Generalmajor Actia Pagala of the Canterlot Commissariat kicked the bullet-riddled corpse. “A shame,” she sighed in smooth Herzlander. “I remember your little secretary, Jachs. Rather easy on the eyes.”
Jachs stood at attention beside the open balcony. Blood still oozed from the grazing wound along his jaw, dripping blood onto the lapel of his coat. His rank was obscured by the growing stain.
Doesn’t matter, Jachs sighed in his head. It’ll probably be restitched again. He spared a quick glance at the Queen’s Guard walking beside the Generalmajor. Captain Tantalus was wearing the distinctive ‘Blue Beetle’ armor of the high-ranking Queen’s Guard. He walked with a heavy stomp and glowered at the other changelings, all except the Generalmajor.
If I’m not shot, Jachs amended. Alcippe stood next to him, a little too close to be proper. He could reach out with his own wing and caress hers.
The Generalmajor swaggered around the room in a flawless black long coat and high cap balanced behind her horn. Other than that, Pagala was a typical changeling. Her eyes were a soft pale blue. Combined with her breathy voice, she seemed like she could be a lounge singer instead of an officer of the Changeling Heer.
“It took your squad seventeen minutes to subdue two ponies,” Tantalus spat at Jachs.
“It was not my ‘lings,” Jachs responded deferentially. “I was just coordinating supplies in the area and tracked the spell.”
The Queen’s Guard hummed and glared at Alcippe. She had been demoted so low that she shouldn’t even be in the room by any right. The changeling averted her purple eyes and gingerly held the frail crystal between her forelegs.
“The Queen will hear of this,” Pagala said casually.
The Generalmajor was fond of saying that whenever something she didn’t like happened. She used it a lot whenever any ‘ling objected to her ‘appropriating’ a pony from a Love Harvest to take to her quarters in Canterlot Castle. The Generalmajor was used to getting her way; she had the explicit backing of Heer High Command and Queen Chrysalis.
And the ponies never came back.
Jachs turned to the open balcony. Lower Canterlot was smoking from the artillery shells slamming into the cobblestone streets and stores. It was making the rush to get more reinforcements down the road painful, but they were making progress. They hadn’t brought out the armored cars yet.
Despite himself, he looked to one belltower near the Estates.
“All hail Empress Chrysalis, the true keeper of the Pax Chrysalia!”
Chrysalis had declared herself Empress of the Crystal Empire and Empress of Equus, yet most changelings still called her ‘Queen.’ She would always be ‘The Queen’ to them, and according to the new history books, she truly had been the only Changeling Queen that ever was. Jachs didn’t have any grubs; he was too busy, but he sometimes wondered what they would grow up to be in the Pax Chrysalia.
Alcippe fluttered her wings beside him.
“To the ponies, we're the villains of this story, Jachs.”
She almost touched one of his gossamer wings.
“Little by little, we're making a difference in the best way we possibly can.”
Jachs shook the memory out of his head. Before he turned back, he noticed a little dot stop under the brass bell in the tower and begin to ring it as the artillery and anti-air boomed. The bell tolled under the explosions.
“What’s the situation with the reinforcements?” the Generalmajor asked blithely.
“A couple of the streets have collapsed,” Jachs reported. “Fires are beginning to spread through Lower Canterlot-”
“I asked about the reinforcements,” Pagala sneered and rolled her eyes.
“They’re moving,” Jachs summarized.
“At least you’re useful for something,” the Generalmajor quipped. She turned to the two Jaegers standing at attention on the far side of the room, next to the broken telescope. “Good work, you too,” she said sweetly. “When this is over, you can sample my personal stock. We’ll throw a nice party ahead of Chrysalis’ victory visit.”
Alcippe glanced at Jachs. He knew what she was thinking. She’s never coming back here. The Queen had spent the last several years in the Changeling Lands, ruling directly from her high tower in Vesalipolis. She had once been enamored with Canterlot, but the Everfree ruined her view.
