"Okay, no," said Spike in a pained voice. "This isn't going to work."
He shook himself, sending the saddlebags that Tailspin had been attempting to attach to him to the floor. It wasn't that he didn't have the physical strength necessary to carry them, even though they were by far the most heavily burdened of any of the saddlebags they had brought. Pith had been carrying them before, and even while injured, Spike was pretty certain that he was stronger than the stallion.
No, the problem was that, even though he had only been carrying them for a brief moment, they had made him feel as though his wings were being destroyed all over again. The bandages Discord had conjured up and, even though he wasn't an expert on such things by any stretch of the word, the set felt professional enough. He still had hopes that they would heal, but putting added strain on them wasn't the way to let them do that.
Tailspin sighed and scooped up the saddlebags. "Fine," she said. "We'll have to put these on the bed as well. I'd rather have them with somebody, just so we're sure we won't lose them, but I guess it can't really be helped."
"Don't worry. I'll hold onto 'em," said Pith, raising his good leg. Discord had, after some coaxing, been convinced to change his bed into a sort of wheeled stretcher with an elevated head. The stallion was reclining in it as best he could, looking uncomfortable. Tailspin had insisted on lashing him to it the same way she had been tied to Spike's back. He didn't look particularly happy about that, but he didn't complain. He just accepted the saddlebags and did his best to hook them around the ropes.
Discord was leaning against the gurney, looking bored. Occasionally, he suppressed a yawn. None of them had even bothered asking him if he would help with carrying the saddlebags. It had been hard enough to get him to agree to wheel Pith around, away from any of the more severe dangers that cropped up. Again, Pith wasn't happy about that, but after a short, whispered discussion between himself and Tailspin, he'd agreed that he should try to stay out of the way as much as possible.
Compass had gathered up her maps and pens again and was pacing the floor, talking incessantly. Her words came out in a rush, high and slightly frantic, and Spike could see that she was shaking slightly. "So," she babbled, "assuming that I can actually cast this spell and we don't all die, Discord will absorb the magic from the mountains, teleport us back to Fort Maneholdt, and when the changelings arrive, he can... stop them, however he plans on doing that, I guess."
"Assuming that I actually can do that," Discord said lazily. He huffed on his claws and spent a moment rubbing them against his mangy coat. "I've never even attempted something like this before."
"Yes, yes, I know." Compass was obviously fighting, and failing, to keep her expression neutral. Her voice was growing more and more panicked by the moment. "All of this is based on a series of huge ifs. If I can cast the spell, if you can absorb the ambient magic, if the spell even works-"
Spike reached out and set one clawed hand between her shoulders as she walked by. She jumped slightly, but stopped and looked up at him.
He smiled crookedly. "I spent enough time with Twilight to know when somepony's in panic mode," he said, somehow managing to sound gentle despite the echoing nature of his voice. "Try to relax."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "Relax? Relax? Now? Really?"
Through some effort, the dragon managed to keep his smile from fading as he nodded. "Yes, really. We'll be all right. Even if the spell doesn't work, Discord can just teleport us all out."
"You're rather quick to volunteer my services," Discord cut in.
"Says the one who's supposedly here to join Team Friendship," countered Spike, without missing a beat. He gave Discord a disapproving look. "Or were you planning on backing out now?"
"Oh, no, not at all," said Discord. He smiled. "Just making an observation. Of course I'll help. We're all friends here, after all." He leaned over and ruffled Pith's mane with one hand. The stallion just scowled.
Spike eyed him for a moment before looking back to Compass. "See? Even if you can't cast it, we'll be fine. We'll just find another way to handle Chrysalis. Just breathe, okay?"
The unicorn nodded. She still didn't look entirely convinced, but the shaking had died down somewhat, at least. He gave her a gentle pat, then turned to the others.
