THE EYE OF TERROR
PLANETSIDE, THE DAEMON SATELITE MIASMA
The last teleportation spell the group endured to get through the Warp was a slog through pseudo-solids that nopony enjoyed. It was a relief that their transportation under the Eldar Goddess' touch ended instantly. Their eyes cleared and they looked around. As far as they could tell they were at the edge of the same decaying forest they first arrived at.
They moved across earth was the same decaying slush towards greater light. The lethal vegetation thinned and for the first time the sense of claustrophobia lifted. After a while the leafy canopy gave way to clear pink skies and the twinkle of distant stars.
Twilight kept herself from surrendering to the naive hope that 'out of the woods' meant out of trouble. Discord said that the Warp was the opposite of the physical world they'd always known. He'd called it Realspace. Indeed, the Warp skies above looked like they held more life than the earth beneath their hooves. Nopony told them this would be easy. It was time to roll up their sleeves and find the way off this blighted rock.
The earth stirred behind them. Shapes began rising from the mud and sloughed off the immaterial to emerge as flesh. They were bipedal cyclopses, some with horns, some with antlers, all covered in boils and sores that exposed sinew and internal organs. Some wounds opened into toothy maws.
"T-twilight-" Fluttershy gulped as she backed away.
"Those are horns. They've got horns. Tell me they don't have magic..." Flitter yelped.
To answer her question the daemons drew out corroded steel weapons as long as swords. Oily slime dripped from their tips.
Big Mac, Rainbow Dash and Cloudchaser stamped their hooves and flared their nostrils in response.
Twilight looked around her. If the forest really did end here and these creatures were tied to it they could feasibly outrun the menace. Behind her she heard somepony scream but the sound was so high-pitched she couldn't recognize who made it.
Had the monsters surrounded them?
She turned to see Vinyl gesturing towards the horizon and her hoof waving was ridiculously desperate for attention. Unfamiliar noises rose from that direction. Twilight wasn't sure if the Vinyl was searching the distant skies or the small hill ahead of them.
Twilight weighed her choices and made her decision. They had left the forest and these new monsters were like the nurglings they had seen; horrible, but familiar.
Only one new variable had presented itself and she had to know what it was.
"Run!" She yelled.
Heads bounced as they galloped at full speed, leaving the gruesome deformities behind them. They reached the top of the hill, stopping as soon as their eyes rose above the slope. They stared petrified at the sight.
"I knew that couldn't be vocal. It's amped!" Vinyl shouted unrestrained.
Twilight would have shushed her but what she saw would make that pointless. The air was filled with the ear-splitting noise of an army. Machines the size and shape of houses rolled towards them, at their sides marched knights in gaudy lavender armor that shined metallic.
If Twilight wasn't misjudging because of the distance each giant was seven or eight feet tall. Their shoulders were huge, their heads comically tiny in proportion to their massive bodies if she could judge from the few without helmets.
Helmets decorated with horns, antlers, spines, spikes, plumes, manes in topknots, socketed hoses that snaked into their eyes and strange metal bits that jut from their mouths. There was such a variety that Twilight wondered if the normal heads only appeared smaller by comparison.
The ponies watched as the cohort of boxes and giants made their way to the edge of the forest.
Twilight identified their noise as the mix of machinery, speech, and damage to the earth. Still, the creative part of her imagination couldn't dismiss other unlikely possibilities.
Easy, they're not ponies and machines are just noisy. Maybe they're not threatening and that's just singing. Really loud, really obnoxious chanting. Like a march.
Her hopeful positivity died quickly. More daemons, Nurgle's children if she remembered the Eldar goddess correctly, were spawning from the earth and air to stand against the invaders. The giants raised their arms without breaking stride and new noises rose in tune to flashes of light. Beams burst in volleys from both knights and carriages- by now there was no doubt ponies were witnessing the use of weapons unlike any they had ever seen.
