CANTERLOT

There was a stylus once that wrote:

Who was the first who forged that deadly blade?
Of rugged steel his savage soul was made.

And if he had seen Canterlot under the pale moon and waning stars, that poet would have said so again. The road that leads up the rugged mountains of the Unicorn Range to Canterlot is like a pockmarked face. No, that is too poetic. It is like a sore, an open wound, the kind that lets the air in and stagnates, the kind that oozes vitae.

The ground has been torn by artillery. The dead lie in piles or alone, some of them in one piece and some in many. The raiders are fewer now, but not drastically so. They still dance, they still wait, they still chatter. Look, now, in the trenches of these hordes that rose out of the darkness: a stallion who filed his own horn off giggles softly as he scrawls strange swirling glyphs into the trench wall. A mare is sharpening a pole arm before she hooks it back into her saddle, humming. Two stallions fight in the mud, laughing, and then one drags the other off into a side-alley and then they aren’t laughing quite the same way. A single barded soldier in white watches these savages with flat eyes, his rifle at rest.

They attack every few hours, sending more and more with each wave. That tactic will end soon. Once the more unruly parts of the raider horde are gone, then they will move. A few more attacks. That is all they need.

When morning comes, one of the barded rebels blows a whistle, and others down the line do the same. Like ants surging out from their nest, so the no pony’s land is filled with the teeming, screaming life ready to be cut down. The first whistleblower, an officer, watches with an uninterested stare. The Good Stallion and the Manichean were wise, and this plan of theirs was perfect. He would feel pride in this but he felt nothing. The idea of freedom, the rhetoric of liberty--perhaps they moved his heart once, but they do not do so now. Now he is more machine than pony. He can wait for the final assault on the wall. Honestly, he could wait until the end of the world, because the idea of waiting does not bother him at all.

And then suddenly there is a change. Something in the implacable stoicism of the White-barded rebels snaps. In all of their heads there is a great screaming of frustration, of rage. Of pain, perhaps, but not in a way any of them can understand. Dozens die instantly, their minds bubbling out of their ears. Some are weeping. Some are left in heaps, seething. But then the great hands that move them grab all of his puppets and he throws them in rage at the wall. Up from the trenches rise in mindless rushing a thousand ponies. From their mouths comes forth a terrible thing that is a mockery of song, something that their own voices could never have produced. Not in life.

They are not quite alive, not like you or I.

Their assault comes at the end of the latest wave of savages and there is no recovery time. They shoot their raider fodder in the back to get to the scrambling, unnerved guardsponies. They run right into machine gun fire and take four or five shots before they stumble, and then crawl afterwards. They pour into the trench before the walls and there begins a struggle in the pre-dawn light to rival the clash of any gods.

Eventually, the rage fades and the assault is called off, and little is done by the surviving Equestrian line. They lie spent if they are alive. More than half are not.

There are hundreds of minds all thinking the same thing. This is not what ponies do. This is not what ponies are.Ponies are not creatures of war. Ponies do not devour each other. Even as they pull the bolt back and chamber another round, ponies do not kill each other, ponies do not hurt each other, ponies do not they do not--

Is this true?

What is the substance of an action? What it produces or what engenders it? A mare thinks of her children and kills a babbling ruin to keep it from the walls. She loves her children. She has kissed their hurts away and scooted over so when they have nightmares she might comfort them, let them sleep in the warm shrouding of her body. She has cut their hair and packed their lunches. She has walked them to school and encouraged them on the doorstep. She baked a cake for their cutecenara and read them stories to sleep. And now she beats a raider’s cheeks in so they will sleep tonight unmolested.

Ponies are not killers. They are not.

A fat unicorn in a canvas uniform walks among the ruins afterwards, a cigar burning in his lips, his revolver in its holster. A young earth pony stallion the color of amber wheat follows behind with wide, hollow eyes. The first looks to the second, and then back to the trenches.

“Hell of a business,” he says.

Around four in the morning, you can hear the first quiet songs if you too are quiet, in the temples of High Canterlot and in the filthy holes along the road, in the corners of taverns and in the warm homes of families.

Have mercy on us!
Celestia, protect us.
Luna, have mercy on us!
Celestia, protect us.

Canterlot’s fall is coming. Not tonight, but tomorrow. There are things yet to happen between the motion and the act.

AMARANTH

Amaranth found Ice Storm waiting for her when she woke that afternoon. Groggily, as she put on her scout-barding and yawned her way downstairs, she found him leaning against the safehouse’s counter. He looked up at her and tried for a smile, but it was a rather paltry kind of thing around sips of coffee. She returned it regardless.

She stood on the other side of the counter, and considered him. Even before her change, she had enjoyed teasing her former commander. Why? Was he dour? Sometimes. But not in a bad way. She just wanted him to smile, mostly. She still did. It was good for ponies to smile. But she also knew that such things had limits. Yes--perhaps the edge of hell was a good place to laugh, but the edge of a cemetary was not. So she did not jump on the counter and make innuendos, and she did not tease him about being a night owl now. Instead, she placed a hoof on his shoulder and he looked up at her.

She noticed the papers he had spread out on the counter. “What’s the news?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you in a moment, when I am done… coming to terms. Would you like some coffee? Do you, um, you drink that still? I assume.” He paused, and blinked. “Actually, you know, I never noticed you drinking coffee at Castle Watch. Do you?”

She smiled. “I do. And I would like some, actually.”

Ice Storm hummed and straightened up. Leaving his own cup behind, he walked back towards the kitchen behind the “store”. Amaranth stole a sip from his abandoned mug and grimaced.

“Ugh. Um, Stormy, could you bring some cream and sugar?” she asked.

“The mighty hunter in the night needs cream and sugar?” he replied, his voice echoing back to her. Her ears tweaked. “If you’re nocturnal, shouldn’t you be drinking your coffee black like the night?”

“You’re not funny,” she said. “Neither is your coffee. This is darker than Luna’s holy flank.”

He reappeared with a quizzically raised brow and a mug of coffee, sugar and cream already mixed in. “One lump enough?”

“Yup!” she said. “If it’s not, I’m sure I can just borrow some more. Princess keeps us in good supply.” She took a sip, not minding the heat--another nice thing about the change. Her sense of pain was diminished. Not gone. Things were just easier to bear. It made eating hot things a lot easier.

“Now, holy?” he asked.

“I’m not a supernalist or a celestialist,” she said lightly. “You know that.”

“I do,” he said quietly.

“I don’t think of her as holy like they do. It’s just… well. Batponies aren’t from Equestria originally, you know? We followed Luna here. So she’s important to us. Batponies on both sides of the civil war did what they did hoping it would help her.” Another sip. “So I feel a sense of… of awe, I guess. We don’t know the name of our progenitor. But we know Luna, and she might as well be.”

Ice Storm nodded. “I suspect a pony who embodied Mother Aurora would inspire a similar awe in myself.”

They were quiet for a moment. Ice Storm no longer looked at the papers, and Amaranth did not touch them. She knew he would explain, given time, and she wasn’t meant for duty right away. There was something nice about the quiet.

Not that she didn’t want to ask questions, because she did. Some of those questions were important--what did you read? What news did Luna get from that spy?--but most of them were not important. Did you sleep here last night? How are you adjusting to the schedule? Do you really not mind being in the Night Guard for now? Are you tired of doing this? Do you like my company? Do you mind what I am? Oranges or apples? Ever tried meat?

Speaking of that, Amaranth was thirsty. Her stomach felt empty. The Duskwatch treated her almost like a foal, and they had all warned her sternly not to miss breakfast. She had rolled her eyes. Whatever. She was a grown mare, she didn’t need them hanging over her. But she was hungry… and Ice Storm was here. He would know why she was going if she left, and Amaranth didn’t really want him to think about her doing… that.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Stormy, you look rough,” she said. And he did. Tired? Very. She wasn’t sure if it was adjusting to a more nocturnal schedule or if it was the near constant duty, but either way he looked dead on his hooves.

“I am tired,” he said with a smile. “Very, very tired, of spirit and of body. Coffee is helping.”

“Coffee helps,” she agreed.

“So is company,” he added. Amaranth liked the way he looked at her. She did not blush like a schoolfilly, but she did smile back as he continued. “Sleeping most of the day is hard on me, but not impossible. I am finding a new balance. Would you like to know what I’ve read? You’ve been remarkably patient.”

She grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. I’m kinda dying to know.”

“Well, orders, for one. You and me specifically have been assigned to work as a team. Do you mind?” he asked, as if he knew the answer already.

“Well, you are kinda stuffy. And you’re too pretty. You’ll distract me.”

“Yes, I’m rather distracting,” he deadpanned. “I hope you can keep that good cheer up. You may need it.” At her look, he continued. “There’s a bomb in the city.”

She stared at him. She took another sip. She cleared her throat. “Go on.”

“You’re taking this well.”

“No, I’m not. But the sooner I hear the rest, the quicker somepony can find it and get rid of it and then I’ll be fine. Now please please please hurry.”

He chuckled despite the situation. “Well, ‘Amy’, if you’re going to keep calling me that ridiculous name--we’re not sure. Ixil did her best, but they seem to not be decided yet themselves. Or they are very skilled at this sort of cloak and dagger, enough to fool a creature born to it. It doesn’t matter. Spike and Lieutenant Soarin’ visited several of the guardhouses in the lower city this morning, as well as the gate to search under cover of visiting the wounded of the most recent attack.”

Amaranth felt her stomach church and she wasn’t sure if it was revulsion or something else. The last attack had been worse than any other ten times over.

“And I’m guessing they didn’t find anything?”

“Nothing,” Ice Storm replied. “So Luna is sending the Nightshades into the lower city. And she is sending the Duskwatch, well… underneath the city. The catacombs.”

Amaranth let a breath hiss over her fangs. “Now this is gonna be fun.”

Ice Storm chuckled. “Interesting, in the very least.”

Amaranth watched Ice Storm drink her concoction while they waited. She knew it tasted awful, but he was trying not to shudder. It was dumb, but endearing.

“It work?” she asked. He nodded.

“I see,” he said simply, and then immediately looked up at the stars and stared with the same wonder she had seen in his eyes at Castle Watch. “Beautiful,” he said softly. “I cannot imagine how you lived your whole life with access to the farthest reaches of glory, Amaranth. I am envious.”

“Daytime is cool too. I’m glad you like it, though,” she said, feeling strangely shy. “Makes babysitting me a little worth it, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m foalsitting you. Perhaps the opposite. You could hogtie me with minimal effort, right now.”

“Well, yeah, but I would feel bad about it. Emotional suffering is still pain,” she whined.

“I see. Well, if you need somepony without all those troubling scruples, you may need another guard.”

They chuckled, more because of the nervousness than of anything said. She’d brought enough rations for three days, knowing she wouldn’t need that much. She was thirsty now, but she could wait.

“Ready to go, Colonel?” she asked.

He nodded.

Rainbow Rays

It really is amazing what unexpected flight does to the mind. And that is flight in the sense of flee, and not in the manner involving feathers, though both apply.

Paradise turned sharply, throwing their shared charge for a loop. As he stumbled, a flying Rays kept him upright and mobile. Ahead, a crowd blocked the way.

He saw white everywhere. Every bonnet, every clean cloud-white dress, every pure coat--they were all a threat. They could all be a Whitecloak about to pull a weapon from his pack or call up magic from his horn. Rays was sure they were right behind, but when he turned, there was no pursuit.

“How far?” he shouted.

There was no answer. Paradise was still maneuvering. Rays flew slightly higher, above the rooftops, and tried to gauge the distance himself.

He felt the air break along his cheek before he saw the sniper or the flash or even noticed the sound. He stopped in midair, blinking, confused, only to finally see the pony in a white cloak struggling with a jam only three or four houses down the lane.

Fable was yelling up at him. That was what broke his sunned paralysis. The gunner--a unicorn with white cloak and white rags tied across his face and wrapped around his forelegs--looked down at the source of the voice and lowered his now working weapon.

Rays dove, yelling. The gunner did not flinch. He lined the lordling up in his sights, aimed--

Rays hit him just as the unicorn used his magic to fire the round. Rays heart pounded in his ears as he and the attacker went sprawling. They seperated, and only now did he see the hoofblades on the unicorn’s hooves. He ducked underneath a two-hoof kick and slammed his shoulder into the whitecloak’s stomach. But the assassin did not falter. Rays felt a sharp pain in his side, and rolled away to find a serrated griffon blade coated with blood. His breathing hurt, but he would know if the lung had been breached.

“Fuck,” he grumbled, panting. The unicorn advanced wordlessly, his knife swinging first. Rays rolled out of the way, but felt the unicorn’s hooves hit him in the side. But it was a glancing blow. The blades caught on his coat, pricked it, but did not shred into the flesh beneath.

“Rays! Para, help him!”

He won’t and he shouldn’t. Get him out of here! Rays thought, even as he baited the assassin, managing a pained smirk. He was not winning this. At all. But he could buy time.

He was a traitor. He was a traitor and this was how he fixed that!

The sniper came again, and this time Rays remembered that he too had hoofblades. He met the griffon knife with one hoof and with another, awkwardly shoved against his enemy’s chest, pushing himself forward onto shaky hooves but the other onto his back.

He saw opportunity and he took it. Rays pounced, hoofblades ready to plunge into the sniper’s exposed belly. He saw the rifle in a blue aura snap to attention and come up to fire, but he was committed.

The gun fired as his blades stabbed into the sniper’s chest. He felt no pain, but the other pony writhed and then went still. Rays rolled off of him, his wings fluttering as he felt over his body for another wound.

