We didn't stop in our little makeshift hideaway this time; Gilda wouldn't let us. She was determined now, and the fire in her eyes matched that in her belly as she sprinted through the halls towards that fog-filled doorway. We passed more guards on the way, and the clacking of hooves that Red and I created in her wake was surely drawing more, but they couldn't keep up with us. We made it to the throne room without having to do anything more than dodge an errant blade or three.

Gilda was first through the fog, and I followed behind only seconds later. Red was behind me, but before I had even forced my way through the stiff fog, I could hear Rainbow Dash yelp in surprise. Gilda had attacked her without even waiting for us.

There was no banter this time, no chance for parley. Dash's helmet wasn't even on; it seemed as though Gilda had truly caught her by surprise, and now Dash's faded rainbow mane shone in the light through the stained-glass windows as she ducked and dodged Gilda's clawing slashes. She caught my eye as I ran forward to try and catch up, and I hesitated for just a moment.

Dash didn't hesitate; as Gilda slashed upwards, Dash ducked under her claw, and swooped at me, spear readied. I had a split second to swing Red’s old axe at where her spear would be, and the dual tips of her weapon struck the flat blade of mine, as she coiled her weight around the spear. Then uncoiled like a spring, and launched herself upwards and away in a shower of sparks, as I was shoved backwards. I'm not even sure she had intended for the strike to hit me; I think she had just been using me to gain momentum, and create distance between herself and Gilda.

That momentum nearly carried her to the rafters, where two arrows narrowly missed her flared wings. Gilda had drawn her bow and was firing as wildly as she could, relying on speed more than accuracy with her shots. While none of the arrows seemed as though they'd hit, Dash still needed to dodge around the projectiles, and Gilda was using them to corral her prey into a flight-path that would benefit her.

The fog parted once more as Red followed me into the room, only seconds behind—though it felt like so much longer. He nearly got an arrow in the face from Gilda as she reacted on pure instinct, and Fleur leapt from his back, ready to defend him against either of the airborne combatants. As Gilda moved to intercept Dash, the dragonslayer changed course suddenly into another diving corkscrew, bleeding momentum while she spread her wings and strummed the strings of her bizarre weapon.

The room echoed with a thunderclap as the twin speartips flashed, and Fleur seemed stunned, as the animated axe drifted aimlessly for a few seconds. In that time, Dash had nearly met the floor, and skimmed the marble tiles with a wingtip as she continued to play her instrument. Gilda was forced to follow behind her instead of meeting her head-on, and I realized all too late that both of them were now speeding towards me.

Dash was too close to the ground for me to duck under her, so instead I jumped over—which she anticipated, and I felt her spear slam into my side. The twin tips kept it from impaling me fully, and instead it seized me from the air and slammed me down into the floor, like a vindictive foal would stomp on an insect. Dash again used me to change her momentum, and I acted as an anchor as she swung her own body around her weapon, then slammed her hind hooves into Gilda's side as the gryphon caught up. “Gotcha!”

The air was driven from Gilda's lungs in an instant, and she was driven to the ground by the impact. She bounced when she hit the marble, and I heard the distinct crack of bone, but Gilda managed to flare her own wings back out to stop herself from additional bounces. Still, she seemed dazed when she came to a sliding stop, and Dash used the few seconds she had bought to leap back into the air—pulling the spear from my torso with a cold sucking sensation. She continued to hover in the air, glancing between Gilda and Red, before she finally spoke.

“Came in hot today, huh? Glad you're finally catching on to how I like to fight!”

Gilda wiped at her forehead, where a trail of blood had started dribbling down her brow. “Where's your ruttin' pet? Not that I'm complaining, it's a lot more fun now. He was getting in our way.”

Dash glanced down at me, as though suddenly remembering that I existed. “You didn't tell her?” Her eyes snapped back to Gilda, who was already nocking another arrow. “Holly here,“ she dodged said arrow without even pausing, “reminded me that Tank's still mortal, or...something close to it. He—“ another arrow arced past her head. “—would you chill for two seconds?”

“I've waited too long already to taste your blood in my beak.” Gilda snarled, as she drew her knife.

Dash actually paused, and tilted her head in confusion. “Whoa. Gil, you've always been intense, but if I read a character saying that in a book—“

“Shut up!” Gilda screeched, as she flew right at Dash, knife in one claw and her talons fully extended from the other.

