Hostile Intent

by Storm Vector

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Violence
Length: 27296

When life goes from bad to worse even in a small sleepy village, how will four friends cope with the horrors thrown their way?

Life in Ponyville has gone on as normal, and the summer blizzard incident has faded from everypony's memory already. Winter Whisper and her now-coltfriend Midnight Storm have been getting along famously, finding their way through their first and odd relationship. But no relationship is without its bumps, and a few days ago the pair hit a rather rocky one. They have been fighting for days, and as their friend Crystal Lattice struggles to find a way to calm them down, everypony remains unaware that a far greater danger than a lover's quarrel looming literally on the horizon. Three mysterious shadows make their way towards Canterlot...

Bumped up to Teen rating for this one due to slightly darker tones through the entire story and one scene of non-cartoonish violence. Cover art again by the talented Sweet Pencil!

Published 2018-11-21 01:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-05-07 18:45:55 UTC

Ch1: A Simple Misunderstanding

The sun rose high over Ponyville, illuminating the amber, brown and red leaves still hanging from the trees. It was a week away from the Running of the Leaves, and the treetops trembled in the soft breeze wafting through town. Crystal Lattice was also trembling, but not for nearly the same reason: the bright green unicorn watched through fearful cyan eyes as two of her best friends snarled at each other with fury she had never seen in either of their eyes.

“I already told you I’m sorry, how many more times can I say it?!” Midnight Storm yelled, his eyebrows dragged down as far on his face as they would go. His thick black sunglasses protected his sensitive pale yellow eyes from the brilliant sunlight, but it didn't hide the sheer fury on his deep, dark blue face as he glared at Winter Whisper standing across from him.

“'Sorry' isn't enough to cover it Midnight,” the snow white mare snapped back. Her horn was covered by the massive sunhat covering her entire front half, shielding the pony from the rays of the sun that threatened to roast her chilly body alive. But even without the sun her horn was shimmering with hints of her soft blue aura and flecks of her white, otherworldly ice power, though she restrained herself from using that just yet. Crystal was briefly thankful for that, but it was a small comfort with the harsh snapping flying between them. “You expect me to think your behavior is just going to change? I know you better than that!”. She scowled back at him, practiced with seeing his eyes behind his glasses: she'd certainly spent long enough staring into his eyes over the last two months.

“How is my attitude the problem here, you’re the one who started it!” Midnight pointed a hoof accusatorily at her, his wings flaring with anger. Crystal bit her lip as she watched the anger brewing between the two, uncertain what to do. Their relationship had been phenomenal for two months, never an issue they didn't seem willing to talk out: where had this whole mess come from?!

Winter stared at him for a second before returning. “Now you’re pinning this on me?! I can’t believe you’d do that! I know you don’t like changing but I thought you’d at least have some sense of decency.”

“You know what? Fine. Decency it is,” Midnight huffed, his feathers ruffled as he tensed his wings. “No point making a bigger scene of this. Bye Winter,” he muttered, before launching himself into the air and flying away.

"Midnight no, wait!" Crystal belted out, turning to charge after Midnight as he launched into the air and flew off towards the edge of town. He made it across three streets and down another block as Crystal ran fast as she could, her limited muscles built more for long distance hauling than running. She hoped for a bit that he would land, but finally she realized he was just going to keep going and raised her panting voice to call out to him. “Stormy come on, I can’t run this fast…”

For a few seconds, it seemed like Midnight would ignore Crystal and fly back home, but a moment later he seemed to sigh and tilt himself backwards a little bit. He dropped and landed just as he was just past, the line of buildings at the end of town, to wait patiently for Crys to catch up. The mare slowed down a little bit, trying to catch her breath, though Midnight seemed patient enough to wait for her. Crystal finally got close enough and slowed to a trot up to Midnight, breathing a little heavily as her body tried to calm her down from the run. “Midnight, what’s going on with you two? I don’t understand…”

“Maybe you don’t need to Crys,” he muttered. “Maybe some ponies just aren’t meant to be together.”

“Oh yeah, like I’d believe that for a heartbeat,” Crystal replied. “So you two are having an issue, that doesn’t mean you’re over!” Midnight reacted by closing himself off more, so Crystal decided she needed to change tactics before he locked down completely. “But okay, she’s being a pain. What did she do to you exactly?”

“She laughed at me, that’s what she did!” he snapped. “I told her about that crash and she laughed in my face about it. I just don’t get how she could be so insensitive to me about this!”

“Whoa whoa, Stormy, easy,” Crystal replied, gently pushing a hoof against his chest. Midnight was hyperventilating, his rage getting the better of him, and Crys knew that wasn’t going to help anypony. As he thankfully started to listen to her calming advice, he started breathing slowly and rhythmically like she’d taught him almost a year ago now, to help his anxiety. “Alright, now can you fill me in on something real quick?” Midnight sighed, but nodded with closed eyes. “I realize you don’t want to talk about this, but…what crash are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

There was another heavy sigh from the pegasus, before he looked away from Crys and spoke again. He glanced around for a moment, then spoke in a whisper. “I…I was practicing a complex flip one night, and I lost control. I slipped out of the loop and I slammed into a tree." Midnight winced, but continued to talk, still not looking at Crys as she watched his face carefully. "I walked it off without a problem, but I was so ashamed it was eating me up inside. I had to talk to somepony about it. I thought Winter would be understanding, but…but she just laughed in my face over it.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Winter I know…” Crystal said, trying to gauge Midnight’s reaction to her statement. She wasn't certain what he thought, but she decided to try and push forward anyways. “Is…I know that’s embarrassing and I wouldn’t want somepony I care about laughing at me for having a problem like that, but…is that all she did?”

“What do you mean ‘all’?!” Midnight snapped, causing Crys to recoil. “She laughed at my flying, doesn’t she know how much that means to me? She’s mocking me for…for…agh, what’s wrong with her?!”

“Midnight, hang on a second. I…I haven’t ever heard you talking about flying like that before. I know you like being up there, but…what does that mean to you then?” Things were suddenly beginning to fall into place, and she had to push forward and figure out if she was correct. “You’ve only spoken to me about flying as a way of getting around, a good escape for a dangerous situation if you get too far into the forest. Is that not what it’s about to you then?”

“Of course it’s not, flying is something…I…” he started to yell, but he quickly backpedaled. “Crystal, I…you can’t tell this to anypony else, got it?” Crystal nodded immediately. “I…well, you know how I feel about the Wonderbolts, right?”

“’Kinda overrated’, I think were your exact words?”

Midnight nodded, briefly smirking at her words before he continued in a hushed voice. “Well, I…I’ve still gone to a few of their shows, and…and I watch how everypony looks at them. I watch their looks and I can’t help but think that, well, I kind of…sometimes I might…” His voice dropped dead quiet as his neck and wings drooped. “I might like having somepony look at me like that.”

Crystal smiled as she softly put a hoof on his back, stroking the back of his neck softly as she tried to ease his addled mind. “Aw Stormy, you want just a little attention? So you really enjoy flying like that then?”

“It’s not just the attention, it’s the feeling I get while I’m up there. Feeling the wind under my feathers, it’s…I just can’t describe it," he stared into the sky, gasping and smiling as he stared at nothing specific. "It just feels like I belong there. I practice tricks like that because it feels good to me, because I love the sensation I get after I do some insane stunt. It’s something I want somepony to see…not everypony, but somepony, sometime.”

Crystal nodded understandingly, thinking of how she felt when she found a perfect gemstone hidden deep inside the crystal mines. “So, when Whispy laughed at hearing you made a mistake, she insulted something about you that you hold so close to your heart?”

Midnight nodded. “But it’s not fair, is it? To be this mad at her…you didn’t know, I haven’t told her anything about that feeling…nopony knows how much flying means to me.”

“Well, that’s not true anymore,” Crys smiled, swinging in and bumping her flank into Midnight’s. He jolted in surprise and looked up at her, breathing softer as she watched her smile. “And I don’t think Winter’s going to be ok being so mad after you explain how she hurt you, is she?”

“I really doubt it,” Midnight replied, with a little smile of his own. “But when we’ve been so angry at each other, I don’t know if she can forgive me that easily…”

“She might not Stormy, but that’s a problem you have to face if it’s going to get better.” Crystal didn’t like having to say that, but she didn’t have any better advice for him right now. He just had to try and make things work, that was the end of it.

As expected, Midnight sighed, but he nodded his head. “It can’t just be easy all the time, I guess. Can I ask you to come with me, make sure I don’t put my hoof in my mouth again?”

“I’d be delighted to, and I can’t wait for this to end. I hate seeing you two fighting like this.”

“Alright, alright, thanks for the extra guilt,” Stormy bonked her in the shoulder. “We’d better go before she gets too…riled…Crys, do you see that?”

“What? See what?” she asked, quickly turning her gaze to match his. He was looking somewhere up in the sky.

“Over there, something headed towards Canterlot,” he said, pointing with a hoof. Crystal looked as close as she could, following where he was pointing, until she spotted what he was talking about. There was something moving towards the capital city…some things, at least three large shadows moving and…flapping wings?

“Are there supposed to be griffons visiting or something?” she wondered aloud.

“I feel like some noise would have spread down here if a delegation was coming…wait, are they…they changed heading. They’re coming this way.”

Ch2: Crushing Regret

As Crys ran off after Midnight, Winter was left alone again, with just enough sense to remember she hadn’t been in the privacy of her home. She glanced around, a little embarrassed, as a few ponies stared at her as the sole combatant left in the recent show they’d been hearing.

“Luna damn it, Midnight,” she cursed under her breath, before trotting off in anger and embarrassment, trying to avoid the eyes of the public. This wasn’t the spotlight she enjoyed at all…this was humiliating, being the subject of judgment from a distance, and he didn’t even have the decency to share in the shame of being looked at like an insane pony. At least this wouldn’t last too long, and if she just laid low for a few days everypony who was looking at her would completely forget the spectacle she’d just been part of.

With a pained grumble and a sigh, Winter turned towards her home and hurried to the front door. She ducked inside, into the enchanted environment inside that kept her whole house cold enough for her unusual body. She slammed the door in frustration, before trying to stop her heart from pounding in her chest. The ache still reminded her of the rage of the elemental creature she had been possessed by two months ago, the fury it had pressed into her heart, and the idea it hadn't left her fully still terrified her. It was all that had kept her frustrations back for several days of frustration. Why couldn't Midnight just see what she was so mad about? Why did he not understand her fear for him, how could he turn that fear for his sanity to be her fault?!

Winter set her head against the wall for a moment, sighing again in frustration as she tried to cool her mind a bit. She hung her sunhat up on the rack by the door and grabbed a collection of shopping bags she had meant to take with her earlier today. Her run-in with Midnight had kept her from grabbing the few groceries she needed, the meal she'd been planning for Midnight for days... "Well THAT'S not going to happen," she growled, but still headed back out the door anyways: she'd need something to eat anyways, Midnight or no. At least she was sure she didn't need her sunhat in the weakening fall afternoon light.

A couple minutes later Winter was not far from the market, just trying to picture what the heck she was going to do for dinner tonight, trying her hardest to push Midnight from her mind right now. She heard somepony yelling up ahead, saying that 'something' was coming, but she wasn't focused enough to worry about exactly what they were rambling about now. She shut her eyes in frustration as she stepped around a corner, only to suddenly smash headfirst into somepony running towards her. She was bowled over as she felt the warmth of their body fall on top of her, the soft touch of feathered wings falling on her outstretched hoof, a very familiar scent in her nostrils. She cracked her eyes and saw exactly what she thought, and instantly her glare doubled in strength. “Oww! Midnight, get off me!” Whispy growled, trying to flip herself over as Midnight scrambled to get off her.

“Winter I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for the fight, and for everything." The pegasus stammered as he unwound his legs from hers. She stood and brushed her coat off as he kept going. "This is all my fault, but right now I don’t have time to talk about this. I need to…”

“And what the hay do you expect me to take that to mean?!” Winter snarled. “What are you even running around for, you and Crystal?! What’s your problem?!”

Midnight recoiled at Winter’s fury, especially as her rage finally snapped and she felt just a little of her elemental magic flaring in her eyes. Crystal opened her mouth, taking a deep breath to explain what they’d both seen, only for somepony to beat her too it. “Holy Celestia, what is that thing?!”

All three of their heads snapped around towards the sound of the voice…only to see a massive dark shadow descending over Ponyville. Winter gasped in horror as it looked like one of the shadows was headed straight for her, only for Midnight to bellow “MOVE!” and slam into her, kick-starting her brain and allowing her to run. She glanced behind her to see something huge, something that stood upright and was nearly tall as a single-story building. The elemental had terrified her for its raw power, but this was an entirely different class of fear she’d never expected to feel.

“What in Luna’s name is that thing?!” she yelled, glancing at Midnight as she tried to keep running.

“No idea, but it… look out!” Midnight shouted, slamming his hooves down in front of her.

Winter caught sight of a second creature landing directly in front of them, forcing her to skid to a halt. She looked to her left and saw there was an alleyway clear to run down, but she didn’t have the time to react. As she stared at the shadow, however, she heard a second crash somewhere behind her. “Get away from me!” she heard Crys yell, and as Winter spun to face her friend.

The first creature was looming over her, Crystal craning her neck back to look up at what appeared to be its face, but in her panic Winter could only see feathers and…maybe it was fur? She couldn’t tell for certain. She caught sight of a cart glowing with Crystal’s aura as it lifted itself off the ground and hurled it in the direction of the creature. Unfortunately, the creature blocked it with a massive wing, and pulled that wing back to reach out to Crystal.

“Crys no!” Winter cried, lunging forward to the unicorn’s rescue, but it was too late already. The wing came sailing down and slammed into Crystal’s side, throwing her into the nearby building wall. She gasped and recoiled off the wall before falling limp on the ground. In the heat of the moment Winter couldn't tell if she were unconscious, or...

The mere idea that it could have happened caused something deep in Winter to snap, and reflexively a huge amount of cold energy flooded into her system as she forced it into her, but as she tried to concentrate on absorbing the power, she lost her focus on the world around her. The creature that had just blasted Crystal across the alley approached in a single stride and mimicked the gesture it had made on Winter, tossing her hard in the opposite direction. She hit the opposite wall hard enough to daze her, causing her concentrated energy to misfire into her immediate surroundings. A halo of ice crystallized around Winter as the rush of energy drained her body further, making it near impossible to move…right at the worst possible moment.

Behind her, Midnight was facing the other creature all on his own. He was less equipped to fight something that massive, however, and only could dodge two wingstrokes, trying to find something he could turn into an advantage. He didn’t get that lucky, as a third strike hit him and threw him aside, knocking his glasses off in the process. The unfiltered sunlight blinded him, but he knew he couldn’t stay still. He stumbled back onto his hooves, only to be knocked over again, this time to be grabbed by the talons of the creature. Winter's eyes recovered enough to stare in horror, just enough sense in her to recognize what was happening, but not enough to try and even sort out what she might do to help him.

“It’s no good,” a sudden, deep voice resonated from behind her. As she turned her head, Winter realized that whatever creature this thing was had just spoken. They weren’t mindless beasts looking for a pony meal after all; these things could think, and talk. “Just grab the two and get out of here. Meet at the desert if you have to!”

Suddenly, the creature holding Stormy spread its wings and took off. Winter saw Midnight’s coat in the claws as it left the ground, just barely hearing him grunting and struggling to break free; with his eyes clenched shut and his wings almost certainly pinned to his back, she realized he was helpless to escape at that point, no matter how much he struggled. The creature behind her suddenly took off too, her head spinning around just in time to catch sight of Crystal’s green coat in its grasp. They were kidnapping her best friends right in front of her!

