“I... I think they're gone...” A faint whisper came from Midnight's cell, delivered with such low self esteem, if it wasn't for Hopeful seeing him earlier, he might have mistaken the speaker for any pony aside from Midnight.
“What happened to you, Midnight? How did any of this happen?” Hopeful asked back, their voices traveling through the corridor.
“I...” He sighed deeply, sorrow and trembling regret in his voice. “I couldn't leave Auri... I just... I couldn't... I saw you two go into that cave and I was in the clouds... I wanted to go back and apologize... But, I just... I couldn't... And... Some Pegasi spotted me and a whole load of them came at me and tied me up...” He took a short break for a breath, his voice croaking, still in disbelief. “My mother has branded me a traitor... She's ordered for me to be executed in the cruelest method possible...” He was breaking down, voice cracking and breath becoming uncontrollably irregular. “They cut off my wings, Hopeful! Tomorrow they're going to throw me off a cloud and I'm going to fall... And I'm going to... Die...”
“Midnight...” He trailed off, not knowing how to respond to that.
“Where's Auri, Hopeful? They told me they have her. They said they were going to kill her too. Please just tell me she got away,” he said with a slight panic.
“She's here too... I'm sorry, I tried...”
“AURI?!” he yelled out, hoping to hear her voice.
“She's out cold... I've been trying to wake her up for the past few hours. She's in the cell next to mine,” he said begrudgingly.
“Auri..?” he tried again fruitlessly.
A brief moment of depressed acceptance was shared as he realized he might run out of time before he could speak with his lover again.
“I'm so sorry, Hopeful... And if I don't get to speak with Auri again, can you just make sure you tell her that I'm sorry for everything I said...? Tell her I love her. And I do want to have this baby...”
Midnight began weeping, leaving Hopeful speechless for a long time apart from a simple; “I promise.”
After he had cried his last tear, and a solemn silence had passed, he remembered something important. “Hopeful..?”
“Yes, Midnight?” he responded, unnerved.
“You know that bag I left you..?” He made sure to whisper, as if he didn't want any other pony apart from Hopeful to hear.
“Yeah...”
“I left Aurora's ring in there... Can you...” He gulped. “Can you give it to her? And tell her that I wanted to marry her?”
“I...” Hopeful wanted with all of his heart to agree, but he didn't have his bags, and it's not like he would be allowed out of his cell to do so. “I don't know how I would... Midnight, they have all of our stuff, and... I'm fairly certain I'm being killed tomorrow as well.”
“Don't worry about that.” Midnight said with a convection hat made Hopeful's ears perk up, even if it was a just a speck of the real Midnight, there was something there. “Hopeful, I'm going to get you and Auri out of here by the morning of my execution. Trust me.”
“But... But that's in a few hours at most... What if Aurora doesn't wake up by then?”
“Everypony, no matter how tired or sick, in the next ten miles will wake up for this. I'm sure she will too... And even then, clouds are known to float down when they're too small to sustain themselves in the air.” He had stopped crying completely. An aggressive vengeance was found in him instead. He was undeniably sure of everything he had just said.
“Midnight... What are you-” Hopeful wasn't fast enough to finish before Midnight answered him.
“If I'm going to fall helplessly to the dirt to my death, I'm going to make this entire fucking place goes down with me.”
“It's morning time, ladies!” The grizzled voice of the lieutenant came barreling down the corridor of cells. The trotting of several ponies made the air ring with echoes of hooves clip-cloping against steel. “You awake yet, Princess?” Hopeful could hear them beside his cell, trying to antagonize Aurora. He grunted in disappointment. “Century, go wake her up. I want her to be conscious for her coltfriend's party.”
A shadow overcame Hopeful's peeping window a split second before he saw the lieutenant's smug face appear. “Good morning. I can see you're all exited to get your turn, but I sadly have to inform you we haven't gotten clearance to have you killed yet, so you'll have to wait for tomorrow.” He nodded at Hopeful, who returned an unimpressed frown at the sick bastard he was.
They then moved on. “And here we have the star of the main event.”
