[Perspective: Arrell]
Pain. Pain was all I could feel.
The flames around me were relentless, licking at all parts of my body. The chamber had nowhere safe, and I was too weak to fly. Even if I wasn't, I wouldn't be able to get out, since the cage I was in now acted as a plug for the hole I got dropped into.
My axe and saddlebags, for whatever reason, weren't burning. It was as though they were completely fireproof; there wasn't even a single burn mark on either of them. My mind barely registered this, though, as it was currently busy shutting down.
I felt myself shrinking as my body slowly turned to water. I couldn't stand, I couldn't move...I could barely breathe at this point. My vision darkened and I felt my heart slow down. I couldn't make my legs move with a bulldozer at this point. Finally, I gave up, and just put my head down, waiting to finish melting.
"Arrell!"
...that's not the sound of me melting...
A couple of crashes reached my ears, but they sounded far away. A scream. The feel of hooves wrapping around me, and suddenly, the heat was gone.
The next thing I felt was the ground, but this ground wasn't burning. It was cold, and the feeling of it against my body was amazing...but it wouldn't help. The fire had taken its toll. I was already too close to melting.
I heard voices, but they were distant and quiet, even though they sounded like shouting. I forced my eyes open, seeing a light yellow pegasus in my vision...Asylum.
"...wake up..." she was saying. "...please..."
I groaned, and she jumped back, far enough that she just became a blur. I couldn't stand, so I just continued lying there. After a moment, she trotted up close again.
"Asylum," I grunted, surprised at the fact that I could speak again – the cold of the floor must have at least helped somewhat.
"Arrell, please-"
"Stop." She stopped. "Frostfiend...get him."
She choked back a sob. "But...what about you?"
"Forget me. I'm..." It hurt just to say it. "I'm dying. Melting. Just leave me and go."
"No!" she screamed, nearly shattering what was left of my hearing. "...no...please don't...please..."
I heard her crying, but I couldn't see it; my sight had left me again, and there was only darkness.
"Asylum..." I coughed out, voice beginning to give away. Her sobbing decreased, but it was still there. "Do as I would've done."
My senses faded.
[Perspective: Asylum]
He's dead.
I stared at the melting Windigo in front of me. He had shrunk so much now that he wasn't even as big as Risk anymore.
He's dead.
I put my hoof on his body. Not only was it wet, but my hoof nearly passed through him. His entire body was turning to water, and I couldn't help him.
He's dead.
No more talking. No more moving. No more breathing.
...
False put a hoof on my shoulder. I shrugged her off. Behind us stood Risk, Nimble, and the two ponies that brought us here. Lord Frostfiend had disappeared as soon as we ran into the room. Time seemed to stop.
"...alright then." My voice was quiet, but firm. I turned to the small group behind me. "Let's go find Frostfiend."
They looked at each other. Risk was the first to speak. "Asylum? Are...are you okay?"
"I'll be much better when Frostfiend is dead." I began trotting for the door, but False got in front of me. "False, move."
"No. Asylum, you're not thinking straight. You need to cool down." She glared at me. I glared back.
"False, what were you going to do when you found Frostfiend?" I asked bluntly. "You can't really arrest him, and he's obviously not going to be talked out of this. We have two options: kill him, or let him take over Equis."
She looked at me in surprise. "...well, the princesses-"
"The princesses aren't doing hay to help us!" I screamed, causing everypony to step back. "You all wanted to wait for them to show up! But it would've been too late! Arrell did the smart thing, and I don't care how much you hate him, you can not say he screwed up this time!"
"He died!" she retorted.
"And if he didn't come here, then almost a hundred other ponies would've died instead by this evening, and several thousand more after the invasion!" I shouted back in her face. "He died helping! But you, False Front, will die hindering if you don't GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
Shock evident on her face, False stepped to the side, almost unconsciously. I huffed and trotted past her. "Now, are the rest of you going to help, or not?"
Hoofsteps slowly fell into place behind me, and we all walked out of the room, leaving Arrell's body on the floor to finish melting. There was no point in a burial if he was just going to be a glass of water by the time this was over.
Had we stayed behind just another moment, we would have noticed the cracks appearing in the walls.
[Perspective: Risk Reward]
Today has been a really bad day. I looked at the sun out a window we trotted by, watching it slowly move down towards the horizon. And it's not even over yet. We'll be fighting all night.
Asylum had pretty much wordlessly taken over as our leader, with no real objections. After the stallion and mare – Rubber and Greengrass, as they introduced themselves – said that they had a couple other ponies wandering the palace, our task became to find them.
There were Windigoes all over, but all of them wore red armor, which meant a lower ranking according to Asylum. We hadn't seen any guards with green armor, which may have been a good thing; the lower-ranked Scouts and Warriors we came across were tough enough. Panic wasn't pumping us with adrenaline anymore, so we couldn't blast through them like a cannonball.
