Prowl led them back to the tunnel, where the others were gathered. Shells littered the ground and the scent of cordite and blood hung heavy in the cold, stale air. A few bodies lay amongst the wreckage, every one with a hole drilled through their craniums. Celestia and Luna walked amongst the survivors, tending to the wounded, voices quiet and reassuring. Their cuirasses were dented, scratched, and spattered with blood and ooze: Celestia’s golden halberd lay snapped in half on the floor, and Luna had a long, freshly healed cut on her face.
Captain Eagle had just emerged from a golden archway, pulling a crate of ammunition behind him which he tossed open, allowing the other Royal Guards to line up and start resupplying their ammunition. Their armor was scuffed and covered in black slime; Phillip did a brief headcount and his heart fell into his stomach when he realized that there were only eleven left.
Four of the corpses wore armor.
Phillip’s heart sank even more when he realized that three of the bodies were police officers. The dozen surviving officers sat in a small cluster, every one of them trembling, sweat clinging to pale faces. Their hollow eyes shone in the darkness. Even the sight of Bumblebee, Trace, Red, and Cold amongst the survivors did nothing to alleviate the crushing pressure.
Prowl let out a long breath like air whooshing out of a balloon now that they were safely back; her posture slumped, wings falling loose and her head drooping beneath the weight. “The swings at St. Megan’s,” Daring and Phillip heard her muttering as she stumbled over to the others. “Uncle Honeydew’s candy shop...Song Stream reservoir…”
She made her way over to Bumblebee, who was whimpering faintly as Arc stroked his mane and whispered soothingly in his ear, and hugged them both, breathing slowly and evenly.
“Holy shit,” Flash breathed, sitting down and dropping the shotgun. He stared at one of the bodies: a young blue earth pony, the same age as Flash. The empty green eyes stared up at the ceiling, a bloody hole drilled into his left temple. His jaw hung open as if in surprise. Flash stared at the corpse, every inhalation trembling. Twilight hugged him tightly, refusing to look at the body.
“Zugzwang escaped,” Cold Case explained to Phillip, taking some bullets from the ammunition crate and putting them back into a magazine. Phillip saw one round tremble in her magical grip, but Cold grunted in irritation and forced the round into the clip, compressing the spring with an audible click. “So did Coin Toss, and I think three of his thugs.” She took a slow breath and closed her eyes for a moment.
“He killed Creek Dancer,” she continued, her voice strained, like a suspension bridge that was struggling underneath the weight of too many trucks driving across it. “And then Creek killed Red Rover and Tire Track.” She swallowed and took another breath before turning to glare at him. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes,” Phillip nodded, also replenishing his ammunition from the crate. Daring pulled out the three gems, and Phillip added the ruby that he’d taken from Dust to the pile.
“Then let’s find and kill that son of a bitch,” Cold snarled.
“I...I can do it,” Twilight announced, reluctantly pulling away from Flash and fixing her gaze on the jewels so as to avoid the sight of the battlefield around her. “Just give me some time to draw a circle…”
“No, Twilight, I shall do it,” Luna stated, striding forward and placing a comforting hoof on Twilight’s withers. “You are quite brave, my dear student, but you need not be exposed to this.”
Luna plucked the four jewels from Daring and placed them in a loose circle around herself as she sat down in the dirt. Taking a slow breath, Luna closed her eyes and lit up her horn in an indigo aura. The same aura surrounded the ruby, then the emerald, the amberstone, and the diamond, each of them letting out a small, vibrating hum that joined in a tranquil harmony that echoed through the Under. Everypony that listened became stilled and turned towards the noise, tense muscles relaxing, hearts slowing.
A moment later, Luna flopped onto the ground and the ethereal music was halted and replaced by loud snoring. Tranquility was quickly chased away by confusion and disbelief.
“...what,” Daring said.
“She is the Princess of Dreams,” Celestia explained with a wry smile, repairing her polearm with a snap of her magic. “Fear not: she’s using an astral projection method to track the location of the statues.”
Indeed, as Celestia spoke, what looked like a transparent image of Princess Luna lifted out of Luna’s sleeping body and disappeared through the ceiling of the tunnel.
“She should be back soon,” Celestia said placidly.
