Private Phantom was down to her last two magazines of ammunition. The Changelings were still coming, though many of their number had been drawn away by the lure of attacking the airship fleet above, either in search of greater prey or through direction from the Queen. That had eased the pressure somewhat on the beleaguered ground forces, but nevertheless being relentlessly attacked in the shadow of the smoking volcano was not where Phantom wanted to be any longer.
Somehow, she had survived the countless drones that had hurled themselves at her squad's position. Ponies had fallen all around her, and the number of Changeling bodies in front of them numbered in the hundreds, but she had come through it all with nary a scratch. It was her first engagement, and, despite her fear, she was handling herself well. She was almost proud of her performance, and pleasantly surprised by her accuracy. However, she was running low on ammo, as were the whole company and, presumably, every unit in the line. Her body ached from the constant exertion and adrenaline, as there was no downtime. The Changeling assault was unrelenting, and despite the cool climate she was soaked with sweat.
Another drone leaped forward, horn lowered, firing off a blast of magic. She sighted in and fired, knocking it to the ground. It scrabbled among the stones for a few moments before lying still. Several more loomed in the sky above, and Phantom fired again, narrowly missing one. She dropped back behind the boulder she was using as cover to slam home her final magazine. As she did so, an almighty roar reached her ears. They twitched, and she turned to peer around the rock with a horror-stricken expression.
The volcano had exploded. Not just erupted, but exploded. The top half of the mountain was hidden behind a huge pall of smoke and dust, while a great roiling cloud of ash rose high into the sky above. She had never seen anything like it before. There were not too many volcanoes in Equestria, and many of them were known as dragon haunts; ponies tended to stay away from those, for good reason. As a young foal, Phantom had hiked in these mountains with her parents, and seen the volcano in the distance. It had just been gently smoking, like an elderly grandfather puffing on his pipe. Now, it was belching and roaring like a cannon. The monstrous cloud of ash it had ejected was what drew the immediate attention, but that was not what Phantom was worried about.
Rushing down the lower slopes of the mountain came a wave of death. A pyroclastic flow, a torrent of superheated gas, ash, and rock, raced down the volcano, sweeping all before it. It raced along at an incredible speed, faster than an airship could move and faster than most ponies could hope to fly. It was coming down the mountainside, and it was coming straight for them.
'Run!' somepony shouted plaintively. 'For Celestia's sake, run!'
The Changeling drones, like a well-oiled machine, simply took to the skies, joining their fellows above, who all climbed high before flying to the east. It was a disturbing sight; every one of them evidently knew the danger that was heading their way if they remained. All around, the drones were climbing, above the battle line of the airships. Their captains had seen the peril, and the whine of engines almost drowned out the roar of the onrushing cloud as they did their best to get clear.
The pyroclastic flow itself hugged the ground, carrying boulders and trees with it, but above it extended a plume of superheated ash which would threaten anything flying, as well as those on the ground. The airships could trust in their shields, but the drones and Pegasi had no such recourse. Those Pegasi who were aware of the problem, who had heard the shouts, took to the skies, climbing away to the relative safety of a few thousand feet above the battlefield. Those who were particularly brave or quick thinking managed to urge earth ponies or unicorns to climb aboard their backs, taking them out of the line of fire. But the vast majority of the infantry were left stranded, facing the gargantuan ash cloud as it rushed toward them at a speed of several hundred miles per hour.
Phantom saw the flow as it picked up the pace, sliding down the lower slopes of the volcano and starting to speed across the valley floor. Her heart skipped several beats. She no longer had any drones to fight, but instead, a new enemy that had appeared; nature itself. Her brain could not quite compute what was coming at her, but she knew she had to flee. She had to be anywhere other than here, and be there right away.
