the mad dash down into the Catacombs had made him lose his way, and now he was alone. The Unicorn Stallion’s horn illuminated the dark corridors and stone walls, down here only slightly cracked from the cataclysm having unfolded above.
While the landslides had taken out the upper structures, the lower catacombs remained intact, secured by rock it was already burrowed into.
Slumping beside the wall of the hallway, Tacit opened up his journal, noting the panicking sloppiness of his writing in today’s entry.
-The earth is trembling, the whole mountain is collapsing, claiming the citadel. The creatures have vanished, their fighting sending this place to ruin. We must escape, the main entryway is lost. The tunnel in the deep, the labyrinth is impassable when entering, not leaving.
But as he looked out down the hallway, Tacit found himself wondering what tunnels were still intact, and which weren’t. He would have to find his way through the Catacombs, knowing the fear of a cave in was always present.
He kept the satchel of Alicorn amulets with him, only a single red gemmed one missing. They felt like weights however, yet his service to Siral was what compelled him to keep a hold of these valuable artefacts.

Later that night, unseen in the shadows, tiny presences gathered unseen, a larger, overarching presence whispering in the darkened catacombs, weak for now as it gathered itself.
Only the solitary Unicorn stallion making his way out provided a living ‘beacon’ to rally towards for sustenance.

Sunrise
April 7th, 71 BNM
Northern mountains, 50 miles west of the Citadel,

The Draconeraqus was hidden inside the small cavern, a few vines slinking into it the same way the water trickle came down.
Cuts and bruises from his mad dash marked his body, as his red and yellow eyes flickered open, blankly staring around in minor confusion.
He recalled running, somepony telling him to run, somepony light blue if he remembered what colours were.
As he stood up, he tried to think, his mind an utter mess, devoid of much at all. A light blue figure telling him to run, others that were angry at him, others that wanted him controlled, it was all a bad dream to him.
But one quote, one line, seemed more real than anything else. A fragment of a speech his unknown creator had given, it stuck out like nothing else. Unbeknownst to him, it was one of the first things ever spoken to him when he was reborn, wiped of his mind.
“-all that causes discord.”
“Discord… Discord.” The Draconeraqus wracked his mind, that word, that name, the only thing that seemed to stick in his mind better than anything else.
He timidly stayed hidden, only that name, Discord, as his safety of knowing something. To him, that memory was more real than any other, so it was truth in his mind.
Gaudium was gone for good.
Discord remained hidden, scared of this unknown world, but as he began to flick his clawed fingers on his eagle hand, he saw sparks of magic fly.
Sat alone in the cave, he began to collect himself, the unknown world beyond a place too intimidating to brave just yet, not before he knew himself and his body better.
Discord made his home in the cave for a while, as his brethren made their mark on Equestria in their own ways.

Author's Notes:

End of the Citadel fall arc, and now we can get moving to the consequences and fates of each of them, as well as tying up loose ends.
But from here on out, the story’s focus shall be from the ‘protagonists’, aka Starswirl, the royals and to a lesser extent, Chack, as his kindness epiphany is still to come.