The howling winds assaulted Pilate's ears, and yet still he could hear Razzar's sneering breaths. With a claw-scraping stride, the naga approached the stallion's rear and kicked him hard in the flank, spilling blood.
Pilate yelped in pain. He rolled over, only to be picked up in two sets of scaled hands.
"Grnnngh—The betrayer sent you?! Hmm?!" Growling, Razzar tossed Pilate across the platform.
The zebra flew through darkness until he slammed into a pedestal. He heard the clatter of skystone between pulses of pain. The air calmed slightly, and he felt a shift in movement all around. The crystal had been jostled slightly out of place on the north pedestal. Stratopolis was slowing down.
As Pilate struggled to get back up, he heard Razzar's voice approaching through the rain. "How does it feel, pony? To be weak? To suffer the consequences of your failure?"
"Nnnngh!" Snarling, Pilate galloped forward with a burst of strength and blindly bucked at the air.
Suddenly, Razzar was behind him, slamming a talon down into the back of Pilate's neck.
"Ooof!"
The naga sneered in his ear. "Once my brothers and I have control of this flying city, we'll do away with sniveling wretches like you." A savage kick in the side. Pilate rolled, his pained brain registering the angry speech. "We will build a better world. A stronger world. One that won't breed accidents like you."
Seething, Pilate got up—teetered left and right—and limped angrily towards the voice. "Rrrrgh!" He swung a hoof, hitting nothing but rainwater.
Whap! Another swat to the flank, this time slicing the skin with the edge of a claw. "Yes. That's it. Struggle in the dark." A prolonged hissing sound. "I want your flesh devoid of hubris once I dig my teeth into it..."
Pilate fell to his knees, shuddering in pain. He took long, labored breaths, his ears constantly pelted by rain and moisture. The world around him grew dull and numb. For all he knew, he could have been the only living thing lost there in the darkness.
So he took a deeper breath. Pilate closed his blind eyes beneath the helm, tilting his head up and allowing the raindrops to splatter against his muzzle and trail down his cheeks. He curled his forelimbs to his chest, feeling as his heartbeats grew further and further apart.
He didn't think of the vengeful reptile stalking him through the darkness. He didn't think of Rainbow's body lying dormant somewhere across the platform. He didn't even think of Bellesmith's songful voice or Kera's tiny breaths.
For the briefest of moments, Pilate was back in Blue Shelf, tending to the garden outside the cabin. His mind ran circles around the various history texts he had just read with O.A.S.I.S back in his study. Hypnotized by the cool spring breeze, Pilate planted flowers neatly in a row, compacting the rich soil around their roots. His hooves brushed their petals, relishing in their delicate softness. Each flower had a unique and enticing fragrance... all but one.
Pilate's nostrils flared. With twitching ears, he suddenly ducked. The air whistled from a handful of claws above him. Spinning around in an instant, he swung both front hooves blindly. Wh-Wham! They made contact with a soft, squishy lizard belly. Razzar's rancid breath wheezed overhead, but Pilate wasn't finished. He charged forward, ramming his skull into the reptile's sternum. Once the naga had fallen hard to the ground, Pilate's rear fetlocks found their way to his ankles... and he savagely twisted.
Razzar's legbone shattered down the center with a sickening snap. The naga howled into the rain and thunder, clutching his sundered limb in agony as he writhed beneath the zebra.
"Hressssshhhhctt!" He seethed and hissed. His jaws snapped at the air, and he fought through a sob to sputter, "How... h-how in Quezaat's name did you know—?!"
"Thankfully..." Pilate exhaled through a bitter grin. "You smell as rank as the day you were hatched." Then, with a triumphant grunt, he slammed both hooves down into the source of Razzar's voice.
Thud!
With a blood-gurgling wheeze, Razzar lay still, his unconscious breaths coming out in anguished bursts.
Pilate shuddered from head to tail. He stumbled backwards, almost slipping in the rain. He heard a rattling sound, and he clenched his jaw shut, pausing his much needed breaths. The rattling continued, rolling towards and past him.
