Amberley Vail’s hands trembled, shock and fury waging war with each other for supremacy in her mind. Please tell me this madman is joking-
“You heard me the first time. Give the order to prepare for Exterminatus, and ready a Cyclonic Torpedo.” The old man snarled in a tone that brooked no argument, never taking his eyes off the lush, pristine garden world visible through the windows of the Pyroclast Retribution’s observation deck. By the sound of it, he was deadly serious; what little hope Amberley had left promptly died a quick and brutal death. She had thought that Exterminatus, the destruction of a world, was something only deployed in the direst of circumstances, and the circumstances here were anything but dire. The xenos on this planet weren’t warp-capable yet, the planet below would have made a perfectly good garden world if not for their presence, and the Inquisition had plenty of time to touch down on the planet on foot and exterminate the locals the old-fashioned way.
And yet, Inquisitor Fyodor Karamazov was insisting that they reduce this perfectly good garden world to a lifeless husk. All because its ecology had somehow managed to produce a sentient species whose appearance was just a tad too similar to a Terran miniature pony to his liking.
“As you wish, Lord Inquisitor.” The captain of the ship declared, and Amberley silently cursed to herself. Seemed the task of reigning in her fellow Inquisitor had fallen to her.
She stepped forward. “Sir, with all due respect, wouldn’t it be more prudent to simply kill only the foul xenos and leave the planet intact for colon-”
The words died on her tongue as she suddenly found herself staring down the barrel of a bolt pistol. Karamazov had whirled around, somehow managing to draw the weapon and level it in the time it took Amberley to blink.
“Finish that sentence, young upstart, and you will have blasphemed against the Emperor, and be treated accordingly.” The Inquisitor snarled. “Do I make myself clear?”
For an instant, Amberley was at a loss for words, briefly struck silent by the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. The man in front of her was acting more like a physical manifestation of every negative stereotype that the wider Imperium held about the Inquisition than an actual person, like every horror story of an entire world consumed by the fires of an Exterminatus solely because one singular citizen of that world had succumbed to Chaos, all condensed into a single being and then set loose upon the hapless servants of the God-Emperor of Mankind. He shouldn’t even have made it into the Ordos’, should have been executed for taking fanaticism way too far before he accumulated even a fraction of the power he had now. And yet here she was, staring down the barrel of his bolt gun for the high crime of daring to show even the barest minimum of restraint that the Ordo Xenos expected of her.
With a superhuman exertion of willpower, Amberley swallowed her fury and schooled her expression. “Yes… I understand.” She said, stepping back.
“Good.” Karamazov lowered the bolt pistol and returned to glaring at the green-and-blue orb visible through the windows. Amberley Vail briefly considered drawing her own pistol and blowing her superior’s brains out right then and there, but thought better of it. Inquisitors had all sorts of fancy gadgets meant to thwart such assassination attempts; better to wait until after this was over and then reach out to the Officio Assasinatorium, which was far more experienced at eliminating Inquisitors a little too fanatical for the Imperium’s own good than she was.
“The Torpedo is ready to fire.” One of the Inquisitor’s lackeys declared, stepping forward. “We wait for your-”
“Fire it. Now. And next time we face a foe such as this, waiting for me to order you to fire will be grounds for execution.” Karamazov snapped, unknowingly adding yet another item to the ever-growing death warrant Amberley was mentally drafting up in her mind. The ship jerked slightly as the Cyclonic Torpedo was launched, descending toward the planet below. Amberley turned away, already sorting out which of the Assasinatorium Temples would be best suited to putting this madman down…
A flash of light drew her attention back to the observation deck’s windows… right in time to see the Torpedo explode in the void of space, detonating harmlessly countless miles above the intended target. A moment later, rays of golden light shot out from behind the expanding cloud of fire the Torpedo had left behind, slamming into the Pyroclast Retribution. A shudder wracked the ancient vessel, somehow managing to make Karamazov stumble. “What the…”
And then, the fires, starved of oxygen, dispersed, revealing the winged, horned xeno hidden behind them. Even from this distance, Amberley could see the disquietingly human-like expression on its face… and it did not appear to be happy.
