The two soldiers stared at each other in barely restrained anger, emotions kept in check by their rigorous training and mental fortitude.
Behind Six, the battle between Chrysalis’s Custodians and the Spartans' combined force of changeling turncoats and rescued ponies raged. The Custodians, although outnumbered almost ten to one, were incredibly dangerous opponents.
With crimson armor that seemed impenetrable to their appropriated changeling armaments and glaives whose black steel cleaved through metal as if it weren't there thanks to their incredible strength, the fighting would be fierce. But luckily for the ponies, reinforcements were coming. The only thing they had to do was survive the Custodians' onslaught until they arrived.
“So, Demon, we meet again,” began Mobius, venom dripping both figuratively and literally from his mouth as he stared the Spartan down. “This time, there won’t be a love bomb to interrupt us.”
“Good. I’m going to enjoy killing you,” Six growled out, her tone that of a snarling wolf as she lowered herself into a combat position, wings flared and blades glinting dangerously in the green light of the hive city. Her entire being was filled with one overwhelming goal of vengeance at the sight of the being that had caused her so much pain.
Mobius mirrored her actions, his chest low to the ground with his previously discarded blade now held above him in its red magical aura. The Venator’s reformed horn bubbled as liquified mana was pumped into the faux appendage from what remained of his real one. Duty to his Queen and revenge for what Six had condemned him to clashed throughout his aura.
A single drop of blue and red colored mana seeped out from the horn's base and slid down Mobius’s snarling face before seeping into the upside-down heart that resided on his chest. The red coloring that accented the decal became brighter as the mana was absorbed.
Within milliseconds feathers and blades collided as their respective weapons of choice clashed. A squeal of metal sliding against metal cut through the air as Six caught the Venator’s blade between her feathers and hooves against her own.
They both stood muzzle to visor with one another, growling like a pair of starved beasts.
Six was the first to strike as she, with a roar of defiance, broke the bladed stalemate with her enhanced strength and threw Mobius off balance and to the ground.
The changeling snarled as he rolled away to avoid the follow-up. The smash of Six’s armored hooves impacting the ground sent shockwaves through his living armor.
“Fine, you want to play that way?” Mobius stated as he recalled his blade and returned to his hooves. “Let's even the playing field then.”
Mobius didn’t have to order Redfang to do what he wanted because she was already on it. Connecting herself to the stores of love Mobius held deep within him, she began to draw upon its power and pump its energy throughout her morphogenic form.
Mobius breathed sharply through his fangs as he felt the energy cascade throughout his body. Crimson light began to bleed through the edges of his armor as he fought to withstand the power surge.
Six, seeing the opening this was creating, drew her knife from its sheathe and threw it as quickly as a bullet into the Venators still vulnerable shoulder.
With his armor still in its partially liquid state, it could give no significant resistance allowing the steel knife to embed itself deeply into the Venator’s limb.
A deep yell of pain left Mobius’s maw as he brought his shaking hoof to the wound. He could feel the knife's steel scraping against the bone, with his external chitin not faring much better.
Grabbing the knife handle, with a guttural roar of pain, Mobius removed the blade from his person and threw its dripping form to the side, panting. He could already feel Redfang’s living metal begin to seep into the wound and begin slowly stitching it back together.
“That… hurt,” spoke Mobius through gritted teeth as his breathing began to slow.
“I was aiming for the head,” came the cold response from Six as the two began to circle each other dangerously. A slight limp was visible in Mobius’s step before it slowly vanished as Redfang worked her magic.
“It will be the last mistake you ever make, Demon,” threatened Mobius as he retrieved his sword and Six’s knife in his crimson magic.
Six prepared to dash at the Venator before her attention was suddenly drawn to the fighting behind her. The Custodians had begun to scale the walls, their large crimson armored forms shrugging off blows as if they were nothing but minor annoyances.
Seeing an opportunity, Mobius attempted to grasp the Spartan in his magical aura, only for it to fizzle out as Six’s shield became visible to the eye. Not giving up, Mobius instead focused on grabbing the Spartan’s tail again as he had in Canterlot months ago.
