//------------------------------//
// Chapter 48: The Rabid Horde 
// Story: Daring Do and the Hand of Doom 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

Daring Do jumped, turning on her heels. The sound echoed through the forest. It was distant, but came from all directions. Far away she saw a flash, and black smoke slowly began to rise. 
“What was that?” asked Rainbow Dash, calling from the front of the pack. “And, before anypony asks, it wasn’t me!”
“It wasn’t good whatever it was,” said Sweetie Drops. White, beside her, nodded vigorously. “But my guess is it was at least forty miles out.
“Whatever it was, it almost made this stupid amulet strangle me!” cried Rainbow Dash.
“It is not ‘stupid’!” snapped Sweetie Drops. “That is a sacred artifact! Where you even managed to get one- -”
Daring Do turned to Flock. “It was magic.”
“Yes,” he said. His expression was grim. “I felt it.”
“So did I. We need to keep moving.”
“Agreed.” 
They did so, with increased haste. The jungle was thick but not impassible. Flock was both the slowest and fastest of them; in his unwieldy unicorn form, he could barely walk over the rough, rocky terrain or roots growing from sludgy ponds that marred any semblance of a path. As birds, though, he could move swiftly. For some reason, the well-hidden turrets did not target him as crows. Still, it was apparent that without his dial the change was difficult and painful. So he generally remained as a pony.  
White and Sweetie Drops moved swiftly and barely disturbed the underbrush as they marched. Daring Do supposed that it was from training, and both were frighteningly stealthy. The two of them also seemed to be growing increasingly aware of a sensation that Daring Do had felt since they had first risen from below the jungle: that they were being watched.
The only one of them who seemed unaware and had no skill at traversing a jungle at all was Rainbow Dash. Despite this, she was leading the group, charging forward with unusual speed- -despite having no functional internal organs- -by brute force alone. Daring Do once again found herself impressed, although at the same time concerned. 
They crested a hill and came to a small ravine. Sweetie Drops and White slid down easily, but Daring Do was- -despite being in impeccable physical condition- -not nearly as agile as a vedmak-girl or a cloned assassin. She moved more slowly, picking her way along and using her wings for support as needed. She could hear Flock behind her, gibbering curse words to himself in some unintelligible clicking language.  
When Daring Do reached the bottom, she immediately knew that something was wrong. The others were not continuing. They were standing, staring at something. Upon hearing Darning Do approach, Rainbow Dash- -still in the front, as always- -looked up. Her eyes were wide and her skin was pale. 
“What is it?”
“L…look.” 
Daring Do did. At first, all she saw was a set of tall mushrooms of a pale, sickly looking sort that was no doubt poisonous. The stalks were higher than she was tall, which was by no means unusual; giant fungi could be found throughout Equestria. 
Then she saw what they were connected to. Lying below the long, narrow caps and beneath a pile of mycelium was a body. 
“Sweet Celestia,” swore Daring Do. She turned away for a moment, but knew that avoidance was no way to deal with something like this. She took a breath and knelt down.
“I don’t like this,” said Sweetie Drops. “What the heck happened?” 
“I don’t know,” said Daring Do. She craned her neck. “I don’t see a mark on him…” She leaned a little bit closer. The body was clearly quite inert, and badly compromised by the mold. Fungus had overgrown him, and seemed to be growing WITHIN him- -and fruiting out of what was left. His mold-covered eyes stared up, glassy and unseeing. 
“He was a zebra,” she said. “At least…I think.”
“You think?”
“See there?” she pointed. “You can still see the stripes. But…the legs are too long. And the bones are all over the place. And then there’s this…” She picked up a stick and pushed open his mouth. Rainbow Dash gasped upon seeing that his mouth, rather than being filled with normal equine teeth, was filled with a combination of cottony mold and long, sharp fangs. “But from the look of it,” continued Daring Do, “he was old. Really old.”
“His age isn’t what’s making my flesh crawl,” said Sweetie Drops.
“Then what is? The fungus, or what he was doing here in the first place?”
“Both.” 
“Maybe he was another explorer,” suggested Rainbow Dash. “If he came here for the Hand, and something got him- -”
“But how would he even get here?” demanded Sweetie Drops. “And look. No equipment. Not even a jacket.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Daring Do. She reached out a hoof. “It’s hard to see under all this mycelium…”
“NO!” shrieked Flock. “DON’T TOUCH IT!”