About a minute later, the image returned and floated back into Luna, who woke up immediately and stood up. “I found the statues,” she reported as though nothing had happened, her face grim. “However, there is a problem. Twilight, Celestia.”
The three mares gathered close together as Luna projected an image with some complicated magical formulae before them. The trio murmured back and forth for several minutes, all of them scowling seriously. Luna seemed to propose something, but Celestia shook her head firmly, hissing out a countermand. Twilight cut in with a proposition, which prompted a round of whispering between Celestia and Luna. The others all stood outside the group, heads tilted to try to listen in.
Finally, the trio seemed to reach a consensus and turned back to the others. “All right, listen closely,” Luna announced, making eye contact with every survivor. “I know we are all shaken by the deaths of our comrades, but we need to keep moving. The sooner that we can find and disable the Statues, the sooner we can end this madness.”
She projected an image before them all: the four Innsbeak Statues, the small idols of the Old Gods snarling at the survivors.
“Originally, our plan was to track down and destroy the Statues,” Luna continued. “As we’ve all told you, the statues are channeling the energy within them from years of worship into the jade necklace that Zugzwang wears.”
A jade necklace appeared amidst the statues and lines of energy began to slither from the statues into the necklace.
“However, I found the statues and sensed the energy of the spell that they are part of. That same energy is also extremely unstable,” Luna continued. “If we were to simply destroy the statues, it would likely cause a magical backfire and chain reaction amongst the necklace and the other statues.”
The statue of Daybreaker suddenly had its head cut off, then exploded. The other statues and necklace all exploded in reaction. “The explosions would be devastating,” Luna said grimly. “If they exploded within the city limits, hundreds could be killed.”
“So here’s the new plan,” Celestia announced, weaving several golden lines of energy into the air. These lines formed into net-like constructs, which she passed out to the officers. “These nets will cut off the statues from the necklace: trapping them in the net will disrupt the spell and prevent Zugzwang from drawing upon their power, which should allow us to destroy the necklace. We can then transport the statues to a safe area where Luna and I can safely drain the statues of their energy and destroy them.”
“In the meantime, we need to refocus upon trying to get Zugzwang away from the jade necklace,” Luna continued. “We all saw: that power makes the monster quite resilient and able to heal quickly. If we can destroy the necklace, or just get it off of him, that should prevent it from drawing upon that energy.”
“Got it,” Daring said impatiently. “So where are the statues?”
“A mansion in the northwest outskirts of the city,” Luna replied. “It rests upon a hill, with a gate around it: I saw construction scaffolding and work within. The Statues are in a red room with black curtains at the end of a long hallway, behind a powerful shield. I saw a coat of arms upon the wall: a hoof crushing a serpent.”
Daring and Phillip looked at each other. “Silvertongue’s mansion,” Phillip grunted.
“Kinda poetic, I guess,” Daring shrugged.
“I remember it well,” Celestia said, opening a golden portal before them. She paused, then carefully looked over the entire group. The ponies all stared back at her, hard eyes peering out from dirty, pale, sweaty faces.
“If anypony does not wish to come, I will understand,” she said softly.
“There’s no shame in it, officers,” Cold Case told her officers.
Phillip’s heart trembled in his chest; his breath came heavy, his lungs feeling as though gravity was trying to pull them out through his chest. He thought briefly of his parents, imagining a solemn-faced officer walking up to tell them that their son was not coming home.
But his hooves refused to move. He looked at Daring: her wingtips were shaking in a manner that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature, but she gave him a thin smile. Trace racked the slide of his pistol, while Red swallowed, shuffling in place. Flash took Twilight’s hoof, while Rainbow draped a foreleg over Twilight’s withers. Bumblebee looked like he was going to be sick, but nodded at Arc and Prowl. Nopony said anything.
Cold Case nodded and racked the slide of her own pistol. Celestia beamed at them in pride.
“Then once more unto the breach, friends,” she declared and stepped through the portal.
Daring emerged with the group through the portal, her hoofsteps clopping against pavement. Looking around, she saw that they were now standing upon Baroque Street, a road that led northwest towards the border of Ponyville.
Her mind went back to a cold night last winter, when she and Phillip had ascended this road themselves with Princess Celestia, headed to Silvertongue’s mansion in hopes of stopping the rat bastard once and for all. And now they were headed back up through the night, with two Princesses and an equally half-baked plan, into the same mansion that was now filled with hostiles...
