When shall I be dead and rid
Of all the wrong my father did?
-T. H. White
Their duel was to be held in a pit with concrete walls and a floor of gravelly sand. A ring of empty seats surrounded the arena, though the only ones who cared to watch were the bronies. There was an atmosphere of inevitability surrounding the entire affair. It felt as though the end was already decided, and they were merely delaying the oncoming war rather than stopping it. The air was as still as death, broken only by the creaking of wooden benches, the restless breath of the spectators, and the shifting of sand under Blueblood’s hooves.
Blueblood stood with his blade hanging in the air. Twenty sparkling shards of meteoric platinum glistened like ocean spray. They twitched occasionally, connecting into a single blade one moment, spreading out the next. He was fidgeting and he didn’t bother trying to stop. He didn’t see a way to win here. He had felt the power of that thing only when it was at rest, not at its peak, and even then it had been mind-boggling in its potency. What was he supposed to do against a power so ancient?
He gandered at the bronies who were watching him, and they gave him a hollow cheer of encouragement. They wanted him to win but certainly weren’t expecting it. He resigned himself to doing what he always did. The impossible.
The King arrived, dropping heavily into the other end of the arena and kicking up clouds of dust. His cloak devoured the light that drifted in through the open ceiling. Standing at his full height, he glowered at Blueblood with one shimmering eye.
“Last chance to back out.” He said, sliding his cloak aside to reveal the long-handled axe he held in his claw, still spattered with dried blood. The prince tried not to think where the gore had come from.
“I could say the same to you.” Blueblood tried to project confidence against his fear.
“No more words then.” The King leveled his axe. “Hit me with your best shot.”
No more words. Blueblood’s blade surged forward as he charged. Twenty shards whipped out in a storm of razor-sharp metal. The King hurled himself through it, finding gaps in the swarm and closing the distance between them in the span of a second. His axe descended like an executioner’s blade, narrowly missing Blueblood’s skull as he danced back. Recalling his sword, he chained them into a single tapering weapon just in time to deflect a follow-up sweep. Blueblood fell into his old Canterlot fencing pose, dancing between heavy swings of the axe and retaliating with swift thrusts of his blade.
Unfortunately for him, the king moved like a hurricane and hit like a cinder block. Every time Blueblood struck, his quarry was no longer there. The slashing, crushing onslaught drove him back as he parried, always on the backhoof and always forced to play defensive. A vicious backhand caught him off guard, and the force behind it was staggering. He sailed through the air and crashed down on the sand, choking on grit. His cheek stung and his eyes watered. He rolled to the right just as the axe chopped through the ground beside his head.
“C’mon! Get up!” Lance shouted from the stands, already on his hooves. “Get up, Vlad!”
Blueblood caught another descending attack on his sword, shuddering as he held it back from his snout. The king barked a guttural laugh as he pressed on the handle, driving the blade closer and closer. Swiftly breaking his blade in two, Blueblood managed a desperate slash to drive his attacker back. Scrambling to his hooves as the king dodged, Blueblood caught his breath and pressed his meager advantage.
Shattering his sword, he hurled shards at his foe in pairs, trying to strike from both sides. The king vaulted over them with a flap of dark wings and hurled his axe end over end. Blueblood deflected it with three motes of his blade but was struck hard across the snout with a follow-up punch. He hadn’t even seen the gryphon approach. He staggered, ears ringing as a claw raked the air inches from his face. Another blow caught him on the base of his horn, and the concentration he held on his magic was shattered. Everything around him exploded into sparks. A wing crushed him from one side as a clenched claw battered him from the other. He was backed against the wall of the arena, his spine accepting the chill of the concrete like a balm. Another flash of claws tore into the stone just above his head as he ducked. Blueblood threw himself forward and attacked with his bare hooves, only to find himself pinned to the wall as his foreleg was caught.
“Is this how you imagined things going, Prince?” The gryphon hissed into his ear. “Or did you think your last stand would be more glamorous?”
Blueblood grunted, writhing against the grip.
“You’re going to die. Then your friends will die. And there’s nothing you can do to-”
The king was cut off as Blueblood kicked him as hard as he could between the legs. It was just enough for him to wriggle free from the hold, ignite his magic, and gather his sword. He thrust hard, driving his blade through the cloak. The gryphon twisted aside at the last second and battered the Prince with a headbutt.
“No more toying around.” The king unfastened the clasp of his coat and let it fall away. “You die now.”
Blueblood looked up into the face of his killer.