She turned and ran, abandoning her post and, a few steps later, her rifle. Her hooves pounded on the ground as she sprinted, as fast as she could. Living in the north, she knew from ski trips that you should never try to outrun an avalanche, but rather ski perpendicular to it until you were out of the firing line. She applied the same principal to fleeing the pyroclastic flow that was chasing her down. She dared risk a glance over her shoulder. A great storm front of dust and ash towered over her. Even as she watched, it engulfed the line of airships, and they disappeared into the cloud. The mass of debris was closing in on her rapidly, traveling much, much faster than she could hope to run. The edge of the valley, the slopes of the hills that might save her, were a long, long way away. As she looked back ahead, they seemed to get farther still. She knew she was going to die. She was too far from safety. All around her, ponies were fleeing for their lives in a futile effort to save themselves, some running away, some running to the sides of the valley, as she was. All of them were fleeing in vain. The pyroclastic flow was simply moving too fast. Phantom glanced back again. The cloud was almost upon them, almost upon her. There was a rock ahead. She dove behind it in a hopeless attempt to safe herself, to be protected against the surge of superheated gas and ash that was about to cook her alive. She closed her eyes and waited for the end.
And waited. And waited.
Trembling, she dared to open one eye first, and then the other. She was unharmed. The land around her was unscathed. Impossible...she raised her head above the boulder, and looked back.
A glittering golden shield formed a barrier between her and the ash cloud, which was beating itself furiously against it, the pyroclastic flow and all of its heat and smoke and death contained on the other side. Phantom looked up and down the line. There were hundred of ponies, infantry who had fled at the cries and shouts of alarm, at the orders to fall back. Some were still running, but many were looking back in awe, as she was. They had been saved from certain death. How? Phantom looked up.
There was the Princess, wings flapping gently, almost peacefully, mane flowing in the breeze, hovering high above, her horn glowing as she maintained the shield barrier that was holding back nature's fury. All along the line, the shield held, crossing the whole valley like a dam, protecting those who had made it sufficiently far down the valley, away from the frontline. There were still, no doubt, ponies on the wrong side of the barrier, but anyone caught in the maelstrom would be dead, burned alive by the hot ash or crushed beneath rocks, their lungs cooking from the inside as they breathed in the superheated gas. There was no hope for saving those unfortunate souls. But Phantom knew the princess had saved her, and saved every other pony she could see, from an agonising death.
She could see the remnants of her squad, most of them at least. Some, she knew, were already dead, cut down by the drones during the fierce fighting. The infantry had formed into strongpoints of defence, guns turned outward against the Changelings while waiting, in theory, for the airships to break through their line up above. That had never quite come to pass. There were too many Changelings, and never quite enough ammunition to bring them all down. Even now, after taking so many casualties, a great cloud of drones could be seen flying away to the east, presumably under orders from the Queen, all acting with a unity of purpose. The Hive Mind was both a wonderfully useful and terrifying thing to imagine. The ponies had no such mental link, but instead relied in discipline, training, and faith. Sometimes, even they were not enough.
Phantom felt herself shaking. She had somehow survived, against the odds, when so many of her fellow infantry lay dead on the other side of the barrier. She looked up again at the princess. Above her, swirling through the ash and smoke, she could see flashes of magic, green and dark blue. While Celestia protected her subjects, Princess Luna was still fighting to keep the Queen at bay. Her drones may have left the battlefield, but she had not.
In her desperate flight, Phantom had lost her rifle somewhere along the way. She was weaponless, and defenceless should a stray drone happen upon her. But it seemed that all of the Changelings were gone, with the exception of the Queen. The only danger now was mother nature, and it was being kept in check by the will of the princess. Phantom slumped to the floor, panting, shaking. Somehow, for some reason, she was alive. She knew exactly who to thank for that. A quick prayer of thanks to Celestia in a wavering voice was her petty offering, but it was all she could give. She looked to the heavens again, her saviour still hovering in the skies above, keeping up the barrier as the pyroclastic flow spent its fury.
