Eternal Knights Trailer · 11:42pm May 2nd, 2017
Teaser Paragraph of my next chapter for my most loyal followers. 
Also a look into what the Cult of Piggsicorn get up to. 
Even gentle hoof-steps sounded loudly on the stone floor.
Though to call it a floor would be unconventional. The vast tunnels were a world between natural and pony-made.
Braeburn had never seen anything like it.
It had all happened so quickly, nopony could put their hoof on it.
Strange earthquakes outside of Appaloosa, not too far from the Buffalo territories, churning up the sand and hills, turning plateaus into canyons and vice versa. Not damaging enough to the ponies around to cause any trouble, thankfully. But then stranger things happened.
Buffalo and Appaloosans were going missing. No-one saw or heard anything but no less than twelve ponies from his hometown had disappeared and, according to reports, around eight buffalo.
Most recently, the buffalo had seen someone attempt to make off with a semi-conscious Little Strongheart. She’d been rescued without injury but the tribe had been adamant that a pony was seen committing the crime, fleeing to the new landforms and disappearing.
Hostilities could not be allowed to let fester again. The one responsible had to apprehended and brought to justice.
With a revolver in his holster and the handle of an oil lamp clasped between his teeth, the young stallion ventured further in.
An enormous underground grotto met his gaze in the light of his lamp, as large as a palace hall. Braeburn found his hooves walking upon steps carved out of the rock, leading down into the cavern.
Tentatively making his way down, his muzzle wrinkled as a horrific stench hit him like a brick wall.
He couldn’t remember the last time he...
Then he remembered. Years ago, he’d been called in to investigate a coyote attack on the chicken coop. One of the hen’s stomachs had been torn right open. The smell was appalling.
Braeburn gulped as he put two and two together.
Had something died down there?
And, more importantly, if hid had...what had caused it?
“H-h-hello?” he asked nervously, voice muffled slightly by the lamp handle in his teeth, as he made the final step down.
He drew back instinctively as his hoof splashed on the floor.
The entire place was flooded. A clear three inches of water bathed the cavern in a great lake.
The smell was becoming more and more unbearable and grew stronger as Braeburn edged further into the chasm.
“Hello?” he asked again, turning left and right.
He saw something out the corner of his eye. He turned to face it.
The cavern echoed with a great scream as Braeburn fell backwards with a splash, the oil lamp falling from his clutches and clattering to the ground.
For the moment there was darkness. Braeburn was, for the moment, not quite sure if what he had seen was real.
He shook the water from his face and mane and stumbled to his hooves.
The water tasted...salty. Overpoweringly salty.
His eyes widened in terror.
‘Oh Celestia...No...’In an instant, the cavern was illuminated in a sickly khaki light from hanging lanterns high above.
Braeburn was not thankful for the light as the sights before him gripped his insides and shook him to his core.
He was staring at bodies. Hundreds of bodies all over the cavern. Ponies, buffalo, mules, changelings, diamond dogs, all of them had died slow and grisly deaths as the floor around them was immersed in a literal bloodbath.
The closest body, the one that had shocked him in the dark, was a young mare he used to pass by not so long ago in Appaloosa, orange-pink with a curly brown mane and a cheeky wink whenever he passed. The poor creature was hanging with an iron collar round her neck and her limbs cut wide open, exposing the stringy tendons underneath the skin.
She twitched and Braeburn yelped again. The young cowcolt paled as he saw sharp needles carved out of bone inserted into her cranium, causing her body to spasm even long after death.
All around him, others were impaled, upside-down or right-way-up. Some had been sawn in half. A few had placed on seats full of barbs and still crowned with cages with inwards-pointing drills.
From the sight of their agonised faces, not a one of them had died painlessly.
Fighting nausea, Braeburn scrambled frantically back to the steps, wanting nothing more than to get the hay out this cave of nightmares and wash away the blood. Placing one forehoof on the first steps, he looked up at a figure standing before him.
Before he could catch his breath, the stallion was seized by the throat and hoisted high in the air. Gasping for air, he stared at his captor.
Whoever he was, he was large and clearly very strong. He was also wearing a mask, jet-black with four white curling tusks jutting up from its sides. His eyes, staring at him through the holes in his mask, bore into him menacingly.
A growly, unhinged voice sounded.
“Transgressor!”
With a roar, the enormous stallion hurled Braeburn back into the centre of the cavern. Shaking the blood from his mane again with a cry of disgust, the cowcolt saw he was surrounded.
