> Fel Equestria - Revised Edition
>  by DarkEquestria
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Fel Equestria - Prologue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Breakdown


Octavia burst through the door to the apartment she and Vinyl shared. her roommate a breath behind her. Gasping for breath as she heard the door slammed behind them, the clicks and snaps of all their locks going up in the unicorn's magic. The streets were still pandemonium, shouts and screams, the breaking of glass and the stampeding rush of hooves on the cobbles. The unicorn staggering back away from the door to join the Earth pony in the center of their meager living room.

“What... just happened?” Octavia managed with a ragged gasp amidst struggling to catch her breath. She jumped a little at a touch against her side, belatedly realizing that Vinyl had sat with a thump. The incredulous expression on the mute unicorn’s face held a horror that she could feel building in her own chest.

Slowly, haltingly Vinyl’s forehooves and ears began to move.

It was a banishment. I remember that much from school.

I don’t know where or how. But it feels like it sucked something out of me.

I feel… heavy, and cold… like I’ll never be warm again.

A sniffle from the still signing mare brought the tears in her eyes to Octavia’s attention and she wrapped her forehooves around Vinyl as the sniffles gave way to silent wracking sobs.

“Shhh, it’s okay… we’re okay. Whatever has happened, I-I’m sure we’ll get it sorted out soon enough.” Slowly she rocked the sobbing mare in her arms, feeling Vinyl clutch at her just as tightly. The sounds of a city in chaos penetrating the thin walls of their apartment as Octavia reached a hoof out to pull a blanket from the couch to wrap around them, her mute roommate feeling oddly chill in her embrace.

They clung to each other as the world outside continued in its madness.






Painkiller


        Sharp staccato hoofbeats on the marble floors echoed down the corridor as a dark gray stallion walked with measured tread towards his master's rooms at the palace, a silver tray supported effortlessly in his pale gray magic. His silvered mane was elegantly coiffed, his butler jacket trim and neat, Stirling Service paused for the briefest of moments to clear his throat before pushing open the doors to his Master's chamber.

Broken pottery crunched beneath his hoof as he surveyed the shambles of the room with barely hidden dismay. The breakable was broken, the unbreakable… well, had been given a good try anyway. He heard the scuff of a hoof from the balcony and began carefully picking his way through the devastation. Reaching the archway he regained his usual efficient tread. "Master, I have brought the…" He broke off at the sight before him. 

Prince Blueblood turned bloodshot eyes upon his butler, seeming almost to not recognize him. That raw gaze zeroed in on the tray bobbing lightly beside him and before Stirling could compose himself, the cover had been lifted, and the crystal decanter was drawn off in a field of deep blue magic. He managed a noise of complaint as it was upended to the white stallions lips. Stepping onto the balcony he eyed the glugging obscenely long pull of the brandy with displeasure, wincing as Blueblood finally stopped for a gasp and a cough.

Silently, he pulled the decanter from Blueblood’s magical grip and filled a snifter to rest on the stone railing before him. It was, after all, the more orthodox and acceptable way to get absolutely shite-faced if one truly must. He glanced at the food he had brought, deciding now wasn’t the time to try to get his master to see the sense in a base for his drinking.

A distant boom rolled across the city, echoing off the many-towered palace. Stirling glanced out over the sad spectacle of fires burning, smoke and ash and the distant but audible shouts and sounds of unrest. Several sections of the city were hazy with a green mist, riot control spells. “I take it… the younger princesses wouldn’t see sense then?” He murmured delicately, hoping not to press his master too hard.

“Did you really think that they would?” Blueblood rasped harshly, throat probably still raw from the potent spirits. “And we’ve lost the Archmage. Whatever he did to deal with them, it swallowed him up as well.” 

That caused Stirling’s eyes to widen. “Astral Glint is gone? How?”

"Nopony knows, maybe Twilight Sparkle was a worthy opponent after all. When they realized the trap they had walked into, they tried to fight their way out, as expected. Whatever spell he ended up casting turned them all into dust." Blueblood sighed and knocked back his snifter, gesturing for Stirling to refill it, which he hastened to do. " In any case, it's finally done. Once the city has been pacified, a joint proclamation goes out to the rest of Equestria. To let them know what has happened." With a sigh the white unicorn left the railing, snagging the brandy bottle in passing as he made his way back inside. "Tomorrow, the Age of the Unicorns finally begins."

Stirling heard him crossing the destroyed main chamber and into his bedchamber, the door closing softly behind him. The butler turned to look out over the chaotic city, eyes reflecting his sorrow while none was present to see it. “While the Age of the Alicorns has ended.” He murmured to himself… snatching up the refilled snifter and downing the burning liquid in a gulp. The tears that dripped down his face just the result of such potent spirits as he waited for it to soothe the ache in his heart.






Escape


Night Light snatched another tin from the cupboard, dumping the contents into a hastily found saddlebag. The panic, it lurked deep in his chest, but he wasn’t going to give it voice. He had to stay busy. He had to DO something. He tossed the tin to the floor with a clatter, grabbing a second, barely even looking at the contents before emptying it as well. His eyes darting over the shelves for something, anything else they could use. He could hear Spike’s frantic weeping and Twilight Velvet trying to console him. He gritted his teeth against his own tears as he furiously discarded a third empty canister and glared at the insufficient contents of the pack.

"Th-they're gone!" He heard Spike wail, the anguished cry was a stabbing pain in his heart. With a stifled oath, he slung the pack over his back and left the kitchen behind.

“We... don’t have much.” He grated out in a rush, realizing how close to panicked babbling he was and taking a breath to calm himself. Twilight Velvet looked up from the inconsolable drake she clutched to her chest, tears dashing from her beautiful eyes.

“S-surely there must be something… anything we can do!?” Her voice hitching at the silent look of anguish her husband gave her.

“Not here… not now. We’ll make for the train depot. If the Crystal Express is still grounded, we’ll get aboard and flee to Shining and the Crystal Empire!” He continued in the most commanding and reassuring tones he could. “We won’t b-be safe here, and you and I both know they’ll come for him!” His eyes darted to the pathetically bawling dragon clutched to his mate’s barrel. “We have to keep him safe. W-we p-promised T-twi-.” He choked off his sob in a strangled gasp, squeezing his eyes shut against the burning tears.

He heard Twilight Velvet’s sharp shocked gasp and whirled. Still half blinded by tears, teeth bared, horn blazing as it pointed towards the large glass window and the shadowed shape beyond, just as the window exploded into the room.






Antecedents


        “And it was only after this nearly bloodless coup that Equestria could begin to recover from over a thousand years of the previous dictatorship. Even so, the solution couldn’t be a perfect one, and modern Equestria has many challenges to find answers to.”

Glancing at the approved curricula that had been provided, Wishful Vision began to copy the bullet points onto the board.

“It has been 5 years since the Unicorn Council asserted its authority over Equestria, and while we are still reclaiming our position on the world stage, Canterlot has never been so bustling with new industry!”

Of course, it’s never had such smog problems either.

        “The withdrawal of the majority of the Pegasi Tribes occurred in year 4 since the foundation of the new Equestrian regime. They saw their services as unique and irreplaceable and expected their departure to ruin Equestria. They cared little for problems not connected to their all important weather control and often sparked heated debates at Council arguing against needed industrialization efforts if they would make more work for the weather service’s teams. It was often noted that most weather teams did not put in even 4 hour days. When it was communicated that they were expected to adhere to newly defined pay scales that classified them all as part time workers, they went on strike in protest and withdrew entirely in less than two weeks.”

“The Pegasi Tribes seceded because of an excess of pride. A certain number of pegasus families had the courage and foresight to object to the abandonment and remained loyal to Equestria. These families were taken in by the Unicorn Council and the pegasus quarter is now a small but recognizable part of every Unicorn city. 

"Some notes must be made of pegasus behaviour and learning abilities. Pegasi, in general, are fairly prideful and lazy creatures. It is often noted that this may lead to stubborn or disagreeable personalities that are not amenable to modern educational requirements. However, this may be simply the result of poor initial rearing. Pegasi foals taken early and rigorously introduced to proper concepts show much-improved absorption of societal education and etiquette. While understandably not able to fully integrate into a magic wielding culture, they often make excellent companions or much-prized servants in areas where long range flight is a boon.

“Of course the loss of the pegasi as a whole has made many old problems begin to resurface. The advent of Wild Weather was a foreseeable consequence and while it has made life harder, this also provides more opportunities for enterprising young unicorns in fields of weather research and management! There will come a day when Equestrian weather is just as orderly as it ever was, but it will be unicorns that manage it!”

Her sharp eyes darted across the attentive faces of the unicorn colts and fillies listening to her lecture. She continued to rattle off the provided information in a concise and professional manner as expected of a level three History teacher.

Because history is written by the ones left standing.

"Equestria's Earth Pony population has never made any effort to secede or take political issue with the new regime and as such have never given cause to distrust their loyalty to us. While there is an unmistakable majority representation in the labor pool, there are also many Earth Pony business owners and even representatives in the minor nobility! These are grand examples of their Tribe in our society, yet they meet with a certain amount of criticism from the layponies they labor to represent.

This is largely because of deep-seated instincts in the Earth Pony mind that any job that takes you away from the soil and crop growing is somehow a lessening of your worth and a betrayal of your nature. While understandable in primitive pony culture, this is mostly viewed today as an example of how short the distance is between the modern earth pony and their primitive gatherer roots.

While the unacceptably pejorative slur of ‘Strong backs, weak minds’ has undoubtedly been in use for centuries, it is extremely unfair to the individual. The common Earth Pony cannot help the pressures of their culture and the strong emphasis of their primitive instincts. Most Earth Pony families, which tend to be large as the same instincts encourage such a state, cannot manage their highly physical jobs and provide appropriate education to their offspring.

They tend to do much better when permitted their unwavering focus and being unburdened with more complicated management requirements. With proper beneficent managers, they can produce the highly efficient labor they are known and prized for while permitting their foals to receive the very best education their station in life will allow.

Despite these advances both socially and economically, it is worth pointing out that during the previous dictatorship, Earth Ponies were elevated to equal status, yet barely managed to attain minor representation in economics or politics. It was left to the unicorns to deal with these facets. The artificial uplifting efforts of the usurper were aimed at enforced evolution of the race. While this might be seen as laudable if misguided, it is vital we recognize that their deeper reliance upon instinct and more primal urges means they need slower and more firm guidance, not anarchy to thrive.”






Slam


The cell door creaked badly as it swung ponderously open, hinges in bad need of grease squealed their complaint for the movement. And as Prisoner 37 was cast into the cell where she would likely spend what remained of her life, the door gave the greater complaint. Her heavy chains rattled as they were fixed to an iron staple secured deep in a thick wooden beam, and they made more of a racket than she did. The spine-chilling screech was followed by the reverberating slam as the massive steel door swung closed, the sound of bolts being secured and locks turned faded into silence. Faint hoof steps fading into the distance. The darkness was nearly as complete as the silence. Heavy and oppressive. Only a faint line of light from a slow burning torch in a wall sconce showing where the door was.

And then the silence was broken by muted sobs.

And the crazed giggling started, and the laughter, foul curses and mocking catcalls from the cells surrounding 37. Soon the noise reached a manic crescendo before quieting down only to be met with a soft unintelligible murmur from their new block-mate. Now and then over the endless, timeless dark of their existence, they taunted and mocked her. Communicating the misery of their lives onto a newer, fresher target, yet all they ever got was that same endless murmur until some weeks later another cell was filled and they had better entertainment. For 38 was a screamer, crying his innocence to the mocking dark, easily goaded into howls of rage or sorrow, they made good sport of him, well, until he managed to somehow choke himself with his own chains.

The cell was cleared, and readied for the next occupant. No pony was punished for their hoof in his demise, there was quite literally no worse place they could be sent. For ponies on the Black level knew they would never leave it, so long as life remained in them. There was no rehabilitation, no point to even trying. Their crimes would never permit reintegration. 38 had just found an express path to removing the problem he ponified.

Over the years, the cells around 37 emptied and were again filled. Sometimes with the mad, the malicious, or the sad. Yet never 37’s cell. All that ever communicated to the outside was the clink and rattle of the chain bound to the steel collar about 37’s throat, and the softest of murmurs. As time passed, even 37’s gender was forgotten, just as everything else about his or her life was. 37 was a black level inmate, tracking the slow path to the grave, just taking slightly longer about it than most did. The guards eventually had a pool going on when 37 would finally check out. Had the inmate known that, it might have brought the ghost of a smile.

Where 37’s bits would have been put, would never be known.






Homeward


The blast of steam from the railway engine signaled its final stop on the line for the day, ponies stepping from the passenger cars onto the broad platform of Ponyville station. Where once the platform would have been crowded and the train would have been making ready for the late afternoon Canterlot segment, that run was now handled by a private, high-security line that did not make stops in Ponyville. 

The station house was growing old, the paint faded and beginning to peel, most of the Equestrian Railway funds were going to more lucrative lines. Once the gateway to the City of Unicorns and the site of the Castle of Friendship Ponville had had its moment of fame, now the anemic Ponyville line from Appleloosa was almost an afterthought. Still, regardless of how out of favor a town became, there was always a need for trains, and the fares to keep Ponyville connected at some level were enough to make it worth it to keep the non-priority southern tracks in good repair, more or less.

The brick red stallion felt the wooden planking of the platform creak under his weight as he stepped down from the train car, his eyes drawn down to them for such a distressing complaint. The years had brought change to the one time Apple farmer, brother to the Element of Honesty. Still a mountain of a pony, his size no longer had the heavy set healthy bulk he had once enjoyed. His long wheat colored mane and tail had been shorn close, a health measure since lice and other complaints plagued the camps from time to time. It was just now beginning to lengthen enough in the front to show a fringe of forelock. Prison life had also left its mark, in the wear lines of the heavy harness and the faint ridges of old lash marks.

Still, he had served his sentence, and given them no cause to prolong it. And now, he was home again, having managed through favors owed and old-old family connections to scrape up enough for a one-way ticket across country through towns who had no use for ‘a convict'. Four long years and they lay heavy upon both the stallion, and the town he'd dreamt of every night he'd been away.

Confident the old platform was going to hold him for now, Big Mac took one slow step as his eyes lifted, only to freeze, hoof upraised, as his gaze locked with another pair of green eyes, brimming with tears. The platform had cleared of the few other passengers as he lingered and now was empty of all save for one other pony. The dark pink mare closed the distance slowly while he continued to imitate a statue.

“S-so you made it h-home.” Cheerilee stammered, voice tight with emotion. The earth pony mare looking him over with deep sympathy in her large expressive eyes.

“Eeyup.” He husked in a voice like gravel from disuse. Slowly lowering his hoof back to the ground, feeling his cheeks beginning to burn, thankful for his dark coat and cursing the laconic nature that drove all words from his head and left him just staring at the Ponyville schoolmarm, swallowing with a throat suddenly very dry.

Slowly she lifted a soft, gentle hoof to touch his chest, concern in her eyes as she traced the worn harness mark across his breast. Her sorrowful eyes lifting to meet his again, so expressive and deep. “I-I missed you.” She breathed, and followed it with a meep of surprise as two dark red forelegs clutched her tight against a red-furred chest hitching with unexpressed emotion. 

The tears came hot and hard, forcing him to grit his teeth against the force of the raw anguish that tore at his heart. Sorrow and hurt long bottled up, threatening to finally bubble over. Two dark pink forelegs clutching him back with strength only an earth pony could muster, a creaking, crackly squeeze that communicated so much more than mere words could oddly helped quiet the maelstrom inside him, for now.

“Shhhhh, it’s alright, c’mon. Let’s go home.” Cheerilee husked in a voice made nearly as raspy as his by sudden emotion.

He took a breath to say something… Anything. To tell her he loved her, that he never wanted to leave her again… “E-Eeyup.” He managed to rasp back, pausing to toss his grip to his back before letting the mare lead him towards her little cottage.






Rouse


Octavia awoke, drawing in a long slow breath, not wanting to move from the warmth of the bed, or let go of  the precious thing curled against her belly. A little smile curving her mouth as she regarded her sleeping marefriend.

Vinyl had her nose nuzzled deep into the gray mare's chest ruff, the soft warmth of her slumbering breaths just making Octavia clutch her more tightly. A pair of limp white forelegs wrapped around her barrel as they lay in the tangled nest of their blankets.

When they had stopped being just friends and had become something deeper was hard to say. It had been a long, incredibly subtle shift during the busy professions they both enjoyed. But the evening she acted upon a whimsical impulse and kissed the mute, showy unicorn was a memory she'd treasure forever, right next to the stunned expression Vinyl had been wearing when she drew back from it. Tavi teased her that she had ‘left her speechless'. A remark guaranteed to get a patient eye roll and a raspberry from the DJ.

They complimented each other in so many ways and exploring a more intimate relationship had added a new warmth and light to their lives, even as the world around them became increasingly depressing and dreary.

Vinyl's ears twitched as the clock tower began to toll the hour. Eight o'clock in the morning. If allowed, the DJ would sleep til Eleven if she could get away with it, and Octavia was sorely tempted to not only let her but join her in subtle protest of mornings and all they stood for. 

She had a noon recital, however,  including time spent rubbing elbows with the noble elite. If being honest with herself she could barely tolerate these events, but the orchestra needed sponsors if they were all going to keep their jobs. It bothered her, though, how poorly the Canterlot earth pony community seemed to regard her. As if keeping her job and paying her bills was somehow betraying them.

With a resigned sigh, she gently released her marefriend, giving her a soft kiss as she began scooting towards the edge of the bed to start her morning. Tenderly pulling the covers up and over Vinyl, smiling as the unicorn instinctively migrated into the warm hollow her body had left in the mattress. Vinyl insisted she wasn't cute, but Octavia knew better, she got to see the adorableness of snoozy morning Vinyl much too often to buy that anymore.






Habit


Blueblood took a measured sip from his glass, the slightly watered whisky burning his throat pleasantly as the ice cubes clinked against each other. He frowned, Stirling always made a point of decorum when he had a visitor by icing his whisky. It slowed him down, which was the whole point, keeping him from draining an entire bottle over the course of his meeting. Still, the ice in his glass annoyed him.

But not quite as much as his ‘guest' was, however.

        The frigid pony standing before his desk, Mistral of House Arcana, was a pain in the plot at the best of times. Her snide nasal voice would quickly become nails on slate after a few minutes, especially when she used that wheedling tone to try and secure some concession that was sought after. She was aptly named, a frost white coat, elegant mane styled into the diamond encrusted curls that were currently in vogue. Her blue eyes so pale one would be forgiven for thinking she was blind. Yet it was all just a complementary theme for the absolute glacial frost of her personality.

        “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Mistral?” He smarmed in that oh so special way he had for speaking to anypony beneath him. Which meant everypony who he graced with his presence. Cultured and proper, while implying by tone that he was being ever so gracious and kind to even be breathing the same air. He delighted to see her pupils shrink in fury, it pleased him to no end that he could get under her skin so easily.

        The look in her eyes was the only outward change to signify his success with the tactic, her face might have been carved from the ice it resembled otherwise. A pity that.

It was nearly a half hour before she left, Stirling having been waiting in the antechamber to bow her out politely before letting his distaste for the mare show as he came to attend to his master. His glass was empty and the stallion in question was slumped in his seat, his eyes closed. A small wooden case of ampules lay open before him. One missing, no doubt the empty sitting in the silver injector syringe next to it.

"Master?" Stirling asked quietly and flinched almost imperceptibly as Blueblood opened his eyes. They now glowed a pale blue with the brimming mana brought from use of the accelerator drug. 

"That frozen… cunt.. She's go-ing after Fancy." He slurred out, blinking languidly with fatigue. "Get the word out." He huffed in a sigh. "I can't help him this time." Slowly he lost the last of the tension in his body and slumped heavily against the armrest of his chair. "T-tell ‘im to get out… wish him… luck."

Stirling watched his master drift into a gentle sleep. A strange and unique reaction to the accelerator, which left virtually every other unicorn who used it crawling the walls. It ached his heart to see the last son of the Blood lost in addiction. And yet, nothing else brought him peace such as this… even the whiskey only helped him get through the day now. He rarely slept without the drug anymore. As quietly as he could, the aging butler slipped from the room and down the hall towards the sleeping chambers.