The volcano itself had not just erupted, but collapsed partly in on itself, driving the pyroclastic flow down the mountanside at a high rate of speed. A gargantuan pall of ash hung over the valley, with a giant eruption column climbing tens of thousands of feet into the sky. The Hive underground had surely been crushed beneath thousands of tons of rock and filled with magma, which was now oozing and seeping out as lava, running in slow-moving rivers down the lower slopes from the ruins of the top half of the peak. The high-altitude winds were carrying the ash cloud steadily out to the west, towards the coast with the Great Western Ocean some hundred miles away. No towns or cities would be threatened by ashfall in the coming hours, which was a small mercy at least. Ash would coat an entire town with ease in a blanket reminiscent of a pleasant winter snow, but it would pollute water supplies, cause breathing problems, impede transport and if enough of it got into a Pegasi's wing feathers, impede the generation of lift and cause them to fall from the sky. The same danger could befall an airship; its engine air intakes would be completely clogged if exposed to ash, causing them to stall and cut out, not enough to make the airship crash but denying it control over its movements.
The strength of the flow began to wane, beating itself fruitlessly against the shield as the force of the eruption that had thrown out so much debris finally fizzled out. Instead of an onrushing torrent, there now lay an inert layer of settled rock and ash and a gently swirling cloud of dust on the other side of the barrier. Celestia was able to drop the shield, her job done. Phantom watched in awe as the princess climbed back up into the sky, through the smoke, to rejoin her sister in battle. She offered another quiet prayer to the princess; not of thanks this time, but one offering good fortune.
With the great volcano ripping itself apart behind them, the commando force flew for their lives, wings flapping and straining to the utmost. The valley had opened out before them, a route to safety from the maelstrom behind them, but to fly down it would lead them straight into the battle. Instead, the plan called for the units to exfiltrate the Hive the same way they had come in, heading west and over the subordinate peaks that formed that edge of the valley, where, if all had gone according to plan, they would wait until the battle was over before firing two red flares as a signal requesting pickup.
Everything was not going to plan, however. The main force would not get a chance to enter and clear the Hive thoroughly, as it was even at this moment crumbling and collapsing. If the Element was in there, it was buried at best, and melted away, lost for all eternity at worst. But they had rescued Twilight, and sped her away. The ash cloud towered above them as the group of ponies, minuscule specks against the backdrop of the chaotic eruption, flew west to the relative safety of the hills. A great billowing mushroom of dirt and magma belched forth from the mountain as part of the cone collapsed, vomiting dust and ash outward in a great arc that formed the beginnings of the pyroclastic flow, the fringes of which would chase them as they fled west.
Spitfire brought up the rear, glancing back over her shoulder at the eternal resting place of those ponies they had left behind. She had made sure everypony left the cavern before fleeing herself, but there were fewer of them coming out than had gone in. Spitfire had lost ponies under her command before, but not in such circumstances as these. Barring the most catastrophic airship fire or explosion, or a direct hit from an artillery shell, there was almost always something left to bury. Not in this case. Assuming proper funerals were ever held for those lost in the Hive, the families of the dead would get the folded flag, the salutes, the plaintive rifle volleys of the honour guard...and an empty casket. There would be no body, not even mere body parts, as was sometimes the case when high explosives or powerful magic had been involved in the death. If anything was left intact of their bodies, which seemed unlikely, given the great flows of magma and superheated gas swirling inside the volcano, there was most decidedly no prospect of recovery.
The western edge of the valley was rocky and steep, with a few scattered and hardy bushes and small trees dotting the hillsides. The string of ponies climbed, making their way up and over the peaks, out of sight of the volcano, but not of the ash cloud that hung above it. In the shadow of the hills, they rested. Arcwing landed Twilight gently on a flat piece of ground, like a mother bird gently laying down its baby. Spitfire, having seen her charges safely to cover and out of the danger zone from the pyroclastic flow, hovered at the peak with her binoculars.