The ELF ruined more. And then there was that night…
The Jaegers nodded gratefully at Pagala’s offer. Both were still wearing their faceless gas masks with submachine guns slung at their flanks. They stared at Jachs and Alcippe with open disdain. The dead Jaeger had been dragged away from the balcony.
Jachs took a deep breath and refocused. He ignored the blood staining the ground under the dead unicorn. More blood dripped from his jaw as he clenched his fangs. Was she trying to kill me and miss? Or did she want me to live? Jachs wanted to believe the latter.
She had worked under him in the castle. Raven Inkwell was one of several stewards for the Princesses of Equestria, and had surrendered with the city. She wasn’t high-ranking, and she was watched like all the other collaborators, but something must have slipped through Vaspier’s spy agency. Maybe he was looking at me, instead. The blood from his jaw obscured the rank on his collar. It ached.
Jachs almost looked out the balcony again. He resisted. More bells tolled in the city under the falling shells. His ears twitched as he listened to them.
“Canterlot is a broken city,” Tantalus hissed, “and Equestria is a failed state.”
“One Changeling with a gun can control a hundred ponies without one,” Generalmajor Pagala agreed lightly. “The ponies are broken; the words of a dead mare mean nothing.” She twisted her head to Jachs and stared at him with half-lidded eyes. “Bring out the armored cars. They can make it down the road.”
“Yes, Generalmajor,” Jachs responded automatically.
In a lull between the artillery and anti-air fire, a distant gunshot echoed from Lower Canterlot. Jachs almost missed it under the ringing bells. His right ear flicked.
Another followed, then another behind it. Jachs’ hooves moved on their own. He walked to the balcony and looked down towards the mountain side of the city. His green eyes swept over the burnt-out ruin of Celestia’s School. There had been discussions about building a monument in its place, but the ruin was a symbol in its own right. The Queen’s Guard had brought in their flamethrowers to finish it while Second Wind and the Canterlot Guard kept the crowd back.
Jachs looked again to the distant belltower.
“The world shouldn't be this cruel.”
The figure inside kept ringing the bell incessantly.
“It shouldn't. And we can do our parts to make it less so.”
More gunshots echoed through Lower Canterlot. Jachs could barely hear them under the barrage from underneath the mountain and the bells. Alcippe remained standing at attention beside the balcony, but glanced worriedly at Jachs.
“Did you hear me, Unterfeldwebel?” Pagala asked with a mild sneer. “I want the armored cars moved up! Get going!”
Jachs nodded absently.
Actia Pagala squinted behind him and trotted forward. She rolled her eyes at the bell towers. “Pointless,” she sighed. “Get on the radio and tell them to stop ringing the damn bells. We know the city’s being shelled.”
“It’s not us,” Jachs answered.
More gunshots echoed under the bells. Peals of submachine gun fire joined the rifles, followed by the chime of spells. It started in Lower Canterlot; parts of the buildings were already smoking from the shelling, and more clouds of smoke rose in disconnected city blocks.
From the balcony of the observatory, Jachs could see the bridge connecting the dockyards and industrial district to Middle Canterlot. Small black dots held the sandbag checkpoint. Muzzle flashes fired down a street. Several buildings were in the way from his viewpoint; he couldn’t see down the street.
The long rattle of a heavy machine gun echoed from the checkpoint. Jachs saw the muzzle flash like a bulb. Pagala raised a ridged brow. “What’s going on?”
A wave of colorful dots crashed onto the bridge from Lower Canterlot. They charged directly into the gunfire from the checkpoint as the two dozen changelings desperately fired into the herd. Many of the dots fell, but the ones behind them leapt over the bodies and rushed forward.
They overwhelmed the checkpoint with sheer numbers. The gunfire turned scattered, then stopped. More black dots raced from the Middle Canterlot side to try and contest the bridge. The colorful dots charged them again, overwhelming a truck bringing ammunition to the eastern road. Unmoving dots littered the entire bridge. More gunshots echoed across all of Lower Canterlot, spreading from street to street. All the bell towers in Lower and Middle Canterlot began to ring.
