Chapter Two
It had been a month since Dominic had been told of his reassignment, and he was absolutely pissed, armed too the teeth, and lodged quite firmly in an airlock hatch as engineers planned to dislodge him. All-in-all, he'd had worse days. He could distinctly remember having to take down a Lesser Daemon with a killer hangover. One of the engineers left and returned later with a stick of butter, Dominic merely gave them an 'are you fucking kidding?' look, causing the engineer to grin sheepishly and begin lathering the area around Dominic with butter and pulling on him. After a few minutes of intense struggling, Dominic was finally freed with an audible pop.
"Next time, make the damn airlocks bigger." Dominic growled.
"Next time, don't wear an entire armory." The engineer retorted walking away.
"Smartass." Dominic muttered before beginning his trek to the drop pod station to await further orders. Just as he was about to enter, a message came over the speakers.
"Attention! All personnel entering the incursion are to report to their assigned drop pods immediately!"
"What incredible timing." Dominic said aloud, sarcasm lacing his voice.
"Nah, he was literally waiting for you to get to the door before doing that." A passing engineer informed him.
"Why is he such an asshole?"
"Well if you spend six years on a space station, you either go insane or become an asshole. The latter occurring ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time.
"And why aren't you and asshole?" Dominic questioned.
"I've only been here a week. Now we'd better get you hooked into your pod." The engineer told him, guiding him to a drop pod designed for battle mechs.
"Why's my pod so big?" Dominic asked, stepping inside his spacious pod and depositing his weapons and ammo on all the racks, surprising holding it all.
"Because you're a walking tank?" The engineer guessed, typing away on a console with a speed that would shame a ninja, of which there was one in the pod across from his.
"Why's there a ninja?"
"Shadow Clan wanted in on taking out the Daemons at their source."
"I see, how many are really in that pod?"
"Thirteen."
"I sorta feel a little sorry for any Daemon that goes up against thirteen ninjas, it's just, not a fair fight." Dominic said.
"Yeah, worst part is, there's actually fifty ninjas going along." The engineer told him.
"Okay, even I think that's overkill."
"Well considering that Tartarus is an entire dimension of nothing but fiery plains and molten hills... it's only a little overkill." The engineer theorized, finishing up whatever he was doing and pressing a button to start up the automatic systems that took care of everything required for an orbital drop.
"Wait, if all you had to do was push a button, then why were you typing on that console?" Dominic asked the engineer.
"Checking my emails." The engineer shrugged, walking away and pulling a beer out of his pocket.
"I wonder if I can connect to the Omninet in Tartarus." Dominic mused.
"Drop in three minutes. I repeat, drop in three minutes."
Celestia was dreaming of a strange land, full of open plains and towering mountains. In the distance she could faintly make out a pulsing blue sphere, sort of like the one in Tartarus, only much bigger and much brighter. Turning around Celestia gasped, standing before her was a miles long line of strange elongated cannons, each one being crewed by strange bipedal creatures made of metal. In the distance she saw a massive black... thing surrounded by what looked like fragments of Tartarus and swarming with all sorts of Daemons. One of the metal creatures below caught her attention, it was making a strange gesture. After three seconds, Celestia was about to look away when all the cannons opened fire on the black thing. After several seconds the rounds detonated on the over shell of the thing, causing small cracks to form. Turning around, she saw the entire horizon taken up by countless drab gray flying machines, and behind those was a vast array of massive metal pillars gushing fire from their bottoms.
Turning back towards the cannons, she saw they had fired another salvo. After the rounds impacted the thing, the flying machines and metal pillars suddenly picked up speed. The flying machines started launching smaller metal pillars and started firing infinitely more advanced guns than Equestrias simple wheel lock muskets. Once the first of the flying machines was over the thing, they began dropping hundreds of small black objects that detonated even bigger then the cannon rounds or small metal pillars they launched. Several minutes later all the flying machines had passed, leaving a massive web of cracks spread across the thing. That was when the metal pillars broke open, to reveal even more smaller pillars, which themselves broke open to reveal even more. The sheer scope of the weaponry being used against this thing was boggling Celestia's mind, especially since the creatures had weapons inside weapons inside weapons, a feat not even Pinkie Pie could possibly achieve.
The first of the metal pillars began to impact the thing, creating explosion the same size as the black objects the flying machines dropped, then came the bigger ones. Their explosions were easily big enough to take out half of Canterlot. But when the original pillars began to strike the thing, Celestia had to shield her eyes from the sheer brightness their explosions gave off. Looking once all the explosions had stopped, Celestia gazed upon a severely cracked carapace that was slowly knitting itself together, looking between the cracks Celestia saw a Gate to Tartarus. Sighing in disappointment at the strange creatures inability to breach the gateway, Celestia was entirely unprepared for the pillar of magical energy that dwarfed even the powers of the Elements to come surging down from the sky, impacting the thing and creating an audible, even from where Celestia was standing, explosion that emanated outwards from the impact site. Completely obliterating almost all of the thing and revealing the opened gate to Tartarus.