Spike watched her walk off to put on her cloak, then settled down onto the floor to wait while they sorted out the rest. The stone scraped against his scales uncomfortably. It felt as though every one of them had been splintered, loosened, or was just outright missing - the bandages covering the deep rents in his hide that Queen Chrysalis had left were gone, destroyed when he had lost control of his size during the fall. The wounds shifted as he breathed, joining the rest of his injuries in torturing him.
His one-eyed gaze drifted towards Discord. The chimera was leaning against Pith's stretcher and occupying himself with swapping out the various items from Tailspin's saddlebags when her back was turned, making it impossible for her to take inventory.
"My eyes are down here, big boy," said a voice in his ear.
Spike blinked and turned his head slightly. There was a second, smaller Discord, this one hardly the size of a kitten, sitting on one of his hands and grinning maliciously up at him. No one else seemed to have noticed, and the original was still snickering to himself at the pegasus' expression. Spike looked back down and let out a low rumble from the back of his throat.
"What do you want?" His voice was as quiet as he could make it.
The tiny Discord patted the back of his hand with its stubby paw. "Just checking up on an old friend," it said, its voice dripping sincerity. "After all, you and I are the last of the old guard now. The foulest of foul weathers, the endless eons, the thickest of thieves - and it comes down to us. You and me, Spikey-Wikey. Pals."
The thing dropped onto its belly and slithered up his arm, then dropped into a sitting position on the back of his neck. Spike could feel it sitting there, behind his head, and whispering. "So I thought I'd come over here for a little heart-to-heart, while Miss Not-A-Cripple-Anymore is finishing up the sorting. You ran off in rather a huff after our last discussion, after all. I just wanted to be sure there are no... shall we say, hard feelings between us? After all, I am trying ever so hard to be helpful."
Spike looked back to Tailspin and Compass. The two of them were putting on their cloaks and fashioning crude torches from the remnants of the fire. Around them, the once-grand entrance hall was dark, ruined, flooded with unnatural shadows fed by the hatred of a pony he had once known and loved. The throne room was full of statues of his friends and his wife, but they were all worn with age. And, in the end, they were nothing but stone.
That's the closest you'll ever get to seeing any of them again.
He grit his teeth. "No," he rumbled. "No hard feelings."
The front gates of Castle Canterlot opened slowly. Even with all of Spike's bulk thrown against them, they were massive, heavy things. If the force of impact from his crash hadn't reduced almost the entire top half of them to rubble, he doubted that he would have been able to move them at all.
As it was, he still barely managed it. He couldn't make use of one of his arms, and the rest of his body wasn't in much better shape. It took him almost a full minute to force the gates open, but eventually they swung wide, accompanied by the sound of grinding stone. In their wake, he stepped out onto the front steps, the others following at his heels.
Laid out before them was the gutted carcass of what had once been the most beautiful city in Equestria.
The raw magic that permeated the mountains was just as strong here. A few yards away from the open gates, the city seemed to be fighting with itself. A three-story stone ruin that had probably been some sort of store was clashing with one of the city plazas. One street seemed to have seven endpoints when Spike tried to trace its length from afar. A tall, spired building became the memorial cemetery when looked at from another angle.
And, overhead, the windigos raged.
Canterlot had not escaped their touch. The city was a study in shadows and ice. Most buildings were nothing but outlines, their remains too caked with rime to be made out. The frost had taken on odd, misshapen contours under the pressure of the howling winds. Their shadows filled the streets and seemed to writhe at the edge of vision.
Spike shuddered and looked away. Just here, in front of the castle gates, they seemed to be in the eye of the magical storm. There was wind here, but it was just a breeze. It was cold, but not unnaturally so, and far from being as powerful as the gale that whipped the snow off of the buildings ahead and churned it into a thick, icy mist. The windigos circled the castle above, neighing and thundering through the sky as they searched for a way in, but they couldn't seem to get past the edge of the intangible barrier around the castle. Their cries sounded distant.
