[Perspective: Arrell]
The entire clan was staring at me in shock. Honestly, I was a little surprised myself, but I decided to do what I always did: just roll with it.
"And I'm not alone," I declared. Looking down, I saw a huge crowd of ponies. The prisoners we freed, the population of Smooth Grove, and probably some ponies from Stalliongrad who saw what was going on. But in the crowd, I saw a certain four ponies. "Let's even the playing field a bit."
With a wave of my hoof, I began channelling my ice magic down into the ground. Nothing happened at first, but then the earth began to shake and crack. A large area of the ground began to rise, pushed up by sheer ice that I had summoned, with a convenient staircase on the side.
Catching my drift, the four began galloping towards the stairs and climbing them. Frostfiend saw what I was doing, a confident smirk making its way back onto his face as he regained his composure.
"Calling in reinforcements?" he taunted.
"I just want you to meet the team," I replied with a calmer voice, meeting his smirk. "Let's see, who do we have? There's Risk Reward, the unicorn powered by an ancient artifact. False Front, a royal guard trained to kill things like Discord and beyond. Nimble Night, a ten-year-old who could even snap your big neck. And Asylum, the pegasus mare who's almost as dangerous as me when she gets angry. You're about to be in for a wild ride, pal."
He continued to smirk. "I have hundreds of Windigoes in my army. You only have four little ponies."
"Five."
He raised an eyebrow, smirk vanishing. "Five?"
"Five. There's somepony I forgot to mention."
The next thing anypony knew, I was right in Frostfiend's face, staring him right in the eye from inches away.
"Me."
Two guards tackled me, pushing me away from their leader. I swung my front legs, smacking them backwards. They spun in the air, trying to regain balance, but I didn't let them. One casting of Din's Fire later, they were nothing but drops of water falling to the platform below, which had stopped just a few feet below where we were all floating.
Just as my friends made it to the top, Frostfiend snapped his claw...and the battle was on. Before his army could do anything, though, I flew down to my team and threw up a shield, keeping us safe for a moment.
"You guys ready to fight again?" I asked my companions. They nodded, and I turned to the army outside of our protective barrier, which the army was trying to break. "Rancid Windigoes!"
They looked at me expectantly, halting in their efforts to shatter the dome. I grinned.
"You better get ready to die."
I let the shield dissipate and we dove into the battle. Using weapons that they must have gotten from inside the castle, my four teammates charged in without hesitation, stabbing or slashing any Windigo that got too close. Asylum took to the air near me, helping act as anti-air. The others stayed on the ground, sticking close together so they wouldn't be overrun.
A few Windigoes tried to ambush me from behind. Asylum tackled them and drew their attention away, preventing me from even needing to use Din's Fire. Within seconds, Asylum had reduced her opponents to shreds with expert swings of a sword. I would've given her a thumbs-up if I wasn't busy myself (and if I had thumbs).
I grabbed one guard that made the mistake of getting too close, ripped his head off, and chucked his divided body at another two guards, knocking them back. Looking down, I saw that Nimble was having trouble keeping up – he was beginning to limp, and he was relying on the knife he had more than his typical evasiveness. Figuring something must have happened earlier, I dove down and scooped him up, pulling him away from a four-on-one battle that didn't seem to be going in his favour.
Unfortunately, this had the side effect of drawing all the guards eyeing Nimble towards myself, in addition to the ones already on me. I couldn't cast Din's Fire without hurting Nimble, so I had no choice but to book it.
I started flying up higher, catching Asylum's attention. As soon as she noticed my extra load, she flew up and in front of the Windigo swarm. While this didn't exactly keep their attention off of me, a few of them went after her and those that didn't still got caught off guard and paused, giving me more time to escape. Reaching a far corner of the platform, I set Nimble down and returned to the fray.
Now that Nimble was a safe distance away, I dove into the giant mob of Windigoes and unleashed Din's Fire, melting every single one within a fifteen-foot radius. As their numbers began to drop, they started focusing less on me and more on Risk and False, who were still on the platform and having some difficulty with keeping up now that Nimble was out.
I waved a quick gesture to Asylum, silently telling her to go down and help out on the ground – or platform, rather. A few guards went after her, but one well-timed voice attack slammed them into the ice hard enough to crack their skulls. A couple of guards bodychecked me, but my natural resistance to pain plus my new form kept it from hurting much, and all it did was knock me down a few feet. I grabbed the two guards who hit me and slammed them together, knocking them both out. Seeing no need to kill them when they were already incapacitated, I just dropped them to the icy platform and went back to fighting.
