War can be regarded as chaos which exists in an incomplete form. Something lacking that necessary thread of order, while obliterating all dignity in the first strike. There can be plans, diagrams, designed movements and counters -- but in the end, it's going to come down to a desperate struggle for survival.
There are many ways to interpret war, for the mind to try forcing it into making some level of false sense. (Ignore 'adventure', for that designation exists for those whose memories have never included the scent of blood or the feel of flesh as it gives way. Anyone going for 'romance' has entered a realm well beyond a normal level of hopelessness, and should possibly be left there.) But when it comes to the participants, the way those caught within it both react and interact... try to think of them as alchemy.
The vast majority of ponies don't understand alchemy. There are a few who possess some concept of how it works, and a scant number have marks for it -- but for the most part, they see it as something best left to the zebras and in that, they've partially given it the wrong definition. Because with zebras, it's about harmonics. It's not so much looking at how things react to each other: it's trying to find the ways in which they want to work together.
(That's not what's happening here, not in war. Mostly.)
And yet alchemy is a natural part of existence. Personalities are forged in a crucible. Take all the events of a life, along with every last reaction. There's the heat of embarrassment: something which tends to linger on the fringes of the mix, for it never truly fades. Stress and demand... those create the pressure cooker. Affection is a gentle simmer. Both friendship and love share the same risk: taking a chance on letting another's mix enter and alter yours. Blend it all together. Stir across the course of a lifetime. And all the while, let the slowly-resolving results tell themselves a story.
But ponies don't understand alchemy, even when every last adult could be said to have gone through it.
The manifestation of the mark could be thought of as alchemy.
The moment when a life catalyzes.
There was a group of invaders hidden in the passages, lurking in wait for the evacuation alarm, and every last one of them was carefully chosen. Personally selected. The leaders of their factions were looking for certain qualities. A level of loyalty which went well beyond that of the normal membership. The willingness to do what had be done. And... rage.
The girl, who doesn't think much of the Americans' comics, feels that 'rage is red' works out to something very trite. To her, the produced scent is something which suggests smoke billowing up from a boiling toxin, added to a hint of scorched flesh. It's something constantly on the verge of burning itself out -- or up. And the faction leaders understand that last part, because there's a crucial level of heat which must be maintained in order to keep their memberships intact -- but there's also a safe maximum. When things boil over... that's when they get what they'll always claim are those who acted fully of their own accord, with no approval from the leaders whatsoever and a complete misreading of the true message. And of course, you need something to blame. The organization's teachings clearly aren't it, because look at all of the ponies who didn't lose it. So what did the wayward do before they snapped? Didn't somepony see her with a copy of the Bugle? Then the solution is clear: ban the Bugle. Blame the last thing the pony read, the last meal eaten, any odd colors on a dress they might have seen in a store window -- blame almost everything in the world for being responsible and perhaps no one will notice that the only exclusion on the list was yourself.
There were multiple criteria applied when assembling this group. Possession of a near-constant anger level that bubbles along at the rate which normally exists just before the first kick is launched was not the least of the considerations. The willingness to utterly hurt ponies was a major factor. So was believing that anypony who wasn't one of their own deserved it.
They got into the palace together. (They hated one word in that sentence more than any other, but -- they had their orders.) They went directly for one particular passage. All of them had to wait in that passage, and needed to do so while indulging in nothing else. No breaking into offices. No targeting staff. No searching for proof.
They waited for the evacuation alarm, because that was going to be the key moment in their story. (It wound up going off just as a train's boiler built up the final bit of steam pressure, and a fur-dyed mare in a private compartment felt the jolt as the most vital wheels in her plan began to turn.) And they had to do so without hurting each other -- although when it came to both entrance and exit, every last one reached the independent conclusion that it would be rather easy to cover up a little purely 'accidental' shoving.
And they had been provided with a carefully-drawn map. (The unicorns had custody of that, and refused to share.)
The chosen ingredients were picked for volatility.
They want to explode.
Wordia Spinner's group is well on the way to their exit, and the mare is starting to feel worn out. She's a rather effective fighter, especially given her core belief that protests against unfair tactics are the first resort of the loser -- but she doesn't have a lot of endurance, she doesn't keep herself in good shape, there were a few more encounters along the way, and... she wants a bottle. Part of her needs a bottle, and she's almost starting to wonder as to why that inner voice is so strong. But she's nearly reached what's supposed to be some degree of safety. It just isn't necessarily going to work out that way.