Winter knew that she should have done something, fired off an ice shot or called down a blizzard, anything, but she was only just regaining strength to move. Plus, she had a horrifying thought right as she stood up as fast as her body would allow her: both those things were easily three times Midnight’s size, and they were currently in the air, quickly gaining altitude.

Winter knew she should have done something, but as she took aim at the creature's wing, she gasped in horror. If she took their wing out, the creature would fall out of the sky, crashing down on a building, or landing on their talons...talons currently clutching her friends.

“Midnight!” Winter cried, as the two shadows were joined by a third from somewhere else in town. It’s claws were empty as it fled town, pursued by several objects tossed high above the roofs presumably by ponies it had been terrorizing. The idea that this creature hadn’t been able to grab anypony else should have been comforting, but Winter could only stare at the shadowy outline of the other two, unable to actually see her friends but at the same time only seeing their forms grow smaller and smaller as she stood there, helpless. Her body just locked up, unable to move until the shadows were gone from the sky.

When Winter finally recovered her senses, she looked around and spotted Midnight’s glasses, discarded with a lens cracked from their impact with the ground. She picked them up and looked at them closer, her heart pounding furiously as she saw the spectre of Midnight’s moonlight eyes behind the lenses like she was so used to seeing…but there was nothing there, not really. “Midnight, I’m sorry…I’m so so sorry…” she whimpered, clutching his glasses close to her chest.

Ch3: Darkness Looms

Midnight's body groaned as he slowly regained consciousness, every piece of him complaining as he regained sensation in it. It took his addled mind a minute or two for his memories to return, and for him to remember they weren't a dream or hallucination: The shadows, the creatures, their dive towards Ponyville, running... Midnight shuddered as he felt the talons close around him, his struggle for what had to be miles, eyes clamped shut in the brilliant sunlight for all but the briefest moments. There was a desert, a grumbling, shadows moving, a crash, a fight, all to darkness.

Head still spinning from his recovery, Midnight strained to nurse his aches as he cracked his eyes slowly. But it did him no good, as the room around him was nearly pitched black: There was so little light even his sensitive night vision made him strain to see his hooves in front of his face. He didn't need his eyes to tell where his hooves were though, as when he moved his hooves there was a loud, heavy rattling between them. His eyes mostly adjusted to the gloom, letting him see exactly what he was afraid to think: his hooves were chained, a heavy iron shackle wrapped around each foreleg. As he tugged experimentally on the chains he gasped with pain, feeling the metal bite into his hooves. It was like there were small teeth on the inside of the shackle, biting into him with each struggle. As he struggled to stand, he felt another iron band around his neck, a chain heavier than the first running somewhere up to the nearby wall, surely to keep him from trying to slip away. There was a band around his barrel too, also toothed as he gasped sharply when he failed to unfurl his wings and was bit for his efforts.

The pain subsided after a moment of standing motionless, allowing Midnight to reopen his eyes to glance around. The darkness was oppressive, but as his eyes adapted ever so slightly a figure began to emerge in the darkness. A figure with a green coat...

"Crystal!" he gasped, and lurched forwards to check on her. He remembered hearing her get smashed into a wall, and he hadn't hears anything from her the entire trip...was she okay? She couldn't have been dead, could she? But as he reached out to try and touch Crystal, the chain attached to his neck snapped taut, the teeth of the collar digging into his neck and making him gasp in pain as he recoiled. He tried to adjust the collar to be less painful, but it predictably refused to budge and he sighed with frustration, laying down as close to Crystal as he could manage. There didn't seem to be any blood on her head, but he couldn't reach out to check properly for any injuries or bruises because he couldn't get near enough to touch her. He could only sit, in silent panic, until a minute later she stirred. "Crys?" he murmured, shifting to reach for her despite her still being out of reach.

As the mare groaned, shifting slowly with her ears twisted back, Midnight watched her carefully. She seemed okay, if very dazed and still waking up from being knocked out. "Stormy?" she groaned, grogginess starting to fade from her voice. "Midnight what happ..." But as soon as Crystal opened her eyes, she jolted in shock, her eyes darting frantically at their surroundings. "What happened? Where...where's the light? Where did the light go?!" Crystal jerked to her hooves, only to jerk again at the sting of the chains bit her as well. "What's happening?!"

"Crystal, Crys take it easy!" Midnight cried. "It's okay, it's alright! I'm right here, I promise I'm here!"

Crystal's eyes were shrunken with fear, but her ear shifted forward to hear Midnight's voice. She looked frantically for any sign of him, but it was obvious she couldn't see him in the slightest. Midnight winced, but shifted his hooves forward. Crys jumped frantically at the rattling chains as Midnight tried to take her hoof gently, only worsened as she heard her own chains rattle with her movements, biting into her skin. “Why isn’t my magic working?!” she shrieked, causing Midnight to wince. “I can’t…I can’t light my horn, what’s happening!!?”

“Crystal please, it’s alright,” Midnight urged her. “Close your eyes, it’s going to be okay…”

“Close my eyes, close my eyes…” Crystal muttered, screwing her eyeballs shut. Midnight watched fearfully as she took several slow, deep breaths, her eyes pressed tightly shut to help her zone out of the pitched blackness around her.

“Crystal, it’s only me. We’re alone here, I promise you it’s only me,” he said, as Crystal nodded in understanding, but Midnight could still see her shaking. "They have us chained up, I can't get any closer. Can you inch closer to my voice?" he asked gently, and Crystal nodded in reply. She carefully shifted her body closer to him, hearing the chain of her leash pull itself taut as she just reached Midnight's outstretched hooves. He grabbed her hoof and squeezed it comfortingly as he could.

"Where...where are we?" Crystal murmured, clinging to Midnight's hooves as she kept her eyes shut. Reflexively he shook his head, but knew that Crystal's panic at the pitched blackness prevented her from seeing his response.

"I don't know Crys..." he replied hesitantly. His uncertainty only made Crystal look worse, more stressed, prompting him to try and fill her in. "We're chained to the wall right now...there's a door on the other side of a flagstone room, that's all I can see."

Crystal shivered a little, glancing in the direction Midnight had indicated, but her straining to ser anything was obvious enough for him to pick up on. "Why can't I use my magic? What...my light, it's not working..." Crystal squeaked with fear. "What's happening to me?"

"It's okay Crystal, it's alright I promise," Midnight whispered, but his own voice was shaking. He wished he was better at hiding his panic, being unbreakable and supportive as Crys normally was, but it was no good for him to try and hide his emotions now. "They've got some kind of cap locked on your horn, I can just see it...I can't reach though."

Crystal glanced upwards and raised her hooves carefully, chain clattering as it folded between her hooves closer and closer. Crystal grasped the cap carefully and twisted at it, the chain smacking her un the face and making her yelp in fear, then again in pain when the cap refused to move. She tried again, but only gasped as it remained locked in place. She let her hooves fall to the ground, tears welling in her eyes as she shook her head. Midnight reached out carefully to grab her hoof, causing her to jerk her hoof back as she heard him move. But after a second she reached out to him and took his hoof clumsily, still straining to see in the darkness. Midnight pressed his hoof to hers. “We…we’re trapped here,” she whimpered. “What do they want with us?”

“I wish I knew,” he answered, patting her hoof tenderly. "But I know they won't get away with it. The princesses won't allow it, Vlyka and Winter absolutely won't."

“Yeah, right, Winter and Vlyka will handle this…” Crystal muttered, nodding her head absently. Midnight could see her straining to remain calm and encourage herself. Hr didn't know what he could possibly do to help her stay calm. He stroked her hoof as she shook, straining not to cry as she whimpered. “I want to go home…”

Ch4: The Hunt Begins

The train's wheels had barely stopped rolling, the car had only just come to a halt at the station, when a short burgundy mare practically shouldered the poor conductor aside. Vlyka Velveteen sniffed the air and glanced around, her ordinary nervousness at a new place or ponies swallowed whole by her fear at what Winter had told her. Her upper fangs dug into her lip as her mouth tensed with worry, sniffing again to try and figure out what scents were natural to this new town. She had heard little about Dodge Junction, just that it was one of the towns nearest the Badlands, which rumors had told Winter that was where those monsters that had attacked Ponyville came from. The arid climate around her gave Vlyka a momentary pause to worry about Winter behind her: the snowy pony's body didn't do well with heat, but it didn't feel too hot for what Vlyka thought Winter cold take... Vlyka's thoughts didn't last long though, shifting back on the fear and determination about her sister Crys, how she'd refuse to give up finding her.

Vlyka's sensitive sense of smell was momentarily overwhelmed by the new odors, but she thankfully was adept at blocking out the sheer volume of smells that came at her nose. She brushed her darker pink mane from her similarly colored eyes as she blinked in the sun, her tritanomalous vision not changing the shades of brown and orange around her as much as she was used to. She would maybe have taken a more interested note in that fact under better circumstances, but now she had far greater worries to attend to. She hadn't even slept on the train like Winter had, unable to pause for a moment while their friends were in danger.

Winter put a hoof on Vlyka's shoulder gently and nodded towards a small group of ponies hovering around the train platform chittering and staring up at the sky. Vlyka sighed, but as she sniffed the air and found nothing, she admitted that some socialization might give them a hint as to where to go next. She could only hope that would be less painful than the thought of losing her sister.

Vlyka nodded and followed Winter as she trotted towards the group. "Excuse me?" the snowmare called, drawing their attention to herself. As the ponies looked down at her, Winter glanced up at the sky as if asking what they were looking at. "Did you ponies see anything...odd recently?" she asked.

Vlyka grumbled silently, wondering why Winter didn't just come out and say what she was looking for, but to her surprise an older pony seemed to be keyed into the problem already. "You saw those things too?" the old stallion asked in a heavy country accent. “Those big, flying varmints that headed off south o here?”

"Well that's certainly odd, and maybe what we were looking for," Winter nodded. "Did you get a good look at them by chance, see any details?"

"Not really," the pony shrugged, as the crowd around them shook their heads or looked confused. "They were too high up for me to see anything but a shadow. Right big varmints though, surprised I haven’t seen ‘em before now. Wonder where they came from…”

Vlyka sighed impatiently and held her tongue for a moment, but right before Winter opened her mouth to speak the little mare's patience snapped. "Were there holding any ponies captive?" she blurted out.

The crowd jerked backwards in shock, a few of those looser attached to the group turning to trot away swiftly. The stallion looked nervously ay Vlyka, before glancing up at the sky. "I dunno, they were too high up to see anything. Why, did you..."

But Vlyka had already turned her attention away from the group. They had nothing useful to give her, it was time to go. She focused again on tilting her head back and sniffing the air: now that the town's general scent was starting to settle in her nose she could distinguish unique smells, and she picked through the scents in a desperate effort to find something helpful.

As Vlyka focused on sniffing, her other senses tuned out, keeping her from hearing the crowd's mild panic at Vlyka's statement and Winter trying to keep them calm but alert. "We may have somepony in danger, if the guards come down this way point them towards the creatures, ok?" As she got a few nods of understanding Winter then turned to hurry after Vlyka, who was already making a beeline for the southern border of town. She had something, something faint but unmistakable, something hopeful, and even as Winter's mildly irritated voice drifted into her mind Vlyka couldn't focus on anything else. "We could try and talk to somepony maybe, explain to them why we think somepony was kidnapped…”

“I think I smell Crystal,” was Vlyka’s only response, her nose up in the air as she sniffed. “It's faint. Scent won’t hold, we need to go.”

Winter stared back at her in mild disbelief. "Vlyka, I know your sense of smell is incredible but..."

"Do you have a better idea?" Vlyka replied, one eyebrow raised as she glared at Winter. Her lips were pulled tight against her teeth, her bottom fangs digging into the back of her lower lip. Winter responded by simply shaking her head, prompting Vlyka to turn her head back up and take another quick sniff to try and catch the scent again. There was the chance it wasn't really there, she could just have been imagining her sister's familiar scent...heck she probably was, in desperation to find some trace of her. But her nose at least wanted to lead them in the same direction the locals had suggested.

"Let's get going then," said Winter, as she readjusted the saddlebag on her back. Vlyka curtly nodded to her in acknowledgement before trotting out of town and into the desert ahead of them. It didn't take long for the dingy, cluttered scents of the town to fade away, and with her nose to the ground Vlyka could be more certain of her findings. She was almost certain that Crystal had come through here, though it certainly wasn't by hoof, of even on the ground at all. It was lucky that there was any trail for her to track in fact, and she refused to lose it now.

“This way,” she said, hastening her trot deeper into the desert. She didn't focus on anything but the scent, but her anger wasn't so easily forgotten and gnawed slightly at the edges of her mind, causing her whole body to tense as she walked. She heard Winter's hoofsteps behind her, the mare's familiar dry-wintery scent billowing forwards even against a headwind that helped Vlyka get any kind of scent for Crys. She could tell that the warm afternoon air was rising in the open terrain ahead of them, but she still felt confident enough that Crys was out there, and that she would find her.

The two walked in silence for about an hour as Vlyka concentrated, trying to cope with the age of the trail and rising wind taking the little scent there was and throwing it in the wrong direction. She may not have had the training of a sniffer dog who did this professionally, but Vlyka had reasoned out that changing wind directions would fool her into going the wrong way. She was doing her best to compensate for it, but she couldn't deny the pit of uncertainty starting to grow in her heart.

"I can't believe I did this to him..." Winter's voice caused Vlyka to snap out of her focus, disorienting her for a second as she stopped in her tracks and turned around to Winter. The snowy mare nearly bowled Vlyka over as she was distracted as well, only just realizing Vlyka was staring at her. "This...Vlyka I'm sorry, this is all my fault."

For a second Vlyka wanted to yell, snap at Winter for putting Crys and Midnight in danger. She bared her fangs and curled her lip, but the growl didn't rumble from her throat. Instead she shook her head and sighed with irritation. "I know." She said abruptly, turning back to the scent and trying to just move on. But behind her came the thump of somepony falling to the ground, prompting het to look back again.

Winter was indeed on the ground, hooves crossed over her face as her whole body shook. "I'm such an awful pony, I did this to him! He was going for help and I...I just wanted to yell at him. And they went after him, and Crys...they targeted them! It has to be because Midnight ran from me, they were all alone outside town..."

Vlyka stood in mild horror, hearing way too many thoughts spilling from Winter's mouth that felt far too familiar. But Winter had never succumbed to that kind of mood before like Vlyka always did, she had never mentioned being so distraught except for the elemental incident...this wasn't like the Winter Vlyka knew at all. And here Vlyka was, watching a friend, her only friend right now, not even trying to comfort Winter. She was doing no better than Winter now, only focusing on something far beyond when there were far more immediate issues she should have known to solve now...

The spiral almost caught Vlyka and threw her into her natural abyss of dark thinking, but something caught her just before she fell. A flash of green fur in her mind's eye, a memory of Crystal's soft voice talking rationally to her emotional overload. Vlyka may have considered herself useless in terms of mental health assistance, but right now she was Winter's only recourse. She had to at least try, right? "Winter, hey..." Vlyka whispered, stepping just a bit closer. Her hoof moved awkwardly towards Winter's shoulder, but she didn't touch her outright: even though she liked Winter, Vlyka wasn't sure about being so touchy-feely, even in an emotionally distressing moment like this. Her thoughts turned dark again, nagging her for not putting aside her own social anxiety for Winter's benefit right now, and in anger at herself she stepped backwards growling. "Okay Winter...look," she said, trying to stay calm. "I don't blame you for what's happening here."

With a sniffle, Winter glanced back up at Vlyka, who tried to smile at her friend but wasn't quite up to it. "Vlyka..." said Winter, with a hint of relief in her voice.

"You're out here trying to save Crys as much as Midnight. I know you, this isn't a problem we're just going to let sit." At that Winter smiled sadly and nodded, standing back upright. Vlyka moved again to hug her friend, but paused and shifted uneasily back. Winter smiled again and shook her head understandingly, letting Vlyka come down from her social nervousness. "We'll find them, together. We'll get them back, and they'll be safe."

