The formula pumped into Blueblood’s system, the changing occurring within an instant, beginning with his magic that was still holding onto the syringe. His long, slender horn flared with an intense white light, his eyes burning with energy in the same way Twilight’s did on occasion. The aura around the syringe intensified and the glass tube was shattered, the broken pieces atomising in mere seconds after the last of the serum had entered his body. Twilight aimed her sceptre and fired a twister of fire and lightning straight at Blueblood, tearing the mesh floor between us and him apart as it decimated everything in its path to reach its target.
Right before the magic connected with Blueblood, his entire body exploded in that same blinding white light, his entire physical being enveloped in it as a shock wave burst forth from him. The magic bubble expanded throughout the entire room almost instantly, erasing Twilight’s attack from the air before it was able to connect with Blueblood. Before we could act to defend ourselves, we too were caught in the blast, sending us all hurtling across the room. The glass tank burst completely, causing the liquid to cascade down through the mesh, while Clover’s bones separated and were sent flying in all directions.
I was thrown as far as the back wall, my head hitting it hard as I collided, before sliding down into a heap. My vision swimming, I tried to lift my aching head, my eyes navigating towards the brilliant light that was Blueblood at the opposite end of the room. I felt somepony grabbing me and hauling me to my hooves, glancing about I saw Applejack, her helmet protecting her when she hit the wall next to me. I could see Rainbow and Fluttershy were trying to help Twilight, whose whole body was twitching and convulsing violently, her eyes rolled back in her skull, presumably some kind of bad reaction to her magic crossing with Blueblood’s.
Pinkie had been thrown down one of the holes made in the floor during all the fighting, but I could see her bouncing her way back up, mounting a higher level with every leap, rather than taking her time with the ladders. As my head began to clear, I looked back towards Blueblood, seeing his shinning body rising up off the dais by about a foot. It was difficult to tell with the light, but he appeared to be stretched out tall, his forelegs spread wide to either side. As I watched, my eyes stinging from the light, but completely powerless to look away or even blink, I could see his form become less distinctive, his outline become almost fluid as his body began to change shape.
There was a ringing in my head, it had begun when Blueblood’s magic had first grown exponentially, but now it was absolutely deafening. It felt like my whole skull was trembling, and that I was about to start bleeding from my eyes and ears. There was no other sound whatsoever… until Blueblood’s laughter cut through the noise, it was a horrible, twisted sound. The longer it went on, the less natural it sounded, like there were two voices laughing, one a split second behind the other… a voice that could only be described as demonic.
“Yes… yes!” Blueblood’s voices bellowed in between bouts of laughter. “This power… unlimited… infinite!”
I could only stare in absolute terror at what was unfolding before me, as Blueblood’s body began to grow in size, his shape still warping and morphing beneath the light screen. My friends too were all frozen in place, completely at a loss of what to do; even Twilight who had managed to recover ever so slightly, stared across at Blueblood with such hopelessness in her eyes.
“Now nothing can stand in my path!” Blueblood went on in a victorious tone. “I am a Go…”
I think he was about to say God, but he never finished, as something shining just as bright as he was, although more gold than white, came hurtling through the air, striking him in his chest. Blueblood smashed back down onto the dais, the metal platform caving in slightly beneath his increased weight. He let out an awful sounding, agonised screech as he began flailing around, trying to rid his body of the holy fire that was growing from the centre of his chest where the flying object had hit him.
Confused by the sudden shift in dynamics, my eyes scanned down from where Blueblood writhed, to where Fluttershy’s mace had fallen at the base of the dais, almost falling into the trench that Twilight’s magic had ripped open. We all turned to Fluttershy, my friends all wearing the same flabbergasted expression as myself. Fluttershy was still posed as she had been when she threw her weapon, her head moving from side to side as she met all our gazes.
“What?” she asked in a nonchalant tone, giving a small shrug. “I wasn’t just going to stand here and watch him transform.”
