Twilight's horn bathed the area in red shimmer which stopped abruptly. The princess herself groaned, legs shaking and sweating.
The green glow of Blinding Light's amulet brightened as the flow of time gradually returned.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" a loud, terrified scream came from everywhere around, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
A blast of orange light signalling Blaze's teleportation appeared in the hallway.
In response to his shocked expression, the Grandmaster just snickered, green aura around him turning into a bubble of emerald fire completely undisturbed by all of Leo and Connie's preparation.
"You took my sons and my wife. I will take your everything."
The sphere of power burst, flames devouring everything in their path. Mortar, chiseled stones, stained glass windows, half of princess Luna's chambers...
...the shocked thestral mare who had saved Straw's life, and the white griffon who was more an older brother to everyone in the squad than anypony ever before.
Straw, the princesses, and the others were out of the explosion's reach, but the helplessness on Luna's face as all her magical protections disappeared said it all.
In the middle of a sphere of disintegration, one very unpleasantly familiar to Luna, cleanly cut out of Canterlot castle, Blinding Light hovered, smiling.
"You finally face the consequences of your deeds, murderer!"
With echoing laughter, the Grandmaster disappeared and everypony's heads turned to Blaze.
Suddenly, Straw wanted to be anywhere else...
...but somehow he knew, just from the moment of looking at the broken alicorn, that not even another galaxy would be far enough.
Tears streaming from his eyes, and his mouth soundlessly opening and closing, Blaze stumbled towards the two small piles of ashes which remained of Cromach and Choking Darkness, scooped up one of them in his hooves, and let it fall back on the floor.
No other pony, alicorn, satyr, or griffon dared move.
It didn't help.
Head hung low and snarling, the spirals on the bronze alicorn's horn flared up.
"YOU!"
Straw nearly soiled himself as Blaze's gaze passed him. He'd seen the alicorn exhausted, worried, frustrated, and annoyed, but never before he'd seen him furious enough to scorch the remaining floor just by walking. The almost physical concentration of power next to him made him want to jump away, but he felt the alicorn didn't even know he was there.
Unfortunately, princess Twilight Sparkle, being slowly levitated upwards, wasn't so lucky.
"YOU JUST COULDN'T KEEP YOUR STUPIDLY CURIOUS MUZZLE OUT OF THIS, COULD YOU? YOU COULDN'T SIMPLY GIVE ME FEW DAYS TO FIND A WAY TO STOP THE DAMN SPELL! YOU JUST HAD TO FUCK EVERYTHING UP, YOU PURPLE PIECE OF WANNABE-INTELLIGENT SHIT! WHY COULDN'T YOU PUT THE BITCHY NOBLES IN LINE FOR A WHILE? DO YOU REALLY NEED CELESTIA AND LUNA TO EVEN WIPE YOUR ASS? YOU WORTHLESS, LITTLE BITCH!"
*Crunch*
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" the princess screeched as she got slammed into the floor, trying to soften the blow with her legs.
Groaning and coughing blood, she didn't stand up, she couldn't, not with bones poking through her skin in multiple places.
"DON'T YOU DARE FADE OUT ON ME!" Blaze flicked his horn, and the purple princess crashed into the ceiling.
Fiery spikes appeared around her, and struck.
"Grrrng... grrr... hshgnng," Twilight grunted, seemingly unbothered by the disappearing needles, at least physically. Blaze didn't want to kill her... yet, the spell was just there to prevent her from passing out.
"YOU AREN'T AN ALICORN!" bronze glow enveloped Twilight's wings, and ripped, "I AM A BETTER ONE THAN YOU, AND I AM USELESS! STUPID! LITTLE! FILLY!"
Twilight was now just twitching in his magical grasp, blood streaming onto both wings lying on the floor. With eyes rolled up, Straw knew the only reason she was still even marginally conscious was Blaze's curse.
"Stop!" a blast of white light shot Blaze down on the floor.
The relief from finally hearing princess Luna's voice washed over Straw. At last somepony would do what he couldn't and stop this slow slaughter.
The fact that this might not be the case became obvious as the crackling of frozen glaciers accompanied the transformation of the hallway into an ice cave.
"You... protect... her...?" Blaze hissed, standing up with ice crystals forming on his breath.
The purple princess, still hanging in the air, croaked as her neck deformed under pressure.
"STOP IT!" another arcane projectile shot at Blaze, but dissipated before reaching him.