“FUCK YOU!” Midnight yelled back through his bars.
“Hmm... You know, I normally enjoy listening to non-subordinates plea for their lives before they get chucked off, but you're just too fucking mouthy, you know that?” He turned to one the soldiers that accompanied him. “Gag him.”
Hopeful then listened in horror as many noises came from Midnight's cell as he struggled against the metal, being restrained and beaten for a few minutes before his body being dragged up to a standing in front of the lieutenant. “Aw, come on, what's with the long face?” He chuckled at his own joke, followed by a forced on laugh from his ponies and a muffled protest from Midnight.
“Come on, you have an audience to attend too,” he said, beginning to walk back up the corridor. The wingless Midnight, tied at the stomach by a rope, was helplessly dragged behind him. The door of his cell shut with a powerful bang and clang as it was locked by key.
Although, while Midnight stopped pushing back for the moment, once he had gotten to see Hopeful peering in from behind his bars, a new surge of strength left Midnight knocking the soldier to his left directly into the wall, a slight crunch as the ponies body was forced against the structure. Then he swung at pony to his left, pressing him against Hopeful's cell.
And with a skill that left Hopeful speechless. He watched as, unbeknownst to the soldier Midnight was currently bashing in the stomach with one hoof and holding their head against the cell door with the other, Midnight unhooked the keys from the soldiers chest with his mouth and allowed the far lower-skilled Pegasus he was in conflict with to reverse Midnight's move to press Midnight against Hopeful's cell door, his mouth painfully shoved against the bars as he spat out the keys to Hopeful milliseconds before he was thrown to the ground and ganged up on by four Pegasi who mercilessly kicked him down further into the unloving floor.
Through all of the chaos, and with the speed that it had happened, barely slower than a blink of an eye, none of the Pegasi seemed to notice what truly occurred.
“Midnight, Midnight, Midnight... I've got to wing it to ya, you are one hell of a fucking fighter, right to the end. I can't help but respect that,” he said, softly trotting up to the fallen stallion, swaying his now semi-injured centuries off of him. Then, lifting up his right hind leg, he continued. “Mainly because it makes this whole thing much more enjoyable,” he got out before slamming his leg right down onto Midnight's throat and holding it there.
Midnight wheezed and his head spasmed for a slight second. The incredible pain he felt poured out of his eyes in the form of tears. He tried to scream and breathe, but the thick cloth stuck in between his jaw prevented both. The acidic distaste of vomit pushed to surge out of him, barely held back by sheer force of will.
The lieutenant let go. “Come on, get him up.” He trotted on, Midnight was forced onto his hooves once again, giving one last glance to Hopeful, a smile appearing on his face as he was still recovering, followed by the cockiest wink Hopeful had ever seen.
Hopeful saluted back with a strange smile of his own as Midnight was pushed along and out of his sight, holding a ring of keys in hoof.
“Get off of me!” Aurora's voice came from her cell, quickly followed by some Pegasus'.
“The Unicorn's awake!”
Midnight screamed as hard as he could through his gag, a gargled and unintelligible rendition of “Aurora” resulting from it.
But she knew. “Midnight!?!” Hopeful heard a few thumps against metal, as if the Pegasus that awoke Aurora had just shut the door while she had just jumped to it to try and get out after them, failing miserably.
Midnight tried to call out to her, screaming, ''I love you,'' and ''I'm sorry,'' just barely understandable as he was helplessly dragged away, the steel floor creating an ear-piercingly painful screech as he scraped against it, fighting back.
“NO! MIDNIGHT! LET HIM GO!” She screamed to him out of pure desperation. “I LOVE YOU TOO, NIGHTY! I LOVE YOU TOO!” she got out before the cell blocks door shut, the two separated for the most painful and final time.
She fell into uncontrollable sobbing.
Hopeful was shocked once she yelled out, presumably aimed at him, “WHERE ARE THEY TAKING MIDNIGHT?!? WHERE!? Why didn't he have wings..?” She sounded like that had just dawned upon her.