To her surprise, the Changelings were leaving the area, fleeing to the east. She could just about see them above the ash cloud that had raced down the valley. Of the airships, there was no sign, but still fighting above she could see Princess Luna, and what could only be the Changeling Queen, dueling, their magic flashing brightly. Celestia could not be seen. Surely she had not been defeated...?
Spitfire looked around for her. She was sure the princess was still alive; she had felt no sense of dread or loss that must surely overcome her subjects were she to fall. Assuming she could fall. She had faced down every threat Equestria had come up against for the last millennium, including Discord, her own sister, and indeed Chrysalis, to say nothing of the horrors from another world that these humans had lured to this planet, suffering nary a scratch apart from when Chrysalis gained her extra strength from Shining Armour and Princess Cadence. She must be alright...she had to be alright...yes, there she was, rising above the smoke and ash which seemed to have mysteriously stopped in its tracks halfway down the valley. Despite her confidence in the princesses' survival, Spitfire felt relief at seeing her with her own eyes.
But what of the airships? Had they retreated, had they fled while Spitfire and her unit were underground? Had they been destroyed by the eruption? During her flight from the Hive, Spitfire had not had time to spare any glances to find out, and now she could see nothing of them. The smoke obscured her vision, but it was slowly clearing. There was a faint glow through the dust cloud, a deep pinkish-purple. A shield! There was an airship, one of the escorts, intact and still flying. There was another, and another, one of the City-Class anti-air craft too. As the dust cleared, the entire battle line was revealed before her, a most gratifying sight and a great relief to her anxious eyes. It seemed that almost all of the craft had survived the eruption mostly intact, their shield proving sturdy enough to withstand the shockwave and the pounding of the ash cloud.
Spitfire lowered her binoculars and made her way down the hillside to where the infiltration force was resting. It had been an exhausting effort, and she had lost track of time, though it could not have taken more than a couple of hours since they began the operation. They had been to the depths, back to the surface, and finally to the relative safety of the hills. All they could do now was wait for the battle to be over, and signal for pickup. Spitfire ordered a picket to be posted at the peaks above, keeping a watchful eye on the valley beyond where fighting was still ongoing, at least between the royals. The vast majority of Changeling forces seemed to have abandoned the field entirely, presumably under direction from their Queen, who, for whatever reason, remained to duke it out with the princesses.
Spitfire reached for her canteen and took a long swig of welcome water. Her uniform, especially with the wing and tail covers fitted, did a fantastic job of retaining heat, and she was practically drowning in sweat. The magma-filled chamber had been like a sauna, or rather an oven. It was only now that she could relax somewhat that she noticed the beautiful coolness of the northern air after so long underground in the stuffy caverns of the Hive. It was refreshing, revitalising. Spitfire removed her helmet, letting her fiery mane show, briefly catching the light as Celestia's sun, rising higher in the sky, shone over the peaks. She trotted down to Twilight, who was sitting on her haunches on the stony ground, and sat beside her.
'You're safe now,' Spitfire assured her. 'The Changelings are leaving. I guess our main force got them on the run.'
Twilight didn't respond, too taken up with her own thoughts. Spitfire carried on talking. 'You know the princesses are still out there, still fighting.' She offered Twilight her canteen, which was accepted. Twilight took a sip with slightly shaky hooves. 'I reckon they'll be pretty damn proud of you. The way you kept going while you were down there in the Hive. Anypony else in those conditions...well, I hate to think what kind of state they'd be in now.'
Twilight passed the canteen back to Spitfire, who took another sip of water. 'I didn't tell them anything...' Twilight muttered.
'Of course you didn't. You're strong,' Spitfire replied. 'You're a tough cookie, that's pretty clear. Princess Celestia must have seen that in you right from the start. You and all your friends. Otherwise she would never have dared to entrust you with the Elements.'
