An Archon's Folly

by TyphlUpgrade


The Corruption Spreads

Glorious.

          Soon, Aksis would have one less interruption from ascending the Eliksni to gods. The Great Machine tortured, nagged, pestered them, but soon the Great Machine and its army of the dead would be annihilated for what it did to the Eliksni. Betrayed them. Took away their glory at their highest peaks, and reduced the once mighty race to scavengers. Pitiful. Aksis burned with righteous rage. These...Guardians would pay. He took out his SIVA Cannon. No more.
         Blizzard-5  had a feeling they weren't going to survive the fury of the Machine God. No matter how many SIVA charges were thrown, no matter how many rockets, sniper rounds, lasers they shot at him, his SIVA would always repair Aksis, heal him, and make him stronger even.
          “He”, however, wasn't the correct term for it, anymore. In Aksis's mad pursuit for ascension, it had warped its body to the point where it was more machine than Fallen.
Aksis’s face was half machine, half Fallen. It beheld an almost...beard of red tentacles made of SIVA, which connected to his torso. Two dome-like pauldrons decorated its shoulders, and worst of all, emitted a shield impervious to almost any damage. From the waist(or what went for it) down, there was six mechanical legs covered with black squares connected to the chassis by SIVA tentacles. The most horrible thing, however, were the eyes. Blue, blank, and emotionless, these were the eyes of a machine. When there should be four, there were only two on one side of his face.

         Blizzard thought they had a chance. He honestly did. Him and his Fireteam had killed Vosik, the Archpriest, who vainly attempted to prevent the Guardians from entering. They braved the Siege Engine, the power of which could’ve  ran them over, reduced them to atoms, but inevitably failed. Aksis’s power was just too great. His SIVA Cannon, that of which shot clouds of SIVA nanites that bit at their skin, and the Elemental Servitors, who obliterated those that got too close. It would all be over soon. Even his mastery of the Light, the ability to come back from the dead in a burst of flame, to destroy waves of enemies with a thought, would be of no use.

         Josh was a Hunter. His speed, his agility, his bow of Void Energy, and above all his cunning should have helped. But here they were, about to die. Aksis was too strong. Four of them had already perished. Logan, Kira, Rizel-42, Gavin, these people Josh thought invincible had died, their Ghosts consumed long ago by the looming miasmas of SIVA. It was futile. But, wait…

         Josh wasn't going to go down without a fight. And he had just the thing.

        “Yo, Blizz!”

        “This had better be important! I'm fighting for my life right now, and I have no time for small talk.”

        “I have this Golden Age mirror thing...it’s got a lot of buttons on it. I'm going to press em’.”

        Blizzard stared at Josh for a second.

        “Are you insane?! We have no idea what that will do!”

        “Do we have a choice?” Josh asked.

         Without waiting for a reply, Josh pressed a few buttons.
         Aksis chuckled triumphantly. This would be one step closer to victory against the Great Machine his race once trusted.
Without warning, the...fast one… took out a silver embossed mirror of crystal and pressed something on it. Immediately, a vortex of spiraling rainbow colors tumbled into existence, sucking everything into the mirror. One by one, Aksis’s Splicers flew inside. What was this sorcery? Madness. Aksis would not fall by some trick of the Light.
         Aksis shot burst after burst at the mirror, hoping that something would give. Nothing. He could feel the vortex trying to pull him in, take him into its grasp.
        He was strong, but the pull was stronger. Despite his resistances, nothing could escape the vortex, Aksis included. He was pulled sharply into the swirling void of color. It sucked him into the vacuum much like a bug into a toilet. And just like that, the vortex popped. Nothing harmful, it just became nonexistent.

         “...What the hell was that?”

         “Joshua...believe me when I say I have no clue.”

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         Unwavering Shield was bored. Guard duty at the Crystal Palace was always dull, especially guarding the Crystal Mirror. He understood why it had to be guarded, after the Sunset Shimmer incident, and the job raked in a decent amount of bits, but sometimes it just didn't feel like it was worth it. Not like he would quit though. It was really starting to get to him though, but the temptation of a sweet promotion kept him grounded.
         A catastrophic sound alerted his (now bleeding) ears to the situation inside the very room he guarded. The Crystal Mirror was fracturing. The Crystal Mirror was glowing red, and a symbol not unlike a diamond, with the exception of two spines jutting out the bottom diagonally, shimmered ominously within the depths of the mirror, as bits of crystal flaked off the surface.

         Did I forget to mention that the mirror was cracking in half?

