Hayden woke to the sound of war. Cannons rumbled, ponies shouted and galloped through the halls.
My city still stands.
She rose from the cot, glancing over her shoulder. There were stitches in her leg, flesh ragged but clean. No infection yet.
Hayden could see one of the doctors rushing over to her. Probably to demand that she go back to bed. Hayden ignored the shouts, and vanished past the guards. Her legs didn’t give out beneath her, and that would have to be enough. Icefalls depends on me.
She stepped over thick bundles of wire on her way up to the command tower, which other ponies moving through the halls were avoiding. Hayden could feel the energy radiating from within them, and found herself reminded of her brief time in a centrifuge. Not a single bat is going near them.
“Stars above, you’re here.” Lodestone was resting outside the control room, staring in at the door as though he were afraid it might attack him. “I think the city lord has lost her bucking mind.”
Hayden raised an eyebrow. “Nightbreeze? Why?”
Lodestone gestured down at the ground with one of his batlike wings. A dozen bundles of cable passed through that door, so thick that it couldn’t properly close anymore. “If she thinks we’re going to fight the Stonebeaks by cursing ourselves, she’s wrong. Salting our own fields won’t work.”
“Huh?” Hayden watched him carefully, particularly at the dark spots swirling in his eyes. Were those fangs more pronounced than they had been the day before? “Is that what you think we’re doing, general?”
He nodded. “I can’t think of any other reason for this insanity. She’s convinced the princess—she withdrew our forces from the walls, our cannons, all the reserve. Everything we have is tied up in protecting these six… things.” He waved a wing through the air. “It’s insane, Evening Star. And I’m not exaggerating. The city lord has lost her mind. Thrashing around, screaming. It’s that damn equipment. You have to convince the princess to let us do our job. There won’t be a city here tomorrow if we don’t.”
“I’ll talk to her,” she said, choosing each word carefully. “Do what you can, general. I’ll need you to make a strategic retreat successful.”
He saluted. “Aye, ma’am.” Did the darkness behind those eyes realize what she was doing? She watched him for a few more seconds, but no.
We’re running out of time.
Hayden hurried past the door. Whatever the strange energy was doing to her bats, it caused her no real pain. Only a mild feeling of distant static, and she was through the door.
There was only one bat inside—and she had hooves bound up like a cowboy might do to an animal that had seriously disobeyed.
Except that animal was Nightbreeze, gagged and flopping and struggling.
The room stared in at her, and a few of the unicorn soldiers stiffened a little, but Hayden only raised a hoof. “It’s okay. I’m clean.”
She paused, taking in the equipment in a single sweeping glance. A rack of mobile servers had been set up on a spare table, and a generator hummed quietly against a wall. At least Avalon had thought to run the damn thing next to an open window.
The princess looked to have recovered in the time since Hayden had seen her last. But then the light outside was stretching to twilight. I’ve been out that long?
The princess beamed at her. “Evening Star, I’m glad you’re here. There is much we have to do, but… our scouts have amazing news.”
“The Stonebeaks are surrendering,” Hayden supplied, her voice not even a little serious. “They see our superior will to fight and they’re going to give our territory back.”
Princess Luna chuckled quietly. “The Solar Fleet is almost here,” she said. As she said it, Hayden felt as though all the pain of all her wounds was washed away. She’d never seen a smile so wide on a pony face before. My sister told me the truth.
I’m glad to be wrong.
“Yes, yes.” Avalon waved a dismissive hand through the air. His costume did not look less silly after a nap. “But I don’t know if you’ve seen any bats lately, Hayden.” Nightbreeze had been tied down against a structural pillar, so she couldn’t move far. She wouldn’t be able to hurt herself that way, at least. “Princess, if you could.”
Luna nodded, and the gag vanished from around her mouth. Immediately Nightbreeze started screaming, her voice shrill and gurgling. “The lie of stars and order crumbles into endless night! The day of her coronation arrives, true queen of light and darkness! mglw'nafh fhthagn-ngah cf'ayak 'vulgtmm vugtlag'n“
Luna silenced her with the gag, though it looked like she was still trying to yell. Each little twitch hurt Hayden more.
“What happened to her?”
“She isn’t the only one,” Avalon said. “Adverse reactions to the presence of… danger… are quite common among the infected I have treated. Even you reacted, Hayden, when the corruption in you was much weaker than this. And what’s worse, there appears to be herd communication of a sort at work in these individuals. Some of those guarding my equipment have reported attacks from ponies. Always bats. We have bound the most serious cases. Many were members of your staff I’m afraid.” He looked down at Nightbreeze, without any of the emotion or respect that Luna had shown.
“It doesn’t matter.” Luna straightened, expression resolved. “We’re moments from activating it, anyway. The Stonebeaks are only harrying now, they haven’t pressed a serious attack for almost an hour. And if they attack with darkness, then I’ll be at full strength. We can hold a little longer.”
Can we? So few of her generals were still here. She only had their aids, frightened looking ponies who didn’t seem to know one end of Icefalls from the other.