But there was not one. He almost stopped there and sat back on his haunches. I could have died. I should have died. Like three times. There was no justice--the traitor was alive. This one time, he could not care less. He grinned like a fool.

But then he remembered his charge. Fable! No way he could fight off these sort of ponies. Panic swelled in him and he took off.

There weren’t anymore potshots, but it took only moments to find Fable and Paradise again. Paradise had done the right thing--he had kept the lordling running, he was getting him to safety. Rays dove again to catch up, whimpering at the agony in his side.

He saw another pony on a roof and did not stop to make sure it was an attacker. He flew over Fable. “My lord! Sniper on the roof ahead!”

Paradise heard and did not waste time asking him if he was alright. He stopped, turned slightly to catch the panicking Fable, and rerouted him down an alleyway.

The gates were close. If they could just get to the palace gates, out of the upper level merchant district… away from the maze…

When Paradise burst out from the alley into another main street, he ran directly into Solar Guards. Rays landed right beside him, stumbling slightly. They faced off, Paradise and Rays panting and wild-eyed, the guards confused.

“What is going on here? Give an account of yourself, citizen,” said one of them.

“We’re being chased!” Fable said. He pushed through. “Please, I must see the princess!”

But, against all odds, this didn’t seem to impress the guard. “And you are?”

Something clicked for Rays. He asked, his voice even. “Soldier, do the words, ‘bat out of hell’ mean anything to you?”

The guard in gilded armor blinked. “No? Son, you need to start making sense. Your friend here already came barrelling out of that alley and struck me, and I’m willing to chalk it up to an accident if you’ll just come with--”

“You aren’t a guard,” Rays cut in. “Luna made sure every patrol knew that code--Paradise get him out of here!”

The veneer shattered. The patrol lunged, and the two house guards bared their shoulders and formed a living wall before the protesting, terrified scion of Rowan-Oak.

Paradise pushed Rays back towards Fable, and he didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled Fable along, panting, desperate. He had to get him to Luna. He had to keep him safe. He had to!

There was a gunshot. He heard somepony using arcane attack magic behind. Ahead, actual guards began to pour out of the gatehouse garrison, streaming past the two of them until two Lunar soldiers stopped them at the threshold of the palace.

Rays, panicking, shouted at them. “Bat Out of Hell! Bat Out of Hell! I’m… I’m a bat out of hell, Spike… Spike made sure… just get him to the princess. Please. You have to…” He stumbled, and clutched his side, and the two Lunar guards moved the heir inside, and Rays lay in the gardens inside the palace walls and tried not to pass out.

SPIKE

They sat, once more, upon the wall. This time, however, they numbered three.

Rainbow Rays had not been formally discharged from his lord’s service, but in the chaos of Rowan-Oak’s arrival, he had been separated and told brusquely but not quite with hostility by Paradise that it would be best if he were not around. At least, for the moment.

So the dejected pegasus sat on the high wall of Canterlot between Spike and Soarin’.

“It’s your turn,” Soarin’ told the pegasus.

Rainbow Rays fidgeted. “Does it have to be?”

“You’re safe,” Spike said. “I promise. They stopped shooting up here a few days ago. We take potshots but never hit anything.”

“Speak for yourself,” Soarin’ said.

“We never hit anything,” Spike repeated with a toothy grin. “We’re really just here to keep eyes on the battlefield. If it gets too out of hoof, or they rush the trenches again, then we pick them off. But as long as they aren’t pushing…”

“Then we wait,” Soarin’ finished. “Which is boring. Also, safe. Safe is good. Safe means pie at the end of a long day and nice beds.”

“For you,” Rays said. He sighed and looked over the crenulations for a moment. Slowly, he balanced the rifle in the crook of his shoulder, leaning in to look at the scope. He left the large trigger on the gun’s belly alone.

They let him be. Spike had told Soarin’ to go easy on him, but not to let him wallow. Spike had an inkling of what it was like to feel like nopony wanted you. To be the odd one out, so it were. And it wasn’t fun. He also knew that, in a way, this feeling was his fault. He had signed off on Rays going undercover. He had been the one that received his reports.

“They don’t move much,” Rays said after a moment. He kept watching. “A few do. The ones in white.”

“Officers,” Soarin’ offered. “At least, we think.”

“Not all of them,” Rays said, evenly. “Way too many.”

Spike and Soarin’ shared a look. “How many is ‘too many’?” Spike asked carefully.

“Uh… I dunno. At least a couple hundred? They’re coming up the road, and there’s a bunch in the trenches. Theyre the ones that attacked last night, right?”

Spike stood and took his griffon repeated off his back to peer through the scope. He swallowed a curse. “How did we not notice the ones coming up the road?”

“It’s only been like twenty minutes,” Soarin’ pointed out.

Spike grunted. “Whatever. We noticed them now. Soarin’, fly down and tell the Colonel at the gate that they’re moving some of the troops from the valley up the mountain again. Maybe…” He grimaced. “It’s hard to tell. A lot. Enough for a push like last night.”

“I hope as hell not,” Soarin’ said, and then Spike heard a fluttering of wings and felt a light brush of air.

He settled back into sitting, leaning his gun against his scaled form. Rays kept watching.

“So we just… wait?”

“Yup,” Spike said. “You know, makes me wish I had something to read. I was a huge comic book guy when I was little.”

He glanced over and saw Rays smirking into his scope. “Really now?”

“Absolutely. I had something like… a couple hundred comics in a big chest in Twilight’s treehouse library basement… lab… thing. She called it the archives, which is a really fancy way of saying ‘the place where I stuff everything else’. Twilight was always organized… until it had to do with research and then organization looked like a bomb hit. She cleaned up later. If she wasn’t passed out after two all nighters.”

“Never could manage those,” Rays said. “I dropped out of Canterlot U, actually.”

“What did you study?”

“Literature. Theatre. Changed it a few times.” Rays shrugged. “Spike, have you ever abused somepony’s trust?”

And there it was. Spike sighed. “You were doing what we told you to do, Rays. You followed orders--the Princess herself signed off on it.”

“If she ordered you to eat a foal, would you?”

Spike was almost angry. Mostly because his first instinct was to snarl something about how being a dragon didn’t make him a pony-eater. That that was a stupid thought. But he held that in check, because it wasn’t the point. “No.”

“I betrayed a friend who didn’t have many friends because she told me to,” Rays said.

Spike clicked his tongue. He didn’t know what to say. “You saved his life. You got him to the princess and you got him through the doors using your connections to that princess. If you hadn’t, if they had had to wait a few minutes longer… you don’t know what might have happened. And you saved him from getting his butt kicked in that bar, and it wasn’t because of what family he was in.”

“I still lied to him, broke my oath, spied on him… after Soarin’ and Mac blew up the munitions, his mother was furious. She hit him. I made that happen.”

“No. I made that happen,” Spike said, a bit too sharply. “I did it. I signed the order, I came up with the idea. If you want to assign blame--”

“I don’t,” he said, finally looking at Spike. “I don’t wanna push blame around. I just… do you ever wonder, Spike, if you’re a good pony? Er. Dragon? Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I know what you mean. I wonder that a lot.”

Rays slid down and sat awkwardly on his haunches. “Because I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop… I just…” He floundered into silence. Several minutes passed, Spike trying to find words that would help, Rays alone with his thoughts. He spoke again at length. “I keep asking myself if I’m a good pony. But more than that, what makes you a good one? If I’m not, can I be? I just don’t know anymore. Maybe I’ll know tomorrow. Or the next day.”

“Two more days alive? Ambitious,” Spike rumbled. “I don’t know, Rays. I have an inkling, but I’m not sure.”

“This is stupid. We’re under siege, ponies are shooting each other, and I’m sitting up on this stupid wall worried that he might never want to talk to me again cause he found out I’m a spy. Stupid.”

Spike smiled humorlessly. It was stupid, in a way. In the short term, there were far more important things to be concerned about. A sniper getting lucky--doubtful as it was, it was still possible. The whitecloaks taking to the street in retaliation for the Guard seizing the warehouse full of supplies that had once been a safehouse for House Rowan-Oak. An epidemic inside the walls. Sitting next to a dragon. The front line breaking and the enemy reaching the gate. Loads of things.

“It’s something you can wrestle with,” Spike said. “That you could feasibly fix by yourself. It’s probably best that you’re a little worried. Try to focus on the here and now, but… I’d rather you care then not,” Spike said. He shrugged.

They hadn’t told Rays about the bomb yet. What was there to tell that would help? Oh yeah, we know the whitecloaks are going to bomb something in the city and it’s probably the wall because apparently they freakin’ love raiders. If we were any closer to finding it, then I would tell him. But as it is, Soarin’ and I found absolutely nothing and I haven’t heard anything from Luna’s ponies. I’d just be telling him he could blow up whenever and not give him any hope at all.

He didn’t like withholding information. But he would. Especially with Rays already dejected.

They both sat with their backs to the enemy and their faces held up to see the spires of Canterlot.

Soarin’ would be back soon. Their turn on the walls would be up, and then he could finally go home. But Spike could not feel peace about that, not really. The prospect of seeing Apple Bloom made him less weary. Almost happy.

But he would just be back here again. Or somewhere else, searching for the flash of a white cloak in some dirty alleyway, or somewhere far below in the catacombs, searching the basement of Canterlot for a bomb that might just go off in his face.

This life was not life, creeping by at a petty pace, day after day of monotonous horror. Spike thought that one of the worst things about war was that when it came to you, it stopped being quite as grand or terrible. The first time he had seen violence, real violence--ponies trying not just to have their way but seeking earnestly to kill each other--it had left him terrified and feeling older. But now it was just something that happened. It happened a lot. Boom, boom, the rhythm of the artillery and there’s another dozen. The chatter of gunfire sounded less like lightning and more like a boring conversation he’d heard a thousand times.

Over and over. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow--

Spike scratched his claws against the stone in frustration.

“How long do you think this will go?” Rays asked.

“Forever,” Spike said sourly. “I’ve seen then numbers. They can’t starve us out, funny enough. We may be running out of food but there isn’t much on the side of a mountain either. Unless they have supplies we haven’t seen…” He shrugged. “They can make it a month more at most. They’ll be starving the last week. And then it’ll be over. And then if we’re still here, we’ll start the slow… you know. Starving,” he finished, wincing. What an ugly word. “Maybe more, if we can ration it well.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“So they have to really attack. They can’t just pick at us.”

Spike nodded. “Yeah. Eventually. At least, that’s what I’ve been led to understand. Soarin’ says that they’re probing, trying to get us tired and nervous before they actually, like, try. For real.”

“Sure looked like it was for real before,” Rays said.

But Spike shook his head. “Morningvale was a real attack. Fewer ponies on both sides, but they weren’t just trying to keep us on off balance--they were trying to take the village. This isn’t anything like that. If they don’t make progress for half an hour they just leave. They try a new angle every time.” Spike yawned and stretched. “Don’t even use the road much anymore…”

They fell silent again.

Soarin’ returned some time later, his face tight with a palpable worry. He landed, shook his wings, and folded them flat. “Word sent, report made, yadda yadda. They’re going to move some more soldiers to the gate. Luna ordered them to start fortifying the streets around the main gate.”

“What? Like… building walls?” Rays asked, cocking his head to one side.

Soarin’ shook his head and grimaced. “Nah. Think more like barricades. Tables and things. Bags of sand or dirt. Anything you can pile up, really. Ponies are making a fuss about it, but it’ll get done either way.”

“Probably a good idea,” said Spike with a grunt. He tasted a little fire on his tongue, and part of him wanted to blow a little stream for the fun of it. But ponies always got jumpy about that, so he didn’t. “That way, when they get in… it’s a trap. I like it. Fire could finally help me some.” He grinned. “It’s like a weaponized barbecue pit.”

Soarin’ made a little snort of disgust. “Barbecue? Nice, man. Nice. Ugh, I’m gonna see that in my dreams.”

Spike played with the the little hinge around the trigger of his rifle idly. “I have a reputation to maintain as a fearsome carnivorous creature living among sweet, tiny, innocent ponies. Even though said ponies always forget that batponies and pegasi eat fish. And bacon, apparently. At least one does.”

“What?”

“Nothin’.” Spike waved him off. “How much longer are we here?”

“We’re done. I was about to get to that. Luna sent a Nightshade to the wall, and he saw me and passed on some news: first, we’re off the wall until that bomb is found. Second, she wants you to report to the Celestial Gate. Apparently we’re going hunting for white cloaks and such with a certain Marshal Scootaloo.”

“Scoots?” Spike smiled. “Sounds fun. You up to it, Rays? I can excuse you from duty officially.”

Rays looked at him with a wide bewildered look before shaking his head. “Nah. Nah, I’m fine. I’ll… I’m fine.”

Which was a lie, but Spike didn’t say so because lying helped. Sometimes.

AMARANTH

She stood, deep into the darkness peering, pondering what had come before.

They’d started around dinner time for daywalking ponies. She guessed it was the next day, by now. Around lunch, perhaps. She imagined lunch. A nice daisy sandwich. Some cider. Maybe a danish. She’d loved danishes. Her ideas of what “lunch” entailed was different now. Much different.

The daisy sandwich would still have been nice.

They’d stopped for Ice Storm to rest. She tried not to say it that way, of course. She acted as if she were beginning to be winded. Suggested lightly that it might be a good idea to stop and reorient herself. Maybe have a bite to eat, listen closely, whatever. Did he see through her ruse? Probably. Almost certainly, but she had to try.