The others turned. Flock had just made his way down the hill, and was now staring wide eyed. His grotesque, semi-pony form made his abject terror seem all the more poignant. He was breathing hard, and when the other ponies moved and he could see the fungus, he took several shaking steps back. “Those fools,” he whispered. “Why, why would they do this? It’s not meant to be released- -it can’t- -get away from it! NOW!”
“You know,” said Daring Do, standing up. “You know what this is- -”	
“It’s called whiteshade- -Sword-Horse, the head! Remove the head! NOW!”
“What the- -did you actually just call me- -my sword is for MONSTERS for Celestia’s butt’s sake- -”
She was interrupted by a sudden cry. All of the ponies jumped as they realized that it was none of them, and as it occurred to them that this land was entirly silent. There were no sounds of animals, and no sounds of birds- -save for something that sounded curiously similar to one calling just behind them. 
They turned to see the mold-ensnared zebra, his neck raised at a horrifying angle. His mouth was opened wider than any equine’s should have been able to, and fungal rhizomes lolled out as he cried. Then, suddenly, he stood up, revealing that he was a zebra- -or once had been. His legs were far too long and thin, and bore bony cloven claws in the place of hooves. Still shrieking, he ran off with surprising agility. 
“But- -but he wasn’t breathing!” cried Daring Do. “There wasn’t a pulse, at least I don’t think- -”
“We have to move,” said Flock. He held out a hoof and his light appeared. It immediately flew off through the brush. “I locked it on the coordinates- -but you’re all on your own now. Whatever you do, don’t let them touch you, or the whiteshade will take you too. Bye.”
His body detonated into a plume of terrified crows. They swooped and swirled, rising up into the trees. The turrets activated, seeming to materialize out of the forest itself, but they did not fire. They were had been constructed to deal with ponies, not birds. 
Sweetie Drops’s ears suddenly pricked. “Paint leaves on me and buck me like an apple tree,” she swore. In a flash, her sword was drawn. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” cried Rainbow Dash. Although she could feel it too.
And they came. They emerged from the brush without slowing- -and without a single sound. They were- -or had been- -something like zebras. Perhaps. They did not make any effort to hide, and for a brief moment time seemed to slow. Daring Do could see them perfectly. Their spindly, anorexic forms; their skeletons asymmetrical and distorted; their skin and eyes covered in thick mold that burrowed beneath their barely-striped coats. Worse by far, though, were the fact that they came with lolling, open mouths that dripped with foam and spores.
“MOVE!” she cried.
Rainbow Dash immediately did- -by taking flight.
“No, not that way! DASH!”
Rainbow Dash flew upward. The turrets immediately locked onto her- -and every pony on the ground. They opened fire.
Sweetie Drops let go of her sword and tackled White to the ground, rolling her into a thin, swampy creek. White grabbed the silver sword as it fell and clumsily deflected one dart heading toward Sweetie Drops’s back. Daring Do and Rainbow Dash were both filled with needles. As annoying as it was, neither of them were affected; Daring Do was resistant, and Rainbow Dash was protected by a shield that formed from the dial imbedded in her chest. 
Suddenly Daring Do understood. The turrets had not just targeted them, but the infected zebras as well. The first of the group fell, stumbling as the poisoned darts hit them. Their hearts had stopped long ago, though, and while they slowed and stumbled the poison did not stop them. Daring Do realized it was not meant to. They were the reason the turrets did not shoot things near the ground. 
“This way!” she cried, gesturing toward the direction that the light-sphere had gone. 
“I KNOW!” cried Sweetie Drops, standing and slapping the nearest fungus-zebra in the face with the flat of her sword, breaking several of his long, hypodermic fangs in the process. He seemed not to care. 
They ran. Rainbow Dash dropped to the side, the dial in her chest ticking wildly.
“Zebras! Cannibal zebras! What did I tell you?! HA!” 
“We have bigger issues right now!” snapped Daring Do. 
Something warm and slightly heavy landed on her back, and she felt talons dig into her wings.
“Indeed,” said a distorted but still familiar voice. “One of you doesn’t seem to know which end of her vedmak sword is sharp.”
“You gosh-darn mother-hugging wizard I KNOW WHICH END IS SHARP!” cried Sweetie Drops. “It’s for MONSTERS! And they’re still PONIES!”
“Zebras,” corrected the crow. “And no. Not anymore. They do not have the capacity for rational thought. Sanity is one of the first things the whiteshade takes, as it invades the nervous system. Slowly.”
“You know what it is!” cried Daring Do, twisting as she rolled down an embankment. The bird leapt off her and another flew beside her as she continued to run. “You KNEW!”