“Y… you… bitch!” Blueblood screeched, trying to get back up to his hooves, which proved difficult what with the now very erratic changes his body was undergoing. “You absolute whore! You’ll pay for that!”
We all tensed up, readying our weapons, no longer willing to simply stand and cower as Blueblood ascended before our very eyes… but rather than try to attack Fluttershy or the rest of us, Blueblood turned and fled through the double doors he had come through, still enveloped in white light and burning with golden flames. Rainbow immediately flew after him, but she was stopped when Applejack called out.
“Hold it Dash!” she ordered. “You can’t take him on yourself, not now that he’s… changin’.”
Rainbow dropped down on the dais, giving a slightly reluctant nod before scooping up Fluttershy’s mace and flapping back over with it. Applejack and I made our way across to where Fluttershy was with Twilight, while Pinkie pulled herself up through one of the holes and joined us.
“Girls, Crane’s not down there!” Pinkie exclaimed in a panicked voice.
“What?!” I demanded, sure there was no way he could have crawled away after that fall and explosion. “How do you know?”
“My mask,” Pinkie explained, pulling it down over her face. “There’s plenty of dead ponies down there from those canisters, but none of them are him, and there’s certainly nothing living done there either.”
“Are you sure Pinkie?” Twilight asked in weak voice as Fluttershy helped her up, to which Pinkie nodded frantically. “Well if he’s got away, then we can’t go looking for him. Blueblood’s the real threat right now, we have to go stop him first and foremost.”
“Are you okay too?” Pinkie asked in a concerned voice.
“I’ll be okay…” Twilight muttered unconvincingly as she shrugged Fluttershy off and started walking by herself. “Blueblood… he’s already so powerful, I felt it when our magic collided… we can’t let him grow anymore, he has to be stopped before he becomes unstoppable.”
We all started walking briskly towards the doors he had escaped through, making sure to avoid the gaping holes or the large shards of glass from Clover’s container. Right before we reached the dais, Fluttershy stopped, reaching down and picking something up. We all looked around and saw her holding an errant bone, staring down at it with a look of shame. I reached out to try and comfort her, but she raised her free hoof to indicate that she would be fine. After taking a deep breath, she set the bone down gently and continued walking, the rest of us following suit.
Once through the doorway, we found ourselves in another section of the lab, this one dominated by a huge machine in the centre. It was a complicated mess of vats, tubes, pumps and all sorts of displays and dials on every side, with pipes running into it from all angles, one visibly snaking up the wall and across the ceiling, connecting it with Clover’s glass tank in the other room. We knew exactly what this machine must be, the thing that had allowed them to produce the final formula, although there was nothing left within.
“Blueblood must have taken the lot,” Twilight muttered angrily as she raised her sceptre.
With a quick flash, a dark sphere shot out of it and smashed into the machine, stopping in the centre where it expanded into a miniature black hole. The machine broke down in seconds, getting sucked in and compressed into oblivion before Twilight tapped the spike end of her sceptre once on the stone floor and the black hole sealed itself. We could hear the distant sounds of Blueblood’s screams, as well as the speck of flickering light at the end of the corridor ahead. Wasting no more time we took off, all six of us sprinting after him, our weapons at the ready.
As we ran, I could see Blueblood’s blinding, contorting form slowing down. He had stopped in front of something; it was a small, box like room with a metal grate, which he slid open quite forcefully, literally ripping it off the box and tossing it to the side. He clambered inside the box, a slightly tricky feat considering his new, ever-expanding size. We had picked up our pace and Rainbow was now flying on ahead like a bullet, trying to reach him before he could escape, but we were two late. The box descended into the ground, taking Blueblood away with it.
We rushed into the room where the box had been, it wasn’t particularly spacious, just big enough to fit three of them alongside one another. The box Blueblood had escaped in was the centre one, and now that it had disappeared below the floor level, we were able to see that there were metal cables on a pulley system that were lowering it. Very different from the magical energy supply used to power the canister lift in the undersea temple, or the gear mechanism used for the moving platform at the lighthouse.
