Each of the girls sobered up at the sight of the griffon that had trusted them enough to bring them into her town. Any high they had felt from the previous battle had drained away and been replaced with guilt and regret.

The guilt of having someone they had started to consider a friend see them like this, and the regret of being caught. There was no remorse in any of their eyes for the atrocities they had committed against the town of Squawken.

Svanhild could see this plain as the blood covered snow on the ground.

For several seconds, none of the girls moved or responded to the griffon's single, grief-laden question. Twilight's grin fell into a sad frown and she opened her mouth to say something, only for it to shut as she turned away from Svanhild.

Pinkie's features remained blank, her desire to end the witness warring with the sorrow she felt at seeing the look in Svanhild's eyes. Applejack grimaced and looked away just as Twilight had, adjusting her stetson so that it covered her eyes.

Rarity looked as though she didn't quite know what to do with herself, shifting from hoof to hoof and chewing on her mane nervously. Fluttershy just gave the distraught griffon a sorrowful look.

Rainbow Dash looked the most stricken out of any of the girls. She slowly flew towards Svanhild, her hoof outstretch and a pleading look on her face.

"Look... Svanhild, I--"

Rainbow retracted her hoof and winced as a bullet clipped her cheek, the shallow cut closing in a near instant. She slowly brought the outstretched hoof to her face where the cut had been as she stared at Svanhild.

The griffon had her mother's old rifle trained on the cyan pegasus, her eyes brimming with hate, sorrow, guilt, and tears. She pulled the trigger and released another shot -- one which Rainbow Dash did nothing to avoid as it sank into her chest.

"Why did you kill them?!"

Another shot.

"I trusted you all -- led you here into town like an idiot and now half the flocking town is dead!"

A third shot rang out.

"D-Do you know what they're all gonna do to me?" Svanhild's grip on the rifle loosened as her claws began to shake, "I... I c-can't show my face in this town again..."

Svanhild pulled the trigger one last time before dropping the rifle, the shot going wide. She alighted to the ground unsteadily, never taking her teary eyes away from Rainbow Dash. The look of hate was gone, and in its place was utter despair at what the six had wrought.

"B-Because of what you did..."

Her gaze gradually drifted to the bodies scattered about and her face twisted in pain before her eyes snapped back to Rainbow Dash and the others who now looked just as shocked and hurt as Rainbow did.

Fluttershy suddenly but quietly stepped forward. She froze where she was when Svanhild whipped around to face her -- her gaze furious and full of pain. The yellow pegasus took a step back and sat where she was.

"We're... not normal ponies, Svanhild," Fluttershy swept her eyes across the aftermath of their massacre as she spoke, "something terrible happened to all of us, and we're still trying to cope with the changes... the terrible, terrible changes."

She looked back to Svanhild with a sad expression.

"I'm sorry for what we did, but--"

"DON'T FLOCKING LIE TO ME!"

Fluttershy and the rest of the group flinched at the sound of Svanhild's enraged shout. The griffon stood tall and flared out her wings in indignation as she continued her tirade.

"I knew. I flocking knew there was something off about all of you," she seethed, rounding on Fluttershy, "I knew, and I still let you into Squawken," she barked out a derisive laugh that turned into a single choked sob, "s-some of my friends are here, y'know?"

She pointed a shaky talon to one of the many corpses littering the ground. The girls followed her pointed talon and saw a smallish grey and blue female griffon in a Town Guard uniform split cleanly across the middle -- her face frozen in terror.

"A-Alvilda Bright Beak," she sniffed, "best friend s-since we were eaglets. She... s-she was a bit of a nerd sometimes, but... but she..."

Svanhild trailed off and shook her head before wiping her eyes and walking over to another body -- this one lying next to a discarded pike. She picked up the pike and held it in her claw, staring at it for a moment before looking down at the griffon that had once wielded it.

By this point, Rainbow Dash had landed and now stood by the rest of the girls as they watched the despairing griffon mourn her fallen comrades. Without turning around to face them, Svanhild spoke again in a voice quivering with grief and barely suppressed rage.

"Arvid... Grey Claw," she went quiet for a brief moment before speaking again, "he could be a jerk sometimes... but he always managed to make me laugh... a-always managed..."

Twilight looked back at the others for some kind of help, but none of them knew what to do in this situation. They could try to comfort Svanhild, but it was clear she wasn't looking for sympathy from the ones that had slaughtered her friends and acquaintances.

The six of them all had plenty of experience in comforting sad and downtrodden ponies -- some more than others -- but this was altogether different. They had been the ones to cause the grief, and they all knew a simple apology wasn't going to be enough.

Nothing they did was going to be enough for this.

They knew going in that what they had done was going to be unforgivable, but the aftermath hit them harder than they expected it to -- especially considering their current states of mind.

It was all so confusing.

One moment they were ready to throw all morals to the wind and commit mass murder, and the next, they were back to feeling terrible for the consequences of their actions, if not for the actual murders themselves.

The virus had twisted their minds and bodies in ways they still didn't understand, and most likely wouldn't understand unless they got some answers from those responsible.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the ones responsible were already dead, and the girls had no way of knowing where the ones that still lived had escaped to -- at least, not at the moment.

When it was clear she would be receiving no help, Twilight sighed and trotted towards Svanhild, who still had her back turned to the mares. She stopped a few yards away and fell to her haunches.

"Svanhild," Twilight paused and waited to see if the griffon would interrupt. When she didn't the mare continued, "there's... there's nothing I... there's nothing any of us could say to make up for what we've done here."