She frowned, realizing that it was dark: the lights in the streetlights penetrated the blackness, sending long shadows across the silent, empty streets. A glance at her watch showed her it was barely four o’clock, and yet she looked up to behold a pitch-black sky. The sun had apparently long set, and not even the moon was up.
The only light that penetrated the black blanket was the twinkling stars: where once she would’ve taken comfort from the sight of Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra looking down on her, with Altair, Deneb, and Vega immediately drawing her gaze, now they seemed cold and distant, like the audience at an execution. Waiting for the ax to fall.
“Uh...Princess?” Flash asked as he, along with most of the other ponies, stared up at the anomalous night sky.
“I had to lower the sun, and Luna cannot afford to raise the moon,” Celestia explained. “Zugzwang is a dangerous foe, we need our full focus to deal with him.”
“We must press on,” Luna declared, pointing her broadsword towards a distant hill. The shadow of a massive mansion sat atop it, backlit against the stars, looking down upon them like a king upon his throne.
As they proceeded, several shadows passed over them as the Wonderbolts arrived, faces grim behind their goggles and flight masks. “Ready for duty, Your Highnesses,” Spitfire declared, saluting the Princesses as she flew above their heads. The Wonderbolt commander reached back and unholstered what looked like a cross between a submachine gun and a tuning fork attached by a thick black cable to a backpack strapped to her back. Sparks danced between the two prongs of the fork-like appendage on the end. Two other Wonderbolts unstrapped similar weapons.
"Cool," Rainbow Dash breathed.
“Zugzwang won’t give up the statues without a fight,” Sergeant Tempest pointed out.
“It would be wise to draw him out from the mansion,” Luna declared. “We need to distract him from the statues, leave them unguarded.”
“I think we can help with that,” Lieutenant Soarin grinned.
“Your Highness, bringing him out into the open carries its own risks,” Eagle pointed out. “It’ll put civilians at risk, and he could make more zombies from them.”
“We’ll have to try to move him to the edges of the city, to the northwest,” Celestia declared. “Cold Case, I trust your officers will clear the mansion and recover the statues?”
“Absolutely, Your Highness,” Cold Case nodded.
“No argument from me,” Bumblebee mumbled. “I really like not having to fight that thing again.”
“But how are we going to draw him out of the mansion?” Eagle asked.
“Leave that to me,” Luna said with a cold smile.
Too soon, they reached the stone wall that surrounded the old mansion. The iron gates had been removed and replaced with only a trio of wooden construction sawhorses to barricade the path up. Even from so far below, Daring could see that the once ostentatious structure was suffering from over half a year of disuse. Several of the windows had been smashed, part of the ceiling had collapsed, and graffiti was spray-painted across the door: “JUSTIC” said the white paint. Scaffolding surrounded part of the walls, and construction equipment was scattered across the formerly manicured lawns. Vaguely, Daring remembered that there had been much discussion amongst the city council about what to do with the mansion after Silvertongue died. Some had proposed tearing it down, but those plans had been paused with the proposition that the mansion be converted into a museum or some other charitable office.
“At least they got rid of the antiflight wards,” she mumbled to herself, stretching her wings out.
A chill zephyr ran up from the south, and Daring glanced up with several others to note that dark storm clouds were rolling in on harsh winds, covering the stars above. Rain began to fall lightly from above, dripping into manes and clothes.
"Was there rain in the forecast today?" Prowl asked with a frown.
"No," Rainbow Dash muttered in puzzlement.
"Bah. Ignore it," Prowl muttered.
Luna pushed the barriers aside and stepped forward boldly, with Celestia at her side and a phalanx of Royal Guards before them both, weapons up and shields primed. The Wonderbolts formed up behind them.
“Officers, remain behind cover,” Celestia ordered.
Daring, Phillip, and the other officers took cover behind the brick walls, watching from around the corner as the Princesses and their entourage stopped before the dark edifice.
“ZUGZWANG!” Luna bellowed, drawing her broadsword and pointing the tip at the doors. “We call you out, coward!”
There was no response from within. The rain began to fall in earnest now, coming down in a light barrage that pattered loudly against the ground.