“I don’t know how long the process will take,” Avalon said. “But I hoped to have you here for it. We’ve deployed the machinery now.” He gestured out at the model, and Hayden could see there were now six new items on the map. Fortified positions on the second fallback line of the city. The outer walls were all marked as “lost,” with several craters from detonated powder magazines.
These new six positions were holding back the assault from within the walls, and each of them had equipment. They were just represented as blocks here, so Hayden couldn’t see what they were. “So really quick. Before you switch this on, what happens?”
Avalon stopped in front of the computer, one of his “paws” half-removed. He seemed to realize what he was doing from the strange looks of the ponies around him, because he slid it back on before he said anything. “I’ve never tried anything like it before. The lunar facility is ready and waiting to receive us. Atop this building is a transmission antenna—through methods beyond your understanding, we will send anything we gather here to containment there. Expect something similar to what you experienced, perhaps a little worse. It… might kill a few. I can’t be certain.”
Hayden’s eyes lingered on Nightbreeze. But the bat’s eyes were wide, filled with a hatred that was nothing like the pony Hayden had known. Something foreign and unwelcome had settled there. “That means… our troops will be out of commission,” she said. “We have lots of bats, maybe half our ponies. Every Blackwing.
“I have already reassigned them. What fighting ponies we have that aren’t bats are assigned to protecting these points. The bats are now in reserve, guarding this tower, or other minor targets.” Luna said it off-hand, but Hayden could already feel the relief washing over her.
“It’s just us in here, War Marshal,” said Honed Edge from behind her, shifting uneasily in the advanced armor. He might be one of a handful of non-bats who even knew how to use it. She’d thought he was one of them from the wall, though obviously he couldn’t be.
Of course she would know how to deal with this. She’s been fighting wars a lot longer than I have.
“Then do it,” Hayden said. “We won’t get another chance like this.”
“It will be a painful process to repair my city,” Princess Luna muttered. “I can’t wait to get started. But no half measures this time. Icefalls will be even grander than Harmony.”
Avalon stopped in front of his portable keyboard. He’d apparently given up on keeping his hands concealed. He settled the fake paws onto the low table beside him, then went to work with his thin, pale digits. Keys clicked for a few seconds.
Hayden heard it first—the screams. She spun around, staring out into the hallway at where Lodestone had been standing. He had fallen over now, and he screamed as though he was being assaulted with an invisible knife.
He wasn’t the only one, either. Screams went up from all around the city, so loud Hayden could hear them over the occasional blast of cannon fire, or the rumble of strategic drums. Nopony in the room with her went down, and Hayden herself felt nothing. But Luna’s face twitched briefly, as though she were fighting down a cough.
Whatever it was, she must’ve succeeded, because she was the first to one of the tiny windows. “Outside, look! There’s something out there!”
There were five somethings, actually. Beams of light arched up from around the city, curving up and up until they met the roof of the tower itself. Each one burned a little to look at, a white that overpowered the purple of twilight and made reality itself seem pale. A cage rose up around what was left of Icefalls, trapping darkness within its bars.
“I hope they don’t—” Honed Edge began, at about the same moment the yelling stopped. Nightbreeze stopped struggling too. Hayden let herself hope for a single moment that the process was that easy, and her whole species had been cured at last.
But the cage was still there, and she could see that Lodestone was only just breathing. They’re unconscious. That’s probably more merciful than the pain they were feeling.
Hayden had gone through that, during her time in the centrifuge. It made sense these other bats would too. What happens if some of them give in to their feelings? They don’t have magic swords to kill demons.
“Is it done?” Luna asked, spinning back to look at Avalon. “The magic continues.”
“The magic has barely begun,” Avalon answered, his fingers flying across the keys so fast they were almost a blur. Hayden didn’t envy him, hunched as he was in a room that made him look like a giant. Sturdy bastard for someone his age. “It appears the process will require longer than my last scaled test.”
Hayden looked away as he said this, avoiding his eyes. But he didn’t elaborate. The fewer ponies know about this, the better. Even the princess. There would be no stopping her if she wanted to know. And if she did, then Hayden’s work was truly doomed.
“Two hours, perhaps slightly less. Don’t worry, I brought plenty of fuel. If you only knew what I was using to make this possible.”
Hayden resisted the desire to speculate. “Well, that’s it then. We just… wait for a few hours. Hopefully Equestria gets here by then. Maybe the fleet will go the other way…”
“Princess!” The trapdoor banged open, the pony sounding desperate. “The Stonebeaks are moving again! I think they must’ve seen… whatever that was. They didn’t like it.”
“Alright.” Princess Luna didn’t sound worried. She made her way over to the table, gesturing for the scout to join her. “Point to the parts of the fleet that are advancing. We can rearrange our—”
The scout pegasus cleared her throat, shuffling a little on her hooves. “Excuse me, Princess. I should’ve said that better. The Stonebeaks are advancing on Icefalls. All of them.”