She hung her head a moment before looking around the battlefield with a grimace. A minute later she turned back to see that Svanhild hadn't moved an inch.

"As much as I want to deny it... as much as I tried to deny it and reject it, the fact of the matter... is that we're monsters. We didn't used to be, but... that changed. We were changed, and none of us know why."

"We kinda can't help it," Rainbow Dash added, flying over and landing next to Twilight, "it's just what we are now. Sure, we're not going around killing all the time, but when you put us in a situation like this... well..."

"Things tend to spiral out of control and we lose ourselves in the moment, as it were," came Rarity's voice as she trotted up next to the other two, "this is all still new to us, and at one time, it... it would've been anathema to all we stood for as the Elements of Harmony... but now..."

"Are we really even the Elements of Harmony anymore?"

The other three turned to see a sad looking Pinkie Pie standing a little ways away. She moved to stand beside the rest of her friends as she spoke.

"Do they still exist after all this time? I don't really feel like they do," the pink mare shook her head, "I always felt this... I dunno, this warmth inside me whenever I was around you girls, and now I don't feel that anymore."

"Now that ya mention it, ah felt the same way," Applejack added moving next to the others, "an' now ah don't feel nothin' like that anymore."

"Girls, this isn't about us right now," Fluttershy chided, giving them all a stern glare before turning a sympathetic eye towards the brooding Svanhild, "she's the one suffering right now, and it's our fault."

"Yer right, Flutters," Applejack conceded, turning to address Svanhild, "knowin' what we were, ah never shoulda asked ya ta take us into town," she trotted closer to the silent griffon, "this was all a mistake. We never wanted ta -- ghgak!"

The five other mare reeled in shock at the sight of the pike sticking out of the back of Applejack's neck. The orange earth pony's body twitched once before she staggered backwards and fell to her haunches.

"A mistake?"

Twilight and the others turned to Svanhild, who was visibly shaking with rage as she let go of the pike and stepped around Applejack to face the others.

"You call reducing the population of Squawken down to half a mistake?" she stomped forward, clicking her beak furiously, "YOU'VE RUINED US! WE CAN'T SURVIVE OUT HERE WITH ONLY HALF THE TOWN ALIVE!"

She continued her advance, heedless of the fact that the cowpony she had left behind had stood up, tendrils consuming the pike and causing it to sink further into her body.

"BECAUSE OF ALL OF YOU, I CAN'T GO BACK HOME! THEY'LL KILL ME FOR BRINGING YOU ALL HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!" more tears streamed down her face as she stopped and sank to the ground, a lost expression on her face and her tirade giving way to a quiet broken whisper, "you might as well have just killed me along with the rest."

"Is that what you really want?"

Svanhild sniffed and looked up to see Twilight standing above her, her expression unreadable as she looked back down at the griffon.

"I told you, Svanhild, we're monsters who have no qualms about killing others," Twilight said, taking a step back, "if you want us to kill you--"

Svanhild didn't know what suddenly came over her.

Maybe it was the guilt, maybe it was the grief, maybe it was the anger, the hate, the regret, the pain. Maybe it was all of those things, but at Twilight's words, she suddenly found that the world had turned red and that she somehow had lost control of her own body.

She was faintly aware of someone screeching incoherently, and whoever they were, they sounded angry... very angry. She had the vague sense that she was moving about, but she didn't really register any of it.

The only thing she knew for sure was that something needed to die, and that she was going to be the one to kill it.

She felt something pierce some part of her body somewhere, but paid it no mind as her body practically moved of its own accord, swiping and slashing and screeching and snapping at anything that moved.

It took her quite some time to come to her senses and realize that she was lying flat on her stomach and unable to move. It took her another moment to realize there was something embedded in her back, and when she finally did, she screamed.

She couldn't see what had impaled her, but whatever it was, was causing her horrible pain that seemed to flood every one of her nerves. Her next scream was cut short by a series of bloody coughs as she felt whatever had stabbed her yank itself out of her back.

At the same time, a weight she hadn't noticed until it shifted, removed itself off her back. She screamed and hacked and wailed from the agony of whatever had happened to her, and through the blurriness the tears had brought to her eyes, she could see five colorful equine shapes a few yards away.

Her vision cleared a second later and she could see five of the mares looking back at her with mixed expressions. Before she could register what had happened, a pair of cyan colored legs stepped in front of her.

She weakly lifted her head to see none other than Rainbow Dash standing above her -- one hoof gone and replaced with a wicked looking silver blade covered in blood.... her blood.

Rainbow Dash looked down at her with a pitying gaze before turning away and trotting over to her other friends -- her hoofblade reverting back to a cyan hoof in a flash of tendrils.

Svanhild coughed again and Rainbow Dash stopped before turning to look at the dying griffon from over her shoulder. The griffon glared at the pegasus, her rage still burning even as her vision began to fade. Rainbow stared back at Svanhild, her face a mix of different emotions. Eventually she settled on a dispassionate frown.

"...I'm sorry, Svanhild."

With that, she and the rest of the girls trotted off to who knows where, leaving Svanhild to die among the bodies of her fellow Squawken Town Guard.

Svanhild stared after the six retreating mares for as long as she could manage, burning the image of them into her mind as her consciousness began to fade. Eventually she became too weak to keep her head up any longer and with another pained groan, she let it fall to the ground.

"F-Flocking... monsters... I'll... I'm g-gonna..."

Everything went black and Svanhild knew no more.

Then something deep within her shifted.

Next Chapter: Omen Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 51 Minutes