With a gasp, Pilate leapt for the sound. He fell on his belly—but slid forward until the manasphere was in his grasp. Fumbling, he clasped the thing back onto the choker hanging around his neck. Snapping a wire or two into place with a splash of sparks, the zebra was painfully reintroduced to a strobing world of red-and-black lines. Once again, he could make out the circular platform that had descended beneath the centermost structure of Stratopolis.
He was lying right beside the platform's edge. Far below, undulating waves of icebergs and frosted ocean water loomed. Gradually, they dissipated, replaced by rising columns of steam.
Pilate tilted his head north, but found it hard to "see." A gigantic line danced with static energy before him. A horizon of pure skystone loomed just within view, and it disrupted the flow of information through the zebra's Ocular Array. Even from afar, he could hear an enormous roar—like a constant avalanche—devouring the sound of Stratopolis' maelstrom as the Sentinel approached the turbulent northern edge of the world.
A petite body lay in the distance, its chest expanding and contracting with labored breaths. Pilate galloped swiftly towards Rainbow Dash, leaping over the Sword of Solstice and Razzar's battered body. He slid to a stop at the pegasus' side and shook her shoulder.
"Rainbow Dash!"
She didn't move.
"Rainbow!"
The mare's lips moved, her muzzle locked in a pained grimace. She was still down for the count.
Panting, Pilate gazed up at the north pedestal. The skystone shard that Roarke had given him lay precariously on the teetering edge of the dais. Beyond, the horizon continued to dance with static energy, threatening to short out his helm at any moment.
The zebra gritted his teeth, shivering in the rain. All around him, the roaring winds of Stratopolis formed a symphony of sound, serenaded by the distant banshee shrieks of winged undead. Instinctually, his blind eyes blinked.
Through the hull breech in the portside wall of the Ledo's Pride, Pilate could see the lush countryside of Ledomare looming in emerald brilliance. Before him, five furnaces billowed, casting the glow of manafire across the zeppelin's engine room.
He braced himself against a wall full of buckling, hissing instruments. His muscles tightened as he prepared to spring for the levers closest to him. The shrieks of innocent passengers lingered in his ears. Acrid smoke wafted across his nostrils, but he was too busy holding his breath to suffer the pain of inhalation.
Jaw clenched, the stallion leapt bravely forward, hurling his body at a wall of red-hot metal.
Pilate didn't realize he was smiling until he had his hooves clamped around the skystone. Grunting with pained breaths, he twisted and turned the shard until it attached firmly to the north pedestal once more. Almost instantly, Stratopolis accelerated towards its destination. The wind picked up, tripling in intensity.
The Sword of Solstice slid towards the edge of the platform with a scraping sound. Pilate slapped his hoof down over its hilt, anchoring it in place. Undaunted, the stallion placed both hooves against the top of the skystone and pressed it down. The more her forced the center of the shard towards the center of the pedestal, the more it billowed with sparkling energy. His skin singed in several places from the rampant beams of mana.
"Grnnn-nnngh!" Weathering the pain, he forced the nebulous body of Stratopolis to increase its velocity. The winds howled with a ghostly tempest. The zebra's artificial field of vision turned to pure static as the skystone fields to the north came within a stone's throw.
Something exploded to the far right. Pilate swung his gaze aside in time to see something splitting down the middle. An obelisk had sundered, shattering completely into thousands of pieces. As a consequence, the half-dozen temples linked to it succumbed to gravity, descending into the arctic wastes below with dramatic sprays of ice and water.
More explosions sounded off all around. One obelisk at a time, Stratopolis crumbled. The black shards flew along with the center structure, hurling towards the tempestuous crystalline fields ahead. Above and beyond, the pained shrieks of pegasi echoed as their undead bodies burned alive, evaporating along with the unearthly slime that empowered them.
By the time Pilate could see nothing but static, he spun around and made a mad dash across the platform. He ran only two feet before falling hard to his chest. The structure had tilted at an awkward angle, dangling the platform precariously along with it. Rainwater slid sideways, shoving the three bodies towards the edge. Pilate panted and floundered for hoofing, his fluctuating "vision" locked on Rainbow Dash. One by one, the columns supporting the platform all around snapped, and Pilate's ears filled with the groaning implosion of the massive structure above him.