A gryphon black as night with streaks of muddy crimson loomed over him. His body was mutilated from some long-forgotten battle, patches of feathers burned away leaving slashes of bare, scarred skin in their wake. He was missing an eye and the one he had kept burned bright yellow with infernal malice. Lifting his axe from the sand, he raised it high and flashed a sardonic grin as he brought it down. Blueblood sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. Nopony could say he hadn’t done his best.
CLANG!
The piercing ring of armor shocked him into opening his eyes again. Frederic had leapt into the arena and covered them both with a shield of dark, shimmering steel. The alicorn’s eyes blazed with rage and memory as he held back the blade with a grunt.
“Richard.” Frederic snarled through his teeth. “How?! I banished you to the core of the earth!”
“Not even a hello?” Richard laughed bitterly. “Is that any way to greet your father?”
In an instant, the other bronies leapt the barricade and landed in the sand pit, surrounding Blueblood and backing up Frederic. Peter threw a hoof around Blueblood and helped him stand, wiping the blood from his snout with a handkerchief.
Richard’s single eye drifted away from his son until it landed on Lance. “Your friend here will understand. Isn’t that right, Greenfield?”
Richard flapped his wings and battered them all with a scouring cloud of sand. He landed a few feet away and leered wickedly as he went on.
“When he died,” Richard pointed an accusatory claw at Lance. “Something from beyond this world intervened. Call it fate, the Creator, God, whatever. It gave him life again. Gave him power.
“After years locked in a box beneath the earth, something reached out to me. Something ancient, primal, and fucking angry. It had been defeated once, back when the universe was water and firmament, and it hated. Oh, it hated. It was a kindred spirit to me. Whispered in my ear through the silence of my prison. Made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Pacing, Richard licked his chops like a malnourished predator. “After all, if Greenfield here can deal with God, who says I can’t deal with the Devil?”
“We defeated you once, and we can do it again!” Lance retaliated, spreading his wings.
“You barely lived last time we met.” Richard rolled his eye. “I’m not the same gryphon I was back then. I’ve picked up a few new tricks.”
As he spoke, the feathers on Richard’s throat began to glow like hot embers. He crouched low and sucked breath through his nostrils. Frederic realized what was happening just in time, throwing up his shield a split second before an explosive flame battered them. Frederic’s aegis held against the flames, but a follow-up attack shattered it. Richard’s claw thrust through the barrier and grabbed his son by the throat, dragging him across the sand and pinning him.
“The first time we met, I wanted to kill you. But y’know son, you’re never too old to learn something new.” Richard spit into the dirt as Frederic broke his grip. He kicked and punched at his father, who danced around the attack with pitiful ease. One sloppy swing and Richard caught his hoof, digging sharp talons into soft flesh. “I’m not going to kill you, Frederic.”
His grip tightened and Frederic could feel his foreleg going numb.
“I’ll leave you alive. Barely. Just enough that you can watch everything you love go up in flames.”
Lance watched the unfolding scene with horror in his eyes. In the recesses of his mind, something screamed at him to fight. Quite literally screamed, in fact.
“Lance! Get in there!” Dawn shrieked. Lance could feel the rage building within him, simmering through his blood.
“It’s finally time!” Break cried with rapturous glee. “Pull the trigger, Lance! I’m ready to let it rip!”
Lance snorted out steam. It was time. Power rippled through him, prickled every hair in his mane, and sent lightning through his limbs. His consciousnesses were working in unison, powered by his anger and driven by his desire to protect the people he loved.
“Raging Breaking Dawn!” Lance screamed his name and countless voices bellowed from within his throat. He surged forth like a bullet, striking Richard with a punch so hard it threw him from his feet. Quick as wildfire, Lance looped back and dove on the Gryphon again, pummelling him with a furious barrage of blows.
Frederic’s eyes ignited with molten iron as he shrouded himself with magic. His coat singed to a gunmetal grey, his mane and tail stiffened like razors, and beneath his breast thumped the hammering of anvils and the red-hot flame of the forge. He exhaled embers as he threw himself into the battle, the sand beneath his hooves reduced to glassy slag. “Darksteel Edge!”
Blueblood glanced at Greg, who merely shrugged like this was an average Tuesday morning.
“Is anypony else going to reveal they have some alter ego locked away in their head, or are we the only normal-” Blueblood nearly fell to the ground as Peter convulsed, flecks of foam dotting his lips. His pupils shrank and his face contorted spasmodically. “Nevermind. Peter, whatever you’re going to-”
“My name isn’t Peter, bitch!” He snapped, spattering Blueblood’s cheeks with spittle. “I’m Violent Inferno now.”
“You don’t look any different to me.” The prince shrugged. Thankfully, Peter’s rage had been turned on Richard, and he jetted off into the fight.