Six snapped out of her stare as she suddenly found herself flying through the air and into a pile of rubble, the air driven from her lungs as they were forcefully compressed by the impact.
“Now is no time for distractions, Demon. We have a score to settle,” threatened Mobius with a hiss as he charged a bolt of magical crimson-red plasma at the tip of his horn before blasting it toward the wheezing Spartan.
Six rolled to the side, barely dodging the projectile before she was suddenly pounced on by the Venator, who attempted to impale her with her own knife. All he managed to do was scratch her titanium armor plates as she wrestled to catch her breath and remove the blades from Mobius’s magical grasp.
Mobius began charging his horn again for a point-blank shot against the shieldless Spartan before an arc of golden electricity jumped from her helmet to the Venator’s horn.
The unstable magic gathered at the limb's tip detonated prematurely, launching the two enhanced soldiers apart and further down the street to the palace. Covered in ash, the two were at each other's throats moments later as their battle continued down the ever more battle-damaged street.
The fighting on the walls was fierce. The so-called ‘Custodians’ pushed the combined pony-changeling forces ever so slowly off the walls of the compound. Like quicksand, their advance was slow but persistent. Every attempt to push them back, to wriggle free from their stranglehold, led to a faster tightening of the metaphorical noose.
Their armor of crimson metal was stronger enough to easily withstand their flimsy changeling-made weapons. Brittle blades cracked and shattered like glass against their ruby armor plating.
Their weapons were even worse, wielding glaives with blades made of a material so black that it appeared as nothing but a void in the shape of a weapon. It cut through pony and changeling alike with ease. Their only hope was to either dodge the swipe or be struck by the staff. Anything else was a death sentence.
For now, though, the ponies held, but it would not remain so for long. To the side, Pixy, Sparrow, and Twilight were in a battle of their own against one of the 10 attacking Custodians.
Pixy buzzed around the beast like a hornet, looking for any soft tissue to sting. Her metallic wing rattled louder and louder with each hectic dodge and flap, its structure not designed for such prolonged use at a Spartan’s level.
Sparrow was locked almost muzzle to armored muzzle with the Custodian, his large stature making him the only pony able to reasonably match the changeling in strength. Were it not for him at the front, they would surely all be in serious trouble.
Twilight remained a reasonable distance behind them all, her horn blazing with power as she spread her magic out in an attempt to help combat the other custodians scaling the walls, but it was a losing battle. With her magic and concentration as spread out as it was, the constructs she could produce were weak and fragile but served as much-needed distractions.
The Custodian laughed cockily through its crimson helmet as it overpowered a straining Sparrow who was holding onto their glaives staff in an attempt to wrestle it from his grasp. With a battle cry, Sparrow was thrown to the side as the Custodian spun his glaive within his grasp, its sharp end grazing the flying Pixy as she went in for a pass.
Both crashed into the ground next to Twilight with yelps of pain as another laugh from the Custodian graced their slightly ringing ears.
Pixy was the first to recover, sputtering as she spat out the dirt that had filled her mouth, “We can’t get past his armor! How in the name of Celestia are we meant to hurt him?!”
The pegasus only had a moment of reprieve before she had to roll out the way of the Custodian's oncoming glaive.
Getting back to her hooves, Pixy yelled angrily at the approaching changeling, “Argh! Can’t you at least give me a moment to think?!”
Her answer was another swipe she was forced to dodge by taking to the air, her metallic wings internals banging against its casing, signaling its disapproval at the pegasus’s actions.
The Custodian looked up at the offending pony, the small slit in their helmet allowing Pixy to see the hard and absolutely focused yellow eyes that were staring into her very soul.
Then it hit her. “The Eyes!” she yelled down to the recovered Sparrow and shielded Twilight. “The small gap! That's our only opening!”
“But nopony can hit that! The opening is just too small!” shouted Twilight back, fear and uncertainty painting her voice.
Pixy barely dodged another swipe by the Custodian before responding, “Well, have you got a better idea?!”