Winter nodded again and readjusted her saddlebag so it rested comfortably on her back, before trotting to Vlyka's side and staring off into the distance. "Hang on Crys, Midnight, we're coming."

Ch5: Hope's Light Lost

The pitched blackness of the room made Crystal shiver with each glance around her. She had never been great at handling the dark like this, even when she was deep in a mine hunting for the purest gemstones for her shop. She'd always had her magic to back her up there, a spell to light the way for her if her lamps ever failed deep in the mountain caves.

"Crys, it'll be ok..." Midnight whispered, jerking Crystal out of her panicked staring into the inky blackness engulfing her. She saw a shape shifting dangerously close to her hoof, the clink of a chain shifting instead of the nervous tinkling of her own chains rattling as she shook with fear. Midnight's body was nearly impossible to see in the dark, even giving her eyes time to adjust. She reached her hoof out towards his, barely grazing his hoof and causing her to breathe deeply.

"It's really childish, isn't it?" she sighed, her voice still quavering a little bit. "Basically a miner and I'm still afraid of the dark. Got a nocturnal friend like you..."

"Well, we aren't all perfect," Midnight tried to joke, laughing slightly until Crystal nudged his hoof again. He tried to grab her hoof with both of his, and she returned the gesture with a soft smile she hoped he could see it with his better eyes. "I'm starting to see...well, not see, why the dark makes you so afraid."

Crys smiled again, a weak giggle working up her throat and desperate to come out to lighten the moment. Her nerves swallowed the joy, however, and her smile faded in moments. She tried to stop herself from shaking again, trying to follow her many breathing suggestions to Midnight himself for his general anxiety. The shock that she was so rattled only made her feel worse, knowing Midnight would be scared too and would need her usual supportive attitude to cling to...but she was too rattled to provide it yet. "I can't even remember what happened..." she muttered, glancing at the chains around her hooves and finding them by the rattle as she shook. "Midnight? What happened in Ponyville?"

The chains near her shifted as Midnight jerked in the darkness just beyond her. "Crys," he muttered, "are you sure that you..."

"Please." Crystal whimpered, shaking her head. "I can't remember, it's making me so scared...I don't know how I got here, it's like a black spot. I'm missing..."

"Shh..." Midnight whispered. "Shh Crystal it's okay." She heard Midnight shifting closer to her...at least as long as the chain around his neck allowed. "It's alright Crys." She shuddered and nodded, trying her hardest to stay calm. "Do you really think that you're ok to..."

Midnight trailed off for a moment, surely seeing the begging look in Crystal's eyes. She knew she was hurting him, worrying him, and in any other situation she felt certain this would never have happened. "It still doesn't have to," she thought, taking a slow deep breath to try and calm herself down. Midnight needed support too, he didn't need to worry about her panic. "I think it will help me, please."

Midnight gave out a long sigh, but Crys eventually saw his form nod in the shadows. "Well...you remember that we spotted those creatures headed towards Canterlot?"

"Yes, that's clear enough," Crystal replied. "We ran into Winter and tried to warn the town, then..."

"...you got knocked out, I heard it behind me," Midnight said after a pause. "And Winter got knocked down after. Oh Luna I hope she's..." Crystal reached for Midnight's hoof and brushed it, making him sigh and continue. "They knocked me down and I lost my glasses, it was too bright for me to see but I could feel it. They grabbed me and flew off. I kept trying to break free but their talons..."

"Well they're big as a house, so I don't blame you for losing a fight against three of them." Her words spilled forth before Crystal even thought of it, hearing the self-depreciation in Midnight's voice and instinctively moving to counter it. "You tried to keep them off us. You were wonderful."

"Well, I'm too worried about what they might do to us to fight you on that," he replied with a slightly worried chuckle. Crystal laughed weakly too, shaking her head with a faint smile on her face. It fell a few moments later, as Midnight continued. "They started flying somewhere, I think southeast of Ponyville but I can't be sure. I just know they flew over a desert. Then they started fighting, something about their raid and why it failed. I should have paid more attention to them talking..." Crystal batted at Midnight's hoof again, an effort to turn his mind again before it went self-destructive again. She succeeded. "I was thinking how to get us out, I finally saw you in their talons as the one holding you slammed into the one holding me. They went at each other, but they were both too fast and dodged. Until I timed the other one's attack, I kicked mine to distract it and he got clobbered. He dropped me...my wings were stiff and I barely landed safely in the sand."

"But they still had me?" Crystal asked.

"Yes, and I didn't know if you were still alive. I couldn't tell, you were out cold. But even if I'd wanted to run, they were on me too fast and I couldn't see clearly. By the time I stared right at one, it was on top of me. It slammed into me and rammed me against a rock or something. My wing went numb, then I hit my head..."

Crystal gasped in worry and lurched forwards, snapping against her collar and leash and making her yelp, but her own pain was forgotten immediately. "Midnight are you alright? Are you dizzy, are your ears ringing? Oh I wish I could see your head..."

"Crys I'm ok," Midnight replied. "I mean, okay as I can be in here. My wing is a little sore and I can't really stretch it right now, but..." He sighed and set his head down on the ground gently.

"So you...blacked out then...?" Crystal let out a soft whimper at the realization that hit her. "So you don't know where we are..."

"No, I don't," Midnight sighed too. "So how will anypony? How are we going to get out of here?"

Crys bit her lip as Midnight's fear dug into her, straining to keep her nerves steady. Buy one image came straight to her mind and gave her something vital to cling to. "Vlyka...she won't give up."

Midnight shifted his head and looked at her, she heard his breath steady and strengthen just a little. "No...no Vlyka won't. And Winter won't either. And there's the princesses in town, they can't let invaders just steal their subjects, can they?"

Crystal shook her head and smiled shakily at Midnight's reply. "No they won't, and I know Vlyka won't let them forget us even if they didn't care." She smiled and nodded, setting her head down to rest a little bit. She knew already she couldn't break free, she could see nothing around her and her chains were too sturdy to break. She could do nothing for herself, it was all up to the others now. "I hope they aren't too late..." she thought, barely restraining the whimper of fear that accompanied it. She couldn't crash in front of Midnight when he was so shaken, she could sense his panic just under the surface but still trying to help her stay calm. He was trying so hard for her, surely hoping to repay how she did it for him so much more, but now she still needed to be there to help him stay sane.

Crystal felt time passing them by very slowly, the two of them lying as close as their chains allowed. Neither spoke often, only occasionally to ensure the other was still there, still as afraid of the danger they were in and lost to their surroundings. Eventually the silence was too much for Crystal and she sat up, inching close to Midnight. "How is it still so dark in here?" she muttered, only partially kidding in her frustration. "I thought eyes were supposed to adjust to the darkness..."

Midnight chuckled at her, shaking his head. "I don't get it either, I still can only barely see you. Your green is just..." he stammered for a moment as his voice cut out. Crys felt a tad guilty hearing that noise, hearing her friend struggle to stay calm in the face of this awful kidnapping: at least she wasn't alone in feeling completely lost.

"Midnight..." Crystal whispered. "We're going to be ok, right? I mean...we will be ok. They'll save us."

"I know Crys," he said, smiling just enough for Crystal to see. "I know they will." Midnight stood up at that, Crystal following him as he looked around again. "we just need to stay strong, until..."

But just as soon as the two ponies felt their hope returning, the moment was torn violently away from them. A torch on the far wall, out of either of their reach, suddenly flared to life in a flash of an unknown magic. The fire blasted light onto the room, causing both ponies to drop their heads at the sudden blinding light engulfing them both. Crystal yelped in pain and clenched her eyes shut, screwed up tight as the new light burned her retinas even through her eyelids. After a few seconds she blinked, trying to readjust her vision to the light, opening her eyes to glance around her.

The room was barren as Midnight had described, with only a rotted and rusty door on the far wall with the torch on the opposite. Her chains looking rusty as the door's metal, but as she glanced at her hooves she saw what she had felt before: the inside of the metal bands were jagged, almost sharp nubs, and as she shifted her hoof experimentally she felt them dig into her leg painfully. There was a hint of blood on her leg, just enough to make her wish she had her magic available to clean and dress the wounds. But as she glanced up from her own terrors, Crys saw something that instantly worried her more.

Just in front of her, lying in chains just as rusted and worn, was Midnight. She had just been able to make out his outline in the pitched blackness before, but now she could see his coat and mane were disheveled from rough handling, a nasty looking bruise on his left temple. But right now the biggest worry was that she couldn't see his pale yellow eyes, which were clamped shut thanks to the blinding light around him. Midnight's eyes were adapted to the night for which he was named, and the sudden change to bright light was far worse for him than anypony else. She could see him writhing in pain, the gasp and groan of him straining to cover his with his hooves. Even with his eyes shut, she could see the sudden fear his temporary blindness had brought, Crys feeling his defenselessness even more than her own helplessness now: she could at least see anything coming for her. "Midnight, can you hear me?" she asked.

"Crys?" he replied, glancing in her direction. His voice was shaking, and he glanced around as if begging for another sign of Crystal's presence. She moved her hoof as close to him as he could.

"I'm here, I'm here," she said, offering what little comfort she could. She reached for Midnight's hoof, grazing it as he tried to squirm closer and take it, Crystal smiling at him despite knowing he couldn't see. It helped her focus on him, being supportive for his sake. "It's going to be alright..."

Just then, the door jerked open, slamming hard against the wall. It would have rebounded, if not for the massive claw stretching into the room as it bashed the door open, leaving just enough space in the doorway for the massive shadow to slide into the room. Crystal's gaze fell on the creature as it entered, paralyzed with fear as she started identifying what she was looking at. The creature was enormous, its massive jackal-like head almost as big as the doors on Crystal's house. The dark fur on its face grew thick at the base of the neck, creating a ruff that gave the illusion of a lion's mane when seen from straight on. It's forelegs ended in griffon-like claws, but Crystal could see that their arms were far more than just that: their flight feathers were folded behind the forearms, the whole arm covered in feathers to give them wings to fly. She could only just see the back half of the creature, another set of bird-like talons on its muscular back legs and a feathered tail stuck outside the doorway.

"Crys, what's happening?" asked Midnight, shifting to look at the noise the creature was making. Crystal glanced between her friend and the creature, who's bloodshot eyes narrowed on the gasping pegasus.

Crystal's heart pounded in her chest, panic still flooding her body with the urge to run. But even if she weren't chained down, she couldn't run, not now. With the distance she had on her collar chain Crystal stepped towards the door, trying to put herself between the creature and Midnight. "You won't touch him, you hear me?!" she growled. "Don't you dare!"

The creature growled at her, a low rumbling noise that shook the flagstones beneath Crystal's hooves almost as much as it shook her. She wanted to stand her ground, but the massive size difference, plus the carnivorous fangs that by far put Vlyka's to shame, rattled her to her very core. Then, just to unnerve her further, the creature began to laugh, until it spoke in a deep rasping voice. "You are far better for our needs anyways."

Crystal gasped as the claw lurched forwards, past her to the wall behind her. She was almost buried in its feathers and fur, the rank, musky odor of it causing her eyes to water. She gagged on the stink as the creature's claws grabbed the chain around her neck. It somehow detached the chain from the wall and yanked it almost straight up, snapping the chain and pulling Crystal's collar to the point she was forced to lift her front hooves off the ground.

"No, stop!" Crystal gasped, as the creature pulled the chain taut and scraped itself towards the door. Crystal reached for Midnight, but the chain had already pulled her too far away to even reach him. "Let go, ahh!" Crystal gasped, as the collar dug into the back of her neck. She strained against the chain's pull, but the pain grew too intense for her to bear. Staggering forwards, stumbling when her forelegs got tangled in their own chain, Crystal tried her best to resist the pull again. But it was no good. "No, let go of me! Stop, Midnight!!"

"Crystal!!" Midnight screamed, reaching his hooves out to grab at Crystal. But they were too far away, and as she was yanked out into the hallway, the last thing Crystal saw was Midnight desperately trying to open his eyes. The door slammed shut behind her as she was dragged away, leaving Midnight alone in the cell.

Ch6: Frigid Reception

“It's a good thing that it's late autumn, huh?" said Winter, trying to force a laugh from her throat. She smiled at Vlyka, hoping for some kind of response from the little mare. Silence hung uncomfortably for a moment as Winter tried again to entice Vlyka to speak. "I spent the whole train ride thinking I'd be melting out here."

Vlyka made no effort to reply, closing her eyes and taking another deep whiff of the dry desert air around them. Winter rubbed her shoulder with a hoof and started to trot faster, noticing that Vlyka was pulling ahead of her even with her shorter legs. The little mare had always been a quiet one, Winter didn't begrudge her for her silence, but she had hoped for some kind of reply at least. It was so barren out here, Winter was nervous enough already, and Vlyka was her only company...

It was a terrible mix, Winter being raised for high-society social circles, Vlyka shrinking from anypony, even those she knew. The two barely spoke to each other outside of meeting with another friend, and then they were usually trading friendly jabs at each other. That's what Winter had been doing with the classic 'melting' line, setting herself up for a low blow from Vlyka. But the little mare was too distracted by her sister's scent to talk to Winter at all.

It had been a hard struggle for Winter to keep her mouth shut, hoping to make Vlyka comfortable as she could out here. As quiet as she was, Vlyka was pretty easy to read when somepony understood how she acted different from a typical pony. Her mouth was normally loose and relaxed in an almost tired expression, but now her fangs were digging deep into her lower lips, her upper yanked tight against her teeth as she stared out ahead of her. She usually had a purposeful gait, a goal and destination in mind and nothing would sway her from it, only now it was distorted and meandering, Vlyka too preoccupied to have her end goal in sight. She was deeply disturbed, and it rattled Winter to see her like this. Crystal would know what to say to her sis, to make Vlyka feel calm again, but she wasn't here...in fact it was worse, as she was the reason for Vlyka's problems. And yet, all Winter could do was beg for the little mare to talk to her.

"I’m glad you’re here though,” Winter changed tactics, unable to sit with her own thoughts. “You’re not going to give up even for a second, not until we find them. I…I really admire that, you know?" That got a tiny response, a brief smile on Vlyka's face, but the little mare didn't turn her head and the smile faded moments later. The smirk had inspired Winter just a little, proving to her that Vlyka wasn't ignoring her entirely and that her presence had some meaning. For just a few minutes, it pushed the swirling mass of 'what ifs' clear of her mind.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. “We’re going to find them, we have to. You’re already on the trail, just let me know what you need okay?” Vlyka nodded once in reply, but still refused to speak or acknowledge Winter more. But the small responses had diminishing returns on Winter's sanity, her need for some kind of social interaction only growing as her thoughts darkened again. She kept seeing images of Midnight, his smile, the sensations of his hugs, but they only spiraled downwards into seeing his anger at her from their fight. Would that be the last images she had of him? Was he already...

"Never thought I'd even survive out in a desert," she said, rather suddenly as she strained to not snap under the pressure in her mind. "It feels cooler than I imagined, but still really hot. How's it feeling to somepony who doesn't have a temperature problem?"

Again Vlyka said nothing, making Winter swallow nervously. It wasn't Vlyka's fault, she knew that the little mare wasn't being deliberately hurtful. But Winter couldn't help but be hurt, stuck without anyone to bounce her worry off of. She needed to hear somepony talking, now. "You know it’s too bad they didn’t head towards the Everfree Forest,” she said, smirking at Vlyka. “Then we could ask your extended family for help.” She let herself give off a cheesy smile, expecting Vlyka to whirl around and snap at her in irritation…but there was nothing. “Knock on wood, right?” she added, bracing for Vlyka to turn around and smack her on the shoulder. Even if by now she was used to Winter using that crack about her foalhood and timberwolves, Vlyka still acted up as part of their routine interactions. It was part of her act, her façade she had with Winter that the two just tacitly accepted was their relationship. But now there was nothing, silence from the mare, not even a twitch of her ear. Winter shook, almost stumbling over her hooves as she failed to cope with the blow. Everything about this situation was so very, very wrong...