Said fight was going poorly.
Lance’s punches were batted harmlessly away before Richard aimed a slash for his neck. Frederic managed to intercept him, throwing his father back with a bolt of force. When he pressed the attack, the gryphon ducked his hoof and swept his legs out from under him. Peter’s guitar whistled inches away from Richard’s beak. He followed up the swing with the right hook he was so proud of, only for his momentum to be shattered as Richard swooped close and delivered a devastating elbow to Peter’s gut.
“Is this all you’ve got?!” Richard crowed as he sent Frederic rolling with a swift kick to the flank. He dodged another attack from Lance and caught him by the tail before arcing the pegasus over his head and slamming him spine first on the sand. “You’re the best defense Equestria had?”
Peter landed a solid punch to the gryphon’s chest and felt the bones of his foreleg scream in agony. It was like trying to punch through concrete. Richard batted him away with a sharp backhand, drawing blood as his talons bit into Peter’s cheek. His singular eye locked onto Frederic. “Pathetic! Even after all these years, you’re still such a fucking dis-”
Richard was sent sprawling as he was suddenly struck with a bolt of lightning. Everypony’s eyes turned to see Greg standing proud with a massive smirk on his lips. For once, smoke was billowing off his horn rather than his lips. He and Blueblood trotted over to help the others up during their brief respite.
“So Lance, my guy.” Greg laughed as he shoved his friend to his hooves. “Remember how I said Zorrow got struck by lightning?”
“Uh, I think so?” Lance coughed.
“Remember how I said I had no idea how to do that again?”
Lance nodded as he shook the dust from his mane.
“Dude, I was just fucking with you. I totally did that shit on purpose.” Greg’s horn crackled with electricity. He raised a blunt to it and sparked a flame on the tip, sucking down fetid smoke. “I was trying to make a party lighter, but this is like, twenty-percent cooler.”
At the other end of the arena, the smoke had begun to clear. Richard brushed soot from his shoulder and snorted contemptuously. The mere idea of harming him was offensive to his nature. Striding forward like a bulwark of inevitability, he smiled as he faced the small army of ponies. It was five against one, and the odds were in his favor.
The ponies rushed him as a group, only to be driven back and divided by a gout of fire. Before they could react, Richard rushed an isolated Lance and slammed into him with a shoulder tackle. Lance was sent flying but felt a tug of magic on his tail as Blueblood caught him. Working with the momentum, Blueblood spun him once and hurled him back at the gryphon. They collided and exchanged blows until Richard wrapped Lance in a bear hug and strangled the breath from his body. Blueblood kicked up sand as he approached, flashing his blade and thrusting for Richard’s spine. The king disengaged and soared high, dodging another bolt of lightning from Greg as he ascended. Peter and Frederic were hot on his tail. Frederic’s magic lifted a clump of sand from the arena floor, glassed it with forgefire, and sent bullets of molten slag screaming after his father.
A bullet glanced off of Richard’s claw, then another, until he managed to return one to sender and catch Frederic in the foreleg with a hot bolt of glass. Thanks to his metallic sheen, it didn’t pierce, but the alicorn still winced and screamed in pain. Peter reached the gryphon and managed to catch him off guard with a hoof to the throat. Richard retched and staggered, only to recover and retaliate with a punch so forceful he sent Peter crashing to the ground. Father and son clashed with a brutal snarl, and Frederic landed two walloping blows to Richard’s face. Flying backward, Richard squared up like a boxer, blocked the next three attacks with nigh-instinctual shoulder rolls, and clenched both claws into his son’s chest. Diving swiftly, Richard dropped them like a rock until they collided with the arena sand. Frederic gasped and sputtered as he heaved for air. Blueblood and Greg rushed to his aid.
Greg threw himself at the gryphon with a dropkick, which was easily dodged. What wasn’t easily dodged was the shroud of smoke he exhaled as he hit the ground rolling. Richard coughed on the smog, squinting his watery eyes as he flapped his wings to disperse it. Something sharp slashed across his shoulder, leaving a crimson streak through his feathers. Blueblood pressed his attack, shards of his blade whistling through the acrid air like arrowheads as he approached. Richard charged him, only for Blueblood to throw himself flat. He avoided Richard’s attack, as well as Lance’s oncoming onslaught.
The air crackled as Lance plowed into the gryphon, pushing him back with an incalculable number of hoof strikes. Their speed abruptly stopped when the king dug in his claws. His feathers prickled and his throat ignited as he exhaled fiery death. Lance threw up his hooves to shield his face as Greg threw up a feeble ward to protect him. The ward subdued the explosion but couldn’t stop it, and Lance was thrown back until he collided with Peter, who was just starting to stumble to his hooves.