The truth was she could have run the entirety of Canterlot at full speed even after all this searching in the vast dark and only then would she feel tired. The Duskwatch did not get tired in the way ponies did. Oh, yes, their bodies wore out with exertion and time, but the duskwatch pony’s endurance was beyond legendary. It was, bluntly, unnerving. Amaranth knew this because she found herself unnerving.

Ice Storm rested against a wall, eating field rations quietly. She perched on some abandoned masonry, fluttering her wings quietly, and watched him with a newfound focus.

Her tinctures of moonflower gave him the ability to see in low light and in almost pitch black, but they were limited. She, however, was not. She saw heat. She both heard and felt his heartbeat and the rushing of his blood. She could make it out small imperfections in his coat from ten strides away. Probably farther. She tried not to stare, of course. He was a beautiful creature, really. Not that she meant “creature” insultingly. She barely even thought it. Mostly she had decided that her new senses that quite convinced her that he was beautiful and also she probably wanted to lap at his lifeblood, but she tried not to think about that.

It was unpleasant.

She decided to talk so that she wasn’t staring at him with some alien mixture of hunger and lust. “How’s your sight?” she croaked. If you could call it that. Her voice sounded… different. A bit.

His ears shot up and rotated towards her, but his eyes did not follow. That would be a no. “Sorry, it ran out while I was eating. I was about to tell you, but decided I could buy a few minutes. I didn’t want it to spoil my lunch,” he said, and smiled into the darkness somewhere a few strides to her left. She didn’t chuckle at him but she wanted to. Even when she’d been herself, she’d still thought how helpless other tribes were in the dark was, frankly, adorable.

“I’ve got more,” she said. “And maybe if you wish really hard it won’t taste awful.”

He snorted and continued eating. She continued to watch him. She also considered, in brief, herself.

What was she? Duskwatch, but that was just a title. An office, if she was feeling facetious. It was a group. What was she? She was, for all intents and purposes, a nightmare. Batponies had always worried their neighbors. When your neighbors were mostly herbivores and you happened to enjoy meat occasionally, that was understandable. When you also happened to fit right into the tales that most ponies half-remembered, that lingered in their racial memory? Well. It was complicated.

Batponies were not vampiric. Fangs? Yes. She bared hers, folding her ears back, making a face she knew would cause Storm’s blood to turn to ice in his veins. Because, honestly, it scared her about as badly. She had an inkling of the effect she had on others. She had become the troublesome dream that had haunted her tribe since they first came to Equestria at Luna’s heels, wide-eyed and wondering.

And here she was, sitting in the dark, as still as a stone. Unnaturally, completely, utterly still. Silent. She saw everything perfectly. To an outside observer, this set up? This was a nightmare waiting to happen? Would she pounce? She could. She would, if you believed what ponies would think. Rend him. Feed. Etc.

She really needed to talk. It hadn’t been so bad, up above. Why was it bad now? Why was she so confused? “How are you in the dark?” she asked, knowing exactly how her voice sounded. Frenetic. Jumpy. Already she was calculating how he would respond, how his pulse and body language would--

“I’m alright,” he answered. She smelled no fear. A little nervous. “Honestly, you being here helps. It’s nice to know you’ll see anypony long before they can see us. If I were down here on my own…” He shook his head. “I am frankly not sure how I would be handling this.”

She smiled, despite herself. “Anything to help Cap. Colonel. Whatever.”

“I rather preferred ‘Cap’, myself,” he mused. “How are you?”

She hadn’t expected that. She tilted her head to one side. Her crimson eyes bored into him. “Me?”

“Yes. I know you can see in the dark, but we’re both winged ponies. Tight spaces are a bit, ah, unnerving. Even for those of us who are more at home in the night.” He smiled at her. It made her feel warm. Also it confused the part of her that was more predator than pony. Which, she supposed, was a nice bonus.

She should probably eat as well. She had totally forgotten, caught up in her observation. Feeling foolish, Amaranth dug quietly in her pack. She found one of the tightly wrapped lumps and unwound it as silently as possible, which for one of the Duskwatch was absolute. Meat, raw, still bloody. She grimaced at it even as her senses went wild and ate it quickly.

She was licking blood off of her fangs when it occured to Amaranth that she had not answered his question. “Uh. Yeah. Little tiny spaces.” How eloquent. “It actually bothers me less,” she said with a shrug. “I guess being basically a vampire pony helps with that?”

She saw him make a face at that. It was brief, but she saw it. “That is a boon, then,” he answered carefully.

“Dark gets to me though,” she admitted and licked her lips. “It’s… weird.”

His brow knitted together. “Strange. I would have thought you would be in your element.”

“I am.”

He seemed not to understand. And then he seemed to understand all too well, and it hurt her when she heard his pulse race. Just slightly. Just a little nervous. She broke her gaze. “Do you want the next potion?”

“Are you alright?”

“Wanna see?” she asked. And then she felt something ugly in her chest, and she pursed her lips. “You know. Keep tabs? So you can see me?” She had dug the bottle out without even noticing that she had done so. She was right next to him now. He smelled wonderful. He had before, too. She shoved the potion at his chest. “Here you go, free nightvision, thank your neighborhood dru--”

And then he caught her. She could have pulled away, but his hoof on hers was enough to pull her out of her sudden irritation.

“You noticed,” he said, making it a flat statement. “When you said that, it made me nervous.”

“I noticed,” she said, and it felt like admitting to wrongdoing. I can’t help it!

“I’m sorry,” Ice Storm said. “I am. It was a gut reaction. I had hoped you wouldn’t notice, but my body betrayed my heart and mind.”

She looked away. “It’s really that bad? I make you nervous now.”

“Not usually,” he said. He had taken the potion, but hadn’t drank a drop. His ration was on the ground. “In fact, rarely. I can’t think of a single time except for now and when I first saw you in your new form. You were still Amaranth. You’re still Amaranth now. I… Well. I asked the Princess if there was anything I could do to help you. She said that I should make sure to say that to you. I should have said it more. You’re still you. I have not forgotten that.”

Her ears folded back. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. Nerves.”

“I am sorry as well.” He paused, and then brightened. “If it helps at all, I’m going to gag on this,” he said, holding the glass aloft.

She smiled. “It helps a little.”

THE CRYPTS

The hooves which walked uneasily on these stones were the first to touch them in years. Hundreds of years, in fact.

There were three of them in this group. There were actually several groups of ponies in now-dirtied white cloaks rummaging about in the bowels of the city, but this one was special. One of these ponies carried a great pack on his back, and strained under its weight.

They expected no pursuit. They feared it, yes, but they did not actually expect it. How could they? They only saw with the help of potions which had taken a whitecloak a week to find moonflowers for. The guards could no doubt acquire such things with more ease, but even then, the tunnels were practically endless. More than a hundred miles of tunnels, criss-crossing, on top of each other, some flooded. Some where digging had unearthed open veins of Thaumite, ready to mine. Some where poor, miserable souls had found Red Onyx.

Canterlot had been a mining town, before Equestria had been conceived of--few ponies remembered that now. In the long ago, when Luna and Celestia had visited, there had been a little village where Morningvale now sat, a rough keep, a petty warlord with a good sense of humor, and mines that snaked deep into the rock. The great riches of Canterlot had come at a cost.

They had been warned not to go near the tunnels marked with red X’s. Warned with rather gruesome detail.

The pony carrying the pack stumbles, and all three of them freeze in horror. But nothing comes of it. They are still safe and alive. He complains of the weight, and his companions bark at him to shut up, shut up will you? You’ll bring the whole guard down on us! But they know that no one is around to hear them. It’s not the guard they fear. It’s the bomb.

How much time passes? Minutes? They feel like hours. The pony in the lead, a unicorn, calls for a stop and they help the chosen carrier lay his burden down with care. The unicorn consults his enchanted map, making soft sounds of comprehension.

Not far now. Not far at all. Only a few minutes, he tells his companions. They react to this with muted relief.

Do they think about what is about to happen? Of course they do. They know what the bomb does. Why else fear it? Nothing can match its power short of an alicorn. They are carrying a godkiller and they know it. It feels wrong. Absurdly, it feels almosty as if the thing itself is alive in some twisted fashion, casually inflicting its aura of fear on them for its own amusement. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die--except there would not be a tomorrow for it, would there? Or for many others.

They know the hordes of savage raiders will surge through the gap. They know innocents will be caught in the blast, die outright, or wish they had died outright as the raiders find them.

But these ponies also thought they knew something else. Sometimes, they said to themselves, each of them his own solitary individual, sometimes sacrifices need to be made. For the good of us all. For the good of everything. Sometimes sacrifices need to happen, and sometimes good ponies need to be… need to be made to join in on that. Against their wills? Unwillingly?

Whatever uncertainty they feel is small compared to the promise of paradise and the promise of agony. Do this and the world shall soon be right again. Do this one thing, and the Manichean will march into the city and free the ponies within. The raiders are a necessary evil and He shall dispose of them. Had he not already begun to keep that promise? After all, what other purpose was there in wasting those raving lunatics in suicidal charges up the mountain road? He was exterminating them and yet in his mercy he had let them contribute to the coming glory, to help usher in the eventual sunrise. Was he not merciful?

They also knew that if they failed, or tried to flee, that it would go badly for them. They did not know that their cloaks were being tracked magically, but they would not have been surprised. The escorts know enough: the Manichean and the Good Stallion did not take kindly to those who shirked from the light of the new day.

Unpleasantness now, murder now, and tomorrow sunshine and plenty to eat forever. It sounded swell, didn’t it? Like medicine. Grit your teeth, hold your nose, and it’s done just like that.

The first sign of danger is hard to hear. None of them, even in their hyperalert nervousness, notice the sound of a hoofblade scraping the rocks. Nor do they notice the intake of breath that follows it. But they do notice how the air seems to chill.

One of the wonderful things about the mind of a pony is its inability to correlate all of the various fleeting half-memories and suspicions into a single, coherent shape. It is a great mercy. The world is too large, and full of darkness too deep by half, even under all the joy, and sometimes mixed in liberally with it. And so the three cloaked ponies did not flee into the catacombs, even as they felt a thrill down their spines, all in unison. They did not begin screaming when she drew near them in the shadows, unseen because one does not see a shadow in the dark. They knew only that one moment, they were nervous. The next, they were terrified.

Usually, this ignorance is a shield against knowing. But this time it was just a blindfold on the way to the gallows.

The first one to fall was unicorn leading the way. It happened quickly: one blink, he was walking slowly, his head swiveling. The next blink, he was crumpled in the muck, gasping, bawling. His companions only heard the crack of bone breaking.

They did not see the dhamphir fly from the wall. They did not see her single kick--enough to knock a foe flat and leave him gasping when she had been herself, but her strength was far beyond her old might, and the sickening report of bone breaking from bone announced that. They did not see her move on, jumping from dark corner to corner.

The first pony was gasping for air. The other two stopped, and then finally the panic that had been building all along grew and released. They ran ahead.

AMARANTH

The feeling of his body breaking under her hoof was intoxicating and had she not been very, very focused, this would have frightened her.

Ice Storm trailed the bomb. He would keep them from retreating, and she would keep them getting away. Already they were passing her, but she had not yet moved from where she had landed. The half-seconds passed like hours to her. These ponies were so slow. So very slow.

The first pony… the wounded one--he bled. She smelled it. She felt his pulse beat against the inside of her head. She felt her own join it. Something changed.

She all but appeared before the second one and roared in his face. When he cowered, screaming, she advanced. He tried to rear up to fend her off, but she did not allow it. It was simple as will. She was lightyears faster, miles ahead of him in strength.

Amaranth bowled him over, hissing as the attacked pony lost his mind. The third one wasn’t even part of her calculation, she had forgotten him.

The food she’d brought was mostly still in her pack, uneaten. She hadn’t wanted to eat with… why hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember now. Some strange feeling. But now…

The trapped earth pony tried to kick her. In fact, feeling joyous, she let him get away with it. She hardly noticed. So weak. So very soft and weak. He did not smell nice like the white one did. But he would do. He would do for now! He kicked her again but Amaranth would not be moved. It did not even register through the haze of lust and thirst.

Amaranth’s fangs were not gentle. The care she might have practiced in her right mind was completely absent. She tore open the struggle whitecloak’s neck and lapped at his lifeblood. She hummed happily into his open wound through his death rattle. It was a blind blissful feast. Why had she been waiting? Why had she been so nervous?

The pony died quickly, at least. It’s hard to hold on to the world of the living when your throat is essentially gone.

After a moment, the haze over her mind cleared. Amaranth leaned back, letting out a quiet groan of contentment. It died in her throat when she saw Ice Storm with the third pony held beneath his hoof, staring at her. She stared back, confused. What? She almost chuckled and asked if she had something in her hair, but stopped because there was raw fear rolling off of him in waves. The pony underneath his hoof was crying and begging for his life. From Storm? Storm would never harm a pony who surrendered, whether they deserved it or not. Was there something behind her?

“Amaranth? Lancer?”

“I’m not a lancer anymore,” Amaranth replied slowly.

“Oh, stars preserve me. You’re back. Amaranth, don’t… just stay there, alright? The bomb… It’s doing something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Please, just remain calm.”

“Cap? Cap, why are you--”

“Calm! Calm, Lancer, it’s an order,” he said quickly, and she stiffened. Something like horror was stirring in her chest, but she stayed still.

It was about this time that she noticed the smell of blood. Moslty because the tight corridor reeked of freshly spilt blood and it was all over her face and chest and some of it was on her hooves. Gingerly, Amaranth touched her face and looked at her own hoof. A sudden desire swept over her to bring it close and lick the coagulating life, enjoy it before it became cold and lost all of the merit.