You could look at her position as co-fighter as a particularly odd brew. The result of forcing an unexpected mix together under extremely high pressure, and watching to see how long it holds. Her temporary companions, however, regard the situation as Wordia having impressed herself onto the staff.
That one unicorn Guard mare is waiting for exactly the right moment to tell her.
Take the most common, ordinary, unnoticed base element which could possibly exist. Then shove poison down its ears until every bit of ingested foulness begins to reemerge from the throat. Tell it that everything taken in makes it special, with special care to imply that there's no other value present. And then, after the mix erupts in exactly the wrong place... leave it to stew in what are now internally-produced toxins.
The arsonist knows she's special. She also knows that she did nothing more than what had to be done, and that everything she did was both the only decision possible and somepony else's fault. She can keep all of those self-imposed facts in mind at the same time, and do so while applying an internal label of Fact at an intensity which could make Mrs. Panderaghast blanch.
The mare is capable of believing any number of things, and there was a time in her once-dull life when the main qualifier for putting faith in another's words would have been somepony feeling she was actually important to speak with. But she's been talking to herself for a very long time now. And as it turned out, she had the real answers all along.
So it didn't surprise her when the Guards (the traitor and the inferior) opened her cell. The palace was being evacuated? Then she had to be moved. In fact, it seemed quite possible that whatever was going on might have been centered around her in the first place. She's just that important.
The mare made up a new lyric about being important and tried it out at low volume, because the Guards are hardly worthy of hearing her sing. She always knew she was important. It just took a while to find out how.
Then she receives proof.
The Guards hear the proof approaching: even barely-ponies like the two armored dolts would have a hard time missing it. And at first, they probably think it's reinforcements coming, because she can see their stupid faces and they briefly look happy to hear hooves on the approach.
But then the words reach them.
The words weren't any part of the plan. But these are among the purest of fanatics and when you get too many of those together, the slogans are going to come out. They replace thought, substitute for battlecries, and put off the faction fighting for a few more seconds. The words give the Guards something they can react to and at the moment they realize there's an attack galloping towards them, they act.
They had enough warning time. If they had used it to go off on their own, they would have escaped.
But they're Guards. And their priority is her.
They change course, because the evacuation route would have gone directly into the attackers. They try to reach another way out. But the intruders see them, and then there's a chase and they're trying to move her, they push against her and shove her but of course she's not going to cooperate, she saw unicorns back there and a third of the slogans were hers. (The rest? She already has an explanation for that, and she's just waiting for the right moment to express it.) She knows they're coming for her, and it means she does absolutely nothing to help.
The traitor Guard has to levitate her, carry her along. And that pony has enough field strength to do it -- but now she isn't doing much of anything else.
There's a chase. The Guards manage to stay ahead for a while, and they turn here and there, use the confusing layout of the lower level to some advantage, but they're carrying a burden and they can't get enough of a lead to drop completely out of sight. There are no rooms close enough to the cells which can truly serve as defensible positions, and trying to convert one wouldn't be getting her to safety. They are, as per their training, trying to get her out. And she just watches the attackers coming up behind them, and sometimes she hums and if her field bubble gets a little too close to the unicorn generating it, she tries to kick through the border because that horn has to stay lit.
The intruders catch up.
The fight begins.
In her opinion, it takes longer than it should. The obvious problem was the bring-alongs, because the Guards prioritized and... there are ways in which that can be a mistake. Standardized tactics can turn into errors etched in stone and when ponies face a mixed group of their own, the first priority is frequently to drop the unicorns. Because earth ponies have strength and there's a full list of pegasus techniques somewhere, but a unicorn is a perpetual wild card. Unless you've personally seen every trick which a given corona can offer, you can never be entirely sure what any given unicorn can do.
She understands that completely. She's been working on a new trick of her own.
As far as the mare is concerned, going for the CUNET members first is a compliment.
...having them actually go down is a sign that somepony may need to do some minor culling of the membership.
There's a fight, and it's two Guards against that selected group. Two Guards can do a lot. But they're doing all of it while trying to protect her and she... doesn't care. But putting her behind them... well, her horn is covered in metal. That added something to the impacts.