Passing the door to his master’s private rooms, he paused beside a dark mirror to adjust the collar of his jacket. Horn lighting as he drew a silver comb from his pocket, he held it for a moment in his magic before with a swift movement he tapped the mirror, releasing a melodious crystalline chime. Anyone watching would see him grooming in the mirror so long as the note of the chime remained. Giving him scant few seconds to scratch a hasty missive upon the dark silvered surface of the mirror with the comb. Bright white lines forming shimmering words shining out from the enchanted surface before melting away into it.

The chime faded away and he pocketed the comb, aware of the shaking in his grip. He closed his eyes, willing the strain to ease. He had much to do to look after his master’s interests, and he couldn’t afford weakness right now.

Miles away, in a lower district, a similar dark mirror chimed, and a hastily scrawled message shimmered into view.

‘They are coming. Get out!’




> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Synapse



The chalk slid across the floor in a smooth, practiced movement, leaving a bold solid white line. The faint susurrus it made against the smooth stone a counterpoint to the panicked breathing of the Earth Pony mare who lay at the center of the slowly growing infernal diagram. Her peach colored pelt and dark green mane were well brushed and clean, a rarity for a pathetic mud pony. Still, they had their uses. Bound, blindfolded and gagged, she was neither a willing participant to this little ritual, nor of a moment's concern to the unicorn who held the chalk in a bright, blue magical field. His eyes following the creation of the summoning circle with almost fevered interest.

As the perfect circle was closed, it began to glow faintly, gleaming with faint crimson light in the darkened chamber. The chalk never paused as it began to trace the additional glyphs and supporting constructs around the perimeter. As each was completed, it also took on the reddish gleam of the circle, and the light of it grew slightly brighter in response.

This was true art! The stallion's eyes gleaming in the glow of his creation. One couldn’t express one’s personal skill and talent with some uncouth silvered foil circle stamped into the floor by filthy workponies! Only with the infinite expression of chalk and effort did you create something beautiful and ever changing!

His mental rhapsodizing was interrupted as the mare gave a writhing struggle. True her bonds were as secure as any he ever tied, still, couldn’t she just keep quiet and not spoil his enjoyment of this moment?! 

Carefully stepping into the circle he wrapped his magic around her braided mane and gave it a savage jerk, arching her head back as she gave a muffled squeal around her gag.

“Listen to me, you little bitch.” The stallion snarled. “I’ve waited for too long to have the time to relax and enjoy myself a little, and you are not going to fuck this up!” His magic snatched a dagger from his work table, pressing the glittering blade against her throat, the mare stiffening in terror. “Yeah, that’s right… you feel that, don’t you?” He pressed a little more firmly, making her whimper as it nicked her skin. “So be a good little bitch, and maybe you keep breathing a little longer, got it?”

Taking the dagger from her throat he released her mane, letting her crumple to the floor in a sobbing little heap. Stupid little cow! Just as carefully he stepped out of the circle, eyes watching for any accidental smudging of its circumference. And as quickly dismissed his victim from his thoughts again. Ultimately, what she did or didn’t do wouldn’t matter in the least. With a huff he tossed the silvered dagger back onto his work surface with a clatter and took some comfort in seeing his victim flinch and tremble.

He ran a soft hoof through his slicked back blue mane, ensuring none had fallen out of place in his unaccustomed haste. A slow smirk crossing his white furred muzzle. In silence he returned to his careful work preparing the circle, now pulsing with lambent light brightly enough to illuminate the chamber far more than the single lamp on his table.

Soon enough the circle was complete, the now bright crimson glow filling the workroom, casting dark shadows on the walls and ceiling. The unicorn's eyes were wide and frenzied with joy as he drank in the light and the deep hum rising from his creation. His horn glowing with soft blue light as he fed his magic into the spell. The pressure built behind his eyes as more and more of his magic flowed down into the matrices, the discomfort drawing a soft, foalish giggle from his throat.

Soon, it will all be worth it.

Letting his neck relax, he lowered his horn towards the circle, closing his eyes and concentrating on feeling the emanations from the spell. The sense of it flowing over him as it reached out passed the veil of the mortal plane and connected with another realm. The thrum of chaotic power sent a slight tremor through the floor beneath his hooves and he grinned. He had what he wanted. Reaching out into the depths of that other realm, he let his arcane sense brush out against the burning aether, groping searchingly for something with sentience.

It mattered not what he found, all that mattered was that the spell would force whatever he snared to do his bidding. And even as that delicious thought passed through his mind, he felt something with substance brush against the questing sense of his magic. Quickly he wrapped his summoning around it and gave a firm ethereal tug through the spell matrix. His grin growing triumphant as he began to murmur the words of summoning. The circle glowing brighter and emanating heat as he drew back his catch through it.

His gaze took in his chosen vessel, now squirming in the increasing heat within the circle. The demonic entity he was pulling into the mortal realms would burn her from the inside out, but she would provide the physical body that would both sustain it upon the mortal plane and the ‘price of admission’ for its entry. The summoning circle would also brand that entity with his will, force it into submission to him, and he would have precisely what he desired… a tamed infernal succubus bound to his service.

Reveling in the delights to come, he blinked as the… ‘weight’ of the entity upon his tether grew. He had caught something old most likely. A demon of depth and complexity and power. Like a fisherpony with a challenging trout on his hook, it made him grin to think of breaking such a being to his will as he strengthened the spell to compensate. And he stifled a mad cackle as he felt the moment of synapse approaching. The single instant when the entity on his line would fill the space sealed in the circle and he would have a slave fitting to show his power and grandeur to his peers.

He shivered as the demon neared the gate, brushed against it…

And stuck fast!

His eyes snapped open as crimson flames swirled into being within the circle, the rumble beneath his hooves growing worse. The spell matrices spurting fire in random belches as he struggled to understand what was happening. The gateway was binary, either you were on one side of it, or you were on the other! So why did it feel like the entity was halfway through it and straining against his tether? That should be impossible! One did not just alter the rules governing the transition between realms at a whim!

Growling, he steadied himself and leaned into his magical effort, his horn blazing with blue fire as bolts of blue magical energy flared out to strike various parts of the circle, enhancing the spell, strengthening the summoning. He was not some two-bit amateur! He was the Summoner! The Master of Demonology of the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns! His power and knowledge was unmatched in the empire, and he would be damned before he let some random demon make a mockery of his art.

He would not allow it!

The strengthening spell thrummed with the force of his magic as he clenched his teeth, feeling the tickle of his freshly acquired nosebleed. It would all be worth it, every ache he gathered he would revisit on his bound slave ten fold! He let the thought of that sublime revenge bolster his ragged gasps for breath as the weight upon the tether began once more to move. Impossibly wedged into the gate, he was making progress in hauling it through and his bloodied lips curled into a gleeful snarl of victory. The crimson fire within the barrier, swirling around the struggling, panicked mare grew denser, and hotter. 

Almost…. there….

This single summoning would become the foundation of a new series of experiments, once the demon was bound and made to tell him everything, tell him the whys and wherefores of this unprecedented experience. Grunting with strain, nearing the end of his stamina, he gave a final magical pull and the weight upon his tether finally popped free of the gate. The barrier now full of blazing red energy, completely obscuring his offering from view.

Yet at the instant it finally came free, ceasing it’s insufferable dwelling between the two realms, a sudden pulse of power struck the gate from the other side. A blast of purple light flared into eye searing brilliance within the shield, bouncing around the inside of the barrier before bursting into brilliant sparks. His dazzled squinting eyes watched the sparks fall, each one flaring into a tiny strobing flame upon striking the stone. They fell over the area within the circle. The floor… and the mare, who jerked in pain and struggled as he caught the sizzle of flesh and burning hair and… rope?

Time slowed as his eyes widened, the rope binding her tail to her neck was burning hungrily from a spark that had alighted upon it. Her flexing, agonized body straining at the weakening bond before with a sharp snap her tail came free. The braided length of it lashing in her distress… and wiping a section of the circle away with its motion.

Oh Buck.

He didn’t even realize he was screaming as the glow of the summoning circle died. He bolted, wheeling around and heading for the door in panicked retreat. Okay, the mare’s pain and terror should distract it. And any time it spends savouring her will give me time to- He skidded to a stop as he discovered the end of the room where the door should be was blotted out in the darkest shadow he had ever encountered. It was as if the entire other half of the room simply no longer existed.

For a second, the only sounds were the gagged sobbings of the mare behind him and his own harsh gasping breaths.

And then the darkness spoke.

“Well, well, well… Nebulae Gaze. How is your dear father?”

His pupils narrowed to pinpricks… that voice! He knew that voice! And yet he couldn’t place it. His mind running through all the demons he knew by name, all the ones he had ever interacted with as his jaw worked soundlessly.

“What? No welcome? No polite greetings? I’m shocked!”

He staggered back a step, frantically forcing his reeling brain to shape a ward between him and the now visibly writhing blackness. Golden light coalesced into a scintillating barrier between him and his now unwelcome ‘guest’

“Tsk.. tsk.. You haven’t the strength for that.” His addressor chided playfully, before a tendril of inky darkness thumped his shield sharply, causing him to cry out in pain as it cracked and shattered like glass. He slid numbly to the side, his rump dropping to the floor as he sat untidily, trying to clear the jangling bells in his head. “Mmmhmmhmm.. Have you remembered my name yet? I’ll admit, I’ll be rather put out if you’ve pushed it far enough out of your mind to forget entirely.”

The room became dreadfully silent.. A dense, waiting silence broken only by the sounds of two pained ponies. Slowly his mind cleared as he gasped for breath, and in that moment of terrible clarity, a name came to mind to match that voice.

“C-Cadance?” He hazarded with a trembling whisper.

“Awww, you do remember! I was worried for a moment!” He heard the sound of hooves clopping together, applauding his answer. The liquid seeming darkness melted from the air to pool upon the floor of the chamber like a pool of spilled ink that washed out across the stone around his hooves, leaving its occupant finally visible.





Before him sat, at apparent ease, quite possibly the most beautiful mare he had ever seen. Her body young, strong, and in a healthy prime. Her coat was a dark pink, many shades darker than his memory told him it should be. Smokey orange eyes that glowed with their own inner fire, slit pupiled and predatory.

She was bodily a size or two larger than she had been at her banishment, nearly reaching Celestia’s height and adopting a fairly similar pose to her long lost mentor. Her wings were massive now, even tucked against her sides as they were.

He noted all of this in passing, his focus drawn to her horn. No longer a fluted, rounded spiral, it was blade edged and pointed, it’s dull red surface pocked and pitted, as if all the soft edges had been melted or cut away, leaving only this wicked looking core.

Last to come to his attention was her mane and tail, still striped in it’s usual colors, but now waving in an ethereal breeze, undulating and curling in slow but constant motion. Small hearts and arcane symbols floated around in its nebulous depths, along with what looked to be lengths of pink and red chains.

Mouth working without noise, he realized what… no, Who, she had to be. And seeing the mounting horror in his eyes, the infernal alicorn smiled. A terrifying grin of fangs and razor sharp teeth which almost made him piss himself to see.

“Y-you should be d…” Nebulae Gaze trailed off, taking a deep breath as his mind raced.

“Dead? Oh you poor little fool. You stood there and watched us be banished to Tartarus. Not whisked away to the Badlands, or the moon, not imprisoned in the Crystal Empire for a thousand years. Banished. To. Tartarus. You don’t send things you wish to die to Tartarus!” Cadance laughed a crazed little cackle and in that moment Nebulae Gaze took his chance.

The silvered dagger leapt off the table in his desperate magic, a glimmering blur as it was flung towards the archdemon. Silver was harmful to the infernal, it should at least distract her! Even as he released it he forced his aching horn to light again as he summoned the power for a teleport. All he had to do was get away! Just put some distance between him and the corrupted alicorn. Then he could sound the alarm, then he could-

The sudden crushing blow to the back of his head drove him to his knees, his spell fizzling out as he tried to regain his hoofing. Grunting, tasting the coppery foulness of blood in his mouth as he struggled frantically to remain conscious.

“Tut tut my little pony. We can’t have you leaving yet! The fun is only just starting!” The cheerful, malicious voice of the demon taunted him as he crumpled sideways, the floor rushed up to meet him, but he slipped into blackness before he even felt it.





> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bindings



Cadance hummed a cheeky lullaby as the unicorn slid to the floor with a limp thump. She regarded the badly dented brass trashcan held in one solidified tendril of her shadow. Unicorns rarely ever considered the utility of a good bludgeon! The rest of the inky mass spread slowly out across the floor, except for one tendril, which writhed and shook, hissing and foaming as it bled from around the glowing silver dagger that pierced it.

The Archdemon gritted her fangs as the sharp biting pain of the wound assaulted her. The silver eating hungrily at her demonic flesh. Her shadow, solid as it was at the moment, counted as an extension of her own body, including the sensation of pain from an injury. She studied the pierced tendril… wondering how to remove the hateful spike of pain when it would burn and injure any part of her that touched it. Lowering the injured mass of shadowstuff to the stone floor she smashed the trashcan in the other tendril against the hilt of the blade with a dull thud. Giving a twisting wrench, she tore the tendril free of the smoking length of the now pinned weapon.

Inky ichor oozed from the injured tentacle as it melded slowly back into the shadows from whence it came. The demon giving a little shiver as she shook off the residual agony. Yes, it was better than a dagger in the eye, but… not by all that much. She glared at the spike of gleaming pain-metal, still sizzling and sputtering with heat from contact with demon flesh. With a snort she put it from her mind for now, tossing aside the now ruined and misshapen lump of brass that had once been a wastebasket. It gave a dissonant clank as if protesting it’s abuse. 

Cadance took a soft breath, her ears pricking forward as she listened hard. Two strong heartbeats, one slowed with the loss of consciousness, the other all a pitter-pat from pain and terror. Nothing else in the range of her generally superior hearing. From the feel of the stone all around them, they were deep... a basement or sub-basement of a large structure. Considering what Mr. I-Like-To-Feed-Mares-To-Demons had been up to it was most likely nopony knew this room even existed.

Perfect.

Her shadow rose to engulf the now still form of the unicorn as she paced by, back to the edge of the now powerless circle. Slitted eyes taking in the sobbing form that lay huddled within. She winced at the blackened, charred marks which marred the earth pony’s soft peach coat.

Oof, Twilight, I know you never like leaving things to chance, but... harsh!

She’d have to fix this immediately. Slowly she approached her, weighing the riskiness of using magic. But considering the illicit demon summoning that had been practiced here to put her in this position, it was most likely that the chamber was well warded against outside discovery. Narrowing her eyes she lit her horn, emerald fire flaring to life along the bladed pike.

“Shhhhh, it’s alright.” She soothed, her magic tugging at the straps holding the blindfold in place. “I’m getting you free. Just keep still for me. There’s a good filly.” She schooled her expression to softness as the padded blindfold came free and she tossed it aside. She held very still as the young mare blinked bleary green eyes, slowly focussing, to view her rescuer. Any second now…

A sharp muffled squall and the panicked writhing of a still bound body rewarded her patience. She smiled thinly, still carefully keeping threat out of her expression. “Yes, I know I’m scary looking. But do keep still, dear. It’s hard to undo the ropes while you’re thrashing about.” Her tone was honed from decades as a foalsitter, and while the mare’s pupils were still shrunk tightly in terror, her struggles did slow.

The ropes that held the Earth Pony flared with verdant radiance before beginning to dissolve into dust with a mute sizzle. They vanished in a wave from neck to tail, and Cadance carefully eased the mare into a more natural position, taking it slow to keep the stiff muscles from cramping. She kept a weak field around the mare, a gentle, hopefully reassuring presence, which also allowed her to very gently assess her burns.

Ugly looking, and certainly painful, but more superficial than deep. Bless you Twilight, I should have had more faith in you.

“These burns should heal up alright, I’m sorry about them.” She murmured, letting a pulse of healing warmth flow through the mare’s body. Taking it slow and gentle, careful to soothe the pain, not aggravate it. “This will take a minute or so, what’s your name, dear?”

“Mmmmph!”

“Oh! I’m so sorry dear, let me get that!” Carefully she undid the gag and pulled it free of the mare’s gasping lips. Setting the knotted cloth aside she heard the mare’s hitching breaths and began to stroke her shoulder with a tender hoof, gently smoothing away the creases in her pelt from the rope.

“It’s alright dear, take your time.” She soothed softly, her voice silken with gentle concern. The sudden shock and pain of recent events could very well be too much for the poor thing. “You’re safe now.” She murmured, risking giving her a nuzzle. 

She stiffened as a sobbing Earth Pony wrapped strong forelegs around her neck as she broke down. The sudden trembling press of a strong young mare to her chest bringing a heated flush to her cheeks.

Oooooh.

Cadance sternly pressed down the sudden keen hunger that lit deep in her core. Focussing instead on the wracking sobs of the poor thing wailing against her neck. Nevertheless, the shiver of desire trailing down her spine would not be entirely repressed and she found herself burying her snoot in that soft green mane and inhaling deeply. Embracing the mare softly, rubbing her back as she cried.

Taking a second long deep breath, ignoring the fading scent of burnt hair to savor the subtleties of her musk beneath it. Fear, panic, sorrow and pain were all strong and recent… not the most appetizing of fragrances, but also unsurprising given the circumstances. Yet beneath the recent trials she… was delicious. The Archdemon let out a soft annoyed huff.

This certainly isn’t helping...

She couldn’t help but admire the loveliness before her. The mare must be in her late teens or early twenties by her size, with a slim build, likely a city pony then, not a farm pony full of muscle from hard labor. Her mane and tail worked into complex braids, a waitress perhaps, or a barmare… some form of service work. Yet the ripple of Earth Pony muscle was there beneath that soft, well-groomed pelt.

Mmmmmh… argh!

She ruthlessly pushed that line of thought from her, focussing singlemindedly on the puckered scars of healing flesh that pocked her body. The glow of her horn intensifying as she began to mend the flesh more firmly. It was easier to think about the injuries while the sweet thing gave vent to her grief.

In time the wracking sobs began to lose force, though considering what she was feeling from the Earth Pony, that was more exhaustion than a lessening of her sorrow. Still, lacking the strength to power it, it was shifting more into sadness. As first the Alicorn of Love and now as an Archdemon; Cadance could read emotions fairly accurately. Slowly she wrapped her wings around her new acquaintance, adding their warmth to try to comfort her.

“Can you tell me your name, my little pony?” The alicorn asked softly.

“G-green Leaves.” She rasped weakly, the hitching of her breaths slowly calming as the warmth of those wings brought some measure of relaxation. Her wounds were now barely more than patches missing fur, though some slight scarring couldn’t be helped.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Cadance. How do you feel Green Leaves? Do you still hurt at all?” That brought a spike of sick bilious anger, a passion that one so young shouldn’t feel, and it set Cadance’s teeth on edge at its proximity.

“H-he…” Green Leaves choked on the words, shaking in the Archdemon’s embrace. “He k-killed them.” Her body stiffening in horrible rejection of the truth, struggling to free herself from Cadance’ forelegs, straining against her as if somehow that would change what she had just uttered. Cadance didn’t relinquish her grip, eyes flashing as she leaned forward to kiss the struggling mare on the forehead.

Green Leaves let out a gasp and went limp in the alicorn’s embrace. Those soft lips upon her brow urging her to stillness as she felt another presence slip delicately into her head. A tender pressure against her temples, curling about her mind like those warm wings had felt. And she felt, as if it were her own, the concern of the alicorn that held her.

“Show me, Little one.”

It was such a soft command, and yet she found herself unable to disobey, giving a weak creel of dismay as memories she wanted dearly to forget began to pass through her mind.





Waking to the feel of rope wrapped about her, the harshness of the linen gag forced into her mouth. The monster was in her room! She jolted awake and thrashed! He hadn’t been ready for that, nor for a flailing hoof to knock over the nightstand. He had caught the lamp before it smashed, anxious to not have any noise give away the invasion. Yet dealing with the lamp had distracted him, as she kicked her rear hoof through the bedroom wall with a loud crunching thud!

There were sleepy shouts of alarm, and she felt a thrill of hope as she redoubled her struggles. All she had to do was buy time! The monster would not get her this time either! She felt the rope tightened around her legs but she flailed a foreleg loose and managed to work the gag from between her teeth for a precious second.

“HELP M-mmmmph!”

A bellow of alarm and the pounding of hooves down the hall answered her stifled scream. He was coming, daddy was coming! He’d saved her before, when the monster had come for her as a filly. He’d do it again! The blow of powerful hooves against her door, the fragile planks cracking and splintering from the assault

The gag was back in place and the rope tightened cruelly, compressing the breath from her chest in a painful huff. Through her tears and pain she saw the door give way. A blurry shape letting out a furious cry as it flung itself at her attacker.