“I can do it,” spoke up Sparrow as he rose to his full height, picking up an old, out-of-date crossbow from the ground. A single bolt remained loaded against the tensioned string. “Get me an opening.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” With that, Pixy dove in, her one goal to try and get the custodian off balance and disoriented in the hope it would provide the opening Sparrow required.
Twilight also helped along by focusing most of her magic and attention on helping Pixy achieve her goal. With magical bots being fired with surgical precision at specific joints and ends of the custodian's blade, their plan was working.
The custodian roared in annoyance as he found his glaive shot off course again by a purple bolt of kinetic energy. This would not do. In a rage, the changeling stomped his heavy hooves into the ground, the sudden vibrations unsteadying Twilight and interrupting her focus.
With this small opening, the Custodian swung wildly at the buzzing pegasus, forcing her into a frantic flurry of movement.
Too much movement, it seemed, as with a loud bang of metal, her wings reached their breaking point, and Pixy lost all aerial control. Her prosthetic wing went completely limp mid-flap as its internals snapped under the prolonged strain.
With a yelp, Pixy fell to the ground with a loud crash, the bone in her right foreleg shattering on impact.
With a shriek, tears welled up in the corner of her squeezed-shut eyes as the shooting pain of a broken bone sent her mind reeling. Were it not for the intervention of Twilight running up and shielding the writhing pegasus, the follow-up by the changeling would have surely killed her.
The Custodian attempted to pull his blade back and strike again but found his glaive stuck against the purple shield.
“Do it now!” yelled out Twilight from beneath the cracking shield.
The Custodian, too focused on dealing with the pegasus that had angered him, looked up and met his maker.
The sound the bolt made as it was shot from Sparrow's crossbow cut through the air like a thunderbolt. The small, iron-tipped bolt flew through the air like a bullet toward the Custodian's eyes. The last thing they saw before they closed forever was the focused, emotionless face of Sparrow, firing the shot that would end his centuries-old life.
Like a tree being felled, the Custodian collapsed to the earth with a loud *thump*. The ground shook and vibrated harshly before coming to a standstill.
Twilight gasped in happiness, “You did it!”
Said happiness was short-lived, however, as her eyes and ears witnessed the combat behind them and the groaning below her. They were losing badly. Without Twilight's magical support, their lines collapsed under the custodian's constant assault.
“Fall back! Into the Building!”
A shout from behind, its origin being a combined order from Raidat and the changeling Curxe for a withdrawal.
“C’mon, you heard the Zebra!” spoke Sparrow, kicking twilight into action as she surrounded the writing Pixy in her magical aura and carefully set her upon her back.
With this, she gave a nod of confirmation to Sparrow before they both made a mad dash for the building entrance.
A multicolored glow began to envelop the structure as the many unicorns and uninjured changelings among them began to work their magic. Fighting was impossible in their current state. They needed to regroup and treat their wounded before they suffered any more losses.
Their opening began to close as the shield became brighter and brighter. The small gateway at the building's entrance was shrinking fast as they sprinted with all they had toward safety.
With the Custodians nipping at their heels and rallied changeling forces loyal to the Queen filling the skies, they didn’t have much time.
Dodging and weaving from side to side, the three of them barely made it into the building as a Custodian glaive smashed into the multicolored shield behind them.
Twilight and Sparrow panted in exhaustion as Pixy continued to very quietly sob in pain as they collapsed onto the overcrowded floor of the hallway.
Behind them, the Custodians banged on the shield, those channeling their magic into it wincing slightly at every strike.
They were up against the wall now. When that barrier fell, and they all knew it would eventually, there would be no escape.
They were cornered and forced to lick their wounds in the small amount of time they had. Their only possible hope for survival was a struggle between their best.
The battle between Mobius and Six was beyond what one would call fierce. With speed and power comparable to two forces of nature fighting for dominance. Both of their armor was visibly damaged as both parties fought with all of their body, heart, and mind.
Cuts and slashes began to reach deeper and deeper into Six’s titanium plating, her armor being slowly chipped away by the Venator’s material-mimicking blade.
Mobius wasn’t faring much better, however, as even Redfang, as gorged on love as she was, failed to reform every cut in her solid appendages, allowing drops of blood to be drawn.
