Rainbow's blood boiled. He had the gall to think she was being cold-blooded by defending her friends? What other option did she have? She got ready to thrust the saber into his throat.
But even as she prepared, she knew that she couldn't. Even to a griffon like him, she couldn't bring herself to summon up the willpower to do it. He was right! What would her friends think of her if she did something like that?
Twilight was on the verge of firing a deadly laser at the leader of crime. She was telling herself, This is the right thing to do. If I don't kill him, we'll be killed ourselves by his confederates. He can't live.
And yet she didn't fire. Amadeus was right. If she killed anyone-- even him-- wouldn't that mean she had failed? What would Princess Celestia say if she found out her protegee had committed a cold-blooded murder? If Amadeus had been killed--by her--on purpose?
The laser building up, however, was becoming too much for her to keep inside of her. It was almost going to fire. She strained against its power, but it was almost going to be unleashed. She let out an anguished cry of determination to keep it inside of her.
Rainbow saw this and readied the saber again, summoning once again the courage she needed. She couldn't let Twilight kill Amadeus. She would do this for her. She would strike first. She would save her friend.
The griffon sniper licked his lips satisfactorily, adjusting the angle of his rifle at the back of Rainbow's head, ready to fire.
False Felony grinned malevolently, showing his rotting, yellowing teeth.
Applejack struggled against her captor's grip more fervently than before. Pinkie was doing the same.
Fluttershy looked up at Amadeus with a look of pure outrage written all across her face, red and swollen from her crying and the slap he had given her. She inhaled and exhaled with furious strain as a scowl came onto her face.
Amadeus, in front of the opened door leading out, looked smug at the indecision on both of their faces. He had a triumphant look of satisfaction on his harsh, scarred face.
CRUNCH
And Amadeus let out an anguished cry of surprise and pain, and the six mares and the baby dragon gasped in horror. Protruding from his left lung was three inches of a slim, bloodstained blade. It had entered from the back, going straight through his heart.
A waterfall of blood cascaded down his front, soaking the black feathers on his torso. Amadeus squirmed and struggled, but weakly, and slowly. Finally his limp body stopped moving, and the blade slithered out with a small whistle.
Amadeus dropped to the ground, pooling in his own blood. Behind him was the cold-blooded killer.
The Night Terror, coated in that black substance, had his head bowed. His bladed horn dripped with Amadeus's blood. His wings, sharp and bladed, extended outward. And his eyes... They were filled with bestial fury. They were the devil's eyes.
"Get away!"
The command was harsh, and guttural, and deep, and it caused pain to all that feared him. The room instantly dropped twenty degrees. Twilight's magic shut off like a blown candle.
"IT'S HIM!" someone screamed in fright. A pony instantly ripped a grenade off a bandoleer around him and circled his arm. The small sphere sailed through the air towards the Night Terror.
The Night Terror made no movement except reach out with one arm. He caught the grenade and held it against his chest to shield Twilight and Rainbow from the explosion. And with a massive BOOM, it detonated in a fireball.
Rainbow and Twilight fell backward. The Night Terror was now enveloped in flame all over his body. His wings and horn were among the parts on fire, and he looked like an effigy sacrificed to some abominable god.
But as Twilight and the rest watched with horrified fascination, they noticed that he was not dead, unharmed by the fire somehow. He just stood there on all fours, tall and fearsome, burning like a bonfire. Smoke rolled off of him in clouds of darkness. The room did not move, but instead collectively watched the demon that had escaped Tartarus.
"YOU WILL NOT TOUCH THEM AGAIN!"
It was a feral, malevolent roar that came from the throat of the devil himself, thundering with the force of a volcano.
Someone made the mistake of opening fire. He immediately jumped over the heads of Rainbow and Twilight, who instinctively ducked, and he flicked his flaming wings. With several shrieking whistles, fiery flaming feathers found themselves in the bodies of several criminals next to him, who let out anguished screams. The Night Terror had leaped at the stomach of the griffon that shot him and sunk his flaming bladed horn to the forehead into his chest. They both fell to the floor with a thud, and the Night Terror, with a swing of his head, ripped his horn out of the griffon's body with a terrible crunch.
He spread his fiery wings again. He was now protecting Spike, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie, and Fluttershy, who was still curled up and whimpering in fright. All around him, several griffons started to shoot at him, but they mostly impacted on him. The griffons that had the feathers fired into them lay groaning in pain on the ground at his hooves.
They were still alive!
