//------------------------------// // Ch9: Frosty Fate // Story: Hostile Intent // by Storm Vector //------------------------------// 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.