A shudder wracked the crew quarters of the vessel I was embarked upon, the muted bang of something exploding reaching my ears. “An orbital engagement. Great, just great.” I mutter, internally shivering at the reminder that the only thing between me and death by decompression was a millennia-old airtight tin can. I was born in a hive-city, so I generally have a slightly higher tolerance for the confined spaces that come with Void-travel than most guardsmen, but I still can’t quite get over the fact that if I’m about to die because one of the systems on this gigantic steel chapel masquerading as a space ship has broken, then there’s very little I can do about it. And the chances of something on this piece of junk breaking go up exponentially if it’s being shot at…
I felt a pressure on my skull, growing and growing, like a headache on the verge of becoming a migraine but not quite committing to it. Thinking some foul warp-trickery at work, I instinctively tried to throw up as many mental barriers as I could-
“I could kill you all, you know.” A voice filled my mind, gentle and soft yet brimming with a level of authority that rivaled even the most strong-willed commissar. “I could slaughter you all with contemptious ease. You certainly would, had I tried to do to even one of your worlds what you tried to do to my entire species.”
“But I won’t. Because unlike you, I’m better than that.”
“I will now give you the chance to deactivate your warfleet’s weapons, turn around, and leave this system unmolested. None of your masters need to know what transpired here, there is nothing here that you value, and we pose no threat to you lest you make us one.”
“But do not mistake this act of mercy for evidence of weakness on our part. Your violence and cruelty has no place here, and should you try to make a place for it here, you will find that, when pushed, I can be as brutal and merciless enough to put evEYAAAAUGH!”
Some kind of projectile slammed into the vessel’s side; naturally, this projectile promptly destroyed the wall to my private quarters and vented the entire chamber into the void. I barely even have time to scream before the sudden rush of air carried me straight out into the cold, airless void of space. My eyes are immediately met with the sight of some kind of horse-like xeno, its mouth wide open in a silent scream, smoke rising from a stump on its forehead and its smoldering wings. Behind it, I can see that the weapons from the ship that had fired on it are still pointed in the xeno’s direction… and they’re all but pointed right at me at the moment.
Killed by friendly fire in frakking orbit! I screamed internally at nobody in particular as my skin began to burn from the radiation of the void. At least if the Commissars on that ship are doing their job, the idiot who’d had way too twitchy trigger fingers will be joining me in the Emperor’s antechamber not long after I end up there and could vouch for the fact that my inglorious death was somehow no fault of my own…
But before the air has even left my lungs, everything freezes.
I blinked once, twice, my shock quickly giving way to confusion. Everything is frozen in place, the mouth of my aide, Jurgen, still hanging open in a silent scream, the edges of the hole the two of us have just been sucked out of still red-hot.
“Well, you appear to be in a bit of a quandry.”
I gasped and flinched at the sound of the disembodied male voice.
"You seem to be at the end of your proverbial rope," the voice continued with a bit of a chuckle, its tone conjuring up bad memories of green-eyed daemons seeking to suck out my soul. "Though I imagine the airless abyss you’re currently plunging head-first into is not quite as proverbial, is it?"
The voice was followed by a soft crunching sound.
I closed my eyes, paused, and opened them again, believing that would somehow dispel the illusion. "Wh…whuh?!" I said dumbly, my voice quavering as I wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
Not exactly the most witty response, but I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders at that moment.
"I've learned how to stop time, that’s what," the voice responded in a tone that was both amused and smug. "Though it lasts only for a short while, so we ought to get down to business."
“…business?” I ask, some of my wits returning to me. “You’re a daemon, aren’t you?”
A strange mismash of every animal trait I could think of emerged from the darkness in front of me, leaning down in front of me, its slitted yellow eyes staring deep into my own. “Yes, Ciaphas Cain, I am indeed a servant of the ruinous powers come to lay claim to your immortal soul!” It roared, its voice suddenly echoing and distorted.
My heart leapt into my throat, pure panic flooding my frazzled mind. My moment of terror dissolved into confusion when the entity burst out laughing.
“Oh, my ... oh, dear ... the look on your face just now … I simply do not understand how dear Luna never drove her subjects insane with that voice, but I suppose it does have its uses. Don’t worry, I’m just kidding about laying claim to your soul. " The creature declared, a red-and white bucket of some kind of popped corn manifesting in its talons. That blasted crunching noise filled my ears once again as it tossed a handful of it in its mouth. It then extended the colorful cardboard box toward me. “Want some?”
“No, I want to know what the frak you want with me!” Yes, yes, I know; in hindsight, lashing out at what was at least a Greater Daemon of Chaos is not a good idea, especially considering that this was actually a full-blown GOD OF CHAOS I was talking to here, but like I said, I was bewildered, scared, and not thinking straight, and this entity’s identity wouldn’t be revealed to me until much, much later.
Fortunately, the creature didn’t take offense. “Simple; I want to give you a second chance.” It responded, withdrawing the box.