And then the hateful horn of the monster flared, and her savior was flung back through the splintered remains of the door. Thudding hard against the opposite wall.

“N-not this time, mud pony!” The monster spat, breathing fast in panic, hearing other voices and yells from below and in the street. Hissing a curse as he cinched her bonds again, all but throttling her in the bindings. She hadn’t even breath to cry now.

She saw a staggering shape coming through the ruined door into her room again. Heard through the thudding of her pulse in her ears her father's ragged gasp of pain and the sickening crash as he was flung into her dresser, the carved wood shattering beneath his weight.

“You just don’t k-know when to fucking give up, do you!? F-fine!” And with a flick of his head, the shambles of the dresser burst into flame.





Cadance clutched the mare tightly as she altered the spell, drowning out the memory of her father's agonized screams as he burned. She froze Green Leaves’ thoughts, bringing them to a swift halt. Slowly she drew back to look into those glassy, unseeing eyes with boundless pity.

And then her gaze narrowed and skewed around towards the unconscious lump hidden in her shadows. Maintaining the gentlest of touches upon the mare’s mind she held the mental freeze even as she stood up. Green Leaves continued to stare blankly ahead, breathing slowly. Cadance’s eyes lit with orange fire as she struggled to find restraint with the hateful passions burning in her breast.

Cadance’s shadows heaved up from the floor to slam hard into the stone wall, depositing the still insensate unicorn against it as the dark mass writhed and flowed, spreading out on the surface like some terrible sentient spiderweb.

It took a lot to make a demon feel sick. And it took less, far far less to justify what this demon was going to do to this filly’s foalnapper for such a hideous crime. And twice over again for giving a gentle young mare that memory. Her bladed fangs bared as her shadows clutched about his throat, one swift jerk was all it would take… like popping the top off a soda bottle. She forced her grip to relax, but it wasn’t restraint that stayed her hoof, only the cold calculation of pragmatism.

You’re more useful to me breathing… 

Instead she ensured he was so secured as to not be able to twitch when he woke. With a thick tendril coiled tightly around his horn, she’d be able to snuff any magic he tried. More liqueous shadow smothered his face, tightening around his muzzle, parting his jaws around a swiftly hardening sphere of shadowstuff. Tendrils clutching behind his head and neck, circling his eyes but not covering them. Tiny holes opened in the new matte black muzzle mask he wore, there’d be no difficulty breathing, but he wouldn’t even be able to squeak unless she allowed it.

“I remember you, Nebby.” She hissed the nickname from the thankfully brief experience she’d had as his foalsitter. Her trademark careful soothing tonality and softness lost along with her composure. “You could never stand not being the focus of attention as the obnoxious foal you were. And I doubt you’ve changed that considering what you were trying to do here.” She spat the words at the unmoving lump of pathetic stallion. 

Her eyes narrowed further at a centuries-old memory of his leering grin and glittering eyes as he had crouched at the edge of the banishment circle as she struggled against the archmage, trying to do something, anything to halt what he was doing. “You were there when the archmage banished us. And unlike the others, I’m sure you knew what had happened. You liked your secrets, it made you so insufferably smug to think you knew something no one else did…”

Her shadows squeezed tight about his body, pinning him to the wall as they went rigid. “So you’ll just hang around for now, ignored and unimportant. When the adults have dealt with other matters, we’ll get around to dealing with you.” She turned away from her captive, and banished him from her thoughts, she’d feel when he regained consciousness.

Pooling about her hooves, the rest of her shadowstuff swirled about her like a loyal puppy as she returned to the still frozen mare. Her horn flaring green to lift her from the hard stone floor. The swirling shadows heaving up into a low dais couch. Cadance sighed as she flopped gracelessly upon it, pleased with the little bit of comfort as her forelegs reached out to clutch the pony held in her emerald magic, drawing the mare in against her barrel as the glow faded. “Oh my deary… what am I to do with you.” She murmured sadly, gazing into Green Leaves blank eyes.

A hoof traced along the helpless thing’s softly plush cheek, down the pleasing curve of her neck. She had buried her nose in her mane again almost before she realized she was doing so, breathing deep of her warm mortal scent. And again she felt the deep shivery thrill of hungry desire for this darling young thing. This time she didn’t reject the prompt, relaxing as ruby red light began to drip from the feathers of her wings, outlining her body and ethereal mane in a ruddy glow.

Slowly she brought her wings forward to embrace the mare wrapped in her forelegs, and as she finally canceled the mind freeze spell she had placed upon her, she darted her muzzle forward to cover her lips with her own. The mare squeaked, disoriented, still reeling from her recently relived traumatic memories. Her struggles beginning again. But this time she was safely cocooned, tangled in forelegs and wings that shared her earth pony strength and would not yield.





Green Leaves meeped against the warm mouth of her rescuer as she jolted awake. Her initial squirming got her nowhere, even as the warmth of the wings about her seemed to soak into her body, unknotting her muscles. Her body growing heavy and slow, weighing down her panic, beginning to erode her urgency to break free.

She felt the beat of the alicorn’s heart against her own chest, the rhythm of it transfixing her attention. It was deep and slow and strong, seeming to pulse through her. The strong essential rhythm washed at the edges of her hurts like the tide, as if offering comfort. Resting a trembling forehoof upon the alicorn’s chest to better feel that soothing beat, she let herself relax a little, pawing lightly at that sinfully soft chest fluff.

As her struggles weakened, Cadance began to advance. Always slowly, and with a gentleness that made Green Leaves blush to be receiving it. The kiss deepened, a hot tongue flicked teasingly across her gasping mouth when she pulled halfheartedly away for air before being recaptured with almost shameful ease.

The last of her resistance melted away under the sensual heat of the alicorn’s desire for her. Trembling hooves wrapped about the demon’s neck as she pressed up into that searing kiss. The rest of the world falling away as she sought to drown herself in the heady rush of desire that washed over her.

The archdemon purring in satisfaction as she at long last began to feed.




> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Resolve





The grey sky rumbled threateningly, as it had been doing all afternoon. The white unicorn pausing to peek up from underneath her hoodie, through her black dyed forelock, at the dark clouds that could be glimpsed far above the narrow street she walked. A single fat raindrop falling with a splat on the amethyst lens of her goggles. She barely reacted, her face remaining frozen in a stony expression of disinterest, and simply shook the errant drop to fall at her hooves. The cobbles before her wet and shiny as they had been for most of the day.

Wild weather was a pain in the plot, it could spend an entire day making life wet and miserable without ever raining hard enough to accomplish anything more useful than making you wet and miserable. When pegasi had been in control of the weather, rain came in cleanly defined showers, often torrential, but easy enough to plan for. Still, for what she was planning to do, she hoped the weather would continue to be properly atmospheric.

Vinyl Scratch took a moment to feel under her hoodie, making sure her I-Pone was still secure and attached to the small speaker unit she had stuffed into a zippered pocket. Her trademark Hoofbeatz headphones were tucked around her throat where they belonged, just for looks at the moment, since her music player would be doing something else for her in a few minutes. Her hoof traveled over the other… prop... strapped to her upper right foreleg. For a second, her impassive mask cracked, a frown pulling at her lips as a weary heartache threatened to drag her to the ground.

She remembered that day at a record store with Tavi. They had just finished lunch, and an animated debate where she had maintained that the common pony wasn’t as dead to music as Octavia thought them in these darker times. Sure there had been fewer and fewer moments where the odd music of the soul was shared as had occurred almost daily in pre-revolution Equestria. The impromptu dance numbers and shared feeling amongst members of a cohesive herd had been at times annoying, and at others seriously embarrassing. But that didn’t mean that ponies were desensitized or deaf to music nowadays.

With a trademark brash smirk, Vinyl had nudged Tavi with a hoof and gave her a ‘watch this’ quirk of her ears. Cranking her headphones to eleven, reveling in a great dance mix she had begun to wander through the shelves, the muffled ‘oontz oontz oontz’ of her jam following her as closely as her own heartbeat. Her head bobbing to the beat as she poked her snoot into a bin next to a browsing unicorn stallion. 

In under ten seconds she watched with satisfaction as the beat latched onto him. A rear hoof tapping almost without conscious thought as she moved on. By the time she had a trio of mares nodding along to the driving brassy thump of her music she turned a triumphant grin on her marefriend. The small shop soon moving hooves, and hips, and bobbing heads in time to her music, even if they didn’t realize it was happening.

And Tavi had smiled. A smile like Vinyl so rarely saw from her anymore. A smile that had reached her eyes and sent a bloom of warmth through Vinyl’s chest. 

The sky rumbled again and she shrunk against one building which had a bit of overhang as more heavy raindrops spattered to the cobbles. That memory, that… smile. She felt her jaw clench and she fought with herself to get it to relax. Trying to get her mind back on track, she checked the clock on the tower down the street… two minutes. She didn’t have time to fall apart now. She took a deep breath and blew it out sharply, as she often did before a difficult performance.

And this would likely be a doozy of a performance.

The guard patrol had passed without incident, and the belltower began tolling the half hour. The white unicorn moseyed slowly down the dripping street in the now gentle rain that was falling. She kept the guards in sight until they rounded the corner just as the last chime struck. A quick glance showed nopony was in the street, and she made her move.

Horn lighting as she stepped up to a nondescript door on an unimportant street, the lock giving her no trouble as she slipped inside. She had twenty minutes before the patrol passed this spot again. The foyer she stood in was plain and a little shabby. Old creaky wood floors, faded wallpaper, old gas jet lighting. Well lived in, and if not super well taken care of, at least not badly mistreated. 

She started with carefully layered buffer spells, the glow from her horn crawling up the walls and across the ceiling and floor. Any time she had a gig in a stuffy part of town, she had always used sound dampening magic to not get the guard called on her. Ironic that she was doing the same thing for the same reason all over again. 

The glow faded along with the sound of the rain. She didn’t have much time until her audience for tonight's performance arrived. Without exterior noise to dull it, the sound of her hoofsteps down the hallway, and the occasional squeak of a floor board seemed creepily magnified. It caused her lips to twitch, the faintest beginnings of a smile before the frost thickened and it was lost again.

An unused dining room, the table stacked with unpacked boxes, was the only door to the left of the hallway. To the right, a small kitchen with a tiny table crammed into the back of it and the door to a small office/bedroom. It was so very… familiar. She’d had a little one pony flophouse like this herself before… before she’d moved in with Tavi.

The door at the end of the little hallway was a tiny, cramped broom cupboard, with a single broom and one mop leaned to one side. She examined the little space carefully before she heard the over loud scrape of a key in the lock. Squeezing into it, she pulled the cupboard door shut with a click just as the front door pushed open. All but holding her breath she held motionless as she peered through one of the thin louvers on the door. A softly mumbling unicorn clopped in from the street, pushing the door shut behind him with a rear hoof. Setting down a dripping briefcase which had apparently been serving as an umbrella. The rain seemed to have picked up.

He wasn’t much to look at, thin and lanky. He looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over, and it probably had, numerous times. A dull grey coat and a slightly less dull grey mane and tail. Blue-green eyes behind rain spotted and fogged spectacles. Nondescript, shabby clothing in the working class styles of five or six years ago. The sort of stallion that just blended into the background for everypony around him.

Vinyl felt the flutter of nerves deep in her belly as he shook himself off. Seeming not to notice the unnatural silence of his apartment, he mumbled his way slowly down the hall and into the kitchen. Vinyl’s hoof hovered near her music player, but she bit her lip. She didn’t want to overplay her hoof.

She only had one chance at this after all.

Slowly she lowered her hoof, perking her ears and listening hard to the noises from the other room. The clink and tussle of glass and paper presaged him returning with a bottle of some low end beer and a ready-mac noodle bowl which he took with him into his bedroom, his head popping back through the door to snatch his briefcase in his magic and drag it through after him.

She closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath. The waiting was the hardest, waiting for him to settle, to go about the comfortable banality of his usual evening rituals. ‘Twitchy’, as he was known around the neighborhood, was technically a member of the Guard. Though not of the armored and steely eyed variety. He was a paper pusher, a desk jockey who dealt with bookings and filings and the morass of legal paperwork that came with each and every pony hauled in on charges.

It had taken her a week of very cautious probing to find out who had been ponying the desk the night Tavi had been brought in. She knew for a fact that no paperwork had been filed, no charges, no court date, no record of lockup or certificate of release. Octavia had passed through the precinct doors between two burly guardsponies and had fucking disappeared into thin air. She had been ‘Vanished’ as the local lingo termed it.

One didn’t asked where a Vanished pony went.

One didn’t raise a legal objection on a Vanished ponies’ behalf.

One didn’t make a stink unless one wished to be Vanished as well. 

It was a dead end of inquiry, no matter who the pony had been.

Vinyl didn’t care one bucking bit. Nopony took what was hers.

And thus she was here, trying to calm her breathing as she carefully peered through the dimming light at the front door, ensuring it was locked, ensuring the silencing spells were stable. Had it been any pony but Twitchy, she wouldn’t have tried this. Her hoof silently found the play button on her I-Pone and gently depressed it. The speaker in her pocket began to vibrate in short, steady pulses. She could feel it hum but couldn’t hear it at all.

        That was exactly as it should be. She had spent half the night breaking down and rejigging the speaker and its arcanotech components to emit infrasound. The lower end of the sonic spectra, below the range that ponies could actually hear.

Hearing, however, wasn’t the only means by which sound meant something to a pony. Infrasound, too low for the ears to pick up, still was felt, and felt by different degrees by different body tissues. The soft low volume sound coming from the speaker was too low to cause any serious effects, but it was there to just build a baseline. To insinuate itself into the environment as a subtle rhythmic little pulse, like a resting heartbeat.

 C’mon Vinyl, 15 minutes to curtain.








The faint tapping and susurrus of chalk on stone roused Green Leaves from the dreamless depths of sleep. She lay, listening to the soft noise, her body as of yet not willing to move even to open her eyes. She lay on a soft surface, surrounded by warmth. Her cheek was pressed into a plush softness that smelled strongly of Cadance. She managed a sharp inhale at remembering that. The malaise in her head clearing enough for her to giving a languid stretch. Feathers tickling along her side as she moved, she was tucked under a wing.

The memory of her last waking moments bringing a rush of heat to her cheeks to equal the incredible warmth of the alicorn who had held her as she slept, when she had finally given in to exhaustion. And what a way to get exhausted it had been. Some tiny part of her mind was scandalized at her behavior, but by and large she felt too enervated at that moment to heed the prompting. She knew she should feel some sense of distress at such… uncharacteristic abandon. And yet… 

Slowly she managed to unglue her eyelids and force them open a crack, drawing in a long slow sigh of breath as she looked up at the Alicorn who still held her. Cadance’s horn was lit and her attention was directed elsewhere, she seemed unaware of her waking. She studied the features of the demonic creature, the fangs, the predator’s eyes, and feeling perverse, tried to fear them. She tried to imagine those fangs tearing out her throat, those piercing orange eyes reveling in her terror… and she couldn't. She found nothing worthy of fear in her fiendish aspects, only a chaotic beauty to her mein.

She had feared last… night? She has no sense of time in this dark cellar-like chamber. She had found terror for a few brief moments when she had felt the Archdemon’s naked hunger. But it wasn’t flesh that Cadance had craved, and the outside world and its cruelties had faded into an unimportant blur for the hours in which she had first tentatively and then fervently explored a new realm of sensuality and intimacy with her newfound demonic lover. She’d felt so beautiful, so desired. And with that sense of a beauty coveted had come a subtle sensual feeling of power. Perhaps it was all head games the demon was playing with her, but if so… she’d thank her for them anyway. It was rare in this world for an Earth Pony to feel any of those things anymore.

The persistent sound of chalk lightly scraping on stone finally drew her attention away from her… bedmate, and she lifted her head from where it rested against Cadance’s chest to look around, and froze in shocked wonder! She was still in that same hateful stone chamber as before, there was a cocooned lump of black against one wall that could only be her foalnapper, but what riveted her attention was the telekinetic dance going on around all around her.

Chalk lines spiraled out from around the edge of the shadowy couch upon which they lay snuggled together. Intricate markings and runes flowed across the smooth stone floor in whirls and whorls continuing right up the walls to either side, a half dozen worn down sticks of chalk held in the deep green of fel magic continued their stately dance, leaving behind them designs of precise arcane significance. The shapes and forms meant nothing to Green Leaves, yet the beauty of the design and the obvious concentration of the Alicorn left no doubt of the untapped potential of the work.

“Ooooooh.” The soft exclamation had left her lips before she even realized she was going to make it. The mare lifting a hoof to cover her mouth as her gaze flicked repentantly back to Cadance, one shouldn’t spoil such concentration after all.

But the alicorn just smiled as she lifted all the chalk bits from the stone and set them gently down, her focus shifting to the pretty young thing nestled close beneath her wing. A flash of a gleefully wicked smile was all the warning Green Leaves had before sinfully soft lips claimed hers once more. “Mmmph!” She gasped into Cadance’s mouth, a light shudder passing through her frame as the Archdemon’s intoxicating hunger for her pulled at her thoughts like the current of a river, a firm steady pressure seeking to carry her away. She was a single pounding heartbeat away from surrendering to it once more when the demonic alicorn tenderly broke off the kiss, leaving her gasping hotly and flustered.

And in that moment, more than anything, she was sorry Cadance had stopped.

“Mmmmh, good morning my dearling.” The words murred bare inches from her ear sent another delightful shiver down her spine, her blush redoubling as she pressed her face into the demons silken chest once more, giving an inarticulate murmur in reply. She felt the wing which covered her wrap a little more tightly. She felt as much as heard Cadance’s soft chuckle and could do nothing but hug more tightly in return. 

Slowly the demon coaxed her away from her plush ruff to look her in the eyes. “There we are.” She cooed softly, lifting a hoof to gently stroke the Earth Pony’s blushing cheek. “I’ve a lot to thank you for dearie. I’m very nearly strong enough to do what needs to be done.” 

Green Leaves ears pricked at that and she managed to pull her thoughts together enough to figure out how to work her mouth again. “W-what needs to be done?” She managed, blushing at the shy stutter she couldn’t quite keep out of her voice.

“To bring the others back too.”

The others… Cadance was.. h-had been the Princess of Love in the old regime. She and Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship and Bearer of Magic, flanked by the living bearers of the rest of the Elements of Harmony had protested the coup, and had been… exiled. Banished… Oh sweet Celestia..

“They sent you to T-Tar…” She couldn’t make her numb lips finish shaping that horrible word.

“Yes.” Cadance spared her completing the statement. For statement it would have been, considering her befanged and demonic appearance now. For a second the alicorn's face became rigid, the surface bleakly frozen but her eyes alive with pain and hatred. Green Leaves felt the metallic tang of bile in her throat, yet she knew the violent emotion was not directed at her. “And it’s taken us three centuries to find a way back.”

“Th-three?! No! It’s only b-been ten years since you were…” Her shock made her stiffen, and drew the Archdemon back from her inner revelry. Her wing and foreleg tightened gently, and Green Leaves felt the anxious energy draining out of her body in that embrace. 

“Ten for you, my little pony.” She murmured softly. “Time works differently in Infe… in Tartarus. Thirty years have passed for those down there for every one up here.”

Three hundred years… Green Leaves could comprehend the number, but couldn’t fit the idea of it in her head. To be cast into hell, and claw your way back out… even changed? Yet Cadance was not a demon, not the wanton creature of destruction she was always been told demons were. She was gentle… kind. There was nothing to fear from her. “A-are the others like you?” She asked in a small voice, unsure how the question might be taken.

Cadance gave a lopsided smile. “Yes, and no. None of us are unchanged. I’d like to think we’ve held on to something of what we were… but how much? None of us could say for certain.” She gave an elegant shrug as she cleared the last traces of hurt from her expression. “That’s rather less important than what we’ll do now.”

The mare gave a little shiver at the eagerness in those words. “And that would be?” She had an inkling before the question even left her lips.

“Why, revenge my dear.” Cadance responded with an almost teasing lilt to her voice. “There’s a score three centuries overdue that needs to be settled. And we’re planning to call it in.” The cheshire grin that settled on the Alicorn’s features was slightly madcap, it was true, but somehow Green Leaves couldn’t bring herself to recoil from it.