“If you’re powerful as you claim, then you should have no trouble with the two of us and our guards!” Luna continued. “And yet you hide in there, behind your walls and your armed thugs!” She laughed. “Are you scared, weakling? Do you need a wet nurse?”
Still there was no answer, but the air itself seemed to go colder and heavier around them. Luna laughed again. “Stygian would not be cowering from us behind his shields!” she crowed. “Are you so spineless that you will let yourself by outmatched by somepony as small and meek as he?! Coward, I call thee! COWARD!”
A roar shook the sky, and then a large section of the roof was smashed outwards. Lightning flashed in the sky with an answering bellow of thunder, and the cold rain began to pour down in sheets. For a second, they all saw it, backlit against the sky: its tongues waved like a den of serpents, its wings were spread wide. It drew the Sword of Asocrac with a metallic shing, blood seeping into the black suns.
But no sooner had it appeared than the Wonderbolts snapped their wings back, then pushed them forward as one. A great gust of wind charged forward like a solid wall at Zugzwang, slamming into him midflap; at the same moment, Spitfire and her two companions opened fire with their portable lightning cannons. Lightning streaked through the air, crackling and roaring like a living thing, slamming into the beast. It was sent tumbling away, spinning almost comically over the mansion and crash-landing in the fields behind.
“Attack! Push him away from the city!” Celestia declared, taking flight along with her sister. The Wonderbolts followed, along with the Royal Guards on wings, both flesh and mechanical.
“Come on!” Trace called, beckoning the officers forward to the doors of the mansion. “You scared of some zombies, officers?” He considered for a moment. “You know what, don’t answer that. Let’s just get this over with.”
As the officers crashed through the doors, Celestia and Luna dove down at Zugzwang, who had recovered and glared up at them as the alicorns descended like meteors.
There was an echoing clash of steel and a blinding flash like a firework, blue, gold, and black. Three ponies were sent rocketing away from each other, wings flaring out and hooves digging out trenches in the mud as they fought their own momentum. They paused, glaring at one another.
Zugzwang snapped the cutlass up in a salute. “Give us your best, spawn of Starswirl!” it growled.
Luna laughed as the Guards and Wonderbolts formed up around the alicorns, rain dripping off their wings. “You wish for our best?” she taunted. “We, who command the sun and moon? We, who have leveled cities and sunk armadas? We, who must spend every moment taking great care to not destroy everything we touch?!”
She and Celestia both grinned and raised their blades in guarding position as another flash of sound and fury lit up the sky. “You shall have it,” Luna declared.
“Stack up!” Cold Case ordered as they charged for the doors of the mansion. The officers instinctively split into two teams, stacking up at either door, weapons drawn: Bumblebee and another shieldbearer took the front, raising their shields. Rainbow and Twilight both instinctively took the rear of the group, Rainbow covering the unicorn with a wing.
“Trace,” Cold ordered, charging up her horn.
A sphere of light blossomed at the tip of Trace’s horn and he nodded.
With a rush of wind, the doors were smashed open and Trace fired his light spell. A blinding nova burst from within the hallway, but there was no response from inside.
The group entered to see that the hallway was empty, Trace’s light spell rapidly fading away to leave them in darkness. The crystalline chandelier that had once hung from the ceiling was gone, as were the great paintings that had been boastfully placed along the walls. The only other way out of the hallway were the doors at the end.
“Matchstick, check the door for traps,” Red instructed.
“Why me?” Matchstick grumbled.
“Because you’re the one who specializes in explosives,” Red pointed out. “Just do it.”
Matchstick sighed and swept the doorframes with a spotlight-like beam of scarlet energy, detecting nothing. “Zilch. Let’s go,” she declared.
They opened the door and entered a large room that was painted all in blue. The periwinkle curtains in the window had been removed, the statues, pottery, and other artifacts had been largely replaced with worktables, sawhorses, and tools, and some of the paintings had been taken down, but a few of the blue-themed portraits remained. The scent of paint thinner hung in the air.
Daring glanced at a painting in a golden frame and smirked. “Good times,” she mumbled to Phillip. “At least the golems are gone.” He just grunted in reply.
They proceeded through the yellow room, then the green, orange, and white rooms. While some paintings still hung stubbornly to the walls, the rooms were empty save for the remnants of the halted restoration and destruction efforts.
