Sneak Peak At Next Chapter

Hi guys.
Between my Ponification requests, other illustrations and my new uni project possibly needing a rethink, I might be finishing my next chapter a little later than usual.
But here's a sneak peak, mainly because I'm just rather happy with how this scene ends.

“Ugh! Blast it”
Twilight fiddled one last time with the communicator clip. It wouldn’t respond no matter what she did. The colour was entirely faded.
She cursed herself. She should have kept a better eye on things.
The lavender unicorn felt guilt well up inside her chest. She’d hoped to have Spike here and give him a chance to help out.
Times were Spike had been involved in their adventures less and less and she’d been meaning to make it up to him.
‘Oh well. I’ll know to bring him with me next time’ she thought, though she didn’t want to think how many times she’d said that over the months. Steeling herself, she made her way into the near-ruined Crossfort. The door was half askew and burnt black from the ferocious artillery bombardments the mercenaries took part in.
Twilight had ordered the Royal Guard to pull back half a mile outside the Crossfort. If anything took off, she wanted as few ponies in the vicinity as possible. She hoped her own magical capabilities and experience would suffice if the worst were to happen.
The ponies of Equestria and Boulette were her responsibility at this time. She couldn’t let them down.
Opening the already ruined door, she made her way through the near-demolished government building.
The building’s interior structure was hardened metal underneath the brickwork and mortar. It wouldn’t cave in. According to the reports, everything that could come down had done so already.
Even so, nopony had chanced to look in yet. And unfortunately for Twilight, being the first one inside involved passing by every corpse the mercenaries had left scattered and sprawled through the buildings.
Nopony had been left alive. All personnel and residents at the Crossfort on the day of the attack had either been captured or killed.
Twilight found herself having to step over or duck under fallen beams and pillars frequently as she tried hard not to look into the faces of the countless dead as well as hold her breath. The smell was appalling and flies and worms were already gathering.
It wasn’t just security that had been massacred. There were technicians, secretaries, cleaners. Innocent ponies so gruesomely murdered for no better reason than being in the building at the time.
If this was what befell those the mercenaries didn’t take alive, she was dreading what was happening to those they’d captured.
At last she found it.
The communications room.
Heading to the desk, she paused, paled and tried hard to stop herself vomiting as she chanced upon the grisly remains of a yellow unicorn cut lengthwise in half, one side of him still slumped in his chair, the other lolling over the side, nearly touching the floor.
Clutching her stomach, Twilight looked up and came across an even worse sight.
An open elevator caked with dried red-brown blood, piled high with bits and pieces of pony, SWAT team equipment intermixed among the mess. The room more resembled the larder of a very untidy timber-wolf than anything else.
Unable to control herself, Twilight grabbed the nearest trash-can and vomited three times in succession.
She hadn’t been investigating for more than a day and already she was already regretting it.
Steadying herself she turned the revolving chair away so the sight of the halved stallion would no longer trouble her.
Even so, she felt sorry for the poor sap he’d once been. The wound was not clean. The process of cutting him in half, she hesitated to even contemplate, could have taken several straight minutes.
She checked the computer screen, using a small spell to clean the screen and keyboard. The computer had been shot multiple times through the monitor. Twilight grimaced.
It seems they gave an electrical appliance a more merciful death than some of the ponies in the room.
Regardless, they’d left nowhere untouched and nopony alive. Everything that could have been linked to them was taken or destroyed. They had missed nothing. Yet there hadn’t been any sign whatsoever of the mercenaries getting inside help.
They would’ve had to have come here before. If not them then perhaps Cascadius himself if he was as good as disguise as they said.
She gazed around, trying to clear her head. Difficult in the area she currently stood.
She noticed something. Something in the one place she really didn’t want to look.
On the wall of the blood-soaked elevator, facing the door, there was something had clearly been put up after the attack as it was completely clean.
She steadily paced over until the sight and smell was simply too much for her. Fighting nausea, she took the object in her magical grasp, off the wall and gazed at it.
Her eyes bulged.
It was a picture of her parents, Shining, Cadence and herself. Taken when her big brother had become an officer of the Royal Guard, a sergeant in the Royal Palace Grounds Platoon under Peregrine. She recognised Flash Sentry, Moondancer, Blizzard Wind, Lyra and several other friends in the background.
But what most grabbed her attention was the small knife that had been used to pin the photo.
It was placed right on Shining’s neck.
With hooves shaking on the ground, barely able to keep enough focus to maintain her magical hold, she turned the photo around.
There was writing at the back. Two words.

You Interfered

Hope everyone's looking forward to it.
And with a huge thanks for Mr Allan for recommending me to his friends.
He has over a hundred watchers at my last count so I might have my work cut out for me.
(If you'd like to do an audio reading of the Rejuvenation Play when next you're able, I would forever be grateful.)

Comments

[Bronycommander]

Sounds like a great battle