"Luna... after all they did for you..." he shook his head, then his eyes went wide and Straw saw nothing more than raging insanity, "But I get it now. Chokey wasn't the obedient bat slave like you wanted your guard to be, and Crom's presence forced you to finally get off your ass and focus on diplomacy instead of just waving any griffon ambassadors away. Now you are happy again, aren't you? Once more you can sleep all day, drool over wet dreams of your subjects at night, be nothing but an annoying blue eyesore, and send the damn purple trash out when you want something done!"
*Boom!*
Twilight got launched through the disintegrated wall into the wide skies above Canterlot.
"Well," Blaze ignored the string of his drool freezing on the floor, "Now what will you do?"
"You have gone insane..." Luna whispered, "I understand your pain, but this?"
"You...? You... understand? Ha... haha... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You spoiled brat! Celestia protected you from everything after your return! The only time you had to stay strong was when I was forced to kill your bodyguard, and even then you just marched your ass to Nightmare and begged for the power to stand against me! You haven't faced a single hard day in your damn life!"
"Well, it wasn't like that, but I like where this is going."
"ENOUGH!" Luna's royal voice accompanied the gathering of magic Straw had never felt before.
However, for a moment he felt Blaze's attention wouldn't snap back to him and he acted on instinct. All this time he wanted to be a guard, and now he had the chance.
"Any physical boost will be enough, Nightmare. I must catch her!"
"Sure, but be quick about it, I want to see how this ends."
Lauching himself at a breakneck speed, he spotted the tiny dot of princess Sparkle slowly reaching the peak of her ballistic curve, and starting to fall.
Either Nightmare's sadistic desire to see the mad alicorn suffer more made it allow Straw to use far too much power, or he was in much better shape than he realized, but the desperate rush towards the falling princess was over much sooner than expected. Sadly, there was nothing for Straw to do about the massive bloodloss the princess was suffering. Careful not to aggravate the princess' wounds, Straw returned back to the scene of dying hope.
Staring in utter disbelief, princess Luna was barely standing, and her coat had been burnt to crisp in places. The landing of Straw's talons and hooves on the frozen floor grabbed Blaze's attention. The hippogriff stared into small pin pricks of the eyes belonging to somepony completely done. The constant *tink* *tink* of frozen tears hitting the floor wasn't helping.
"You too... heh heh heh," Blaze sniffled and shook his head, "So... yeah. In the end you win, Nightmare. Of course you would enjoy this, but did you have to make it hurt so much?"
Straw, Twilight Sparkle still on his back, took a step backwards. Blaze leaned towards him.
"DID YOU?!" he screamed.
"This has gone far too long, Blazing Light. I hope you can finally find your peace," Luna's loud whisper resonated through the hallway, and everypony felt sleepy...
...everypony but the spell's intended target.
Blaze just snorted in contempt at Luna's new attempt, and the makings of whatever final solution the princess was offering disappeared. Drained completely of power, Luna collapsed on the floor.
"I have spent most my days working out how to fight your magic, but you know way too much and have too much experience. So, it's much easier to just rip the divine power out of you directly." Blaze just said, "Now... the rest of this killer trash."
"Enough," announced a regal, stern, but warm voice.
"Oooooh," Blaze grinned widely, "I was wondering when the rump so fat that it makes the sun orbit it, so filled with cake that it developed its own ego, princess I-do-nothing-lestia herself would show up."
There was no warning. Steam burst from the ice under Blaze, and the area around turned into a miniscule version of the sun. It went on, and on, and on, while the solar princess focused on her dying student, and then at her carrier.
"No words can say how much I owe you, young hippogriff," Celestia smiled, horn glowing more and more as princess Twilight's breathing calmed down and the bleeding stopped, "This should give us enough time to get her to... the... hospital..."
She slowly turned her head, realizing something was very wrong.
The burning sun locking Blaze hissed out, and the alicorn walked out, unharmed.
"Funny thing," he said exhaustedly, "It's still so cold now. Why is it so cold? Why couldn't you save THEM? Weren't they important enough? I know you didn't like them like you love your student... but why did they have to die?"
Blaze's coat turned from bronze to gleaming black ice, same as his wings.
"Why isn't even the sun enough to warm me up when they're not here anymore...? I had one chance, and I failed. Like I always do."
Sitting down, Blaze spread his blackfrost wings, buried his muzzle into his hooves, and wailed uncontrollably, turning more and more into an ice sculpture.
"You win... I don't care anymore. Equestria can rot, or whatever Harmony wants. You can all go to Tartarus. There's nothing worth fighting for left."