“In general, yes. The whiteshade is a parasite. Used to create expendable slaves. But whoever built the city below us greatly improved its breeding. These aren’t new infected. They are the descendants of the ones created in that city. I suppose the whiteshade has become some sort of…symbiont.” He paused. “And I suppose it recruits new bloodlines from trespassers.”   
“Recruited?!” cried Rainbow Dash. “I’m not getting recruited! I’m too young and awesome to be all moldy and stuff!” 
“Well then DUCK!” screamed Sweetie Drops. 
Rainbow Dash did, and a mutated zebra leapt over her. It landed gracefully and whirled, opening its mouth. Rainbow Dash tried to dodge but slipped on the damp foliage. She fell backward, and held up a hoof to defend herself. 
White responded in an instant. She leapt over Rainbow Dash and braced herself, then rammed her foreleg into the creature’s mouth. It bit down hard, but could not break her titanium bones. The teeth, however, did puncture her armor- -and her skin. 
“WHITE!”
Sweetie Drops slid past her and raised her sword. This time she did not use the flat. She passed under the zebra’s high belly and cut. The wound was shallow, and it did not bleed. Mycelium puffed out at her, looking like a ridiculous parody of a plush animal that had just been sliced. Then the mold pulled the edges of the wound back together, healing the injury. The monstrosity had not even seemed to notice. 
White jumped back, grimacing in pain. The wound was not deep, but white mycelium was already sprouting from it.
“White, hold on!” cried Daring Do, rushing to her side.
“It’s too late for her,” said Flock. “I’d go for the head before it makes her rabid too.” 
White’s face contorted, and she stretched out her infected hoof. The white of the mycelium suddenly grayed, and it twitched wildly- -until it blackened and collapsed away from her.
“…unless the Questlords gave her unnatural resistance to disease,” hypothesized Flock. 
Now confident in her immunity, White tackled the zebra creature. It squeaked wildly and struggled against her, tearing at her armor with a combination of teeth, cloven hooves, and tendrils that were not analogous to anything that a normal zebra would have. White held on, though, until Sweetie Drops could stand.
Sweetie Drops raised her sword, only to be forced into a block as more of the mutants arrived. The impetus from the impact turned her, allowing her to strike- -but all she managed to do was cut a large mushroom cap off a small zebra mare. She looked more insulted than hurt. 
“We can’t outrun them! Looks like we have to fight!”
“I can’t!” cried Rainbow Dash. She danced wildly, dodging several impacts. “How am I supposed to punch something I’m not allowed to punch?!”
“Don’t!” said Daring Do, unfurling her whip and snapping what remained of it at the zebras. They barely recoiled. She doubted they could either hear it or see it.
“Easy for you to say, you have a whi- -EEP!”
“DASH!”
One of the zebras had leapt toward Rainbow Dash. She turned to dodge, but before she could the dial in her chest clicked and turned violently. A sphere of translucent yellow energy formed around her, and the zebra landed against it with a confused thud. Up in a tree, Daring Do saw Flock sitting, his hoof surrounded with a complex rune-circle of similarly colored light.
“Wait,” said Rainbow Dash. “Force field- -Daring Do! Here!” She ran toward the older Pegasus. “I need you to buck me! HARD!”
Daring Do blushed. “Wh- -what?!”
“Like in ‘Ark’!”
Daring Do suddenly realized what Rainbow Dash meant. She turned and kicked hard, just as Rainbow Dash leapt toward her. The sphere did not activate- -apparently it did not consider Daring Do a danger- -but Daring Do kicked anyway, feeling her hooves impact incredibly well-muscled ponyflesh. 
Rainbow Dash rebounded with incredibly force, folding her body as she went. As she barreled into the zebras, her shield ignited, forming a perfect sphere, and she rolled through them, pushing them back in a long swath. When they fell, they had trouble getting back up. 
“Their balance!” cried Daring Do. “The fungus does something to their balance! Push them over!”
“Pushing quadrupeds over? That’s almost a town sport in Ponyville!” Sweetie Drops struck a zebra in the leg with the wide part of her sword, and then White pushed her, causing her to fall. “Except these are a lot harder than cows. DASH! Amulet! NOW!”
Rainbow Dash- -who had stopped rolling- -pulled the amulet off her neck and threw it. Sweetie Drops caught it and put it around her neck. Then she dropped to her knees and made a strange sign with her hooves. A small explosion formed around her, hurling back several attacking mutants, including one that White was doing her best to bite. They fell, but the exertion  had nearly drained Sweetie Drops. She fell to a knee, breathing hard, and then picked up her sword once more.  