Richard reached up and gently touched the wound Blueblood had left him with. Ichorous blood oozed between his claws as he regarded it with raptorial anger in his eyes. It was as though he believed that what he was seeing was an affront to him; something which could not and should not be. His one good eye narrowed as he glared at the small army that stood against him, battered yet unbroken.
“He’s gotten so much stronger!” Dawn whimpered in the back of Lance’s skull. “All that fighting and the most we could do is draw blood!”
“We’re all still alive at least.” Lance managed, despite the aching pain that was creeping into his body. Even through the power of his rage, the beating was taking its toll.
“Really?” The gryphon rumbled, folding his talons across his chest. “You can resist me all you like, but all of you are already dead.”
“While I’m still breathing, I’ll still be fighting.” Frederic huffed the words between deep gasping breaths.
“How noble.” Richard sneered. “Allow me to show you where all this fighting leads.”
He opened his one eye wider than should have been possible. The light behind his eye grew devastatingly bright, the putrid yellow tainting the room to its bones. Lance tried to shield his face from the piercing gleam, but it entranced him. He couldn’t look away. He had to see.
“Lance! Lance look away, goddamn it!” Break’s guttural voice snarled somewhere in his mind, but Lance couldn’t hear him. All he knew was the light.
"Lance you need to..." Dawn's voice trailed off into oblivion as the light embraced Lance.
It entered him, coursed through him, and whispered to him in languages unspoken and universal. The light penetrated him in ways only it knew how. It delved the depths of his soul and dredged the deepest wells of his memory. Lance felt it surround him like a shroud and envelop him in its diseased aura. His nostrils filled with the smell of wet pennies and his tongue tasted sand. He tried to tear his eyes away, tried to force it to exit his mind, but it latched onto him with hook and talon.
“This is all your fault.” A choir of familiar voices echoed through his psyche. Lance couldn’t pick out a speaker, but he knew every voice intimately. Mothers, sons, lovers, friends, rivals, an infinitesimal crowd reduced to a pinprick of sound. “You weren’t strong enough to save us, Lance.”
And then he could see them. Ghosts etched into the scattered stones of Canterlot’s shattered walls and the broken, burning homes of Ponyville. His throat burned with the smell of smoke as rising embers smote the sun. Lance could sense it was day, but it was pitch black. Distant screams echoed through broken ruins, his hooves were awash in blood that was not his own, and he was driven to his knees by the weight of his guilt. This was his fault. Why hadn’t he been stronger?
The light infected them all; feverish and raving as it drew on their deepest fears and wove fresh hellscapes for their bleary eyes. It beckoned them with voices warped and familiar to dive deeper into their delusion, to plumb the ocean of madness that simmered beneath the fragile ice of sanity. Overcome and overwhelmed, they sank into those frigid waters to meet their fates.
Frederic stood alone in a silent room with dusty wooden floors and barren walls. Empty chairs sat at empty tables, and a devastating sorrow loomed over each one. Every chair was a missing friend, a friend he had outlived. There were phantom voices from another room; voices he hadn't met yet knew he would. Voices he knew would fade until they too were empty chairs at empty tables. Immortality had a cost.
Peter was frozen solid on the side of a road, the tarry stink of asphalt, burnt rubber, and motor oil miasmatic in the air around him. The flicker flash of police and ambulance lights nearly blinded him but couldn’t erase the yellow streak in the highway that painted him with cowardice. He didn’t need to be told that his friend wouldn’t make it.
Greg felt the cold metal cuffs tighten around his wrists as he was pressed against the filthy wall. Too many hands felt around in his pockets, too many radios crackled out arcane codes he knew all too well. 11357b, 11360a, and a jumble of mumbled jargon that felt like hammer blows against his future. He could smell the courtroom, the county jail, the reek of years being shaved off his life as he rotted in a six-by-nine cell just for having a little fun.
Then there was Blueblood. For his eyes, the light reserved a special, delicate sort of horror. It had penetrated every wall, every tower, every last defense that he had built around his innermost fear and dragged it to the forefront. Blueblood stood in the shadow of somepony else. Somepony resplendent, drinking in the sunlight with wings spread against the corona flare. A long slender horn graced the top of their head, shimmering with potential magic. Blueblood knew in his heart that they were friendly, he could even make out a faint smile through the blaze, and knew he was safe with them. That wasn't his horror.
With this unrecognizable alicorn came a realization. A realization that this wasn’t him. That this would never be him. He stood where he always knew he belonged, in the shadow of someone greater. In that instant, Blueblood knew he was a failure. Somepony else would take his place as Celestia’s heir, despite his best efforts. Whether this war ended in victory or defeat, he would never be seated upon Equestria’s throne.