Finally, the mental strain was too much and Winter broke down. “Vlyka please, just say something! I can’t take this silence!” she begged, her eyes welling with tears. “I know you hate talking to others, but I can’t do this!" She fell off her hooves, curling up in the sand and sniffling. "I can't take it out here, please...can you even hear me?"

The sound of hooves scraping in the sand told Winter that Vlyka had stopped, turned to face Winter, but she couldn't bear to open her eyes to look. She was shaking badly, trying to stop herself from crying, as she lay there broken in the sand. The added heat from the sands on her legs didn’t help Winter’s core temperature, adding to the heat of the afternoon sun, but she was so far beyond her breaking point that the heat didn't matter anymore.

It was several moments of deafening silence before Winter could even process what was happening, sniffling and rubbing her eyes as the tears leaked regardless of her efforts. But then, to her utter shock, Winter felt a hoof touch her shoulder. Jerked from her sadness she glanced up, staring at the face of the only pony who could have been touching her. Vlyka was there, standing inches from her as she gently pet Winter's shoulder. "Hey..." Vlyka murmured, smiling worriedly down at her. Winter could only stare, mouth hanging open as she listened to Vlyka in absolute shock. "You...you'd better calm down," said the little mare uneasily. "I didn't bring a bucket to carry you if you...if you melt down out here."

Vlyka looked embarrassed and nervous as she gently pet Winter's shoulder, shaking almost as much as Winter had been moments ago. It was obvious that the poor mare was desperate, trying to help the poor snowmare lying before her. But Vlyka was so out of her element, so confused, and she was still trying... Suddenly, Winter just burst out laughing, almost rolling on her side as she giggled madly. Vlyka pulled back, looking absolutely befuddled as Winter wiped the tears out of her eyes. "Oh Vlyka..." Winter gasped, smiling sadly as she stood up. Vlyka fell back just a little bit, but to Winter's surprise she didn't get out of touching range from her. So, tentatively, Winter raised her hoof to Vlyka's shoulder and pressed her hoof to it. Vlyka looked at the hoof, then back at Winter and smiled ever so slightly, before Winter gasped and lurched forwards, hugging Vlyka tightly. The little mare stood stock stiff until she raised a hoof and wrapped it around Winter's neck, squeezing warmly as the two embraced.

"I'm sorry Vlyka..." Winter sighed. "I tried to stay quiet..."

"No no, don't start," Vlyka growled, squeezing Winter tighter. "I know you like to talk, I just couldn't, I was..."

Winter let her grip go gently and pulled back, Vlyka following her lead as the two mares stared at each other. "I can't blame you for being you," Winter smirked. "This is just an awful situation..."

Vlyka nodded with a slight smirk. "But we can talk, at least a little. I'll try and be a bit more chatty for you."

"And I'll keep quiet and let you focus of your scents," Winter said, nodding. Vlyka smiled, before turning back in the direction they'd been wandering and taking a deep whiff. She continued to head off, Winter picking herself up and falling in line beside Vlyka, who slowed just enough for her to keep pace.

“You think anypony’s ever seen these things before?" Vlyka asked, tilting her head to Winter. "We might get famous for killing one to save your coltfriend.”

Winter laughed gently and shook her head. “Not just for him, of course. Maybe we let your sis name them?”

Vlyka smirked but didn't reply, giving Winter a little time to fall silent for Vlyka's sake. She was feeling less emotional strain and isolation now, though that only made room for the physical exhaustion to start setting in. Winter had never been that physically fit, since she was forced to remain in her chilly home most of the spring and all summer. There were the occasional hikes in her namesake season that kept her from just keeling over now, but she still had to focus on her breath to keep her body going. She took a little swig of water from the canteen she'd hastily packed to keep her body temperature down, and for the next hour Vlyka's occasional conversation kept her from a complete loss of sanity.

When Vlyka wasn't busy talking with Winter, the little mare was busy with her nose in the air, sniffing for Crystal's weakening trail. She'd claimed the scent was getting weaker and she was getting a bit worried, Winter teasing her lightly to get her confidence rolling again. It was remarkable to see Vlyka work, acting just like the dogs she was so associated with. Vlyka hated to admit it, how canine a pony she was, and tried to deny it however she could. Vlyka normally liked the solitude, but Winter could tell that deep down, Vlyka needed to be accepted for who she was, fangs and all, by ponies she trusted. Winter couldn’t help but giggle as she thought that Vlyka was, in her own way, just as sweet to those ponies she liked as her beloved canines. In the end her last name was accurate enough: velveteen, so like soft velvet that only the most stuck up ponies would focus on the differences.

Winter was just about to open her mouth to let a very gentle canine joke slip from her lips, just something to prod Vlyka while it looked like she was faltering a little. But just as she started to look towards her friend, Winter's eyes grazed across a shadow in the setting sun. She gasped with the space she had left in her lungs, almost coughing as Vlyka jerked out of her scent tracking to look at her. Winter pointed straight at the shadow, Vlyka tensing as she started to hurry over.

Winter was just behind Vlyka, hurrying towards the shape as it gained just a little more form. The more she looked, the more she realized there was more than just the one shape: what she had seen was a recess in the sand, about the shape of a pony, which was why she had been so alarmed to see it. But around it were several large claw-like marks, circling all around the pony form. The wind had already started to erode the shapes, but it was still obvious enough that the clawed creatures had attacked this pony, recently...

"Midnight."

Winter gasped as she looked at Vlyka, who had bent down to the pony indent. She pointed straight at the deepest point of the hole, where a few dark blue feathers lay stuck in the sand. "No, Midnight..." she gasped, as Vlyka took a sniff. She looked up at Winter with a sad, worried nod. "Is...oh Celestia is he...?"

"I don't think so," Vlyka muttered, biting her lip. "There's no scent of blood, he wasn't bleeding. I think they just knocked him out. I hope..."

Winter grabbed a feather in her magic and raised it to her face, feeling tears welling as she stared at the slim trace of her coltfriend's trail. She tried to think that this was good news, they were on the right trail and Vlyka was certain it was his feather. But Winter couldn't help but feel the panic gripping her heart that this would be the last piece of Midnight she would see. "Oh Celestia please..."

Vlyka meanwhile was busy sniffing around the clawmarks. "These things reek," she muttered, right as Winter refocused on the little mare as she spoke. "Way too easy to tell them apart from the wildlife."

"Do you know where they went?" Winter asked, as Vlyka sniffed. "Midnight, Crys, were they..."

"I can't smell them," Vlyka shook her head. "I don't know..." Vlyka's tone was obviously worried, staring off in a direction her nose seemed to be pointing her in.

Seeing Vlyka worried like that triggered something in Winter's mind, helping her step back for a moment. Midnight was still in danger, Crystal too, but...but they were close. Vlyka had done it, she'd found a trail after all. "Well, we'd better get after them. Only way we'll know they're safe." Vlyka stared at Winter and smiled sadly, nodding eventually as she turned to trot after the scent. Winter followed close behind, the knowledge that Midnight had been here and that they were on the right track giving her enough sanity that she remained quiet until well after nightfall.

Winter waited and watched in silence as Vlyka worked, sniffing and tracing the bird creatures deeper into the barren wastes they'd wandered out into. The mountains in the distance were farther than Winter had ever realized, she’d never really seen this far south of Equestria. It surprised her that there was this much down here, but so little life. “What else is out here?” she wondered. “Anything besides those creatures, anything that might help us?” She sighed as she glanced across the mountains on the horizon, only to catch sight of an unusual one. “Wait...” she muttered, “what’s that?”

“Hmm?” Vlyka turned her head at the whisper, causing Winter to point out the peak. As she focused more on it, Winter saw why she’d noticed it was different: it wasn’t a mountain at all. It was a structure of some kind, the spire of an old castle not too far from them. She couldn’t tell how old it was, what condition it was in from how far away they were, but there were no lights on anywhere near it. It wasn’t inhabited...or at least, it wasn’t some place inviting. Vlyka blinked and narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the shape for a moment before she gasped. “Smells like they’re headed that way...” said Vlyka, before looking at Winter in confusion. “How did you even see that?”

Winter could only shrug. “Looking for Midnight in the night sky’s harder, I guess?”

Vlyka rolled her eyes with a slight smile. But her expression returned to her serious face, as did Winter’s as the two nodded knowingly towards each other. Then they turned for the tower and trotted as quick as they could towards it, Winter focusing her thoughts inwards. She felt it, the icy elemental magic she was connected to, swirling and asking to be channeled through her. “I just hope I don’t have to...” she thought. “Please, don’t make me use you for this. Don’t make me hurt somepony...”

Ch7: Extraction

Midnight wasn’t certain how long he’d been alone in the darkness, feeling the anxieties swirling around him. He’d let Crystal get taken, laid there blind and helpless while she’d been dragged off for Luna knew what tortures at these monster’s claws. His vision was still blurry, the darkness almost as painful as the light before as it fed his guilt. Crystal had needed him, for once he’d been trying to help her, and he’d let her get yanked away terrified and alone. He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hooves, lying down to reach as he tried to hold himself back from crying.

Despite his hooves being in the way, Midnight could still tell that the lights had come back on, forcing him to tighten his eyelids trying to block out the light. It wasn’t quite enough, but at least he could bear to lift his hooves clear and try to stare into the light, cracking his eyes as he heard one of the creatures approaching him. He wanted to lash out at the creature, furious at what they’d done to him, to Crystal, to the ponies in town they’d terrorized, whatever strain Vlyka and Winter had to be under right now... But he knew it would be pointless. He couldn’t hurt them, not in this state, and any attack might have just made his or Crystal’s situation worse.

“I hope you know I can’t see anything,” Midnight grumbled, trying to be dry and defiant as possible. He felt the creature approach, tried not to flinch as he felt certain he was about to be pounded into the flagstone beneath him. But he felt the shadow fall over him, hearing the claws reach behind him and grab the chain of his collar from the wall. “Your stupid lights are...” he began, only to feel a yank on his collar, shutting him up with a gasp of pain.

“Quiet,” the gruff, rasping voice snapped at him. “Stand.”

The chain was pulled tight against Midnight’s collar, yanking it up his neck and threatening to choke him. Struggling a little to stand with no sight and his chains, Midnight sighed and tried to just listen to the demands. He hated being like this, his safety in jeopardy and a close friend probably already in worse trouble, but he had to just go along with his captors or else... He stood at the creature's order and glanced up at where he thought its face was, eyes still shut in the blinding light. “Just what do you expect me to do with-” he began, only to feel the chain at his neck jerking forwards. Unprepared, Midnight fell forward, crashing back to the ground and gasping in mild pain. “Stand!” the voice rumbled, louder.

Midnight almost snapped in fury, but stood upright again, shifting his shoulder as the pain of smashing into the ground. The ache was bad, but he felt it would be okay if he was careful. His eyes were a bit better adjusted and, carefully, he felt it was safe enough to crack them open. It was still hazy, but he could still tell just how much bigger the monster holding his chain was than he. Chills ran down his spine and the anger he felt was swallowed by fear, as the piercing yellowed eyes of the creature bored into his soul and shook him to his core. They’d been intimidating enough attacking him in town, but now...now he was helpless before them, nowhere to run or hide. They had him pinned... “I can barely see, I hope you’re-”

The chain snapped again, digging the painful nubs into the back of his neck and making him gasp. He lurched forward as the creature half-pulled him out of the room. The light was still a bit too much for Midnight and he shut his eyes again to protect his vision. Of course, the creature seemed to care not a bit for his vision, still leading him by the collar into a slightly dimmer hallway. Midnight tried to keep his eyes attentive as they adjusted, peeking just enough to figure out if he was about to hit something walking. The halls were barren save for the artistic archways raised to the ceiling, making the corners hard to turn when he couldn’t tell if the chain at his neck was pressed against the wall or not. But as his eyes began to properly adjust, Midnight started to hear something beyond the eerie silence of the seemingly abandoned ruins around him, there was something faint coming from further in the broken halls.

“Ah! Stop, please stop!”

Midnight gasped as the words started to become clear. “Crystal,” he muttered, under his breath as the shock hit him. He’d never heard Crys in that kind of pain before, the agony in her voice shaking him worse than the stare of the creature had before. She was screaming in pain, begging for them to let her go, and the creature was dragging him closer and closer to her. The fear of what they would do to him was intense, if they were so blasé about torturing Crystal, but the pain she was in right now drowned out even that intense emotion. He almost broke out into a run towards her, but with his forelegs chained he couldn’t have run, even if the chain at his neck wasn’t pinning him to the monster. It was almost a relief that the creature was pulling him towards her, even as it made the pain in her voice all the more obvious. As they came closer and closer, a light from the hallway ahead grew brighter, along with the groans and whimpers of a pained unicorn, until finally they rounded the last corner and stepped into a new chamber.

The room was massive, circular with high ceilings that had the roof busted in one corner. The other two creatures were already standing in the room, one of them slipping through the hole in the roof from some outside excursion. The other was investigating a massive device sitting in the edge of the room, with cables big as Midnight’s legs attaching it to some larger device in the dead center of the room. It reminded him of a water tank from Cloudsdale, a massive cylinder to store something and dozens of bits and bobs for adjusting one thing or another. But unlike those tanks, the input seemed to be on the bottom...winding down some cables and tubes to a busted-up metal helmet with space for a unicorn’s horn. And, of course, there was only one unicorn who could have been strapped into the device...

Crystal’s eyes were squeezed shut from the pain, straining and twisting her head as the anguish wormed its way onto her face. She looked worse than Midnight had ever seen her, standing with her hooves chained to the floor so she couldn’t try to escape. The helmet seemed to be glowing around the base of her horn, with more than one clear tube reaching out from the helmet’s horn flooded with a familiar pinkish-red glow. It didn’t take a unicorn to tell what they were doing: these creatures were trying to siphon Crystal’s magic away. The device was sucking the magic out of her, by force if Crystal’s anguish was to be believed, for some nefarious purpose. They’d tried to sneak up on Canterlot when Midnight and Crys had spotted them, surely trying to capture some stronger unicorns from the mountain city, if not capture the princesses themselves. Of course, Crystal’s magic was rather strong...and of course Midnight had delivered her straight into their claws.

As the guilt dropped hard on Midnight’s shoulders, he felt something else adding to the weight, only this wasn't metaphorical weight. One of the creatures was behind him, pressing a claw down on his back and forcing his legs to bend slightly. He tried to struggle against their force, strained to stay standing and shake the claw off, but he already knew that escape was pointless. It could slam him into the ground if they wanted, for the moment it was just content to hold him there, head down as he heard Crystal gasp in fear. "Midnight..."

Midnight looked up at the voice, Crystal's quavering, weak and mortified voice, as the mare stared at him with tearful eyes. They locked their gaze for a moment, Crystal’s mouth hanging open with fear as Midnight understood what was happening. Crystal stared between him and the creature holding him, shaking her head in fear, confirming for him what Crystal was expecting out of seeing him. “No, don’t...don’t hurt him! I’ll try and give you my magic, but please don’t hurt him!”

“Crys don’t-” he started, only to feel his knees buckle under the force the monster applied on his back. He barely kept his barrel off the ground as he squeezed his eyes shut. He was a bargaining chip in all this, a warning...a threat. Crystal had either resisted releasing her magic to them, or it hadn’t been going smoothly enough for their liking, so they decided to put another of her kind in the line of pain to try and coax her to be more cooperative. But Crystal had to know, as Midnight suspected, that there could be no benefit to these creatures gaining Equestrian magic of any kind, especially if this was their go-to method of gathering it. And if Midnight played any role, however unwilling, in the procurement of that magic, he would never forgive himself even one consequence of that magic’s use against anypony. He had to stop them, had to get Crystal out of there somehow...but how?!