Dash lazily flew backwards as she strummed her guitar-spear once more, intercepting Gilda with a blast of freezing air, which barely slowed her down even as the blood and sweat crystallized into frost across the surface of her fur and feathers. “I said chill, jackass!” When that didn't stop Gilda, Dash beat her wings to gain altitude back up to the rafters, but Gilda kept following as closely as she could anyways.

As they started to duck and weave in between the old wooden beams holding up the tiled marble ceiling, Red finally met me in the center of the room. “We're not gonna be able to join that fight,” he grumbled, before adding, “wish Gilda had waited for us.”

“Who are w-we hoping will win?” I mumbled quietly, still watching the complex dance as I splashed liquid sunlight over the bleeding wound in my side. I recognized maneuvers from faded memories of a time before, and my wings twitched as they itched to join them, my pegasus instincts aching even though I was still incapable of flight.

Red shook his head. “If we're lucky, they'll kill each other, and it won't be our problem.”

“I d-don't think we've ever b-been lucky. N-not once.” I re-corked the bottle, and back into my bottomless bag it went.

Red snorted, and it took me a second to realize it was as close to a laugh as I'd heard him ever give. Then Dash swooped back towards us, and the fight was back on.

In fact, she was diving directly in between me and Red. We both leapt aside as she dragged the tips of her spear against the marble floor, leaving a shallow furrow in the stone as she passed. Lightning bounced between the sparks left in her wake, into a lingering cloud—which Gilda flew right through, screaming as the electricity crackled across her wings. She tumbled to the floor as her flight muscles spasmed uncontrollably, and Dash pulled an immelterzel turn—a gryphon-style flight maneuver that had her looping back on herself without losing too much momentum—to bear down on us.

We readied our weapons to swing at her as she passed, but she flared her wings at the last second—and we were buffeted by a shower of razor-sharp hail, which sliced at my flesh and armor, even as I turned away to protect my face. Red was more successful, using the flat side of Fleur as a shield, but I felt one of the shards pierce through my cheek and start to burn the inside of my mouth with unbearable cold.

And yet, Dash slowing down enough to use her weather magic on us was a mistake. Gilda had ducked low to dodge the hailstorm as she slid between us, and like a large cat, she leapt back upwards faster and further than any of us were expecting. She grabbed one of Dash's hind-legs, and used her weight to yank the dragoon out of the air. Dash barely had time to whinny in surprise, before Gilda's other claw, curled into a fist, met her jaw on the way down.

They crashed to the floor together in a flailing tangle of limbs and armor, then began rolling away from us as they grappled each other. Dash's spear was kicked away as Gilda started to try and hold her still, and then I saw the flash of her hunting knife. Dash gasped sharply as Gilda grabbed her throat, and then the knife was in the mare's eye, and all was still.

Rainbow Dash was dead, just like that.

A single mistake, after fighting so viciously, for so long.

Gilda could hardly seem to believe it herself; she was the first to move, her claws trembling in shock and exhaustion, as she crouched atop Dash's dead body. She gave the knife another couple of cruel twists, as if to make sure, and if Dash weren't undead like us, it would have been a very permanent end. Maybe it still would be.

That shocked trembling turned into quiet giggling, as Gilda yanked the knife back out, and she watched the ichor drip from the blade. “Ruttin'...finally. Where's your cocky attitude now, huh? It got you killed, that's what! You're gonna taste so damned good when I gorge myself on your—“

I slammed into Gilda's side as hard as I could, and the knife went flying.

She let out a screech as we tumbled together away from Dash's corpse, and she raked her claws through my mane, snagging on my armor, but leaving little more than shallow slices. “You rotten piece of donkey scat! I had her, she's mine!”

I forced myself to my hooves and back away from Gilda, who struggled to stand, still dazed. “Don't! We d-don't need to—“

“Betrayal!” Gilda shrieked, as she lunged at me again. “You want her soul all for yourself you ruttin' vulture! But you can't have her!”

“N-neither can y—“ I didn't have time to finish the response, as Gilda ducked low and slammed her head under my chin. I reared back onto my hinds, off-balance, as Gilda started to try and rip my armor right off my barrel. She sliced through one of the straps holding it in place before my lightly-armored hoof hit her in the head, and then she grabbed my foreleg. Using that for leverage, she yanked me forwards, and I flailed as I went sprawling across the floor. I saw the flash of Gilda’s claws, and I thought they were bound for my throat—but a silver blur passed my vision instead, and Gilda let out a screech of anguish.