Hopeful knew that if he explained too much, she wouldn't be able to help in their escape. “Aurora, Midnight has a plan to get us out of this! You just have to listen to me, ok?”
“O-ok...” she replied with great uncertainty.
“Theses cells are locked from the outside and I have the keys. I need you to use your magic to unlock both of our doors.” He jangled the keys for Aurora to hear.
“I can't! My horn... It's got this thing on it... I can't cast anything.”
“Can you take it off?”
“I... I don't know...”
“You need to try. How is it locked on?”
“It's really tightly fitted on... Let me try something...” Aurora placed her horn through the bars of her door, barely enough to accommodate it. She then pressed the bottom lip of the steel cone around her horn against a bar and pulled away with all of her strength, a sizzle becoming audible as she attempted to pour out all of her magic against the apparatus. “I... Nearly...”
A snap and a clink of the restraint snapping off and finally a thud as she collapsed back onto the floor.
“Auri?” Hopeful called out for her in concern.
“I’m fine... I got it off.” She slowly made it back to the door. “Throw the keys over so I can see them.”
Hopeful did so, chucking the set of keys to the right of his cell, delighted when he saw them bounce for a moment in the air as a glowing shimmer surrounded them, proceeding to gently float to her door.
Soon. the clunky door creaked open and Aurora stumbled out, sliding the door closed behind her and quickly attending to Hopeful. His door cracked open, and then with a hardy push, it let up and move out of Hopeful's way, the two of them meeting eyes.
“We need to get our things.” Hopeful focused on the plan, being stopped by Aurora.
“We need to save Midnight,” she prioritized.
Hopeful put a hoof atop her shoulder, trying to ground her thoughts. “Midnight told me that we'll have a few minutes before he gets started and we need to be ready to leave for then. You have to trust me.”
“Alright, but tell me that he's going to be ok, right? He'll escape with us?” She held onto him, looking for a glimmer of hope.
“Just trust me,” he repeated, moving past her and leaving her in a fearful haze to go down the corridor to find the locker space that held all of their gear.
“Pass me those keys,” he asked of her, receiving them from the worry-ridden Unicorn.
He went through them one by one until the lock denying Hopeful access had been thwarted. He hoisted the bundle of their items out of the locker and set it between himself and Aurora, “Here, pack up; we don't have much time.”
“Hopeful, can you tell me what Midnight is going to do? Please?” she asked while floating up her bags and coat, strapping them to herself.
Hopeful felt terrible for trying to keep Aurora in the dark, allowing himself to tell her at least part of what she wanted to know. “He's going to blow this whole place out of the air... All he needs is to set off one Lightning shell.”
“But... How is he going to do that without blowing himself up?” She was even more concerned than before.
Hopeful swayed his head away to keep away from Aurora's painfully passionate and miserable eyes.
“H-Hopeful?” She continued to not get an answer, although that quickly became irrelevant as she came to a conclusion of her own. “N-no! NO!” Aurora stepped to the side to run past Hopeful and up the staircase leading to the cloud surface. She was caught by Hopeful in a grapple as he planted his hind legs to hold her back. She wailfully pushed against him, hollering and crying, “NO, YOU CAN'T! HE CAN'T DO THAT! HOPEFUL, LET ME GO! HE CAN'T DIE LIKE THIS!”
“Aurora, there's no p-” He was interrupted as a powerful quake launched both of them onto the ground, a cackling blast ringing through the air, deafeningly loud. Then, immediately followed by an explosion frightfully larger as a chain reaction of explosives parted the clouds and then, with ease, the heavens themselves as the sounds of collapsing infrastructure above them rained through the sky.
Aurora grabbed onto Hopeful with a desperate fear, emitting a protection bubble spell around the two of them. They both felt themselves lift off the ground for a few seconds as gravity itself seemed to give way to the size of the blast. Then the flooring hit them, which quickly turned into the wall as the entire complex titled to its side. The cloud it sat upon dropped to down to the dirt below it, gently, relative to the speed they'd be going at without the cloud, but still enough to feel like their backs were breaking as they felt the prison slam into the side of the mountain, even with Aurora's masterful magic dampening their fall, a fall which could have otherwise easily killed them if not leaving them brutally and unfixably injured.