Amaranth shook. She trembled. “Cap? Colonel, what…. how…?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know. Amaranth, are you of sound mind? Are you rational and in control? This is important. I can’t deactivate this. I’m not even sure how it was activated!”

She barely heard him. “What did I do?” she asked nopony in particular. She heard somepony whimpering behind her and turned. There was the unicorn. She stumbled towards him.

He was trying to crawl away. “My legs! Oh gods, I can’t feel them! Oh gods…. stars please…” His movements were so weak, so small… her stomach churned. Her head seemed hazy again. She fell back, realizing that her breathing had grown ragged just watching him.

She remembered hitting him just once. She’d broken his spine with a single blow.From the smell and the erratic pulse she heard very, very, painfully clearly, she had little doubt that part of his spine had torn through other things as well. She’d crippled him. She’d probably killed him in the slowest way imaginable.

Amaranth saw herself trying to move after the mortar at Morningvale.

She turned back and she saw the second pony. She tried to move to his side to see what she had done to him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to look, because she knew what she would find because she remembered now.

“Amaranth?”

She looked at Ice Storm sharply, her chest heaving.

He took a deep breath. “Amaranth, I need you. You have to focus. We… You’re you. You are still Amaranth. Come back. I need you to help me or we won’t make it out of here.”

She nodded. Years of training pushed at her horror.

“Do you have any way of contacting the other Duskwatch?”

She opened her mouth. She closed it, thinking.

And then she took a deep breath of her own and called loudly in a voice that was too high for regular ponies to hear. But her new brothers and sisters heard it, those within a few miles of them.

“We have the bomb. Please assist.”

She heard something, faint and far off, but growing stronger.

“Keep singing, sister. I am on my way.”

Singing? She wasn’t singing. Amaranth frowned. “Well, I think that worked. Let me…” she mumbled, shook her head, and continued, warbling a single ultrasonic note.

In a few terrible moments--still as the grave save for two whimpering, terrified ponies--another one of the duskwatch arrived. The dhamphir’s eyes blazed in the darkness in a way that left Amaranth mystified. He looked around grimly.

“You’ve been busy,” he said softly.

Amaranth flinched.

Ice Storm was about to step in, but the newcomer--it was Tranquil Sands, she saw--held up a hoof. “No, she could have avoided this. She resisted feeding earlier, no doubt. But it is done, and these are enemy combatants so there is no breach. Is that the bomb?”

Ice Storm nodded, and moved aside as Tranquil approached. The dhamphir ran a hoof over the bomb’s smooth, glowing surface. “It’s not mechanical,” he noted. “Magical, then. Unfortunate, but it is good that I was nearby. Give me a moment.”

The stallion’s hoof rested on the object, and Amaranth finally got a good look at it. It was a featureless orb, with crisscrossing lines of angry red light. The hoof began to glow, and Tranquil hummed. “It was much easier when I still had a horn,” he said to himself.

“You… what?” Amaranth asked blankly.

Tranquil did not look at her. But he did smirk. “Not all of the Duskwatch were born with leathery wings, youngest. Ah… Ah. This is a nasty thing, isn’t it, this bomb? Not what I expected at all.”

“How so?” Ice Storm asked. He moved the captured rebel away from the bomb.

“Stars, this is complex. I had expected something brute force. The cloaked ones have not made inroads among the mage’s college… ah. This would be beyond many of them, regardless. To construct, at least. Perhaps not to dismantle. Youngest,” he spoke and Amaranth went stock still. “You can also do this, you know. You will learn, with time. You will also learn why what happened here occurred, though I suspect you already know. You will talk to Luna and the Oldest. You have stumbled, but not fallen. Are you alright?”

“I don’t know.”

“Perhaps that is the best answer. I require your aid, as I am preoccupied. Sing again, tell our comrades to leave the crypts. There is nothing more for them to do here.”

“Did you disarm it?” Amaranth asked.

“Sing first.”

She did, though she didn’t know why he called it singing. Go! The bomb is found! Everypony needs to leave the underground now.

When she had finished, she noticed Ice Storm wincing. “Can you hear that?”

“Almost,” he said. “It’s more of an… it’s an odd sort of pressure on the ear. Unpleasant but not overly so.”

“Sorry. I told them.”

“Good. Now you also go.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Take your prisoner and go.”

“Did you figure it out?”

Ice Storm understood first. “Amaranth, come. I need you to help lead the way.”

She sputtered. “Wait, hold on--”

“Go, youngest. One of us has to try. This is has an hour at best. I believe my efforts may shorten the time the spell has before the wards break.”

“You can’t stay, not if... “ But she knew immediately that somepony had to stay. Even if it was too late, somepony had to try. She shook her head. “I… yes. Yes sir.”

He smiled genuinely. “And now I feel old. Off with you. Fly from this place. There is an access point the way I came. Do not stop for the other one. He will not last much longer.”

Amaranth and Ice Storm fled.

CANTERLOT

In the last hour of wholeness, Canterlot was restless. A contingent of Lunar guard engineers had been building barricades around the gates, with additional makeshift fortifications further in. They had drawn up plans for how the city might be evacuated in an orderly manner in the case of sappers crippling the gate, and the results were promising. It would take almost half a day, but that was what the barriers were for--it was all a matter of buying time.

These engineers were proud ponies, and for good reason. It was their job to build, the constructive arm of a thing which excelled at deconstruction. An Equestrian military engineer turned a few tables and spare timber into a fortification worthy of the name. He made things work.

Some of the civilians had offered to help, and they had been put to the task of bringing in material. It was a morbid task, turning streets into fortresses, but somehow doing it together helped make the work go smoothly. It was almost a happy atmosphere, like a bizarre barn raising.

Engineers deal in facts. Numbers, precedents, measurements. They knew about bombs and extrapolated what might occur if one went off. They knew about gates and with that data they built accordingly with what might happen if one were sabotaged.

Luna had already begun the evacuation quietly a few hours before. Her guards moved slowly, securing one neighborhood at a time, starting with those nearest the wall and in the most immediate danger.The main thoroughfares were filled with carts and ponies who never seemed to look about them, but not yet clogged. Order was maintained. Few of them asked where or why--they knew perfectly well where and why.

Somewhere in the market district, two ponies--one pale as clouds and the other a dark grey--crawled out of the bowels of the earth. The sun had not yet set, so the white pegasus shielded his companion with his body until she could find a heavy cloak within her pack.

There were scattered ponies in white cloaks haunting the now empty neighborhoods. Waiting.

Moments passed in waiting. Every single pony seemed to be waiting, even the ones who built in the streets.

Outside, the besieged trenches were quiet. The reinforcements had arrived from the valley, and now the white-barded strange army outnumberd the raving savages they barely controlled.

It began to rain and no pegasus wanted to go out and try to corral the torrential downpour. Not in a storm of war.

It rained for five minutes, give or take. Ponies pulled in and donned cloaks and ponchos, or they waited under dry roofs and looked out sullenly. The ones constructing barricades called for unicorns to help them quickly cast some last minute fortification over the ramshackle constructs and then they sent the city dwellers home with thanks. Helpful apprentices and former salaryponies cantered home, their spirits lifted.

And then it happened.

Do you know what a bomb sounds like? Or, perhaps, do you know what fireworks sound like? The “pop” as black powder ignites and catches fire? The expansion of hot air and gas so quickly that it bursts the paper container? Have you ever heard a cannon? Heard the dragon’s roar before it trails smoke into the wind? If you have heard these things, you could try to apply them to the sound the bomb made underneath the great gate of Canterlot. You would try, and you would miss the mark by miles.

It does not “pop”. It does not shatter. It does not roar. It engulfs. One moment, an engineer wipes his brow and smirks at the work of his hooves, and the next the gate, the plaza before it, the main HQ of the guard on the mountain, several hundred yards of wall--all of it is vile green fire and undifferentiated howling sound, a wall of sound and heat and malice. It does not destroy--it annihilates. It burns things from the pattern of existence with hot coals. It takes the tall, proud gate which has never fallen to assault. It takes the neighborhoods, some full and some not. It takes the guards and the city-dwellers laughing as they flee the rain. It takes the old and the young.

Out of the raging green fire spout further fires which seek new things to burn. They alight on houses and streets. They find a cart in the market district as a stunned pair of guard ponies look on in horror, knowing that a member of the Duskwatch failed.

The earth shakes like a wounded animal. It recoils, and the ponies who stride upon it fall as well, shouting and screaming in confusion and alarm. Aftershocks follow the initial rumblings. Masonry cracks and comes loose. Windows shatter.

When the magic subsides, the fires still burn but the air has a great hole where there was once cacophany. There is screaming and shouting and order-giving, yes. But it cannot compare. There is a relative silence.

That silence is filled with a new roar.

From their trenches and dugouts, like a plague of monsters in an age of legends, swarm two thousand raiders and bandits and cutpurses and simple madponies, delighted with the new game before them. They charge up the hill.

Behind them comes a white wave of ponies in lockstep. Silent.

SPIKE

They had been in the tanner’s district on patrol with Scootaloo when the bomb went off.

Almost immediately, even as the aftershocks had washed over the lower city, Scootaloo had ordered half of her levies back to House Belle to keep Sweetie safe. Spike didn’t blame her.

When the initial shock had worn off, she and Soarin’ had reacted admirably. Neither of them had anything on Spike, who sprang to his feet with sword in hand.There was the bomb. They’d failed. He didn’t spend time dwelling on the enormity of it because for one he couldn’t see the enormity of it yet, and because he could feel Luna’s soul touch his own in that moment.

Go.

And so he did. Soarin’ tried to get his attention, but it was impossible. So instead, they followed him on either side, fanning out. Rays they sent back to tell Luna that Spike was heading to the gate. As they reached the first edges of the fleeing crowds, Spike parted them like the keel of a ship, cutting right through with his mere presence, and the levies of Belle stayed safe in his wake. Most of the ponies they passed weren’t running for the gates and to the safety of the upper level. Some didn’t seem to know where it was they ran. Some even ran towards the main gate.

Spike called out to them as he advanced. Many ponies stopped dead in their tracks at a dragon wading through their midst, barking orders. Many obeyed, streaming past him and towards the middle tier.

Others simply kept running. Spike couldn’t go after every single one. He would do what he could.

It took what seemed like an eternity to make it to the lowest point around the gate, and finally Spike witnessed the enormity of what had happened.

Here, there was no confusion as to where to go. Ponies clogged the streets, struggling to get past each other. Spike saw over them but here even his size and strength had trouble clearing a way. Past them, far down the main thoroughfare, he saw small fires burning and a great open wound in the ground. The gate was completely gone. The great plaza was gone. Whole neighborhoods gone.

After much struggle, they cleared the panicked refugees when a squad of solar guards flew in and began to help clear the way for ponies to move. Rubble from the wall and gate had arced through the sky and landed in the street, clogging the way through. Spike clambered over one great piece while the others squeezed around it, and he saw the guards left after the explosion.

The original fortifications were completely gone now. The secondary ones were there. Mostly. Guards were frantically rebuilding them. He saw no levies--many had probably done what Scootaloo had done, or been on the wall.

How many did we lose on the wall? he thought, horrified. We can’t afford to lose that many.

As he approached the barricades, Spike found Lunar and Solar contingents mixed together, scraping together material to finish their cover and setting up a sort of above-ground rifle pit. One of the barded ponies turned and stared for a moment, before letting out something between a curse and a prayer.

“Companion!” the Night Guard bowed hurriedly once he’d rushed to Spike. “Please, please tell me that more are coming.”

“Soon. Do you have ponies helping the evacuation?” Spike asked, scanning the surrounding buildings.

“A few. Three or four. Somepony else must needs do it, Companion--we’re hard pressed preparing for the rush. The front line is all but finished. They are trickling back as they can,fighting as they retreat, but…”

“We need to hold the gap,” Soarin’ said. “Yeah. Spike, do you have paper?”

Spike grinned. “Send a letter to the Princess? I can do that, but nah. If you have some…?”

“Captain Tenebrae, sir,” the guard saluted. “And I do. Give me a moment.”

Pen and parchment were acquired and Spike wrote quickly. Firstly, that Spike was engaged in shoring up the gap. Secondly, that whatever she could spare was desperately needed. He wrote her briefly that the crowds were beginning to grow too thick for their own good. Whatever she had envisioned as a successful evacuation, this wasn’t going to be it. They needed the guard or levies or some sort of official force with nerves of steel to corral ponies towards the middle tier.

He sent it with his green fire, and then inspected the barricade.

“Yeah. That’s not gonna hold,” he said, weakly.

Well. It did surprisingly well against an axe, Spike noted. He was always forgetting about magic. Which, he reflected, was pretty ironic considering he had grown up with the Element of Magic.

The last wave of survivors from the front line had arrived only minutes ahead of the raider horde, all of them half-dead and mad with terror. Spike had tried to stop one and put him on the barricade, but one look at the poor stallion’s eyes and Spike had released him immediately. They weren’t in any condition to fight.

The raiders had spilled into the gap, stumbling and shouting the whole way down into the silt and fallen masonry and all the way back up towards the street. And now they were kicking and chopping at the tables. Instead of going over them.

Spike took in a deep breath. He’d let enough gather in one place. Standing, he whirled around to face a small crowd of ponies with plastered, drunk grins who all looked up at him with confusion. It was the sort of confusion of an athlete who comes in first only to find he’s been disqualified all along.

Spike covered them in a river of flames. He didn’t watch if any were left standing. He ducked below and hoped one of the rebel sharpshooters hadn’t seen him.