Judging by the rate at which the cable was spinning, the box must have descending at some incredible speeds. Indeed when I looked over the edge, the box Blueblood had ridden in was nothing more than a speck far, far below us.
“Where do these things go?” I questioned aloud, thinking about the catacombs.
“Does it matter?” Rainbow asked, sliding open the grate door on the box to the right. “Let’s just get in one and go.”
I glanced around at the others, they all nodded in agreement, and soon we were all bundled inside the box, Applejack sliding the grate closed while Pinkie pulled on a giant lever to start the descent. Our lift didn’t seem to sink nearly as fast as Blueblood’s had been going, even though there were six of us, and Pinkie Pie was frantically jumping up and down until Twilight asked her politely, yet firmly, to stop. I began to zone out while the others talked quietly among themselves, asking each other if they were okay and what the plan was for when we found Blueblood.
I wasn’t paying much attention however, an odd sense of dread was filling me, like the further we descended, the closer we were approaching something… devastating. I was snapped out of my thoughts when a crackling sound entered the box, my friends all fell into silence, looking around curiously until an awful voice echoed out and we froze.
“Enjoying your little ride on the elevator?” Blueblood asked in a sinister tone, the unnaturally quality to his voice clear even over the projection device. “I hope you are, because soon you’ll all be dead, crushed beneath the ruins of this cathedral like the tiny insects you are.”
“Blueblood, if you think…” I began in a stern voice, only to be cut off by Blueblood interrupting me.
“Silence!” he commanded, almost in a hiss. “You might have stunted my evolution with your blasted mace, it will take… time for my ascension to be fully realised now, but I am a patient individual. I have waited this long for my revenge, I can wait a little longer. Until then, I shall take my new army north where we will gather our strength. The power of the alicorn is mine and mine alone, but my new followers will need some… enhancements of their own if they are to be deserving of serving under me. Once my ascension is complete and my army is sufficient, we will march south and take back this land of filth before we set sail and conquer Equestria. The throne to the greatest empire the world has ever seen will be sat on by someone worthy of it, and any who oppose their new king and god will be eradicated!”
“You’re pretty daft when it comes to military strategy,” Rainbow retorted. “Moving an army of deluded cultist and savage monsters anywhere takes time and coordination, and you think you can just walk them up to the Ash Lands before declaring war without any bother?”
Blueblood didn’t respond angrily or yell at her; rather he started laughing darkly, which worried us more than if he had started promising to tear the flesh from our bones.
“You naïve fools…” he said in a low voice, the demonic half more pronounced than ever. “I never said… that we would be walking.”
The elevator, as Blueblood had called it, had been descending throughout his entire tirade, but with those words, it finally reached the bottom, the wall beyond the grate door sliding up and away to reveal something that made my all my insides freeze, and my heart stop dead in my chest. We had indeed descended into the catacombs, but this particular room was colossal, larger than Fort Mule with its extensions… both the ones above ground and below. We were able to survey the entire room as we descended the final several dozen metres to the steel mesh balcony that overlooked the room, and the massive vessel that occupied almost the entirety of it.
“It can’t be…” I uttered in horror, as I reached out and grabbed onto the grate in front of me, looking out over the thing I was sure I would never see again.
“Rarity…” Twilight began in a voice full of apprehension. “What is that thing?”
I gulped before replying.
“The Dreadnaught.”
The Dreadnaught, it was right there before my very eyes, as impossible as that might have seemed. Now we knew what Blueblood had meant in Fauna’s memory, when he referred to Crane’s ‘other little project’, as well as what Suri had been making arrangements for, and how Crane had planned on abandoning the cathedral to begin the next stage of their plan by facing the world. The Dreadnaught was almost exactly as I remembered it from both the designs I stole from Typhoon’s office, and the original one I had seen in the factory beneath the Fort.