“Enough games, unicorn,” the creature holding Midnight growled, reaching around him to grab his leash and remove it from his collar. It was an advantage in his favor to have one less restraint, but he couldn’t capitalize on it with the creature’s left claw still pinning him down. “Give us your magic, or else...” The creature’s claw came down and snapped open the shackle on Midnight’s left hoof, grabbing it in its claw and dragging the chain towards a small ring in the floor. Midnight gasped as he saw the next few moments play out ahead of time in his mind; the creature would thread the shackle through the ring, clasp it around his hoof again, and Midnight would be pinned to the ground just like poor Crystal was now. He had to resist now, but how? There was no chance, he was outmatched...

“Stop screwing around!” one of the other creature’s snarled, and suddenly there was the sound of something heavy shifting rapidly. The creature above Midnight ducked, its head almost hitting the ground behind him as it barely avoided a piece of metal or stone whizzing over its head. The right claw disappeared somewhere behind Midnight, leaving the shackle lying loose on the ground. His legs were free now, and the weight of the creature’s claw lifted just slightly from his back. He glanced behind him and his heart lifted too, seeing one single opportunity. Forcing his weight and the remaining weight of the creature onto his forelegs, raising his back legs and tensing them as much as he could, before letting all that energy out straight behind him.

Both his hooves hit the creature square in the snout, slamming hard into the bone even through the thick coat of fur and muscle. Midnight felt the shock travel back up his legs, resisting the need to wince in pain as he kept his legs slammed straight out, feeling the creature’s head recede from his hooves. There was a loud yelp behind him and the claw came off Midnight’s back, but Midnight didn’t have the presence of mind to check behind him to see what the creature was doing; he had to act now. He dropped his hooves and kicked off the ground hard, shifting into a frantic sprint towards Crystal as the mare glanced up at him, mouth agape and eyes wide with surprise. He glanced up at her, drawing strength to cut through the raw panic flooding his system as the adrenaline started to kick in. His focus narrowed on Crys, his goal to get there and get her out however he could manage.

It was only Crystal glancing up behind him, staring in shock at something behind him, that widened the scope of Midnight’s senses. His ear twisted back and he heard it, the creature shifting, claws scraping on the ground and lunging forwards towards him. Midnight stopped quickly and bent his legs, pushing off the ground as hard as he could and leaping into the air. Even without his wings, the jump was a familiar enough action that he bounded almost directly upwards, glancing down just in time to see the creature’s nose hit the ground right where he had been. Gravity exerted itself and Midnight fell, smashing his hooves down on the top of its muzzle with enough weight to crash its head into the floor again. Angered, the creature roared, throwing its head in the air again. But Midnight had predicted it and braced himself, using the momentum to jump high again.

By now the other creatures had noticed Midnight’s escape attempt, and one of them had spread its wings to strike at him from the right. It flapped and dashed closer towards him, but with a twist of Midnight’s barrel he sent himself into a spiral. The creature’s nose came close to him, but with his spin Midnight had just barely given himself the momentum enough to roll off it instead of slamming hard into it. As he rolled, the shackle on his right hoof spun with him, Midnight feeling it snap against his leg and made him wince, reflexively pushing his foreleg out to move the shackle away from what had to be a new bruise. It just so happened that he shifted at the right moment, and as Midnight righted himself on the creature’s head the shackle swung wildly off his right leg, slamming straight into the creature’s eye as it turned to focus on him.

The monster shrieked with pain, almost roaring and throwing its head roughly down to the ground. Its right claw came up to cover the injury to its eye, but Midnight was quick enough that he jumped again, soaring just over the claw as it came uncomfortably close to stabbing him in the neck. There was a heavy thump behind him, followed by a second one as the two monsters hit the floor hard. Midnight resisted the urge to look back at the carnage he’d caused, and to look for the third, as he was so desperately close to Crystal he couldn’t afford to lose a moment. Crys seemed dazzled enough by his actions, staring behind him as he reached out to grab the helmet on her head. With one hoof he shifted a strap clinging to Crystal’s jaw, pulling it free of her muzzle and yanking the entire helmet downwards a little too hard.

Crystal gasped in pain and screamed, a long and echoing cry of pain as Midnight yanked her head down a little harder than he had intended. But as he pulled the helmet clear of her, Crystal’s magic misfired, her magic unfocused but flowing without her desire. The raw magic formed into her laser-cutting spell, a spell she had shown Midnight was quite useful for slicing up rocks as she dove into the gem mines for her gem shop. Unlike Crystal’s normal precision with her magic, however, Midnight had to fall backwards as dozens of laser bursts shot from the poor mare’s horn, slashing wildly across the entire room. More than one blast cut across Midnight’s stomach as he fell backwards, covering his face with one hoof to avoid getting shot in the face, but he could already tell that the injuries she left by accident were no more than a light burn. She’d explained to him more than once that the spell was useless at harming an organic being, it was a finely tuned bit of her magic that could only be effective on inorganic things like rock or...metal.

As the lasers died down and Crystal gasped, panting and opening her eyes, Midnight looked down at her forelegs towards the chain that had bound her. Sure enough, three separate scores on the stone floor had intercepted the chain as they’d danced wildly from Crystal’s horn, neatly severing the chains binding her. Crystal was free. Crys looked down following Midnight’s eyes and gasped, looking straight back at him as they held eye contact again, savoring the momentary victory.

“Get them!” The moment didn’t last, as the third creature bellowed its command, extending a claw towards the two free ponies menacingly. Midnight looked back at them, staring upside down as he laid on his back too stunned to move. But as he tried to get up again, he felt Crystal falling onto his stomach, one hoof pressed sternly over his eyes. He didn’t have a second to panic as she covered his eyes almost perfectly, cutting off almost all light from his vision...but still enough to tell that something had just gotten a lot brighter. The fringes of his eyes were filled with a dazzling pink light, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his ears back as the sound of magic pulsed brilliantly rather close to him. The three creatures screamed, another three thumps filling the room as they all fell to the ground. By the time Crystal removed her hoof from Midnight's eyes, the creatures were all lying on the floor, writhing in pain and covering their eyes. Realizing how Crystal had taken his earlier torment and turned it against their captors gave Midnight a momentary spot of satisfaction in his heart, smirking as the creatures writhed, but Crystal was quick on her hooves and grabbed his side.

“Come on! Run!” she yelled, helping him turn over and stand up quickly. Midnight didn’t need to be told twice and bolted out of the room, slamming through a door and turning right down the hallway. Crystal was right beside him, eyes speaking for her as her throat was too busy keeping air going for her muscles. “Where do we go?” they asked Midnight, who answered with a similar silent glance.

“Anywhere but here.”

Author's Note

For those wondering, yes "the creatures" do have a proper name, at least for their species. I've been keeping it unmentioned due to consistency with the narrative: none of my characters know what they are, so their inner thoughts won't know better. But if it's growing too annoying for my readers I'd be happy to change the next few chapters to properly introduce these monsters. Let me know if you want the change: if you'd rather be surprised (by the end of this story, I promise), feel free to remain silent, and see if you get the ~~poorly planned out~~ highly subtle hint as to who they are before the big reveal!

Ch8: Desperation

“You need to learn to start running more,” part of Crystal’s mind grumbled, as her heart pounded in her chest and her legs burned from the exertion. But that self-criticism that had surfaced unusually in her mind was pushed down not by her own efforts to be positive, but the swarm of anxiety and fear crowding her brain right now.

She glanced at Midnight as they had turned a corner and run for quite a distance, looking for any distinguishing signs of something, anything in this ruined castle. But these weren’t anything like Canterlot castle that Crystal had been so lucky to tour only once, or like what she’d seen of Princess Twiight’s gem castle. These ruins weren’t pony at all, some destroyed statues they'd found had seemed almost porcine even, and neither one of them could tell what they were looking for. There were barely any windows where they were, the ones they’d found making it obvious they were far too high up to jump out. Midnight had turned away to run again, Crys unable to gasp out any helpful remarks to keep him calmer...

“Dead end...” Midnight gasped, skidding to a halt. Crystal stumbled up behind him, panting heavily as she clutched a hoof to her chest. She couldn’t keep doing this, her legs were going to give out, or her heart. If only this had been an endurance thing, that she was stellar with for a unicorn, but sprints and long runs...

“Midnight...” she gasped, grabbing Midnight as he turned to run somewhere else. “Stop, we...we can’t...”

Midnight grabbed Crystal and helped her stand, letting her lean on him as she struggled to breathe. She gathered herself a little and looked up, smiling at him gently. “Okay, hang on. I think I can carry you if...”

“Think you can fly?” she asked, working on her breathing. Midnight stepped back gently and glanced back at the band around him. “If I...if I can cut that off...can you...?”

Midnight looked back at her and shrugged, but tried to give her a reassuring smile. Crys smiled back and knelt down, lowering her horn towards the band. But as she tried to charge her magic, wincing in pain as something deep in her being felt twisted up and wrong, Crys spotted something on Midnight’s underbelly. She raised a hoof and lowered her head, gently pressing her hoof to his side and pushing his skin a little upwards to get a better view. What she saw made her gasp, twisting the knot in her stomach even further: burns. She could see the burns scrawled across his skin, the same chaotic pattern that she’d cut with her laser spell in the floor and walls of the extraction chamber. She’d left a few slashes in the band, not enough to cut all the way through, but even as she tried to focus on the positive her eyes were drawn back to the angry red welts on Midnight’s skin. She’d hurt him, however unintentionally she had hurt him with her magic.

“Crys?” Midnight asked, turning towards her as she fell backwards, sitting rather roughly with a hoof over her mouth. “Crys what’s wrong...your magic?”

“I...” Crystal began, before trying her hardest not to cry. She focused on her horn and let her magic flow, trying to ignore the twist in her soul as she let a tiny spark of light ignite from the tip of her horn. her magic was still working at least, but as she tried to focus back on her cutter spell she just couldn’t do it. “Midnight are you ok? I...I burned you...”

“Crys I’m ok,” Midnight said softly, smiling at her. But Crystal saw past his statement: maybe he wasn’t so damaged by what she had done to him, maybe he forgave her for what had always been an accident. But Crys knew that her magic was already messed up and controlling it was surprisingly difficult. She knew she’d never stay focused long enough to cut a score deep enough to break the band, and even if she could she felt like her magic would falter and only burn Midnight worse than he already was. She couldn’t do that, she couldn’t hurt him again, not right now!

“I...I...” she stammered, focusing her magic in a feeble effort to try the spell anyways. But the cutting beam wouldn’t fire, she couldn’t bring herself. “I...”” she murmured, eyes damp with tears.

“Crystal...Crys...” Midnight whispered, grabbing her cheek and raising her head. “It’s okay. We can...” But his thoughts were interrupted by a loud slam, a door they had tried to seal shut being broken off its hinges. They had two minutes maybe before one of the creatures found them.

“We have to get out of here!” Crystal gasped, but Midnight grabbed her tight.

“No Crys...you have to get out.” Crys was silent as Midnight stroked her cheek softly. “Think you can still teleport?”

“I...I don’t know maybe. But I...you know I can’t...”

“Then go Crys. Warp out of here, go!” Crystal started to shake her head, but Midnight grabbed her and held her head still. “Crystal, get out of here. One of us has to get out of here...go get help. You can get out of here, I know you can! Go!”

Crystal whimpered, biting her lip as she tried to argue against him. She couldn’t bring herself to admit he was right, because that would leave him all alone. But she had the best chance to escape, her teleporting would let her slip past them as long as her magic held out. Without his wings Midnight could only run, and she could teleport far greater distances faster if she were properly motivated. And saving Midnight, bringing help back to him and letting him escape...that was motivation solid enough to keep her going. With her entire body shaking, Crys reached out with both forelegs and grabbed Midnight tight, hugging around his neck and squeezing even as her collar dug painfully into her neck. “Be careful Midnight... I’ll be as fast as I can...”

“I know you will,” Midnight replied, raising a hoof and hugging her tightly back. “Now get out of here, fast. I’ll do what I can to stay safe, I promise.”

Crystal nodded shakily and stepped backwards, wiping tears out of her eyes. Midnight smiled sadly at her, before she gently let her hooves down. She nodded to Midnight, who nodded sternly back to her and turned to run back down the hallway. “Midnight!” Crys cried, halting him abruptly. “I...I know Winter still loves you.”

Midnight looked back at her, stunned. She could see he was searching for the word to say, something to respond with, but he found nothing. She knew him too well, knew that he would be criticizing himself for this and fueling the anguish he’d feel thinking he’d destroyed his relationship with Winter. It was a small comfort, something absolutely tiny facing the titanic fear he’d be enduring all alone in this horrifying castle, but it was a tiny comfort she could give him and pray that it would help him.

Finally, Midnight smiled a little confused, and nodded once before turning to run down the hallway. He hurried past the turn they had made and down the other direction, ready to lead the creatures far from her. It was her opportunity to get out, now, and if she succeeded she would be Midnight’s only hope for rescue.

With purpose burning in her mind, Crystal focused on her magic to expand her senses. She reached outwards past the walls, looking for someplace that was obviously outside that she could teleport to. She didn’t have a visual representation for where she was, but she felt the only safe place to stand that was obviously outdoors was a roof three floors up. So in her mind’s eye, Crystal drew a tunnel between there and where she stood, even as her magic felt ready to corkscrew her through space. Her stomach felt all out of order, her magic arguing with everything she knew, but it was her only hope. So, without thinking further on it, Crystal took a breath and jumped into the tunnel.

Despite the strain her magic was under, Crystal vanished perfectly from the hallway, reappearing almost a meter above the slanted rooftop of the castle. She fell and hit the tiles hard, fighting to gain a grip on the tiles as one slid loose under her hoof and skidded right off the side. But Crys stayed standing, panting and gasping for breath as her head spun. Her magic hadn’t protected her as much as it usually had, and she felt the strain of the teleport through her entire body...even her magic felt noticeably weaker. And as the pain grew, her will began to shrink, and the sensation of guilt clutched her heart. If only she’d learned to teleport more than one pony, she could have saved Midnight too. If she hadn’t started freaking out with her magic and just cut him loose...

“Not now!” Crystal snapped at herself, hoping to avert the pain for just a moment. She forced herself to glance upwards, turning her gaze towards the moon high in the sky. She whispered a tiny prayer to Luna, begging for some kind of mystic intervention to save both herself and Midnight, before focusing on a more practical method of help: searching.

All around the castle was a stretch of desert, dark and dreary in the pale moonlight. Determined to not give up just yet, Crys squinted off at the horizon, looking for any signs of faint lights from a town or anything nearby. Her search didn’t last long, as half a turn around the tower roof pointed her directly at a faint light source in the distance. It was hard to tell what it was, but it was certainly larger than a single campfire, even so far away. It was going to be a long trek, but it was her best shot.

Crystal looked between the lights in the distance and the castle ruins, looking for any obstacles she might run into or distinguishing landmarks to find her way back. This was all going to be pointless if she made it to safety, only to fail in leading anypony to Midnight’s rescue. Thankfully, there were a few distinct rock formations on the way, spaced well apart enough that Crys felt she could even use her teleportation to reach them safer than just running. If she ran, she’d leave a trail for those creatures to follow, if they chose to split up and go after her when they realized she’d slipped away. Certainly Midnight would be safer, but she couldn’t garuntee she would outrun even one of them; she had to be careful.