She doesn't think they're dead. (Not that it matters.) They both look like they're breathing, especially because there's blood on that one snout and it's not going to bubble unless there's air passing through it. But they're both down. Incapable of fighting, much less sounding any degree of extra alarm. But there was a point when they were calling out for reinforcements, probably just hoping that any of the other traitors were close enough to hear and now the victorious group is more than a little nervous. Every distant hoofstep could be trying to get that much closer, even when those sounds seem to be coming from above.
One of them starts to move towards the wounded CUNET members -- but then there's what feels like a full outburst of hoof-produced overhead noise, and the conscious ponies shift priorities. They have to move, they start to surround her, and the fallen are left where they dropped. Prioritizing.
They tell the mare that they've come for her. To get her out.
She's proud. Of course she'll go with them! Because she heard her own slogans, and that means she knows who's really in charge of this.
She'll have to be in charge now, because the others were too weak.
She's especially proud to tell them that they finally know their place. As those who've chosen to serve their superior.
(There is a reaction when she says that. She can't be bothered to see it.)
She deserves this.
She's important.
There are three factions of invaders trying to fight their way through the upper levels of the palace. They have been forced to work together and in the most absolute sense, they have a lot in common. The foundation of that emotional cloning starts with a steadfast belief in their own superiority, added to the necessary cart which carries 'Everypony else has it wrong' in constant echo range. And 'everypony else' very much includes the ones they've been told to fight alongside. They've been forced to work with those they hate, and the tendency of disparate elements to use the foxhole of combat as the kiln which forms lifelong connections just isn't applying here. Not when every little victory is seen as having successfully given orders, which your inferiors clearly should have been following all along. And if you must protect somepony, then maybe you can move in after the second kick.
Still, they have a lot in common. So do radioactives, and you don't want to get too many of those in close proximity either.
Reactants with too many similarities. You can't force them to bond for long. Because in the alchemy of hate, the mixed groups of ponies trying to fight their way through the upper levels of the palace represent supersaturation.
It's an artificial state. Something which can be achieved, but... it's unnatural. There's only so many of the mixed toxins which can be held in rough suspension, and that's been maintaining for all of those weeks protesting together outside the gates. Keep them in proximity for too much time, compress everything into a small space, apply the heat of attack and you might get something very close to critical mass. And their leaders have been trying to keep them from reacting with each other.
Supersaturation is a delicate condition. Any new factor...
There's a group closing in on one of the reading rooms. They've done some damage, but -- they know the palace is fighting back. Something which wasn't supposed to happen -- but they can still win, because they're superior. In fact, every last pony in the group is one-third superior and two-thirds inferior: it depends on who's thinking about them.
They're all keeping an eye on the doors, the intersections, and each other. Looking for anything suspicious.
It means the scroll gets noticed.
There's a small group of benches in one of the deeper alcoves: a sort of secondary reading area outside the main one, for when a Princess needs to use the central space and everypony else just spontaneously decides to take their books outside. Those benches have plenty of cushions, and... a portion of the scroll is sticking out from beneath a plush purple edge. You wouldn't see it unless you were looking for something odd. (Or looking for something at all.) It was obviously hidden in a hurry, and not particularly well.
A poorly-hidden scroll is worthy of notice.
One of the unicorns slows down. Her horn ignites, collects the missive and because it's the palace, she tries all the counterspells she knows: the instant result is a shower of sparks as she effortlessly breaks through every layer of protection which isn't actually there. She tells herself that it's safe to open the thing, and she's absolutely right. The quickly-unrolling paper is tilted away from the rest of the group, allowing the first reading to be for her eyes alone --
-- it's rather more of a scrawl than usual: something which suggests the old mare was both in a hurry and had been trying to hide her style. But the clumsy attempt at deception has utterly failed, because the unicorn still recognizes the fieldwriting. You can't grow up in this nation and not know it, not when it's been at the bottom of every signed law to make a history book for the last thousand years.
R3
Trigger Event Zantor is go. Wait until you reach Location Prektic, then move against others. Palace MUST support your faction after lessers are removed: will be easier if you win.
Make sure you're the one who recovers this. The weaklings can't know.
TO THE PAIN.
TO THE FLAG.
TO THE END OF OUR ENEMIES.C.
The unicorn's corona instantly goes double.