My heart thundered in its chest, and for once it wasn’t due to fear. "What did you mean by a second chance?"
"Exactly as it sounds."
"You can ... y-you can give me a chance to do this over again?" I said in a small voice as I trembled. "And fix what I did wrong?"
"Oh, heavens, no. What do you think this is, a Peggy Sue fic?"
My head jerked up. "Huh? But I thought you said—"
"What I mean, kiddo, is that you get a chance at a fresh start. A new job, a change of scenery, a new life. Oh, and most importantly, you get to not die."
Was this thing serious? Was any of this even real? Or was this all just my dying brain’s floundering attempt to make sense of what is happening to me as it slowly shuts down? If that was the case, then what the frak did I have to lose? But then again, if this was real… “What are you, really? And what’s the catch? Am I gonna start this “new life” as a baby?”
“To use a common explicative in the wider galaxy, frak no! I would not even dream of sending you back to such a drab human existence."
One word. One Emperor-damned word. In the emotional state I was in, I’d completely missed it, and this freak had been counting on it.
“You still haven’t answered my first question.” I powered on, completely oblivious to the fact that I’d overlooked that one crucial word.
"Oh, right. I’m merely a spirit of chaos. And I suppose you require some conditions," the entity responded, sounding bored. "Very well. You will keep your current age. You will keep your personality. You will keep your gender. And you will keep your soul. Satisfied?"
“…Spirit of Chaos? What's so chaotic about this?"
The entity chuckled. "Plucking you from one life and dropping you in another where no one knows you and you’re a stranger in a strange land? Watching you stumble around and try to make sense of your surroundings while everybody else tries to make sense of you? What's not chaotic about it?"
"Then how is it going to be any better than--?"
"Than being dead approximately fourty-five seconds after time resumes?"
"You're not giving me any choice, are you."
"Nonsense. There are always choices. It’s just that sometimes, those choices can be…unpleasant. You, of all people, should know that."
I glance back at the frozen form of my aide, caught right in the middle of a bout of rather undignified flailing. “…then I choose to take Jurgen with me.”
I half-expected the daemon to refuse, but instead, it laughed at that. “Oh, relax. I’d never even dream of separating you from your friend.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed by that.
“So, what will it be, Cain?” The creature continued. “Death, or a new life?”
There were so many unknowns I should have asked about, so many questions I should have demanded answers for. But I was stressed, out of my element, and, ultimately, I was a coward. I didn't want to die. If that meant bargaining with a Daemon, then so be it.
"I choose a new life," I said.
"Wonderful!" said the entity in a joyous voice. "Oh, but I need to read you the fine print."
"Huh? What fine—?"
The entity inexplicably produced a rather large scroll, almost as long as it was tall. "This offer is presented as-is, with no warranties explicit or implied. No guarantee is made that this offer will be suitable for any particular purpose, color, party, or fashion statement. Offer may not be sold, redistributed, transferred, relicensed, lent, thrown out, spindled, mutilated, repainted, regifted, reversed, or revised. Offer not valid on Cadia, in the stomach of any of the four Chaos gods, or Tartarus. The Spirit of Chaos is not responsible for any damage, injury, embarrassment, mayhem, ruckus, fracas, or hilarity that may result from the transformation you and your companions will be subjected to."
My eyes widened. "Wait, transformation?!"
“Too late for backsies, Cain! Enjoy the ride!” The creature snapped its fingers, and everything went black.
Inquisitor Karamazov staggered to his feet, pure, unbridled fury coursing through his mind. All around him, the Pyroclast Retribution’s bridge was aflame, multiple screens were flickering and unresponsive, and there was a crack in the observation deck’s windows, but none of these annoyances were the source of his ire at the moment.
A console near him pinged; he reached down and opened a vox-link to the escort that had just opened fire. “Are you alright?! I’m sorry-”
“The xeno.” Karamazov snarled, pure fury dripping from his every word. “What is it’s status?”
“We… we don’t know! It just vanished a second or two after we took out it’s wings and horn! And I know, I should’ve held my fire, but-”
“You made the right call. It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.” Karamazov snapped back. That xeno was a powerful psyker, which would have warranted its death even if it weren’t some unholy perversion of a Terran horse. But far worse than either of those was the fact that it dared to think itself superior to Mankind. Such blasphemy could not be allowed to continue to exist; if a few of his men or even himself had been caught in the crossfire of his allies’ righteous retribution upon that arrogant xeno witch, then so be it.