Shaking her head and focusing on her magic again, Crystal picked the nearest rock formation and drew her tunnel towards it. Now that she could see the target the process was easier, she didn’t have to sweep for a clear landing site with her magic and burn up more energy than she already had. She merely focused on the side of a far away rock and willed herself to leap there, feeling the magic bubbling in her heart flood forth to her horn as she vanished from the roof. As she landed on the rocks, however, her chest burned like she’d swallowed a fire, forcing her to clasp it and breathe until the pain weakened. It didn’t go all away though, only moving closer to her horn.

“No...please, I need more...” she murmured, shaking as the memories came flooding back to her. She’d felt this burning sensation before, during Tirek’s attack where he’d sucked her magic dry, along with pretty much every other equine in Equestria. Her heart had burned as her magic was pulled, every last shred of it, out of her body with incredible force. It had been so painful Crys hadn’t been able to move after it, her whole body weakened from the pain and loss of such a vital part of her being. And here she was, feeling that sensation again.

Crystal shook her head in denial, forcing herself to not think further on the matter. She didn’t want to realize the truth, that she was burning her magic supply out and possibly hurting her body badly. She couldn’t slow down now, not while Midnight was in so much danger. So she focused on the next rock formation, determined to lay no trail for those monsters for at least a mile if she could help it. She found her landing site and threw herself forwards, landing on the rocks a bit sturdier this time, but again her chest burned. She couldn’t tell if it was worse than before, but it again subsided after only a few seconds.

Her next teleport wasn’t so forgiving, as her forelegs buckled on landing and sent her to her knees, shaking from a sudden weakness gripping her. Her magic seared her chest and horn, her body begging for some kind of relief. “If Midnight doesn’t get a relief, neither do I...” she growled at herself, standing and focusing on the next rocks. But in her determination, she lost her focus, and as she warped again she fell out of it on her side, slamming hard into the rocks and skidding into the sand, yelping in pain and clutching her shoulder. She shook herself off, focused, and warped again.

As she landed once more, Crystal’s magic finally seemed determined to torment her. She felt the fire dull in both heart and horn, but instead of pain there seemed to be a void of feeling, sucking all her energy from her entire body. It was almost worse than the torture she’d endured during the siphon, she felt almost like she was being plunged into an icy lake and her body was going completely numb from the chill. Her knees buckled again and sent her crashing down, slamming into the same shoulder hard. She gasped as a momentary prick of pain lit her body up, but it too vanished into the void of feeling devouring her. She wheezed, desperate for air as her body silently tried to maintain itself, but as her body tried to silence her and take her into an emergency sleep, her mind continued to race with images of Midnight. She saw him now, cornered, grabbed, plucked feather by feather by those horrible monsters...

With the last of her strength, Crystal raised her head and pointed at the next outcropping. Drawing everything she had, she forces herself into her tunnel once more, teleporting straight into the last pile of rubble. But unable to stand up, Crys fell from thin air and hit her back painfully against a raised stone, forcing her to roll off and fall under a rocky outcropping nearby. She gasped and strained to raise her hoof to hold onto the minor pain the stone had left, but her body was so drained of energy she could barely move. Her hooves shook so bad it was less risky to just lay there panting.

It was almost a minute before Crystal could open her eyes again, her breath still ragged but the pain weakening just enough that she could think again. She raised her head to stare past the rocks, glancing at the town in the distance...still far in the distance. There was no way she’d even cleared a quarter of the trek there, she had to keep going. But as Crystal focused on the town, anywhere closer to it, she sent every drop she had into the tip of her horn to draw herself closer. But the only thing she got was a tiny spark, a little fizzle of energy erupting from the tip of her horn, and nothing else. Desperate, she tried again, begging for her horn to light with magic...but there was only darkness, nothing remaining. She was spent, completely out of magic, her body burned out, helpless here in the middle of nowhere...

So badly shaken by her own state, Crystal’s thoughts again turned to Midnight. Now it was obvious he was all alone, helpless before those three beasts. She shouldn’t have left him alone, leaving was a terrible idea. Now she’d failed him, there would be no rescue coming to save him, because she didn’t have enough strength to get further. Crystal’s mind shattered then, as she curled up tightly in a ball with what feeble strength she had in her limbs, and started sobbing.

“Crystal!”

The voice rang out in the cooling desert night, jarring Crys from her sobs after at least a minute. She hadn’t expected to hear anypony’s voice, much less one that sounded so familiar. Surely she was hallucinating, one more gift from her broken mind as she died from eventual exposure...but mere moments later, she heard it, two sets of hooves running through the sand, getting closer. There was a faint bluish light bobbing as the hooves got closer, slowly coming close enough to bathe her in light and, more importantly, shed light on the faces of those approaching. And one face, the shorter one, was a face Crystal could never have mistaken.

“...Vlyka?” she gasped, raising her head just a little bit. As the little mare charged forwards, head down as she ran full tilt at the rocks, Crystal felt sure she was going insane. Vlyka couldn’t truly be here, there was no way-

Vlyka’s hooves closed like a vice around Crystal’s stomach, squeezing her enough that it jarred the haze of emptiness from her body enough to feel pain...and warmth. Vlyka’s body heat, the smell of her mane as she clung, the tiny squirm of her back half when she was too excited...It was a convincing hallucination, if anything. But as Crystal’s mind slowly started to reason how this was just an illusion, Vlyka lifted her ever so slightly off the ground, placing her head to Crystal’s and shivering enough that Crys felt her vibrations. She could practically hear the little mare’s heart pounding as she stared right into Crystal’s eyes, Vlyka’s lined with tears and etched with the most tremendous relief she had ever seen in her adoptive sis. “Crys I...I found you...” Vlyka murmured, her voice so happy and relieved. Crys knew she had never heard Vlyka that relieved before, it wasn’t something she was taking from memory...this was her. This was really Vlyka, she was truly here.

As reality struck Crystal again she grabbed her sister with all the strength she had, squeezing against Vlyka and whimpering as she sobbed again, this time with relief. Somepony had found her, she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t just to be forgotten in the desert. She was safe. But...

“Crys, you’re ok!” came the voice accompanying the blue light. Winter ran forwards, close enough that Crystal could see her clearly. Her mane and tail were standing on end, a sign she had been consolidating her otherworldly ice magic in her body, along with her eyes being partially glazed over from the sheer power she was storing for later use. Crys knew that Winter’s body could only hold so much of that power, so the fact that she was using it now meant Winter was desperately worried about the future. The rare sight of her charged up like this, plus the relief on her face to see her friend safe, was a combination Crystal had not seen before, only adding further credence to the idea that she wasn’t just going nuts in her final moments alone in a desert. But that didn’t help now, as Winter’s appearance had reminded Crystal of just why she’d been so desperate she’d burned herself out like this.

“Winter...” Crys whispered. “I...I...”

“Crys, where’s Midnight?”

Vlyka shifted uneasily as she continued to cling to Crystal, Crys looking down to see her suddenly looking around. Her little face shifted from relief to panic, fangs pressed tight to her lips as she started to realize what was happening. It was another stab in Crystal’s heart, and she sniffled before glancing back at where she’d come from. She shakily raised her hoof, pointing directly at the castle tower she’d warped from. As she kept staring, trying to speak, no words could form in her mind sufficient to explain everything. She could only turn her head down and start crying again, begging her friends to know her meaning: Midnight was still trapped inside.

Ch9: Frosty Fate

Author's Note

Here's that scene of non-cartoonish violence I promised y'all. Readers be cautioned.

Ch9: Frosty Fate

Midnight skidded to a halt and clutched his chest, panting and gasping for breath. He cursed silently the dead end he'd just been faced with, a massive door half-collapsed and blocking his path forwards.

"Think you're clever, you little runt!?" the voice snapped, dangerously close behind him. Midnight winced, shivering as a cold realization flooded over him: that was a lot closer than he had expected them to be. He was trapped now.

Slowly, the panting pegasus turned around to face the monsters as they came bearing down on him. Only two of them had followed, the third splitting off to look for Crystal...at least that gave Midnight a good smirk, knowing Crys was probably far away now. She'd gotten out, right? He'd heard her teleporting, things had to have worked for her...right?

The moment of relief faded and brought Midnight painfully back to reality. The shackle on his right hoof had been flailing wildly as he ran, smashing into his back right hoof a few too many times. He'd burned precious seconds trying to secure the shackle, but with the locking pin missing he couldn't keep it securely shut, even on the same hoof as the locked one. So he was forced to run like this, badly bruising his back legs as the shackle flew wildly under his stomach. It had been a miracle he hadn't tripped so far, but he knew it wouldn't last. He was already burned out, stuck on his hooves instead of his wings and his overall stamina was burning out fast. Meanwhile the creatures behind him hadn't seemed to lose any steam, any of their fury that he was eluding them. "Come over here and see if you get away with bouncing off my face again, runt!" one of them bellowed as it came around the corner.

Midnight took a deep breath to yell something out, some sarcastic or bitter remark at the now-bloodshot eye of the creature snapping at him. But fear dulled his sharp tongue and he clamped his mouth shut. He couldn't tell if it was better to aggravate the creatures, provoke their rage and make them make mistakes, only to suffer greater when they finally got their claws on him. He knew he couldn't outrun them for much longer, this war of attrition was already lost.

Right as the two creatures closed in on him, snarling and bearing carnivorous fangs almost long as his leg and sending shivers down his back, one of them bashed its shoulder into the other. The first snarled and turned, growling angrily at the one who had made the first impact. It responded by pushing harder, pressing the second against the wall in some kind of fight for dominance. Midnight watched for a moment, fascinated and terrified, until he glanced downwards and felt a jolt run through his heart. The first creature was leaning far to the right, its claws pressed almost against the wall. There was a wide gap under its arm, large enough that Midnight should have fit easily between it....but the chance was going to close fast. Midnight glanced up again to see where the creature’s attention was, and to his relief it was still on the creature it was trying to dominate.

Taking his chance, Midnight broke into a sprint, leaping towards the gap as he strained every muscle in his legs to run faster. But it was too late. “Oh no you don’t!” the creature bellowed, raising its claw up fast to grasp at him. Midnight pulled himself tightly together to try and avoid the claw, and only just succeeded in avoiding getting grabbed. But, unfortunately, his body wasn’t the only thing he had to be mindful of. The claw closed tightly around the loose shackle, yanking it back down to the ground. Midnight felt the shackle bite into his right foreleg, as the force of the tug pulled his leg out from under him. The chain snapped taut and his leg was yanked hard, bordering on dislocating his shoulder as his momentum continued to try and carry him forwards. He had just enough presence of mind to duck his head as the force of his body sent his hindquarters spinning up into the air, flipping him over as his right leg was pulled up over his head, slamming Midnight down hard on his back.

The impact sent stars spinning across Midnight’s vision, a dull pain sitting on the back of his head and along most of his back, especially under the band around his stomach where it had been forced hard against his spine. He groaned and shifted, trying to find a way to stand again while still pinned down by his right foreleg. Only the creature wasn’t content to let him recover, because as he barely managed to get himself breathing again Midnight felt his right leg get yanked straight up in the air. the rest of his body followed, helpless to resist as he felt himself swinging around sideways. Even though he was a practiced flyer and knew how to handle a spin, his sense of direction failed him and he couldn’t tell which direction he was moving. The next thing he was aware of a solid object smashed hard into his right side, slamming his head and shoulders hard into what he soon realized was a wall. Gravity started to exert himself on him, but the creature was faster and yanked him off the wall, spinning him once more before Midnight met the ground stomach first.

The impact knocked the wind out of Midnight, followed immediately by a sharp shooting pain streaking across his chest. He gasped and coughed, the pain forcing him to groan with the little air he could take in; something in his chest was not where it was supposed to be, that was about all he had time to figure out. The impact had completely stunned him, barely able to breathe shallowly as he tried to cope with the pain. He wanted to stand, defiant to the torments these monsters were laying on him, but his legs felt like jelly and he couldn’t move one, even as the shackle attached to his right leg was discarded entirely. The creature didn’t need it to hold onto Midnight anymore.

The creature took both of its foreleg claws and grabbed Midnight’s barrel band, yanking harshly on the band and scratching Midnight with its claws just behind his wings. Midnight winced in pain and shifted uneasily, only to feel a claw pressed hard down on him. One of the monster’s legs had come up and surrounded him, a talon pressed sternly right between his shoulder blades to discourage any struggles. He could do nothing but feel his heart pounding in his chest as the creature’s forelegs finally snapped the band clear off his stomach, finally releasing him from its binding. Reflexively, his wings unfurled, trying to flap and stretch after being trapped for ages. Unfortunately, this was just what the creature wanted, as Midnight immediately felt an immense pressure engulfing both his wings. He gasped and groaned as the talons closed tight around him, threatening to crush his wings in their grip as he barely avoided trying to break free. it was too late to escape this; all he could do now was pray that the creature would release him...even though he knew it wouldn’t.

“We’ll get what’s special out of your kind,” the creature growled, a sinister smirk obvious in its voice even when Midnight couldn’t bear to look up at it. The pressure of its claw was intense, the talon pressed right to his spine threatening to skewer him with the slightest sign of resistance. “One way...” it continued, as it began to yank straight up. Midnight cried out, moaning in pain as the pressure strained the tendons in his wings. He felt every minuscule shift in his body as the creature threatened to tear his wings straight off. “Or the other!”

The creature laughed as it pulled hard on both wings, forcing Midnight’s chest off the ground and against the talon. He felt it dig into his skin, piercing his body and drawing some slight blood, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The yank on his left wing was far more intense than the last few had, and the strain had grown to be too much over just a few seconds. Something gave out in his left wing, a sickening shiver spreading instantly out from the base of it, and he swore that he heard a “pop” from the wing joint. Whatever it was, finally there was too much pain to bear. His teeth almost welded together, Midnight yowled, opening his mouth and screaming in pain he could no longer restrain.

As the creature lessened the pressure on Midnight, he fell roughly on the ground. The sharp pain shot through his chest again, stopping Midnight from gasping to refill his lungs. His entire body felt the pain, everything fading into a white void of agony that he couldn’t bear any longer. Tears welled in his eyes, blurring any vision he could bear as he looked back up at his captor, barely feeling its grip still on his wings and talon on his back in the haze of everything else washing over him. The creature leaned closer to him, sneering at him as Midnight shivered. “Such a shame your little sweetheart isn’t here to watch this. I’m sure this would have loosened her magic up real good,” it hissed. Midnight wanted to be angered at that, at them misunderstanding his and Crysal’s relationship, at the fact that he was just a tool to hurt Crystal with to them...but nothing could override his pain right now. “We might still get some magic-”

But the monster didn’t have a chance to finish whatever threat it had started. Just as Midnight began to sob from his pain, he felt something oddly familiar. The temperature plummeted suddenly, and a nearby wall shook violently, before collapsing. The room was suddenly filled with a wave of dust and...ice.

Winter had heard something from the other side of the wall, something that had pierced her heart with fear even though she couldn’t be sure it had been what she’d heard. So she’d focused her energy, taking strands of the ice power swirling around her and feeding it through the cracks of the stone wall before allowing it to form, creating ice crystals large enough to push the stones out of the way. She’d smirked for just a moment, but as the expansion had forced the stones apart enough to smash a hole in the wall, Winter glared as the dust flew high into the air, swirling energy into the air on her side of the wall. She let the elemental magic chill the air, creating a ring of cold that raised the pressure on her side. The two sides of the hole attempted to equalize, blowing the dust further into the room beyond; Winter’s intensely concentrated elemental magic gave off a faint glow from her eyes and mane, enough light her immediate surroundings, and though the far room was darkened Winter caught sight of two massive shadows shifting. One of them suddenly lunged at her, raising something at her face that came close enough for Winter to see the clawed tips.

Winter narrowed her eyes, focused energy from her mane back into her horn as she glared right at the lunging figure. Her magic tightened the energy and she let it loose, firing a spiraling shot straight at the approaching figure. Her shot slammed right into the creature’s center of mass and throwing it backwards, skidding down the hall with its chest and a wing trapped in a thick coat of ice.