“It’s not us,” Jachs repeated. He looked over his shoulder at the unicorn’s corpse. His jaw dripped with congealed blood. Raven’s eyes were open, staring blankly up at the open shutter.
She died with a smile on her muzzle.
Directly below them, some soldiers scanned over the surrounding windows of the nearby shops and businesses. A few ponies stared back from the inside, standing next to the changelings that owned them. The city was under curfew and everyone was supposed to be inside. A changeling screamed high and loud in one of the nearby houses.
“No,” Actia Pagala hissed.
One of the guards below fired his rifle into one of the shops. At the same time, a flaming bottle flew from a different window, landing on one of the parked armored cars. It was impossible to tell which happened first. The guards formed a cordon in the street, firing blindly into the nearby buildings. Ponies and changelings screamed inside them, and the screams turned into whinnies of anger.
“No!” Pagala shrieked. She whirled back into the room and faced Tantalus. “Get the Queen’s Guard out! Bring out the flamethrowers! Ponies want to play, let’s play!”
Tantalus grinned under his blue helmet. “Lord Commander Cardo will be happy to hear that. We’ll burn this city to the ground before we lose it.”
“Bring up the armored cars!” Pagala ranted. “Bring everything forward! Now! Crush them!” She kicked the corpse again. “I am not losing this city to these inferior wretches. They don’t even have guns!”
“There’s a million of them,” Alcippe responded. “A hundred thousand of us.”
“We have guns!”
We have bullets, Jachs snorted, watching the changelings below panic fire into the nearby buildings. And the hope that when we run out, they’ll all be dead. His ‘lings imposed some sense of suppressive fire and retreated behind the stationary armored cars. The fresher conscripts in the street still panicked.
Jachs extended his emotion sense and tasted the growing rage in the air. It had been a long time since any form of anger exceeded the fear. A Jaeger team buzzed low and landed on one of the nearby bell towers. Their guns silenced the bell-ringer.
There were over two dozen belltowers in Canterlot. All of them were ringing.
The armored cars opened up with their turrets, shattering the windows of a bakery and watch repair shop. Despite the hail of gunfire, a unicorn stood up in a window and flung a flaming bottle down onto several Changeling soldiers. He died immediately, but the bottle landed and three soldiers rolled in the street as their black uniforms burned.
“Shatter that fucking crystal!” Pagala screamed. “I will not lose this city to a dead mare!”
Jachs looked over his shoulder. Alcippe had backed up against the wall, still holding the tiny crystal in her hooves. Generalmajor Pagala glared at her. “That is an order,” she said in a dangerously sweet tone.
Alcippe looked at Jachs. Their eyes met. Before either could say anything, Tantalus stormed forward and knocked the crystal out of Alcippe’s hooves. She flinched from the hit, but stayed against the wall. Jachs looked back at Canterlot on the balcony, lost in memory.
Flashes lit the eastern horizon. Generalmajor Jachs watched with Finicus, Marsilio, and Alcippe. The Equestrian Liberation Front was driving hard for Canterlot, and nothing was ever going to be the same after this. Lilac had publicly broken with the Queen’s stances on the Love Tax, and now a rebellion broke out in her protectorate.
“Well,” Finicus raised a wine glass. “We had a good run.”
“They slashed funding to my Synthetic Love experiments to refund the damn Heer,” Marsilio growled. The Surgeon-General refused the offered wine glass and sipped a glass of water.
“Trimmel’s coming down from the Crystal Protectorate,” Alcippe whispered to Jachs. She hooked her forelegs on the railing and leaned out over the mountain. The wind nearly blew her officer’s cap off. She held it down with a flash of her horn.
Jachs nodded with a blush as her fangs gleamed in the twilight. He had seen the encoded telegram. “We’ll…” he paused. “We’ll hold up in Canterlot and see what happens.”
“Is that the Hive Marshal’s plan?” Alcippe asked.
Jachs sipped the wine glass instead of answering. He walked across the old private chambers of the Diarchs of Equestria, now Chrysalis’ sparsely used multiple bedrooms, and found the western balcony.