I scrambled backwards as quickly as I could, looking for a weapon, and I saw why my throat had been spared this time; Fleur had lopped off Gilda’s right foreleg, halfway between her claw and her knee. The detached limb was still bouncing across the floor, and Gilda’s eyes darted between it and the floating axe, presumably trying to figure out her next move. Meanwhile, she clutched her shortened limb to her breast, even as it soaked her fur with dark blood.

I knocked into something in my mad scramble backwards, and I risked glancing back to see what it was. Surprisingly, it was Rainbow Dash’s bizarre spear, as it must have ended up over here when it was yanked from her grip. Gilda seemed preoccupied with Red and Fleur currently, which gave me time to roll over and pick up the weapon for myself.

I’d never played guitar, even before my undeath. I could tell that much, from how alien the instrument-slash-weapon felt in my forehooves. But I could feel cloudsteel woven through the strings, and the whole assembly thrummed with magic that yearned for the touch of a pegasus. I could use this weapon, I was sure of it, I just had to figure out how.

Gilda made her choice, as she leapt for Red, and Fleur moved to counterattack, but the gryphon’s feral madness kept her from losing any more limbs to the deadly swings of the living weapon. Red was forced backwards as Gilda pounced at him, but the fact that she’d lost a claw threw her off balance, and she was forced to use her wings to be more mobile instead. Fleur’s own weight threw her off, and Gilda managed to just barely avoid the wide sweeps of the axe, leaving the living weapon orbiting them both to try and get a clear swing.

I refocused on Dash’s discarded weapon. It had an internal reservoir of power, imbued through enchantment, or perhaps it absorbed power from the wielder? Either way, it was clearly designed to release that power to mimic weather magic. I was nowhere near as skilled or as powerful as Rainbow Dash was—as powerful as she had been, that was. I had barely managed to glide since my reawakening, and my own connection to the skies and the wind was so tenuous that I had been learning to fight like an earth pony, and a weak one, ever since I learned I needed to fight.

Experimentally, I slapped my hoof against the strings, and while the instrument certainly made a noise, it was in no way musical. Still, I felt a spark, and I tried again, this time dragging my hoof down two of the strings towards myself. Lightning arced from my hoof down the strings—in the wrong direction, and I yelped as there was a ‘snap’ of ozone, which left a scorch mark on my hindleg barding from the backblast.

As I caught my breath and waited for the pain to fade, I glanced back up to make sure Gilda wasn’t tearing her way back towards me. So far, I was safe, but Gilda was winning against Red. The big stallion was holding her back as best he could, but he was clearly used to using his size and strength in offensive charges—Gilda kept forcing him backwards, and Red could never seem to get a second to brace himself and retaliate. As incredible an advantage as Fleur provided, it seemed as though lacking an actual weapon of his own left Red reliant on shoulder-checking and stomping, and Fleur was doing her best to work around him whenever he tried—but they weren’t quite synced up, and that left Gilda room to play them against each other and make openings by being so frantically aggressive. With the gryphon so close, it must be too risky for Fleur to swing at her without hitting Red instead.

Gilda lunged for Red again, and I realized my time here might be short. I shook the lingering numbness from my hoof, and then started to flick the strings to get them vibrating. That seemed to be generating more power, somehow? I could feel some powerful force building up inside the body of the guitar, while the twin heads of the spear sparked and arced, but my technique was still missing something.

The floor shook as Red was slammed down against the marble, and Gilda dodged a swing from Fleur, then apparently chose to switch targets. The gryphon’s eyes turned back to me, and I began strumming the strings more frantically. My problem wasn’t getting a reaction out of the weapon, it was that the instrument was eager to channel magic into destructive force, and I had to learn how to use it with a deft touch. If I used it wrong, it was all too possible that I might just blow myself up—and maybe the whole room with me. No wonder this was Dash’s chosen weapon for slaying dragons.