As his enemies writhed in the grip of madness, Richard approached slowly and methodically. Who to kill first? The arrogant prince who had dared to threaten his war? Lance, who had long been a thorn in his side? One of the lesser ponies, whose death would no doubt strike horror into the rest? He made his decision as he stood in front of the little prince who had managed to draw blood from him. He curled his talons under Blueblood’s chin, feeling the softness of his flesh with apparent disdain.
As nightmares tormented him, Peter tried to move. He found that he had been rooted in place, forced to stare at the scene that haunted his slumber. Taking a deep breath and steadying himself, he focused solely on flicking his ear. Once he was able to do that, the rest of his body seemed to follow, shaking off the stiffness like sleep paralysis. He needed to touch something, to feel the solidity of the space. Yet when his hoof reached out to grasp a shard of metal wreckage, the steel seemed to warp around it. He blinked. This had to be a dream. He fumbled in the weeds that choked the edge of the highway, but they melted away like murky paint. Then he touched something smooth and firm among the weeds. At last, he felt something true and real and solid. He knew what it was without even looking. Sucking in a breath, Peter hoisted his guitar up and over his neck.
Music was the only thing that ever brought him any comfort in these dark moments. His hooves found their familiar places on the strings as he looked out on a painted dreamscape. Peter steadied himself and struck a chord like a weapon against the darkness.
What he played didn’t matter. The power was in the playing itself. Peter had spoken until he could no longer speak, and would now play until he was out of notes. The reverberations shook the illusions to their core, shattering them in a shower of sparks. The hateful light retreated from the acoustic assault, and Richard’s one good eye flicked to Peter. Peter smirked, struck a few chords, and belted out the one song he knew could break his friends out of their stupor.
“Look at this photograph…”
Almost immediately the hold Richard had held the bronies under was broken. Everypony jumped in with their own horrible Chad Kroger impression, shredding their throats trying to emulate his tobacco-infused vocals. A whole chorus of "Errytime I do it makes me laugh," echoed through the arena as everypony but Blueblood threw this voice into the choir. Richard stared in disbelief as they laughed, scarcely caring that he was about to behead their beloved prince. He snarled and threw himself like a bullet, colliding with Frederic before anypony could react. Pulling back his fist, he clouted his son under the chin with a skull-shaking uppercut. Frederic was launched skyward, tumbling end over end as he attempted to right himself with his wings, but Richard was in hot pursuit, catching him by the back leg and slinging him toward the stone ceiling. Frederic struck the roof and dislodged decades of dust, choking as he felt his wings buckle. He squinted through the clouds of dirt, just in time for his father to barrel into him again and drive him straight through the dome.
“Lance, we gotta help Frederic!” Peter shouted as he took off into the air, frantically flapping his wing in pursuit.
Lance kicked off the ground and launched himself like a rocket. “Right behind you!”
As Blueblood clutched at his throat and rubbed the spot where Richard’s dagger-claws had dug into it, a disturbed silence fell upon the arena. Dust rained down, ruining his mane, and he cursed the name of the king and every turn of fate that brought him to this moment. Greg however didn’t seem to care one way or the other and was leaning casually against the concrete wall, hooves tucked neatly behind his head.
“So you wanna like, just chill here?” Greg said, puffing smoke with every word. “Pretty sure they can handle this.”
“That… thing, damn near killed all of us!” Blueblood’s breath came in short bursts. “Greg, they’re going to die up there!”
“Awww, you do care!” Greg chuckled softly as he blew out a ring of smoke. His horn shimmered as he motioned for Blueblood to follow him as he leapt through the wispy circle. He didn’t appear on the other side. Blueblood threw himself through the magic portal only a second before it dissipated, landing on something metallic and freezing. A stiff wind billowed past him, and as Blueblood stood, he could see that they had emerged atop one of the airships that cruised over Kleinskrieg.
Frederic tried to control his spiral as he careened towards one of the armored behemoths, but it was too late. He threw up his hooves to cushion the blow as he struck the steel hull with a metallic clang. Before he could catch his breath, Richard caught him by the throat and dragged him across the surface, slamming him against every bristling gun emplacement along the way. Lance and Peter closed the gap and distracted him just long enough for Frederic to break his grip and shove him away with a burst of magic. The three of them engaged in a deadly midair dance, slinging spells, exchanging punches, and slamming each other into the thick armor of the airships at harbor.