"Adorable, aren't they?" said Discord mildly from somewhere behind him. "They remind me so much of myself when I was younger. So brash, so eager to see ponies suffering in entertaining ways." He let out a sigh. "It's a shame that they turned out to be so unimaginative, really. All I did was twist the background magic a little bit, make the path here a bit more confusing, and suddenly they're completely at a loss. Amateurs, the lot of them."
"And yet they're the ones who haven't been locked up in a throne room for several hundred years," said Tailspin, sounding faintly amused. Discord made a scandalized noise, but she ignored him. "Compass? You're sure you want to do this?"
Spike turned. All three of the ponies were wearing heavy cloaks and holding torches. Tailspin and Pith had pulled theirs up over their faces, but Compass Rose had left hers back, presumably to leave her horn free. She was squinting upward, towards the circling windigos. She was also shaking.
"Yes," she said. Her voice was surprisingly firm. "I'm sure. It's our best shot."
It was impossible to make out Tailspin's expression under her hood, but Spike could see enough to tell she was frowning. "I just don't want you to end up h-"
"If she thinks she can do it, let her do it," Pith said in his usual, even tones. "She's done the impossible twice already."
"A mare after my own heart," Discord said, grinning widely. He raised his clawed hand, fingers poised to snap, and raised an eyebrow towards Compass. "Say the word, madam."
"Not yet," said Compass quietly. "Let me... get ready."
She closed her eyes.
Compass Rose was rapidly becoming familiar with the twin sensations of panic and exhaustion. She was also beginning to realize that she worked at her best under pressure.
Over the course of her travels with the others, when lives were on the line, she had found strength and skill that she hadn't known she possessed. When the changelings attacked them in the Tangle, she had beaten them back with nothing but a spellbook as a weapon. When Tailspin had been at death's door, she had somehow, impossibly, managed to create a healing spell that even she didn't fully understand and successfully translate it for use by others. When the windigos had attacked, she had managed to find the path to Canterlot through impossible geometries and blinding, hostile snow.
Even asking Pith to break the resin around her horn had been a result of her newfound strength, in a way. She wouldn't have been able to stomach making that request before, she knew. Even now, she wasn't entirely sure how she had made herself go through with it, let alone how she had still managed to provide emergency care for Tailspin immediately afterward.
It wasn't a nice thought. Knowing that she was at her best when things were at their bleakest wasn't pleasant. But it was... bracing.
She just had to hope that her horn was still intact enough to allow her to cast the spell she had devised.
To her mild surprise, she wasn't too worried that her spell wouldn't work. She had felt firsthand the type of magic that the windigos used - the type of magic that they were made of. It was a cold, hungry, spiteful thing, strong as the blizzard they summoned. But it was also precarious, in a way. Fighting them wasn't a matter of power. It was a matter of finesse.
The problem wasn't in the spell, or in the power required. It was with her.
She pushed those thoughts out of her mind for the moment. One step at a time. Take it piece by piece.
Her senses had been dulled by the breaking of her horn. She could sense the magic within herself only dully, and she groped for it like a blind mare, trying to gather up as much of it as she could. Before, this would have been trivial. Now it was almost impossible, but she managed. Then it was just a matter of preparing the spell, crafting the raw magic into a coherent form.
You're one of us. You earned us.
It was ready.
Compass Rose opened her eyes, grimaced, and readied the spell. A weak, wispy green aura flickered into being around the remains of her horn.
"All right," she said. "Now."
Discord snapped his fingers.
There was the sense of the world twisting in on itself. Suddenly, the howling of the windigos seemed much closer.
Wind, sharp and biting, whistled across Spike's scales. Sleet hissed across his vision and stung his eye, forcing him to blink rapidly in an effort to clear his vision. When he managed it, he looked up.
The windigos were bearing down on the five of them, riding a cloud of swirling ice. They tossed their heads wildly, and the high, piercing shrieks they let out echoed throughout the city.
The temperature was already dropping. Hoarfrost was forming on his tail, and he could hear the groan and crack of shifting stone as the castle froze. But there was something else, now, something that he hadn't felt the last time that the windigos had attacked.