        The mirror shattered. A massive expulsion of raw mana flung Unwavering across the room, and he hit the wall with a sickening crack. Unwavering may have wanted excitement, but this was too much! As he struggled to get up, the stallion boggled at what he saw where the Mirror, now a small crater, was.
         One large creature that looked similar to Tirek, but with two extra legs and more...angles lay limp on the ground. Multiple bipedal creatures holding long pipes covered in some sort of  artificial disease also lay limp beside the centaur-like creature. Circular machines that appeared to be eyes, of sorts, lay deactivated on the ground, some rolled over. He didn't know what exactly covered their bodies, but he knew for certain it wasn't natural. The princess needed to know about this. This could be a national, nay, a worldwide emergency. Unwavering limped to the throne room with the little energy he had left.
         Aksis awoke in a room of crystal, with shards everywhere. How the room was solid crystal, he would never know, but the once pristine walls were scratched, and in some places burnt by some powerful force. As his Splicers awoke around him, and as the Servitors started to reboot, Aksis struggled to remember how they got there. Certainly they were not in the Perfection Complex anymore. Did the Guardians defeat them? No, he would be dead if they did. That was as far as he could remember. Everything else was a big blank. Aksis seethed. This was ridiculous. One moment fighting the abominations of the Light, the next in a room of solid crystal that was damaged like it had been assaulted by a Hive Ogre.
         He was a god. And he had fallen. There was no time for complacency, however, the priority was getting out and establishing a base with the little SIVA they held. Even if the strange nanotechnology self replicated, it would take some time, and the SIVA needed matter to make itself out of.

        “Come, my Splicers. We have been transported to regions unknown by unknown methods. We must find our way back to the Cosmodrome so that we may live to see the fall of the Great Machine.” Aksis declared.
         A cheer, though slightly tiredly, came from the gathered Vandals and Dregs. The Servitors hummed in place contentedly.
         Aksis walked to the door. It was only five feet in height. For the twelve foot Archon Prime, this was a problem. Not a big one, mind you, but a problem nonetheless. The door really didn't know what hit it. If doors could feel pain, it wouldn't have felt any. With the firepower Aksis was packing, the door didn't have time to feel much before it was blasted into oblivion. Aksis stepped out of the small room via the new addition of the great, big, smoking gap in the wall. He had a new objective, and nothing was going to stop him.

        Get out alive.

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         Almost there…just a few more steps, and he would have made it to the throne room. Unwavering felt as if he had walked for hours, when in reality it was only about ten minutes, but with the injuries he had sustained from the explosion, it made things all the more harder. As he approached the throne room, the stallions guarding the doors halted him.

        “Waver, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be at the Crystal Mirror? And may I be so bold as to ask how you got so bruised up?” One of the guards inquired, as both of them raised their spears in a cross-like fashion.

         Unwavering gasped for air. His broken ribs were making it so hard to breathe. He would have to use his breath wisely.
         “Emergency...princess needs...know…”

          “Kid, you're looking pretty banged up. How about we take you to the infirmary first?”

           Unwavering shook his head.
           “Please…”
           
           The guard duo looked at each other uneasily, then relented.
            “Alright kid, but only as long as you go see a doctor after this.”
            As the doors opened, Unwavering wondered how he would break this to the princess. The searing pain in his chest would have to wait. It was slowly eating away at him, though, and he would pass out soon. Just a little longer…

         The architecture of this place was lovely. The most skilled crystal craftsponies, long ago, built the palace out of the abundance of crystals found in the arctic tundra. Aksis, unaware of this, shook his head. Such fancies did not interest him. He preferred functional architecture. For most of his life, he did not have the resources necessary to live in such luxury. As he led the gathered Vandals, Dregs, Servitors, and even a few Captains, he pondered what would happen if he had the power to create such luxury. Then he remembered SIVA. Once he found a suitable area to set up a base, he would have the SIVA create something like this. He wondered what it would come up with.
           His train of thought was shattered by a Captain alerting him that they had found the exit. A relatively small spiral staircase led down to yet another five foot door. Aksis had to duck his head to reach the bottom, and the Servitors barely fit. He blasted open the door, and was met by a queer sight.
          Aksis couldn't blink. He had no need to. But if he could, he would've, for the sight displayed in front of him was clearly absurd beyond his wildest dreams. Ponies? Aksis had read about them from some stolen files found in the wasteland, in a hidden bunker underground. The files did not describe them as tiny, multicolored things. The files also did not tell that apparently they sounded much like humans. One fainted. The rest ran in utter terror, as Aksis walked the tiny streets. He resisted the urge to blast them all as he tried to find the way out of this absurd settlement. The pony things screamed annoyingly, and without any sign of intelligence. Aksis just wanted to find the way out. He thought he might have stepped on a few. And as the Archon strode, he realized that the day he stood on familiar grounds again was a long time coming.