Because the old mare knows how conspiracy theorists think. A trail of documentation created over the course of years is a carefully-planted forged false lead, but a single stray scroll sent to a staffer who was going to be evacuating along this general route, with instructions to hide it as poorly as possible? Something which somewhat echoes what their faction has been telling them all along, as the Solar Princess is finally caught out supporting their inferiors through making deliberate plans to sabotage their lives?
"WHICH OF YOU IS R3?"
For the pony who discovers it, that's evidence.
Of course, there's some ponies who suspect it's a deliberate deception. They say so. That's the first sign of their working for the palace. And after that -- well, it's a little harder to get the protests out in the middle of the fight and after that, two-thirds of them have been hoping for a chance to attack the unicorn anyway, so as long as she attacked first...
Not everypony falls for it. There are scrolls being planted in various, widely-separated places and at best, a third of the discovered ones disrupt the supersaturation. But when it does work, it makes the emotional state collapse back towards a more normal base -- which in this case means taking out those long-suspended energies on everything in the immediate vicinity. Especially if it has a horn. Or wings. Or neither.
It's a cruel trick. But... the old mare is kind. She spent much of a lifetime in learning how to be so.
It's war. Forgive her for backsliding.
The girl, galloping towards the palace walls with a slightly-stunned pegasus carried under one arm, represents alchemy in progress. There's a certain distillation of purpose under way.
She is not alkahest: the solvent which dissolves all the bonds of pony society into a primordial boiling soup. (Even after potentially realizing what truly might be taking place, it's what she fears. She just doesn't have time to express it. Certain other concerns are currently in play.) But she is a catalyst. Something which makes previously-disassociated factors come together in new ways...
Call her the potter's clay, still being shaped. The terra figulina of another Terra.
Recently, there were a number of foreign elements introduced into a new system. She's trying to ignore them, or at least focus past what they've been doing to her. (The illness is still very much present, but she's managed to push it down to background awareness. It seems to ease off somewhat when she's concentrating on what they have to accomplish.) But alchemy is the reactions created by a life in progress, and there are so many of those foreign elements. A thaumatologist might describe them as all the elements of existence -- followed by watching closely, because alchemy isn't the sort of thing you're supposed to do as creative cooking. You don't just pour everything into a living cauldron and wait to see what happens -- but as long as someone else already did it, you might as well observe. From a great distance.
Elements...
Nopony told her about Sun and Moon, because none could have imagined it as something she needed to learn. Similarly, there has been no discussion of the pony virtues, and that's placed a lot of potential questions on hold: at the very least, she would want to know how that particular sextet arose. Every culture is different, and the six honored by ponies wouldn't be fully echoed within the girl's herd. Valor, determination, steadfastness... centaur females look to what's almost a completely different set of standards, while the stallions feel that clean-and-jerking the largest amount of weight is all the virtue anyone needs.
She would wish for the choices to be explained. And inevitably, she would measure herself against them.
The girl wishes to be kind, but... it's hard. Kindness represents a softening of the self and in both herd and household alike, that could feel so very much like showing weakness. Making herself vulnerable, when the war for a single heart means there was always someone waiting to strike. And when it comes to receipt -- what has she done to earn it? What can she do it to earn it every day? Is she even worthy of something so simple? Love felt as if it would be impossible to find, and its gentler cousin...
She wants to be more honest with herself, possibly even in a way which brings down the number of internal attacks. Loyalty? Oh, she recognizes that: it's the virtue where ponies and centaurs overlap -- but she left her herd. And laughter? It's elusive. The one who so often feels like the subject of so many cosmic jests can find it impossible to laugh along, or just to laugh at all.
One virtue might run a little too deep: something universal among the Guard. Her former liege bore an Element once, and that's why the dark mare understands. The girl would readily give up her life for that of another, and the final gift of Generosity is sacrifice.
Magic...
...she would have a lot of questions. And it might take a Princess to explain it, because the librarian has yet to go that far in her studies. These are words which have yet to reach a scroll: what is magic, when expressed as a virtue? It's deep change. Inner transformation. Personal growth. The willingness to admit you aren't perfect, that you could be more than you are, and the drive to be better. Something the girl has carried with her from the start.
(If somepony tried to explain all of it at this exact instant, she would cut them off with a sincere wish to be carrying a little less magic. 'Prithee' would probably get involved.)