        “On the unicorns? No, no… th-the Nobles?” Green Leaves heard the slight hiss as she bit off that final word, swallowing passed the lump in her throat for the newfound hatred she found in her heart. Her head slewing sideways to regard the black cocoon on the wall with narrowed eyes. The pile of horseapples hanging there silently was cultured and erudite and everything a noble unicorn was supposed to be, and a foalnapper, murderer and all around waste of oxygen. “You’re going to kill… th-them?” She hissed, eyes stinging. She gritted her teeth against the tears blurring her vision. She didn’t want to lose sight of the… whoreson that had taken her only family from her. She cried out when a gentle hoof touched her cheek and turned her face away, her desire to resist the movement insufficient to prevent Cadance from drawing her gaze again.

        “If we have our way? Yes.” The coldness of the words, and the cruel anger that looked out at her from those orange slitted eyes nearly took her breath away. The mare let out a whispered sob as her resistance gave way. “If I can draw Twilight and the others through, we will cast down the noble houses and remake Equestria anew.” With difficulty the Alicorn mastered her rage, and as she did Green Leaves felt her own somewhat abating as well. 

“What else do you need?” The voice sounded like hers, yet was several degrees more chill than anything she had ever uttered before in her life. She had a direction now, a goal. Not a sane goal, nor a nice one. She might be remembered in infamy for this, or be just as forgotten by time as any other Earth Pony was these days, but she was going to help bring a reckoning down on the head of the bastard pinned to the wall and all those like him.

Cadance’s expression grew stony, the last guttering flames of her anger snuffed in an instant, except for the intensity of her eyes as they bored into hers, as if studying the contents of her soul. The Archdemon's mouth was pinched in thought, fangs worried at her lower lip for a moment. Finally she drew breath to speak. “Every summoning requires… raw material. The circle, scribed of chalk or paint, or etched into stone which becomes the contract binding the summoned. The energy of the summoner, offered either through channeled magic, or through blood which empowers the gateway to draw a demon through. And that which is to be offered in exchange for that which is called, the ‘fare’ for passage.”

Green Leaves blinked, mulling over this explanation. “Offered. A sacrifice? Like I was for you?”

“In a way, dear, yes. Only we have spent decades preparing for this. It was vital that I make it through the summoning with my free will intact. Thus the… well, ‘payment’ for my passage needed to not be as he intended. Thus, he offered you as fare, but we paid it from our end, or more precisely, Twilight did. The energy she infused into the gate took decades to gather, all of it used up in an instant, just to get me through without… well, consuming the sacrifice and completing his contract.”

“So… if you’re trying to bring six more… ponies… through, what will you use to pay that fare then?” She caught the slightest flinch from the archdemon, feeling it only because she lay pressed so close. It awoke a terrible suspicion.

“Well, for starters, Mr. Summoner over there. But a single, unwilling offering would only bring one maybe two of my friends through, and likely in bad shape. Doing that, we would immediately have to flee before we could be tracked down and contained. Wherever we are, he wouldn’t have been hiding this room so deeply unless he was worried of discovery, so most likely it’s in a cellar in Canterlot somewhere. We couldn’t risk any sort of confrontation...”

She let Cadance babble, listening to the quick, clipped tone, and picking up on the critical wording she employed. She’d never seen the alicorn betray nervousness or discomfort before. Now, experiencing it, and the circuitous long-winded explanation she could not miss two new insights that broke upon her spinning mind.

She’s going to sacrifice me. But… she doesn’t want to.

She didn’t know why she did what she did next. She lifted a hoof to gently touch to Cadance’s lips, and stilled the still quickly babbled words. The archdemon simply going quietly cross-eyed to look at the hoof touching her snoot.

I just made a Princess stop talking.

She couldn’t stop the soft giggle that bubbled up out of her chest, nor the sniffling sob that followed it. To have such a surreal feeling of power, she’d only had to lose her family, her home, she flinched at the memory of her father’s scream and the roaring crackle of the inferno. All that had to happen, and she had to become the monster’s sacrifice, so that she could be here shushing a demonic alicorn with a hoof. 

She swiped her other foreleg across her eyes as she tried to get a handle on herself. Her mind was racing, running around itself in circles as she digested the situation. “I-It’s okay… I think I’ve f-figured it o-out.” She took a shuddering breath. “A-am I e-enough?”

“I’m sorry.”

Green Leaves looked up in surprise, to see tears tracing down Cadance’s cheeks, those slitted eyes awash with more of them.

“I’m so… so very sorry. You’ve been through s-so much already. And here I am… about to t-take from you exactly what he planned to.” Her eyes squeezed shut tightly as she clutched a hoof against her cheek, wiping irritatedly at the tears as they fell. “It’s been so long since I… felt like a m-monster.”

She found herself pushing up against the larger alicorn, and this time there was no resistance, Cadance slumping miserably onto her side as the Earth Pony found herself on top, figuratively as well as literally. Why did all of this make her feel so calm? She clutched at the sobbing archdemon, and felt her forelegs clutch about her just as tightly. The joint popping extra-squeezy sort of hug only an Earth Pony could deliver, or translate.

No. You’re nothing like him. You care.

“You can’t take anything.” She heard herself reminding the still weeping alicorn. “Me being willing is the trick, isn’t it?”

“A willing… offering, is immeasurably more potent.” The archdemon mumbled softly. “Two souls offered… one willingly… and I can create a gateway to bring whoever I like… Even another Archfiend through.”

“Another… Twilight Sparkle, right?”

Cadance just nodded softly.

“Alright.. so the two of us make this gateway thing, and the Elements come back. And you’ll be able to d-deal with the Nobles then right?”

Another nod, Cadance just clinging to her like she would never let go.

Somehow, I don’t think I want you to… ever.

She took a slow sobbing breath, and let herself just lay atop Cadance’s barrel, nuzzling softly against the plushness of her pelt. “There’s something that I want...”








Once a day a guard brought buckets of slop to feed the prisoners of the Black Level in the Canterlot dungeons, ignoring the howls and jeers and cackles of his charges.

He preferred the quiet ones. Like Cell 37. The tiny slot opening, letting him dump the fetid muck in his pail into the trough. And not a peep from the occupant beyond the shifting of a heavy chain telling him he or she was still alive. He didn’t know any of the specific crimes of those who were buried here so far from the light and forgotten, nor did he really care to know. Being a Black Level inmate was analogous to being forgotten, and for good sane reasons.

Sliding the slot shut with a clang he moved to the next one, a mad babbler. Ignoring the insane jabber directed at him as he mechanically performed the actions he repeated at each and every cell before he could lock the door and forget these wretches for another day.

Behind him, deep in the darkness of her cell, prisoner 37 turned vacant eyes on the disgusting slop that had been her meals for… however long she had been in here. One lost track of time, down here in the dark. In any case, she wasn’t hungry at the moment. She returned to gazing at the floor about six inches in front of her filthy forehooves, unshorn fetlocks, cracked and uneven hooves. Ratty and matted mane and tail. She was a wreck of a mare, who in better times would have likely contemplated death if reduced to such a state.

But now there was nothing to bother her about her appearance as she gazed through the matted curtain of once blueish silver mane. Dull violet eyes gazing vacantly at the floor before her.

“Light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-nnngh!” The suppressor on her horn did what it was meant to do, what it was made to do. It bled the magic out of the spell, letting a residual amount of the power feedback in proportion to the charge being produced. A warning to not try to cast magic with it in place. “Light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-ngh!”

Again the spell fizzled, and the mare began to rock slowly side to side. “Light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-nrgh! Th-thank y-you mares and g-gentlestallions… I’ll.. I’ll be here all night… L-light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the m-magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-hngh! D-don’t be alarmed… i-it’s all part of the act.”

Her swaying increased, eyes falling half closed, seeing something else all around her. The crowds, the smiles, the bright eyes of foals.. “Light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-ugh!” A single spark from the feedback dropping before her face, momentarily lighting it before winking out, the dim light shining on filthy, tear stained cheeks. “T-the Great and P-powerful Trixie.. w-will show y-you things beyond.. I-imagination.” She hissed out softly, breath hitching in her throat..

“Light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-nnngh!”

“L-light the horn, build the charge, think of sparks and cheers. Let the magic flow, Whistler’s Shimmering Rocket Po-nnngh!”

“Light the horn, build the ch-charge, think of sparks and ch-cheers. Let the magic flow…”




> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 4
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Praxis



The smooth slither of chalk on stone roused Nebulae Gaze as it tapped and stroked beside his head. He felt stiff and exceedingly uncomfortable, and also sore in strange and embarrassing ways. He tried to turn his head and groan. The former he was unable to do, and the latter came out as a much-muted grunt around the thick, slick mass wedged between his teeth. He couldn’t see and struggled ineffectually against the tendrils which pinned him uncomfortably to the wall of his own summoning chamber.

And it all came rushing back. His summoning had failed in the worse way possible. The demon had been released, unbound! And even worse, it was the corrupted remains of a pony who he knew, and had known him! Cadance, the self-styled ‘Princess of Love’. Now the sultry archdemon of Lust it would seem. He winced at the pounding of his poor head, nnngh, the bitch had clocked him a good one.

Still, to have ensnared an Archdemon! To have been a breath away from binding it to his will! Imagining the possibilities made his aches almost trivial in the warmth that surged through him. The things he’d have done with a… properly tamed and servile Cadance. She’d always been a ridiculous ponce when she’d played at being a foalsitter. Toadying up to any family who wanted to boast about being served by ‘the alicorn of looooove’. He’d known the game, even as a colt, and had resolved not to play along with such stupidity. She’d learn her place, they’d all learn their place sooner or later. And every indignity they forced him to suffer would be repaid in kind.

He almost giggled at the thought of that, of how he’d have made her crazed demonic husk crawl, made it pretend it was still her and beg once it had been his to do with as he pleased. He was so wrapped up in those borderline delirious musings, that he almost failed to notice that he could see.

And what a sight It was. The demon was playing with its food again. The soft mewling cries from the stupid mud pony as she was toyed with were almost nauseating to listen to. Why didn’t it just devour her and be done with it? Once it finished, no doubt it would be satisfied enough to figure out a bargain. He had contacts and information it would need if it were to escape detection. Resources that it couldn’t ignore. It was just a matter of figuring out the right offer to make and the right demands. Get free of it’s infernal magical nullification and he could sound the alarm. His chamber was shielded it was true, but all he needed to do was open the door and the alarms would be foalsplay to set off over half of the high district.

Set the alarms off, maybe trigger an overcharge of the fel-suppression runes that were all over his summoning chamber for distraction, a quick blink spell into the double blind in his private chambers and the guards would descend upon that thing before it could even formulate an escape. Yes, that plan had the dash, the elegance that would see him through this. The fallen husk of a pony wouldn’t even know what hit it.

All he had to do was bide his time, wait for the critical moment, and he’d recover from all this just fine. In the meantime, he enjoyed the show he was getting as much as his uncomfortably upright position allowed.

He had fallen asleep at some point, lulled by the soft sounds of sex, fantasizing about having both of them at his mercy. The heat of those thoughts had been enough to erase his discomfort for a time. That ended when the tendrils that bound him slackened ever so slightly, and blood that had pooled in his extremities with the tight bindings began to circulate again, bring with it the sudden buzzing tinnitus of oxygen starved tissues. He writhed in agony, struggling against his bonds as life was forced back into half starved flesh.

“Nnnngh! Urgh y-you fucking bitch!” He tried to scream, and found his aching jaw was also free to permit it. Clenching his teeth as he growled through the slowly ebbing discomfort.

“Oh good. You’re awake.” The thing that had been Cadance responded in an emotionless deadpan that sent a shiver of ice down his spine. The caressing sensuousness of it’s voice was nearly absent. Extremely odd given the type of demon it was.

Slowly he managed to get his body to stop its noisome complaints enough to focus on something else. And there, again, was that fucking mud pony. Still alive! It was inconceivable. She was the payment rendered for the summoning in the first place. How could she still be breathing, laying so calmly beside the demon? She should have been burned in hellfire the instant the demon was released! Or failing that why hadn’t she been devoured afterwards? Impossible!

“So… have you finally decided to stop playing with your toy so we can conduct business?” He hissed with something approaching a sneer. “Regardless of that skin you’re wearing, demon, you have to be aware there’s no safety for you here without an appropriate sponsor.”

He must have surprised the creature, for it was silent for a long time. Heh, had he out guessed it so easily? Finding the silence unnerving, he essayed another thrust. “I have the information you need to get clear of the city. Or if you prefer to stay, I’m sure we can come to an agreement about the price of my sponsorship. You’ll find I have many friends and colleagues who would be most impressed with your… particular flavor.”

Still the intransigent demon just stared at him stone-faced. He felt an unwelcome trickle of sweat down the side of his neck. “If the offered sacrifice was unacceptable, and I can certainly understand why that might be, we can most assuredly discuss a better vessel for your-”

“Just stop.” The demon bit out, a hiss that somehow expressed the pressing need for violence backing up its words.

“Awww, I was wondering if he could actually dig that pit for himself all the way to Tartarus.” The mud pony bitch offered, malice glinting in her eyes in the dim light of the few remaining nearly spent candles. He glared daggers at her, yet found her state startling on closer examination. No outward signs of possession or demonic control, she hadn’t the eyes of an enthralled pony. Yet she also gave no outward signs of terror of her circumstances, was neither bound nor fettered. Even as he watched she casually leaned into the demon’s shoulder and was rewarded with the draping of a wing about her, as easy and natural as could be.

“I can understand if you would rather not discuss matters of importance in front of your toy.” He responded a touch more brittlely than he intended. The nerve!

“Shut up, Nebby.” The demon growled out the response.

“Don’t call me that!” He snarled back, straining against his bindings in his outrage. That hateful diminutive! “My NAME is Nebulae Gaze! Master of Demonology at the Canterlot School for Unicorns. And I will not be-”

The mask regrew around his face in an instant, turning the rest of his angry rejoinder into an incomprehensible mumble. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the horrid thing, to no avail. Soon reduced to just glaring his hate across the intervening distance.

“So, I’d guess we’re in the sub-basement of Celestia’s school then. Or whatever they’ve turned it into.” The demon commented conversationally. “That’s useful to know at least.”

“Doesn’t much care for nicknames, does he?”

“Oh, he was a spoiled, entitled, perfectly ridiculous little foal when I had the misfortune to be his foalsitter. Never an ounce of sympathy for anypony but himself and as narcissistic as they came. How Guiding Light produced such an insufferable brat I’ll never know.”

“Him? A member of House Light?” The shocked incredulity from the mud pony only sparked the long disdainful rolling of his eyes he always responded with to that sort of skepticism.

They continued speaking about him instead of to him as he struggled frantically against his bonds, grunting and offering muffled protests to the best of his ability. He was NOT ignored! And yet, slowly his struggles began to die off as something slowly occurred to him about this surreal situation. The demon was talking about things it shouldn’t be. It was offering insipid anecdotes about his foalhood as if it had been there! As… as if… it were the real… Cadance.

No… No! That was absolutely impossible! It was a demon. It was whatever demonic thing had been fortunate enough to devour the mincyhoofed twat. It had clear demonic heritage. It was an archfiend! One didn’t just walk into hell and apply for the position of overlord!

But… what if? No! It wasn’t possible. But… what if?

His eyes must have showed some part of his growing disquiet, because the mud pony giggled. “Oh, I think he might finally be figuring it out.” 

“It does seem that way.” The demon mused thoughtfully. Her orange eyes glowing in the dim light as she regarded him. “Yes, it really is me. And there’s something I really need you to understand, Nebby.” He stiffened at her intentional use of that damned nickname, before the mask clamped down around his jaws and forced his wandering gaze to her. “This wasn’t an accident, you poor little foal. You didn’t snare me by chance. We’ve been waiting for decades for some foolish pony to try to snag themselves a succubus.”

His eyes began to widen as he took in the implications of her words. The cold feeling in his stomach quickly turning into a buzzing mass of panic at the back of his skull. “We paid the ‘toll’ from our side, to ensure I came through unfettered, and didn’t need your sacrifice.” Her words continued, hard, cold and implacable. “I am not some half panicked demon, dragged through to the mortal plane without any sort of plan. I do not need your contacts, nor your ‘sponsorship’.” She sneered distastefully, reaching a languid hoof to the floor from where she lay. As it touched the stone floor,  lines of intricate chalk caught fire with a hellish green glow.

And Nebulae Gaze screamed into his mask as the intricate summoning circle lit up all around him, the nearest edges of the rune tracks to him repeating over and over his new position in life as his ideas of supposed leverage shattered all around him like glass.

Sacrifice.

He continued to scream and struggle with fevered energy as the tendrils again encased him. The last thing his frantic eyes saw was the cold emotionless gaze of Cadance, and the malicious glee on the Mud Pony’s face before he was once again wrapped in utter darkness.





Green Leaves rested while she could. It was nearly time after all. She watched with a quiet detachment as Cadance slowly finished the necessary preparations of the circle, now glowing dimly. It would be much brighter when they began and she finished the one broken line at the center herself. At that point, according to Cadance’s explanation, it would really be ‘her’ circle. There’d be no chance of her untutored hooves smearing the circle either. Cadance was transmuting the chalk into something else, a powder that ate hungrily into the stone before being scoured away by the archdemon’s magic. The result was a beautiful shallow etching which spiraled out from the clear center of the circle as if a master stonemason had carved it inch by inch. All that remained unfinished in this fashion was a small two inches of chalk line carefully erased at the center. A single imperfection that waited for her to correct it when the time came.

Green Leaves the powerful summoner, bringing on the end of the world she had known. She gave a snort at the unexpected touch of tired whimsy. She’d been finding the oddest things amusing lately. Likely more shock and emotional trauma than anything else. She and Cadance had continued to… enjoy each other... off and on over the hours when the archdemon tired of her spell work and took a break. There was a certain urgency in the alicorn now, a subtle, gentle presence of mind to make the most of their remaining time together.

The Earth Pony didn’t mind, far from it. Whatever happened to her after the coming ritual, she found many things to treasure in the sympathetic embrace of the alicorn of love and lust. 

Her hoof groped in the dim light and found the cool hard object she searched for. The silver dagger of her captor, carefully cleaned of the demonic gore that had encrusted it. Cadance had showed her the slowly healing scar in her shadowy mass, the wound that silver had inflicted upon her. She gently brushed her hoof along the edge of the blade, razor sharp, the fineness of the edge tangible to even her inexperienced touch. Would that she could have put such an edge on the tavern kitchen cutlery!

She shifted her grip and dug the point against her frog, giving a hiss of pain as it gouged the tender surface. She saw from the corner of her eye Cadance flinch and slew her head around to look at her. Dark red welled from the scratch. The frog was soft and blood rich, she’d likely be tender there for a while. Wordlessly she extended the wounded hoof over the etched circle, guiding the first few drops of crimson fluid into the shallow channel. The glow increased a little as the offering was accepted. She watched the sluggish trickle continue to drip, holding it there until the wound had clotted and stemmed the flow.

And then Cadance gently grasped the wounded hoof, examining the gouge with the loving concern of a true caregiver. The depth in those piercingly slitted eyes belied her fearsome appearance as she bent her graceful neck to lick gently over the injury, making Green Leaves shiver at the warm tingle that coursed up her leg from the caressing touch.

She was no unicorn, she had no direct control of magical power, Cadance had patiently explained. That didn’t mean demonic ritual was beyond her, but it meant she had to resort to less… elegant solutions. Blood, the fluid of all life, was an acceptable medium for summoning rituals as well. And by giving her blood to the circle freely, it increased the potential power of the summoning by an indefinable magnitude. The Monster hadn’t bothered to offer her blood to the ritual he was using, because he intended to offer her everything for it anyway. He had offered his energy through magic, but had scrupulously offered nothing of his own body into his ritual. Such would have left him potentially vulnerable, though making his ritual all the more powerful for the risk.

Green Leaves needed no such caution, as she would be offering herself anyway, that was part of the intention after all. As was her taking the Monster with her. She thanked Cadance with a loving glance as the Archdemon released her hoof, only the faintest ache remaining. Slowly she stood and approached the bound and still form of the Monster, moving with a three legged gait as her other foreleg clutched the glittering blade, she couldn’t bring herself to put the hideous thing in her mouth… she didn’t want to know what it tasted like.

Wrapped tightly once more in shadow, masked and gagged and restrained, he had given up struggling only when he had fully exhausted himself. His muffled sobbing had fallen on deaf ears until he had lapsed into benumbed silence, as he had remained until now. Asleep, or catatonic she didn’t know, or even care. She eyed him distastefully… she could do anything she wanted. Cadance had been very clear on that, so long as she didn’t kill him, she could acquire his blood however she liked.        