"We're taking too long," Asylum grunted after almost half an hour of searching. "Where the hell are these friends of yours?"
"They could be anywhere by now," Rubber admitted. "They might have gotten caught, for all we know."
Asylum stomped the icy floor. "Then forget it! Let's just go get Frostfiend already!"
"What're you gonna do to him?" Rubber snapped. "He's over twenty times your size! Maybe thirty! The only reason he hasn't killed us yet is because he doesn't think we're a threat! We can't j-"
His sentence ended abruptly, and we all stared at him. Some blood trickled out of his open mouth before he fell over, a knife sticking out of his chest.
At the opposite end of the hall stood about twenty guards, all of them clad in green armor. They all held a sword, spear, or knife in their mouth – except one guard, who had just thrown his knife into Rubber's body. He smirked at us.
"He was right, you know," the guard informed us. "We didn't consider you a threat. But we know you are one now. And so we will be dealing with you in the proper way."
...today has been a REALLY bad day. That was all I could think as the guards surrounded us, weapons at the ready. They trampled over Rubber's body, moving in towards us.
"I don't think they're gonna arrest us, guys," I sighed. "I think they're out for blood this time."
"They are, are they?" Asylum asked rhetorically. Suddenly, she dashed at one guard, slamming into him and knocking them both onto the ground. Moving fast, she grabbed his sword, stabbing him in the chest in the process, and stood to face us. "Well, so am I."
The guards began looking back and forth between her and the rest of us, briefly wondering who to kill first. Apparently they decided on her, as about half of them turned and ran straight at the yellow pegasus. She grinned around the sword she held in her mouth, fire almost literally visible in her eyes.
The first unlucky guard to reach her tried to stab her, but she just knocked his knife away with her own blade and stabbed him in the side. Two more decided to tag-team her with their own swords, but she blocked every one of their attacks, finally managing to pierce the chest of one and buck the other away.
...when did she get good with a sword? I briefly wondered before noticing something: the guards around us were distracted. They were all watching Asylum. I lit my horn and grabbed a spear from one guard's mouth, turning and stabbing him with it not half a second later.
"Get busy fighting, or get busy dying!" I yelled back at False, Nimble, and Greengrass. Instantly, we were all involved in the fight; False drew her sword, Nimble pulled the knife out of Rubber's corpse to use, and Greengrass held her rope in her magical aura. Apparently other guards either were being called in or heard the fight, as a bunch more Windigoes in both colours of armor began pouring into the hall.
If the guards thought we were a threat before, they were right!
I dodged a flying knife, avoiding ending up like Rubber, and charged for its launcher. The guard quickly looked scared, but he didn't have time to run. Before he could even turn around, he had my spear impaling him.
Nearby, False was taking on three guards at once; every attack from them was swiftly blocked, though it kept her busy and prevented her from dealing any damage of her own. A fourth guard began creeping up on her from behind, ready to stab her in the back...only to get tackled by Greengrass, who then proceeded to jump into False's battle and help take down the trio of guards, using her rope as a lasso.
The only one I hadn't been able to account for by that point was Nimble, but given that he was trained to hide and strike suddenly, this didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was when he dropped from the ceiling (don't ask how he got up there, because I don't know either) onto a guard and slit his throat. Two other guards charged at him from opposite directions, to which the colt responded by jumping in the air and letting the guards crash into each other.
Soon, the number of guards began to fall, and no more reinforcements arrived. I noticed that shortly after dying, each Windigo would melt into a small puddle of water. I wasn't sure if the water was normal or not, but I wasn't willing to take the chance, so I just avoided all the puddles. The others seemed to have the same idea, as they avoided any traces of water as well.
Eventually, the last of the guards were down. We stood around, tired and covered in blood. None of us sustained any fatal injuries, but we definitely had a few cuts. Nimble had a pretty big gash in his side that made it hard to walk, so False put him on her back and carried him.
"Where to now?" she asked calmly, as though she didn't just aid in the slaughtering of dozens of Windigoes. As soon as she asked, a crack appeared in the wall. "...that's not good, is it?"
Similar cracks began appearing in the floor, ceiling, and other walls. All around us, the hall began to crumble apart – and we had a feeling it wasn't just the hall. The entire palace was likely falling apart under our very hooves.
This realization hit us all at approximately the same time, and we reacted appropriately.
"Son of a changeling, run!" I shouted, galloping for the door. Asylum took to the air to follow, while False began running as fast as she could with Nimble holding on tight. Greengrass ran after us as well, but she only took a few steps before her hoof landed in the melted remains of one Windigo guard.
The effect was instant. From the puddle, ice formed around her hoof, holding her in place. More ice quickly ran up her leg and over her body, freezing her solid. Then, after vibrating for about a second, she shattered into pieces.
I stood there for a moment, staring slack-jawed at her remains, before finally snapping back to reality and running through the door after the others.