“Follow me, I’ve got an idea.” Blueblood sprinted across the airship and threw open the hatch to the interior of the craft. Greg trotted after him at a leisurely pace, his eyes only occasionally catching flickers of the battle beyond. Gryphons were rushing through the corridors below, escaping the craft by any means necessary as their king brutalized an ambassador only a few hundred feet away.
Outside, Lance, Peter, and Frederic were fighting a desperate struggle against an indestructible foe. Peter lashed out with a flyby punch and Lance followed it up with a hypersonic tackle that slammed the gryphon against the airship. Metal squealed as Richard’s claws shredded the craft, rolling over and using Lance’s momentum against him. Lance thudded against the steel head first and his eyes filled with stars. Frederic wove a spell, heating the craft’s armor until it glowed bright red. Richard’s flesh sizzled as he leapt from the surface, only for Peter to beat him back down into it. Igniting his horn, Frederic peeled the metal from the canvas like an orange, wrapping it around Richard and turning up the heat. The ball of metal blazed white hot as Frederic forged it, only for his father to burst from it in a shower of sparks. He still clutched a fragment of the scalding steel in his talon and hurled it at his son.
Frederic caught it between his hooves, its glow painting his features bloody as Richard approached like an oncoming train. They slammed together, hoof and claw ringing with every blow. Lance shook the sparks from his eyes and shot back into the fight, hoping to take the gryphon from behind. Richard whipped around and slapped Lance out of the sky for daring to attempt, and did the same seconds later when Peter attempted to interfere. The feathers on his throat bristled and glowed as he clamped both of Frederic’s forelegs at his side.
“If you won't stop fighting,” Every word was punctuated by flares of orange from his beak. “Then maybe I need to start breaking things.”
Frederic thrashed and struggled against the grip, but his father only dug his nails in deeper.
“I’ll start with your wings. Then your horn. Then your legs.” Richard savored every word as his one good eye narrowed. “Then, with you powerless, I’ll start killing your friends. They’ll scream for you to save them, and you’ll just be forced to watch.” He licked his lips. “And if you hadn’t betrayed our family, you could have saved them.”
“No!” Frederic screamed. “I won’t let you!”
“You won’t have a fucking choice!” His claw clenched around Frederic's wing and started to bend it. He could feel the hollow bones straining as his son shrieked in numbing pain.
There was a sudden ear-shattering chorus of explosions, a split second of silence, and then the air around them was filled with fire. Frederic clenched his wings to his body and fell as Richard’s grip went lax. He fell like a stone, just in time to watch a second volley thunder from one of the airships.
“Faster!” Blueblood shouted as he stuffed another shell into a cannon mouth and rammed it home. “Greg put your back into it!”
“I am!” Greg huffed as he shoved one of the guns back into position. He jammed his still-smoking blunt into the priming hole and moved on to the next. The cannon behind him fired only seconds later, hurtling explosive shells downrange. Before they could finish reloading, Richard shattered his way through the armor of their airship and snarled as his eye locked on Blueblood.
The prince narrowly dodged two swipes of the gryphon’s claws, dancing back and drawing his blade. The various shards of his weapon had been scattered during the fight, and all that remained was a single mote no smaller than a pocketknife. Richard seemed to regard this as a challenge, ripping a small piece of the airship’s hull out and holding it in front of him like a jagged dagger.
Blueblood struck first, slashing low and nearly slitting the king’s belly. Richard sidestepped and elbowed him in the snout, just before he thrust his makeshift blade for Blueblood’s eye. Mere millimeters saved Blueblood as he reared back and retaliated with two swift jabs that Richard wove between. He poised himself for a downward stab, but Blueblood caught his claw and tried to hold him back. Greg hurled himself into the fight, jumping on the king’s back and pummelling his skull with punches. Blueblood managed to jam his blade into the gryphon’s shoulder, where it stuck as it hit bone.
Richard threw off the stoner and kicked the prince away. Peter, Lance, and Frederic arrived through the hole in the armor and immediately re-engaged. Frederic whirled around and bucked his father back. Before Richard could recover, Lance and Peter struck him with a coordinated one-two combo: one punch to the body, one to the face.
“Keep pushing him back!” Blueblood shouted, using his magic to levitate a discarded gryphon musket and discharge a bullet at Richard. “I’ve got a plan!”
“You’ve got it!” Frederic’s magic coalesced as he fired a blast into his father’s chest. Peter ducked under a claw and swept Richard’s legs with a kick. Before he could hit the floor, Lance caught him under the chin with an uppercut. A bolt of lightning from Greg caught him seconds later, stunning him just long enough for Blueblood to close the distance and catch him off-guard with a headbutt.