Daring Do moved to help, but a group charged her. She dodged, rolling and dampening her fall with her wings. Her whip snapped, this time furling around her hoof. She then rammed it into a zebra’s face, sending her back a single step.
“Do they not feel pain?! What even are they?!”
“Your future if you don’t get out of here,” noted Flock, his crow still perched on Daring Do’s back. The mutants seemed to prefer to ignore it. “It’s not much farther. You can make it. You have to.”
“You could help, you know!”
“Not without the dial. If I help, you must be prepared to sacrifice the rainbow-horse.” 
“Nopony’s getting SACRAFICED!” Daring Do slammed her whip-covered hoof into a zebra’s nose. It recoiled, and another leapt forward, charging its long, gnarled teeth toward her free hoof.
Daring Do muttered a quick rhyming spell. Swooping lines of light appeared just over her hoof. Covering it up to her wrist was the best she could do, and even that was straining her ability with zebric spells- -but it was enough. The infected zebra bit down, and then recoiled as it found that its teeth were unable to breach the magical barrier. 
The barrier collapsed almost instantly, but by then the zebra- -and several others- -had leapt back. Their expressions were still largely blank, but now instead of having a dull cast of rage, they showed confusion instead- -and grave surprise. A bird-like call went out between them, and was amplified by the weaker of the group who patrolled the perimeter for stragglers. Then, all at once, the zebras that could still stand retreated, joining their comrades and slowly circling. Those that had fallen stopped struggling and laid perfectly still, the only visible motion being the slow but still perceptible growth of fungal caps from their backs and sides. 
Daring Do backed against her comrades. 
“What did you do?” said Sweetie Drops. She was sweating badly and barely able to stand. Using the amulet for magic had been effective but strained her badly.
“I think- -I think they can recognize the spell.”
“Impossible. They’re brainless,” replied Flock. “Now. While they’re distracted. Attack. Destroy. End their cursed existences. Do it while you can.”
“Shut it!” snapped Daring Do. 
“What other spells do you know? Please tell me something that makes fire!”
“Don’t you have one for that?”
“If I use that sign I won’t be getting up again. I’m saving it for a last resort.”
Daring Do looked down at her hoof. She did not have the same limitation as Sweetie Drops, but she was still limited. Not in terms of cost, but in terms of abilities.
“I only know a few spells. Mysticism, mostly- -dispelling magic, warding danger, healing wounds- -”
“That one might be adequate,” said Flock. “The whiteshade is a pathogen. Attempting to heal them would be harmful. Perhaps fatal.”
“But…they recognized the spell.” Daring Do watched them shambling in a tight circle, never blinking and never taking their eyes off the captives. “That means there’s something still in there…they can still think.”	
“No. The whiteshade thinks for them. And it only craves warm bodies to infest. Heal them. Hurt them. It’s the only way you will survive this. Make them pay.” 
Daring Do stepped forward. She knew the set of couplets. Nearly a sonnet. A beautiful one, told to her by a beautiful stallion. But it was weak. Not even powerful enough to heal a bone- -but Flock was right. It was her only weapon. The mutants circled, watching. They felt no pain. Sweetie Drops was handicapped by her sensitivity to their disease, and White was handicapped by her inability to swing a sword properly. Rainbow Dash could not touch them either, and Flock could not engage without his dial. There was no other choice.
As she separated from the others, the circle suddenly parted. A figure emerged from the brush, silently and without so much as rustling a single leaf. Daring Do stared in awe and horror. She was like the others- -or might have been, once. Now she had grown old, but not aged like the weaker ones covered in mushrooms. Instead, she had grown larger, taller, and mutated to a state so hideous that she barely resembled anything like a pony. Her entire body was covered in fungus, but it came in strange forms: not just mushrooms, but thick, glowing tendrils, or mycelium that had hardened into thick plates that almost formed a mask and armor over her body. 
The giant stepped forward, and then stopped. She had no eyes, only mold-filled sockets, but they stared at Daring Do- -and she extended one gaunt, infected hoof. Daring Do did not recoil or show weakness, but felt herself gasp as she saw the air around the appendage flicker and spark. Dark, corrupted symbols formed around it, but although they were strange and broken, Daring Do recognized them. 
The overgrown zebra held out her hoof, holding it still and unshaking. The striped symbols slowly revolved, waiting, spitting off sparks from a damaged, incomplete spell that had been built perhaps only out of instinct.