The raiders weren’t acting as they normally had. There was all of the manic energy, but none of the cunning or the viciousness. They were useless. It occurred to him that whatever had twisted the first generation of raiders could very well have started infecting those they preyed upon. He didn’t want to consider that.

He heard bullets hit the magically-reinforced barrier and flinched. They were fine. He was fine. So far, they were holding off a massive force and doing it well--the enchantments were holding.

“Done!” the mare with the bandage over her eye called to him. Spike turned his head and locked eyes with her as she held up his rifle with both hooves.

“Throw it!” Spike said, and she did. He caught it with one hand and spun it until it was safe and ready to be used. He grinned. “You know, I think it’s me laughing this time, god of dragons,” he said to himself. To the civilian who’d stayed behind, he gestured towards the other weapons lying on the sheet beneath her. “Load me one of the pony repeaters,” he asked.

“Got it, scales.”

He took another steadying breath.

In the short time between his arrival and the first waves of attackers, they’d worked out a system. Ponies stayed where they were, keeping fire raining down while others loaded every firearm the little band could find and helped cycle through them.

The rebels in white had paused their advance at the mouth of the gap, letting streaming barbarians take their place as they provided blanketing cover fire from behind the jutting masonry.

Spike popped up from behind the barricade and sighted down at a clump of white clustered behind a surviving catacomb wall that had risen from the silt. When one moved out to fire up at the wall, Spike caught him with a bullet and chambered a new round.

Another cluster saw him and fired. He thought he felt the heat of the first shot fly right in front of his nose and he ducked back behind the wall.

LUNA

Page Turner was doing an admirable job of keeping up with her.

“Your Highness, what is going on? Where are you going?”

She did not answer. It would slow her down. He would see what she was doing soon enough, after all.

Luna threw open the doors to the royal armory, ignoring the questions of the quartermaster and the guards he was outfitting as she ignored the pleas of her own aide and confidant. They would all see, soon enough. The time had come for everypony in Canterlot to see.

She stormed through the crowded, organizing guards. Unlike them, Luna felt no confusion. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Another door, another chamber, and then a stairway down into the private store room of Celestia herself, repurposed for both sisters.

Luna came to the sealed door and channeled her magic to match her sister’s careful weaving. It was like a portrait of Celestia, one she could touch and feel connected to an absent sister. The door opened itself as she withdrew her touch from the warmth of Celestia’s signature.

Luna strode among the weapons of a goddess, surveying them.

“Page Turner,” she began quietly, “what does a monarch mean?”

“I… what?”

She did not smile or react in anyway as her eyes wandered over the trove of arms and armor. “Tell me. What does a monarch mean? Words have meaning. Twilight Sparkle seems to think that we give them meaning and that is that--in my day, the scholars speculated that meaning was inherent in the song and we simply ‘discovered’ it. My point stands. What does monarch mean?”

“A ruler?”

“Close. What does a monarch do?”

“Rules? She… She rules.” Page Turner said.

Luna approached the armor she had made herself deep in the core of the mountain. She smiled at it. Yes, yes it was time. Her smile held no mirth. Only a dark satisfaction burned in the heart of Equestria’s last princess.

“No, that is simply a reward or a fringe benefit. A Monarch--Queen or King, Prince or Princess, Lord and Lady, Burgess and Magistrate--the title does not matter, the thing itself is the question! A Monarsh is a bridge, my confidant and friend. A bridge. Do you not know what I lead ponies into?”

She levitated the armor all around her. “Attend me. And answer.”

Page Turner knew how to do this. She had made it part of the qualifications of the job, after all, and he was a studious and precise sort. She felt him borrow the shaped tantalum armor, banded to steel by her magic, studded with spikes. It was massive, heavy, seemingly impossible to wear. She hardly noticed.

“I do not know what you mean, Your Majesty.”

“A ruler is a bridge, Page Turner. Between this life and whatever is after. This we do in three degrees.”

He secured her greaves and hoof-coverings.

“First, in life, in peace we provide security and safety that the pony might live until death comes for him in his bed.”

Page Turner nodded, silent, as he lowered a shirt of mail over her head. She held her mane back herself, and then let it fall over one shoulder, shrouding her face in dancing stars.

“Secondly, in death, in peace, through faith. We are his bridge to the stars, the moon, the sun, his gods or his heroes. The king is high priest in peace.”

Page turner tightened the chest plate in place and the pauldrons, marvelling at how many individual parts Luna had created. It should not have worked as it did, and yet only a cursory examination showed that Luna had fashioned something bulky and also agile. Something dense but light. It was, perhaps, the greatest achievement of smithing since the age of legends.

“Thirdly, the monarch leads him in war, on the fields of death’s games. She holds the threads of their lives in her hooves and decides which ones she shall cut. And then she hopes the others do not snap as well under the weight of a great burden. Mind the shirt, keep it straight. I have attempted to fulfill the first two. Now I shall return to a much more familiar haunt. War is my domain, Page Turner, as much as art and music and the gentle night ever were. When ponies died it was me whose name was on their lips, one way or another, whether I wanted that or not. Thank you, my friend.” She shook herself, making sure the armor was well secured. It was. Luna noted he had not placed the circlet on her head and smiled. She would not have minded, but it was amusing that even now he was trying to bow to an ancient set of codes. She placed the circlet upon her own head, adorned with a shard of black onyx.

“So you will go down yourself?”

“My nightshades will help us keep the foe at bay. As for myself, I shall bring our subjects into order that they might not die today. Not now.” Luna’s eyes did not need to search. Her sister had kept the Hammer of Selene for a thousand years in pristine condition. It held memories both horrific and beautiful for both of them. Luna brought it to her and felt once again the presence of her sister.

Be well. Return to me. I would see your face and feel your kiss upon my brow as I did when I was young. I would once again introduce a lover to you and hear your gentle laughter. Twilight Sparkle will find you. She will not fail.

“Your Highness, someone will need to organize the Lunar Guard! And the Solar Guard! I must--”

“And that one will be you, scholar. I have already written the order. It is signed and sealed on my desk for such a time as this. You will find it. I trust you have the knowledge necessary to do as you must?”

“Yes, but--”

“Good. My trust in you is, as always, rewarded,” Luna said. “I am not foolish. A regent must lead, she cannot only command. But she cannot throw herself away--both are abandonment. One is simply more emotionally satisfying than the other. I will not be in the hail of bullets. But I must go out. I must do my sole duty as a princess. I must shepherd them into death, or away.”

SPIKE

The Nightshades came in fast, dropping grenades on the advancing rebels. The white-barded troops tried to find cover, but it was too late.

Spike used the distraction to rise again and fire into the amorphous mass. As soon as he ducked back below, he heard a dozen answering shots.

Soarin’ was back from the western barricade. Things were worse there--they had whitecloaks behind the barricade looting and taking potshots at defenders, fighting among themselves. The blue pegasus was coated in the dust still riled up by the explosion and the consequent fighting. Spike waved him over and watched wearily as Soarin’ crawled in the shadow of the failing wood.

“What did Moss say?” Spike asked.

“El-tee is dead, actually,” Soarin’ said numbly. “Tenebrae is gone too. Some… I don’t know what rank. Some mare was trying to get a count on the ammunition that the engineer brigade had left and its almost nothing. The Nightshades could only bring so much with them.”

Three batponies landed beside Spike and immediately collapsed in a panting heap.

Spike barely glanced at them. They’d made so many strafing runs already that he was losing track. “Who’s left then?” he asked.

“Hell if I know.”

“Any bats down?”

“Rays is alive. You and me are alive.”

“Speak for yourself,” Spike said.

“Aint’ funny. Funny is for when I’m not being shot at.”

As if on cue, another hail of bullets lapped at the magic holding the barricade together. They all flinched, knowing the enchantment could still fail at any time.

Spike closed his eyes and held his head in his clawed hands. He had no idea how long he had been here, shooting and hiding and roaring and flaming and waiting. Hours? Maybe days? He fell asleep earlier when the Nightshades pushed the raiders back into the gap, but that had probably only been for an hour. Had it gotten lighter at any point? He didn’t think so.

The rain had stopped pretty soon after the bomb went off, but the sky was still overcast. Which was probably for the best, he reflected, as it made flaming any attackers that got close a little easier and steam would just get in his eyes.

Spike was exhausted. He was beyond feeling and beyond excitement. All that was left in him was dread. Another volley of bullets, and he answered. Did he hit anything? The stars might know, but he doubted. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. He was there to delay. They were there to be chewed on while others were safe. Another hour or so. Just a little while more. He was losing track of time.

Did Spike think about dying? Of course he did. Not as much before now. He was a young dragon after all, and a young dragon thinks very little of death in a serious light. But now he could do nothing but think about it.

How does the end come? He could imagine many ways. He braved return fire over and over--law of averages. The rebels got close enough to throw grenades or improvise some sort of explosion. A hole in the guard’s constant fire might give the rebel mages enough time to turn their magic from casting shields to casting lightning and he would be one of their first targets. A pegasus from above catches him with a hoofblade to the eye.

Over and over. How would it happen? When would it happen? Now or later? Would he know it was happening? Would he simply step into a bright light on the street and never see the last moment he lived?

“Spike, we can’t stay here,” Soarin’ was saying. Spike looked down at him.

Soarin’ was ragged. He had bleeding cuts that were dirtied and swollen. He’d lost the rifle he had borrowed from the guard armory, and Spike had the strangest thoughts--almost an insane amusement that he would be in trouble for that, wouldn’t he?--and he just sort of blinked in response.

“Spike. Spike!”

“I heard you. Where would we go?”

“Further in, make them fight house to house. This is not going to work much longer. The west is going to give in any moment, and then they’ll just sweep through the alleys and take us all in one swoop and then there will be nothing between them and--”

A distant cry, and they all covered their heads. Outside, one of the rebel mages had managed to get behind a comrade’s arcane shielding long enough to recover his own strength and launch an attack. They heard his bolts of arcane energy strike the enchanted walls.

Spike looked to the Nightshades, but they were already standing. They took off without a word. Another run. Every time the rebels managed to get a mage into firing position, Spike lost another nightshade. He was running out of fliers.

“Spike! At this rate we’re going to leave the evacuation with no buffer.”

“If we screw up the retreat we let them run right up the center and they’ll do the same thing.”

“So we don’t!”

“They have the numbers to ignore us without the wall.” Spike said dully.

Soarin’ was in his face, shaking him. “Spike, we have to do something. You wanna be a hero? Fine. But do it and be useful. We started with two hundred guards and we have like eighty of them left. We had like twenty fliers and now we have like what, six?”

All around them, guards fired guns and spells to cover the ascent of Luna’s batponies. Spike and Soarin’ stopped arguing as Spike looked over the wall and joined them. Two shots. Both hit a shimmering shield of magic.

The rebels were throughout the crater in clusters behind great ruined hulks or hiding in little depressions. How many were there? He had no idea. Too many. Thousands, if you counted the ones beyond the wall, firing. Even with their best efforts, more and more rebels slipped in under fire.

Three nightshades divebombed the mage, who was very near the wall. His unicorn companion tried to extend the shield above to deflect them, but doing so broke the spell. One of the last guard unicorns grabbed him with magic and slammed him into another pony who was aiming upwards. The attacking mage tried to summon his magic, but he was tired.

It wouldn’t have mattered regardless. The batponies opened their mouths and let out a ultrasonic scream. Spike heard it, barely, and it was unpleasant but not awful. The ponies directly below the diving Nightshades writhed, holding their ears and groaning.

The Nightshades found their target. He went down almost effortlessly.

But as they rose back up, fire from the gap took one of them. One less flier. The one salvaged machine gun they had pulled off the wall fired in retaliation from a house above the barricades. Return fire hit all around the window, embedding in the enchanted sandbags the engineers had laid down.

Without the shield, Spike aimed past the exposed cluster towards an exhausted looking unicorn. He aimed only for unicorns--they were more tactically valuable--and every single time he saw a smiling Twilight Sparkle showing him a new spell.

Spike slumped back behind the wall when they were out of range of the enemy. Soarin’ was still determined. Spike stared at him.

“We have to move, man. There’s like a thousand of them right there and there’s like a hundred of us. If we can get out of here and hook up with other guard units. They’re going to get lucky and once we lose that gun or run out of ammo for it we’re done. We’re already done, Spike. We need to go. They’ll only listen to you.”

“What?”

“You’re the companion. You’re in charge here. Send them away! Pull them back!”

“Me? I--”

Soarin’ shook him. “Please! The wall will hold them for--”

“Stop.” Spike gripped him and found that holding Soarin’ off the ground was actually pretty easy even now. “I get it. I’m pretty sure I’m not in charge, but whatever. Who do I talk to?”

Soarin’ pointed down the way towards a mare with her mane tied in a braid trying to load a rifle with her teeth. Spike noticed hoofblades on her hooves and bandages on all four legs. Her barding was in bad shape.

Spike moved along the wall, careful to keep his head down. Soarin’ followed behind him. Overhead, the machine gun roared again.

The mare in question was a Solar--he guessed a Corporal? He wasn’t as familiar with their insignia. As soon as she noticed him she tried to struggle to her hooves but Spike stopped her with a clawed hand.

“Sir! Companion, I’m keeping the cycle up as well I can, but we’re running low.”

“How low?” Spike asked.

“At this rate?” She winced. “We’re really not going to make it. I mean, I didn’t expect we would, sir, but I’ve got literally three of these.” She gestured to a cast-iron box beside her which she knocked over. Nothing spilled out. “That one’s empty now. Delightful. Three of those left. And that’s for every rifle on this line. Save that griffon one you got, Companion. I’m out for that entirely. Sorry.”