She's... trying. She's not perfect, but she's trying. It's usually all you can ask for.
Right now, she's mostly trying to ignore the screaming.
There was still a battle raging in the air around the tallest tower -- but no part of that had spared a glance down for the two mares. And when it came to those whom Cerea knew were at ground level, there had been a deliberate choice. Her chosen path towards the castle avoided the Sergeant entirely, because he had to watch over physician and wounded. He couldn't abandon them, and he didn't need the distraction.
(On a more practical level, Cerea really didn't want to hear his reaction when he saw her heading back inside. There was probably a level of profanity which would collapse the ground under her hooves and if he truly didn't like her decision, he just might do it without the actual cursing.)
They weren't seeing a lot of ponies. (Cerea didn't have all of the evacuation routes memorized, and so was unaware that she was avoiding most of the paths which staffers would have taken. It didn't matter. They needed a Guard.) Most of the ones she did race past seemed to be invaders who'd managed to become severely lost, and her best option was to keep racing because she was faster than anypony on the ground and one of her arms was just a little bit occupied.
Cerea needed to avoid fighting, for as long as possible. She and Nightwatch had to pass the theory to somepony who could act on it. And they were seeing ponies whom the girl was certain had never been any part of the staff, because their first reaction to seeing a hard-galloping centaur was to scream.
But they didn't try to fight her. They just screamed. The same scream.
Nightwatch had said it to her: that when most ponies looked at Guards, they saw the armor. The arsonist had taken special care to research beyond that -- but for the majority of viewers, removing the metal would render its former wearer anonymous. The little knight wasn't recognizable out of armor.
...which was currently the problem.
"THE CENTAUR IS FOALNAPPING THAT PEGASUS!"
It was a belief which begged certain questions, all of which were at least temporarily answered through standing stock-still and reviewing all possible options: as those on the ground consisted of earth ponies and unicorns from the supremacy factions, none of those included rescue. And as long as they weren't moving...
A knight could work with that. Cerea just did her best not to break stride.
Eventually, they approached a shadowed portion of the wall. There were no ponies anywhere within sight. 'Scent' was a little more uncertain, but Cerea was fairly sure that nopony was close enough to react.
"This is one of the outside entrances, right?" the girl asked. "I remembered that from the drills. But nopony showed me how to open this one yet. So you'll have to let us in."
Silence.
"Did I miss it?"
No response.
...I've been carrying her at full gallop while pressing her firmly against the side of my left breast and it had to be firmly because even with the bra, I couldn't take a chance on having her getting hit in the snout over and over and --
-- I made sure her snout was clear, I can feel her breathing but she's not talking, she's not --
The centaur hastily adjusted her grip, knelt as best she could while her right arm went under her bustline and did its best to help. Some rather careful movements managed to get the pegasus down to the well-shaded grass.
Cerea straightened, reluctantly backed up to get a better viewing angle. Dazed silver eyes stared at her. And there were still no words.
Frantically, "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you? I was trying not to put too much pressure on your wing! Tell me I didn't --"
Four dark legs staggered in place. Wing joints loosened.
"...soft..."
Cerea blinked.
"Nightwatch?"
"...I think they nuzzle back..."
Several hundred stories marched through the girl's mind in rapid review. None of their recorded dialogue offered anything helpful to say.
"Let's just get inside," Cerea tried. "Before we're seen."
Feathers rustled. The pegasus abruptly shook her head, and the black wings refolded. The silver gaze turned to regard cold stone.
"Right. Watch closely. You'll need this later --"
"-- I can't stay with the Guard --"
The nausea surged, and all four of the centaur's knees tried to buckle. The pegasus, who had just fully focused her attention on the wall, failed to notice.
"-- if you don't want to set off the trap, you start by pressing here --"
Immediately, "Trap?"
"It's a ramp going in. Miss the first stone and it's a frictionless ramp. Of course, that doesn't stop the pegasi." With what felt like surprising grimness, "The pegasi get the foam. So after you press that first one, move to --"
And then they were inside.
It took somewhat more effort than Cerea had been expecting. The entrance they'd used ended in one of the halls which had multiple art alcoves, was partially concealed by one of those alcoves, and...