They came ever closer to the palace at the center of it all, with Six forcing Mobius back whenever the opportunity arose and Mobius doing the same when possible. But even then, it was a big hive. There was plenty of ground for Mobius to give, and he had brought Six right where he wanted to.
Mid dash, Six was suddenly thrown from where she was standing. The ground next to her exploding outward as a bolt of magical artillery, intended for the palace, landed too short.
Her shield flared once more as the Spartan was sent into a nearby crater from a previous artillery shot.
More and more bolts began to land in the street around Six, dirt and rocks showing her as she attempted to right herself. But the sudden weight of Mobius jumping on the Spartan and putting his blade at her throat changed her priorities.
Thinking fast, Six attempted to flare her wings and bring their bladed feathers into the Venator’s side.
Only for them to hit empty air as the Venator retreated back into the street, more bolts of misaimed artillery fire impacted the world around them. With the slight glint of the nearby palace shining through, he kicked up dirt and stone that fell around them.
Climbing out from the crater, Six stood once again opposite Mobius, her shield reforming with a golden flare. Its glow reflected in the Venator's bared fangs.
Both parties were panting heavily, their stamina strained after such a prolonged battle at their unmatched level.
“What are you hoping to accomplish here, Demon?!” Mobius hissed out, his voice nearly drowned out by another nearby artillery spell impact. “We both know you don’t belong among those ponies! Creatures like us-”
Six growled, “Shut. Up.” They began to circle one another once more before they clashed at the center, wings and swords locked against each other.
“I serve the Queen! What’s your excuse?!” Mobius yelled as his armored glowed slightly brighter, and Six found her wings buckling against the Venator's suddenly enhanced strength, “For murdering hundreds of changelings without care?! I watched you butcher them like they were nothing but ants to be stepped on!”
The Venator's assault doubled as he grabbed a nearby rock with his magic and began to smash it into the Spartan's barrel. “YOU are the reason I’m standing here right now!”
Her shield flared and cracked, a groan leaving her mouth. She attempted to counter, to leave the blade lock. But she couldn’t, as the enhanced Venator prevented any such moves.
“YOU are the cause of all this bloodshed!”
Another smash, her shield shattering like glass as the rock was driven into her torso, the air forced from her lungs in a wheeze.
“AND YOU are far more of a monster than I ever will be, Demon!”
One final blow struck her side, sending her flying into the path of another incoming artillery spell. Smoke engulfed the Spartan’s form as the explosion wracked her insides and strained her armor to its limits.
Looking towards the cloud of dark smoke that now engulfed the Spartan, Mobius spoke. “What would Spear say if he saw…you…now?”
A sudden yell of pure rage exploded outwards from the spoke as Six slammed herself into the Venators chest and through a nearby crystalline wall.
Mobius only had milliseconds to recover and order Redfang to form a shield on his foreleg before blow after blow after blow fuelled by unshackled emotions smashed into his shield.
Mobius didn’t even have time to recognize that the room he had been flung into resided within the very palace he was sure was at least a block away from where they were not a few moments ago before he was thrown through a set of doors and brought deeper into the structure.
The fight continued on like so, the Venator completely unable to mount any substantial defense against the unending onslaught. Redfang was glowing brightly as ever as she continued to drain Mobius’s love reserves dry. But he was beginning to run dangerously low.
“Don’t you dare speak his name!” Six yelled in unrestrained fury as she continued to push the Venator through room after room. Dining halls were destroyed, offices were eviscerated, and general living quarters were made uninhabitable as they fought up the palace before, finally, Mobius could take no more.
With a final mighty buck, the shield Redfang had created for him shattered in a spray of liquid metal. Mobius, now unprotected, took the full force of the Spartan's buck, sending him flying through the wall behind him and into one of the palace's many libraries.
Books and splitters of changeling resin flew throughout the room as a large hole in the room's outer wall illuminated the heavily injured Mobius.
Lying in a pile of debris and books, the Venator wheezed in exertion as one of his lungs failed to inflate. His vision was nothing more than a blurred mess, with pain shooting all throughout his body the moment he tried to move.