The frost covering the hall melted along with him. Aside from Luna gasping for air, Twilight Sparkle locked in stasis by Celestia, and a sphere of missing masonry chewed out of the castle, nothing was left from what had just occured.
Apart from words that had been said.
"Why," princess Luna huffed, slowly getting up and narrowing her eyes at Straw, "Why did he call you a Nightmare?"
"Uhh, well..."
The combined burning stares of both princesses made Straw's heart skip a beat over and over.
"There's this voice talking to me, which Blaze said was called Nightmare."
For a second, Straw looked directly at two glowing points aimed at him, then the princesses' horns got blocked by something.
"I'm not even gonna bother casting a shield spell, because I know how futile it would be, but if you want to do something to him, then it's going to be over my charred corpse, your Highness," Leo, standing between princess Celestia and Straw, said shakily, "He got into this, whatever 'this' is, by accident, and he's been doing his best to not let it get him down. He's neither crazy, nor a monster. So stop with the evil glow, please, I can't keep this defiant stare up if my eyeballs start bleeding."
Straw's eyes misted over at the noble's intervention. However, his mouth fell agape when he noticed Connie was between him and Luna.
"Your Highness," Contradiction started carefully, "I know the matter of the god of destruction and you is a sensitive topic, but Straw's been under heavy scrutiny since Bucket alerted ambassador Cromach. As far as we know, Straw Basket might be Nightmare's last hope, and thus it is careful with him. They have been seen to even... cooperate for common good."
Luna just growled.
"If he's the last host then it's just more of a reason to get rid of him. You are advocating high treason here, especially after your leader's actions. It's regrettable, but he has to go."
"Our leader was baron Heavy Hoof, appointed by you," Connie's voice grew louder and firmer, "not a mentally unstable alicorn. Both sir Hoof and Cromach knew the risk and decided it was acceptable for saving an innocent life. After a bit more experience with all this, I have to agree. These guys are the only family which cares about me, not like the unicorn trash who threw me out of the house I grew up in because my magic and body weren't satisfactory, and I'll be damned if I let a unicorn or alicorn noble hurt any of them!"
"SILENCE!" Luna's royal voice silenced Connie's fiery rebuttal, "NIGHTMARE IS A PLAGUE WHICH HAS TO BE ERADICATED, NO MATTER THE COST! YOU WILL NOT RESIST JUSTI-"
Somehow, the click coming from Fortune's shotgun stopped Luna mid-word.
"Heroes... idiots," the satyr sighed, aiming the loaded gun at the head of unconscious Twilight Sparkle, "Blaze got one thing right - empty gestures, bravado, and ideals don't win you the fight. You know what they wrote on his statue, that you have to be ready to give everything to protect those important to you."
She had to be surprisingly strong to hold the weapon steadily with one hand while watching both princesses. Straw recognized the look on Fortune's face. It was the same look Blaze had when standing side by side with Cromach, the eyes determined to throw himself away at a moment's notice to give the griffon even the smallest chance to get out of trouble.
The fading death wish, threatening to return in case of the smallest disruption of recovering balance. The knowledge that the last chance at happiness was right there, and if it somehow got away then the world would forever be an empty, cold place. At that moment, the loss of Cromach or Blaze's death would be interchangable for the alicorn.
At last he understood what all of them really meant Fortune, no matter what she said. All it took was her facing two alicorn princesses while threatening to blow the third one's head off.
"-So, as Connie said, the Order is my family, not whoever and whatever my parents were. Some of them might be annoying to the point of madness," her eyes flickered between Connie and Leo, "but others are the reason why I'm here. Now, I don't know how good the quicksilver projectiles really are, but they are made to break through magic and weaken divine influence. They might not be enough to break the stasis spell, or they just might splatter her brains all over the floor. Are you willing to risk princess Sparkle just for petty revenge against somepony who didn't do anything to you?"
Luna was fuming, but Celestia's face betrayed her worry.
"Ehm," Straw took a step forward and gently pushed Leo and Connie aside, "I am willing to go peacefully and stay in the castle dungeons until you make sure I'm no threat, but last time I was here I had to run away from the observers, so I don't want to just sit there, defenceless. I will, if you really want me to."
"All of you will follow Luna to the special holding cells," Celestia said regally, "You may keep your equipment, at least until we decide what to do with you."
Fortune coughed menacingly.
"Execution is off the table." continued Celestia, "Although you'd do well to not attempt anything like this ever again, young satyr. Luna, take care of them, and then come visit me in the infirmary wing. We have much to discuss."
"Come," Luna said coldly, "and no sudden moves."