His green eyes squinted in the setting sun. An armored train steamed through the low valleys in the waning light. It was heading west, loaded with Queen’s Guard. They had swarmed the mountain suddenly before abruptly commandeering the train station and departing.
Generalmajor Jachs had orders directly from the Queen to turn over one of the armored trains to Lord Commander Lacin. The Queen’s Guard leader had appeared himself to deal with it. They kept anyone, changeling or pony, from approaching the station until the train departed. Jachs' ‘lings and garrison watched curiously, but no one moved to stop them.
“The cave’s abandoned, isn’t it?” Alcippe asked suddenly behind him.
Jachs did not answer.
The frail little crystal rolled to a stop next to Jachs' hooves. It was still intact and glittered softly in the sunlight. “Tough bitch,” Tantalus snorted and stalked over to it on his armored boots. Jachs did not notice; he stared out into the city as the bells tolled.
Jachs looked at the terrible paintings along the bare walls of Finicus’ mansion. It looked like a foal had drawn them. They were the only decorations in the nearly-stripped interior. He stopped on what appeared to be either a train or a vase of flowers.
“You like that one?” Finicus hiccupped. “You can have it. I’ll paint another tomorrow.” The CEO was already slurring his words, having downed his seventh glass of thick wine in as many minutes.
“I don’t have room for it in my new office,” Jachs answered. “It’s in one of the old embassies. In the basement.”
Finicus laughed, high and chittering. “At least you have an office! Main Hive Industries is trying to force me out! Me! I founded…founded the damn company!” The long-eared changeling burped. “This Synthetic Love isn’t bad, Marsilio.”
“The funding cut is permanent,” Doctor Marsilio answered sullenly, “and the Queen thinks she can tell the difference. It will never catch on, not with the new quotas.”
“Fuck her,” Finicus spat. He swayed in his stiff wooden chair. “It tastes better.”
Alcippe tensed. “I think you’ve had enough.”
Main Hive Industries couldn’t compete with its two major rivals, not after Finicus leveraged his position to keep ponies employed with wages. They made better products, but not as cheaply and not fast enough. The board was trying to force him out before the company went bankrupt.
Finicus was determined to drive the company into the ground. He had already sold off most of his cars, luxury furniture, and the mansion they were currently in was already being auctioned off. He was making up the deficit with his own rapidly depleting funds.
“No, I mean it,” Finicus slurred. “Fuck her! She just waltzes in here and ruins all our lives with her little ‘lings by her side? Pagala’s trash!” He pointed at Jachs' lapel. The stitching had been torn off. “You did everything you could!”
“Not everything,” Jachs responded.
“The Queen’s in the city,” Alcippe said worriedly. “Lacin’s here. We need to-”
The front doors to the mansion were kicked open. Jachs heard the sound echo down the hallway. Finicus had already fired all his servants as a cost-cutting measure. The drawing room tensed. Jachs unclipped his holster with a horn flash.
A Queen’s Guard entered, panting under his blue armor. “Generaloberstabsarzt Marsilio?” the guard mangled the title with a gasp. “You’re needed in the castle. Queen’s orders.”
Marsilio left his untouched wine glass. “What’s wrong? Is the Queen ill?”
“Now,” the Queen’s Guard panted. “A squad is at your estate to collect your medical equipment.”
Marsilio blinked and hurried forward. “We’ll pick this up another time, ‘lings. Duty calls.”
They waited until the two were gone before Finicus snorted, “Serves her right.”
The lights dimmed in the room as the power faltered.
Alcippe helped Finicus up after he fell out of his chair with a slurred rush of profanities. She grimaced up at Jachs with soft purple eyes. “I got him. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Jachs answered. He ran to the front doors. The entire Estate District was losing power. The lights in the surrounding mansions wavered, sometimes dimming, sometimes glowing bright like little suns.
Jachs turned his head to Canterlot Castle. Every window was alight. Two trucks with Chrysalis’ trident crown on the hoods sped down the street past him. An old respirator from a hospital spilled out the back into the street with a crash, but the truck kept going.