‘R-Redfang…little…help?’ he called through his weakened aura. The response he got was not promising.
‘Need…time…Love…too low.’
Across the room, Six made her approach, her form obscured by the dust kicked up by the Venator's crash through the wall. Stepping through, the palace vibrated as another volley of artillery spells crashed into the superstructure causing the room behind her to collapse in on itself.
Incidentally, that room appeared to have been the only way out as the other door to her left was blocked by rubble, the only other way out being the gaping hole in the room's outer wall. Outside, a dim glow of another multicolored dome caught the Spartan`s eyes. She recognized it as the same building where they had started this battle, the place where her Spartans resided. She refocused her gaze on the Venator. She needn’t worry about them right now.
Mobius had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He was completely and utterly at Six’s mercy.
Approaching slowly, Six removed her helmet and let it fall to the ground at her hooves. She was going to watch the life drain out of Mobius with her own eyes, not through the glass of her visor.
Drawing her knife, Six stood over the bleeding and coughing Venator.
“For Spear.” She whispered as she raised her knife up high, her light blue eyes locked on the fear-filled ones of the Venators. She was mere seconds away from plunging the knife deep into the Venators throat when a voice echoed through her mind, a bolt of indescribable agony soon followed.
In the corner of her eye, she could see the multicolored shield begin to flicker and fail as she was assaulted by the worst migraine she had ever felt.
“Six-…-help u-“ She dropped her knife as she reflexively brought her hooves up to her temples in a futile attempt to stop the pain. “Thei-…comin-…no chanc-…we need yo-“ It was Twilight's voice, that much she could discern through the pain before she found herself flying through the air and against the far wall she had entered through.
With her mind beginning to clear, she saw a metal construct of some kind cutting out from the Venator’s upside-down heart decal on his chest. Then, before her very eyes, the construct reformed itself into a shield that surrounded the Venator completely.
“No!” Six yelled as she slammed her front hooves into the shield before she herself was wracked with a bout of bloody coughs. But that didn’t stop her from pounding on the shield again and again and again, but it remained intact. Only the slightest of dents were visible on its crimson surface.
The shield at the edge of her vision flickered and crumbled once more. The message…her Spartans needed help.
She looked back down at the shield beneath her hooves. It couldn’t hold for long. With the amount of damage its creator had sustained, it would fall soon enough. But waiting for it to do so would mean leaving her Spartans to fend for themselves.
There was no other option. She had to choose. Either stay and finally end the life of the changeling that had killed Spear, or leave and go answer the call for help.
Her mind was a whirl, gaze constantly swapping between the two, the smallest of tears in the corner of her eyes. The one that had killed her friend was right here! This may be the last time she ever sees him, the last time she may ever have the opportunity to avenge Spear.
The shield flickered once more and began to dissolve at its peak, and seeing this Six, knew what she had to do.
With Luna’s words bouncing inside her head, Six gave one last look to the protected form of the Venator before grabbing her discarded helmet and knife.
Her eyes scanned the crimson metal, its surface already beginning to slowly liquefy before her mind refocused once more. Putting her helmet on, Six jumped from the palace and slid down the side onto the street below, another bloodied cough splattering drops of blood inside her helmet.
Her Spartans needed her, and she would be damned to allow any more Spartans to die under her watch. Heavily injured and dangerously exhausted or not, there would be no more dead Spartans, even if that meant Spear's killer would live.
Twilight winced once more as another strike was brought against the shield that surrounded her building. Even with her own tremendous magical reserves being channeled into the barrier, she and all the remaining changelings and unicorns doing the same could not keep the shield up for much longer.
The combined strength of multiple Custodians and the now growing number of normal changelings still loyal to the Queen did not help matters. Through attacks, both magical and physical, the shield was beginning to break. A feeling shared among the strained morale of the allied changeling and pony troops.
Peeking out a nearby window, her view tinted by the shield, her heart dropped as she saw the changeling force that now resided outside. There was no way they could beat them once the shield fell. It only took 10 Custodians to force them into the building. Having to deal with 9 of them plus a whole swarm of normal warriors and praetorians would be a death sentence in their current state.
