And then, finally, the time came for those large double doors to open up.
We made sure to spread out to either side of the double doors so we wouldn't be seen in case one of the guards peered inside; thirteen groups of five Changelings in the left hallway, twelve groups of five and our group of six on the right.
Deadbolt waited for us all to get into position, then unlocked and passed through the first set of doors.
Sitting where I did, he pretty much just disappeared from view for me.
With the spell being what it was, we would have no idea of what Deadbolt did next as we could not hear anything.
The plan was for him to go through the two sets of double doors and leave them unlocked as he closed them behind himself. For any guard looking in their direction it would appear as if they were locked as usual until they were to test them.
We wouldn't know if this plan would work or if any of the guards present in the reception hall just outside would be inquisitive enough to try the doors.
If everything went according to plan, Deadbolt would come back into the jail to let us know the coast was clear. If it didn't, it would be a group of armed guards instead.
Silence fell over the jail, a pressing quiet of expectation, of growing nervousness.
Camellia, Meadowsweet, Burst, Crook, and Tizzy were waiting together with me at the back of a sea of grey Changelings. The ponies were no less nervous than the rest of us, although poor Tizzy was the only one showing it by trembling uncontrollably.
Forsythia, Glottis, Cubitus, Featherweight, and Lighthoof were all with their own groups somewhere in the halls but mostly blended in with the rest of our family. Mostly, because I could spot Glottis' unique colours very easily a few groups up ahead of me.
Over a hundred faces were trained on those double doors, pensive expressions betraying worried thoughts.
They opened up again after an immeasurable amount of time had passed, and Deadbolt returned through them.
He turned to the left and nodded to the first group. "Path's clear. Follow me out."
The five Changelings he addressed as such stood up from where they were seated and followed the old guard out of the jail.
The leader of the first group on our side of the double doors started to count out loud. "Twenty, nineteen, eightteen..."
The countdown continued until he got to five, then they all stood up in preparation to move out as well.
"Four, three, two, one," their leader spoke, then moved out with his group.
The front group on the other side of the doors now took over the count, starting anew at twenty after having taken a few steps forward to sit closer to the doors.
This was the way it had been decided we would go; one group from the left, wait twenty seconds, then a group from the right, each making their way out into the courtyard and then taking a slightly different path from the previous one to escape from Canterlot.
Twenty five groups of five Changelings in all, with our little group of four Changelings and two Ponies making the twenty sixth group to leave the jail after everyone else.
Each time one of the front groups left, the ones behind them shuffled forward to sit closer to the doors again to prepare for when it would be their turn.
Each new group leaving the jail when their count was up filled me with a strange mixture of worry and relief; worry that they were now on their own out there, but relief that they were out there in the first place.
Each time those doors swung open to let us out, and not let guards in instead, was a potential five of us saved from going feral in this place.
Every time the count hit zero, that group would be free to find their way out into the world again, and hopefully be able to return to their previous lives once the princesses figured out how to defeat the Tantabus once and for all.
I spotted Cubitus and his group getting ready on the opposite side of the hallway, one of our sisters doing the countdown in his group. Once their countdown hit zero, he gave a quick nod in my direction before rushing out with them.
Another few groups followed after, then it was Forsythia's turn. Her face showed her grim determination as she waited for the countdown to finish, and she barely looked around at anyone else before leaving us behind.
Featherweight and Lighthoof were together in the same group, of course, on my side of the doors, and they eagerly bounded out once their time came.
Before long it was Glottis' turn to escape the jail, and as he left I felt my nervousness rise. He was the last of the Changelings whose names I could remember, not counting those in my group, and I had no way to check on their progress as they made their way out of the city.
I had to hope I would see them all again once we managed to get to a safe place, but there was little I could do to help them get there.
More and more of my siblings ran out, and I started to count down the groups who would be ahead of us.
Seven groups remaining, now six. Five. Four. Three.
The group in front of ours moved closer to the doors and started their countdown and we followed after them to close ranks.
I looked around at the faces of my five companions. We were the last to go and the closer we got to our turn the more it sank in that there were no guards coming back to meet us yet.
All of those who had gone before us had either avoided detection or were giving the pony guards the runaround in the city above us.
There were now a hundred Changelings out in the open, in the streets of Canterlot, making their way out to the best of their abilities, aided only by pony magic which hid the sounds they were making.
They could still be spotted if somepony were to look directly at them, but there was no indication that this had happened.
The group in front of us left us behind to join this reverse invasion up above us, an strange exodus of sorts, and the last one on the opposite side of the doors started their countdown.
"Let's get up and get to the doors, everypony," Camellia suggested.
We all got up on our wobbly legs and waited for the group ahead of us to finish their countdown.
They were staring at us from across the hall, each of their faces betraying how eager they were to leave this place behind.
"Good luck," their leader told us after finishing their countdown, and walked past us to disappear out through those double heavy doors.
Crook started to count. "Twenty, nineteen, eightteen..."
Time slowed to a crawl as he kept up the count, my heart thumping heavily in my chest.
"Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen," he continued unabated.
I looked back at Tizzy behind me to my left side. She looked as much like a nervous wreck as I felt I was, but was showing it more clearly as she was trembling from the top of her head down to the tip of her tailfin.
I dared a smile in her direction in an attempt to calm her nerves.
"We'll be fine," I whispered, trying to sound like I believed it myself.
Tizzy looked up at me with a weary look, then jumped a little as Meadowsweet to her right reached out with her left hoof to gently touch Tizzy's right shoulder.
"We'll be fine," the Earthpony repeated.
Tizzy dared a careful smile to her newfound Pony friend, giving a slow nod after.