“I’ve got a few shots left,” Spike said flatly. “Can you pull back? Fighting retreat? I’ve been convinced that we’re going to get wiped out here without reason and I’d rather try to pull them into running battles and ambushes in the city than just let them steamroll us.”

“Aye, that’d be a good idea. Good as any, really. We’re right fucked regardless. Suppose you’ll be wanting me to get the word out.”

“Yes, if you can,” Spike said, not sure how she would.

“Oh, trust me, I can. I’m the message mare, I am.” There was a pack beside her. She limped over towards it and pulled out a small glowing orb. “Don’t need a horn to do magic, sometimes,” she grumbled and then the orb glowed brightly. She spoke into it quickly, and Spike watched with surprise. He’d thought only unicorns could use scrying stones. Of course, he’d only seen unicorns use them. Even now he learned.

When it was done, she turned to him. Her face was cut into a grim line. “Sir, may I ask one last thing?”

“What?” Spike asked.

“Carry me to the gun nest above? I’m weak on my feet and I’d rather make my stand there with the gunners.”

Spike frowned, not understanding. “What? Wait, hold on, what?”

“I’m staying, sir. I…” She gestured to herself. “I can’t keep going. You need that gun alive and firing or you’ll never be able to withdraw.” Above them, the machinegun came back to life, tearing into the waves of rebels. “This is what I can do. Help me, please. Sir.”

Spike swallowed. “Alright,” he said, his throat feeling dry. He scooped her up in his arms and turned towards the house with the makeshift pillbox. She was so small in his arms, so fragile. How breakable these little ponies were.

When he set her down next to the gun and she took the place of the one gunner with no injuries, his world began to slowly drift, like sand on a shaking surface, tiny fragments shaken apart.

ICE STORM

Even after what he had seen and what she had done, they worked like clockwork. She dove, beautiful in the way only the deadliest things achieve, and he followed her down into the teeming chaos of battle.

The breach had been forfeited--not from choice, either. Most of the army left to defend the wall itself had been either annihilated in the blast or kept at bay by encroaching raiders… or the problem in front of Ice Storm.

Whitecloaked fighters spilled into the streets, fighting a two front battle. They fought the raiders that slipped into the streets, that trickled into the markets and alleys and thoroughfares. They burned the buildings that fueled their resentments. A courthouse aflame. The lower jail had been bombed soon after the wall. But soon they moved onto anything. They burned things whenever they could.

This time, they had been caught in the middle of torching a bakery. Why? Why do any of this? Ice Storm was a simple sort, but not a fool. He followed orders. He stayed inside of the lines. He was not too rigid, but he preferred order to a lack of it. None of this made sense to him at all.

This did not, however, stop him from landing hooves-first in the face of a yelling whitecloak.

The beleaguered Solar guard squadron cheered as they surged forward, going hoof to hoof, battering down the startled whitecloaks. The first pony was down; another had taken his place in Ice Storm’s sight, kicking with both hooves. Ice Storm dodged underneath the blow and applied his shoulder to the offending shoulder, toppling his attacker back towards the burning windows.

Amaranth, burdened with the heavy moon-weave cloak struggled to fight, and yet even then she dispatched a whitecloak in seconds. One of the looters got lucky and his hoofblade caught a gap in a guard’s armor. Any kind of coherency began to break down as they drove the panicking looters towards the building they had set ablaze.

When the small crowd had been reduced to three ponies, they tried to surrender. Ice Storm felt a surge of fury. Oh, it wasn’t fun anymore, was it? It wasn’t emotionally satisfying to have to actually pay for one’s crimes, was it?

He didn’t have to suffer it. When one of the Solars tried to apprehend them and bind one of them, the looter used the chance to buck his helmet off and run for it. The others also jumped to their hooves and bolted. Storm got one. Amaranth fell on another and lingered just long enough to send a shiver down Storm’s spine, but he ignored it.

The pony beneath his hooves was alive. Ice Storm wanted to change that. He couldn’t hide and say that it was his anger speaking, not that that wasn’t true. It was his anger that made him think that. His anger. It was a part of him. It was him. And he wanted to crush this skull and bring a little more balance to existence because it would be right. It would be good. It would be Just.

He slouched back towards the guards who saluted him.

“Report,” he croaked. “Where are you headed and what were your last orders?”

“Commander Violet ordered us and what’s left of Dandelion Company to push to the gate, sir,” said one of them--a lance corporal by the insignia on his barding, roughed and bloody--and Ice Storm nodded. Violet had a sound head on her shoulders mostly, but she was aggressive.

“And the others?” Ice Storm asked.

The officer grimaced. “We lost Dandelion a few blocks ago. Whitecloaks are coming out of the woodwork everywhere. We landed right in the middle of an ambush and there were less of us. We had to withdraw.” He pulled a map from the small pack on his haunches with some difficulty. “I have a map, sir. We were planning to meet up with them at the fallback point marked out.”

Ice Storm laid the map in the dust and sighed. They were a long way off. He’d seen it happen before now--the enemy was inside all along, and they had failed to thin their numbers before the deadline. Whitecloaks kept smaller groups of soldiers from moving to what could be called the front line only by approximation.

He looked the guards over. They were ragged but not beaten. Continuing towards the gate would mean high casualties. Falling back would be yet another failure.

Ice Storm gestured for the guard to come closer and began to gesture as he spoke. “There aren’t enough of you to make much of a dint in the rebels moving up the great thoroughfare, but they aren’t the only problem. See this? Good. Do you have anyone familiar with this ward?”

The lance corporal looked up, biting his lip as he surveyed the watching guards. “Diamond, Haybale, Gravel, aren’t you three from the seventh ward?”

A mare nodded. “I am, sir. So’s Gravel. Haybale’s from Filly.”

Ice Storm nodded. “Could the two of you come here, then?”

Four ponies crowded around the map. Amaranth watched the street, as did the other guards, fidgeting in a rough circle around the impromptu conference.

Ice Storm turned his attention back to the one in charge. “Lance, you know solar regulations as well as I do. You know I can’t countermand the Commander’s orders, but I can tell you rather bluntly that falling back is going to weaken our overall hold on the lower city. I have an alternative that gets you back to Highmarket and still allows you to help. What route were you planning to take?” The guard showed him, and Ice Storm nodded. “Good plan. I might have done the same--you’d make short time. If you make a detour here, you’ll have to go through another ward to get to your fallback point. A ward that just happens to be poorly defended right now and filled with panicking civilians. Are you catching my meaning?”

The pony before him gawked. It wouldn’t hold up, and they both knew it. The Lunar guard bent the rules, but the Solar guard was rigid in its adherence to protocol and doctrine.

“Yes sir,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “I think I take your meaning. It’s a much better route.”

“Good stallion. Where were you coming from?”

The lance corporal pointed back towards the gate. “Made it halfway through the tier, too. Orders stressed we not waste ponies we can use to hold the next layer’s walls.”

“They would, wouldn’t they? Let me guess: Violet is swamped with panicking nobles and their marshals?” The grim look he received told him more than he wanted to know. “Then I would make absolute sure your orders come from where you think they do, because Violet is a lot more aggressive than this. Good luck, Lance.” He called for Amaranth, and together they took off, headed towards another ward. This one was nothing but fire.

SPIKE

Luna guided him. Luna defended him. Her spirit burned with his in the dragon’s heart and his limbs did not grow tired.

It had been two hours since the wall and the advance had continued. But it did not continue unopposed. The guard did its best, but it could not bring its full might to bear in the smaller streets, and the whitecloak traitors harassed any detachment small enough to maneuver in the city, pulling the guard into a dozen skirmishes.

Spike felt something akin to the confidant fury of Morningvale, and now he knew it was his link with Luna. He was her Companion, her knight out of the harrowing of Night. He kept on his feet, always running, always moving. The last defenders of the breach had scattered but they had not surrendered. They set rifles against windows and fired until the enemy rushed, and then they fought with hoofblades or they moved again. Each time they pulled a few more white soldiers from the main force, spinning out running battles in all directions. And among them was Spike, Soarin’ with him, emerging from the ash and smoke like a nightmare.

Spike crashed into the vanguard with his long sword swinging in a wide arc, catching three of them. His reach was long--longer than theirs, his sword longer than their bodies and sharp enough to slide through padded barding. The others, shouting, tried to fight back, but once again--ponies had little chance against a dragon in close quarters. They were herd creatures. They were not made for the rage of tooth and claw. They could kick, and they could fashion horeshoes and hoofblades to make those kicks more effective, but they could only reach so far. They could only fight back against a dragon in dreams or in hordes.

Spike bathed those who had avoided his great sword with a veritable river of fire, killing one of them outright and sending the others crawling and rolling. They hissed and steamed--the rain had begun again, sometime. Spike almost didn’t notice at all.

There were more. There were always more. They were lining up shots already, but Spike was not afraid. He charged them, roaring as only a dragon can.

Did they quiver? Did they tremble? He did not see and did not know--the rain distorted everything. But he did see Soarin’ dive from above, crashing into the middle of the firing line, kicking wildly and throwing them all off balance, laying some low. The startled gunners turned to him, and as he retreated back into the sky one took aim--

Only for Spike’s claws to catch his face and send him into a puddle on the street. Spike’s fire was everywhere. His sword swung freely. His strength was vast--a unicorn tried to use his gun as a shield against a sword blow and found it shattered by the force, and then he found nothing because there was not much left to find.

They made short work of them. Spike felt only an ache in his chest and the itch of adrenaline. They had to keep moving, had to keep coming from unexpected angles. This had been easy, but it was only easy because nopony expected a dragon and a pegasus. But that would change.

*

Another skirmish. Mixed levies and guards at a hasty barricade. Civilians behind them, fleeing down the street. Raiders trying to climb over, laughing even as hoofblades caught them or hooves kicked them back down to the street below.

Spike didn’t feel tired, but his body was losing its strength. Even as he he loaded the smaller pony rifle he had taken from one of the fallen, he could not ignore the shaking. But he said nothing. There was nothing he could do.

Five shots. He missed all of them. The Raiders weren’t dodging or hiding. They barely seemed to notice that their delirious chase was even opposed at all.

*

Soarin’, panting, pushing Spike against the wall.

“Please, we’ve… oh stars, just calm down. We need to rest. Just a few minutes. You’re going to work yourself to death. They’re regrouping, we have a minute to--”

But he couldn’t. He had to keep going. There were ponies out there, trying to escape, and they needed him to guard their escape. He would stop when he was dead. He would rest when they were safe. But he stayed still. There was nopony to fight right just then. He could lie still. For now.

CANTERLOT

The last enemy is death. Every sapient thing knows this. Whether they understand the truth, know it for the truth… well. That’s different.

One sees it play out. Peaceful ponies become soldiers. Lovers make their bodies shields. Children dodge under a thousand bullets and disappear into any hole large enough to squeeze into. The ways go on.

A stallion named Swift is cursing his name as he flees before a crowd of raiders. They are laughing. They have been laughing since the wall was breached. Swift’s daughter is on his back. His wife lags only a pace behind, struggling to keep up. But he cannot slow down. He will doom them both if he does. He pleads with her to keep running, that there will be guards soon or the gate or another lie he knows somewhere inside him won’t convince her.

The raiders gain on them a hoofslength at a time until he can almost feel their breaths.

A unicorn among them uses his magic and Swift’s hooves hit something invisable and solid and he trips. His foal flies through the air, screaming, and lands in front of him. He tells her to keep running, and tries to stand.

He feels a hoofblade in his side. Where is his wife? His child is up ahead. Why can’t he get to her? What are they doing? Another kick and another. One of them tries to bite his ear clean off. His thoughts dissolve into struggle and blood and do not resurface.

The rain continues to pour down on Canterlot. The brief respite must be paid for, after all.

Canterlot, like all cities of stone, does not handle rain well. Normally, drainage is an annoyance. Now it becomes lethal. The water pools until the streets are swamps and rivers of water. Refugees and guards alike trip. Reinforcements trying to establish a defensive line in the city find the going brutal and show up to the fight exhausted and late. Rifles misfire and blows do not land as legs slip in the deceptive little currents.

In High Canterlot the nobles crowd the guard, rerouting them to protect their investments over lives. Luna arrives with a grim aspect and a hammer older than Equestria and some of them flee outright. She goes out into the city herself, flanked by a company of the Lunar Guard.

Civilians scramble through the ruined markets and find themselves in empty streets, safe or feeling safe for a moment. Some slow and are set upon. Others slow and are safe still. The legion of the White moves with slow deliberation, but the raiders have no semblance of plan or reason. They scatter in the neighborhoods and go to ground, appearing seemingly anywhere.

What is left of Spike’s impromptu command is hunted down, one by one.

Death is that last enemy that shall be defeated. That’s what they say, at least. Where is death more clearly reflected than in the blank stares of the marching White Legion? The rebels with no names and no battle cries. They push the guard and the guard cannot withstand them. It is not a matter of training--the Guard know as much of war as any rebel or more. It is not equipment--they use the same. But the white barded host has not been called to act until now, kept waiting for this final stage. The guards have been on the wall, have been in the street, the trenches, the alleyways, the barricades. They are exhausted. Even their retreats are slow, now.

Luna knows that the bomb has thrown her forces into disarray. The only chance is to retreat behind the high walls. She orders the guns on the lower walls destroyed and the guard pulls back.

And in the rearguard, an exhausted dragon and his pegasus companion face the might of a mysterious Manichean.