“It’s quiet,” Rainbow Dash commented as they proceeded to the door at the end of the white room. “Too quiet.”
Almost everypony else groaned and rolled their eyes as they entered the purple room. This room was just like all of the others, save for one detail: at the opposite end of the room, a hole had been carved into the wall, tearing away a large section where the door should’ve been. This hole was covered by a gold-green magical barrier, arcane symbols dancing along the semi-transparent surface.
“That looks interesting,” Daring commented, proceeding forward.
“Block the doorway,” Cold ordered, turning and casting pools of ice over the floor of the white room. Small, sharp stalagmites of ice blossomed from the sheets.
Bumblebee hit a button on the handle of his shield: an additional metal plate unfurled from the bottom of the shield and he slammed down the larger shield with a thud, aiming his revolver over the side. The other shieldbearers did the same, forming a solid wall of metal before the doorway.
“No one’s getting past,” Bumblebee declared firmly as Prowl took position behind him, aiming her Trotson submachine gun over his head. Behind them both, Flash checked to make sure that there was a shell in the chamber before clearing his throat and cuddling the stock to his shoulder.
At that moment, there was a great crashing from outside and a flash of blue light outside the windows temporarily turned the night into day. Everypony paused for a moment, staring outside and wondering how the other, greater battle was going.
“Hang on, Princess!” Captain Eagle cried, urging his armor’s wings to carry him faster to the wreckage that had been an electrical substation. The steel girders and columns now lay in a twisted heap, arcs of electricity dancing amongst exposed wires, sparking and fizzing in the rain. Already a pair of unicorn Royal Guards were telekinetically pulling at the wreckage, trying to get at their charge beneath.
Landing amidst the debris, Eagle heaved up a girder when the entire mess shifted, then was tossed aside. Celestia emerged from beneath, panting and leaning upon her halberd; her helmet had been knocked off and her golden armor was heavily dented and scorched to the point where the entire ensemble might need to be replaced, but she still stood up on her own power. Steam rose off her armor where the rain struck the superheated metal with a constant hissing like a den of vipers.
“Ow,” Celestia grunted, looking up at the house across the street, which now had a tunnel carved through it from her journey down the block. A few terrified eyes stared at them through the enormous gap. “Looks like moving him out of the city won’t work.”
“Are you all right, Highness?” Eagle asked, quickly scanning her over and noticing that there was a shard of metal sticking out of a gap in Celestia’s left hind leg armor, blood running down the sabaton.
“I’m fine, Captain,” Celestia said, shaking herself off and yanking the debris out of her leg without even wincing. “Back to battle!”
The four flew back towards the fight, towards the block-sized clearing where Luna now dueled with the beast, sword clashing against sword with a sound like hammers striking the air. The emerald glow of the cursed necklace could be seen from blocks away. Guards and Wonderbolts circled the duo, firing their weapons in a constant cacophony, but if their target was affected by their bullets, it wasn’t showing it.
A trio of Wonderbolts swooped in, one right after the other, each of them dropping a softball-sized grenade upon Zugzwang’s back that shattered upon contact. The multicolored jelly within spread over its body, over its back and legs and wings: where the refined liquid rainbow fell, it clung to the flesh and burned. The thing’s screeches of agony echoed down the streets as it staggered, forced on the defensive by Luna’s renewed onslaught.
Maneuvering for a clear line of fire, Spitfire fired her lightning gun once more, only for a shield to deflect the arc of light away. Misty Fly, already wounded by a ricocheted round, was too slow to avoid it: with a terrible scream, the Wonderbolt fell from the air and crashed into the ground in a charred, smoking heap.
“No! Fucker!” Soarin bellowed, opening fire with a tri-barreled Gatling gun with a tank full of cloud material where the magazine should’ve been. Daggers of ice and hail rocketed from the barrels, digging into whatever they hit; the volley hit the thing in its hind leg, encasing part of its fetlock in ice.
With a sneer, the thing conjured another shield that deflected the ice bullets at Luna, who grunted and spat curses as she was forced away. A moment later, her curses became a cry of shock as the smoking form of Misty Fly leaped upon the alicorn’s back, driving her survival knife into the joints of her armor in a cold frenzy. Throwing off the dead Wonderbolt, she retreated from Zugwang, firing a rifle burst from the hip that her foe easily blocked.