It resembled a giant boat made from metal, with four stubby wings instead of masts and sails, two on each side with propellers embedded in them. From this height however I was able to see the large command bridge for myself, mounted high up on the furthest end of the deck. A glaring light was just about visible through the front windows of the bridge, which indicated Blueblood was already inside and that was where he had spoken to us from. There were some differences between this one and the first however, one was the hull, which had no gaping holes in the side and looked nigh impenetrable.
The second difference was that it was much bigger; perhaps over twice the volume of the original, everything just appeared to be magnified. The final, and perhaps most frightening difference, was the addition of the cannons. I still remembered the siege weapon that Cogs had built, the one with the six slender barrels which rotated and fired out projectiles at an incredible rate. Similar weapons, only much bigger were mounted in two rows, running the full length of the deck, as well as more placed along the side of the hull to shoot down while the Dreadnaught was in flight. All of them were attached to spherical structures that would allow them to rotate and fire over a huge range.
I could see the metal struts on the floor of the catacomb factory, holding it in place while several gangplanks were steeped to allow the tiny ponies in Covenant robes scurrying about to board. I could see them, pulling monsters along by chains or pushing them in cages, leading them up the gangplanks and to stow inside the Dreadnaught. There were no canons or siege towers like there had been below the Fort, what need was there for them when Crane… and now Blueblood, had an army of living siege weapons?
They were almost all on board, only the final few stragglers were mounting the gangplanks and making their way inside the Dreadnaught, unaware of what Blueblood had planned for them after they took off… they probably didn’t even know Crane had been usurped. The elevator reached the balcony, and I quickly forced the grate open with my magic as I rushed forward, but even as I reached the railing, I could see the gangplanks retracting back up inside the great metal monster.
“Arcana served the Covenant well,” Blueblood’s voice echoed across the entire chamber. “Not only did he provide Crane with the knowledge and tools from Arclight University and the Tower to build his labs here, he also managed to make copies of a certain scientist’s research material, which he was kind enough to donate in return for the Covenant’s help in bringing him to power in Arclight… research which has led to the grand structure before you, which will be a fitting weapon for me when I begin my conquest of the world.”
I felt light headed; this was all just too unreal… Blueblood had achieved ascension, he had an army of abominations, and now he had a Dreadnaught. Twilight had been wrong, he didn’t need to finish his transformation into an alicorn to become unstoppable… he already was.
“Ah, but of course you’ve seen this before Rarity,” Blueblood mocked, his voice sending chills up my spines. “Of course Crane managed to make some improvements upon Cogs' original designs, and unlike the last Dreadnaught you destroyed… this one is fully functional!”
And with those words, the four propellers began to rotate, slowly at first before, picking up speed rapidly until they were spinning so fast that they were nothing more than a blur. The droning noise of the whirring propellers and rushing air were absolutely deafening as the entire Dreadnaught began to rise up off the struts holding it upright. I craned my neck and watched as the Dreadnaught ascended, the cannons lining the deck firing upwards to help clear a path to the open skies for it. I was paralysed as I watched it climb higher, all hope I had felt when we left the temple at the Isle of Serenity now decimated as I witnessed the insurmountable force before us now.
“Rarity!” Rainbow Dash yelled. “Pull your shit together; we have to get out of here!”
Her words struck me like a slap to the face, in fact, she may have actually smacked me, but I was so overwhelmed that I hadn’t even noticed. Now that I was back in the present, I could see that the entire cathedral was going to come down on our heads as the Dreadnaught split it apart, and of course all would be hopeless… if I continued to stand there and wait for this place to become my tomb as Blueblood intended. I gave a firm nod to Rainbow Dash, sheathing all my weapons before turning from the railing and hurrying back to the elevator where the others were already waiting for me to join them.
As Rainbow and I began running however, I saw a huge section of rubble drop from the ceiling, snapping the elevator cable as it plummeted down onto the box.
“Get out!” was all I could scream to my friends before the stone crashed into the top of the elevator and smashed right through it.