The man on the other end of the vox-link began to sputter incoherently; Karamazov severed the connection. He glanced over at a separate terminal, cursing as he took in the information contained in the readout. Other than some superficial damage, all of the Pyroclast Retribution’s systems were still fully intact… with the exception of all the Exterminatus-class weaponry that he needed to eradicate these foul xenos from the face of the galaxy, all of which was nonfunctional and damaged well beyond repair. Neither of the Retribution’s two escorts possessed the means to perform an Exterminatus. He could leave to repair the Retribution’s damaged weaponry, but that would give the filthy xenos time to prepare for his return. He’d have to have his troops wipe them out first, and then leave the system, hoping that that cursed planet below didn’t conjure up any more warp-wielding blasphemies against the God-Emperor of Mankind while he was gone.
He pressed another button, preparing to speak on the wide-vox. “All troops, prepare for deployment and landfall. We have xeno filth to purge.”
Twilight Sparkle sighed contentedly to herself as she flipped another page in the book hovering in front of her. Nothing on the schedule today, no incoming apocalypses to avert, nothing to do today but relax or read, and nothing was going to change that for her today. Right?
Wrong.
With a heavy CRASH, a pair of somethings plunged through the ceiling of the library she resided in. Twilight jumped what must have been several feet into the air, the simple levitation spell she was using to hold the book aloft disrupted by her loss of focus and leaving the book to crash to the floor. For a long, long second, she stood frozen in place, half-expecting to have to teleport away as something else plunged down from the heavens to finish the job those somethings had started. When nothing did, she slowly started to step forward, toward the two objects that had caved her roof in.
Those objects, it turned out, were a pair of very strange ponies.
One had a periwinkle blue coat, a red mane, a short unicorn horn jutting from his forehead, and pegasus wings, spread wide and jutting out from the multiple layers of black-and-red fabric he was buried underneath. Aside from those anomalies, he was similar in appearance and size to Blueblood. Two odd objects were strapped to the top of the pile of fabric; some kind of L-shaped device, and a huge great sword with wicked-looking sawteeth on its blade.
The other was an Earth Pony, and a big one, too; he looked to be about Big Mac’s size, if Twilight had to guess. Like the alicorn, he was buried underneath a small pile of stuff, though in this case the ‘stuff’ was an assortment of furs. Unlike the unicorn, his coat and mane possessed duller, far less vibrant colors, being a pale grey and a faded brown respectively, almost like a pony drained of its magic. And there was something… off about him, some kind of aura he gave off that made Twilight’s fur crawl and her horn feel oddly cold.
Oh, and there was an envelope placed atop the alicorn. An envelope signed “From: Discord”.
For a long, long second, the Princess of Friendship stared at the two stallions, studying the both of them. When neither moved, she stepped forward, picking up the envelope with her telekinesis and opening it up, pulling out the letter within. She read through it carefully and then glanced back at the two stallions, silently processing the letter’s contents.
Twilight Sparkle let loose another sigh; not one of contentment, but exhaustion instead. “Why does all the weird stuff always have to happen to me?”
Holy frak, this bed was comfy. Don’t get me wrong, the beds in the Commissaries’ dedicated cabins are… well, tolerable (albeit only barely at times), but this bed was a whole frakton better than just “tolerable”. The mattress was all nice and plush, the blanket was warm and fuzzy, and the bed was more than large enough for me. It felt like something you might find in the private mansion of a planetary governor…
Yeah, yeah, I know, I really should’ve been wondering how I went from the void of space to a Governor-Suite-quality bed on a habitable planet. But c’mon! I was more comfortable right now than I had been for months on end! Can you really blame me for not giving a damn about how I got there?
Something nudged my shoulder. I absentmindedly tried to bat it away, letting loose a sleepy grunt of disapproval. Definitely not the smartest move, considering what that ‘something’ could have been, but I was really frakking tired and I didn’t want to wake up.
Unfortunately, that ‘something’ didn’t want me to stay asleep. It nudged me harder, pressing into my shoulder juuust hard enough for me to register that it was a cloven hoof.
That set off all sorts of alarm bells in my head that the sudden change from imminent death by vacuum exposure to waking up in an unfamiliar, inexplicably comfy bed just didn’t. I sat bolt upright, my eyes shooting open… and promptly taking in the sight of a bright banana-yellow mutant horse standing over me.
Acting on instinct, I did what any sane and reasonable servant of the Imperium would do; scream at the top of my lungs and throw my best punch. The equine-esque xeno leaped backward with a yelp, but at least it was off of me now. I leaped forward, diving over it and trying to scramble to my feet… and promptly lost my balance, momentum making me tumble forward as I face-planted into the ground and landed on my back, my legs sticking up in the air.