The power fluctuations spread to Middle and Lower Canterlot. Jachs buzzed his wings and lifted above the street, watching how far it went. Alcippe exited and shouted something below him, but he couldn’t make out the words. He stopped when he spotted the train station from his vantage point.
An armored train sat in the station.
The Queen’s Guard raised his right hoof over the crystal. Just as he stomped down, an errant shell rattled the observatory and the crystal rolled closer to Jachs. Tantalus missed and snarled.
A field mouse squeezed into the crack in the wall. Once on the other side, it erupted into green fire and Jachs sighed, stretching out his legs with a pop. The condensed love left him sluggish and dull, but it was needed for a transformation like that. He wasn’t a trained infiltrator.
“I can’t draw too much attention,” Second Wind whispered from the window pane. “I’ll shout if I see anything.” The pegasus scuffed a hoof on his black patrol uniform. The Canterlot Guard were only armed with clubs now, as a precaution.
Jachs flushed in embarrassment at his nakedness, but Second Wind rolled his eyes. “I’m Equestrian, dumbass,” he snorted in Herzlander. “I don’t care.”
“Right,” Jachs slurred, then shook his head to try and clear out the fog. “I’ll have to go out the front door, or unlatch a window, or…something.”
“Right?” Second Wind echoed. The tan pegasus jerked his head toward the interior of the mansion. “Lemme know what you find out about Marsilio. Be careful.” He disappeared back to the street, rejoining his patrol.
Jachs turned back around to the study. The room was a wreck, full of scattered papers and dust and broken frames. The Queen’s Guard had trashed the place in their rush to get medical equipment up to the castle.
But that was three months ago.
Marsilio returned to his estate after two days of power fluctuations. He fired all his staff and retreated into complete isolation in his small mansion. No one saw him. By rights, the Surgeon-General of the Changeling Heer should’ve already been removed from his position, but every ‘ling was too busy with the new Pax Chrysalia after Starlight’s defeat.
Unless he had already been replaced for seeing something.
“This is the second-stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Jachs said aloud, then immediately cursed himself and shook his head again. He pushed through the fog in his brain to slowly creep forward.
The mansion was wrecked. Gouges were scored into the intricately carved wooden frames, portraits slashed, notes and equipment scattered. Jachs did not find a single report on the floor that wasn’t scrawled over with illegible scribbles. He eventually heard the crackle of a fireplace after a half-dozen rooms and peeked through the door.
“Marsilio?” he asked aloud at the shape before the fireplace.
The thing that rose and turned around was barely a changeling. The chitin was a dull gray instead of black. It was naked and the eyes were almost feral. Jachs reared back on instinct.
“Jachs!” Marsilio slurred. He took another swig of a vodka bottle. The clear alcohol mixed with the bright pink of condensed love. “Just the ‘ling I wanted to see! Come in!”
Jachs, half-drunk on love already, entered.
“Have a seat!” Marsilio gestured to a pile of discarded bottles. Synthetic Love potions were mixed in. The Surgeon-General was going through his entire supply.
Jachs stood. “We’ve been worried. Finicus and Alcippe and even Second Wind.”
“Worried about who?” Marsilio blinked.
“About you!”
The doctor laughed, only to vomit pink slime onto an already stained floor. Jachs recoiled at the smell. The entire room stank. Marsilio’s chitin was smudged.
“We’ve been worried about you,” Jachs repeated himself. “Finicus is in a motel Lower Canterlot. Alcippe’s still helping me run patrols. Second Wind’s doing alright.”
Marsilio hummed.
“Ever since the power outages-”
Despite his slow reflexes, Jachs managed to duck under the vodka bottle. It crashed against the wall. Marsilio heaved and swayed before the fire. His eyes burned like the flames behind him.
“They wanted her to suffer,” he growled with unfocused eyes.
“What?”
“They wanted her to suffer,” he repeated, “but not like that.”
Jachs shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“The Queen wanted her prize.” Marsilio swayed and trotted to a pile of beer bottles. He pawed through them with his hooves. He smiled to himself as he unearthed something, then chucked it towards Jachs with a sparking horn. Jachs tensed to dodge preemptively, then froze as a purple-bound book landed at his hooves.