She looked down at the gleaming blade held in a shaking forehoof. Why was she shaking? She stared at the offending appendage for what seemed like hours. Eventually she gritted her teeth and forced the tremble to still. She’d start small. Small and familiar. She poked at the shadow mass, getting it to extend one limp foreleg, tightening around the limb firmly once it was fully out. Blood was needed, for what was to come, the actual amount didn’t matter all that much. It was there only to bind him inescapably to the ritual.

Raising the dagger, she angled the tip against his frog and gave the same gentle press as she had moments before experienced herself. The sharp tip pricked the soft tissue, a bead of red forming at the tip. And he jerked, the tendrils preventing him from withdrawing as his muffled wail echoed around her. A second later she heard the soft patter of fluid to the stones beneath him and almost dropped the dagger in numb shock.

He… he’d pissed himself. Over a single ouchy stick, barely enough to draw blood to begin with, and he’d pissed himself over it! She watched the sluggish trail of crimson fluid reach the edge of his shaking hoof, gathering there a moment, before finally falling. A tiny double drop of red blood spattering to the carved circle, letting off the gentlest of seething hisses as it was accepted. Like steam escaping from a kettle.

Swallowing against the keen feeling of nausea, the mare fought back the urge to fling the knife away. She felt sullied and gross, in sudden need of a really hot shower. All her fantasies of sweet violent revenge cast into a starkly different light because at the merest touch of a blade, the monster had shown himself to be a pony. A horrible dangerously insane excuse for a pony, but a pony nonetheless.

She found herself sickened by the sight of him, a perverse anger flaring in her chest alongside a bitter defeated regret. Passions she was unused to and didn’t know how to handle.

Why?! Why couldn’t you just be a monster, a vicious, howling beast?! I could have revenged myself, I could have paid you back for everything you’ve done to me! Fuck you, you goddess damned bast-

“-ard! Fuck you!” She didn’t realize she was yelling until the echoes rebounded, throwing her final curse back at her from the darkness. And then the tears came, hot and hard, her voice lost in ragged snuffling gasps as the dagger clattered to the stone at her hoofs. All at once strong forelegs lifted her bodily from the ground and she clutched like a foal against Cadance’s chest. Sobbing and weeping incoherently as the alicorn simply held her.





It was time. 

Cadance drew in a slow breath to calm herself. It had taken less time than she had feared to help Green Leaves regain her composure and the mare had surprised her once again. Now as the Earth Pony stepped into the shallow carved circle, clutching the silver dagger in one fetlock and the last stick of chalk in her mouth, the archdemon could barely keep herself from fidgeting in her mixed dread and excitement.

A gasp from their… host… made her tense. He’d finally woken from his panicked torpor and realized he was once again unmasked. She remained still and forced herself to relax. Green Leaves needed to go about this her way… for all she had done and was about to do, Cadance couldn’t in good conscience deny her that.

“S-stop.” The stallion gasped. Watching terrified as the mare paced towards him. His breaths came ragged, his pelt soaked with fearful musky sweat. For a moment a glint of hope lit in his eyes as she paused to gaze up at him… And then she ducked her head and with a single flick of the chalk in her lips, she completed the broken line of the massive summoning construct. The terrible thing flared to life as demonic energy hummed all around them.

“No! You can’t do this!” He strained against his bonds, but they held him quite fast. He tried to push power through his horn, only to have the tendril bleed it off. His breathing growing more panicked by the second. “You aren’t enthralled. I c-can tell. You don’t have to do this, you can just stop!”

Calmly, Green Leaves leaned her head to the side and spat the nub of chalk passed the circle and out of the summoning. It’s job, at least, was complete. “ And why should I?” She asked in a calm, emotionless voice. Slowly brushing the chalk dust from her lips against the back of her hoof.

Cadance saw the incredulous horror in Nebulae Gaze’s eyes as they darted between the mare confronting him and the demon seated so passively to the side. “Don’t you get it?” He sputtered, squirming once more against her grip on him. “She’s using you! She’s telling you whatever you want to hear so that you’ll do this for her! Whatever she’s got you summoning, it’ll destroy Equestria!”

“Equestria? No.. no I doubt that. Canterlot? Oh, I hope so.”

The unicorn flinched at the grim finality of that statement. “So she’s fed you thoughts of revenge then? On how you’ll bring down the big mean unicorns and make the country full of rainbows and sunshine again?” He sneered. “You have no clue what you’re doing. You’ve no idea the hell you’re about to unleash. And for what?”

Cadance sighed very quietly, saddened to no end that a unicorn she knew as a colt, that she had tried to help would come to an end such as this. Somewhere deep under the demon’s iron resolve a much younger more innocent foalsitter was sobbing as her boundless optimism was again trampled by the sadism of reality. She could still see the colt she had known in there, but she could also hear the screams of a stallion as he burned. And so Cadance-the-Foalsitter would have to weep.

“For what?” Green Leaves growled in response. “You seriously don’t get it, do you? You murdered my only family you bastard! I have no home to go back to. I know the life that an unattached, unprotected mare with no resources would have in that cesspit you call a capitol! And there are hundreds of mares like me there. Or, instead of becoming another unmarked, unmissed statistic, I have a chance to make a difference! So why shouldn’t I take the risk of slaying the insane dragon of Canterlot?”

“You stupid mewling mud pony bitch! You don’t have the ri-glrk!” Nebulae Gaze suddenly choked as a tendril tightened fiercely about his throat, he squirmed and struggled. His face darkening and eyes bulging as he struggled to draw a breath that would not come. As his vision darkened, narrowing into a lengthening tunnel centered on the mare in front of him, he saw her turn to speak to the demon who was strangling him. His pulse pounding in his ears as his vision greyed, and bright sparkles danced before his eyes, before velvety blackness drove the world from him entirely.

Cadance relaxed her grip as the stallion lost consciousness, and ignored his limp body as she turned her full attention to Green Leaves. “It’s time.” She whispered softly. “He’ll be out for maybe a few minutes. He’ll feel nothing, just like you wanted.”

The mare nodded, looking simultaneously relieved and sickened. “Promise me… swear to me that you’ll make th-this stop?” She whispered through clenched teeth, tears trailing down her cheeks as she approached the now still body. “Swear that whatever caused this will be ended. Swear that the world will be made better by what I’m about t-to do!”

“I promise.” Cadance hissed through clenched fangs.

She promises.
                I promise.
                I promise, Darling
                                                                  I swear!
      Cross my heart and hope to fly...
We promise!
                        We all promise!

The faint whispered voices rising out of the now flaming circle caused Green Leaves to freeze in shock. The words continued to echo, winding around and around the circle, a soft murmuring litany of support and acceptance. Cadance bit her lip hard, feeling her eyes pricking at the reassurance offered from across the boundaries of the mortal plane to the brave mare whom held all of their hopes in her hooves.





Green Leaves remained still for a few breathes as the voices twined about her, her eyes closing as she steeled herself. Suddenly she grit her teeth with a whimpered sob and raised the glittering blade in her forehoof. Her stroke was shaky, but she followed Cadance’s simple advice on technique. 

Press up at the hilt, pull to the side quickly. The blade is sharp, you don’t need finesse or fancy technique. It will feel like… slicing a cheese. Don’t look, don’t think, and once you start the pull, don’t stop. Keep your eyes closed, breathe through your mouth, turn and face me and toss the knife across the room out of the circle.

She managed to make the turn away, breathing raggedly before the feel of sticky warmth against her shaking foreleg made her pause. She knew what it was and kept her eyes shut tightly. She didn’t want to see it, she kept gasping for breath through her mouth. She didn’t want to smell it either. Blindly she flung the dagger away and heard it clatter against the far wall with a sense of relief.

She felt dizzy and a second later found herself sitting untidily on the floor as the circle roared around her like a bonfire. Slowly she opened her eyes, ignoring the circle, ignoring the green flames that washed around it, seeking the archdemon who stood beyond them. 

Cadance stood as near to the circle as she could without disrupting it, the emerald flames washing and lapping around her hooves and against her half spread wings. The green fire making the tears streaming down her cheeks shimmer with their flickering light. And Green Leaves could see the mixed triumph and agony in her expression in that moment.

She felt the spell take hold about her. A strange sensation, prickly and buzzing like being caught in a swarm of bees. She felt herself lifted in the pulse and flow of the magic she herself had unleashed, her eyes never leaving the Alicorn as the warm currents swirled about her. She felt heavy and slow, as if drunk on ale, drunk and about to keel over from it. Her mind was fuzzy and indistinct, but she managed to force her lips to whisper one last thing.





And as the mare dissolved bodily into glowing golden sparks, the dead stallion having already melted away into blue glowing dust that swirled heavily into the forming portal, her final words whispered out to the archdemon who countenanced her sacrifice, bringing a hitch to her breath and a dagger-like stab to her heart.

“Thank you.”

 And Cadance, looking and feeling more like the demon poor Nebby had thought her to be, howled her grief into the tumultuous thrum of the coalescing portal as the golden sparks spiraled into its strengthening substance.
> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 5
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ingress


 The thrum of the portal was a soothing counterpoint to the archdemon’s easing sobs. It ebbed and throbbed as if the room had become the heart of some massive creature, it's beating pulse shaking the stones beneath Cadance’s hooves as she calmed herself to miserable little sniffles.

All other sources of light were gone, the oil lamp spent of its meager fuel and the candles burned to dead stubs of running wax now. The cool light of the portal and the muted green glow of the runes now the only illumination. 

The portal itself was a shimmering film of reflective silver liquid surrounded by the chaotic dance of dimensional distortion. The stone beneath it bent and rippled, seeming unable to decide what shape or dimensions it should be, stretching and contracting in time with the pulse of the silvered surface which rippled to the same beat. Surrounding the distorted space on all sides, floor, walls, and ceiling, were the blazing runes. Etched in demonic green fire now as they contained the wounded dimensional fabric with it’s gaping rent within.

Mastering her grief, Cadance turned bloodshot eyes upon her creation. The pulses were getting faster, approaching the point where this end would connect with the identical rune structure carved into the throne room of her citadel. The stronghold of the Archfiend of Lust, from which she managed her infernal duties to her conquered realm. Now that management would be left in the hooves of her lieutenants and courtiers. Carefully chosen and trained for this moment, when their mistress would depart for the mortal realm, and leave her realm in their care for a time.

She had hoof picked each one for intelligence and loyalty, and they would skillfully maintain her realm in her absence.

The silver portal flashed and flexed and with a burst of light it deposited a huddled form upon the open space where less than an hour before Green Leaves had stood. Cadance hurried across the intervening distance even as the black cloaked figure struggled to rise, the finely detailed cape identifying its wearer just as much as the spiky rainbow mane that currently hung passed the deep hood about a gasping fang filled muzzle sucking wind as if she’d been bucked in the stomach.

Embossed across the shoulders of the cloak were a pair of pegasus wings, flared as if in a stiff breeze. Radiating from the extended primaries were bolts of jagged lightning that scattered to the hem in forked tongues. The black woolen fabric masterfully buffed and worked to make the embossed patterns stand out in even the dim light of the portal. Between the wings, high on the back, was a familiar rainbolt cutie mark entwined within an equally recognizable six pointed starburst.

“Dash! Easy…” Cadance dropped to her haunches beside the hunched figure, her forelegs wrapped about the cloaked mare and pulled her close. She brushed back the hood and beheld the glazed, vacant expression, the slack, gasping mouth. Cupping a blue cheek with her fetlock she coupled her mouth to the mare’s. Pulling her into a deeply intimate lip lock. Drawing energy up from the supply she had spent hours with Green Leaves to build, she allowed a trickle of the precious store to flow into her drained companion.

She knew immediately how effective it was as as sky blue forelegs clutched at her tightly, like a drowning pony, still trembling with a desperate needy hunger as tongues twined and wrestled within the clasp of their muzzles. Cadance fought back, controlling the sudden pull of the other’s hunger. Rationing her draw until she had consumed what the Archdemon could spare her and no more.

As their muzzles parted, Cadance felt the mute rebelliousness of the other mare and smirked as she gazed down into her panting, still hunger-pained face. Those slitted magenta eyes so hungry still, giving her an almost puppyish look of sorrowful pleading. “There will be more, so.. so much more to be had. When we’re all through and have a plan.” She whispered, caressing a blue-furred cheek soothingly. More of her carefully hoarded lust she couldn’t give her, but hugs were free, and she clutched the pegasus tightly to her chest. The deep squeezy embrace of her own pegasus heritage seeking to reassure her friend.

“Wh-where… are we?” The pegasus husked softly. Returning the tight squeeze for a moment before slowly trying to gain her feet. Rolling her shoulders, her wings stretched from under her voluminous cloak. As the garment parted the shiny black of felhide leather armor peeped from between the halves. Her slim athletic form crisscrossed in straps and buckles to hold the snug suit together. Above and beyond the protection of her cloak, Dash was, as always, ready for action.

Cadance helped her gain her shaky footing, knowing the feeding was scanty considering the utter draining the portal had exacted to get her across. “I think we’re under the Canterlot School. I haven’t broken the seal on the room, its wards seem strong enough to have masked the summoning.”

Dash nodded shortly, still struggling to catch her breath as she scanned the room, locating the heavily barred exterior door. “Alright. I’ll watch for signs that someone is busting in. Flutters should be next.” She grated out tiredly, ignoring her borderline exhaustion as she moved towards the door.

Cadance drew breath to respond just as the portal convulsed again, depositing another cloaked body upon the floor. Embossed bat wings at full spread, cupping over flocks of bats in flight, each tiny bat having two glittering red eyes, tiny rubies worked into the weave to peep out and reflect even the dimmest light.

The huddled mass was significantly larger than your average pony. Near in size to what Cadance had been like as a lesser alicorn. Slowly she brushed back one wing of the cape, exposing the butter yellow thestral that lay beneath it. Tartarus had aggravated Fluttershy’s muddled magical jumble of pony and Fruit bat heritage, and brought forth the more predatory beastial characteristics once more.

Helping the shaking batpony to sit, Cadance drew her into an all too brief kiss. There was no grabby desperation to the mare’s hunger. Fluttershy was many things, but rarely food aggressive. She melted against the Archdemon and tenderly accepted the necessary meal. Her broad, membraneous wings cradled Cadance softly. As big as the alicorn was, she still fit snugly within the overlapping cocoon of surprising warmth and felt it drawing the tension from her body as it always did. 

She remained in that embrace even after the feeding had ended, tucking her muzzle up beneath the Thestral’s chin, hearing Fluttershy murmur soft reassurance for her keenly felt anguish. Such a strong, warm presence Fluttershy was, as she began to tenderly groom at Cadance’s forehead as they prolonged the loving embrace.

“It’s going to be alright.” Fluttershy whispered in her ear, slowly unfurling her wings and letting Cadance go. The thestral smiled serenely, a soft hoof stroking her shoulder gently before with a last fond nuzzle, Fluttershy slunk off to help Dash guard, long ears pricked for sounds the pegasus might miss.

Cadance smiled a little, feeling her spirits lifted after a moment with her dear Fluttershy, just what she needed after the pressure she’d been under.

Again the portal shook and belched forth a spray of cold, silver light. Dropping an orange pony almost on top of her. Cadance gave a little giggle as she gathered up the groggy Applejack in her forelegs.

“Nnngh, durn thing’s got a bit offa kick to it.” She grumbled, her ever present hat pushed back to dangle behind her head by it’s thong.  She smiled into Cadance’s kiss, wrapping her strong forelegs about the alicorn’s neck. The kiss was firm and feisty, more of a wrassle than a tender submission. And Cadance could see the drooping buds and leaves in the Earth Pony’s mane begin to perk up with the returning vigor. AJ had become a fel-dryad, and was almost more plant than pony these days.

Her cloak was modeled after a wayfinders cloak, broad collar but no hood in deference to her tattered stetson. The black fabric embossed proudly with many an apple entwined on all sides with blooming vines, some flowered, some thorny.

Slowly Applejack drew back, giving Cadance’s lower lip a fond nibble. Her buds were starting to bloom now, many tiny flowers springing open amidst the soft blonde of her mane and tail. The perfume of the opening buds was enticing, alluring and Cadance chuckled as she poked her hoof against AJ’s belly making the mare jump and chuckle. “Can’t blame a gal fer tryin, ah reckon.” She drawled with a saucy wink and a fiendish grin before she released the archdemon.

They were just finishing up as the portal rippled again and Cadance heard a ‘Whee!’ before another set of strong earth pony forelegs wrapped about her neck. The forward momentum propelled the alicorn to the side as her vision was swamped with pink. The landing on the stone floor drove a ‘whuff!’ from her lungs as she giggled into Pinkie's mane. Still unable to see in the fluffy bouncy mass, a pink muzzle found hers and the resulting kiss was enthusiastic and deep. 

For all of her seeming pep, Pinkie took her allotted lust energy as swiftly as any of the others had. Unlike them, as she gigglingly helped Cadance back to her hooves, the alicorn found herself chewing a wad of strawberry bubblegum that hadn’t been there before. The Pink one watched as she blew a bubble from it, laughter dancing in her demonic eyes with just the lightest touch of crazy.

And Cadance felt even better.

The party pony pronked over to where her cloak had slipped free as she had completed her transdimensional-princess-pony-cheer-up-pounce and gathered it back up. The almost mad swirl of balloons and cakes that covered it were all contrary to the somber color and purpose of the heavy garment and yet, somehow, it was as much Pinkie as Pinkie Pie was herself regardless.

Growing more used to the antics of the portal, Cadance heard the shift in its pulse and was in better position when a pale pony in the ubiquitous dark cloak staggered through. Giggling with her renewed good spirits Cadance caught Rarity before she could collapse, pulling the unicorn close.

“Oh… my... that was not entirely pleasant…” the white pony groaned in dismay. She sagged over Cadance’s supporting foreleg as she peered around, eyes narrowing at the crudity of their surroundings. “Oh this is dreadful! How gauche! No class at-hmmmph!”

Cadance rolled her eyes as she took no small glee in silencing the fashionista in the necessary way before she could work up to a full knicker attack at being in a dim cave in the Canterhorn bedrock.

Unlike the rest, it wasn’t simply slitted eyes and fangs that set Rarity apart from the pony she had once been. The pale spiral of her unicorn horn was just as it always was, but now was joined by two backswept curving horns of darkest jet black, rising through her elegant purple mane. The mark of a devil unicorn.

Rarity’s cloak was a masterpiece. Even with all the care and pains she took to match the themes of her friends, she couldn’t help but go a length further with her own garment. Black to match the shared theme of *shudder* utility and function. But hers glistened with onyx stones woven into the durable fabric. And whole flowing sections of her cloak were so diaphanously thin as to be sheer, giving the appearance of her white body cloaked in a stormcloud or wreathed in smoke. Her gem motif ensured it was a particularly fabulous cloud of smoke of course, and left the sinuous movement of her curvy body beneath it tantalizingly visible as she walked.

Her lips were the softest velvet against Cadance’s. Her tongue appropriately inappropriate with it’s darting teases. As the kiss finally broke, she was left giving a feather-soft gasp. “Oh my… well… I guess this will do… for now.” She tittered quietly, her soft forelegs squeezing around Cadance’s withers for a long moment before reluctantly releasing her.

Cadance took a long, deep breath. All of her friends were here, save one. She felt the others gathering about her, all save Dash and Fluttershy who kept watch. She had no attention to spare them now, her eyes sharply scrutinizing every line of the portal spell she had spent two mortal lives to empower. Bringing a demon or a devil through was one thing, bringing… something bigger… could become much more exciting.

The portal flexed, but did not disgorge its passenger as before. It flickered alarmingly before with a sudden jarring pulse the warped space around the silvery portal cracked, jagged lines of silver clawing out in all directions from the perimeter.

Oh buck…

“Oh my, I don’t think it’s supposed to do that!” Rarity gasped, eyes wide as the portal let out a metallic shriek as it began to breach the layers of magical containment.

Cadance bared her fangs as she marshalled her magic. Green fire flaring off of her horn to stab out into the runed array. Belches and sputters of green flames leapt up as the spell tracks strained to contain the fracturing of the now writhing portal. The widening cracks splintering as they were forced to turn aside, twisting back towards their source, widening the portal while forcing the weak flaws that were breaking down to spiral around its circumference until they could balance each other out. The portal howling hollowly as the air in the chamber was whipped into a chaotic maelstrom by its flailing rejection of the load placed upon it.