My short, periwinkle blue, fur-covered legs.
Time screeched to a halt as the fuzzy legs shattered my brain’s floundering attempts to make sense of what the frak was going on. I tried moving my arms and legs, and in response I saw the furry blue appendages moving instead. I looked a little further down, catching sight of a trail of red hair splayed across the floor and my blue chest, rising and falling at a quickly accelerating pace.
“Are… are you okay?” I looked up from my disturbingly inhuman form, up at the yellow xeno, peeking out from behind the doorway I just tumbled through, noting how alarmingly similar its body was to mine. The yellow xeno who’d just spoken in perfectly fluent gothic.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” I screamed, scrambling to my feet—wait, no, my hooves—and bolting for the nearest open door, slamming it behind me. That’s at least an inch or two of solid wood between me and the weirdly horse-like xeno.
Okay, now to take stock of my situation. In summary, I’m stuck in the body of a mutant xeno horse, stranded on a planet that’s almost certainly full of them, and completely alone aside from maybe Jurgen. Oh, and what’s the first thing I did? Make my situation all the better by trying to cave in the muzzle of one of the locals. Never mind the fact that I’m not a frakking Space Marine and am thus not equipped to wage a one-man war against an entire planet’s population even if I did have all my stuff, which I don’t! Oh, and on that note, I’m also buck-naked (no pun intended).
Yeah, I know, I’m not making much sense at the moment. But you try forming coherent thoughts after waking up in a strange place and an alien body.
“H-hello?” I scramble away from the door, my heart leaping into my throat as I realize that I’ve locked myself in some kind of bathroom. The door I just slammed shut was the only entrance; I’m trapped in here.
“It’s okay.” The yellow xeno from earlier (I recognized its voice) spoke, already on the other side of the door. I pressed myself against the back wall as I struggled to suppress a terrified whimper, half-expecting the xeno to force the door open and barge in. Instead, it just remained where it was, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I blinked in confusion. A xeno that didn’t want to hurt me? This thing had to be lying, right? “I… I don’t believe you.” I said in response, trying to sound confident and intimidating, but the trembling, stutter-laden words that came tumbling out of my mouth made me seem like I was anything but. Which I was, in all honesty.
Again, this xeno threw me another verbal curveball. “Why not?”
I almost said ‘because you’re a xeno’, but managed to stop myself before the words reached my tongue, at the cost of allowing a brief spurt of undignified sputtering to take their place; it had just dawned on me that this xeno didn’t know I wasn’t one of them yet (probably). And if I didn’t want to change that, then I probably shouldn’t call it an alien. I quickly came up with another reason.
“...because I just tried to punch you?” I tried. Not the best lie I’ve ever told, but it was the best I could come up with on the fly.
And yet, despite that, it worked. “You were disoriented, scared, and thought you needed to defend yourself. It’s okay; I understand.” The xeno responded, leaving me caught between feeling relieved and flabbergasted. By the Throne, that xeno was either very good at making very stupid-sounding excuses sound convincing, or she really was that unbelievably forgiving. I certainly wouldn’t be quite so quick to brush off an attempt to cave my own nose in.
“O… okay…” I said slowly, trying to both sound as if I was starting to trust this xeno. And then, I did something that might probably strike some of my more dogmatic Schola instructors as a very stupid decision.
Like I said earlier, I am, at heart, a coward. A scared, quivering bowl of self-interest through and through.
But one thing my upbringing had thoroughly drilled into me is that you should never let your fear bully you into taking actions inimical to your own chance of survival, however slim that chance might be.
I may be a coward, a liar, and as terrified as the Martian day is long, but that's no excuse to be foolish. And right now, acting like I was uncooperative and not opening the door seemed pretty foolish.
Slowly, carefully, I reached up with one hoof and began to turn the knob, doing my level best not to think about the way my flat hoof was inexplicably able to grasp the round door knob as I did so. Sure enough, the yellow-furred xeno was standing right outside, giving me a patient smile.
“My name’s Fluttershy. What’s yours?” For a few seconds, I scoured my brain for a decent alias, but came up blank. Besides, these things spoke Low Gothic: they might have Low Gothic names too. Maybe this one’s name was an outlier or something.
“Cain.” I said in response. “Ciaphas Ca-“
It was at that moment that a bright rainbow blur burst through a window, came to a stop mere inches in front of my face, and resolved itself into another horse-like xeno, this one with cyan-colored fur and furious magenta eyes.
The new xeno was shouting something at me, but I was too busy screaming to catch what he was saying.