With a third of them injured and Pixy in need of medical attention, their situation was beyond bleak.
Twilight winced again as the shield took another terrifying blow. She watched as another unicorn and several changelings in the same room as her fell unconscious with a shower of sparks emanating from their horns.
“C’mon, Six…where are you?” she spoke quietly to herself, begging Celestia that her makeshift messaging spell worked. Without a horn, there was no guarantee Six got her message, let alone understood its meaning. Until 3 minutes ago, such a spell had never been tested.
“She’ll come,” a voice came from behind her.
Turning around, wincing again at another strike against the shield, Raidat stood behind her in his own set of appropriated changeling armor.
“What makes you so sure?” asked Twilight with another flinch.
“A feeling. Now save your strength. When that shield falls, and it will fall, we will need you as support.”
“Yes, I’ll…wait,” she responded as she realized something was wrong. Ever since that shield went up, every 6.3 seconds (Twilight had been timing it, a way to distract from the pain) the Custodians would attack, yet 7, now 8 seconds, had passed and another wince of pain was nowhere to be found.
This was a feeling shared by the still-conscious unicorns and changelings, judging by the confused looks on their faces.
Peeking out the window once again to see why the Changelings had stopped attempting to breach the shield, Twilight found them all looking toward one specific section of the outer wall. Following their gaze, an action mirrored by every pony and changeling that had noticed the change in the Custodians' behavior, Twilight found the biggest smile imaginable growing on her face.
A voice from the side broke the silence, a pegasus with red fur. “It’s…It’s-!”
“The Angel,” Raidat finished for them, a smirk of his own as he looked towards Twilight. “Told you she’d come.”
“Yeah…you did.”
Six, meanwhile, stood against the distant dull glow of the palace, blood dripping from her feathers as the two changeling guards next to her on the wall lay bleeding on the ground.
There were a hundred of them, maybe more, surrounding the failing shield. The Spartan could see the relieved and smiling faces of those trapped inside the dome. She scanned for her Spartans, and once her eyes met those of Twilight and those of Sparrow on the opposite side of the building, the smallest of smiles grew beneath her helmet.
Such a smile was short-lived, however, as she diverted her attention to the nine large Custodians moving into a semi-circle formation in front of the smaller changeling swarm.
One of the Custodians stepped forward to the center of the circle, their helmet being far more ornate. Six could recognize a leader when she saw one, and a challenge to duel at that.
No words were spoken, but the tossing of an extra glaive into the open field in front of the custodian was heard louder by the Spartan than any words could manage.
Jumping down from her perch, she approached where the glaive was thrown, its blade embedded in the dirt, causing it to stick out at an angle.
The Spartan stood next to the blade, her emotionless visor staring down the Custodian Leader. The changeling mimicked her gaze.
Six picked up the glaive…and threw it directly into the leader's chest with all the power her enhanced, yet tired, muscles could muster.
Eyes widening, the leader used his own glaive to try and deflect the blade away from his chest. With a bellow of pain, it impaled itself into the custodian's right foreleg. It's black as night steel cutting through his centuries-old armor like butter.
Six sprinted after the blade and towards the injured Custodian. Within three moves, the fight would be over.
First, she dodged the custodians' blind thrust using her wings to propel her forward and under the swinging blade.
Second, she jumped onto the impaired glaives staff, using it as a stepping stone to reach her final destination: the Custodian's exposed neck.
With one final mighty flap of her bladed wings, she sunk both sets of her bladed feathers into the windpipe of the surprised Custodian leader.
Their final words were a strangled gurgle before Six decapitated the changeling that had seen the rise and fall of the Empress herself.
Everything went silent as the eldest of the Custodians fell backward to the ground, his head missing from his shoulders.
Six panted heavily, her stamina now beginning to wane and fail her. With her legs feeling like jelly and her own breathing coming in gasps and wheezes, she stood to her full height atop the dead Custodian.
Fearful looks surrounded her from not only the changelings and praetorians, but the Custodians as well.
With a cry of rage, four Custodians charged at her, their glaives cocked back like hammers on a rifle.