The girls scooted back in fright, Spike holding on to Rarity. The Night Terror still held out his bulletproof wings, seemingly oblivious to the bullets impacting on him. The griffons, obviously confused and frightened, just kept pouring fire on him until he rang like a snare drum with the metallic pings all over his body, still blazing like an inferno.
And then, suddenly, the air was filled with tiny clicks as the guns ran out of ammunition and they continued to click the trigger anyway. They desperately began to fumble for extra bullets.
"My turn."
He raised his hoof and a glowing red projectile screamed out of his hoof and slammed into a group of ponies gathered together. They disappeared in the fiery flower, and the air shook like a drunkard.
Twilight instantly felt a pair of talons grasp themselves around her neck, inexorably closing themselves so quickly Twilight could not focus enough power to free herself. Out of the corner of her fuzzy vision, she saw Applejack try to pry her loose from the griffon holding her, but the griffon gave her a heavy backhand and Applejack went sprawling.
"You're coming with me," the griffon hissed in her ear, dragging her towards the still-open door the Night Terror had come through. "Best to salvage all we can." His breath was stale, and smelled of tuna fish.
Twilight struggled, but her windpipe was slowly, slowly getting crushed, and she couldn't get loose and she couldn't breathe-
"OH, NO YOU DON'T!"
BANG
And the griffon's grip relaxed all of a sudden. Twilight gasped in relief and pulled herself away. She was initially confused until she looked up and saw the griffon sway a little, a hole in his forehead dribbling blood. The hole in his head was so clear Twilight could see through it and see the opposite wall. He teetered to the ground, and Twilight was now free.
Twilight whirled around. It was the flaming deity pointing at the space the griffon's head had been. It was the second time her life had been saved by the Night Terror.
"Put up a shield, Twilight!" the Night Terror commanded her. Twilight instantly obeyed his directions, out of fear and desperation, with her magic.
He ripped something off of his flank and held it out to his side and triggered the device. A loud BwowWw emanated from it and a meter-long jagged blade of white electricity surged out. He then lunged towards the nearest griffon and cleaved him in two with an incredible cut. He fell to the floor, smoking from where he had been cut in half.
Everyone took that as a sign to retreat. They were scrambling towards the door Twilight and her friends had came through. The first ones to reach the door, however, found themselves slumped against the wall and leaking blood from holes that appeared all over them with every bang from the Night Terror, who was firing at them from a long cylindrical gun that had mysteriously appeared in his left hoof. The gun spun like an electric drill, firing yellow bursts of death at the ponies assembled.
Unable to stand up to the brutal assault, the ponies scattered. Most of the griffons had been gunned down, lying in puddles of maroon liquid. The Night Terror, still on fire, now ran at the largest group of fleeing ponies. They were fast, but the Night Terror was much faster. He cut their route off, and with one sweep of his humming sword, cut their heads off as well. He wheeled around and impaled another pony through the throat that had been sneaking up behind him with his bloody horn.
Somepony tried to run towards the door the Night Terror had appeared from, but just before he reached the door, he felt a crunch in his hind leg, just above his knee. He immediately fell to the floor, and he looked behind him, wincing and crying aloud. It was the tip of a harpoon that had been fired into his leg, and the Night Terror was reeling him in, the harpoon fired from his left hoof.
He screamed and scrabbled at the ground as he was pulled backward away from the door by the hook stuck in his thigh. As he was pulled he could see a trail of blood from the wound in his leg. Once he was reeled in like a fish, he looked up to see the Night Terror, in all of his burning glory, strike him down.
The griffon sniper that had shot Case File was cowered up against a wall, his wings flared, desperately pointing his long rifle at the Night Terror. "ENOUGH! Can't you see we surrender? WE SURRENDER!"
"If you surrender," the Night Terror slavered with awful hunger, "Then why is there still resistance?" A bullet impacted on the back of his flaming wings from another griffon across the room, and he quickly snapped off a shot in return, silencing the other griffon forever. Bits of burning black substance dripped off of him, leaving a burning trail on the ground.
"Then I surrender!" he pleaded. "Please! Spare me!"
"You took the life of an innocent," the Night Terror snarled. He sunk his sword into his gut. "Feel his pain."
"Please!" he sobbed, smoking from his wound. "Pleeee- "
The sword cleaved upward, splitting his head. He slumped to the ground.
Another pony saw that and started to pound on the door furiously, screaming for help. She continued to scream until she caught a bladed feather in the back of her head. She slid to the ground and did not move.
He came to another pony, who was pressed against the wall in a vain attempt to stay out of the way. He was shaking like a building without foundations. He stammered, "P-please! I want to live! Please!"
"Can you give a better reason than that?" he snarled in the voice of Tartarus.