As Cadance fought to enlarge and stabilize the portal, she felt other magic pulse beside her. Rarity was wending her magical sense around Cadance’s, prudently not touching her spellwork directly, but analyzing the runes from just shy of doing so. “She’s got her shoulders wedged I think.” Cadance heard the fashionista mutter, tossing her elegant mane out of her eyes in the rising wind from the very unhappy portal.

The white pony braced herself as her horns flared, pale blue and deep purple twining together from her unicorn and devil horns as she cast a shimmering strand of it into the rippling portal and gave a yelp as she was nearly dragged off her hooves by the sudden traction upon her magical tether. Bracing as well as she could against the smooth stone of the floor she arched her graceful neck against the strain. Her hooves continued to scrabble for unsure purchase as she turned about. She took one shaky step, only to have her purchase fail and leave her to slide backwards.

A pair of pink forelegs wrapped around her waist, arresting her scraping slide towards the portal at the very edge of the flaring rune circles. Pinkie clutched the unicorn against her barrel, rear hooves spread wide and finding purchase like only an earth pony could. But she couldn’t haul against the relentless drag on the tether on two hooves.

“Ah’m gonna hafta anchor ‘em!” The farm pony glared all about the chamber, looking here and there across the seemingly featureless walls. “Can’t sense anything beyond all the durn wards.” Applejack shouted to Cadance over the rising scream of the portal. “Floor or ceilin’?”

Was she seriously suggesting… of course she was. What choice had they? Cadance spared a quick glance about the chamber before leaning even harder into her spellwork, green fire lashing here and there, wherever the glow of the runes was faltering. She made her gamble. “Floor!”

She heard the crack and splinter of stone beneath earth pony hooves and felt a anxiety inducing broadening of the range of her senses. But only in the direction of the new fissure in the floor that Applejack was busily widening. Her rear hooves now dispersed into many strong thick roots digging and gouging their way through the bedrock like oak tree roots splitting a boulder, yet compressed into mere seconds instead of centuries.

It took moments for the dryad to find a secure anchorage, her lower body quite literally planted in the stone floor, her barrel held upright as if she was frozen mid-rear. She stretched out a forehoof towards the valiantly struggling Pinkie Pie and the orange fur rippled alarmingly, turning swiftly brown and green as it stretched out in ways no pony’s leg should, bifurcating again and again into rapidly lengthening vines.

Her vines wrapped firmly about Rarity’s middle before circling around Pinkie as well. Pinkie needed all four hooves on the ground, so the vines quickly pulled Rarity from her forelegs and tied the squirming unicorn to her back. Pinkie dropped to all fours, her forehooves cracking the floor as Earth pony met earth, gouging a hoof hold against the relentlessly increasing drag of Rarity’s tether.

“Alright sugarcube, one step at a time!” AJ hollered from her secure anchorage, gritting her teeth against the pain as her vines stretched. Fibrous plant matter stretched and stressed, a series of pops and crackles speaking of fibers being overtaxed. For the fel-dryad it was like pulling a muscle, only in agonizing slow motion.

Her vines twined around and around the two mares, wrapping down to Pinkie’s hoof as she lifted it to slowly take a step. As her hoof touched the stone, thousands of hair-like roots sought to glue that hoof to the floor, binding into every miniscule fissure and imperfection they could find.

Pinkie took a second to get her bearings, clenched her fanged teeth and pulled! Earth pony muscle bulged against the usual softness of her curves, answered by hissed groans from a white unicorn as her tether resisted the movement, and from the orange earth pony as the pressure on her vines likewise intensified.

Pinkie was now the core of a hellish contraption that accomplished two simultaneous effects. Each step dragged the finite length of Rarity’s tether further into the space and out of the portal, and also tortured both the unicorn and the dryad with increasing discomfort as the pressure ebbed and then intensified again.

AJ felt her other foreleg shaking as she pointed it forward and added more vines to the task, trying to find some manner of either speeding their endeavour or easing the strain by any degree. She tried to convince herself that sharing the rending ache between both forelegs was an improvement of some sort.

Pinkie took another slow, dragging step forward and waited for the vines to root her hoof in place. As soon as it became immobile she again heaved, dragging a pained yelp from Rarity, who clutched at Pinkie’s neck with trembling strength as the tether tried to convince her head to take the path of least resistance and come free of her shoulders. The unicorn tucked her chin and strained against the crushing pressure.

And the tether moved another length.

Grimly, through sweat and tears, the trio hauled and strained. Cadance was just as embattled, leaning into her magical effort as the portal grew more and more convoluted and the task of containing it became more and more complex. It didn’t take a pony with Twilight’s impressive list of doctorates to know they were fast approaching the point where a figurative wheel would come off. And bad would go to worse.

Pinkie was maybe six steps from running into AJ when the tether slammed to a stop hard, not budging an inch more. The portal shuddered and flexed and a hoof rippled out of the chaotic storm tossed mirror. A lavender hoof trailing blood from several deep gouges. As the hoof touched the floor, purple fire leapt up from around it, the edges glowing hot from contact with the stone.

Cadance let out an inarticulate scream that brought all eyes to the horrifying sight. AJ snarled a curse as she leaned towards Pinkie, her vines wrapping around the two mares even more tightly as she then arched herself backwards, taking up the slack and adding her own strength to Pinkie as the corrupted Earth Pony matched her heave for heave.

Rarity's anguished wail at the sight of Twilight’s bloodied hoof was just as piercing and the unicorn redoubled her own efforts, her horns' glow brightening as she poured her power into mirroring AJ’s actions, taking up the slack, shortening the tether on each heave.

The combined efforts of the trio slowly dragged a blood-soaked mass of pony wrapped in the ragged smoldering frays of a once pristine cloak through the silver aperture. Her hooves clattered to the stone floor, which hissed and crackled as purple flames danced about them, but the swaying figure refused to fall.

As soon as the pressure on the tether went slack Rarity canceled the spell, unintentionally freeing Pinkie who staggered forward into AJ driving an ‘oof’ from the fel-dryad. The partly orange partly green earth pony clutched at the lathered pink mare weakly, her vines quivering with exhaustion as they rapidly went slack, falling away from the other two.

Rarity was in motion almost before she was free of her bonds, scrambling off of the top of the exhausted pony pile to weave her own wobbly course towards the slumping form. “T-twilight!” She gasped, before with a weary stumble she found herself on the ground gasping raggedly for breath.

Cadance still fought with the portal, the surges from the overload lessening, but the imbalance still requiring all of her effort to handle.

The cloaked pony tottered, struggling to remain standing, a fanged muzzle gritted in pain from within the deep hood. Attempting to take a step, trailing blood from her many wounds, her hoof again met the floor and a fresh burst of pale purple fire washed over it as her leg buckled, pitching her headfirst towards the unyielding stone that inexplicably sought to burn her.

She was met by a blur of blue, Dash getting under her before she could fall, bracing to take her weight. “Get her hooves off the floor!” She growled, struggling to find a position where she could hold the larger alicorn up fully.

Feebly twitching vines slithered sinuously across the floor, struggling to rise from it, and failing. AJ growled again as she shifted tactics and began weaving them together, over and under each other, back and forth and side to side until a thick wicker like matting of them worked its way under the smoking hooves. The vines scorched, but were wet enough not to catch fire themselves as Rainbow Dash half carried, half flung the injured mare atop the makeshift barrier.

To their great relief the flames died away and did not return to assault her prone form once it was no longer in contact with the stone.

“What in tarnation? It weren’t tryin’ ta fry us when we came through. Why’n tha heck was Twilight imitatin’ a bonfire just settin’ hoof in here?” AJ ground out, voice worn and dry as winter twigs rubbing against each other as she tiredly began tugging herself free of the rocky gouge she’d made in the floor.

Cadance grunted and gave her head a shake. Her eyes narrowed from the glare from her horn and the still flickering and writhing portal. “Figure it out later! Is she conscious?! I have a very unhappy portal trying to explode and I need to know what to do with it!” She yelled a touch more loudly than she meant, but exploding tended to make her nervous, she wasn’t a fan of exploding truth be told.

“D-drain it away.” A cool, pain filled voice gasped, barely audible over the thrum of the circles. “Earth th-the power. We’ll need the portal, b-but we can recharge it if we have to.” It hissed at her.

Earth the power… right, drain it away into the ground. She already had a breach in the wards, that could work. But… “Twi, if I push this much power into the bedrock…” She yelled over her shoulder.

AJ gave a whistle, “That’s gonna shake things up somethin fierce, ain’t it?”

“No choice.” Dash was helping Twilight sit up, supporting her shoulder against the curve of her body, heedless of the crimson smearing her blue fur. “I bet this little powder keg going pop would inconvenience us a lot more than a tremor will.”

“We’re deep enough,” Twilight hissed, “it will probably seem natural. Do it!”

With a grunt, Cadance dragged her horn away from the portal, pulling on the increasingly unruly green fire like taffy. AJ helped Pinkie up and away from the cracked hole in the floor as the Archdemon began to literally pour the blazing power down into the stone, feeling it permeate and soak away into the unwarded mass below. In her mind's eye she could see the verdant glow blooming out into the dense bedrock around them, and she quickly turned her attention to the wildly erratic portal. This was risky, but if she timed it just right…

She felt the ground beneath her hooves begin to squirm even as she focused her senses to the quickly draining energy of the portal. Almost… allllmost… now! She cut the siphon she had created the instant the portal output reduced to normal levels, swiftly adjusting the runes and shutting it down, the still billowing silver film of the aperture winking out. Leaving them in utter darkness a breath before the quake hit.

Cadance was sent sprawling as the earth roared and rumbled its displeasure all around them. Her horn flared brightly, sending a thin green film washing over the walls of their pocket. A blue/purple film flowing out as well, blending and melding with hers, and a second later a weak violet glow from the drained alicorn of Magic joined them in reinforcing their cavern as it jumped and bucked and tried to shake their teeth from their sockets.

It was a timeless moment of exquisite terror for seven mares as the mountain they were under threatened to crush them in its mighty throes as rock shifted and broke, the mass of energy it had been suddenly charged with causing expansions and contractions, forcing it to find a new equilibrium that could bleed the unwanted energy away and attenuate it into the crust of the continental shelf.

Cadance never was quite certain how the quake stopped, whether abruptly or petering off over seconds to minutes. All she ever remembered was opening her eyes to a cavern dimly lit in the multicolored glow of three sets of horns and trying to decide if the world was still shaking or if it was only her.

Numbly she clambered to her hooves, grimly daring the floor beneath her to start moving again as she crept at a shuffling gait over to the once again prone form of Twilight. Her horns still faintly shining, casting a dim glow over the pegasus who lay draped protectively over her, shielding her body with cape and wings as if she would have held up the ceiling had it fallen upon them.

Knowing Dash as she did, Cadance didn’t doubt for a moment that the pegasus would have tried.

The archdemon knelt onto the mat of slowly drying creeper vines beside the unmoving lavender alicorn, her keen nose scenting fresh blood from her wounds. She carefully drew a wingtip along Dash’s cheek, feeling the pegasus stir and slowly withdraw now that the acute danger had passed. Giving the demonic alicorn the space needed to assess Twilight’s condition.

Sizewise there was no longer any disparity between the two corrupted alicorns. Their hellish trials had erased any differences in their rate of development. Twilight was nearly as large as Celestia had been many long years ago. Though perhaps not as willowy and graceful in form. She was deep-chested and leanly muscled in a way the Solar Alicorn had never been.

Her horn had lengthened, as should be expected from her natural ageless maturation, yet the two backswept almost draconic horns that curved from her crown giving her the devilish triad of a fel-unicorn were decidedly not the handiwork of alicorn biology.

Her mane was no longer the prim, mathematically precise nerd-cut she had always worn, though the ethereal mass filled with stars and galaxies tried to assume the old look as much as its gentle wavering body could be coaxed to, ebbing and flowing around her trio of horns like a living thing. Though it now flowed long and thick between her shoulders, curling down over either side heavily, much longer and fuller than her mane used to be. Cadance had often teased her for ‘letting her mane down’ this much.

Below the base of her lush mane, more changes became apparent, her darkly lavender fur giving way to soft folded plates of deep purple draconic scales, a widening swath of ‘different’ that broadened to subsume both wing bases, and everything attached to them. Her currently limp wings were draconic in form and function, the pale purple membrane pulled between predacious spars of bone and sinew. They were a size and a half as large as their feathered predecessors had been, scaled up similar to Fluttershy’s to accommodate a radically different form of flight.

The scales narrowed down her spine and over the top of her rump, petering out only after they had claimed their last conquest, her equine tail replaced with a long, thin whip of muscle and scales, a plume of ethereal stars at the tip the only concession to her alicorn heritage.

Crisscrossing her body were puckered burns and gouges. Each leaking her dark red blood from whatever tortures the portal had visited upon her. The damage was extensive, and it brought a keening mewl of distress from the archdemon’s throat to see it. Her horn’s glow brightening as she went to work, tenderly soothing and beginning the slow process of knitting ravaged flesh back together.

So intent was she upon her healing, that she almost didn’t react to a purple foreleg wrapping about her neck, dragging her down. She caught the briefest glimpse of smiling fangs before they caught her up in a hungry kiss. Glowing slitted eyes of deep violet gazed into hers as the kiss deepened swiftly and she gave a mumbled half-hearted protest as her magic fizzled out.

Cut up, burned, drained to the lees of her power, Twilight still had the physical strength to dominate the Archdemon of Lust, rolling her onto her back, clutched between strong forelegs as a long tapered tongue enjoyed her suddenly submissive mouth. Injured as she was, Twilight was still utterly beautiful to Cadance even so. The Archdevil of Power, domineering and seductive, taking no little portion of her stored energy, but leaving her feeling paradoxically stronger for the loss.

Eventually the passionate liplock became more celebration than feeding, and still they both lingered in the enjoyment. Indulging themselves after the complicated but real success of their escape from the infernal regions.

Finally they parted with a mutual gasp, though Twilight refused to release her. Cadance giggled with heady, almost delirious giddiness. It took her a moment to relearn how to form words.

“I-I think some of our… calculations were… off.” She managed to gasp out between pants for breath.

There was utter silence for a brief moment before Twilight began to chortle, hugging her all the tighter. Other slightly stressed voices joining in with the laughter as tensions began to dissolve. Cadance felt more warm bodies piling about her as the now long worn and comfortable cuddle pile coalesced about the two archfiends, pressing about them with giggles and peals of laughter. One small pocket of the mortal plane ringing once more with joyous voices not heard there in over a decade.






Starlight Twist didn’t immediately react when the quake started, initially chalking up the quiver to her tummy rumbling its complaints to her endless engrossment with her studies. It was only when one of her absurdly tall stacks of books and scrolls, precariously stabilized as it was, suddenly spilled to the floor with the increasing tremor did the startled pegasus tear her eyes from her parchment. Quill clutched between her lips as she realized her room was shaking, not her.

Blue eyes widening in shock as another monument to her current research project slid apart into a cascade of books onto the floor, the pegasus spat her quill in the general vicinity of the inkwell, rearing up to steady a third stack between her forehooves, wings flaring to catch more delicate scrolls before they could join the growing mess around her desk. The stack between her hooves shifted, drawing a meep of displeasure from her as the base parted company with the surface supporting it and she ended up hugging the top three books to her chest as the rest treacherously made a break for the floor. The shaking lasted for barely a minute before as quickly as it came, it ceased. 

The navy blue pegasus gave a disgusted snort as she carefully set her few successful rescues upon the desk. Her eyes took in the now colossal mishmash of books on the floor and she groaned in dismay. Then her eyes spied the traitorous quill, which hadn’t quite made it to the inkwell, and instead had spattered ink spots over her parchment, queering the runes she had been painstakingly scrawling without the benefit of unicorn telekinesis. Her groan returned, double strength, as her ears flopped limply to each side. A flat mournful posture that made her look like she’d just been bonked on the head with a mallet.

Three hours work, ruined! She’d have to start from scratch again. Once she picked up her source materials… once she sorted which from which. Once she got another large sized, casting grade parchment. Her chin came to rest on the desk, staring mournfully down her muzzle at the loss of her afternoons efforts.

Canterlot had been having tremors for the past two years, but the quake ward project was supposed to have put a stop to it all. A year of planning and six months of concentrated work to ward the bedrock under Canterlot's foundations. How had an aftershock like that slipped through?

She wished she was at the class laboratories today. She’d have had a new parchment almost at once, and quite likely Professor Scrolls could have assessed her work post-tremor and have let her use a pre-scribed rune parchment after the mishap trashed her original effort.

But today was Swift’s late shift on patrol, and on nights her older sister worked late she had to make do with study at home. She might be considered an unexpected prodigy in magical theory and alternate application to the researchers in the school laboratories, which had secured her an anomalous posting as an assistant. But outside those hallowed halls she was ‘just’ a pegasus. And ever since the unpleasantness in Baltimare, being a pegasus was enough to some unicorns who had lost family there, and wings weren’t always enough to outrun an angry stallion looking for payback.

As she began to clear up the mess, she hoped her sister was having a better afternoon than she was.





“Is everypony alright?” Swift Light bellowed in her parade ground volume voice. “Anypony hurt? Speak up if you’re injured!” She barked, horn flaring as she snatched another pair of falling roof tiles out of the air before they could crash to the cobbles of the narrow street and further panic the disorganized mass of ponies all around her. She settled them on the growing stack at her hooves with a muffled clank, eyes busy watching for any more that slithered loose after that shake.

Murmurs, some still sounding panicked, some more sane erupted from all around her, but no yells, pained or otherwise responded to her call.

Standing at attention, the Guardspony was still an impressive sight, even if the white and gold of the royal armor had been traded out for the steel and blue of their more mundane existence as peacekeepers. The trick was to keep one's breathing controlled and relax slightly into the armor. Done properly, the full suit would remain perfectly motionless, and you would look like a statue of stone and steel. Immovable, impregnable, safe.

To have a motionless statue also catching falling tiles and policing them into neat stacks without seeming to even breathe was perhaps even more impressive to the layponies present.

It was the duty of the Guard to make ponies feel safe. And more than half of that job was done with showponyship.

“That’s the first strong shock we’ve had in months. Probably a misaligned section of warding left a gap that hasn’t been caught until now.” She swallowed a snort as she continued making up a plausible reason, going with whatever sounded good at the moment. “I’m sure the corps of engineers will be hard at work figuring it out.”

She lifted an armored forehoof and resumed her patrol, setting the neat stacks of tiles against the wall of the house that had been shedding them. The milling crowd gave way before her, making a respectful path for her as she departed the scene.

More than half was showponyship, she thought wryly, the rest was talking out of your plot but sounding like you knew what you were talking about.

Her patrol continued uneventfully as the hours bled away and soon the westering sun neared the horizon, the sky burned a deep orange as she rounded the last bend of her circuit and stamped into the tiny park that served as her rest point before she began the long plodding march back to the station.

Tiredly she unstrapped her helmet and tugged it off, feeling the tingle as the glamour enchantment on it dissolved. The steel grey of her coat fading into it’s natural snowy color, her grey eyes melting into amber as she gave an irritated shake of her chestnut mane. She really missed the old look, she’d never have had to use a full body enchantment to meet the requirements of the Royal Guard. And the new colors were so dull! Steel grey and blue grey and pewter.

Carefully she set her helmet down, glad to have the elaborate bucket off for a short time. Twisting her neck until it made a sound like celery stalks breaking she gave a grunt as some of the tension eased.

The park was barren now, used only by the guard as a waypoint now. The tiny fountain still bubbled dull grey water into the marble catchbasin, but the roses, the flowering shrubs and greenery had all been ripped out at the same time all the statuary of Celestia had been smashed and removed.

Once this had been a small, private little shrine to the sun goddess, maintained lovingly by the residents of the surrounding buildings. But with the coup, any form of devotional or worship of the sun had been outlawed. And all the little artistic nooks and niches of the city had been scoured clean of her imagery and icons.

Swift’s hoofs scuffed in the dry hard dust that had once bloomed with life, making her way passed the tiny morose little fountain to the outer wall, a soft breeze ruffled through her sweaty mane, bringing welcomed cooling as she looked out across the vast valley below, burnished copper in the setting sun.

And there, bathed in the waning light, her lips moved soundlessly with the first words of a prayer. A prayer she had uttered often since she had entered the academy.