Thinking as fast as she could, Six grabbed the nearest weapon she could find. The glaive of the fallen Custodian was her choice as she used it to narrowly block the combined assault of the Custodians.
Sparks flew as four separate blades as black as night smashed into the staff of her stolen glaive.
Six groaned and hissed through her gritted teeth as she used every ounce of her rapidly diminishing strength to hold the Custodians back.
She wouldn’t be able to hold them for long. With her own hooves getting weaker by the second and her lungs getting more erratic with every painful breath, she knew her end was coming, and it was arriving quickly.
When she fell, the changelings would attack the shield again.
Her Spartans would fight to their last breath even if they knew the fight was unwinnable.
Noble would die again…
‘No.’
With a burst of energy rousing from deep within her soul, Six’s second wind began to kick in.
With a roar of defiance that surprised even the Custodians, she stopped their glaive in their tracks. Then, ever so slowly, Six began to push them back before, with strength the four combined Custodians could not match, she broke their guard.
With another yell and a slash faster than the very lightning that cascaded off of Six’s armor, four more Custodians fell to the ground, one head shorter.
All went silent once more, the only sound cutting through the air being the heavy panting emanating from Six’s helmet, her armored legs twitching as her tired and aching muscles began to reach their limit. Her right foreleg radiated with pain at the joint, indicating a possible dislocation, adding to her injuries.
The sound of weapons and shields clattering to the ground rang out.
Craning her neck, still panting heavily, Six saw the source of the sound.
Several changelings…were running. Not retreating, not pulling back to a more advantageous position. They were running in fear.
More and more began to join in, the weak-willed letting the primal terror within them overtake any sense of duty or will to fight. Several of the larger and stronger among them remained frozen where they stood, fear gleaming in their eyes, but they remained.
Another one of the now dwindling Custodians, having broken out of the shock of watching four of his brothers be killed in a single swipe, charged with a roar of equal parts fear and rage.
Six, unable to block, could only redirect the angle of the attack so that the blunt staff of the weapon struck her instead of its sharp edge.
With a silent gasp, Six was thrown from where she stood, the air driven from her lungs, before crashing into a stack of empty jars that shattered on impact. The Spartan was only barely able to raise her own glaive, supported by her wings, to defend against the continued assault by the Custodian as they delivered another mighty blow intent on ending Six’s life.
She couldn’t defend against this. Her body was too injured, her stamina too drained. The toll of fighting Mobius then multiple Custodians was too much, even for her own enhanced body. The only thing keeping her conscious was the adrenaline flooding through her system, which was beginning to run low.
The joints that connect her wings to her back burned in pain as even the ligaments there began to tear from the strain, and her feathers broke and snapped underneath the titanium plating.
First, her right wing went limp, then her left, before finally, the glaive she shakily held within her hooves was thrown to the side violently.
She tried to fight it, but her strength was falling fast. Six was utterly unable to defend herself as she lay there as the Custodian prepared to deliver the final killing blow.
“For Equestria! For the Princesses! For the Angel! Charge!!!”
A deafening battlecry shouted out by hundreds of pony voices at once boomed through the air, forcing the Custodian’s attention away from the exhausted Six. The changeling had mere moments to block before another glaive slammed against them.
A purple glow suddenly enveloped the Custodian's glaive before it was violently ripped from their gasp and pulled away to some unseen location away from Six.
Without a weapon to speak of, the Custodian was forced away as the void-like blade was pointed at their neck. Sparrow held the blade within his grasp as a unicorn clad in purple and gold armor stood next to him, a pink shield encompassing all three of them. It was then that Six saw a change in the skies above them through the magic shield's pink tint and her darkening vision.
No longer was it swarming with the black forms of changelings buzzing the skies. No… those were ponies flying above them. Pegasi in the deep blue uniforms Six recognized as belonging to the Wonderbolts.
The sound of a struggle in front of Six brought her gaze back down to the backing off Custodian. They were bucking around wildly, a blazing orange form hooked around the back of their neck.
A blade was drawn that glinted in the pink glow of nearby casted magic. It was only visible for a second before it was plunged into the opening of the Custodian's helmet.