"I never wanted to harm anyone! I just wanted to be happy! I just wanted a better life! " He cowered against the wall more.
"Wickedness never was happiness," he growled in the voice of judgment. With a lunge, he burned through his head with his sword. The pony swayed, and the Night Terror flicked his sword, cutting through his neck. His brain-burned head tumbled to the floor.
Most of the carnage had destroyed the rest of the room. The only beings still alive in the room were the Night Terror, Twilight and her friends, and one final criminal, huddled next to the case of trophies, the glass shattered and the wood pockmarked with holes. The Night Terror, on his hind legs, turned towards the last remaining survivor of the throne room that was now a tomb for so many others.
False Felony, trembling like a weak building, squeaked out, "Come on, ya bloody nut! Lemme live! I've go' a family! I- "
"You have no family," The Night Terror snapped in a voice colder than interstellar space. "I've looked into your files. You've lied to try to save your filthy skin." He leveled his sword, buzzing and crackling with energy. He was still burning, but some of the black material had dripped off of him. False Felony looked into his face and saw that the black lines had run off of him, revealing parts of his face. And what he saw made it clear that whatever he was, he was not a pony. He was something much, much worse.
False Felony whimpered in fright. "Y-ya go' no righ' ta jus-"
"I know who you are. You're a rat-soiled con artist that lives to trick others out of what they have to make your life rich. And- to further condemn you- I know that you also raped other ponies. Sally McColt. Daisy Shower. Coco Pommel. And you're proud of it. An unrepentant sinner, that's what you are."
He raised his sword. His eyes burned with intolerable wrath.
"The unrepentant are the unforgiven," he uttered with pure malice in every drop.
And he plunged the sword into his gut.
He convulsed for a little, gasping and shuddering. He then drew it out to watch him grasp at the wound. As he lay on the ground, wheezing for breath, the Night Terror kneeled down to his face level. It was so awful, to be so near that terrible face, that burning face right next to his, making his cheek hot.
"This is the consequence you chose," he spoke. "You- as well as I- have no redemption. I have no hope left for myself, I've done the most awful things to ponies like you." He sniffed and sighed in delight from the smell of his wound as if a pie had passed under him. "So I'll just take as many of you down with me as possible. I'll see you in the afterlife we've both chosen for ourselves."
He stomped on False Felony in his smoking wound, making him gasp and topple over, clutching his wound. After a few seconds of shaking and moaning, he finally stopped.
The mares and Spike were trying their hardest to not throw up. Rarity had passed out and Rainbow was now holding her steady. Fluttershy gasped and sobbed harder than before, still on the ground, not daring to look at the carnage around her. Applejack could only stare at the horrible sight of the bodies. Pinkie was hiding her head in Applejack's tail. Twilight was silent and did not move a muscle. She just stood there in abject fascination and fright at the Night Terror.
The Night Terror himself was burning off the last of the flames coating him. He shook the last bit off and turned around to face Twilight on his hind legs.
She was speechless. She couldn't move, couldn't bring herself to say or do anything. What she saw was beyond her ability to comprehend. It wasn't physically possible for him to exist- and yet here he was, right in front of her.
The Night Terror-- the archangel spreading the works of death, the pony who looked to no judge except for his god, if he worshiped one, and his conscious, if he had one-- was a machine!
He was made out of a strong, flexible metal that overlapped each other like a suit of armor, except that the suit was completely animated and was living, breathing, talking. His hind legs were clawed and oriented strangely, and his right hoof had unnatural dark grey fingers clutching his electric sword. His left arm ended in a massive rotating gun with eight wide barrels. His metal wings suddenly didn't seem so out of place on him. The long, slim blade on his forehead jutting out of his steel forehead suddenly made sense. The terrifying red eyes now seemed to be more artificial than devilish.
On his curved metal flank was his Cutie Mark. It was a peace symbol in dripping red paint.
He dropped to all fours, his hind legs readjusting themselves into a position natural for a pony. His left arm folded the tip of the Gatling gun back into his arm and replaced it with a hoof. He deactivated the sword in his right hand and put it back on his hip, and the fingers retracted back into his hoof. The wings folded at his sides, effortlessly shifting into his body and closing up, leaving no trace of him having them to begin with. His bladed horn shot backwards into his head. He was the normal shape and build of a normal pony, except he was made out of cold, unfeeling metal.
"Princess Twilight," he said softly, his voice not at all synthetic. He sounded, for all intents and purposes, like a normal pony. "You're not safe here. I can get you back to the surface." Ironheart extended a hoof. "Come with me if you want to live."