She'd had to shove at the door, force her mass against it in order to move the unexpected weight on the other side. The result had been (eventual) movement -- along with a rather loud grinding noise as something scraped against the marble, and she was waiting for somepony to investigate what the fuss was about.
Scent had flooded the corridor at the moment the seal was broken. Fear and rage, commingled to the point where they were essentially inextricable. The air was saturated with them. Cerea wasn't sure she would be able to find any older traces within the mix. The palace was going to need thorough ventilation before anything could come close to being normal again.
"I'm through!" Nightwatch softly called out from the other side of the new gap. "Give it another push!"
It took three before Cerea could force herself through the opening. (Her lower rib cage still refused to compress.) She automatically peered out of the alcove, checked left and right, felt stupid because of course Nightwatch had already done that and finally looked down to see what the problem had been in the first place, not to mention what was making the new noise --
"-- Cerea?"
Slowly, the centaur stepped away from the remnants of the fallen griffon statute. Fragments of broken stone feathers clattered against her hooves.
It started with a falling statue...
Or rather, a portion had begun that way. That which had made Princess Luna feel she deserved a chance.
But I knocked it over to start with. It was my...
While she'd been on her sickbed, her hips had been studying vocabulary. This had meant trying to learn the full definition of 'upchuck'. They now felt like they were perilously close to mastering it as an action.
...I didn't have to take the impact. I could have run.
...I had to take the impact.
A knight would have --
She took a breath. The illness stepped back again.
"Just thinking," the girl quietly said. "Let me see what I can find..."
Maybe I can get past the saturation.
She took a deep breath. The nausea remained in the background. It meant having her head spin was entirely her own fault.
With open concern, "Cerea?"
I can't get past the saturation.
She was trying to use odor discrimination. Identify, isolate, ignore, then move on to the next. But there was so much...
Try to find metal. Guard armor.
...Guards go through here all the time.
Still not a bloodhound.
"I can't pick out anypony specific. Not when so much was happening. We'll have to find somepony the hard way. Can you hear anything?"
Black ears rotated: the brown ones did their best to twist.
"Fighting," Nightwatch reported. "Off to the left somewhere."
"We should go that way," Cerea immediately proposed.
"Fighting," the pegasus stated, "means ponies to fight. You still don't have the sword."
"Fighting," the centaur countered, "means ponies who are fighting. That could mean Guards. So we should go that way."
The silver eyes glared at her.
"And," Cerea unnecessarily added, "you still can't fly."
Black forehooves made a sullen point of not stomping. "I can still use wind." Paused. "In some ways."
"I can still kick."
"...Cerea..."
"I'm also pretty sure I can punch somepony," the girl said. "But that's probably going to be a pegasus. Punching that far down is hard." Her lips twisted. "Or I could just headbutt."
The pegasus had a doctorate in not stomping. Not sighing was the thesis. "We go towards the fight." She started to move out of the alcove, with the centaur making sure to stay close behind. "We just have to find a Guard who can get into the basement and check the cells. And then I'm getting you out of here."
It wasn't a good time to argue. (That could happen after they spread the word.) The mares advanced through the hallway. Past fallen art, torn tapestries, and freshly-chipped ceilings --
"-- they went after the ceiling," Cerea softly observed.
"They went after everything."
The girl stared up at damaged frescos. Thought about fine powders and stained paws.
And then they were alone for a time.
"Where is everypony?" the girl whispered. "I thought..."
"We're not near any offices or workspaces," Nightwatch replied. "This section's been evacuated. And the invaders... did their damage. Then they moved on."
They wandered through debris, stepping carefully to avoid producing extra sound or... doing more damage.
Cerea kept checking the air. Searching for any traces she recognized, or... for more signs of contempt. She almost expected that they were going to wind up stepping around another obstacle eventually. Something which might come in puddle form. If they were lucky.
They didn't care.
They don't care about anything.
The mares stopped at an intersection. Listened left, then right.
"Left?"
"There's definitely hooves running to the left."
They began to make the turn.
Both paused.
"They're coming this way," Cerea said. "It's getting louder --"
"-- they're coming fast," Nightwatch frantically cut in. "There's at least two of them! And that's just the ones who are galloping! I hear wingbeats --"
-- there was a moment of shared confusion, with both uncertain as to whether they should pull back in order to line up a potential ambush, or keep watching in order to get more information. It left them visible, and it also let them see the exact moment when the unicorn and earth pony stallions raced into view.
