Void felt the wind beat against his face as First Flight raced through the skies, right behind the rest of the Knights. His side screamed in agony, demanding that he should ground himself and rest… but there was no rest. As the blimps and the gliders set themselves in formation against the bladed flower, the number of eagles that had circled around the sky had more than doubled in strength and fury. Now they were not as calculated as they were, they simply were ravenous. Void kept these thoughts to himself as he tried to seal away that fear, and take on the bravery he required for the moment.
“Don’t know why we didn’t just fly you back when we rescued you originally!” First Flight grunted, “That’d have been adequate training for this!”
The Knights closed in on the centre of the conflict. Suddenly the formation they took broke to pieces, the Knights throwing themselves in every which way. Void was originally confused as to why first, before he realised the murders of eagles that tore off after all of them. First Flight rocked off to the side to avoid an eagle who swiped at him with its claws, threatening to kill both the pegasus and the unicorn.
Regaining his stability almost as quickly as he lost it, First Flight continued his trajectory toward the ever growing storm. It was only then that Void appreciated the true size of the bladed flower, as if it was an amalgamation of all evil. The hordes of dark creatures thickened like smoke when they approached, and the booming sounds of war trumpets and flashing lights from the sudden arrival of the air force was doing nothing more than add to the tenseness and turbulence of the situation.
“We’re getting close!” First Flight called, “But the storm’s thickening up quick! You think you’re ready to do whatever you did down there?”
“I-I hope!” Void responded.
“Don’t sweat it!” Flight responded, “You’ll do fine! I just know it! And when it’s over, I’ll even get you a--”
They were struck by something but not by an eagle. Void nearly yelled in fury before he felt his weight stop from plummeting, as from the corner of his eye he watched First Flight plummet toward the ground. He cried out, but his voice escaped him as he turned his attention to the thing--no… the pony that held him up. A pegasus that wore shadows as her coat, appearing as dark as the storm was.
Her eyes weren’t normal… they were something else. Something much worse.
“You have proven yourself troublesome.” This shadow said with a hollow voice, “But EXISTENCE demands CORRECTION.”
“W-who are you?” Void demanded.
“I? I-I… I am a lost light that has found Purpose.” Lost Light responded, “But you are a shape that requires CORRECTION. You threaten the balance.”
Void looked at Lost Light in horror, as the pegasus twitched violently. Her voice broke through, as if panicked and dissuaded: “W-what have I done…?”
The twitching stopped as the pegasus returned a condemning glare, swinging Void downwards and swept her wings in a diving manner. The two immediately shot downwards toward the ground that was several hundred metres below. Void tried to break free of the grip that Lost Light held him in, but she seemed to dedicate herself like a weight to sink him. The unicorn wrestled more and more, desperately seeking a way to at least get pegasus off course and the two tumbled wildly down toward the ground.
Thrusting his hoof into the head of Lost Light, Void received no response more than the pegasus driving her hoof into the wounded side of the unicorn which caused him to shout in pain. Reality seemed to blur as Void slipped into the balance between consciousness and unconsciousness, violently wrestled to break free from the vice that was throwing him down to his demise. Suddenly a power seemed to surge within the unicorn as his eye watered with pain and anger. Void yelled and blinked.
Bliss. Momentary bliss.
The velocity seemed to break for all but a moment as Void forced Lost Light to be underneath him as the two sailed into a window. Lost Light broke the velocity of the impact as she cried in a sharp and definite pain and let her grasp of the unicorn loose as he tumbled into a wooden support beam that held the wooden and concrete roof overhead up as dust was unsettled from its resting place and scoured the scene. Pain screamed over Void’s entire body as it ached incredibly.
Void shot a nervous glance to where he thought Lost Light was, as he saw the pegasus already on her feet as she approached Void slowly and sinisterly. The air seemed to taste tainted as Void drew in a deep breath.
“RESISTANCE proves impurity…” Lost Light muttered, “b-but it isn’t… REALITY REQUIRES CLEANSING.”
“L-Lost light?” Void coughed… the air seemed to grow thicker and harder to breathe, “I-I don’t think you--”
Void was slammed onto the floor by the pegasus whose eyes burned with a contradicting look of terror and hatred, and she intentionally slammed her hoof on his injury. Void cried sharply in pain. She stared at him, and for a moment she took off her hoof from his injury and looked at him with an expression that pleaded for forgiveness. Void shook his head, pleading for Lost Light’s second side to take control as she twitched violently.
“I-it hurts!” The pegasus cried, “It hurts! Make it stop! Ma-- PAIN IS LIBERATION… pain is-- LIBERATION.”
“P-pain?” Void quiveringly asked.
“It is required.” Lost Light responded with a newfound confidence that seemed to escape her with every breath.
“But for hundreds of innocent souls?”
“T-they--”
A third shape slammed into Lost Light. It wrestled with her, the two winged ponies tossing and turning as their wings lashed at each other and eventually shot them out of the building. Void painfully rolled onto his uninjured side, as he tried but failed to stand upright. Drawing in a deep breath, he thrust his foreleg forward and used every part of strength he still maintained to drag himself across the floor that was littered with glass and splinters and the sharp shapes poked through his greatcoat.