“Now is your only chance,” whispered crow-Flock into Daring Do’s ear. “She is the leader. Clear the way for us. I have to get to the Hand. Before the others do.”
Daring Do gulped. Her mouth and throat were dry. She reached out a hoof and muttered a spell. Weak light erupted over her own hoof.
“What are you doing?” demanded Flock. “That isn’t a zebric healing spell. That’s the WRONG SPELL. You fool! You TRAITOR! I TRUSTED YOU- -”
Daring Do ignored him, having decided that it was the best thing to do after all. She reached out and grasped the zebra’s hoof. Their spells merged, and she felt her soft skin touch soft, downy mildew. 
The world suddenly fell silent. Daring Do realized that her eyes had been closed. She opened them, only to find herself standing in the dark. She looked down. White mold was slowly growing up her front right leg. 
“Listen, and take heed,” said a powerful and ageless voice. “For what you have done is no simple deed.”
Daring Do looked up. She was not alone in the dark, but what she saw was not so much a being as a reflection in her own mind, transmitted through the spell that joined her to the speaker of the rhyming couplet. 
Her appearance resolved. The shape of a zebra mare, but not just any. Dressed in drab clothing, wearing a mask unlike any that any modern zebra would have recognized. A white one. One that appeared almost to be of flesh, as did her clothing. Daring Do looked down, and realized that her leg was clad in the same white. 
Two pairs of red painted eyes looked up at her, and a pair of luminescent yellow eyes between them. The eyes of the shaman. 
“The thing that you think of as a simple bird,” continued the shaman, “do not misunderstand our muteness, as not a word went unheard.” 
“Was he right? If I had used the healing spell…would it have hurt you?” 
The shaman paused, although it was clear that she had no need to. The answer was already known and had been formulated into rhyme. “Is it something you wonder still?/ Whether healing can truly hurt those who are deathly ill?” 
“I can still use it. Not to hurt you! I can heal you! I can help!”
The shaman laughed softly. Something else laughed, and the eyes on the mask blinked horribly. Her clothing ruffled, and Daring Do understood. It was not clothing, nor was it part of her, but a creature that embraced her who chose to be embraced. “Dear generous child, let me put you at ease/ although we are infected, this condition is no disease.”  
“I don’t understand.”
A different voice spoke. One who did not speak in words, although that was what Daring Do interpreted it as. The voice was deep and strange, but spoke with the same calm authority that the female shaman did. 
“Our ancestors were brought to this place. Long ago.”
The area around them shifted, the darkness evolving into images. Daring Do felt pain, and saw the world constricting, blurred by corrupted memories carried throughout the millennia in a being that had no semblance of a brain, transmitted from mother to daughter and father to son for endless generations. 
It was tight. There were screams. Weeping. Mad blubbering as it dug deeper. Through the shadows she saw the tubes, and the wires. And she saw them. Their bodies had been reduced to little more than shadows, dark things that wandered just outside visual range. They almost looked like ponies, but they were too flat and moved to quickly to be anything other than insects. The only parts of them that came through clearly were the circular, luminescent devices they wore: the smaller ones wore them in the center of their chests, and the larger wore theirs on their left shoulders. 
“Through millennia, centuries, years and days,” said the zebra, solemnly, “somehow and always, this memory stays…” 
“There was pain,” agreed the other voice. “Although we did not understand at the time. The things we felt were new. We could not understand. But we were not the same.” 
Images shifted by. Daring Do saw something that looked like a blueprint or an x-ray, showing the mutated, infected bones of a failed subject, annotated in an odd script, one that consisted of perfectly aligned square geometric characters. 
“But they left.”
The images of the scientists vanished, and the zebra nodded, her mask staring on solemnly. “Who knows why they came to this place, or what they started…/Or if they managed to accomplish any semblance of it before they departed.” 
“They experimented on you,” said Daring Do. “The ones who built that city. They were trying to make a new whiteshade. But why?” 
“I know not for what need/ or if they truly did succeed.” 
“But then where did they go?”
“We don’t know,” said the deep voice with just a hint of longing- -and relief. “We were left alone. But more came.”
The image changed. This time, clearer images stepped forward from the shadows. They took the form of ponies, and although they were blurred, Daring Do did not recognize what sort of ponies they were. Only that they were almost half her height. 
“They had no interest in the old experiments. And they did not fear us.”
“They released us, and bade us strive/ to continue throughout our distorted lives. That forever would this be our land/so long as we stood by as guardians of the Hand.” 