I tried using Din's Fire again, but I noticed the flames that came out were much weaker. I bit my lip and started going back to close combat and voice attacks. Finally, the army began to deplete much more; only a dozen Windigoes or so were left. I flew down to the platform with the others.
They were all tired, injured, and bleeding, but they kept fighting off the guards as they came at us. Nimble had even limped over and was back to his knife work. Grinning, I happily joined in with our last stand.
The guards began to hesitate and flew back away from us, but made one mistake: they formed a straight line. Smirking, I opened my mouth, looking right at them.
"FUS RO DAH!"
My voice attack hit every single one of them and knocked them back into each other; those that weren't killed by becoming a giant sandwich were at least knocked out, and they dropped like swatted flies.
Everything went quiet as the fight finished and we just stared at what remained of the battle. All around the icy platform, dead Windigo bodies were everywhere, just starting to melt. Frostfiend was nowhere to be found.
I sighed and relaxed, feeling as though my body was getting smaller. My anger began to dissipate, and I felt as though whatever snapped earlier was mending itself. I sat down, nearly falling over completely as I did so. I just then realized how tired the battle made me.
"Well..." I gasped, my voice weak. "I hope they were ready to die."
Nopony reacted, and I turned to look at them. They were all staring at me, breathing heavily. Risk looked skeptical, False looked pissed, Asylum looked ready to cry, and Nimble...well, he never really showed emotion anyway.
Suddenly, I found myself tackled by a mess of yellow and feathers. When my vision was clear again, I was staring up at the night sky, now lying on my back. A pair of hooves were wrapped around my shoulders, and Asylum was pressing her face into my neck.
"Don't! Do that! Again!" she half-yelled, half-sobbed. I just lay there, unable to respond. For a few minutes, nopony spoke; the only sound I could here was Asylum crying.
Then, of course, the silence was broken.
"How emotional," a familiar voice droned in boredom. "Oh, somepony get me a tissue, I may cry as well."
Asylum jumped off of me, and I hopped up, glaring at the reappeared Frostfiend. He smirked, as he had done millions of times.
"Oh, is little Arrell not so strong anymore?" he crooned. "Wasted all that ice palace energy on my army?"
I shook my head. "That wasn't ice palace energy," I replied.
He raised an eyebrow. I thumped a hoof against my chest.
"A while ago, Celestia found some kind of evil inside of me and sealed it away," I explained. "Turns out that it wasn't evil; it was my true anger. Which you unleashed. And now it's back in its seal."
He glared. "My point is, you're not strong enough to stop me anymore."
"When did I say that?" I grinned. "Sure, that rampage was natural, but I did still absorb an entire ice castle. And though I used most of that energy healing myself and creating this platform...there's still one thing I can do."
"What?" He faked a yawn, leaning back in the air as if ready to watch a movie.
I channelled the remains of my ice magic and began pouring energy into the platform we were standing on. I turned to the others.
"Might wanna get to the ground," I warned them. They nodded, and with little hesitation, began galloping down the stairs.
As soon as they were safe, I split the platform in half down the middle and began to move the halves. With how big the platform was and how little energy I had left, it was pretty hard, but I managed.
Frostfiend watched curiously as I separated the two halves, then started lifting them up. He continued to stare until I had each half positioned perfectly; one to his left, one to his right. Instantly, he caught on.
"...well then," was all he could say. I smiled.
Then I slammed the two platform pieces together, crushing him in between the halves.
The collision shattered the platform pieces into billions of ice shards, which fell to the ground below. I watched as they dropped, hitting the snow harmlessly, along with the melting bodies of a few hundred Windigoes.
"Everything has its time and everything dies," I said quietly as I slowly headed down myself. I escaped death this time, but Celestia knows how long until my time ACTUALLY comes...
I ignored the cheers of the crowd, my exhaustion beginning to dull my senses. My friends sensed something was wrong and gathered around, supporting me as they led me back to Smooth Grove and our house.
"No more waiting," I whispered as we walked. "The longer we stay here, the more I kill. We're going to Stalliongrad tomorrow."
I thought nopony heard me, but as it turns out, Asylum has good hearing. She shook her head. "You fought through it, but you're still sick and evolving," she reminded me. "You're probably going to feel awful as soon as you lie down. We're not leaving until that passes."
I sighed. "Yes, mother."
"Hey." She nudged me, smiling. "You did great back there."
I couldn't help but smile back. "So did you. ...where'd you learn to use a sword?"
"Back where I lived, you need to learn to defend yourself, or you won't last long. I didn't learn a lot, but it was enough to survive."
Minimal effort, just to get by? She's almost exactly like me.
I chuckled at the thought and closed my eyes, finally managing to relax for a bit as we trotted home.