I gave Meadowsweet a thankful nod as well, then turned to face forward again.
"twelve, eleven, ten," Crook spoke.
Camellia stood in front of me on my left side, and her horn start to glow slightly as she charged it in preparation for casting the spell she would have to uphold throughout our escape.
"nine, eight, seven," the countdown continued.
Burst stretched her neck muscles as she stood waiting in front of me to the right, most likely trying to keep her worries at bay.
"Six, five, four," Crook directly beside me on my right side stated, turning his head to look at me.
I gave him a smile and a nod in return while he finished the countdown.
"Three, two, one, go!" he finally spoke in that same rhythm he had been maintaining throughout.
We instantly pushed forward as a group, out through the first set of heavy double doors, continuing through the second set, and into the empty reception area beyond.
Deadbolt wasn't there, nor in his adjacent office. We didn't expect him to be, as he was in charge of keeping any guards from coming down here to block our way out, but it still gave the area an eerie vibe.
Up the stairs we ran, around the corner once we hit the landing, and on through the doors leading out into the courtyard.
Deadbolt stood just a few paces away from the door, his back to us, looking at nothing in particular.
He held his right foreleg out at an angle as if to point us in the direction we should be going, and Camellia and Burst turned to follow it.
"Be seeing you," he muttered under his breath as we passed him by, his old eyes following us from his peripheral vision.
I dared to look back, past Tizzy and Meadowsweet following behind me, and saw the old pony turn around to head back inside. There was a reason we were chosen to be the last group; it gave him a clear indication of when the jail would be empty.
Hundreds of similar Changelings were too much to keep track of, but once we passed him by with a couple of ponies in our midst, he knew the jail was empty and could lock it up.
I faced forward again at the same time as the light from Camellia's horn brightened and then enveloped the six of us.
All sounds around us immediately died out to a soft whisper, even our hooffalls sounding dampened as we ran.
Crook dipped his head down to bump his crooked horn against Burst's left flank, and my sister instantly steered us to the left into a small passageway between the palace buildings.
With the sound muffled the way it was, there was no use to trying to talk about where to go. Crook obviously knew the best way to remain unseen, even here on the palace grounds, and we were going by his expertise.
He repeated his motion almost instantly with a bump on Burst's right flank, and she ducked into another passage I had not even seen coming up ahead.
Crook continued to lead us from one dark passage into another small gap, through a service corridor, and finally into a building which turned out to be a goods storage room.
We paused momentarily as Crook jumped forward past Burst and started to search between the stacked items in this room, Meadowsweet making sure to close the door to the room behind us.
I watched as Crook moved a crate aside, then pulled open a trap door in the floor and motioned for us to go down it.
We did as suggested and ended up in a rounded passage with a trickle of water leaking past our hooves. It was clearly a drainage pipe if I ever saw one.
Crook closed the trap door behind us again after dropping down into the pipe with us, then used his magic while looking up at it.
With the sound muffled because of Camellia's spell I could only guess at what he was doing, but given he had moved a crate aside for us to get to the trap door in the first place, I could guess that he was covering our tracks by putting it back.
He then motioned in the direction we were supposed to go and we set off anew, following the drainage pipe until it opened up to a larger sewer pipe up ahead, with elevated stone walkways on either side of the flow of unmentionable contents.
I scrunched my nose up to try and protect it from the smells, but to no avail.
Crook took the lead now there was a way for him to pass us by without pressing us into the side of a narrow drainage pipe, and led us down these damp, dark tunnels following the flow of water down.
Without warning he suddenly went left when we got to a T-junction, now going against the flow of water passing us by. Then a right, continuing against the flow of water.
We reached another T-junction which split the water coming down into it to flow both in the direction we had come from, and to the right into another passage.
Crook turned right, then climbed into the first drainage pipe on the left. We followed it until the water was no longer running towards us, indicating we had gone over a hump in the system and were now going down again.
It opened up to another larger sewer pipe and he turned right anew, still following the flow of water further down.
I had the feeling that there were several interconnected sewer systems under Canterlot and he was making us go from one into the other, but I had no idea where we were in relation to the city streets above us or how far we had gone up or down since entering the system.
Finding my way back even to the storage room we entered through was going to be nearly impossible but Crook appeared to know where he was leading us.
Finally, then, he climbed up into another drainage pipe and stopped before we reached another hump which changed the direction the water flowed.
He reached above his head and tried the trapdoor located there. There was no give from it. Crook tried again, but to no avail.
He frowned and motioned to Camellia to stop her magic for a moment, and for us to remain quiet.
Camellia doused her magic, taking away what little light we had available to us.
"Let me try that again," Crook whispered in the darkness, and the sound of him straining himself followed shortly after.
"Do you need some help there, little brother?" Burst wondered.
"I think they put something on top of the trapdoor, like the crate before. Let me see if I can move it from here," Crook replied.
A green glow came off his horn as he reached out with his magic, and soon there was the sound of something heavy moving aside above our heads.
We all fell quiet as his horn stopped glowing, waiting to hear whether it had drawn unwanted attention to us.
Crook moved to push the trapdoor open again after it had remained quiet for the longest time. This time it did open, the hinges creaking as if they had not been oiled in years.
Camellia quickly cast her spell again to silence them even as Crook clambered up into the room above us, now illuminated again by Camellia's horn.
We followed him into another storage room, this one full of barrels and fewer crates than the previous one.
Crook motioned toward one particular barrel, supposedly filled with cider if the stamp on it was any indication, as if to say it had been the offending one having kept the trapdoor closed.
Once we were all up out of the sewer, he closed the trap door again and used his magic to move it back in place.
We were now partway to safety, in the storage room of what appeared to be a drinking establishment.