Duty to the Last

The unicorn’s horn got surrounded in a very dark, almost tar-black miasma – the sign of magic kicking in. The energy quickly moved to the tip and dripped – literally – on the stone ground below, spreading into a surprisingly big, black puddle. What was but a drip became a shade-like shape beneath its creator.

Tendrils black as the longest of nights arose from the puddle, some of them relatively short, and a few growing as tall as four times the average pony’s height. There was about a dozen of them, each one ending with a sharp, dagger-like spike trickling with dark miasma. They didn’t make any sound, but if they did, I bet it would be a hiss, as that’s what they resembled – a nest of blackened snakes dripping deadly venom from their fangs.

Before we managed to pull ourselves together, they sprung in all directions, the few shorter ones dashing right towards Lance Tail’s chest.

“LANCE!” I screamed and rushed forward in desperation. I barely made three steps when the biggest tendril hit and launched me in the air, sending back at the booth’s wall. I could only hope that Lance would somehow survive this.

But he didn’t stand a change. With a flurry of stabs he got stripped of his steel breastplate, then the two spikes impaled his body, rending the heart and lungs, no doubt. Reddened tips came out on the other side, ruthlessly tearing the skin on his back.

As he got lifted up by the tendrils, I saw his face twisted with pain and surprise written all over, and his mouth wide opened in a soundless scream. The internal fluids flooded his lungs quickly, so he was denied any last words, a strangled cry taking their place. He looked down at his chest, coughed with saliva and blood once more before becoming but a lifeless body of a soldier, stretched on the black spikes.

Quick Bronze reacted instantly. The booth door opened violently, and the stallion holding two spears dashed outside. I managed to rally and grabbed one of them. Quick Bronze roared a battle cry, took a running start and threw the other spear at the murderous unicorn. It was a good and steady throw, but it took only a single glance of the sadistically contorted face for the tendrils to move the corpse of Lance Tail and make it take the hit instead.

Two more holes were added to his already gashed figure, then he was released, cruelly thrown into the ground like a puppet, staining the white cobblestone with numerous crimson streaks. He rolled along the pavement and landed by the other side of the Aphelion Gate, with a broken piece of wood sticking out of his chest.

I joined Quick Bronze and tapped him on the side. He was clearly shaken by the fact that his spear desecrated the body of our friend even more. But it was not over yet. He drew a thin dagger from between his armor’s steel plates, a typical choice of secondary weapon for most guards.

“FLANK!” I shouted to Zealous Charge, something akin to a plan shaping inside my head. There was no need to deny that the whole situation was ugly, but as a soldier, I knew my priorities. We could probably save those civilians, but saving the kid – damned, innocent first-year kid who had found himself at the wrong time in the wrong place – would require more than just a simple tactical maneuver. I had to draw as much attention as possible to myself, at least until Quick Bronze would position himself. How to make myself more appealing as a target?

Improvisation! With a wild cry I shifted my weight to hind legs and lifted both of the fore ones at the same time, using the spear for support. However strange it would look – a pony walking on two limbs, psh – it seemed to be working. With my belly uncovered I had become an interesting option for the majority of the death-bringing tendrils, or rather their creator, but to be honest I couldn’t tell if the dark energy was under his control, or if he was possessed by it.

Zealous Charge moved to the other side and sparkled up his horn with harvest gold energy. He was now directly between the stallion and the merchants, protecting them with a transparent, arcane shield which appeared out of thin air. Blast! Although most of the civilians had escaped, those of weaker stomachs in the total number of three couldn’t even crawl away, but remained curled up by the ground, trembling with fear and wishing that the recent bloodshed was only some kind of terrifying nightmare.

“MOVE! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, MOVE!” Zealous Charge shouted, pouring more and more energy into his shield, readying both the spell and his spear for the inevitable assault of darkness.

Only one of the merchants complied immediately as the other two were paralyzed with terror. And the worst thing was that even though Quick Bronze’s furious dagger storm and my crazy, spear-spinning dance – which turned out to be ineffective, as the tendrils were astonishingly agile – the evil unicorn didn’t focus on us. He focused on the kid’s side.

One particularly big and nasty extension of the unicorn’s dark magic fell on the Zealous Charge’s shield like a hammer dropped from the sky. The spell shattered into hundreds of pieces, then dissolved completely, opening the way for another set of tendrils to brutally perforate the two merchants’ bodies.

It was a massacre. Neither of the cuts proved to be deep enough to kill them instantly, but the repeating stabbing was a truly merciless torture, inconceivable by a sane mind. The merchants were writhing in agony and squalling with the amount of pain that would take down a dragon for far too long. Finally, their butchered bodies, surrounded by trickles of blood, joined Lance Tail in the peaceful embrace of death.

“KID, RUN!” Quick Bronze shouted, precisely verbalizing my only thought. I smacked the nearby tendril and looked at Zealous Charge.

He dropped his spear and tried to fall back, galloping away. That’s what I wanted for him, too – to abandon this place as soon as possible. He was just a kid, he had his whole life ahead! He did not deserve to share that dreary fate! Why did that damned stallion decided to invade Canterlot today!?