Six could barely register the wink shot at her by Spitfire before she disappeared in what seemed like a streak of fire towards another distant fighting Custodian.
Questions filled the Spartan’s mind before she laid eyes upon the unicorn standing before her next to the pegasus she recognized as Sparrow.
“You did a good job, Six,” spoke Shining Armor with a smile on his face as he moved to remove Six’s helmet. He waited patiently, knowing that the only way that helmet got removed was with Six’s consent. The hiss of the pressure seal breaking was the signal he was waiting for as, with a small twist, the hunk of metal came off.
Six was barely awake, her breath coming in wheezes and blood dripping down the corner of her mouth as she gave a weak smile toward the Captain.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” Six whispered before she was silenced by a look from the Captain.
“Galloped into some company on the way here, now rest, Six. You’ve done your part. We’ll do the rest. But for now, you’ve earned yourself some R&R.”
“Heh, lucky me,” were the last words Six was able to get out before unconsciousness began to take her as her adrenaline was finally used up. The last thing she felt was herself being lifted from where she lay and onto something soft.
Another fit of bloodied coughs wracked the stumbling Venator, a trail of green blood and liquid metal behind him as he made his way through the abandoned halls and tunnels of the palace.
How he was still alive, even he could not really fathom. But since the Demon had left him, Redfang had been eerily silent. His body was growing weaker and weaker as it cried out for sustenance, his reserves of love having been fully drained, his cells turning to cannibalize his already meager mana reserves to keep Mobius moving.
Every step felt like his last as the weight upon his back grew as he wondered to Empress knew where. Conscious thought had begun to dwindle as pure instinct began to drive him down the palace halls. Were it not for the many escape and maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed every room, he would have surely remained in the pool of his own blood back in the library the Demon had left him in.
Even in what little part of his mind could think rationally, he knew the war was lost and that the ponies would win. That he should just lay down and die like a good Venator that had failed in his duties.
But he did not. Even with those thoughts at the forefront of his mind, he kept moving down the palace as more and more of his chitin was exposed to the open air once more as the Pannasari dripped off his body.
Was Redfang still alive? If not, why did she sacrifice herself for him? And if she was, wouldn’t she give him a sign?
He wanted to dwell on these thoughts, but the distant sound of ponies breaking into the palace refocused his primal brain's priorities. He dragged himself along as fast as he could before he reached the destination he didn’t know he had.
Pulling himself through the partially open doors to the Halls of Vendratis, he saw what was calling him.
Ignoring the sounds of distant hoofsteps, the Venator limped his way towards the door he had helped open. Bathed in the red glow that emanated from its contents, Mobius stepped through, not noticing the doors click shut behind him, sealing the Tomb of the Empress shut once more.
The Venator fell to his knees as he reached the ruby bridge that led to the Empress’s island. His Empress was calling him, however, so Mobius pushed onwards and crawled across the bridge with what little energy remained in his broken body.
Indecipherable whispers filled his mind as he got closer and closer to where the Empress lay, and once he reached the island, the whispers were deafening. They all lead him to one spot.
A small crimson throne now sat next to that of the Empress herself. Even in his nearly delirious state, Mobius knew that that throne was not there before, but he didn’t care.
Reaching the stairs, now empty from the previously sleeping custodians, the Venator’s legs fully gave out. His tired and starved muscles were unable to hold his own weight anymore, but he did not stop.
Using what little energy he had left, the Venator began to drag himself up the stairs, even using his chipped fangs as anchors to pull himself up the ancient crimson stairs.
He reached the throne, aura buzzing, vision darkening, and breathing slowing. He wanted to close his eyes, to finally put his broken body to rest, but the throne beckoned.
Using every last ounce of his dying body's energy, Mobius brought himself upon the throne as his consciousness began to leave him.
The sound of running water came to his ears as the world became ever darker. A deep crimson sheen began to overtake his vision. But just before the world faded away, his withered aura picked up one last message from his Queen.
‘…Surrender…’
And Mobius closed his eyes, unknowing if he would ever open them again.