My time was up; Gilda leapt into the air to dodge a low swing from Fleur, and turned that into a swooping dive back towards me. I had seconds to get out of the way before Gilda’s single outstretched claw cleaved my head from my body, and instead, all I was doing was screwing around with this stupid instrument. In a panic, I pointed the twin heads of the spear towards her, and slid my hoof straight down the strings like I was trying to scrape flint against steel to start a fire.

A thunderclap deafened me as my vision went white, and my body went numb.

When I regained my senses, I realized I was staring up at the ceiling, and the room was much brighter. My ears were still ringing, which made it hard to move my head, and moving my legs was even more difficult. They were still numb, and I worried I’d done permanent damage. Eventually I managed to move my head enough to look around the room, and at myself.

I was lying about twenty leg-lengths back from where I’d been sitting before, at the foot of the staircase behind the thrones, and the marble floor at my previous location had been marked with a whirling scorch pattern across the stone that reminded me of tree branches. The guitar-spear wasn’t far from the epicenter of the blast, but it had clearly been thrown as well. The strings were all snapped and smoking, and the heads of the spears had a red-hot glow to them. Still, it didn’t seem like the general structure of the weapon had been too badly damaged.

Gilda, on the other hoof… At first, I thought I’d blown her into ash. I couldn’t see her anywhere near the blast site, and she’d caught the full impact of what I’d forced out of the weapon, directly to the face. That was worse than Dash spearing her through the first time, there was no doubt about it. I only relaxed slightly when I saw a crumpled, charred form lying against the distant wall at the other end of the throne room, under a dark smear. The force of the blast had slammed her against the stone at speeds unimaginable, and I’d be shocked if she still had a solid bone left in her body. At least she wasn’t a threat now.

Then I looked up, and noticed the windows. The grand stained-glass panes that had lined the hall before, displaying the great glories of Equestria’s history in the past and more recent past… They were simply gone. Only shards remained in the frames, and a cold breeze blew through the throne room in their absence. Not a single shard had fallen inside the room, and the gardens outside must have been littered with uncountable shards of broken glass.

When I recovered from my stunned shock, I noticed Red was still alive, and approaching. He was covered in cuts and slices from Gilda’s claws, but they only slowed him down a little. As soon as he noticed I was awake, he changed course towards me, and said...something. His lips moved, but all I could hear was a dull ringing. Damn, my ears were damaged again.

As were Red’s; he seemed to notice that he couldn’t hear himself either, and I recognized the motions of a frustrated snort, even if it was inaudible. He looked back up, as if to say something else—but whatever he was going to say was lost, as his eyes went wide, looking at something behind me. Then, to my shock, he dropped to his foreknees in a sign of respect.

Sluggishly, I struggled to sit upright, but a golden aura enveloped my body to assist me. I was lifted from the floor, and gently set on my shaking legs, which I immediately threw into jeopardy by trying to turn around. I nearly collapsed again, but that golden aura held me steady as I looked back.

Princess Celestia looked haunted, as though she had been awake for days on end, and had spent all of that time filling out obituaries. The crow’s-feet of her eyes were deeper, and her whole body sagged tiredly as she stood before us. She wasn’t wearing any of her usual regalia; she’d probably left it upstairs, in case her prison was restored in the time it took to make herself look presentable.

It was odd, I thought, but without her peytral, boots, and tiara, she didn’t look like a goddess of the sun, or a princess of Equestria. She just looked like any other pony, but…taller. Even Rainbow Dash had looked more regal, more like an alicorn, than Princess Celestia did. But still she stood, unadorned, atop the stairs.

She was looking down at us, as we stood in the wreckage we’d made of her throne room during our fight. That omnipresent feeling of guilt returned, eating me alive, as she silently witnessed the bloody path we’d carved through her palace to reach her.

Author's Note

Even on my birthday, I'll not forget to post the week's chapter, heh. Hope you're all enjoying the story so far! I'm always a little worried with fight scenes because I don't want them to get too complicated in description—and thus potentially boring. The banter throughout this chapter helps significantly with that, I feel.

Much more befitting a fight scene is the song for this chapter: Radiarc - Gilded in Blood
Once more Radiarc's catalogue of music provides a thematically-fitting jam, and this has always been in the story's playlist, ever since I first started planning it all out.

As always, send thanks to my pre-readers, Prince-Nightfire93, Citizen, SisterHorseteeth, and Non Uberis.

Finally, my links to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Hopefully the situation will change enough in the future that I won't feel as though those are necessary any more.