“SAVE YOURSELF!” I shouted.

And just when I thought Zealous Charge could get away, the tendrils grew larger and shot towards him.

“NO!” I cried.

Zealous got ruthlessly dragged back towards the darkness, waving his hooves in desperation and trying to grab something, but there was nothing to hold onto on the ground. The black energy entangled him, wrapping around his head, neck and body. The monstrous creation did no longer behave like snakes, but rather like jungle vines, sucking the life force of what they would have grasped.

But it was not enough for the insane stallion. Without a word, the vines extended and raised the cadet to a height of the ivory arch. And then I could caught Zealous Charge’s stare.

There was a fully justified fear of death in his eyes. Those weren’t the eyes of a young, studious colt. Those were the eyes of somepony who had to grow up much too soon. Who had seen things that nopony should ever see. Who was well aware that the battle was lost. He struggled to move a hoof to his head, and despite the restraining force, he saluted.

Tears came and watered not his eyes, but mine. Something inside me broke. I saluted back, but when the tendrils began to move, I turned away my sight and even closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at this! But I couldn’t stop the sounds from reaching my ears.

In a complete darkness, I heard rhythmic pounding. Those were the strikes against a very dense surface of the arch. I thought that metal hitting ivory was the worst I could take, but then I heard several metallic clangs at the ground level – that was the armor pieces falling off, without fail. And the pounding didn’t stop, no. I heard the bare body smashed into the ivory arch with excessive force over and over again, as if somepony was trying to break the gate’s structure.

“NOOOO!” I heard Quick Bronze’s voice, guessing that something bad was about to happen and he spotted that. Which meant he didn’t turn away his sight. He was way tougher than I was.

There was a unpleasant crack heard. I knew that it couldn’t come from the ivory, it was way too durable. My imagination suggested me the rest.

I opened my eyes to see Zealous Charge’s bruised body falling from the top of the ivory arch. Just like that. Without but an ounce of respect, the dark magic released it and allowed it to hit the ground. The unnatural position in which it landed indicated that his neck and spine were broken in several places.

The blackened tendrils sprung towards me and Quick Bronze. I wasn’t fast enough, so they quickly wrapped around my throat and pressed me against the booth wall, but the other stallion dodged in time, so only his foreleg got bounded by the depraved force. We struggled, but neither of us could move.

“Celestia will grant me an audience,” the death-bringing unicorn spoke to Quick Bronze, his voice frustratingly calm as if nothing had happened. “Beg, if you have to…”

“AAHHH!” the stallion screamed in torment, as the tar-black miasma which motioned around his leg caused several gashed and frostbites. Or maybe those were burns, caused by some kind of magically produced venom or acid? I couldn’t really tell from that distance. Instead, I inspected my own body. I snorted, seeing multiple cuts oozing with blood and gore. I ignored them in the heat of battle, but now the pain was gradually waking up.

The cloaked stallion released Quick Bronze. I spotted that the guard’s eyes were also red of tears. We suffered great loses today, and there was nothing we could have done about it. Nothing.

“Or else,” the dark unicorn put on his hood, “I will destroy all of Canterlot.”

“Sergeant?” Quick Bronze glanced at me. How far he had come! The same reluctance that was holding him in the criminal underworld many years ago was now holding him by my side. And just like then, I was going to make that reluctance vanish so he could do what was really important.

“Just go!” I commanded, to which he complied and left me, moving towards the Castle as fast as he could considering his wound. “Warn the Princesses!”

I coughed blood. There was no hope for me, I knew that. I looked around the aftermath of the last five minutes or so.

I saw dead merchants – denied to express their concern to the Princesses…

I saw dead Lance Tail – denied to finally prove himself to his brother…

I saw dead Zealous Charge – denied to live a normal life with his marefriend…

I saw their numb, motionless bodies scattered around the Aphelion Gate area – pierced, bruised, broken, gashed, deformed…

“You will lose,” I tried to chuckle, but saliva and blood in my mouth made it impossible. I was breathing heavily as the tendrils were sliding around my throat. I felt the end drawing near, but I wasn’t going to make it any easier for the murderer. “Guys like you… always lose. Our Princesses… will kick your flank… you’ll… see…”

Judging by the fact that every single blackened tendril was coming down at me, I’d say my provocation worked. I could even count them now, there was a total of thirteen. Figures.

What should a pony think about before his death? It all depended on the individual, I suppose. I was wondering whether or not the service of my squad at the Aphelion Gate would be remembered. My relatives were long gone, my only family were the fellow guards. I was wondering if somebody would at least remember my name.

That’s what I was thinking about, staring at the air-slicing snakes. But to tell the truth, it didn’t really matter. Remembered or not, I was going to die in peace, filled with pride of my boys and the fact that I remained by the Fortress’ walls to the very end, performing the greatest duty of all: protecting the Princesses and doing everything in my power to protect the citizens of Canterlot. Perhaps it’s not exactly how I imagined my end, but at least I’d die happily, knowing that I fulfilled my duty.

The snakes were getting closer. I smiled and closed my eyes.

I fulfilled my duty to the last.