You are drifting…
Void ignored the thought as it tried to wrestle for his attention, he continued to drag himself toward the window he and Lost Light crashed through. Reaching the border of the window, wheezing, Void cranked his neck upward toward the bladed flower that lay still. It offered no resistance to the bombardment that the air force was putting up against it, when before it was burning Grad indiscriminately.
Why stop now?
The spider had left her web.
Lost Light cried out in pain as she was slammed into the ground by the pegasus that intervened and spared what needed CORRECTION. The pegasus that had carried her enemy, the pegasus that… how? No… her legs for the first time felt as if they were being controlled by her, she met the eyes of this pegasus that seemed to have a strange connection with her. Friend. Family… brother. Lost Light’s mind rushed with what she swore was a reunion, she commanded herself to stay pinned to the floor by the uniformed pegasus who wore a rebreather. How did she know who this was?
Why was he her-- FOE.
“F-First Flight?” Lost Light asked as tears of pain and joy brimmed, but she ignored what was being asked of her from FREEDOM.
“Why are you trying to kill us?” First Flight demanded, seemingly unphased by the fact that she knew his name. Lost Light choked as the accusation was laid before her… was she killing them? She thought…
No.
“H-help me…” Lost Light asked, “I-I can’t--”
“What do you mean?” First Flight demanded before his expression shifted into horror, and he looked at Lost Light and looked at her wings. He shook his head as he worriedly fidgeted, “N-no… you can’t... you’re alive?”
“Why did you leave me?”
First Flight sat silently, guilt beset his mind once again. Eventually First Flight stepped off from Lost Light, he pressed one of his hooves against his chest as he sighed: “We didn’t want to… but your rebreather, it was damaged. We tried to raise your attention, tried to get you up... but you didn’t respond. We tried…”
That is the world that they live in, YOU have learned to unfortunately accept. They live in an irreversible state of fear, that anywhere outside of their walls is a place of suffering. They have YOU wear those facemasks to ‘protect’ YOU from the ‘evil influences…’ yet they risk the precious lives of countless selfless souls, much like YOU UNDERSTAND. It is a blissful ignorance where they live. It is an illusion… nothing more than a sorrowful state where they believe everything they are surrounded by terror and destruction.
Lost Light shook her head as she tried to wrestle with-- LIBERATION. Her legs moved and pain surged through her body like a current, but she didn’t respond to LIBERATION. Her mournful eyes stared at First Flight who had let his guard down… he had tried to justify abandoning her to IT. No… no, he didn’t want to leave her behind-- CORRECT IT.
“Symphony--” First Flight said before he came to a sudden halt, dropping to the floor. His eyes showed nothing more than surprise before he keeled over, Symphony tried to rush forward to catch her friend, but found that Lost Light held her back and kept her hooves cemented to the floor. She tried to move, but everything CORRECTED her not to.
Void struggled to rise to his hooves, as he managed to lift himself up on his trembling legs that ached. He took a few uncertain steps before he fell onto the wall, using it to support him and drew in several deep breaths in a vain attempt to feed his weak limbs enough to walk. After finding a way to control his breath, the stallion took few precious moments to strengthen his resolve to walk without the assistance of the wall, stumbling over weakly toward the other window that Lost Light and the other pegasus crashed through.
Every aspect of Void’s body screamed for him to stop, but that...
That willingness. It inspired him.
Reaching the second broken window, Void stared down into the hole that would have been where the two ponies would have fallen. It was quite some way down, but if that was where they went, it was where he needed to follow… even if it meant a broken leg, or two. Void calmed his nerves as he took his first tentative step toward the abyss, he allowed gravity to do the rest. Slowly his body teetered forward as eventually gravity’s pull was strong enough, and he plummeted down the hole.
Void’s mind raced--his memory corrected his fall--he tilted his body to land hind legs first and he pressed out one in particular. Positioning his hoof to land first, Void watched through a tightly clenched eye as his leg impacted with the concrete. There was a second where the pain dominated his senses, crying out in pain following a sickening crack. Landing on his injured side didn’t help with the pain, resting motionless on the floor before his senses got the better of him.
He needed to move.
Using his three other legs, Void rolled onto his stomach before he weakly pressed up. His fourth leg lamely kicked but it seared in pain with even the slightest flinch as the stallion bit his tongue. Void struggled forward, he entered into a much more spacious room as he soon spotted his friend who lay prone on the ground and a lost light that lingered over the pegasus’s motionless body.
Anger surged momentarily, before he noticed that Lost Light trembled…
“What have you done?” Void asked after waiting moments for the pegasus to do something, anything.
“I-I… have betrayed my friend.” Lost Light responded after what could’ve been a minute, “I am not my own…”
Void stood in silence.
“I-I have caused pain… no, I have lived in-- PAIN… pain isn’t LIBERATION…! I need help, I want help! The pain!” Somepony else cried.