Celestia found herself impressed, whatever these creatures were, they had managed to harness the raw magical energies given off by the sun to destroy their enemies. Sensing a disturbance in the air, Celestia looked up to see tens of thousands of meteors falling towards the open gate. she also noted dozens of massive flying machines were also approaching from the blue bubble in the distance. Celestia could only stare in awe as the meteors changed course in midair to aim directly into the gate. Just as the massive flying machines were about to enter, Celestia was jolted awake.
"Ah, sister. Thou art awake. We must make haste if we want to continue traveling unseen." Luna cautioned her sister.
"Of course, Luna. I had the strangest dream, there were these metal beings attacking a Daemonic Shield with weapons the likes of which we couldn't possibly hope to comprehend, and then, they launched meteors into the open gateway the shield was protecting."
"I had the same dream too, sister dearest. But a dream it was not, I fear it may have been a glimpse at the world on the other side of the rift." Luna told Celestia.
"Princesses! Strange objects have been seen falling near the rift." A guard called out, skidded to a stop in front of Luna and Celestia.
"What do you mean?" Celestia asked, looking over at the rift, only to gasp as the strange flying machines she saw in her dream flew out of the rift. "Luna..." Celestia began, only for Luna to finish for her.
"... We may have a problem." Luna concluded.
"Why?" The guard asked, looking in the direction before going so pale as to almost be see through. "Oh... Should I rally the guard?"
"That, won't be necessary." Celestia told the guard, if these were the same beings from her and Luna's dream. Then nothing they could throw at them would even slow them down, much less stop them entirely.
It had been two months since Dominic had had arrived in Tartarus, and he had so far racked up a kill streak so long that he has his own server dedicated to keeping track of it. At this moment he was chasing after a fleeing Greater Daemon, whose blade had was currently wielding. Jumping over a cliff that would have otherwise presented an impassable obstacle, Dominic readied the Greater Daemons blade to deliver the killing blow.
Rainbow Dash was out scouting ahead with the Wonderbolts, when she spotted a heavily wounded Greater Daemon charging towards her, flapping her wings quickly she managed to gain enough altitude to avoid the Daemons charge. Knowing she had to get to camp and warn the others, she almost missed the metallic biped chasing after it, leaping over impossible gaps and running up the sides of cliffs, all the while carrying a sword that looked like it belonged to the, she now realized, fleeing Greater Daemon. She watched as it leapt off a rock jutting up at a forty five degree angle, and angled the the blade so it would stab the Greater Daemon through its skull.
After an incredibly long falling period, the blade finally pierced the Daemons skull, burying it up to the hilt in the Daemons head and pinning it to the ground. All that was going through Rainbow Dash's head was that this thing had just killed something, even though that something was a Daemons, it had still killed it. With a look of disgust on her face, she charged the strange creature to make it tell her why it killed the Daemon, just as she was about to tackle it, it spun around and grabbed her. The creature held to her as far away as it's forelegs could, and it seemingly scrutinized her. Rainbow felt herself blush under the creatures gaze and from the position she was in. After a few more seconds Rainbow heard the creature say something she'd have never thought it would have.
"IT'S SO FUCKING CUTE!!!" Dominic exclaimed cuddling Rainbow Dash to his chest like a plushie, despite her furious thrashing as he did so. "I wonder if there's any more..." Dominic thought aloud, heading in the direction of the ponies camp.
"Lemme go!" Rainbow Dash thrashed.
"Holy shit, it talks!" Dominic shouted, holding rainbow at arms length again.
"Of course I talk! What do I look like to you, a dumb animal?" Rainbow asked.
"... Yes?" Dominic asked, continuing on towards the pony camp, blissfully unaware of what he was about to stumble upon.
After two hours of walking/leaping, Dominic came across a cliff. Seeing as it was a normal cliff he decided to free-run up the side of it, completely unaware of what it truly was. Jumping off the ground, Dominic placed his foot on the cliff in order to boost himself up, instead he passed straight through it and faceplanted in someones pudding.
"HEY... OH SHIT!!!" A person called out as Dominic was wiping chocolate pudding off his face.
"Who leaves pudding in the middle of Tartarus? It's just a hazard." Dominic muttered,unaware that Rainbow Dash had escaped his grasp. Continuing onwards he came to a low rising hill, sorta like the ones that are there for the opening of every movie ever made. Taking a moment to get over the cliche hill, Dominic slowly walked up to the top to gaze upon... what appeared to be a massive encampment of ponies, griffins, minotaurs, weird insect things, and zebras with the occasional dragon or two thrown in for diversity, and all of it was being brutally massacred by Daemons.
Knowing what he had to do, Dominic steeled himself before targeting the area for a strafing run and running away as fast as he could. Did you really think he was gong to tank all those Daemons? He's a mortal, not a god. Just as he reached the hill, the rainbow maned pegasus from earlier flew in front of him with tears in its eyes.
"Please, you have to help them!" Rainbow begged him, sighing he unholstered his Redundo Rifle and charged into the fray.