It was as if the cold that the windigos conjured were inside him. He could feel it creeping inward. Worse, he could feel it spreading out. The sensation reminded him of the slow burning that he had felt when he thought the changelings had captured Twilight, the feeling of something powerful and inevitable swelling up from inside his own blood, but this was somehow worse.
The open wounds from Queen Chrysalis' attack felt as though someone had stabbed him with knives of ice.
"Compass?" It was Tailspin shouting, her voice barely audible over the screaming of the incoming blizzard.
"I'm-" The unicorn gave a slight gasp, and Spike saw that she was shaking with effort. "I'm trying." Her horn was glowing steadily now, but there was a network of cracks visible on it. They spidered across the remaining surface, pulsing with the same green as her aura. It looked as if it were about to explode.
"We're running out of time," Tailspin shouted again. She moved up to stand beside the unicorn, leaning against her as if to offer support. "Are you sure you can-"
"No!" Compass' eyes were shut again, and the cracks on her horn seemed to be widening. "But I'm going to try!"
For almost three full seconds she stood, trying to force out the spell in silence. The windigos were nearly on them now. Spike could see their manes flying in the wind. Every shriek left his ears ringing.
"I can do this!" Compass' eyes snapped open, and she squinted at her targets. "I just - have to push - a little harder-"
Despite her look of exertion, the green aura around her horn began to fade.
"Okay, time's up!" screamed Tailspin. "Discord, get us out of h-"
The world condensed itself into a single point, twisted around, turned inside-out, and went black. Spike screamed. No sound came out.
A moment later, the universe sprang back into existence. The next thing he felt was a sudden, sharp impact as he collapsed against one of the ruined, frozen hulks of Canterlot's former residences. He didn't hit particularly hard - he had apparently sprung into existence just a foot or so above the ground - but he felt disoriented nonetheless. Discord's method of teleportation was much less enjoyable than Twilight's, and Spike had never particularly cared even for that.
He heaved himself to his feet, stared around at the streets of Canterlot, and grated, "Discord, why are we still here?"
Discord was standing in the middle of the street, still holding Pith's stretcher in one hand. They, at least, seemed to have arrived upright. Tailspin and Compass, however, were still trying to pick themselves up.
The chimera was staring at his fingers as if he'd never seen them before. "I appear," he said slowly, "to be having some technical difficulties. Perhaps I am a bit more under the weather than even I realized. Or perhaps all of this background magic-"
"Just get us out of here!" shouted Tailspin. The pegasus had managed to regain her footing, and was pointing down the street with one hoof. "They're coming!"
It was almost impossible to tell what part of the city she was indicating. Here, things were so mixed up that Spike wasn't even certain of the distance between himself and the others. But even through the eye-twisting haze of magic, they could all see the windigos bearing down on them once more.
Before anyone could say anything more, the world folded in on itself again. This time he managed to keep from screaming, and he kept his feet when they reappeared in another street that looked almost identical to the one that they had just left.
"Discord!"
The draconequus just lowered his clawed hand, gulped, and murmured, "Oh, dear."
The screams of the windigos echoed around them. Spike wheeled on the spot and saw the herd of them barreling down the twisted city streets towards them like an oncoming freight train.
Without really thinking about it, he stepped to the side, placing his scaled bulk between the windigos and the others. "Compass!" His voice came out as a bark. "Stay behind me! And get that spell working!"
"Spike, you can't fight them," Tailspin shouted. "You have to use magic! You said so yourself!"
The dragon bared his fangs. The ice in his veins was screaming at him. He couldn't have backed down if he wanted to. There was finally something in front of him that he could fight. One of his problems finally had an answer that he understood. Despite the cold, despite the pain in his body, despite the feeling of being frozen from the inside out, Spike grinned.
"I'm going to try."
He dug his talons into the ice beneath his feet, braced himself against the building wind, and roared.
And the world went white.