The dust continued to settle as Winter stepped into the hole, staring right at the other figure who hadn’t moved once towards her. but as she got closer, Winter saw exactly why it hadn’t bothered to move: it was holding something down. Something dark, something blue, familiar...her coltfriend Midnight, lying prone on the floor. As her sight improved, Winter’s rage grew and grew, unconsciously summoning more and more elemental magic into her body. She could feel it starting to strain her muscles, threaten to burst her body at the seams, but her anger was too intense to feel the pain of the eldritch magic burning her small pony body. Midnight’s injuries started to become more evident as the dust settled further, only spiking Winter’s rage higher and higher as she finally broke her gaze from her shivering coltfriend, staring right at his captor. Her magic swirled tight in her horn as she prepared to fire off all it at once, not caring what she did to the monster, as it tried to speak to her.

“Not a step further!” it snapped, “or else I’ll-”

Winter didn’t think the creature actually meant to do anything in that moment. It hadn’t meant to cause anything more, only serve her a warning. It was scared, rightfully so, of her power, and had tried merely to defend itself from her wrath. Unfortunately for all of them it hadn’t seemed aware of its own strength. In the moment of panic, time slowed down, and Winter only sensed two things; the twist of a claw, and a sickening “SNAP.”

The creature's muzzle moved, but Winter heard nothing. There was only one sound that rang in her ears: Midnight screaming in agony. It was octaves higher than she had ever heard his voice, his pain echoing with every quiver of his vocal chords that Winter felt his pain even before her own engulfed her. She could only momentarily feel it, a stinging white-hot pit of anguish deep in her heart, and only had a fraction of a second to hope that it hurt worse than Midnight's body hurt him now. For in the next second, all her pain had evaporated, vanishing behind the haze of pure, violent fury. Her magic drew more elemental strength forth, forcing a snowstorm to materialize within the hallway. The strength in her horn spun tight into a single point, and with her own scream of wrath Winter set it loose, blasting the force straight as an arrow through the air into the monster's face. The impact alone was enough to pick the beast up off the ground and throw it violently backwards, sailing down the hall after its comrade as its head was engulfed in a glacier. Unfortunately, it hadn't yet let go of Midnight, dragging the pegasus back about a meter before the talons released him and the poor stallion came to rest on his left side.

A storm still swirling around her, Winter charged forwards, skidding to a halt beside Midnight and clinging to him with her hooves. "Midnight! Oh Celestia Midnight I'm so sorry...Midnight...!" she sobbed, tears freezing on her cheeks as she shivered with pain and sorrow. She clung to her stallion as he shivered too, though not from the cold of her touch or the storm she was unconsciously casting. Winter pressed her forehead to Midnight’s, icy tears falling on his cheek as he whimpered, his pale moonlit eyes sealed shut from the agony. Winter’s heart shattered, reformed, and shattered again within seconds, terrified that Midnight was on the verge of vanishing from her all over again. She had just gotten him back now, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him! She couldn’t stand him being in this much pain, if only she could take it away from him...

Deep in her heart, Winter knew she could do nothing to help Midnight’s pain now. She had no kind of medical training, and while a cold compress might have soothed some of his injuries she was too terrified to try moving him to apply it, fearful it would make everything worse. She wanted to beg Midnight’s forgiveness, pray he’d forgive her for getting him sent here, even accidentally. She wanted him to feel safe again, be safe again. But nothing, nothing seemed right anymore.

Winter heard something scraping along the hallway and glanced up to check. The snow swirling around her and her coltfriend obscured the view somewhat, but she could still see it: one of the creatures was getting back up. It hadn’t broken free of her ice yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time before they did and came after them. It was only a matter of time before they came to hurt Midnight again...

The anger reemerged in Winter before her next heartbeat. The snowfall increased exponentially, blinding everything in the hall as much as Winter’s fury blinded her to anything else. Something needed to hurt for what Midnight had suffered, she needed to repay that agony. As her fury surfaced, Winter thought back to the wall she had torn down. The walls of the ruins had certainly been dilapidated since they were built, but overall it had seemed almost livable since she’d charged through the cracked front door not five minutes ago. She’d seen the support pillars for the rest of the ruined castle, found the massive cracks in the stone that still held the entire building up. She could see clearly the places that had seemed lived in, re-adapted from whomever had built this place to suit the lives of the creatures that had come here, the ones who had turned Midnight’s life into pain.

"My parents would kill me for this,” thought Winter, only for a single moment, as she used the remaining rational part of her mind to concoct a critical part of this plan. She formed a sphere of ice around herself and Midnight, resting the two of them on a bed of cushioning snow, before she pictured an icy slide not unlike the one she had formed two months ago to speed down a mountain path after her last major ordeal. Thankfully this slide would be much smaller, as she could already feel her power tearing at her muscles. She couldn’t be channeling this much elemental energy at once, she was going to be weakened for days from what she’d already done. But this had to be done, to save Midnight, to serve vengeance to the creatures who had heart him. As she set the slide up quick as she could, bracing their protective dome at the edge of it, Winter heard just beyond the dome the sound of ice shattering. A quick scan of the arcane ice around her told her that part of the shell encasing one of the creatures had shattered, and that there were large gashes forming in it. They were getting loose.

“Too late,” she hissed, as she grabbed every shred of arcane energy she could and forced it downward into the stone below them. Winter forced the power deep into the rock, snaking it through the castle walls until she found where she remembered the support pillars had been. She fed the energy into the cracks, seeking out any crevasse she could find and building out from there. The pillars were coated, so she shoved her strength into the walls, the ceilings, floors, everything she could until the energy spread across half the castle’s lowest floor. She finally exhausted her supply of elemental energy, feeling her mane and tail fall back to normal as she emptied her body of her power, save for a tiny glimmer in the tip of her horn. And with her trap ready, Winter flicked her horn upwards and lit the last spark.

Even from so far away and sealed in a bubble, the sound of several tons of ice forming instantaneously was deafening. Almost immediately, the tremors began, the castle shaking violently as the ice smashed through the stone supports. With her magic exhausted Winter couldn’t feel what was happening with the ice anymore, but she didn’t need to sense it to know that the pillars had already begun to shatter. The castle was coming down.

Drained of every drop of her strength, Winter fell hard on her right side, gasping for breath. She’d forgotten one critical thing however, and she stood weakly to fix it. With the last of her muscles’ might, she hurled herself at the far side of the capsule, slamming hard into the inner dome and rocking the whole thing over. She was grateful she’d crafted the chute carefully to prevent their shell from rolling, as she knew Midnight wouldn’t take a tumble well in his state. He still slid towards her as their gravity shifted, the shell tilting as it hit the slide and began to ski downwards, forcing Winter to grab him and try to keep him still. It knocked the wind out of her and she coughed, body shaking from her weakness as she fought to keep herself conscious for just a little bit more.

The rumbles of the castle rapidly grew more distant, but at the same time perplexity louder; Winter must have done more damage than she’d initially thought. But before she could focus on the guilt of destroying an ancient palace, the capsule came to an abrupt halt, smashing Winter against the wall and catching Midnight again, who whimpered in pain before falling painfully silent. Barely conscious herself, Winter saw he was still breathing, but only shallowly... "Hang...on...Midnight...” she gasped, struggling to set him down and comfort him. But all she accomplished was collapsing next to him, face close to his, as she barely stayed awake. Her eyes glanced up behind her to see a sliver of dark blue like Midnight’s coat...the night sky. A crack had formed in the shell, probably from the impact with the ground.

Then, a flash of red. Winter’s eyes were blurring, but she had just enough time to make out Vlyka on the other side of the ice. She was saying something, but Winter’s ears weren’t responding anymore. She had just enough strength left to watch the little mare grab the sides of the ice and pull, yanking large chunks of the shell free as she tried frantically to get inside. But before Vlyka could reach the two of them, Winter’s eyes shut and her mind faded to white.

CH10: The Recovery Begins

The smells of the hospital around her were intense, diverse, and flooded with sterilizing compounds, too strong for Vlyka to entirely zone out of the scent even after a couple of hours. But it had stopped bothering her by now, giving her time to think about what might be happening in this building. It was secure enough, with enough ambient noise, that she couldn’t even clearly hear what was going on in Crystal’s room behind her as she sat begrudgingly out in the hall while the nurses looked over her sister; picking up anything else was out of her hearing range. Winter would probably be in similar care somewhere until she woke up, but Midnight... Even when she’d had a few veterinary classes seeing the insides of furry pets, Vlyka understood Midnight’s severe phobia of being cut open or jabbed with anything. And he was probably having something invasive happening to him now...

Vlyka shook her head to try and clear the images from her mind, but they refused to leave her. Moments after she’d shattered Winter’s ice shell, she’d been petrified with fear at seeing just how badly Midnight was bruised up. He was barely conscious, shaking and whimpering in obvious pain, to the point Vlyka couldn’t bear to touch him. She’d left him there, standing shaky guard until a group of medics had appeared out of nowhere, led by some royal guard and a few of Princess Twilight’s close friends, all of whom had gone into a frenzy of work as they came close enough for Vlyka to recognize them. The guards had gone after the remaining creatures, the princess having a momentary pause of awe to ramble on about something called a “raptorian.” The princess' focus came back to the quartet thanks to a sharp jab in the ribs from an orange-coated earth pony, one Vlyka recognized solely because she was a dog owner she'd been debating talking to about their pet. The medics had approached, Vlyka barely willing to step back and let them work since she knew that they would be far better at caring for Midnight’s wounds than she could.

It had been another twenty minutes as the medics appraised Midnight and Winter, Vlyka barely speaking up to mention Crystal to them as well, leading them there as four medics carefully loaded Midnight and Winter into a carriage. Vlyka had almost refused to leave them be, but a guard had come by insisting she talk with them. Their questions, and her answers, were a blur in Vlyka’s memory, punctuated by her casting worried glances back at Crystal as she was tended to by some nurses; it was a relief when she’d been released by the guard before Crys could be moved to the carriage too. Vlyka had barely managed to get herself on the carriage with her sis, a brief set of praise from the princess herself for Vlyka and Crys that almost made the latter faint from glee, allowing the sisters to ride back to Ponyville together. Crys had been admitted for minor injuries and observation, but the nurses had forced Vlyka to wait outside while Crys was settled in.

It had taken Crystal gently talking Vlyka down from snapping in fury at the nurse, prompting her to exit the room and sit dejectedly at the door where she was now. She wondered if she should take the time to check on Winter or Midnight, but as she tried to convince herself that taking a moment to think about anypony but Crystal wasn’t a horrible betrayal of her sis, Vlyka realized that those two would probably be in worse condition than Crys was. She’d heard the medics handling Midnight mention intensive care or the emergency room, and Winter would certainly be under observation until she woke up; at least she’d found her voice to tell the medics that Winter usually was fine after some cold water, even when it had taken a few tries to get them to take her seriously.

Vlyka growled and threw her head back, almost bashing it against the doorframe behind her. It was impossible to wait for these doctors to check on Crystal after all the waiting and fretting she’d done all day searching for her! Vlyka wasn’t sure if she could take this much more, especially when she felt the panic of her other friends, the only ponies who really truly cared about her, looming in the back of her mind. But the minute she saw all of them together in pain, Vlyka’s mind overloaded, panic spiking her heart rate and scaring her as her brain refused to stop. Every pain and fear crashed down on her in a moment, making her clutch her head in her hooves and hyperventilate. What would have happened if she’d been just a second earlier, or later? Should she have gone after Winter, instead of cling to Crystal and keep her safe like she had? Would something have happened to Crys then, all alone? Did something happen anyways and she never could have prevented it? The guard had barely arrived in time, what if they’d been delayed, and those two monster raptorians had attacked her all alone...

“Miss?” Vlyka jerked from her panic, shaking her head and staring at the now-opened door. A unicorn nurse pony had opened it, glancing worriedly at her while holding a clipboard in his magic. “You can go in and see her now, she’s stable enough to have visitors.”

Vlyka wanted to say “thank you,” but even in the best of moods those words were hard to remember to say. Right now she stammered and strained to say anything, but when nothing came to her mouth Vlyka simply nodded and trotted past the nurse and into the room. It wasn’t a single room, but Vlyka only had patience to look at one bed: Crystal’s.

Her precious sister was lying with her back elevated in bed, bandages wrapped around her hooves and neck. A strange device was attached to the tip of her horn, Crystal casting worried glances up towards it every so often as it pinged and glowed softly. The device was attached to a machine next to her bed, along with a traditional heartrate monitor beeping steadily below it. Vlyka hadn’t memorized a pony’s heartbeat and standard blood pressure, but it sounded regular enough to her own heartbeat that she felt comfortable thinking Crys was ok, at least for now. The unicorn took her glance off her horn device, or at least as close as she could see it, to smile at Vlyka as she recognized the mare entering. Vlyka trotted a little faster to her sister’s bedside, raising her hooves to the bed and pressing one on Crystal’s hoof. She felt the bandages graze her hoof, But Vlyka could do nothing but stare at Crystal’s eyes as she stared back at her. Vlyka’s usual social phobias, even with Crystal, had melted away for the moment, and she felt a profound sense of relief once again: Crys was here. The usual sparkle in her eye was dulled, but Crys’ smile was there, gentle as ever and soothing Vlyka enough to steady her heart rate again. “Crys...”

“Hey Vlyka,” said Crystal, gentle smile and a small laugh escaping the corner of her mouth. “You saved us.”

Vlyka huffed, smirking but shaking her head dismissively. “Winter did, I just led her...” Crystal opened her mouth to say something to counter her dismissal, but Vlyka spoke quicker. “I was so afraid we would be too late...”

“Well you weren’t,” she said back, shaking her head briefly. “At least not for me. And Midnight...is he...?”

Vlyka pressed her hoof down a little bit sterner. “They have him in the emergency room. I...don’t know anything more.”

“Well the good news,” came a voice, jerking Vlyka backwards so hard she almost fell on the floor. A doctor had approached while the sisters had been having their moment, and Vlyka’s defenses had been lowered in public so much. She tried frantically to recompose herself as the doctor checked his clipboard. “Your friends who came in with you are both in observation. The pegasus...Midnight,” he said, as he paged through his notes. “He’ll be in inpatient care for a few days at least while we help him through his injuries, but he’s responding well to preliminary treatments. And...Winter is up and on her hooves again as well. Seems like a severe case of exhaustion, possibly heat exhaustion from her stroll through the desert.”

At that, Vlyka couldn’t help but snicker very slightly. She’d seen what had happened to the castle ruins firsthoof, and Vlyka had only seen that kind of ice once before. Winter had been fine the whole walk, but at the moment Vlyka didn’t find the strength to speak up and correct the doctor. “As for yourself,” the doctor said, gesturing to Crys as the little mare at her side gulped. “You’ll be in observation for at least the rest of the night, just to be sure your magic won’t need any help recovering.”

Vlyka glanced at the device on her sister’s horn, as Crystal glanced up towards it herself. “So...should I expect anything? I lost my magic before with Tirek’s attack, I thought this felt the same...”

“Yes, plenty of unicorns came in after that little incident, I assure you,” the doctor sighed. “We had no problems with anypony there, and so far your readings are about the same. You should be back on your hooves and in your normal magic in no time...though you’ll probably want to go easy on the heavy lifting for a few days as your body recharges. Your release documents will be more thorough with their instructions.”

Crystal smiled gently, but Vlyka felt the relief for Crystal’s status lifting...only to leave one more intense fear lingering on her heart. “Doctor...how’s Midnight?”