For a brief second I was terrified that they hadn’t got out in time, but as the dust settled, I saw all four of them dog-piled on the platform right in front of us, all safe and sound. The elevator was quite clearly out of commission, and with all the stone raining down from the ceiling it wouldn’t be long before the balcony was taken too, and we would fall to our deaths on the floor far below. I scanned my eyes around the huge room, it was difficult to see what with all the falling stone and the rising clouds of dust, but I was able to make out other metal platforms fitted to the wall around the room, some with doors leading elsewhere from them.
“Alright girls!” I called out over the sound of destruction. “We need to get to that platform there; we'll take the door and pray to Celestia that it leads to the surface. Rainbow Dash, fly Applejack over there, you’re fast enough to avoid any hazards. Fluttershy, take Twilight, she can use her magic to protect you. Pinkie Pie, can you get me over there?”
“I might have a trick for this situation,” Pinkie replied, nodding her head as she pulled on her mask.
“Alright, let’s go!” I declared, running with Pinkie over to the left edge of the balcony while the others got ready to fly.
“We’ll have to be quick,” Pinkie told me as we stopped by the railing and placed her hoof on my shoulder. “Chaos magic is unpredictable; you never know when it might stop randomly.”
“Just do whatever you can and we’ll make it work,” I told her, returning the gesture and giving her a firm squeeze.
Whatever Pinkie did, not that I had the faintest understanding of how inducing the powers of chaos worked; she managed to mute the sound of the ruination taking place all around me. Next, it was as if she had slowed down time, I could still see the debris falling and my friends flying, but it was all happening at an incredibly slow rate while we moved in normal time. Looking down at my hooves, I saw that moving them left a trail of ghostly imprints behind which slowly faded. Following that, the world around us began to… dissolve, as if every solid object was turning translucent.
Steadily, the world took on a blotchy quality as waves of purple and blue began flowing all around us. I was reminded of Pinkie’s fight with Twilight, but this time the real world remained in conjunction with the bizarre world that Pinkie had beckoned. Pinkie raised a hoof and waved diagonally towards the ground, as she did, about a dozen large lumps of translucent rock floated off their intended course to come spinning into line in front of us, creating a stepping stone bridge between us and the platform I had instructed the others to go to.
“Move now!” Pinkie ordered, letting go of me and leaping onto the first rock.
I obeyed her command and climbed the railing, before throwing myself onto the rock that she was already bouncing away from. She made bouncing from platform to platform look so easy, but I didn’t have quite the same physical capacity as her and was forced to take it much slower. I could feel the rocks were still sinking even after being realigned, more so when I landed on them. This had the effect that the next stepping stone was always slightly higher, until I was forced to latch onto them with my forehooves and drag myself up.
As I proceeded further and further along the path Pinkie had created for me, I began to feel myself growing sick, blotches of light appearing in my eyes while my brain felt like it was pulsating with gallons of blood. Just like the last time, I was starting to feel the effects of direct exposure to chaos magic, something the average pony just wasn’t built to handle. Naturally this was Pinkie’s element, and Twilight clearly had a lot of resistance to it, but me… I was quickly remembering why Pinkie preferred not to use this kind of magic when other ponies were involved.
With the sickening feeling growing, and the increasingly difficult jumps, I wanted to call out to Pinkie for help, but I found that when I opened my mouth, no words came out. Speaking wasn’t a bother, I just produced no sound when I did. I was only a few rocks away from the end, but I couldn’t see Pinkie anywhere, I couldn’t even see the others flying anymore. I was close, but found I couldn’t go on, collapsing on the second last rock, I heaved up the contents of my stomach. When I opened my eyes and looked at what I produced, I saw that it was mainly blood.
I fell to my side, vaguely aware in the back of my mind that the rocks were picking up speed, and that whatever Pinkie had done was coming to an end, but that didn’t seem important to me as a dense fog began filling my mind. I tried calling out to Pinkie once more before my thoughts failed me, but this time I didn’t try to open my mouth, but instead called out to her from within. Almost instantly, I felt a pair of hooves wrap around me and lift me up. Pinkie Pie carried me the last of the way, jumping with me on her back. When she landed on the platform, everything returned to normal within an instant, the unnatural colours fading and the real world turning solid once more, while time and sound resumed.