It was called ‘The Guards’ Oath’ and was very old. The tradition said it had first come into being from the lips of Celestia herself, when the Royal Guard had first been formed. A litany of the traits she wanted her new Guard to stand for and been seen by the common ponies to exemplify.

It had passed from the first corps to their first conscripts and eventually to cadets of the academy that was founded to train new members. At some point it had become cadenced and ritualized.

Her class had been the last class to be taught it.

It was said to be upon the lips of any true Royal Guard at the moment of their death whether natural, accidental or from violence. A whispered affirmation of what they strove to be even as breath left their body for the last time.

It was… probably more romanticized than reality, but the concept held a powerful example of the strength of the ideals which they lived by. Definitely made an impression upon the young hopefuls at the academy. 

And so she murmured the words, to the sun, to the sky, to herself. Turning away from the wall and approaching the small fountain. The water seemed so grey and lifeless, a burble of sound without the sparkle it had once held. Soot from the many factories had tarnished the marble of the bowl, leaving this dulled mirror. As grey as the reflection staring back up at her from the rippling surface. She wasn’t wearing her helmet, but nonetheless it was a drab, dull, greyed out mare that looked up, reciting the words of a dying ideal along with her.

Yet still she whispered the words. In acknowledgement of the many who had spoken them before her, and the one who had first spoken them long ago. The flame had become sparks, and now died to embers. Maybe when it was all over it would finally go out when those like her finally ended their vigil and acquitted their duties. Maybe then the last vestiges would go dark and cold. But she had a duty, if to do no more than blow upon those embers until she no longer had breath to.

Hoping always, for better days.





> Fel Equestria - Invasion - Chapter 6
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Interstice


Cadance opened her eyes to darkness. She was warm. Smaller bodies were piled around her like a living blanket, the various snores and breaths a grating, discordant, comforting din. She almost drifted back to sleep, lulled by the warmth and the comfort. Until she saw Twilight standing apart in the dim purple glow of the flames about her hooves.

Her breath caught in her throat in momentary panic. But the archdevil seemed barely inconvenienced as she studied the odd effect that rippled about her hooves, the edges of them glowing as if hot. Cadance watched her lift one to examine the stone beneath, a dim half circle hoofprint of heated glow remaining as the fire itself died away.

She felt the pony atop her shift slightly and turned her attention to Fluttershy, who was perched atop the pony pile like a mother hen, her broad wings blanketing all the ponies below her. Very much awake, she was watching Twilight with curiosity until she noticed Cadance awake. “She’s been at it for maybe five minutes.” The thestral whispered softly. “I think she’s wrapped up in figuring it out now.”

Nodding her understanding, Cadance's horn lit faintly. Fluttershy gave a ticklish giggle as she found herself and the rest of her slumbering charges gently rearranged, the Archdemon emerging from the pile and gathering the rest back into a cohesive clutch. Dropping a fond kiss upon the thestrals brow, she left Fluttershy to nestle down atop the mound again as she padded softly towards the Archdevil.

Her eyes took in the still puckered and healing scars, assessing their continued regeneration. Already they looked much better, though total healing would require more energy than a single pony could provide.

Cadance’s throat tightened in memory of Green Leaves, the infernal alicorn suppressing the urge to keen her sorrow. Pushing the thought away once more, she turned her attention to the quiet, fizzing flames that continued to wash up around Twilight’s hooves, glancing at her own just to assure herself that the odd reaction was indeed unique to the lavender alicorn.

“It’s the ley energy.” Twilight murmured softly in greeting, glancing up into Cadance’s eyes before returning her attention to her upraised hoof. Settling it back to the stone, where just as before it began to burn. “We’re perhaps three miles from the Prime node under Canterlot, this close the bedrock is saturated with runoff from the local ley nexus. This residue appears to react caustically to my own Fel power.” She paused for a moment, dragging her hoof sideways, causing a line of fizzling sparks. “I hadn’t anticipated this.” She admitted with a sigh.

“So, tapping the ley in the short term isn’t viable.”

Twilight gave a harsh snort, shaking her billowing ethereal mane in annoyance. “I can't even begin to build a theory about what that might do to me.”

Cadance grimaced, biting her lower lip as she pondered, casting back through her memories to dredge up anything that might shed some light, no matter how small. She came up empty hoofed. “Alright, so what about the portal? Why did it suddenly go unstable like that?”

Twilight was silent for a long moment, “I think that was all me.” She murmured softly, brow furrowing as she glared at her still flaming hooves. “I’m getting the distinct impression I wasn’t supposed to be able to leave Tartarus.”

Cadance blinked and took a moment to digest the nuances of that. “Rarity said she thought you’d gotten… wedged?” She prompted. Hoping her intellectual counterpart had more detail to give about her predicament.

Twilight’s eyes narrowed with remembered pain. “It was… very much like that actually. There came a point where no matter what I did, I could neither progress nor withdraw. I was fundamentally ‘stuck’. That’s when the portal energies starting tearing strips out of me. I was aware of Rarity pulling at me, but I was paralyzed by the pain, unable to act. Had the girls not hauled me through as they did, I think I would have been stuck until the portal flayed me to paste. This may be a reason why previous Powers didn’t seem especially focused on escape. They were very solitary creatures. With no aid in gaining passage, an interdimensional gateway was probably suicide for them.”

         Cadance nodded with a sympathetic wince. “My predecessors certainly had no trouble with it, considering the wealth of portal data they had amassed. That proved extremely helpful in making this possible. Well, for now, we’re through, we can figure out a return trip if and when it becomes necessary.” Her lips quirked in sudden inspiration. “But in the meantime, will you be flaming everywhere we go?”

Cadance watched Twilight’s expression, darkly focused and intense per usual, go blank as the comment registered in her magnificent brain.

Hah, critical hit!

She could almost see the processing that was occurring as her counterpart worked her way through the question. Grammatically, syntactically, scientifically, there was probably at least one bunny trail followed into the realms of language and prose. Then her mouth twitched upwards rustily at the corners. Ahhhh humor had gotten a bite on it! Any second now!

Twilight giggle-snorted, and Cadance felt her own mood burst free of the pall of worry at the sound of it.


******


Vinyl plodded along the rain slick cobbles, neither appearing to hurry nor to loiter. It was difficult with her heart hammering as it was in her chest. Her ‘performance’ for Twitch had only been enhanced by the sudden quake that had shook the city. She had done what any good performer would and improvised.

Her little jury-rigged infrasound generator had by that point been beating like a rabbit's terrified heartbeat, the unheard pulse of it lending weight to her carefully choreographed horror show. A dark house, the creak of hall boards, the absence of external sound. Flashes of lightning with no rumble of thunder. Natural phenomena all provided without some usual component. Not enough to perhaps immediately be noticed, but it would leave the mind on edge, searching for bits of sensory experience suddenly missing. And under it all, the infrasound would be coaxing the heartbeat to quicken, the stallion to get jumpy and not know why.

Then the quake had hit, and she had been forced to quicken her pace. Her magic sneaking a tiny ultraviolet spotlight into the room, attaching it to the front of his desk. She lowered her hood, giving a few last rapid blinks from the contact lenses she’d just finished putting in. Full sclerals hurt, the lenses seeming two sizes too large, as they always did.

As the quake subsided she’d found the wall switch with her magic and doused the magelamp in the room, stepping into the doorway and waiting for a few anxious seconds for a little lightning.

C’mon….. C’moooooon!

As the needed lightning flash struck she flicked on the spotlight. The mare-like shriek from the amped-up stallion was a perfect complement to her skill at makeup. Skull face paint, and eyes aglow with corpsefire in the spotlight. She probably looked like something that had just crawled its way out of tartarus! She remained motionless, unblinking, simply staring at Twitch as he recoiled in terror, his chair knocked over with a clatter.

The glow of her own magic washed out in the UV light, making it easy to snatch the panicked stallion by his tie and bodily drag him forward out of his chair over the desk, his paltry meal knocked aside by scrabbling hooves, the beer bottle smashing to the floor in the process

Out from beneath Vinyl’s hoodie rose her other prop, an absurd fantasy dagger. Patterned in a skull motif, polished to a glittering finish. She’d used it at a few shows that wanted darker music and imagery for their patrons. Now with a glittering blur, it slammed down into the table, it’s false edge nailing the poor ponies tie to the near side, leaving him unable to back away without strangling himself as he gibbered and screamed. She then suppressed her magic hard, using only the barest amount to create the next effect. She wanted it to look nothing like unicorn magic for her next ‘trick’.

Vinyl remained motionless, hardly daring to breathe. She surreptitiously lifted a photograph from her pocket in her magic as the stallion squirmed and pleaded with the spectre in his bedroom. Out of his sight a tube of carmine ink carefully spattered the precious photograph, drops glistening wetly along the lower edge before her magic gathered a small orb of the liquid beneath it so when she slapped it down next to his face the ‘bloody’ photograph made a satisfyingly disturbing blood smear beneath it. Octavia smiled up out of the picture at Twitch, her muzzle spattered by the crimson ink.

Even as his panicked gaze was drawn by the movement of the photograph the ink was already running out from beneath the crumpled edge. The stallion watching in horror as the red liquid bunched into a single word question.

‘Where?’

Twitch had gabbled out all he knew, which hadn’t been much. Only whose henchponies had been responsible for emptying the holding cells that night, the answer confirmed Vinyl’s worst fears, and she’d almost fallen out of character. Not that it had mattered, as Twitch’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he began to seize. Vinyl frantically freed his tie and dragged him bodily to the floor, trying to keep him from biting his tongue or injuring himself in the spasms.

From under the ice covering her soul came the nauseating knowledge that she’d frightened him all too well as she held his rigid body through the worst of the wrenching spasms. As the seizure finally ebbed, she had dragged his body half into the hall, laying him down carefully, assured herself repeatedly he was still breathing as she quickly snatched up all her little props, every item that would tie her to this sad scene.

Watching from a cramped alley across the street, she had a good view of the guard patrol that found his conspicuously open door, their initial entry and then the firing of an emergency flare into the sky to bring help for the stallion they found down and unresponsive. Watching his pathetic huddled form being loaded into an ambulance wagon had been accompanied by a sick revulsion for herself and what she’d just done to a stallion who had the bad luck to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yet even then, a part of her mind reasoned that at least this way, he wouldn’t be able to alert the guard about his horrifying encounter. The seizure had struck so quickly he might not even remember what had happened… if he woke up at all.

That last supremely cold and calculating thought had driven Vinyl numb with grief. Was she really weighing the pros of having propelled a stallion into an early grave by way of sheer terror? What was happening to her? She had found a rain barrel to dunk her face and scrub away the matted makeup and had fled that section of town with however much haste she could get away with unnoticed.

Deep into the entertainment quarter she had plodded, down thoroughfares past theatres and into the lower levels where most of the bars and underground clubs were found. The Guard had given up patrolling down here, not enough ponypower to try to maintain the capricious and self-centered ‘laws’ that came down from the nobility. They made a ‘bust’ every now and then, turned over a rave or trance bash for narcotics and illegal booze. And nowadays, thanks in part to Vinyl herself, for illegal music.

The rain had been brief, and from the looks of it had only touched part of the festering cancer that was Canterlot. ‘The City of Unicorns.’ It was called, and Vinyl couldn’t help a bitter twist of lip at what the decay of the once shining capitol of Equestria said about those same unicorns. Even as the thought crossed her mind she felt a familiar beat coming up through her hooves from the cobbles. She paused, letting the pulsing beat speak to her as her eyes closed. Yeah, it was hers.

When she had found the writ of seizure upon her door, and after a panicked search and several attempts to get any of her neighbors to confirm what they had seen that night, the night Tavi had been taken, she’d packed a few things in a hurry and lost herself in the bowels of the city. Places she’d never taken Tavi, though she’d told her marefriend tales of them. The ‘rough side of Canterlot’, ‘places where you didn’t go if you didn’t know your way around’.

It was from the darkest of pits that new music had poured forth. Sadder, angrier, more violent. While she had begun her subtle search for any news of her Tavi, she’d allayed her powerlessness by venting her rage and hate for the city that had betrayed her into music such as she had never before composed. Almost overnight Vinyl Scratch became a wanted pony for incitement. Her ‘renegade’ album had gone viral. It didn’t matter what the official word was, her pain touched something in ponies, something dark and painful. Something that, right or wrong, begged to find expression.

She’d cut and dyed her mane and tail that same night. She was thankful that her cutie mark was amenable to dye and makeup as well. Her cherished bass note all but obliterated, replaced by a carefully designed ink brush and swirl. For now, Vinyl Scratch was a spectre somewhere in the underground, never showing her face. That left Onyx Scribble to do the heavy lifting of her goals in the world.

She stood immersed in the heavy, aggressive beat on one of her angrier mixes for a full minute before she drew in a shaky breath and forged ahead. Her work had paid off, she had a name, she had a place, and with those, she was one step closer to taking back what belonged to her.

It was barely two hours later that she pushed through the door to a well kept hostel in the merchant quarter. A hooffull of bits and she had the room of her choice, north facing, upper story. It was a nicer room than she was used to, but the warmth and comfort of the amenities were not why she was there. Dousing the lamp and opening the window she gazed down the long straight main avenue of the merchant quarter to the gated premises of the newest magnate power of Canterlot. The mansion of the so-called ‘Brothers Horn’.

Cold crimson eyes took in the gate and the guards. Twitch had given her a name, a famous one. And now she had a place. The Horn brothers were dangerous. The elder was unstable and ruthless, the younger a fop of a stallion. They had coasted into Canterlot years ago as if they were the Flimflam brothers, promising answers to various ailments with their potions and ‘enhancing medicinals’. 

True their stuff seemed to work, even combatting the magical malaise that many unicorns had started to suffer in the past two or three years. But on one point all outside sources agreed. Their concoctions, no matter how useful, were addictive as heck. And once they started providing stimulants to the merc units that the nobles maintained for their ‘personal protection’ their fortunes were made. They very quickly became the sort of wealthy that even the high courts couldn’t touch.

They were now noble in all but name, skirting the laws and having everything their own way like every scion of the major houses did. In truth, bits now meant more than blood, and they had a controlling monopoly.

It didn’t matter. All the bits in the kingdom weren’t going to keep her out. She just had to figure out how to get in without becoming another nameless statistic. Simple right?


******


        Rarity let out a soft sigh, the fel-unicorn settled as comfortably as possible upon the hard stone floor. Before her lay a ragged collection of blackened threads and burned fabric where a magnificent cloak should be. The portal had done an incredible job wrecking one of her masterpieces.

Each of her friends' cloaks was a labor of years, consuming her energies and many hard to replace resources to craft. They were resistant to magic and bolt and blade, each clung to their wearer's body and spirit, passively gathering any ambient magical energy from its surroundings and using it to repair itself or refresh its wearer.

Unfortunately, the raw magical forces that Twilight’s cloak had been subjected to were an order of magnitude beyond its abilities to resist. It had been flayed as much as its wearer had been, far beyond what its own self repair abilities could ever mend.

There was a second option if Rarity had the strength for it. Taking a deep breath, the devilish unicorn gave it another go. She reached deep inside until she felt the dimmed spark of her own energies, her sense of the outer world fading to bare shadows upon her perceptions. Silently she cursed the portal, first for draining her, second for making her expend so much to retrieve her mistress. 

A pony of sense would have weighed her exhaustion against the repair of what was essentially a secondary accessory to a being of Twilight's power. But Rarity was a mercurial devil for whom common sense was at best a useful convenience at times. She had built in her mind for decades how these fledgling hours of their return to the mortal plane would play out. And for Twilight to not have her proper accouterments was unthinkable! It was wrong, and that was the end of it.

Still, her sense of personal affront at the realities of their crossing was not aiding her in finding the energy she needed. She felt the light stickiness of sweat beading against her brow and was about to relent when another spark entered the closely shrouded proximity of her senses.

For a brief moment, she feared it was Twilight. Her mistress was not known for patience with matters she considered trivial. And in the grand design, Rarity’s preoccupation with style would self-admittedly be quite a petty concern. But that didn’t allay the pang it would give her to be ordered to let this go.

But the slight hint of lavender in the other spark was just like her own, the mark of Power amidst the almost brutish glare of cyan. She dimly felt Rainbow Dash settle down beside her, leaning against her as a wing draped casually over her back. She neither opened her eyes nor held back the soft smile that touched her lips.

Three centuries ago, she’d have demanded the ruffian unhoof her immediately, and Rainbow would likely have had some biting jibe to offer back. Now, after so long together, the intimacies shared, some willingly, others not, there was no irritation with the familiarity, only appreciation of just how warm a pegasus’ wing could be.

So close together, the discrete boundaries of the individuals became indistinct. It wasn’t true telepathy, there were no words, no defined thoughts. It wasn’t exactly empathy, though bursts of emotions were infrequently experienced. It was more a distinct comprehension of another soul, another spark with different color and flavor than her own.

She found she basked in the feeling when she could indulge it.

Dash was worried and alert, as she should be, with their mistress injured and all of them half-starved from the jump to the mortal plane. Of them all, Rainbow was probably the most highly strung beneath her essential bravado. Resting at this point would be making her jumpy, thus whatever Rarity was doing was a useful enough distraction from her jitters.

And with a second spark involved…

Rarity pushed once again, and this time she felt the pegasus push along with her as if they had done this very thing a hundred times before. Rainbow had only basic knowledge of the magic Rarity and their Mistress wielded, but she understood energy. Her pegasus nature was predisposed to harnessing elemental lightning after all. So the inner process of drawing power and pushing it out was deliciously second nature.

Rarity allowed her head to dip as her horns began faintly glowing and felt Dash reach a hoof to touch the nearest corner of the burned and frayed mess before them.

And to Rarity’s senses, a thin arc of color flowed off both their sparks, illuminating the ragged threads to Rarity’s augmented inner sight. The colors flowed through the physical material like water, pooling inside its fragile structure until pale violet met cyan. She heard Rainbow gasp and felt the sympathetic jolt as their differing energies encountered each other. And like striking sparks off a flint stone, the impact set magical fire amongst the crazed tatters before them. Their colors fleeing back to their sources as the glow quickened in their wake.

It didn't take much to get the process to kickstart, each thread giving a shiver before one thread became two, became twelve… became innumerable. Each weaving together, growing longer and longer as the remains duplicated and divided, again and again. Each thread knowing precisely where to go in concert with its neighbors, the arcane blueprint for the entire cape stored in every fiber of its mass.

It was beautiful to watch like an invisible artist was sketching the cloak back into existence. First the outline, the lines growing darker and bolder as they grew more substantial, strands of glistening black filling in from the edges towards the center, weaving new web as if coloring in the inner space of the sketched rough. Rarity nestled into Rainbow and felt the pegasus snuggle right back, her own inner sense of satisfaction mirrored back at her from Dash’s magenta eyes.

They both started a little at the soft chuckle behind them. Rainbow’s head jerking up to see their Archdevil looming over them, watching as the cloak became whole where it lay before them. With a foalish giggle, the pegasus scrambled to her hooves, gathering the garment from the stone floor and holding it out to the larger devil almost shyly.

Twilight bowed her head, allowing the colorful devil pegasus to settle the garment over her neck, nimble hooves closing the clasp as a soft purple field of magic from Rarity billowed the fabric out to swath her as it should. Black and regal, Twilight’s cloak was embossed around the hem in arcane sigils of startling depth and complexity, rune arrays of strange form and function. As it draped about her it drifted oddly, tucking behind her wings, the fabric gathering here, tensing there, giving the Archdevil full use of her wings unless she tucked them close. With a flick of her horns, the arrays on the garment caught fire with a violet glow, running through their paces for their mistress, ensuring her of the functionality of the myriad enchantments woven into the webbing of the cloth. As the runes along the hem lit, various designs and pathways likewise caught fire across the fabric, the simple garment showing itself to be a carefully constructed multifunction spell array, needing only the magic of its wearer to power and direct it.

Just as swiftly the glow drained out of the arrays and the cloak returned to velvety darkness about her. A purple foreleg slipped out, quick as a striking snake, to catch a sky blue pegasus up. Rainbow giving a little gasp, quickly stifled against Twilight’s lips as the pegasus was thoroughly and comprehensively kissed, going limp in her mistress’s clutches, mewling softly and pawing tenderly at her chest ruff with a trembling hoof.