Eyes teared, lips flapped and teeth rattled as sound waves ripped through daemon flesh. The squat green deformities plodded along towards the garish knights even as the screaming weapons burst into them. Masses of flesh were liquified on the spot and while nopony thought that spontaneous matter change was outside the nature of the decaying monsters they weren't so naive as to think it wouldn't do the same to pony flesh.
"Twilight." Applejack had to holler just to be heard. "What are those things?!"
Twilight stared and stared and came up with nothing. "I have no idea! They might be machines, carved golems, maybe even magical atronachs. I'd have to see one up close!"
"No way that's happening if we can help it!"
"I agree!"
As the enemy lines closed on each other new signs of life emerged; flashes of light in red and fiery white, explosions that kicked up great globs of mud amidst the noise, always the noise.
The first of the knights reached the daemons and attacked. Twilight guessed that they were strong even at this distance but she hadn't expected them to also be fast.
A blade danced in her eyes for a second before vanishing in a flash of metal, crossing over the daemon body three times. Instead of spilling gore the foe vanished in a puff of glowing smoke. Other groups of the knights were similarly crashing into the daemons, a great melee where the nimble warriors were cutting pieces out of the native spawn.
One of the giants became surrounded, the blade in its hand tore into foes relentlessly but for all its effort they weren't vanishing. One of the cyclopses stumbled behind him and avoiding the giant's unusual backpack punched its dagger home.
The knight dropped to its knees slowly and then fell to the ground. It never moved again.
The scene was being repeated across the skirmish.
Twilight blinked her eyes away at the sight of violence before her. The earth was reddening. She turned from the hill and saw massive reinforcements emerging from the forest behind them, summoned by unseen calls.
"We've seen enough!"
Twilight forced her magic into the shape of a wedge and stabbed into the earth. Her head perspired with the strain of keeping the wedge solid. "Everypony who can, hoof a surface and push it like a plow, we're getting out of here fast!"
She struggled forward making the first tear in the ground.
Everypony nodded as they dropped into the trench in a V formation with the Apple siblings at the point. Rarity fell in line immediately behind them, using her magic to reveal dense rock formations buried in the mud.
The rest of the unicorns piled in, using their own levitation to push the plow or to cover the group using rocks as shields. Together they tunneled around the edges of the battlefield and managed to stay hidden, escaping from the plaguebearers that continued to materialize in response to the Emperor's Children's incursion.
Behind them the sounds of Noise Marines, tank treads and explosions died away.
REPENTIA POINT
They had been crossing the wastes for hours. The stars in the sky twinkled on but none of them seemed to orbit the planet as a sun. Only their exhaustion served to judge the passing of the day.
Doubt was an emotion Twilight had been battling with long before her friends pulled out from the trenches to gallop across the sunless wasteland, but she couldn't question the growing fear and hunger ponies had begun to complain about.
They needed pastures and shelter.
Twilight looked about. In the distance she saw a fleshy spawn, one of many dotting the wasteland. Whether they were living bodies or immaterial daemons, she wasn't sure. And she wasn't going to risk her friends vanquishing one to find out. Some were mewling, some were aggressive, all looked tough and if they wandered too close they'd be dealing with a lumbering mass of corrupted flesh. No, left to their own the beasts wandered the wasteland mindlessly and Twlight meant to keep it that way.
"I think I hear something." Octavia said, stopping the group in its tracks.
"All I hear is wind... and something that I'm trying to tell myself doesn't sound like muffled screaming." Vinyl replied, wishing she hadn't left her mixing headphones behind. They weren't soundproof but any amount of muffling would've been welcome- hours ago.
"Yes, I hear that too but there is something else in the wind. Feel how it ceases, pauses, then picks up again ever so briefly."
"I'm not sure what I'm hearing. It doesn't sound like words."
"No but it drags on, carries, then stops. The voices in the wind die down in tune to something else. I think it might be music."
Twilight overheard them.
"We're in Tartaurus. If there's a point where the anguish lets off... we have to see it."
With a few turns in the low hills she took the lead and subtly shifted course, heading towards the echoing sounds.