I was shaky on my hooves as Pinkie set me down, before grabbing my hoof and leading me through the open door where Applejack and Rainbow Dash were already waiting for us; it wasn’t long before we were joined by Twilight and Fluttershy.
“Sorry about that,” Pinkie said to me in a guilty voice, as we wasted no time in rushing through the trenches of the catacombs. “Like I said, chaos magic is unpredictable. I didn’t even know you were there until you called out, you slipped further to the other side and disappeared even to me, I just had to hope you’d make it on your own.”
“I thought…” I began, before sliding to a halt as the tunnel ahead caved in we were forced to turn back and make a turn at the last junction we came to. “I thought you were the spirit of chaos, surely you can just make it do what you want.”
“Chaos can’t be controlled,” Pinkie explained. “Not even by me, it’s hard to explain, but it’s more like I… influence it, and I can’t even do that to the same degree in my current state.”
“Is your head aright Rarity?” Twilight asked, her horn glowing as she kept a bubble shield constantly erected around us while we ran. “You weren’t in there long, but even short exposures can have… adverse effects.”
“It’s fine now,” I told her, completely honestly. “The whole thing feels like a dream, like it didn’t really happen.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Fluttershy advised in a concerned voice.
I was strongly reminded of Blueblood’s attack on Fort Mule as we made our escape through the catacombs. The ground beneath us shook, the walls and floors split apart all around, and rubble cascaded down upon us. We would never have been able to find our way back to the lighthouse entrance, so we took the first staircase to the surface we found that wasn’t already sealed off; rushing up the steps we found that the demolition of the cathedral itself was even worse than the underground.
Whole pillars and columns toppled down, bringing large sections of ceiling with them. Entire floors and towers collapsed in, and all around, the floor was falling away section by section into the catacombs and dungeons below. We wasted no time in rushing towards the nearest exit of the hall we emerged into, it looked vaguely familiar, and I guessed it was somewhere between the west wing and the main entrance. Rainbow soared expertly through the collapsing rooms, spinning and dodging the stationary and falling obstacles with absolute precision. Applejack took the most direct path she could, smashing through anything that got in her way, and if that wasn’t an option, she leapt over and ducked under.
Pinkie darted around lightning fast; her body stretching and bending like she was made of elastic to allow her avoid everything in her path, even if doing so looked like it should have been impossible. Fluttershy moved with such grace, while not as fast as the others, she naturally gravitated towards the safest route, if ever there was a split second choice, she always managed to choose the right path that would have the least opposition. Twilight made up for her lack of speed in her sheer variety of defensive spells she had at her disposal, blasting falling rocks to dust before they got close, calling in gusts of wind to carry her along when she needed a speed boost, or simply summoning a shield if something happened that gave her very little time to react.
As for myself, after all my experiences I was well equipped to deal with anything that was thrown my way. My keen eyes were able to detect threats before I rushed recklessly into them, I forward rolled under falling pillars, leapt over crevices in the floor, used magic to shift light debris out of my path, or simply stopped when I needed to quickly assess the situation and plan the best route. We were making good progress through the cathedral, even as it all fell into ruins around us. Before long we were dashing through a tall archway right as it began to collapse in on itself, arriving in entrance hall with the great stair case and the path to freedom through the arches overlooking the dock.
We sprinted straight for the exit, all individual strategy coming down to 'run and don’t stop' as we bolted for the light of the evening sun, the pillars splitting and the floor caving in directly behind us with every new step we took. It was so close, survival was within our grasp, but it seemed too much damage had been sustained, there was simply nothing left to support the floor between us and the exit, and before we could do anything it began to open up right before our eyes. Fluttershy, Twilight and I tried to slow down before we rushed right over the edge, Rainbow, Applejack and Pinkie all sped up in the hopes of leaping across before it grew too big.