Masked ponies, theirs were of pink pigs, all of them bloodstained, their hooves curled around jagged hooks they were trailing along the lake of blood they stood in, snorting and snuffling excitedly.
Braeburn drew his revolver and pointed it hysterically, teeth bared with rage and horror as he yelled.
“Don’t any o’ y’all move! Y’all under arrest!”
The pig-faced marauders all gave amused snorts at the sight. The large boar-masked stallion lumbered forward, wading through the red lagoon. Braeburn turned, cursing his circumstances and fired.
There was a dull click and a weak spurt as his revolver failed him, the powder wet and useless.
Cursing, he resolved to throw a punch with his forehoof.
It was caught and met with the boar-mask’s own, sending into the pool again before being held up by his mane, a rusty hoof hovering inches from his belly.
“You have defiled a shine of the Great Sow, transgressor!” he growled “We must cleanse it once again...in the blood and bile of the heathens”
Braeburn’s mouth quivered with terror, no sound escaping as he closed his eyes.
Just a day ago, it had been a pleasant day in Appaloosa. Waving hello to the locals, checking the apple harvest, having cider with Cherries Jubilee at the tavern, spending the evening with Little Strongheart on the hill with the pond.
And now he was, swimming in a lake of blood, about to be gutted by creatures out a foal’s nightmares.
How had this happened? What would it lead to?
“Strongheart...Applejack...Everypony...” he whispered, voice cracking with despair “Please be safe”“DEMONS!”
A hoarse voice sounded from above as a frantic masked stallion scrambled down the steps, waving his hooves and yelling.
“DEMONS! THEY’RE DEMO-”
Shunk!
He stopped, his entire body jerking forwards then backwards, struck dumb by an arrow protruding out of his mouth, its feather-tipped tail sticking out the back of his head. Swaying morbidly, he slumped and toppled into the red lake with a splash and lay dead.
As he was dropped by his captor, Braeburn looked up as the pig-faced madponies stared, knives still drawn and shaking in their hooves.
There was a faint chatter.
“Is it the Six Heathen Breeders of Canterlot?”
“Nay. The Bearers of the Blasphemous Hexarchy do not kill”
“There are three. Dressed in black...and armed”
There were gasps and wails all around.
“It’s them! By Saint Erymanthius’s Sulphurous Phallus, it’s them!”
Sure enough, three ponies, dressed in shimmering jet black long-coats and dark shades, slowly made their way down the steps.
The one on the left was a lean pegasus mare, navy-blue coated with a flowing silver mane adorned with a braid. The collar of her long-coat was adorned with a flurry of feathers every shade of the night. She was spinning a throwing knife in one hoof and snarling with a mixture of disgust and anticipation.
The one on the right was an elegant unicorn stallion, leaf-green of coat and with a long sandy-blonde mane. He wore a scarf over his long-coat, grey-dappled like marble stone. In his lime-green magical grasp, an ornate whisperwood bow hovered in front of him, a keen arrow notched and ready as he scowled at the savagery before him.
And the one in the centre was a hardy male batpony, coat of grey with colourless eyes behind his shades and a straight black mane upon his scalp. His collar was turned up-high in the style of the classic batpony and the long-coat itself was accented with silver stripes of command. His hoof was curling round the handle of a long and menacing broadsword, his fangs bared in an intimidating manner.
He spoke, his voice low and level but commanding respect, dominating the cavern.
“Cultists of the Piggsicorn” he said “For environmental disruption, housebreaking, abduction, torture, rape, cannibalism, mass murder, terrorism, the practice of illegal magic, active heresy and royal treason to the Equestrian throne and its citizens...you have been sentenced to death”
Curd is about to go down!
Aaaand methinks that's putting it mildly, my friend.
Something just tells me that the Eternal Knights are about to clean house, and Cascadius and his crew and allies are about to go down.
Permanently.
I just hope that, for HER part in all this madness, a certain Countess that we all know and loathe finally gets her just, and well-deserved, comeuppance before all this over.
PREFERABLY at the hooves of a SUPREMELY pissed off Solar Princess.
Cowcolt, nice Pony Version of Cowboy. Also the Eternal knights to the Rescue! Braeburn would be Forever grateful.
4517901 Well, sadly, this isn't the main shrine of the cult but it will lead to finding out where it is and how to get there.
4518291 Ah, okay.
Well, that's good to know, at least.