The ground fell away from beneath them as the prison aligned with the steep mountain edge, the building falling much faster. The two of them were luckily held partly afloat by Aurora. It was perhaps a few minutes before they felt the blisteringly cold kiss of a snow blanket against their backs as they landed, along with the rest of the rumble, at the hoof of the mountain. Aurora fell into a violent fit of gasps for air as she let go of her concentration of the protection spell.
It was only then that Hopeful gained the bravery to reopen his eyes, looking directly upward to where the entire cataclysm had occurred, seeing hundreds of streaking bolts of thunder creating a spherical shape, the residue sat in the sky like smoke from a gunshot as the debris continued to shower around them, the hundreds of tons of steel being knocked out of the sky to lightly sprinkle the earth, splashes of blood and flesh scattered in between the ruins of this once powerful military base.
“What... The fuck...” Hopeful breathed, still shuddering from the size of the explosion. Midnight said he'd only set one off. Something must have happened.
“Nighty...” Hopeful heard the tender purr of Aurora feebly calling out her lover’s finally honoured name.
Hopeful searched yet another broken pile of melded flesh and bone, happily surprised when he finally found an intact weapon he was trained in, sliding a pistol out from beneath this mound of dead meat, wiping the gooey viscera off the weapon, checking for bullets and priming it once he had seen its full magazine. He slid it into the neck of his jacket, easy access for his mouth for when he would need it.
It had been a good while since everything had settled down, nearing the edge of an hour. As far as Hopeful could tell, nearly every single Pegasus had been killed by the blast. The ones that didn't flew far, far away as fast as they could. The sphere of lighting stuck like a scar in the air, a faint cackling still coming from the source.
“Aurora..?” He trotted through the maze of these colossal fallen buildings, trying to find the place where Aurora had wandered off to. He found her at the edges of the rubble, leaning over something in tears. He trotted up to her side, seeing the corpse she has been weeping over. Unlike the others this body seemed to be far more devastated by the explosion to a point where it was impossible to tell which end was their head or flank. The body also seemed to not have been wearing any armour at their time of death, and neither was there a feather to be seen anywhere around. Aurora could only assume it was Midnight.
“I'm sorry.” Hopeful sat down beside her, seeing she was lost in a trance staring down onto this body.
“He stayed, Hopeful... You were right... He still loved me.” She let the words murmur from her faintly parted lips.
“Aurora, last night Midnight asked me to give you something.” He twisted around his shoulder, letting one of his bags fall onto his lap, rummaging around through it as Aurora softly turned her damp eyes to him.
Then, holding it in between the tips of his two hooves, he lifted out a small golden ring with a embedded crystallized stone on its tip, a gorgeous diamond. Aurora's eyes lit up like a sunrise at the sight of this beautiful gift.
“This is the ring he wanted to propose to you with...” Hopeful said carefully, trying to be as sensitive as he could as he felt the ring release itself from his grasp and float over to Aurora for further inspection. She lifted her hoof to cover her open-in-shock muzzle, her breath quickening and eyes swelling.
“T-thank you...” Her voice was shaky while replying to Hopeful, turning to the disfigured body of the fallen warrior, “Thank you.” She repeated to it as she floated the ring around her horn, pressing it down until it had reached the base of her forehead, the magic in her horn glowing like a shining beacon of hope surrounded by the arid frozen, death showered wasteland.
Hopeful equipped his bag, standing up. “I'll give you a minute. Just call for me when you’re ready to leave.” He backed off, leaving Aurora to her moment.
He went to see if anything else was worth scavenging, looking up and down at crumpled, fiery wreckage. Not exactly anything too interesting to keep his thoughts on while he waited for quite a long time, but once had though, his boredom was becoming an annoyance. He found his interest piquing from a collection of voices coming from far off.
Hopeful drew his new pistol and sprinted over to the outer rim of the ruins, making sure to keep to cover as he peeked out, seeing a small group of three Earth Pony Soldiers marching up to the wreckage, seemingly amazed by it all, especially the large thunderball standing in as a huge section of cloud. They all kept their awareness, along with their rifles, high.