“That was your last kill, beast!” Celestia declared, diving back into the fray.
“How the fuck did this hole get here?” Red commented, tracing an eye over the circumference of the tunnel that had been carved into the wall.
“Looks like it was magically carved,” Twilight commented.
“Maybe Zugzwang made it,” Phillip stated. “Just focus on getting in there.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be in here any longer than I have to,” Trace commented, standing next to the smaller group. He glanced over at the other officers, who were still blocking the other door. Cold Case paced behind the line: she shot the detectives a glance, then continued looking out into the room, watching for any sign of intruders.
Daring poked at the shield: it buzzed and tingled beneath her hoof, like static electricity. She studied the strange barrier, squinting into the black room with the red curtains and accents. Through the magical window, Daring could see the four statues of the Old Gods sitting on the long black table, all of them faintly glowing the same emerald color as the jade fox necklace. The coat of arms mounted on the back wall was rusty and dirty: the motto “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” was faded out.
“Looks like this shield is powered by the statues,” Twilight commented, scanning over the shield with her magic. “Not that complicated, though. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get past…” She started sending tendrils of magic out of her horn, snaking them over the barrier, probing for weaknesses.
Rainbow Dash looked around. “Again, does this feel like a trap to anypon—?”
The door to the room suddenly glowed bright yellow, then crashed shut with an abnormally loud reverberation.
“The hell?” Trace shouted, rushing over to the door and trying to open it. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t open. From the other side, the others could hear pounding and shouting.
And then they heard the gunshots.
At that moment, the golden shield burst in a dazzling array of color. A hole tore itself out through the midst of the aurate field with a roaring sound like a giant vacuum cleaner, the edges constantly churning and shifting. Daring’s helmet was yanked through the hole and into the black and red room, flopping down onto the floor.
Daring shoved Twilight and Phillip out of the way, then cried out in alarm as the sucking wind pulled her towards the hole. Rainbow jumped in and grabbed her foreleg, but the two mares could only helplessly scream as they were yanked into the hole. Both of them crashed into the room; they lay upon the floor, still as stone. The hole closed with a sudden snap.
“Daring!” Phillip cried, pounding at the shield. He squinted through, trying to see if the mares’ chests were rising and falling with breath. “What happened?” he cried.
“A trap,” Twilight gasped. “Dash was right.”
“Get us in there!” Phillip snapped at her.
“I’m trying!” Twilight cried, casting her magic at the shield once more. “I don’t—”
She looked over Phillip’s shoulder and gasped. He whirled around to see a stallion climbing out of a painting of a night sky through a clearing of trees, clambering over the golden frame. More ponies climbed out of the paintings, turning to face them with dead eyes.
“Shit,” Trace muttered as he and Red raised their pistols and opened fire. The attackers charged, zigzagging to avoid their gunshots. Red nailed one headshot, Trace another, but the rest closed the distance, engaging them in hoof to hoof.
Pushing Twilight into the corner, Phillip moved forward to help, but Twilight’s warning cry reached his ears too late. A jackhammer pounded against his back. Grunting in pain, he tucked and rolled, turning about and throwing out his boomerang. The wooden weapon struck the hoof carrying the crowbar, knocking the weapon away. Phillip caught his returning projectile and paused, staring up at his opponent.
Charlie August Silvertongue stared at him for a moment, head cocked to one side. One eye blinked at him: where the other should’ve been was an empty hole. The flesh was pulled away from the cheek, revealing two long rows of teeth in a sneer. From beneath his vest, the dead stallion withdrew a long knife.
A purple aura seized the weapon and tried to jerk it away, but Silvertongue merely bent down and grabbed the crowbar up off the floor. Twisting about, he threw the metal bar at Twilight: it spun through the air and smacked Twilight on the forehead with a loud crack. She stumbled, her eyes rolling, and crashed to the floor like a sack of bricks, eyes closed.
Phillip growled and cracked his neck, forcing any worry, every thought of Daring, into his gut, where it boiled and festered into rage. “Guess I get to kick your arse after all,” he snarled.
The dead pony almost smiled. And then the two lunged at each other.