“The Exmoori.”
“We know not,” said the deep voice. “Only that they were noble and proud. And immune, as are the white ones. The white ones that slay our forest now. As immune to us as you are not.” 
“I know them,” said Daring Do. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand. It’s my fault- -”
The zebra raised her hoof, clad in white lace more delicate than anything that could be sewn by any pony. “Child, do not shed a single tear. / Here in the white-light, there is neither hatred nor fear. The Immune Ones gave us life, death, and new birth/ so that we might permit passage to those of greatest worth.” 
“And those that come with fire and weapons are not worthy,” added the deep voice, the voice of the whiteshade- -or an echo of deeper, mad consciousness from the zebra herself. “But you are.”
“No,” said Daring Do. “I attacked you. I hurt you, and I didn’t know- -”
“We feel no pain. Only hunger. But for you we suppress it. For you we allow passage.”
“But…why?”
The zebra smiled beneath her mask. “Because instead of trying to bring about our end, you came here with hoof extended as a friend.”
The darkness began to fade. Through it, Daring Do became able to see the leaves of strange trees, and beneath the shade of the beautiful zebra the hideous appearance of her true form. Still, she spoke one last poem.
“He who watches, borne on silver wings/ so long ago, he prophesized the end of things. The cycle will be complete/but the end is never so neat. Go, and claim the Hand/ and bring about the death of this land. And when the ice comes and erases both sight and sound/ you will find us yet again, having returned and claimed our final home far beneath the frozen ground.”  
Daring Do cried out. There was a pain in her hoof. She looked down to see long tendrils be being pulled away from her, leaving a series of tiny, evenly-spaced holes that had swollen and grown red- -but that were not covered in white growth.
The mutant shaman took a step back, and stared back with empty eyes. Then she received into the trees, and the others, watching- -or perhaps part of the whole, all a single, linked zebra- -retreated back as well, and in an instant were gone.
All was silent. Then, finally, that peaceful silence was completely destroyed. As anticipated, the bringer of its end was none other than Rainbow Dash.
“Ho. Ly. BUCK!” she cried, nearly squealing. “What- -what did you just do?! You made them go away, just like THAT? How- -what did you- -was it some sort of ancient spell? Some sort of secrete technique or- -”
“No,” said Daring Do. She turned and smiled weakly. “No. None of that. I just talked to her.”
“Her?” said Sweetie Drops. “That thing was a ‘her’?”
“You made a mistake,” said Flocks’ crow as the others materialized around it, forming a black unicorn in a waistcoat. “You should have ended it then and there.”
“I did,” said Daring Do, glaring at him. “You don’t need to worry. Not every problem needs violence or fighting. Sometimes, just sometimes, you can have a reasonable conversation and end it in a way where nopony gets hurt.” 

Caballeron covered his face. The heat was intense, and he feared for his eyebrows. Not only that, but it was a hard thing to watch. 
The robots had taken up a triangular perimeter. They proceeded forward, marching without hesitation or pause. Some unknown system within them had been triggered by their masters’ will, and from the front of them shot liquid flame. Everything the flame touched ignited, screamed, withered and blackened to piles of ash. The robots did not care. They simply did as they were told. 
The jungle receded in flame, and Caballeron was led through. The white Questlords let him onward, ignoring the flames completely. The light flickered off the silver of their armor, the heat reflecting harmlessly. In the glow and with their serrated swords drawn, they looked like a force of demons.  
Figures moved in the fire, but did not approach. Through the smoke, Caballeron could not see them clearly, nor did he want to. They might have been ponies once, but they were not any longer. They were horrible monstrosities, and he found himself wishing that they would burn in the flames along with the horrid jungle where they lived. For their own sake as well as his. 
The pony who led them stood beside him, marching and keeping him marching quickly through the swath of ash they were cutting. Her armor had no clear eyes, yet Caballeron could nearly sense the red reflection of her albino pupils. It was impassive and without expression.
“Don’t you think this is a little much?” he asked. 
“No.” She replied quickly and without emotion. “I will do whatever is necessary. They are in my way. As is this jungle. Do not question me. Or my mother. The Hand of Doom will be ours. For the good of Equestria.” 
Caballeron stared at her, and he was afraid. He felt his hatred for her waver, and wondered what role fate meant to have him play if his part was not that of the victor. More importantly, though, he wondered what the Hand actually meant to a pony who could do nothing but follow the orders of others- -and in that respect, for the first time in a long time, he was not thinking about himself.