'But I let her down...my Element is gone!' Twilight pointed out, with a dismayed tone. 'I should have...I don't know, been more alert...paid more attention...maybe I could have stopped it!'
'What's done is done,' Spitfire reminded her. 'You can't change what happened before, but from what I was told about it, you had no reason to suspect anything. No reason to think you were in any danger. The city had been cleared, the palace was secure, there were guards all around. What happened to you is not your fault, Twilight. That's the most important thing you can know right now. It wasn't your fault. But regardless of any of that, you're a civilian. Even though you hold one of the Elements, you're not trained in the same way we are. You're not trained in close quarters combat, or in spotting infiltrators, or anything like that. And what's more, you're not trained to resist torture, either. But you did.' The veteran mare put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. 'You did, because you knew it was something you had to do, because the princess was relying on you. You may not think it, you may not believe it, but you're damn brave, kiddo, and don't forget it.'
Twilight frowned, looking down at the ground for a few moments. 'How long was I down there...?' she asked.
'Twelve days,' Spitfire replied,' trying to keep her response both matter-of-fact and serious, to emphasise both the relative swiftness of Twilight's rescue, and her bravery in resisting torture for so long. 'I bet it felt like a whole lot longer.' Twilight nodded.
'I didn't know...I mean, I'd lost all track of time.' She sighed. 'Everything was the same down there, every day, every night. There was no way to tell them apart.'
'Well, you kept it together, and that's all anypony could ask of you. Princess Celestia will tell you the same thing when you speak with her, I know she will.' She offered her canteen to Twilight again, who shook her head this time.
'I'm sure she will...but what if I could have done more? Maybe I could have broken out...maybe I could have taken out the Queen, or...'
'Don't talk yourself into that spiral, Twilight,' Spitfire cautioned. 'Even if you had broken out, you wouldn't have made it out of the Hive. The Queen is taking on both princesses even as we speak, and it looked like a pretty even fight from what I could see of it.'
'They're fighting the Queen?' Twilight blinked. 'Show me!'
'I think you should rest a while,' Spitfire replied. 'You've...'
'Show me!' Twilight repeated, more urgently. 'Please. I just want to see, I'm not going to do anything crazy.'
'Well, alright.' Spitfire nodded, gesturing for Arcwing to approach and help Twilight up. The slope was steep, and so he carried her up to the top of the hill, perching her in a saddle between two rocky outcrops, from whence she could observe the valley that lay beyond, and the battle still raging above it.
Luna and Celestia were engaged in swirling combat with the Queen, flashes of magic cutting across the skies. A long line of airships hung in space about halfway down the valley, like a dividing line between the land of the ponies and that, formerly at least, of the Changelings. Of the drones, there was no sign. Spitfire had said they had fled, but the Queen remained.
'Can't we help them?' Twilight muttered. The trio of dancing figures were distant, but the colours of their magic marked out their identities, if there were any doubt. Twilight certainly had none. She would recognise Princess Celestia anywhere, and she watched as the princess gracefully swooped and swirled through the air. But the Queen was agile, and smart, and she could be seen teleporting around, flying short distances, teleporting away, appearing behind or below one of the pony sisters, keeping them off guard, negating the advantage they held over her in terms of numbers.
Seeing the princesses gave Twilight some renewed spirit. She had been languishing in her own pity and fear in the Hive before Luna made contact with her, giving her hope in her darkest hour. She had made a promise to Twilight, that they would come for her, and come they had. But would it prove to be worth the cost of those who had died to save her? The Changelings had escaped, thousands of them fleeing the wrath of the airship's guns and the collapse of their former home. The Element had not been recovered. The Queen was still alive and fighting. So far, the mission had not been a great success, with only Twilight's rescue to show for it.
Twilight longed to join the fight, to help her mentor and her sister fight the evil of the Changeling Queen. But she knew she was too weak, too feeble in her current state to offer any aid. All she could do was sit, and watch, and wait.
And hope.