“Just a little further!” Blueblood managed to shout before Richard clocked him in the gut and took the fight out of him. The gryphon’s claws caught his shoulder, and as he tore away the crooked talons lacerated his foreleg.
Peter attempted to throw a headlock around the king but was broken by an elbow to the stomach. Frederic used his magic to drag Peter out of the way before his father vomited flames over him, then bashed his father with an iron wing. Lance was quick to follow, cracking the sound barrier and shattering windows as he smashed Richard with both hooves. The gryphon was hit hard, rolling back from the sheer force of the attack, but he landed on his feet as he skittered to a stop. He inhaled slowly as he faced his foes, all of whom were battered and bloodied. He glanced at the tiny fragment of Blueblood’s blade still embedded in his shoulder. This was the best they could do?
The prince clutched his bleeding foreleg and spat orders. “Frederic! Shield! Now!”
Dutifully, the alicorn threw up a ward just as Richard slammed against it.
"Bigger!"
Frederic's horn burned like a phosphorus flare as his ward expanded it to fill the hall from floor to ceiling, sealing the gryphon on the other side.
“Stalling for time?” Richard sneered as he dug into the magical aegis. His eye caught a glimpse of movement to his left. The missing shards of Blueblood’s sword were hard at work cutting through the layers of the craft. Richard heard something snap and felt a rush of faintly rotten-smelling air flood into his nostrils. He realized with mounting horror what Blueblood had just done.
The little bastard had cut the gas lines.
The balloon around them began to wheeze and sag as the craft listed to one side. Richard redoubled his efforts to break through the shield, suddenly realizing the danger he was in.
“So, should I do the thing now?” Greg muttered, rubbing a nasty bruise on his cheek.
“Now Greg!” Blueblood grabbed onto a metal railing. “Everypony brace yourselves!”
Wickedly grinning, Greg slung two spells. First, he opened a portal in a smoke ring as he exhaled through his teeth, then he zeroed his magic on the blademote that was still stuck in Richard’s shoulder. It was a spell he used hundreds of thousands of times to light up a blunt. A single spark flashed from the blade, and that was all it took.
The explosion struck them all blind and deaf. The craft didn’t hold together as Blueblood had hoped but sheared messily in two as it went up in flames. The explosion didn’t throw them all into Greg’s portal either. He was propelled back, sailing through the clouds on the edge of consciousness, barely able to hold himself together. Shrapnel whizzed through the air around him, bits of glass and shards of metal falling like deathly rain. Apparently, he’d had the foresight to recall his blade, which he felt vaguely against his hip. Billowing explosions rocked the airship as he fell, trying to somehow control his descent. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that if he hit the ground from this height he was dead, but the thought refused to register. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the descending airship. He needed to know they had won.
“Vlad!”
Blueblood could barely hear Lance’s voice over the rushing wind and the bludgeoning of his heart. He blankly watched the wreckage for any sign of life. He saw a multicolored blur approaching him at great speed. Evidently, Lance hadn’t been thrown into the portal either. No sign of Richard.
“Vlad! Grab my hoof!” Lance screamed as he rocketed towards the earth, reaching out to catch the falling prince. Blueblood managed that at least. He reached out for rescue with a hoof covered in drying blood.
Then it hit him.
Blueblood was struck so hard in the chest he swore that he heard the crackle of his ribcage. He was sent horizontal, spinning out of control. One second he saw the earth below, the next the sky above as he tumbled over and over. He closed his eyes tight to avoid throwing up. He opened them just in time to see Richard approaching like an oncoming apocalypse. The air reeked of burning feathers and molten flesh as the gryphon punched the prince squarely in the snout. Blueblood crumpled under the impact as he whirled above the landscape like a maple seed.
“You’ve meddled in my affairs for the last time!” Richard heaved as he clocked Blueblood again and again, propelling him through the sky on pain alone. “I’m saving my son’s death until Equestria is in ruins, but you?” Another strike to Blueblood’s midsection. The prince spit blood all over his white coat. Richard leered, smiling. “You can be the first of his friends to die.”
As he cocked his claw back for another slash, Lance caught up and rammed into him from behind. It was enough to distract Richard from his quarry for at least a second. He turned his fury on the pegasus, letting gravity do the work on the unicorn. He inhaled breath and exhaled flames, forcing Lance to brake with his wings and shield his face from the heat. Richard bashed his skull against Lance, shattering his senses, and when the pegasus reeled, he was ready. His claw lashed out and snagged Lance’s wing, squeezing it tight as his quarry screamed in pain. Lance struggled, but his desperate efforts were in vain. Cranking his grip, Richard bent Lance’s wing until he heard it snap painfully. Lance roared and retched in pain as his left wing bent at an unnatural angle. The only thing keeping him aloft was Richard, who released him and let him drop with Blueblood.