        Rarity felt a fanged grin coming to her lips at the familiar and stirring sight. As much as they both belonged to their mistress in ways both wonderful and terrible, the Archdevil and the pegasus shared a bond deeper still. Rarity was a Devil of Power, certainly. But Rainbow was Her Herald. Content with her own lot, she did not begrudge Rainbow Dash her intimacy with their mistress… she had witnessed what it took to make an Archfiend’s Herald.

        Rainbow collapsed into a softly giggling heap as Twilight released her. The Pegasus with a dreamy, glazed look that so often accompanied such moments. Rarity lifting a hoof to titter behind it at the sight. Rainbow would be bubbly for a good half hour from such a moment with Twilight, the poor dear would barely be able to focus until she got that high out of her system.

        The Fashionista, however, had let her attention wander with the Pegasus, and so let out an unladylike squeak as a deep lavender field of magic snatched her from where she lay. Strong forelegs encircled her, nestling her deep against a warm purple furred chest. She went limp against her mistress, burying her nose into her fur and drawing in a long, slow breath. Her eyes drifting closed as she clutched at the Archdevil with her hooves, trying and not quite able to encircle the alicorn’s neck.

        Sharp fangs gently closed about her ear tip, the soft, tender prickling like a kitten’s milk teeth, it sent a delicious shiver down her spine as her breath halted in a gasp. She was suspended off the floor by Twilight’s height, even seated. Her body supported in Twilight’s hug, her hind legs still supported in her magic, until she felt a serpentine tail curling snugly about one, Her muscles tensed a little as if trying to paw at the ground a little, old pony instincts demanding her legs be free, free to run from a predator. The muscled tail resisted the movement, pulling her leg to stillness even as a serpentine tongue flicked along the inner cup of her ear. The loss of mobility made the pony hindbrain jittery, but the loss of control did even more…. stimulating things to her conscious mind. 

        The results were delicious. Rarity couldn’t help herself, she gave a soft, submissive whine, Twilight knew just how to play her. The archdevil gave a husky little purrr back, tugging on her poor captured ear before snaking that merciless tongue down inside it, sending another shudder down her spine. I-if she kept this u-up….

Slowly she was lowered into a confused heap beside the now gleefully leering Pegasus. She pouted at Rainbow with all her might even as the flashy devil’s grin grew larger.

“Mmmmm, that’ll teach you both for wasting energy.” Twilight murmured with a predacious grin. “But the cloak is as beautiful as ever… thank you so much Rares.”

Her eyes narrowed at them seriously. “No more foolery, gather your things, we’ll shortly be moving out. You’ll just have to bear it until we have a plan.” She spoke in a commanding voice. Her eyes however holding a flicker of smugness for the dawning distress on her wayward pets expressions.

As Twilight moved off, Rarity and Dash looked at each other, both assessing how pent up the other suddenly looked.

“Y’know Rarity… I hope the cloak was worth it.” Rainbow grated out with a huff. Her cocky grin returning as she leaned closer to the devilish Unicorn. “I think she wants us hungry when we leave.” She whispered, letting her tongue slide sensually along her gleaming fangs.

Rarity gave a soft little shiver as she tamped down the warmth in her belly with difficulty. Pondering Dash’s point she looked up at the pegasus. “Mmmmph, means she has an idea of what she’s going to do I would opine.” She whispered back, just as softly.

Their smiles matched each other as they scrambled to their hooves to make ready. If their mistress had a plan, then she was grooming them to play their parts. That was reason enough to put up with the itch the wicked fiend had kindled for them both.

Twilight, meanwhile, strode towards the other side of the chamber, eyes taking in the new burst of activity all around. Cadance was concentrating at her portal, green fel magic lancing out into the rune work, shifting a few key portions of the arrays to permit what they needed next. The others were now gathering and checking over the gear they had brought, each pony having a pack or satchel beneath their cloaks, each one in charge of some modest amount of the necessary gear for what would hopefully come next.

As Twilight reached the wall she paused, looking down at the silver dagger that lay glittering greenly in the bright light from Cadance’s spellwork. The edge dull and rust colored now, a small pool of tacky fluid having formed beneath it. Grimly her horns lit, the nearness of silver making her eyes narrow in concentration as she forced a few beads of the blood to lift and congeal into a sphere the size of a marble before her. Stepping away from the grisly object, she studied the tiny scarlet drop.

Slowly she began to chant words in a tongue now forgotten to mortals.

Blood of mine enemy, Seed of my foe,
Shed in my name, I bind thee!
Speak of thy line, the panoply of thy house,
And concede to me thy sovereign!

Her eyes grew brighter with their own glow, from plum to byzantium to red violet, her slit pupils fixed upon the droplet of deepest carmine as her spell formed. The blood droplet began to glow with its own ruddy light before with an unexpected sizzle, it blackened, growing hard and ashen in her magic, condensing into a jet black cabochon.

Twilight just stared at it for the longest while, weighing the results. Her face was a study of conflicting emotions, passing across her features one after another before slowly her expression cleared of conflict. She began to chuckle softly as she tucked the dull gem into the darkness inside her cloak.

One down, seven to go.


******


The office was dark, the windows heavily shuttered, only a single lamp glowed upon the desktop, casting a bright circle of light upon masses of files and paperwork, all arranged in neat and orderly stacks.

Pale eyes read through the currently opened folder, the pony who bore them flipping slowly through the pages, scanning through the latest findings related to the anomalous quake that had shaken the city merely hours before. Beyond the illuminated workspace the door of the office opened after a single perfunctory knock. Several ponies in the armor and livery of Arcana Security hustling a bound pony into the room.

The sudden noisome burst of activity was ignored by the shadowed pony as they continued to read. The rest of the room might not even exist for all the attention paid to it. By the time the security squad had secured their guest to a steel chair in front of the desk and departed with the most hurried of bows, the details of the quake had been absorbed and the folder could be safely set aside. A pale hoof moving to riffle through another stack, pulling free another file, beginning to pore over that information as well. The room silent save for the soft movement of paper, and the pained breaths of the bound pony.

That silence drew out, one file drained to be replaced with another until it was almost unbearable, before the pony behind the desk, not even looking up from the latest one, finally spoke.

“I realize this must all seem in rather poor taste.” Mistral Arcana began with slow, cultured aplomb, her tone conversational, yet not familiar. “I wanted to take a moment of my very precious time... to thank you. You didn’t run, which surprised me.”

More soft riffling of paper, her pale eyes continuing to devour more data to add to her own understanding. “I’m sure you realize how useless a gesture that would have been, and how little it would have mattered. Still, we were expecting you to try. In appreciation for your not having made us expend all that effort, I’d like you to know that your wife and your servants got away cleanly.”

Still she continued to read, eventually lifting a gold pen in her magic and beginning to add details to the latest folder that held her attention. “This isn’t personal, though I am quite certain you’ll disagree on that score. I’ve honestly admired your efforts, and would never have interfered like this if it weren’t for some rather unpleasant acquaintances we both have the misfortune of sharing a city with.” The pen continued to write in tight efficient letters, easily legible and permitting the maximum amount of information to be carried in the space available.

“Even the… shall we say, inquiries, you’ve spent the afternoon having with my security staff is more of a formality than anything else. I’m quite certain you have neither knowledge nor connection with our charmingly seditious friends, the self-styled ‘Underground’. Still, it always pays to be thorough when you’re forced to get your hooves dirty like this.” Another swap of files, another spate of tense, quiet penwork. “This Underground has apparently decided to move from governmental protest to targeting our research projects. Several sensitive projects have been hindered or brought to public attention in manners not in our best interests, and their attempts to obstruct us have now reached a level that isn’t tolerable.”

Finally the last folder was levitated into her outbox and she lifted her frost blue eyes from the almost empty green velvet work surface to regard her guest. “While I mentioned I admired your efforts and would usually have never dreamed of interfering in this manner, your connections and reputation have made you the single most effective tool in my sphere of influence to handle this problem. You will have your trial, a highly publicized one, of course. You will be presented with the evidence against you and after strenuously maintaining your innocence against incontrovertible proof, you will be sentenced to death for your treasonous acts.”

“Your execution will also be public. The common ponies need to see their justice system at work after all. I am rather hoping that we will see some unexpected guests there. If the underground wishes to present themselves to the commoners as the champion of the downtrodden, then they certainly must make an effort to not let this travesty come to pass. I’d rather hope they will come to your rescue, and run headlong into the combined security forces of the nobility. It would simplify matters greatly.”

“Of course, they could choose not to. It’s said their leadership is exceptionally talented at sniffing out ambushes and traps. So perhaps the risks will be too great for them. Perhaps they will let that blade fall on you. You have my sincerest apologies if they do. But I hope you can take some small comfort in the knowledge that if they don’t appear, they will have only delayed the inevitable. For when the tampering with the evidence that convicts you comes to light, and is traced to the hooves of known Underground sympathizers, they will have lost the public trust. Your wrongful death will be the rallying cry that brings about their ultimate irrelevance.”

“I realize that might be cold comfort, and really, why would I expect you to go along with this little drama I wish to create?”

Lifting a series of photographs from the desk, the final items that remained upon its surface, she flipped slowly through them, showing them one by one to her guest, hearing them catch their rasping breath around bruised ribs as they saw them. “Do this for me, and your lovely wife will depart my sphere of influence intact, with all those tragic waifs and hardluck cases you’ve taken in over the years. While they got away as cleanly as you could wish, that doesn’t mean I don’t know where they are. Make this hard, and the next set of pictures you see will be much less comforting.”

She left the photos spread out upon the desk. Fleur Dis Lee, the famous fashion model, looking harried and distraught, but alive and well in a nondescript lower city hotel suite gazing off the edge of the photograph. So vulnerable, but also safe, for the moment.

Fancy Pants took a harsh, shuddering breath, his swollen eye already tearing, now joined by tears from the uninjured one as he let out a snorting sob from around the gag he wore. Chains bound about his legs, keeping him in a seated position against the uncomfortable steel chair, the dull onyx band of a magic suppressor snug around the base of his horn as he stared down at his beautiful wife in the photographs.

“I trust we understand one another.” The soft, conversational voice of the glacier who acted like a pony observed. It was not a question.


******


The top of the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns tallest tower was a massive observatory, or it had been once. Now, abandoned and forgotten, no pony was present in the high stone tower to witness the green flicker of sparks against the inner wall. It spat and sputtered before flaring into a shuddering circle of green flame. Rainbow Dash stuck her head out of the wall for a split second for a look around before disappearing again.

Moments later she piled through the portal with AJ and Fluttershy right behind her, the three ponies fanning out looking for threats even as the others leapt free of the flaming portal. Cadance coming through last and turning to hold up her hoof.

Within the stone chamber deep beneath Canterlot’s School for Gifted Unicorns the fiery runework of the portal began to fold upon itself. The layer of stone surrounding the arrays collapsing and shifting, rushing together like some form of madly shifting block puzzle. The shimmering portal above it wavering, but remaining stable until the runework had packed itself into a tight cube no larger than a puzzle box, which flew through the collapsing portal to land securely in Cadance’s waiting hoof. The portal giving one last burp of light before it vanished entirely, leaving the silent chamber in utter darkness.

Twilight winced as she took in the dishevelment of the massive telescope, a hulking mass of tarnished brass, slightly askew on its precision mount. The observatory dome had been carelessly left open, possibly for years.

Poor Percy.

“Hi! My name is Twilight Arcana Sparkle!” A cheerful little filly stated proudly, nopony was in the room, so she didn’t have to be silent while the adults worked. Thus she could properly introduce herself to the amazing telescope which her father had said she might get to look through tonight. And big important things like observatory telescopes deserved politeness just as much as big important ponies did! Beaming with the uncomplicated joy of the very young, she murmured in a sotto voced reply. ‘Good day my lady! Sir Percival Starbright Farseer at your service!’ 

Twilight shook herself out of the sudden keen memory, gazing sadly upon the ruin of a very old friend. She’d been on a first name basis with the big scope by her second year of school, and it had always been a warm and comforting presence during her astronomy period. Her eyes narrowed and she snorted for the time she was wasting. It was a lump of brass and crystal, nothing more. She had many many other things to attend to. Things that mattered.

Striding through the obviously dilapidated chamber, she pushed open the door to the exterior balcony with a rusty groan of complaint and stepped into the rapidly dimming dusk. The sun shading into fiery orange as it neared the horizon, the moon soon to rise. The others filed out onto the wide terrace, blinking in the fading light, and taking in their first sight of Equestria in a very long time. It was a jarring experience.

Canterlot stood nearby, as tall and imposing as ever, in fact, more so. The white stonework of the city stained grey with soot from hundreds of tall smokestacks. The industrial quarter has swollen cancerously to consume a great deal of the slopes beneath the city proper. Canterhorn Falls still fell amidst the new construction, but the outflow beyond the city was nearly as sickly grey as the stones of the once proud capitol itself. The land around it, once green and verdant, was now yellow and brown in the fading light.

She heard a sudden hissing gasp of distress, Rainbow Dash had scampered to the railing, eyes darting this way and that. She lifted her forehooves onto the railing as she craned her neck to look about. “Where’s Cloudsdale?! If the sun is over there, we’re mid to late summer… Cloudsdale should be somewhere between Ponyville and Appleloosa, heading towards the Gulf of Las Pegasus to take on water for the snow factories. Wh-where is it?!”

“Rainbow.” The soft voice of Fluttershy murmured, stepping up to wrap a wing around the now smaller pegasus. “Look at the clouds…” The sorrow in her voice was unmistakable.

Rainbow blinked, again looking out over the south basin of Equestria, the elevation of Canterlot giving a truly far and wide panorama. Twilight clenched her teeth as she drew a lightning quick conclusion of what the demonic thestral had noticed. A second later Rainbow let out a sob and she knew her guess was correct.

“The weather… H-how can it all be wild? Wait.. t-the area around Ponyville shows a bit of work… it can’t be! No! What the buck did they do!? They couldn’t h-have! Not Cloudsdale!” Rainbow’s panicked and angry denials were belied by the tears in her eyes, by the snarling clench of her fanged jaws. Her wings twitched, as if ready to throw off Fluttershy’s bat wing and leap from the balcony to find her foalhood home.

“Enough!”

The word was like a whipcrack, aborting any notion of Dash leaving the ground.

“We all have answers we need. But I will not have us scatter and leave an entrenched enemy at our back!” Twilight snarled in a commanding voice, eyes narrowed as she watched lights flickering into being all over Canterlot. “We cut off the head before we do anything else.”

“Yes Mistress.”

“Y-yes Mistress.”

Rarity and Dash immediately capitulated, as was proper. AJ nodded easily, though she was likely as anxious as Dash was for news of her family. Fluttershy and Pinkie turning to look at Cadance. Centuries of submission to the greater fiends they each served left them hanging on the word of their Archdemon. 

Cadance was troubled, and Twilight knew why. Shining Armor. It would be a physical pain for her to not immediately teleport to the Crystal Empire and secure the Love of her demonically extended life. Yet a teleport of that magnitude would light up every magical sensor for three kingdoms with demonic energy, alerting far too many to an archdemon on the prowl. She readied her most persuasive arguments, if Cadance broke away now, their sortie would be over before it began.

“Agreed.” The Archdemon of Lust responded, with only a hint of reluctance in her voice, Fluttershy and Pinkie both relaxing at their mistresses agreement.

Okay, one hurdle cleared.

“Well then…” Twilight began in a business-like tone, horns lighting with a soft purple glow as she spread her senses out towards the school beneath them. Delicately she probed, and slowly she located the 36 arcane detectors dotted over the structure, most directed outwards, a few pointed at the dormitories, none aimed at something so innocuous as the abandoned observatory tower. And they were the exact same models as she remembered from her own foalhood!

It was with great relish that she touched each and every one, not disabling them which might alert somepony to tampering, simply resetting the wavelength of arcane emission they were calibrated to pick up. Set it to the lowest gain possible and set the amplitude cap near the top of the available spectra and you’d need an angry alicorn going magic happy at three feet to get a peep out of any of them.

With the sensor web out of commission, she could let her magic wash through the school in a low level scan. Nothing a sleepy unicorn might feel, but enough to get an idea of what she was dealing with. Her smile slowly grew as the inner workings of the facility came into focus for her.

“Okay, detectors are handled. All we have to worry about is experienced teachers sensing something. From the feel of it, we’ve three sensitives to take care of. The Dean, the librarian, and the third is probably the primary level magic teacher. I want those three neutralized tonight.” 

“Cadance, you’ll subdue the Dean, and his quarters will be used as a holding place for any others we manage to take in one piece.”

“I’ll take the Library.” She rolled her eyes at the soft titter that ran through her friends. Of course she had the Library… she tried very hard not to smile, settling for a tight smirk. “If I can take the Librarian alive, I’ll send them to you, Cadance, otherwise I’ll dispose of the body.”

“Rarity, I want you and Dash to handle the magic teacher. Try to do it quiet and deliver him or her to Cadance as soon as we’ve eliminated the other two. Then find two other teachers to neutralize. You’ll be leading some classes tomorrow!”

“As you wish.” “Alright! Gym Class!”

“Pinkie.” 

“Yeppers Bossmare?” Said Stealth Pink…. Her curvy body covered in a matte black body suit, a weird pair of three eyed green glowing goggles pulled over her face. The grin beneath the odd headgear as playful as ever.

Twilight chuckled softly, her expression softening a little. “You’ve got the kitchens. Get to baking.”

“Oooooh! Excellent! Any special requests?” She asked as she trotted soundlessly over to an absurdly oversized duct cover and began prying it off, setting it silently to the side as she began crawling inside, her head popping back out to hear the answer.

“Baker’s choice, just make sure they’re potent.”

“On it! Triple batches coming right up! Send me staff as you can and we’ll blow the roof off the cafeteria!” And Stealth Pink darted out of sight and silently disappeared into the copious and absurdly pony sized ductwork of the school.

Twilight couldn’t help but chuckle again. Turning towards AJ and Fluttershy, she paused, arching an eyebrow curiously. The pale yellow thestral was draped over the worn railing, looking far down below.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked in a whisper, seeing the taut, hunting sense of the batpony.

Her large ears twitched in acknowledgment, but she did not change her position, gesturing silently with a hoof downwards before lifting the hoof to touch the near ear. Something below that can hear like me. This was silent communication that they all were intimately familiar with, the demonic thestral had physical senses superior to even archdevils and had often been their strongest guardian and bloodhound over the centuries.

Twilight’s eyes narrowed and her gaze shifted to Rarity, also tensed and alert. Her slim horns began to glow softly, the subtle crinkly feeling of a very powerful aversion spell crept over the archdevil. She could see the soft blue bubble with her magical sight as it slithered out from the pale devil to encompass all of their friends. 

Fluttershy relaxed as she felt the tingle engulf her. “Batponies, coming out of a crevice below the gardens. They must be night caretaker staff. They look underfed, the poor dears. I think it’s their rookery. Imagine, living in a dirt burrow… Why aren’t they up here? Are they not allowed into the building?”

“Sadly, I think they are not. What I was able to glean from Green Leaves suggests the noble unicorns are oppressing the other tribes and even lesser unicorns who haven’t the blood ties to protect them.” Cadance sighed and shook her head, making her ethereal mane billow in the nonexistent breeze that moved it. “It’s like a return to the preclassical feudal period all over again….”

“Regardless, this is useful to us.” Twilight interrupted, ignoring the nerdy impulse for a history debate. “AJ, I want you to take the gardens, and if the bat pony rookery is indeed dug beneath it, then you can assist Fluttershy to contain them when they return for sleep with the dawn.”

“Oooooh, I hope they don’t make me hurt them!”

“Use your experiences, if they’re cowed enough to live in a dirt hole in the ground and haven’t fled elsewhere, they probably lack any strong alphas. Give them that and maybe they will fall in line for us.” Twilight counseled. Despite her demonic nature, Fluttershy was still the most nurturing pony she had ever met. Given proper direction, she’d probably have the bat ponies eating out of her hoof by nightfall.

“With tha resources in them there gardens, I should prolly be able ta recover their poor diet. I doubt the day staff is as bad off. If Shy kin bring em around to our way o’ thinkin they’d make darn good skirmishers when the school wakes up to us.”

“Good thinking, approach the tasks as you see fit, but I’d like you in full control of the surrounding grounds and gardens before we move on the student body as a whole. There could certainly be those that try to escape, I want them caught the instant they step on the grass.” 

Her ponies, her friends… her allies and slaves, all bowed to her respectfully before hurrying to prepare for their tasks. Soon leaving her and Cadance alone atop the ruined tower, looking out over the bloated city they were here to conquer.


******