“You forgot your secret drawer,” Marsilio hiccupped. “When you cleaned out your desk.”
Jachs suddenly felt very sober.
“It’s probably the last Friendship Journal in Canterlot, you know,” Marsilio said conversationally. “We burned all the others. Who gave it to you? Second Wind?”
Jachs didn’t answer. Marsilio picked up another bottle and poured his Synthetic Love into it. He shook the vodka to stir the substances together.
“They brought her back,” the doctor sighed. “She wanted to gloat.”
“Who?” Jachs asked, even though he knew the answer.
“The Queen. She wanted to gloat. Lacin turned up the power. They did an even worse job than that cave we went to.” Marsilio took a long swig. “They wanted it to hurt.”
“What happened?” Jachs' stomach flip-flopped above his hooves.
“What do you think?” the doctor hissed. “You saw the power go mad. Chrysalis was infuriated when she slipped away. The Queen’s Guard tore through the city, grabbing all the medical equipment they could. It was all useless.”
Jachs licked his fangs. “Who knows I had the book?”
“The Queen,” Marsilio answered easily.
Jachs inhaled.
Marsilio felt the sharp fear and snorted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I…I have to get out-”
“She didn’t care,” the doctor scoffed. “The Queen was grateful to have it.”
Jachs stared at the fireplace. He licked his fangs. “Why?”
“Chrysalis held it in front of her muzzle and laughed.”
Jachs stared into the crackling fire. “Did you…did you save her?”
“I tried,” Marsilio coughed. He took another gulp of his vodka.
Jachs buzzed his wings. “Please, this doesn’t-”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Marsilio said blandly. “I have a pistol somewhere in here, and if I ever find it again, I won’t miss your head.”
Jachs wanted to say something to his friend, but instead backed out of the room.
“You forgot the book!” Marsilio called out. Jachs stopped in the hallway. Marsilio hiccupped before continuing behind him. “In one of her lucid moments, she thanked me for staying with her the whole time.”
Jachs slowly walked towards the front door.
The Queen's Guard raised his hoof again. Jachs glanced at him out of the corner of his green eye.
And for the first time in several years, Jachs did not consider the consequences of his next action. He ripped his pistol free from his flank holster with a blazing horn and fired through Tantalus' eye. The bullet ricocheted off the interior of the changeling’s helmet after passing through his head. It traveled back through his brain and caused a spray of blood to erupt from his nostrils. Tantalus’ hoof locked up as his brain was mulched; the changeling fell over.
As he fell, Jachs braced his forelegs around the front of the armored body and pivoted his floating pistol. The two Jaegers next to the telescope grabbed their submachine guns and lit their horns. Jachs fired first, catching one in the throat and another through the gasmask. The one shot through the throat fired his submachine gun as he fell. The bullet pinged off the blue carapace armor of the dead Queen’s Guard.
The pistol continued to sweep the room; the gun barrel floated past a frozen Alcippe and stopped in front of Pagala’s muzzle. Pagala’s horn glowed and she tugged at her pistol, but the Generalmajor hadn’t even bothered to unclip her flank holster. The grip was caught on the leather strap. Jachs exhaled.
Jachs dropped the dead Queen’s Guard to the side. He trotted forward towards the Generalmajor, lining up the pistol; Pagala's horn dimmed after a moment. Her pale blue eyes met Jachs' green over the barrel of his gun. She stared him down with pursed lips, eyes dancing over the bodies in the observatory.
After a heartbeat, Pagala smirked and said in her lilting cadence, “The Queen-”
The bullet entered just under the base of her horn and her head snapped back. It stopped somewhere in her brain. Actia Pagala sank to her knees and her mouth flopped open, then her legs splayed out and she collapsed to the floor. Her sharp white fangs clacked against the floor as her eyes dimmed. Blood dribbled from the hole under her horn.
The bells tolled above the gunshots outside.
“What…” Alcippe stammered. Her wings were pinned to her black, long-sleeved shirt. “Jachs, w-what did you do?”