Ch11: Falling Action

The doctor’s words hit Midnight’s ear, just like every sound he’d ever heard. His ear drums reverberated, transmitted sound to the bones of the ear and sent the signal to his brain. His brain even processed the signal correctly: the concussions had done nothing to dampen his hearing. But Midnight still heard not one word of what the doctor said to him.

Instead, his mind was flooded with two words cycling endlessly in his mind, louder and louder and louder with each pass: “wing broken.” He stared at his right wing, frozen stiff as he tried to process the words and sights and reconcile them with the deepest hope he was trying desperately to cling to. But his grip kept slipping, and reality reasserted itself harsh on his mind.

The next thoughts of Midnight’s were not much better for him than the cycle he’d been stuck in. He knew deep down he should be glad that this was the worst of his injuries; he’d been scraped by the bands and lay there with his neck, hooves, and stomach wrapped in tight bandages. His hind legs joined the fore in bandages, thanks to the harsh bruises from the flying shackle smashing against him. His right foreleg and left wing were both in slings, holding his body still while it tried to repair the torn tendons on its own. His back had a piece of antiseptic soaked cloth pressed against the wound on his back, stinging with each slight shift of his body. The burns on his stomach ached too, but comparatively they were hardly worth his notice as the cooling bandages pressed tight against them. His chest pains had been diagnosed as a shattered rib, thankfully not life threatening but he’d already been lectured on trying to breathe deeply despite the pain it caused to avoid pneumonia. And finally, there was a bandage wrap around his forehead and the right side of his head, applying cooling medication to avoid any swelling in his head and lessen the pain of his concussions. All things considered, he’d gotten off remarkably safely for infuriating creatures so much bigger than himself...

Midnight couldn’t even smirk at his own scrap of dry humor. He couldn’t feel joy, or even sorrow, anger, fear or anxiety; all he felt as he stared at the broken wing on his back, was sheer emptiness. His thoughts eventually pulled out of their infinite loops again and he sighed heavily. He knew that this would be a painful experience to heal, both physical and emotional... “How...how long?” he asked suddenly, speaking unintentionally during the doctor’s description of something. The doctor stopped, stared at him in confusion as Midnight tried to put aside the shame of interrupting a more important pony than himself. “How long will I be...” he said, only to lose steam again. He glanced back at his wing and bit his lip.

Thankfully, the doctor understood. “With your age, and proper rest, and a clean break like this...I would guess you’ll be back in the air...six to eight weeks.” The words stabbed Midnight in the heart, a sharp breath causing his rib to pain him as well, making him cough in pain and clutch is left hoof to his chest. “Just try to stay still as you can for the next few days, it will help your body start to heal properly. Just be patient and you’ll be back dreaming about the Wonderbolts Academy in no time!”

The doctor’s words and positivity didn’t help any, only making Midnight shiver with fear. The idea that he might heal wrong, that he might never move like he used to, pained him almost more than the aches and pains dulled by whatever intensive medication they’d pumped into him. He kept seeing his wing broken forever, never to heal, never to fly properly again... “It’s not likely” didn’t matter to his mind, the idea that anything could go wrong made the worst case a certainty. His heart thumped pained in his chest as he tried to steady his mind, but the series of aches across his body was too much for his mind to break free of his mental traps, and he sank back into depression.

The doctor seemed to recognize that Midnight had tuned out of the conversation and nodded. “I’ll check on you soon,” the doctor said, Midnight barely acknowledging him, before he left the room. Midnight stayed still, staring at his broken wing. He was so sucked into his own mind, he didn’t hear another pair of hooves trotting tentatively closer to him.

“So...” came a familiar, Canterlot-tinted accent, jerking Midnight out of his doldrums. He stared up and met Winter’s eyes immediately. “Wonderbolts Academy?” Winter smirked, stepping to about a meter away from Midnight’s bed before stopping. Midnight looked her up and down as she stood there, staring right at his face the whole time. She looked a little rough, her mane and coat dirty from the dust and sands of the desert, and her legs were just barely shaking from exhaustion. But he knew Winter well enough by now: she wouldn’t lie down. She was staring so intently right at him, that nothing would convince her to take a moment to herself.

The doctor’s words finally hit Midnight and he let out a soft chuckle, only for it to die in his throat as his face was clouded by sorrow again. “You know me better than that...” he muttered, tilting his head away. Winter nodded and took a step closer, but Midnight could only bite his lip. It was just a joke, she was kidding with him, he didn’t need to be so literal about what he knew was a joke. “I’m sorry Winter...I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Now, earlier...all this...”

“No. You should have.” Midnight blinked in surprise as Winter took another step. “You should have snapped, you should have done worse. You should have been so cruel and awful to me, because I hurt you.” She stepped again, a pained look on her face that perplexed Midnight. “Of all ponies I should know how badly it hurts when somepony dismisses something you hold so close to your heart. Shouldn’t I have known how much that hurts, how badly even a pony with great self-esteem can hurt from someone they care about denying something so basic to them.”

Midnight smirked weakly, as he started to realize what Winter was saying. “So Crys told you?” he asked, only for Winter to shake her head.

“I haven’t talked with her, I passed out after we escaped and I came right here after they let me out of bed. But...I figured it out.” Winter stepped closer, down to half a meter away from his bedside now. But still she stayed at a distance, looking very uncertain of where to stand. “The doctor was right to talk about the Wonderbolts, you’d be fantastic for them. They’re missing so much because you don’t want to join those showboats! You flying around at night, your tricks...you be proud of that. You and I are alike, we’ve got skills we need to be proud of, damn anypony who thinks otherwise!”

Midnight shook his head. “That’s sweet Winter, but I’m not cut out for the Wonderbolts. I don’t have the...”

To Midnight’s surprise, Winter cut straight through is words and stomped forwards another three steps. “You’re not interested in the Wonderbolts, Midnight, that’s a big difference from not being cut out for them! You’re overqualified for them, you just don’t care to be in the spotlight! And that’s okay!”

Midnight tried to look at Winter, who smirked gently at him. He knew her face, trying to encourage him without a word. It would have worked, he knew she had a point...only she was just a tad wrong. “I’m not always uninterested in the spotlight...” he muttered, glancing down to his left, shifting his left hoof as a sign of embarrassment.

Winter was silent for a moment, before she gasped far louder than she’d been talking moments ago. Midnight’s ears tipped backwards, a little from embarrassment and a little to quiet the noise of Winter’s gasp. “What?! You’re...you’re not?” He shook his head almost imperceptibly, but Winter looked like she was about to faint into the chair beside her. “I...I thought that watching you at night, asking about your flight manuals...Oh sweet Celestia I thought I was digging into you about it!”

Midnight smiled gently and shook his head at Winter. “You’re right Winter. We are alike, your ice and my flying. I’d love to show off what I know about flying, but when I think about doing it in front of everypony, I just...”

“Start worrying things will go wrong?” Midnight nodded as Winter smiled sadly, knowing what he meant. “Been there done that,” said Winter, as Midnight looked puzzled at her. Winter then glanced around, feigning nervousness as she moved right up next to Midnight as though she were trying to go unnoticed. “I’ve never told anypony this, but a year and a half ago I got hired for a filly’s cuteceañera in Canterlot.” Winter lowered her voice to a whisper and raised a hoof towards Midnight’s ear as she told him her precious secret. “The big finale was to sculpt the filly’s cutie mark nice and big for a centerpiece. But I got so into crafting I entirely forgot how to support the dang thing.” Midnight’s eyes widened as he jumped ahead in Winter’s story, but he sat patiently while she finished. “Not three minutes after I’d finished, it snapped right in half. Took the table out in a single blow.”

Midnight’s hoof jerked up towards his mouth as he valiantly failed to stifle a snort of laughter at his marefriend, who smirked sheepishly at him. “Seriously?”

Rather ashamed, Winter nodded, unable to look right at Midnight’s eyes. “I was so ashamed I almost bolted straight out the door. I refused my commission for that, begged them to use it to buy a better table.”

Midnight laughed a bit louder, straining not to for both Winter’s and his chest’s sake. “I’m sorry Winter, I shouldn’t laugh...” he giggled.

“Oh don’t you worry, I’m used to that response. The foals thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I can take a bedridden stormcloud giggling at me,” she said with a knowing wink. That only made Midnight giggle more, until he started coughing from the irritation of his ribs. There was a moment of silence as Winter raised a hoof to the bedside, pressing it down near Midnight’s hoof.

“Okay, you got me,” Midnight smirked. “That’s funny. I promise though, your secret is safe with me.”

“Like yours should have been with me?”

The hurt in Winter’s eyes was obvious, sending an ache into Midnight’s mind. He could see it in her, the pain she now realized she’d put him through, however unintentionally. “You didn’t tell anypony,” he began, but the ache in Winter’s eyes stifled the lie he was about to say in his throat. A pang of guilt hit him as it quickly outmatched the good he thought discounting his own pain would do for Winter. “I told you about that crash in confidence Winter, I...I was so ashamed of that, I dropped out of the sky and hit a tree from ten meters up! That’s just humiliating!”

Winter only shrugged slightly. “I don’t know how hard it is to fly, but I know I should have been serious about it. I didn’t mean to laugh at you Midnight, it was cruel of me. Yelling at me was the least of what you should have done to me.”

“That wasn’t an appropriate response and you know it,” grumbled Midnight. “I know...I knew then that you didn’t know flying was that important to me. I should have known you didn’t know how mortified I was about the crash. I shouldn’t be anyways, better fliers than me still mess up worse than that!” He sighed and closed his eyes, hanging his head in frustration.

“That doesn’t mean you just invalidate your feelings,” said Winter. Midnight felt her hoof shift close to his through the mattress, but she still didn’t make contact. He opened his eyes and glanced to his left, seeing her hoof very close to his. “Things are allowed to hurt us, even when it feels...” she began, only to stop suddenly as Midnight raised his left hoof and pressed it to hers. He glanced up and saw her staring in surprise at his hoof, before glancing up at him. he smiled softly at her, as she raised her other hoof and pressed it on top of his. “I don’t care if you think your feelings aren’t important enough for other ponies, please...your feelings matter to me. Because they’re you, who you are, and I couldn’t give those up for all the family reconciliation in the world.”

Midnight smiled weakly at Winter, almost laughing at her little joke. But tears formed in his eyes as he looked straight into hers. “I was so afraid,” he murmured. “The whole time I was captured I was so afraid that I’d never see you again, I’d die with you hating me...”

“I don’t hate you Midnight,” she murmured, her eyes tearing up as well. “I’ve never hated you, even when I was so mad. I just was so worried about your health, I got irritated and...”

“it’s ok Winter, it’s ok...” Midnight pressed his hoof harder against hers. “I know...I’m awful with my sleep schedule. It’s bad for me, and I should fix it. You’re right to get mad at me for it. Your feelings are important too, and I just got so afraid that I’d never get the chance to explain why I was mad, for you to know I was so sorry...”

“Well, I accept your apology, if you accept mine.” Winter smirked, Midnight laughing gently and nodding once. “I think we both blew this whole fight up for no good reason, and I am so so so sorry that I lost my cool.”

“And we all know you losing your cool is a dangerous thing,” Midnight smirked, causing Winter to laugh. The gentle melody of her voice giggling chilled the fires of pain in his body, making Midnight smile broader as Winter squeezed his hoof tighter.

“Well, when I look at you my heart starts beating faster. I’m sure that starts to make me heat up...”

“Okay then, okay,” Midnight smirked, pulling his hoof playfully from her grip. “Thanks Ms. Heartthrob, but I’d rather not drown from sappy comments in the hospital.”

Winter laughed louder and nodded, holding a hoof to her muzzle as her teeth flashed from her glee. “Hardly the worst thing we’ve said to each other,” she said, smirking as Midnight rolled his eyes. It was true, he’d fallen hard into pet names or stupid jokes about their love in the last two months, as had Winter. It was kind of sweet at some points, but right now Midnight was too tired to handle any of it. “But right now, you got a deal.” Winter raised her hoof to Midnight’s cheek and gently touched him, making him smile and follow her with a hoof. Then, suddenly, Winter jumped forwards, planting her lips on his and giving him a deep, long kiss, one Midnight was only too glad to reciprocate after the surprise passed him.

“Alright,” Midnight smirked, as Winter gently pulled back just a bit to stare into his eyes. “Is that a ‘let’s finish this stupid argument already?’”

With another giggle, Winter nodded. “Guess its finally time to officially end our first big argument.”

“Snowball,” Midnight smirked, “I was ready to end this fight two minutes after we started.”

“And I wanted it ended just a minute later,” Winter said, playfully acting as though she were offended. “Don’t think you beat me that easily.”

As he shook his head and chuckled, Midnight felt too tired to snip back at Winter, even as a joke. “Alright, alright, you win this round.”

“Well I think it’s fair to say you won the fight,” said Winter, looking a little too stern for her to be joking. He knew that she was trying to be serious and fight back the depression that she expected to crowd into his head with his perceived ‘loss’ to her. But Midnight felt ok, if very tired physically and emotionally.

Not interested in replying even as a joke, Midnight shot Winter a flat look with a single eyebrow raised. “Can we not turn this into our second ever fight?”

Winter blinked and looked rather ashamed for a moment, but smirked as she rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, deal on that too,” she said, letting out a soft giggle as Midnight smirked at her. It was a relief to see her gentle look again, it felt like things had been reset between them at last. “Now I can see you’re slowing down, you wanna get a nap in after all this hell you’ve endured?”

Midnight looked at Winter, a little embarrassed, as he nodded sheepishly. She already knew him way too well, she could tell even through the entire hospitalization that his social energy was dying, even for his precious marefriend. Winter looked no worse for wear either, she’d long since learned to put up with his limited ability to interact, and she simply approached him for a very tender hug before using her magic to shut the curtains over the window. It was still dark outside, but Midnight knew that the sunrise had to be scheduled soon, as did Winter apparently. The room wasn’t darkened that much, but it was enough that Midnight felt a bit more at ease. “You gonna be ok walking home? You’d better rest when you get home too, since I can’t bug you at your house,” he said, laughing gently.

Obviously pretending to be offended, Winter gasped. “I didn’t use that much power at once, you know,” she huffed, before letting the act drop abruptly. “Oh, I...I almost forgot. Your glasses they...”

“Oh...” Midnight sighed, as Winter’s meaning became clear to him. “Well, I...I have a backup pair by my flight goggles. Do you think you could bring them to me, when you have the strength?”

“Of course I can,” Winter said, “and a book or two to read huh? Hospital’s gonna get boring without them, I bet.” Midnight only nodded to her as she spoiled him a little. “I’ll take a nap, head to your place, and bring those back later today, I promise.”

Midnight was going to protest, but he stopped himself. He could tell she was nervous for him, and she’d want to check up on him as often as she could bear. Plus, being alone in this hospital could have been devastatingly dull for him, meaning he would cherish Winter even more when she chose to visit. “Get enough rest before you come back here,” he said sternly, but nodded afterwards. “You be careful.”

“Of course I will,” Winter nodded back to him, stepping close and giving Midnight a gentle kiss on his cheek. “Now you get some sleep too, my precious night angel. You deserve it.”

Midnight smirked at his snow angel and nodded once, kissing her cheek in response as she held herself close enough to touch him. “Thank you, Winter, for caring about me.”

“I could never do anything else,” Winter replied, holding herself close to him before she finally, regretfully, stepped backwards towards the door. She blew a kiss goodbye with a sad smile before she trotted out of view.

Midnight sighed and glanced back at his numerous injuries, before struggling to settle into his bed with some semblance of comfort. Rest was calling for him, but his body seemed ready to fight him for that need. It was going to be a long time before things were right, he felt that fact sitting uncomfortably in his heart...but Winter would be there for him. Crystal, Vlyka, Winter...they were all safe, all there to help him, and for him to help them. “Maybe we’ll make it through this...” he sighed, before his mind finally managed to cut through the pain and let him slip into the shadow of dreams.