The pair fell in a death spiral, rapidly approaching the earth. Blueblood reached out a hoof and grabbed onto Lance as the two of them rushed ever downward.
“My wing!” Lance groaned through clenched teeth. “It’s… I can’t…”
Blueblood had to scream to make himself heard over the scream of the wind. “Lance! We need to aim for those trees! We have to-”
They didn’t need to aim. They hit the first tree with a crack and a shower of splinters, flipping end over end before they collided with a second. Branches snapped and sharp limbs scraped their already sore bodies. Blueblood struck the third tree shoulder first, and he feared that he’d dislocated it as he spun into a fourth. Their momentum slowed with every painful crash, and when they hit the fifth they were slow enough that the branches merely bent rather than broke. Pine needles showered them as they dropped through the limbs to the ground below, where they landed in shin-deep snow that shocked their wounds.
Blueblood wasn’t sure how long they laid there, or whether or not they maintained consciousness. His eyes opened to a slow, steady fall of snow and a brutally battered figure standing between a pair of snapped pines.
Richard was burned badly. His skin was loose and sagged over his frame like a canvas tarp. His feathers had been scorched to nearly nothing, exposing flesh painted with old scars and fresh wounds. He was breathing heavily, his breast heaving with every inhalation. Yet even now, Blueblood could sense power at work in him. Some antediluvian horror lurked just beneath the skin that was knitting bones together and soldering nerves. He still stood like a titan against the icy wind, driven on by unfathomable forces and insatiable bloodlust.
Lance vomited in the snow as he tried to stand. His broken wing throbbed and set his brain on fire with pain. He could barely stand, using a nearby pine branch for support as he forced himself to his hooves. Blueblood wasn’t looking or feeling much better. His snout dripped blood, and his wounded foreleg was tender and ached whenever it touched the ground. His ribs pulsed with inflammation and moving his shoulder made him feel nauseous.
“What do we do now?” Lance whispered in the hush. “We couldn’t stop him with all five of us, what can two of us do?”
“We buy time.” Blueblood huffed, spraying red on the pristine snow. He summoned his blade; twenty softly glowing shards of meteoric platinum glimmering in the falling flakes. “Equestria needs all the time she can get to strengthen her defenses.”
Lance swallowed hard. “And if we die?”
“Then we die standing.”
“You’ll die like everyone else.” Richard spat, his eye gangrenous through the shroud of snow. “Alone, weak, and helpless.”
“We die standing,” Blueblood repeated, flashing the steel in his eyes as he looked to Lance. “And we die together.”
Lance reached out to the prince with an unbroken smile. “Brohoof?”
Mustering up what strength he had left, Blueblood pounded hooves with Lance. “Brohoof.”
And with that, Blueblood and Lance charged off to face death.
Blueblood’s blade flashed in the gloom as he sliced shards at Richard, who rolled aside and retaliated with a billowing flame. Blueblood kicked up a cloud of slush to stifle it, reformed his blade into a single sword, and aimed a thrust at the gryphon’s throat. Richard sidestepped it, only for Lance to catch him unaware with a kick. Thudding against a tree, Richard dodged three motes of the prince’s blade and caught Lance’s follow-up punch. Grappling the pegasus, he whirled and slammed Lance against a tree trunk, making sure to strike his broken wing in the process. Blueblood dashed in and slashed low, only for his opponent to go high and deflect him with a roundhouse. He rolled in the snow, staining it as he struggled to stand once more. Richard kicked him in the stomach and knocked the wind from him.
Lance attacked again, but his punches were sloppy and his eyes were swollen with bruises. Richard blocked both with ease, then struck Lance in the face for his insolence. Blueblood threw himself at the gryphon, sword blazing as he swept it in wide arcs. Richard avoided these poorly aimed attacks, only for Blueblood to shatter his blade and use the scattered shards to slice through a pair of spruce trees on either side of his enemy. They fell, but Richard reacted quickly enough to flap his wings and sail out of their reach. He sped forward, sidestepped five shards, and closelined the prince, knocking him from his hooves.
He knelt over Blueblood and wrapped his claws around the Prince’s throat. Blueblood fought tremendously, but the pain clouded his mind and made his limbs leaden. He couldn’t breathe. He saw Lance struggling to stand, slipping on the snow and ice as blood ran freely from his broken wing. The brony reached out a hoof, a futile effort to assist in the face of the inevitable.
Blueblood's eyes bulged and his tongue protruded as he convulsed. His mind screamed with one alarming thought.
They were going to die here.