Void completely expected Lost Light to turn and strike him, to try to kill him again. But yet in that moment he couldn’t help but stand with his guard down. She wasn’t an agent of her own will, and it was evident that what she was doing was conflicting with what she truly was. The lives she ended and the peace she distrubed was not her will, it was something else… something that had seized control over her.
He in some ways was a victim of that, too.
“You have…” Void affirmed, “but what you choose to do now, will at least ease the burden of that pain.”
“I-I need escape!” The pony cried.
“There won’t be. There will never be. But just as long as you are willing to do better…” Void said as the pony seemed to stop trembling.
There was a deafening silence as Void Walker stood trembling from pain and Lost Light stood completely still. He felt a tiny spark of power rush through him when he stared at the pegasus, convincing himself that if it escalated he would offer one final, good fight… not even a day back into a new life, and he was already considering its end. One moment which seemed to stretch on for an hour left the trembling and still figures in place.
“Strike me…” The pony said cooly, “it is the only way.”
“You--”
“P-please… break this thing from my mind! I-I can’t… I can’t stand it anymore!”
Void stood in silence for a moment, before he lifted up on of his forelegs and directed his hoof at the pegasus that stood still. A ping of sorrow tore through him, considering what he was about to do to a victim of some plague. He wobbled like a sickly tree as he tried to maintain his balance and his concentration. The greyish energy started to swirl around his hoof, and he looked at the pegasus that refused to look at him.
And he hesitated.
He tried to follow through with the pony’s request, but as soon as he concentrated on it the greyish energy faded. Void watched the pegasus eventually turned toward him. He couldn’t tell what she was feeling, but he waited for the moment that she would do anything.
It was her turn to strike him down.
The weak stallion stood by as he waited for fate to claim him, to do to him what he couldn’t bring himself to do to another. The two stared at each other for a long time, whether in contempt or in sympathy, Void couldn’t tell. With the passing time, Void watched the pegasus grow more and more unnerved, her calmness seemed to slowly melt into uneasiness and then into anger. His trembling became more apparent as this happened, he did what he could to swallow his fear.
He shut his eye as she lunged toward him in fury.
The room seemed to break away immediately as he felt himself lift up through some vacuum, before he opened his eye in confusion. The entire landscape seemed to change as he now faced Lost Light with her body twisted into a corner of the room, both of her wings seemed to be bent in such a way that they could never be guaranteed flight again. She stared up at him no longer with hatred, but rather with fear.
Fear. And that was the last thing he saw before she closed her eyes.
Void immediately turned his attention to the limp body of First Flight as he set off, his trembling legs collapsing underneath him as he brought himself to crawl once more to where his ally rested. His hind leg screamed in pain as he did, as each pull sent the incredibly wounded stallion into a cry of pain. Everything in his body demanded he stopped as soon as he reached the limp body of First Flight, Void’s anxious eye scanned over his friend.
He was breathing.
Resting one of his forehooves under First Flight’s head, he cradled his friend as First Flight went into a coughing spasm. It was evident that life was closing for his friend as Void sat there trembling. The pegasus managed to laugh between each cough, “I-I never… I never finished what I wanted to tell you…”
“You have time.” Void offered.
“Heh… n-not much.” First Flight coughed, “I-I’m sorry… I thought I could--”
“You did do it. We stopped the storm, First Flight.”
“N-not what I was… going to say.”
Void turned his head toward the unconscious figure in the corner as it dawned on him what First Flight meant.
“I’m going to get you both out of here…” Void responded, “I’m not going to leave you.”
“You might not… I can’t promise…” First Flight responded.
Void lowered his head in sorrow.
“I-I… never got your name…”
“Void Walker.”
“Yours? Or--”
“The Lord General.”
“S-see?” First Flight laughed through sickly coughs as his breathing soon became erratic, “I told you… it wasn’t so bad.”
“First Flight--” Void attempted to say.
“T-there’s a flare on my utility… you’re going to need to fire it, Void… get Symphony out of here, and you… you get out of here, too.”
“You’re--”
“N-no… I think--I know--this is the last one, Void. Last flight…”
Void sat in silence.
“T-tell Proud Defender,” the pegasus said between laboured breaths, “tell Skyrunner, a-all of Grad… that it’s been an honour, and you, Void? Y-you’ll do fine.”
First Flight stopped moving when he said this, and Void was left to hold the retired body of a lost friend. Sorrow choked the stallion as his hooves reached around anxiously to find that flare that the pegasus had mentioned. Perhaps if he worked quickly enough, they could get a medic that would be able to help, perhaps if he lit it he could save his friend. Finding the blue tube, Void yanked it off with what little strength he had in his reserves before he aimed the tube toward an exposed hole in the wall as he fired the blue tube through.
Void watched the bright blue smoke stream through the air as it whistled a call for help, dropping the now useless container for the flare to the floor. The stallion gently rested the pegasus back onto the floor and pulled himself onto the wall to rest, and wait for help to come… wait for someone to rescue the three lost souls.