SPIKE

He still felt Luna with him through the link, encouraging and emboldening him. He was beyond thankful. Without that warm prodding, he was not sure what he would have done. Dragons are made for combat, after a fashion, in ways that ponies are not. What they were not made for is war. Spike suspected that no living creature was created for this sort of war and never would be made for it.

The bulk of the civilians had been brought within the middle tier already. A few stragglers here and there were still making their way in. They had done it.

Or had almost done it. Luna was sending Nightshades to extract large groups holed up in the city. Just a few more pockets of survivors, some of them with town watch trying to keep raiders out. A flier had brought Luna’s order to evacuate one of the pockets and then retire behind the walls, and Spike would have been lying if he had said the news hadn’t been beautiful.

Spike and Soarin’ didn’t sprint, but they did not walk. Both of them were tired, and Soarin’ needed to rest his wings if they were going to be useful later. Spike’s fire was off-limits now. It had started to dim and sputter half an hour ago and he was afraid it might go out.

He wanted his sword in his clawed grip, but didn’t retrieve the thing from his back. He needed to move without the weight on his arms. They were already pushed to the limit.

“How far?” Spike asked, his voice raspy from hours of fire.

“Another block,” Soarin’ said. He stumbled, but recovered. “Sorry. Damn water.”

The rain had not let up. Spike hadn’t been overly concerned before, but now… fire-breathing wasn’t exactly something that worked well in a wet environment. He rumbled.

“Just one more. Luna said this place had some town watch guarding it, so we won’t be alone. We just… we book it to the gate, and that’s it.”

“That’s it.”

They had said all of this before. Why? Trying to convince themselves that it was, indeed, “it”. That this madness would somehow be over when they got behind the walls. But Spike wasn’t fooled and he knew Soarin’ probably wasn’t either. It would just continue.

The street was empty and silent. The sounds of battle raged on, yes, but it was quiet here. All he could hear were echoes. Thunder crashed overhead, and Soarin’ shivered.

“That storm is gonna last awhile,” Soarin’ said, mostly to himself. But Spike heard and thought he saw Rainbow Dash for a moment, saying the same.

They came to a crossroads and Spike consulted his map one last time. The rain slid off the enchanted surface as he squinted. Yes, this was the street. The escape route Luna had suggested was simple. Just twenty more minutes and he would be out of here. He had done what he could.

He knew there was trouble as soon as he turned down the street. He heard somepony shouting, and then the great bray of an old-style shootstick.

“That’s the town watch! Stars, come on, Spike!” Soarin’ raced ahead, but Spike’s long strides caught up and surpassed him with ease. The sword slid from his back with a frightening ease he had not expected. He felt his fire return strong as ever in his chest. His weariness faded and again he was indomitable.

A raider dressed in rags fell into his range of vision at the mouth of the long, narrow street. Something had caught his slight clothes aflame and he rolled in the water. Steam swelled up as he cried out.

Spike was on him in a moment, and any doubts as to his identity were gone when he saw the spiralling runes cut into the pony’s haphazardly shaved coat. Soarin’ ran right over him, and the Raider coughed and sputtered but did not rise. Spike ignored him and moved on.

Before them was a storefront with broken windows. Two ponies in dinted and worn town watch uniforms struggled in the watery street in front of the door with a dozen raiders, four of which turned to meet the newcomers.

Spike cooled his fire and pulled his sword up. Soarin’ took to the sky and Spike almost grinned. Perfect unison. He swept it in an arc as he ran, catching a confused and laughing raider in the chest and throwing him against two of his companions even as the blade moved through him.

Soarin’ dove back in as Spike found himself with raiders piled on him, pulling, biting, kicking, laughing. He punched and clawed, roaring, but they clung to him.

Until suddenly they weren’t. Spike threw one of the raiders towards towards the shop, and then in the gap a pony in a ruined business suit headbutted one of the raiders and a new crowd began to fall on his attackers.

Spike’s sword was back in play as soon as they were off. He swung from high, right over his head. The blade crashed down into a raider who was struggling back to his feet.

Around him, a few of the braver civilians had begun to grapple with the raiders. One of the town watch ponies was lying face first in a pool of soiled water. The other kicked a raider in the face and then tried to pull at his companion.

Soarin’ and Spike finished the rest as they were distracted by civilians, and then Soarin’ ordered them all inside. Without a word, Spike approached the fallen town watch pony and her standing companion, who still tried to rouse her.

“C’mon. Get up, Northern… dammit! Dammit, Constable, on your hooves!”

“I can carry her inside,” Spike said flatly, too tired to do it any justice. But what he couldn’t express in words he could in deed; he gently picked the limp form up and cradled it against his chest as he came in from the rain. The town watch pony followed him in a daze.

There were two or three dozen ponies in the store. They came out from their hiding places behind displays and the aisles and stared at Spike with eyes wide as saucers. Even now, he managed a sort of halfhearted smirk that died quickly. He looked around, and found a table.

“Clear off the display,” he said quietly, but firmly. One of the civilians did so hurriedly, and Spike placed the pony of the watch on the table.

The other watchpony tore open her waterlogged uniform and put his ear to her chest. After a moment, he tried to check for a pulse and fumbled at her neck before sitting back on his haunches. “Gone,” he said. “Already gone. Knew it as soon as I opened the uniform. Hoofblade right under the ribs.” He closed his eyes. “Northern and I are all that’s left of the precint’s night watch, I think. You here with the guard, dragon?”

“Spike. Yeah. I’m here to get you out of here.” Spike swallowed. “I’m sorry. We were the closest ones. We got here as fast as he could.” He didn’t know if they were the closest or not. He didn’t know what to say.

“It’s not your fault,” said the watchpony. “It ain’t your fault at all. I’m glad to hear that, Spike. I remember hearin’ about some sort of dragon or something in the guard now. Don’t listen to rumors much. Prefer to see things with my eyes. If we’re going to move we should go soon. More will come.”

“Agreed.” Soarin’ stepped forward. “Do you have anything that still shoots?”

The watchpony shook his head. “No, sir. Just had one old shootstick--found that in the manager’s office when we got here. Nightwatch don’t go around armed with anything deadlier than some horsehoes. Ain’t killed a pony on the beat my whole career.” He stared at his companion. “Not a one.”

“You’re right, we should move,” Soarin’ said again, a little softer. “Watchpony, I need your help getting these people out of here. Can you do that? I need you here.”

“Right. Right.” The watchpony shook his head and looked away. “Alright, folks! We’re headed to the gate! Got some guards here to help us break through. I need everypony ready to go in two minutes! On your hooves, up! Come on then.”

The civilians shuffled into something like readiness. A few mothers clung to foals. Spike thought he saw somepony in ruined noble’s silk among them. They were from all walks of life, the weak and the strong, the old and the young.

It was the old and the few injured among them he worried about the most. This was not going to be as quick as he’d hoped.

They moved out into the rain again. Spike blinked against the water in his eyes, marvelling how it seemed to coming down even heavier than before. But that didn’t stop him--he gestured to the watchpony, who strode out into the street, calling the civilians to follow.

The plan was simple. Spike had given him the map and the old veteran hadn’t needed it at all. He knew these streets like he would the face of his mother, he swore, and no matter what he would get them through his precinct safe and sound. Spike would take the rear, looking for opportunistic raiders or any pursuing whitecloaks. Soarin’ would fly-hop along the roofs, providing overwatch and looking out for ambushes ahead.

The bustling, frightened herd surged behind the running pony of the watch, and Spike waited only a moment, sparing the store and the surrounding street one last glance. One last run, he thought. Just one more.

Spike slogged through the streets. Unbidden, he thought of Fluttershy, nervous about the Ponyville weather team making a tornado to bring water out of the reservoir to Cloudsdale.

He remembered the Crusaders stormchasing and Spike tagging along for the ride, hoping Twilight never found out he let them do any of what they did. He saw Applejack in the rain, her face stern as she said--

--Spike! I expected better of you. You too, girls. Coulda been dangerous! If Rainbow hadn’t spotted ya--

He heard Applejack running with him on one side, Apple Bloom on the other. Somewhere, Luna was giving orders, and he felt her hard and icy tone and felt faintly her fury. He felt her worry. He thought she tried to say something, but the link was weak and still new.

They made better time than he had thought they would, but nowhere near as fast as he had hoped. Here and there, a foal slipped or a pony splashed into a pothole and every time Spike’s heart skipped a beat. But none of them fell.

We’ve got to go faster. The front’s already collapsed. This is gonna get everypony killed.

Spike tried to call to the watchpony, but the rain drowned him out. He could almost hear Rainbow Dash in his head, groaning about how slooow this was. And then Twilight would remind her that there were more important things than speed, didn’t she know--and Spike shook his head.

Up above, lightning flashed, illuminating the dreary streets for a moment. Long enough for Spike to see a clear outline of Soarin’ on a roof, waving. The pegasus pointed behind him.

Spike cursed and turned. There, far down the street, he saw them: rushing rebels. The Manichean’s arm stretching out for this last pocket of refugees. Spike felt his fire flare in his chest. But they were too far. He turned back and began to sprint until he was right on the heels of the fleeing herd.

He took a deep breath and bellowed over the dull roar of the storm. “Go! Faster!”

And they did, as herd animals hearing a predator roaring in their ears tend to do. With satisfaction, Spike saw them bolt, pushing the whole crowd even farther out o the reach of their pursuers.

How much farther would it be? Spike was losing track. How long had it been already? Surely they were halfway there.

They passed underneath a bridge from one building to the next, an arch, and only in the quieter air did Spike realize how omnipresent the rain really was. But then they were back in it. The water pulled at his every step. It clung to him and weighed down the cloth underneath armor he wore.

And suddenly Spike knew where he was. This was Bit Street. He’d walked it a hundred times, riding on Twilight’s back while she trotted to the used book store with the friendly old mare who liked to give him peppermint. Donut Joe’s was only a few streets over. Rarity had complained about the uniformity of the low-end boutiques on… on Juniper, a street after Joe’s.

Memories crashed around him, but he kept running. He couldn’t afford to stop. But the visions kept coming. Twilight treating him to donuts when he was small. Showing Apple Bloom and the others all the sights, all of his favorite places. Carrying Rarity’s bags for her while she shopped, feeling helpful, feeling like he was a part of things. Worrying over Twilight’s obsessive studying in her observatory tower. Writing letters. Sitting on Shining Armor’s back while he did pushups. Twilight’s mother sending Twilight off to school, Spike on her back as a tiny, tiny drakeling.

Why? Where was this coming from?

It was only then, as the refugees came at last to the main thoroughfare, when the gate was in sight, that Spike finally remembered his dream the night of the long bombardment.

He had not been afraid before. Not because he was fearless, but because there had not been time. There had been no room for panic or terror because those things meant he died in the chaos. Without words, he had known that. The part of him that had not been tempered by softer, kinder pony ways knew that a dragon that lost his control lost his head.

But now it was upon him. He felt his fire die in his chest. Here, at the last, the warm confidence that he had felt in the Companion bond was completely gone. Spike felt for the second time in his life like a trapped and wounded animal. He was in the madness of Ponyville all over again.

This is my dream and I am going to die.

He kept running. He couldn’t have stopped even if he wanted to. As the ponies before him began to tire, he only managed not to run them over by sheer force of will. No! No, I’m not going to… I’m not going to die. I’m not going to do what I did in my dream. I save ponies, I don’t leave them!

It wasn’t his dream. It looked different. He was running, yes--being pursued, yes!--but this wasn’t his dream. This was real. This was as real as his sword and his scales. The arches that led to the gate were real.

Another burst of lightning revealed the gate wide open before him, with guards before it and atop it. They fired their weapons, and as Spike opened his mouth to shout that they were friends, he realized they were shooting around him. Only now did he realize that they had stumbled right into the middle of a firefight.

One of the running refugees was hit by a stray shot and tumbled into a pool. Spike swooped by and grabbed her with his free hand and kept running.

The guard was right behind where they had entered the street, firing even as they fell back, propping up rifles against windowsills and barrels, one lying flat on her back to aim between her legs through eyes half-covered in blood from a head wound. He didn’t see what happened. He kept running, gripping the fallen civilian. She needed to get out of here. They all did. He’d led them right into a trap.

Another one fell. Spike tried to alter his course to retrieve the fallen stallion, but he slipped and almost sent his passenger flying. The pony was dead. He’d been hit in the neck just as he came to the beginning of the arched walkway in front of the gate.

Another fell. And another. Four in all. He couldn’t two of them, and one stumbled back on his hooves and limped ahead until a second shot hit him and he cried out miserably.

The gate was still wide open when the crowd made it to the soldiers who manned it. They had erected hasty barriers in front of the strong adamantine doors, and Spike dodged behind one of these as he passed, shielding his whimpering passenger from gunfire, magic, and rain.

“Am I the last one?” he shouted at one of them.

The guard he had yelled at glanced over, and then a shot glanced off of his helmet. He spun and fell flat, groaning. Spike stared, wide-eyed, his breathing ragged, until the guard coughed and nodded weakly. “My head… Dammit! You’re the last one. The last bloody one! Oh…”

The guard was pulled in a unicorn’s blue aura, and Spike looked up to see the magic wielding pony on the other side of the door, sprinting towards him. As soon as he saw the others with her, and the red cross emblazoned on their helmets, he held his injured passenger up. A unicorn caught her and helped her limp behind the wall. He stared at the absence for a moment.

Somepony shouted to close the gate. They had to close the gate, everypony was through, and they would lose the gate. Spike suddenly felt numb. In shock, he sat back down behind the makeshift barricade of sandbags and tables and stared at the open gate. Slowly, the doors began to close.

