The report came in. Finally. Lupines had been waiting all day. He was dying to know about how the assault on Canterlot went.
The plan was to go over the small town next to Canterlot and threaten it with some bombs. The Canterlot guards would come to the rescue, but the other armies, which had successfully surrounded Canterlot, would attack the city and capture the leaders, which were no doubt hiding in the palace, convinced that the guards would take care of them and that there was nothing to worry about.
Commander Sea Spray’s second-in-command walked into the room, his steps subdued and his head hung low, avoiding Lupines’ eyes. The emperor immediately went into shallow panic mode. Clearly, something had happened that the commanders and generals were regretting telling him.
“Well?” Lupines snarled. The other pony (Lupines thought his name was Shell) winced.
“Well… Um… It failed.”
Lupines blinked. He shook his head and glared at Shell.
“Excuse me?”
“It… failed. We were stopped in Ponyville, by a small force of rag-tag ponies and creatures. We were caught off guard and had to retreat. When we came back, there was a large shield around both Ponyville and Canterlot. It was so strong none of our weapons could penetrate it. And all of our forces were forced out of it. There’s no way for us to get there now.”
“You were stopped,” Lupines said slowly, venom dripping from his voice, “by a rag-tag group of ponies and creatures?!” Shell gulped and nodded. Lupines rubbed his hoof on his forehead.
“Do you mind telling me what these creatures looked like?”
“Um, yes sir. There were three ponies with wings and horns, like pegacorns, but with bigger wings. And much more powerful. And there were two dragons, and two shape-shifting creatures and some yaks and two hippogriffs and an earth pony. And a unicorn. And we encountered a couple of younguns in the forest when we were raiding. We tried to kill them, but one of them managed to generate a shield. And some ponies fought us just outside of town. There was another one of those pegacorns there, too, as well as two pegasi and a unicorn and two earth ponies. They were presumably killed, but we never found their bodies.” Shell shifted from hoof to hoof nervously.
In his head, Lupines was already putting together who his forces had met outside of Canterlot. If there were some pegacorns with larger wings and who were more powerful than pegacorns, they would be what they called alicorns, who were the leaders of the ponies. Which meant that if the pony leaders were there, chances were that the other leaders were there as well. Instead of doing what Lupines had thought they would do, they were smarter than he had thought. They had hidden in a small, insignificant town that would probably be overlooked by Lupines. That was smart. Lupines didn’t think he’d ever had an opponent quite so intelligent as the Equestrian forces.
“Second-in-Command Shell,” said Lupines menacingly, “I hope you realize that the creatures that you encountered were the leaders of these lands, as well as several of their closest friends. And you just assumed that they were a… ‘small force of rag-tag ponies and creatures'.”
Shell gulped, seeing where this was going. Sweat rolled in rivers down his neck. “Um… yes?”
“So you should have captured them and brought them to me. And you didn’t. Even more than that, you were forced to retreat at their hooves. And gave them time to put up additional protection, which delays our plans by a large amount?”
“Yes?”
“And the punishment of this is death.” Lupines flicked his tail, and two guards trotted in and grabbed Shell and dragged him away.
“No! Please! Wait! Please, give me another chance! Please! No!”
Lupines snorted. He was immune to any emotions that other ponies might give him. He turned to the remaining three guards in the room.
“Send a letter to Commander Sea Spray and the other generals. Tell them that if they mess up this bad again, they will meet the same fate as Second-in-Command Shell.” They nodded and trotted out of the room. Lupines settled back on his throne with a sigh.
In his mind, Lupines knew that the Equestrians were more powerful than the Anoians, but the Anoians had greater numbers. He had hoped that if he attacked suddenly and scared the Equestrian military with their great numbers, they would surrender or be scared to fight them. But now the leaders of Equestria and the surrounding lands had realized that they were indeed more powerful than Anoia, which made it almost impossible for them to lose the war now. But Lupines had to try. He’d gotten this far already. He wasn’t going to back down.
So Lupines started forming a mental plan. He would dig in for a siege and stay long enough for the Equestrian’s strength in their protective shield to fade. Then they would suddenly all attack at once, overwhelming the Equestrians and catching them off guard. They would fall, and Equestria would finally fall to Lupines’s control.
Lupines relished in the idea of an entire world following his every order. He would rule over it all. And he would be long gone before any more problems came up, such as running out of living space, or exhausting their resources, or before advancing technologies would take over the world and there would be no ponies, only cyborgs. Yeah. All those problems were far off in the future. Lupines didn’t need to worry about them right now.
All he needed to worry about was winning this war and taking down the rulers of these lands. They had escaped him. Nopony ever did. Lupines always found the ponies who betrayed him in the end. And after this whole thing blew over, and he emerged victorious, he would find that Red. He would find out what it was that he suspected about her if it was the last thing he did. Even if he had to torture it out of her. Lupines wasn’t sure what it was, but he was suspicious about something. And even that suspicion was wavering under Red’s act. At least, he thought she was acting…
Dang, that pony was good! If she was acting, she was doing a fantastic job. Lupines allowed himself a smile despite himself. If she wasn’t a lieutenant, he would stick her in the closest theater and they would never get rid of her. But, if she was acting, then that meant she was a spy. The smile melted off Lupines’s face as he sat up quickly.
A spy… if that was true, then he had made the right decision, making Marylyn watch over the pegacorn every waking second. Hopefully, if Red was smuggling information to the Equestrians, Marylyn would catch her. And yet, the Equestrians hadn’t interpreted Lupines’s moves very well. They had put up defenses along their borders, but they left gaps in areas that they had thought to be impenetrable, such as the desert. The Anoians were able to slip past them fairly easily. If Red was a spy for the Equestrians, she was doing a terrible job. Like, awful.
Lupines shook himself and focused on the issue at hand. He had to infiltrate Canterlot. Only then would he be able to take the city, and with it, the remains of the Equestrian armies and rulers. And then the world would bow to him and him alone.