Jachs dropped the pistol and shrugged off his jacket. He knocked Pagala’s hat off with a wave of his horn as he approached the body. Grabbing her limp head, he flipped her over and began to pry her elegant coat off the body.
“What we should have done before,” Jachs answered in a dull tone.
Alcippe glanced around the room. “T-the soldiers…”
The gunfire and bombs throughout the city rumbled through the open balcony, joining the tolling bells. Jachs finished pulling the jacket off and tossed it next to the hat. He pushed Pagala over and inspected her.
“What…what are we going to do?” Alcippe asked, lost and afraid. The changeling worried her lower lip with a fang. Jachs felt the fear roll off her as she turned to the staircase.
“We’ll fall back to the Estates and blow the bridges. We can hold there for a time.”
“But the breakout…” Alcippe took a breath, “the battle. Jachs, we’ll be stuck on the side of the mountain.”
“Yes,” Jachs agreed. “Do you want to go out there? Is that how you want to die, shooting down ponies as they charge you?”
“I don’t want to die,” Alcippe whimpered. “What are you doing?”
Green fire raced over Jachs' body as he suddenly slimmed down. When the fire receded, Actia Pagala stood over her own corpse. The living Pagala’s pants were loose around her slimmer legs and she tightened her belt. The jacket and hat floated on; a perfect fit tailored for a changeling. The wound reopened on her jaw.
“I’m going to order Kommandant Second Wind and the Canterlot Guard be rearmed,” Pagala said in her smooth lilt. “We’ll need their help. I’m going to the armory outside the castle.”
“Jachs,” Alcippe began, “they’ll know. We’re changelings. We can tell.”
“In the middle of all this panic?” Pagala laughed. “I don’t think so. They just need to open the door.”
“Second Wind’s not going to fight other ponies,” Alcippe tried.
“He’s not going to,” Pagala answered. “Lord Commander Lacin and the Queen’s Guard still hold the castle. They’re going to try and follow orders.”
Alcippe’s lips trembled around her fangs. “This is suicide.”
The living Actia Pagala finished pulling her nice boots off the identical corpse next to her. She laced them to her bare hooves in a green aura. “We should have tried,” Pagala said in Jachs' voice.
Alcippe took a moment. Her purple eyes squeezed shut. “She…she didn’t want us to.”
“We should have tried anyway.”
“We can just go,” Alcippe begged. “Let’s just get out of here.” A few tears slipped through her eyelids. “Please,” she whispered. “I love-”
“I am a changeling,” Pagala said in her trademark sneer. “I know. I’ve always known.” Her muzzle collapsed into a kind smile that stretched oddly on the mare’s narrow muzzle. “Get out of here,” she said in Jachs' voice.
Alcippe finally opened her eyes and snapped her foreleg into a salute. “Awaiting orders, Generalmajor!” she choked out.
Pagala nodded after a moment. “Get every ‘ling towards the Estates. Command is collapsing. Load the wounded into the armored cars and move.”
Alcippe legs shook, then she raced down the stairs, shouting commands to the soldiers below. Pagala trotted to the balcony and watched Canterlot burn for a moment. This city made my career. I might as well die in it. She grabbed one of the fallen submachine guns, dragging it across the floor in her magic. Her horn throbbed from the effort.
The stock of the gun bumped into the little purple crystal. It spun in a circle on the floor. Pagala stared down at it. She finally looked through the rising smoke clouds to the outskirts, past the east gate and towards an abandoned and forgotten cave.
"I hope you don't expect us to free you."
Pagala slipped the submachine gun’s strap over her head.
"I don't."
Jachs picked up the crystal and tucked it into his pocket.
"But I do expect the three of you to do your best at spreading a little bit of harmony wherever you go."
The Generalmajor flared their wings and buzzed above the burning city, flying towards the castle. The bell towers tolled underneath the whistle of falling shells. Gunshots and spells filled the shattered streets as ponies and changelings fought to the death. Blood soaked the cobblestones as the Pax Chrysalia died.
"I know you will."