They were running hard. The unicorn's fur was already shedding excess sweat, and the earth pony wasn't particularly worried about whether the weaker specimen could keep up. Both were showing signs of injury: impacted fur, discoloration to the skin beneath. They were fleeing, they were both breathing fast and the unicorn was having trouble with that too, they weren't particularly thinking about anything other than the path ahead and that now contained a centaur.
The earth pony, who had been told that the centaur was helpless, still had some difficulty in reconciling the level of reality which now included And Right In Front Of Me.
The forelegs decided to accelerate into a charge. The hind, based on visual evidence, decided to dump momentum. The resulting skid-veer went right, and that was when the wingbeats caught up.
Dark orange blurred through the upper levels of the hallway, pulled up with a backblast of wind, got over the unicorn, and the stallion dropped.
As far as Cerea was concerned, pegasi were rather light. But gravity added something, and so did the armor.
All four close-pressed hooves went into the unicorn's spine, and the smallest of the stallions screamed. It made the earth pony look back, hooves scrambled to recover because the centaur was in front of him and that mare was helpless, utterly helpless and somewhat in the way and that helplessness possessed several times his body mass --
-- the male pegasus had to be easier --
-- keratin skittered, planted solidly, the earth pony oriented as the pegasus stallion jumped down from the fallen unicorn, wings were spreading but there wasn't enough time to take off again, the earth pony was going to kick --
-- the pegasus didn't have time to take off. He simply twisted his body, and the earth pony's forehoof went into armor.
Kinetic energy transferred, and enough carried over to send the pegasus staggering into a wall. The majority, however, rebounded.
"AAAUUOGH!"
...oh, Cerea distantly thought as she watched the earth pony fail to find a good planting on the newly-split hoof. Barding's been working on the refit.
The pegasus reoriented. Moved. It didn't take long after that.
He looked up from the second dropped form --
"-- what the buck are you two doing in here?"
He's a Guard.
...technically...
...he's still a Guard --
Nightwatch was the first to complete the turn, and the mare raced into the hallway. "We had to find somepony! Cerea --"
He barely took a moment to stare at the girl. The exposed left flank and then, for no reason she could think of, he went to her face.
"-- is probably supposed to be outside!" Squall yelped. "Anypony with any priorities would have gotten her out of here, away from this! That's supposed to be you, Nightwatch! And you don't even have armor! You're going to get hurt --"
"-- I followed her in!" Cerea technically failed to lie. (Honesty was a work in progress.) "There's something you have to --"
"-- I have to make sure you two leave!" the Guard shouted. "One without a weapon, and the other doesn't have working wings! There is nothing you can do in here which is as important as getting her out! I don't know what that one is thinking --" this with a furious glance at Cerea "-- but you --" and then Nightwatch "-- need to be more responsible!"
"We have a reason for being here!" Nightwatch tried to insist, with wings painfully flaring to suit. "It's important --"
"Keeping her alive is important! Evacuate her! Now! Before every one of these idiots smells a fresh target!"
It could be said that the mares shared a thought. On some level, they both understood that Squall was distracted. Stressed. He had too much to think about, was probably not dismissing them offhoof, and yet both responded to his shout through giving up on males forever. Or for the next ten minutes, whichever came first.
"Keeping me alive," Cerea disbelievingly proposed to the pony who had nearly electrocuted her. "Squall, we have to --"
Eyes wide, desperate, begging. "He's dead! He's dead and you killed him! I don't hate you that much!" And before any of it could truly sink in, "Nightwatch, I don't have time for this! There's more problems brewing where I just came from! I have to go back! Get her out of here!"
His wings flared to their full span. Flapped, and he turned in the air, started to speed away --
"-- it's the prisoner --" the girl desperately tried.
But he never heard her. Not over the sound of his own pleading voice.
"LET US SAVE YOU!"
And then he was gone.
The mares were briefly silent. Two fallen invaders used the moment to groan.
"We don't know how much time we have to find somepony else," Cerea observed. "We can't just gallop around here and hope to get lucky."
"Because so many of the Guards would have taken the staff out," Nightwatch carefully took over. "We could try to chase an evacuation route, but that may mean the tunnels. And the further out we go, when it might already be too late..."
Blue eyes met silver.
"I -- we have to go down there," the centaur said.