It took another hour at a canter but they found a building in the distance, hidden by surrounding hills. It was white and square with a flat roof that wasn't designed for rain. The thought made Twilight worry that there may indeed be no such thing as weather on this planet.
Stay positive. She decided to be comforted that they found shelter and maybe supplies instead of holding out for something better that might not exist.
"There, I hear it now" Octavia said. "Something besides the silence."
"I hear it too" Vinyl nodded, indifferent to the music now that she saw real shelter.
Lyra cocked her head to one side. "It's song, I don't know what it is. It sounds... beautiful."
"I think it's vocals." Rarity answered. "Uplifting, it reminds me of the songs for your coronation Twilight but- grander."
The chanting was indeed musical, a chorus of female voices that lingered on long vowels for words they weren't familiar with.
Applejack looked suspicious as they reached the gate, bringing a hoof to the side of the fortress. It was nothing like the forest mansion but it was also completely different from the wood buildings in Ponyville.
"It's the first house we've seen out here. Everything else was part of the woods."
Cheerilee looked nervous. "Twilight, I think you like the singing, we all do. But if it brought us here isn't there a chance it'll bring others too?"
The princess nodded and made a gesture to Rainbow Dash. Dash flew up to the roof, found the voxcaster and tugged at a loose cord causing the music to cut off . Reaction was immediate: the sludge at the edge of the building came to life, reaching up with tendrils of mud to lash at the side of the building. A crag began to open up, moving as if to swallow it whole.
"Turn it on, turn it on!" Several ponies yelped at once. Caught between a logical thought and her natural instinct when the first tendrils began to snare bodies Dash sped down, splattering mud off by the hoof-full.
Derpy took to the air and sped towards Sparkler. The unicorn was struggling alongside Applejack when the delivery mare splashed down hard, scattering the mud as the force of her hooves rippled across the surface. She tugged her purple pony free and hoisted her up high.
"Momma stop!" Sparkler yelled in a panic.
"Get up there Sparkler." Derpy answered and batted her wings violently to gain altitude now that the mud she had scattered wrapped around her rear hooves. "Go!"
Sparkler let Derpy shove her up the wall. Her hooves grabbed onto the edge of the roof and she pulled herself up.
Her eyes went wide as she felt something pushing on her rump and glanced past her tail to see Lyra's levitation helping to push her up even as she and Bon Bon struggled with their own tendrils.
Sparkler galloped at full speed to the device Dash had unplugged.
Over her shoulder she saw a flash of purple and peeked as quickly as she could to see Twilight teleport with an exhausted looking Roseluck and Carrot Top in tow.
The princess sparked again, vanishing, and Sparkler knew it was to try and apparate more. She grabbed the wire and pushed it back into the only slot the machine had.
It remained quiet.
"Fix it!" Somepony yelled.
She screamed back angrily: "In trying but I don't know what you did to it! I can't find a switch."
"Fix it!"
Panicking she almost forgot herself. She started with the basics and with a quick repairing spell the vox transmitter blared out its hymn again.
The tendrils retreated back into the mud.
Twilight and the pegasi were ragged, their feathers ruffled as they set the last few ponies down on the roof.
"That settles it." Twilight declared. "We keep the music on. Everypony split into teams, watch each others' backs. There's no telling what else will happen inside."
"Are we really going in?!" Sparkler asked. "We just walked for hours. Miles and miles of land, no mud tendrils. We find this thing, mud tendrils. Anypony else think we might be better off stopping somewhere else?"
"Unless the mud's the same everywhere else where demons and other things come out of it."
Fluttershy suggested.
"We were trotting on that earth for hours. Why didn't it attack us before now?"
"Umm... maybe it was waiting. Maybe... until we were tired... or fell asleep."
Sparkler turned with eyes wide in horror.
They huddled together and waited until the very last pony regained their nerve before dropping to the ground again and investigating. With no further incidents and no desire to venture out further they had no choice but to try the only access door the building had. A mix of levitation and a few good bucks released the lock. The door opened to a reception room loaded with sandbags and barrels pointed at the door.