In the end, it was just too fast for any of us and we were all plummeting into the depths, as the last of the entrance hall came crashing down. I twisted in mid-air, spreading myself wide to slow my descent, not that it would save me when we hit the ground. Fluttershy was trying to flap, but she just wasn’t a strong enough flier to save herself. Twilight’s horn was flashing and dying repeatedly, but whatever it was that was stopping her from teleporting still seemed to be in effect. Pinkie Pie was falling very slowly, like she was just more buoyant than the rest of us, but still fast enough to do a severe amount of damage when we landed.
Applejack simply raised her forelegs over her head, like it would somehow protect her. Only Rainbow was in control during the fall, swooping straight towards us, reaching out to me with her hooves as she closed the distance between us… and then she was struck on the head by a slab of broken tile, knocking her out cold instantly and resulting in her plunging down with the rest of us. It hadn’t been too far to fall before rescue came, and it came in an unexpected but welcome form. A loud, ear-splitting caw was what first alerted us to Harbinger’s return, next was the flurry of feathers as the massive crow swooped down upon us, swiping in with its great claws and clutching us all together between them, before flapping hard upwards to the surface once more.
Nothing that fell could slow the bird down; most of it was simply decimated as Harbinger flew through them like a bullet. As we were all held together in the cage like claws, I was able to see shackles around Harbinger’s legs with broken chains trailing from them, and a very familiar collar clamped around his neck, cracked and sparking, making it clear that it was now broken. It was obvious what had happened to Harbinger after we left him, and why he hadn’t shown up when we called, but he managed to escape and come to our rescue when we needed him most.
As we flew out of the cathedral, into the open air, I made a mental note to ask Fluttershy later what we could do to reward him… but that notion was brought to a premature end with the distant sound of a cannon blast. I only caught a brief glimpse of the projectile hurtling through the sky before it struck Harbinger directly in the back, burying itself between his wings, a cloud a fine red mist erupting from the wound as his body jerked and his wings stopped beating. Things happened so fast after that, we were all bundled together in the now very tight grasp of his claws, as we felt ourselves spiralling to the ocean below.
Harbinger hit the water and sank like a stone, his claws slackened from the force of the impact, and we were able to struggle free and fight our way to the surface. Applejack and Twilight dragged the unconscious Rainbow Dash between them as they kicked their way to safety. He hadn’t sunk far; we were too close to the shore when Harbinger was hit for the water to be particularly deep, but I still sucked in a massive lung full of air when my head broke through the surface. One by one, I saw the heads of my friends bob the surface and heard them coughing and sputtering before joining me in wading back to the beach.
The fog was completely gone; whatever had been the cause of it was presumably destroyed along with the cathedral. I trudged through the waist high water, my breathing heavy and laboured as it the waves lapped against me. Soaking wet and completely exhausted, I walked the last few metres from the sea onto dry land, turning around to look at what remained of the cathedral. It was almost like a postcard, picture perfect, the dying light on the setting sun reflecting off the scattered clouds, casting a deep orange glow over the remains of the cathedral as the last steeples and towers collapsed in on themselves, leaving only ruins of the once awesome structure strewn amidst the rubble, while the vast form of the Dreadnaught was slowly swallowed up by the pink hue of the cloud cover.
I looked about and saw that all my friends were around me, still alive and kicking, even Rainbow Dash whose head was tilting about, her eyes half open. Giving a satisfied nod, my legs gave out beneath me. I fell onto my rear end before flopping onto the sand, not even caring that it was sticking to my drenched clothes. I shut my eyes and blocked out the last light of dusk, images of Blueblood changing, and the army of monsters and soon to be monsters boarding the Dreadnaught swimming into my mind. We had come all this way, but we were too late… it was over. Blueblood had an insurmountable army and the most devastating weapon of war ever built at his disposal, and soon he would have the power of a god, the truth was undeniable… we had lost.