"We have to check," the pegasus reluctantly agreed.
Because that was duty.
It didn't matter what kind of factors were brought into the brew. Duty never changed.
The intruders in the basement are now searching for three things: excuse, escape, and opportunity.
The first is easy to come by. What's their excuse for still being down here? It's the fault of the unicorns: the ones who were so weak as to be the first to drop in a fight against a mere pair of Guards. Forget about the injuries which the remaining ponies in the recovery team are sporting, because the unicorns are the ones who actually went down and --
-- the unicorns had the map. There was too much of this place to memorize, the unicorns had the map and they can't go back for it.
...well, they could. All it takes is working their way to where the bodies fell.
Wherever that was.
The group has become disoriented. They lost the trail in during the initial part of the chase, when the Tartarus-chained Guards were trying to get the target away from them. After that, there was a period when they were on the run, trying to get some distance between themselves and any somehow-arriving reinforcements, they made a few brilliant turns because who was going to track them when they were moving randomly and...
Nothing they've done has managed to locate any part of their entrance route. And there has to be another path leading to the upper levels, a secret passage, a public ramp, but... so many of those would have been on the map. They've been stumbling around, trying to align themselves with Solar or Lunar wing. But there's just too many corridors down here, running through spaces where the surface levels of the palace never ventured. They are somewhere within what feels like the near-infinite space between angled marble and they are lost.
...there's a certain suspicion that this has to be where the best evidence is kept, and a few would like to explore -- if they had a guaranteed exit at the end of it. If they could just do what they were supposed to do.
(They were chosen for this.)
(Because they were the ones who would do what had to be done.)
They are listening for the sounds of hooves on ramps. Doors opening. Stone grinding as it pushes against a hidden frame within the walls. And sometimes they feel as if they're hearing hints of that, but they can't track it down here. Any noise they can register is so often connected with fighting, their own numbers are lessened, and...
...blame the unicorns. The unicorns went down. There's probably a working which copies paper and the selfish idiots didn't use it. And there's got to be spells down here, things they might have to deal with in order to get out.
It's why they took the prisoner's restraint off.
That took some work. The Guards probably had some kind of master key, or knew a spell which could unlock the entire thing at once. The recovery team had to get through the straps, and those were reinforced. Fortunately, there's a lot of stuff down in the basement and if you stumble past the right section, it's easy to borrow a few tools for the job. So now they've got an active horn to work with. If there's spells to deal with, then she can deal with them. Or take the brunt of any failure. As long as it's not them.
She was almost silent, when they were taking the restraint off. It was practically the only time...
...she keeps talking, and sometimes she sings to herself in ways where they can't make out the words, hackles have been raised since they entered the palace and her song makes every nerve hum along in a way which can't quite counter the octaves, she sings and she talks to herself and she tries to give them orders as her clear inferiors, she told them that coming for her was the first sign that they knew their place and she's just kept going from there and she becomes petulant and childish when they don't do what she says immediately, her field keeps pulling on manes and tails like a foal trying to get attention and sometimes the corona light goes under the jaw and she almost never shuts up...
...there's something wrong with her eyes...
...unicorns are useless. The pegasi and earth ponies can agree on that. You just wait until the horn lights up, and then you hit them. It works every time. And her horn is lit more than it should be, the light shimmers on the walls, they're convinced it's going to reflect into searching eyes and then --
-- they were chosen with intent.
Each species group thinks they were the only ones given the full plan -- but ultimately, they were all told the same thing. Even the lost unicorns agreed to it, because Mrs. Panderaghast has some awareness of which members might eventually become a problem -- along with the ones who potentially already have been, and simply weren't caught. Those ponies were approached first.
As far as those involved know, the central purpose of the assault is to make sure the arsonist is never questioned. There are two ways to achieve this, and the first is through removing the mare from the palace.
The second...
...if it seems like getting her out will be too difficult, but they can still escape once the burden is released and the opportunity just happens to arise...
There's a backup plan. Something they're starting to hope for, because what good is a bonehead who sings to herself and draws attention and just insults them all the time?
...it's just like getting rid of the centaur.
They were hoping to encounter the centaur. To hurt the one who's to blame for all of it.
It's the centaur's fault.
But both problems have the same solution. Something which happens to qualify as alchemy.
You just remove the impurity.