“Hello! Earth Pony here!” Hopeful revealed himself, slotting his pistol back inside of his jacket and waving a hoof over to them.
After the initial jump Hopeful gave them, they ran over to him with enthusiasm. “Are you alright? What happened here?” She ran up right up to Hopeful and inspected him. “Are you a soldier?”
Hopeful didn't answer, having his own questions. “What are you all doing here?”
“There was a fucking explosion the size of the capital. What do you think?” one stallion following behind the leading mare blurted out.
“Yodel, please.” The mare rained her soldier in before returning to Hopeful, “We're investigating whatever the hell is going on over here, we were just on a patrol and heard the explosion. Now can you tell me what your doing here?” She persisted on Hopeful.
“Same as you, I've been looking through the place and it's all just dead Pegasi and rubble. And no, I'm not a soldier.” He said, trying to dismay them from going through and searching the place as he did.
“If your a traveler you can come back with us, but first.” She twisted around to her group, “Yodel go right and Switch go left, I want a full round and meet me back here, I'll keep watch and guard of...” Her eyes darted to Hopeful, “Name?”
“Hopeful... Hopeful Twist.” He responded.
She dully shook her head, “Right... Keep guard of Hopeful here.”
“Yes Mam!” They saluted and move to their ordered directions, their respect obviously high for their captain as they moved on without a hint of a rebuttal.
“So, sir, if you’re not soldier, what are you doing investigating a fallen Pegasian base?” She trotted a few steps into the place, her rifle stuck to her chest, keeping her keen eye on Hopeful.
He, for obvious reasons, didn't exactly want to tell her. “I... I was just scavenging.”
“What? Cloud dust?” She looked into him, seeing his worry as he tried to move after one of her troops. “You hiding somethin'?”
“What would I be hiding?” Hopeful insisted.
She eyed Hopeful down. Something was off to her. “I dunno, just seems kind of weird that an Earth Pony who claims not to be a soldier, yet wears a soldier's jacket is the only living creature is hanging around a newly blown-out-of-the-air Pegasus base. Something just doesn't add up, what kind of Earth Pony are you?” She was becoming really quite skeptical.
Hopeful was not granted any time to make up something as the soldier he was trying to keep a track of had shouted back to their captain before he could. “Captain, there's a Unicorn here!”
“What? You, stay here!” She jumped up with a ready rifle pocketed in her leg and went to sprint past Hopeful.
Then, like a strike of lightning, Hopeful jumped the captain from her side, rolling down into the snow as he wrapped around her neck and thrown against the rotation of her body, a painfully quick crumple of her neck left her motionless. Hopeful quickly stumbled up, hoisting up her rifle strap and preparing the weapon, sprinting off in the direction she was originally planning on going.
He ran up onto a scene with a emotionally distraught but still fearsome Aurora, defending herself with her magical bubble was being held at gunpoint by a nervous stallion, awaiting the arrival of his captain, getting nothing but a gunshot from Hopeful. The Earth Pony fell quite ruthlessly at Hopeful's hoof.
“CAPTAIN?!?” The last soldier cried out after hearing the gunshot, sprinting over, only adding to another Earth Pony to those taken down by Hopeful's great aim, his loyalties clear.
Aurora finally dropped her bubble, seeing Hopeful come over.
“Are you alright?” He put a hoof onto her to check for himself as she nodded. “Well, we should go... Are you ready?”
“Yes... And, thank you for shooting that pony...” Aurora tried to smile, feeling blessed for having had Midnight and at least still having Hopeful.
He gave a resigned smile. “Please don't thank me for killing a pony.”
Aurora, without words, walked right up and hugged Hopeful, shutting her no longer weeping eyes and letting her smile overtake her. The moment lasted as long as they wanted, ending once Aurora had repeated her “Thank you.”
They returned to the road, their journey to be much the same as they thought, with the exception of one pony less to keep them company as they continued north, hoping that pheraphs the sun might rise once again.