Soarin’ was at his side in an instant, tugging at him. “Spike! In you go! We’ve got to get through and get back to Luna. She’s going to need--”

Other voices began to drown him out as the gates groaned. Spike stared up at the arches above him, their pennants sagging in the rain, their bright marble dimmed without the sun.

“Faster, damn you!”

“I’m trying!”

“Try harder! They’ll take us in one good rush at this rate! Get it done, guard!”

The whites had been advancing up the street through houses but now they no longer bothered to hide. They poured into the streets, some of them with lances protruding from saddles, others firing as they ran. Finally, they roared, all of them in the same cacophanous voice, some un-equine thing that Spike knew only too well. Cowering, he saw it again as he had in Ponyville, a creature miles long, all coiled and spiralling and seemingly endless, all in a great blackness between worlds of light, a thing that lived in the in-between and whispered about the hatefulness of light and substance, of air and sound and music and silence. He whimpered, covering his head as he felt its chains on him again, his body hot and cold in turns. He lost track of what happened around him. Soarin’ was no longer there. The gate was no longer there. He was alone again before that great baleful eye, and Twilight or Rarity or Luna or Celestia, none of them were there. All alone before the face of Death.

It was speaking to him again.

It said, you’re going to die. I know, he told it. You never had a chance. All of this movement and struggle, and you’ll be snuffed out like a candle. You are a plaything in the hands of a child. Not even a clever one. Doesn’t that make you angry? Or maybe you’re too smart to be angry about it. Or you believe in fate, that this has purpose, that being shot has purpose. Hm? Sneaking into my children’s nest to spy on them. Talking to all of those ponies. This was foolish. It was and is stupid. You’re going to die. And you don’t want to die. And you know, that doesn’t matter, does it?

No, it doesn’t matter, he told it.

It laughed at him for eons. Then hate it. You know, that seems like the best choice to me. If you run and don’t stop, maybe you’ll prolong your life another few short hours. Maybe even a day or two! But here? Now? It laughed and laughed and screamed and wanted to die and it wanted him to die and--

And then he was no longer alone with it. Somepony was walking in the darkness towards him and Spike shied away from her, only to find the chains were gone.

“Are you afraid?” she asked. She was indistinct, hazy, little more than mist. Yet, somehow, she was more solid than anything else in this delusion.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“I think I’m going to die. I had a dream just like this.”

“What happened?”

“The gate won’t close. Or, well. In my dream it didn’t open. But it doesn’t matter what happens, exactly. I just… I think I’m going to die.”

“Ah.” The mare cocked her head at him. At least, he thought she did. “Unfortunate, perhaps. In battle then you aim to fall.”

“I don’t aim to fall at all.”

The chains and the coiling serpent and the despair--all of it was gone. It was only Spike and the shadowy mare.

“I did not aim to fall in battle either, and fall I did regardless. Against a dragon, no less! How curious is this: a dragon who fights for little ponies. Very curious. Exciting even. And you say you will die soon?”

“I think so. I don’t really know. I just feel like I will.”

“Then would you perhaps like to die with company? Your link has left you. Luna felt it like a blow. She does not understand it as well as she thinks. Elsewise, I would not be here, would I? I was left behind.”

“You’re… where am I? What the hell is this?” Spike’s numb acceptance broke at last. He looked around wildly. “Where is the gate? Where’s Soarin’? Am I just… I’m definitely going to die if I’m just standing there staring!”

“It will be but a moment to those outside,” the shadowy mare said with a wave of her hoof. “Think nothing of it. But I was asking if you would allow me the honor of fighting alongside you, young drake. If this is truly your last battle.”

“Who are you?”

He felt it smile. A chill ran down his spine. “That thing speaks of despair but it does not know what real despair is. I have felt that real despair. I am what is left behind. Call me Lacunae, Memory, Regret. Call me Nothing, in fact. I prefer no name at all. I am a remnant of your princess’s heart as she was. She cannot be with you. Allow me this honor in her stead.”

Spike blinked. He didn’t understand at all.

He held out his hand.

--Soarin was shaking him. “Spike! Man, are you there? Oh, shit, I--”

“I’m fine,” Spike said, gently pushing him off. “What?”

“The gate! They need time to close the stupid fucking gate.”

Spike smiled. “I’m not surprised. Rust from constant rains? Age? I don’t care. Luna will have to wait.”

“What? Sp--”

But he was already getting a carbine from one of the medics. Bullets flew overhead. Magic lightning flashed. Grenades were thrown with magic and thrown back with magic. The white tide had not stalled at all.

Spike felt something new where Luna had vanished. It was not her warmth at all but something darker and smaller and perhaps more cruel, yet not wrong or foul. It was something like acceptance. It purged doubt not out of confidence but because it was above doubt. It had moved beyond. It was eternally resigned.

It was free. And Spike finally felt free.

His hands were awkward on the shorter weapon, but he still fired with precision. When they came close, a panicking Soarin’ kept by his side, his wings flared and ready to take to the sky or barrel into the first pony to come over the barricade.

The guards began to panic around him, but Spike was calm. He was ready. When the carbine was out, he threw it aside and his hands found his sword again. The Memory within him burned, and then so did his fire as the first crest of the wave came within distance. He roared an surging river of flame right into their charging line, breaking it apart as they fell back from the heat or were caught and burned.

The rifles were abandoned. They came down on the guards at the gate around Spike’s fire with hoofblades and blunt force and lances which came over the little wall at head-level. Spike sidestepped a lance and then grabbed it, overbalancing the manichean soldier before he could detach his weapon. Spike threw him back at his companions and then let loose another geyser of flame.

The charge carried the rebels into the midst of the last guards remaining in the lower level. Guns were abandoned entirely. It was all hoofwork and slipping on the wet stone. Spike did not wait for ponies to come to him--he pushed into the squirming mass of ponies in white, throwing all of his weight into each sword swing. He stopped only to blow white-hot flames into the faces of the invaders. Every swing claimed a life or more, every spurt of flame sent hot steam up which blinded his foes and as they stumbled a guard dispatched them or they were trampled under the weight of their own comrades’ charge.

Spike had become something more. He was something beyond dragon or pony, something fighting with two souls. Spike and the Nightmare, Spike and Luna, Spike and another pony who knew what it was to be the only one who knew what she felt and wanted. He swung but she empowered his blade, which burst into blue flames.

He did not stop to ask what she was, for he knew already. She was telling him all along. Luna had felt his distress and in her own panic she had dropped her last boundaries. Spike felt the Nightmare that rested beside her heart and found it much changed. This was Luna’s magic now, not his own strength alone. Was that fire real? Was it simply the flickering torches along the columns and archways that caught the blade in their light and made it shine?

What was like him in its anger? Nothing. He was beyond anything the ponies around him had ever seen. One rifle was retrieved from the water in panic by a fallen pony. It tried to fire but jammed, and Spike picked the offender up with one clawed hand, claws digging into his shoulder, and threw him against a column. He dodged nothing. Hoofblades cracked and broke against the armor Luna had forged him. They cut into his flesh when they could and Spike did not flinch or acknowledge them. The Nightmare bore all of his pain and did so gladly for she, too, was Luna, and Spike was her Companion, her friend.

The crowds thinned out. Spike was dimmly aware that the jam in the gate mechanism was fixed and the guards behind him were beginning to withdraw back into the city.

But more of the Manichean’s troops were pouring into the walkway, bringing with them more unicorns that could batter the gates and walls, bringing more grenades that could be thrown into the midst of ponies beyond it. Brining more rifles that shot and hooves that crushed. They had to go. They all had to go. He would do what must be done.

He roared his defiance at them. He roared Twilight’s name as he threw them into the air and beat them into the street. He called his friend’s names. He screamed about Morningvale. This was for Ponyville. This one was for Applejack’s farm. This one was for Manehattan. This one was for Rarity, and this one was Rainbow Dash. This one was for Fluttershy, bearing the weight of a world of darkness. This one was sunlight and this one was for dawn.

And they fled before him at last, broken. A hundred of them or more, in full panic. Their master’s control had shattered and now they thought for themselves and the only thought they seemed to have was to flee. Spike stood in the archway, still roaring, still screaming. But he grinned. He laughed. They would come back and face him if they dared. And they would not dare. If they wanted to teach ponies death than he would be glad to help them in return.

Down the street, raiders and soldiers were still charging. They hit the fleeing manichean soldiers and ignored them or beat them if they would not move. The raider’s laughing seemed more forced and the steel glares of the rebels seemed less hard.

And for a moment, it seemed the night would end right there.

Down the street, a snickering raider appeared as the ranks of rebels parted way for him. On his broad back he carried a great gun or small cannon, and Spike saw him for only a moment.

He fired. The first shot went wide, and sailed through the air. It detonated above the arches, sounding like the blast of a cannon. The force of the blow sent the fleeing guards sprawling. Soarin’, in the air, found himself thrown against a column and struggled to rise. Spike was unmoved.

He fired again, as Spike sucked in air for another burst of flame. This shot hit the arch above Spike.

It broke. The ancient arch, erected a thousand years before, broke above Spike’s head and the great masonry fell on him, crushing him.

Spike tried to move and found he could not. He could not speak. His breathing was labored.

The mare was there, the shadowy one, the dark lack. She sat beside him in this new darkness, more empty than the one before it but somehow more wholesome. He tried to speak but could not. She rested a hoof gently on his head, and he felt that he had done well.

Twilight. Twilight, where are you? Luna? Where are you? I’m sorry, I tried.

It hurts. It hurts a lot.

Guys?

“Sleep, Spike,” the mare said, not unkindly.

Rarity? He saw her smiling down--down? Where was he?--at him. “I know, Spike,” she said.

Twilight Sparkle was there, holding him. She was saying something. What was she saying? He couldn’t make it out. Apple Bloom was there, and she kissed him over and over, covering his grimy, bleeding face with kisses. Was she crying? Was he crying? He couldn’t tell. It became less and less distinct. Everything did.

“I…” He coughed. His mouth felt full of something wet and warm. It wasn’t supposed to feel that way, not like that. “I didn’t want…”

“You have not died alone. Sleep,” the mare urged. “Sleep. You could not have escaped.”

“I…”

“The unicorns in that wave had mines. I saw them through your eyes and recognized them from what Luna has learned of war in your time. They would have destroyed the mechanism and damaged the gate. I saw this. Do you believe me?”

He couldn’t answer.

“Sleep,” she whispered. “Sleep.”

He wanted to.

Only Twilight and Rarity were left now. The mare was a voice.

His mother. His sister. His first love. She who pushed him forward into the light and she who he ran to.

Sorry, he thought one last time, and then he fell into darkness.

CANTERLOT

They fight over his body.

Rainbow Rays returns to the fight to late to do anything for Spike, who lies beneath the ruins of two arches, now. The raider with the cannons is silenced too late by a sniper on the wall. Everything is too late.

Soarin’ is screaming denials over and over. Too late. Rainbow Rays, confused, panicking, trying to understand what has happened only to grasp it as Soarin’ takes a hoof to the face and crumples. Too late. He dives in and kills the attacking raider with a hoofblade, trying to pull Soarin’ to his hooves, trying to keep him up.

“He’s dead! Oh, stars! Fuck! Kill me, he’s dead! He’s dead!”

Rainbow Rays is losing it. He doesn’t know what to do. This is not what he expected. He pulls at his commander.

“We gotta go! We can’t… They won’t hang back forever when they realize he’s really gone! Come on! Come on!”

“I can’t!” Soarin’ kicks him back. A few raiders are beginning to laugh more fully again. The dragon has not risen. Already you can almost taste the scent of blood in the air. There is no movement from the stones. “I can’t leave him!”

A bullet pings against a column, zipping past Soarin’s head.

“We have to go! Please!” Rays is back, pulling him. “For the love of Celestia, please! Captain!”

“He’s not gone! I can’t just leave him! He’s a kid! I can’t--”

Rainbow Rays feels the bullet that cuts across his cheek only after it has passed. He falls back, crying out. He panics. Soarin’ is lost. Spike is lost. The Bats Out of Hell are dying one by one now. He takes to the sky.

He never feels the second bullet, the one that hits him and steals his wings. A single bullet from a hundred yards, a sniper who had taken the stairs to fire from the roof at Spike but has found a new target.

Rays hurtles to earth, screaming until his face smacks against the stone surface with a sickening sound. His wings sag. He tries to move, but panic and shock have stolen his legs from him for this moment. He bawls like a child.

“I can’t move! Oh, oh Celestia! My legs! My wings! Soarin’! SOARIN’! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF THE STARS PLEASE! Oh Celestia, fuck! Fuck!”

It’s enough. Soarin’ is at his side, putting the limp and bleeding Rays on his back. The guards are all inside, but for two prone earth ponies by the gates, firing around the grave of Spike. Soarin flares his wings as best he can with a pony on his back and jumps into the air, propelling himself through the small gap in the gate like an arrow, where he lands, slides Rays into the waiting grasp of a shouting medic, stumbles, falls. He lays in the rain, weeping.

Author's Notes:

any grief or anger or sorrow you feel I feel also we
feel it together we are perhaps one in this I have kept the race and faith
I am sorry Spike
I thought you were a hero
It was always meant to happen

I struggled to write this chapter. I agonized over its construction. It is not as it should be. My heart was not in it.

A gunslinger shoots, aims, kills with his heart. I am no gunslinger.

I'm sorry. If it is any consolation to your unhappiness I am just as unhappy. But it was the plan. I... I had to. I don't feel right about it. I don't like it. Necessity does not equal these things.

Good night, Spike. Good night.

Thanatopsis
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice—

Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.