"Twilight, what is this place?"
"I'm not sure. I want to say it's a house but it doesn't belong here. Dash what do you think?"
Dash exchanged a look with Flutershy. The soft-spoken pony nodded and Dash explained: "Flight school didn't exactly teach a ton about pre-history but some of the military traditions still get passed on. Best I can tell this is a forward base: small, armored and inconspicuous like a desert tortoise." Fluttershy smiled as Dash looked a little embarrassed, realizing her mind had wandered to thinking about her pet back home. "Whoever built it was making an opening for something bigger. It might even be those knights we saw advancing on the forest."
"I think that's the case."
"Huh? how come."
"Because I think we just found more of them."
Twilight said as she identified a weakness in the wall and collapsed it in with her levitation.
The hidden doorway opened into a choke-point revealing dozens of bodies mowed down by gunfire, stains splattered across the walls behind them. Most were the same knights in lavender armor they had seen from the march on the forest. Most but not all.
"Who are they?" Rose asked.
Twilight chose one of the minority bodies, the knights in different colored armor, focusing on heraldry painted onto a shoulderpad.
"Their armors have letters. I think I can read it if I set up a translation spell..." Twilight focused as the letters shifted before her eyes from the original High Gothic to Equestrian script. "Done. The text reads, 'Vorpal Swords'."
"What's a vorpal?" Applejack asked as the two of them crossed inside, wary and scanning each body for signs of life.
"I haven't a clue."
They crossed as certain other ponies looked over the bodies. Up close for the first time, Twilight was surprised. They were giants it seemed but their proportions were smaller than a pony even when fully armored. "I thought they looked bigger in the distance." She lifted an arm and something fleshy fell out from inside the armored gauntlet.
"Sweet Celestia! They're not golems, they're armor. There were people inside of these!"
Carrot Top charged back in from one of the deeper rooms."Twilight. There's more of them inside, smaller ones. There's not that many of 'em but you can see what I mean. They're animals!"
Twilight entered a small alcove, hidden away like a secret closet, while Applejack searched the rest of the room. A headless body, far tinier than any one of the knights, slumped against a wall that had been splattered red with what she realized was blood all along, not magic or machine oils. Its arm lay at its side with a weapon gripped in it.
She added up the facts very quickly:
The gaudy knights had been hit multiple times, their armor pierced along their forward plates. Almost all the dead, gaudy or vorpal, were dotted with similar injuries.
The gaudy knights had been found dead in great numbers at the outermost doorways and the Vorpals were most numerous inside along with the tinier creatures.
"This was a battle. The pink knights attacked these other knights. They were protecting the smaller ones."
"That don't add up. If they lost why was this place left intact?" Applejack motioned to the obviously damaged interiors.
"I mean if they're enemies why leave the building and its song machine standing? And why are they enemies? This whole place is filled with monsters. Colors aside they look and dress and decorate themselves the same. They've got wings and skulls and scrolls and weird symbols on all a them!"
"I don't think the Vorpals lost, though the victory cost them dearly. I think they fought them off and only the small ones survived"
"Then how come we got in here so easily?"
"The victors, they... chose not to remain."
The thought chilled Applejack to the bone. "What have we walked into, Twi?"
Twilight grasped around and managed to remove the first of the gaudy helmets. Carrot Top looked around and did the same to the helmet of the Vorpal Swords' most ornate knight.
What they saw made ponies turn to each other on instinct, staring at unicorn horns and pegasus wings.
The lavender knights weren't using stylistic decorations on their helmets; the knight's skull itself was horned. And the Vorpal captain's head had none. Other helmets came off and the same pattern repeated itself without exception.
"They're different, like the different races of ponies." AJ stated with drooping eyes.
Twilight swallowed heavily, keeping the vast physical differences between the two knights in mind. "I don't know how it relates to the Chaos Gods and the monsters on this planet, but we've walked into a civil war."