The pegasus swung. The axe connected. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza’s head came off in a single clean cut.
“CADENCE!!!” Twilight screamed.
“SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!” roared the pegasus, seizing Cadence’s head in one hoof by her mane. Twilight could only watch in stunned horror as her old foalsitter’s body crumpled to the ground, huge amounts of blood gushing from her open neck. As it fell, the earth shook. In the distance, Twilight could see the pink barrier collapsing, cracking, breaking up, and then it was gone altogether. Unholy cheers of triumph and terrified screaming filled the air.
“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!” screamed the Cadence’s killer yet again. She brandished the princess’s head high in one hoof, holding her axe in the other. She let out another inhuman triumphant roar, swinging the bleeding alicorn head about for all to see like some sort of sick trophy.
Three emotions struck Twilight at once. The first was shock. It just didn’t seem possible. Princess Cadence, her friend since fillyhood, her sister-in-law, now dead, head waved about proudly by her murderer. The second was self-hatred. She was there. Magic was her element, wasn’t it? So how had she failed so utterly? But these questions were pushed aside by the third emotion: hatred. As Twilight saw her friend’s murdered body so desecrated, a powerful heat rose in her chest. Her vision started to narrow as the feeling spread, rejuvenating aching limbs with raw power. As she stared at the pegasus, she could think of nothing but eliminating the pony who had murdered her friend.
Twilight screamed in the throes of her own murderous rage. Shunting aside all logic and reason and survival instinct, she telekinetically grabbed the nearest chunk of concrete and hurled it as hard as it would go at the murderer’s head. It impacted with an audible crack, and the pegasus plummeted to earth, head and axe slipping from her grip. She impacted roughly on the pavement, rolling several yards before stopping. That should have been fatal, yet through some artifice of her master the pony yet breathed.
Not if Twilight had anything to say about it. She grabbed another heavy rock and rushed the downed pony, suddenly beset by the irresistible desire to look the vile mare in the face as she died, see the light dim in her eyes.
The mare rolled over onto her back, groaning. Her helmet was severely cracked on the left side cheek, where the projectile had impacted. The metal had nuermous fractures, and had caved in several inches, perhaps driving shards of metal into the pony’s face. Twilight hoped it hurt. Blue eyes stared up at her as she loomed over the pegasus, enormous hunk of concrete held high above her. “Just… DIE!”
Then, even as she prepared to end the monster once and for all, the last thing that Twilight expected happened: she spoke.
“Oh, come now, Twilight,” said a soft voice from within the ruined helm. It was barely above a whisper, and somehow familiar.
“No, it couldn’t be…”
The pegasus reached up and unclasped her helmet with one hoof. A cascade of pink hair tumbled out as she raised the headpiece and then tossed it aside, exposing a light yellow coat. “That’s no way to treat a friend.”
“Fluttershy?” Twilight gasped. Her jaw dropped, her eyes bulged, and her weapon dropped, forgotten in her utter incomprehension. Her mind simply refused to connect what she was seeing with the logical answer.
Fluttershy simply grinned.
Then she was in movement, hurling herself off the pavement towards the purple unicorn. Her armored right hoof connected with Twilight’s chest, driving all breath from her and sending her stumbling back. Fluttershy didn’t let up for a microsecond. She was on Twilight with a speed that would have driven Rainbow Dash to envy, her left hoof smashing into Twilight’s right cheek, dislocating her jaw and stumbling her further. Fluttershy’s lower right hoof shot up and impacted hard on Twilight’s trachea, knocking her off her feet as she coughed and wheezed, her lungs desperate for air.
Fluttershy snatched up her axe from where it had fallen before Twilight could even think of doing anything. She laughed triumphantly as she raised the gory blade high, Cadence’s blood still dripping from it. Their positions now reversed, Twilight found she could do nothing but cough and choke for air, her mind simply refusing to credit as truth what her senses told her. She scrunched her eyes and waited for the end.
“Blood for the Blood – Gaaaah!” There was a crack, the smell of ozone, and the sound of an impact some distances away. Twilight opened her eyes the slightest amount.
Fluttershy was gone. The axe blade no longer loomed her head. Twilight opened her eyes further. Above, she could see another armored pony floating on one of the disks. Her armor was blue, featuring a long purple cape. A staff with a long redwood handle and strange silver head was clutched in her hooves. The head smoked slightly with recently-discharged power.
“Back off, Fluttershan’t. You’ve had your fun. This kill belongs to Trixie!”
“Twixy?!” Twilight managed, speech greatly impaired by her dislocated jaw. Trixie seemed to understand.
“Yes! The Great and Powerful Trrrixie is here to take her revenge at last! And she-”
Whatever the great and powerful Trixie was going to say was abruptly cut off as what looked to be a yellow-red missile shot up from further down the street, smashing hard into the unicorn and sending her flying off her platform. She would have plummeted to her death had her loyal disk not moved to catch her.
“WITCH!!!” Fluttershy roared, axe in hand, runes glowing fiercely in tune with their mistress. “You DARE interfere with a warrior of the Blood God?! You DARE attempt to steal what is rightfully mine?!”
“Oh, stuff a sock into it, you lowly little meat cho-” Trixie’s words were cut off as Fluttershy swung her axe at the unicorn, forcing her to parry with her staff. Fluttershy slammed into it with repeated blows, face contorted with fury. Trixie began to retreat, the pegasus in hot pursuit, screaming oaths to Khorne to see her pay for this. Both ponies seemed to have forgotten Twilight as they pulled out of sight behind a building, Trixie still attempting to put some distance between herself and the enraged berserker.
Twilight didn’t know what to do. Her logical mind seemed to have shorted itself out, utterly unable to make any connections. It simply refused to consider the idea that what she had seen of her sweet, shy, nurturing pegasus friend could be real. Lacking a logical train of thought, she defaulted to her instincts. Looking at the rampaging daemon hordes in the sky and not so far away on the ground, the choice was easy: she ran.
Twilight ran and ran and ran. She ran by skyscrapers, through neighborhoods, past the last guard reserves, past the wagons, past the wounded and the dead, past everything. All other thoughts were shunted aside by her absolute desire – her need – to get as far away from the daemons as she possibly. Someponies shouted at her, making noises she heard but didn’t comprehend. It was doubtful she could have answered them with her dislocated jaw in any case. Only a few tried to stop her, but she instinctively teleported directly past them, always moving as far away from the enemy as she could. She heard loud noises in the distance, which she might have recognized as a retreat signal were not in a blind, crazed panic.
Twilight Sparkle fled Manehatten, never looking back.
…
Commander Dawn Spear observed the immediate tactical situation. It wasn’t good, to say the least. Mostly because of the rampaging daemon hordes not ten feet from his position, butchering more of his ponies each heartbeat, fighting mercilessly and without pause. Panic had set in over much of the Royal Guard. Dozens of ponies had abandoned their posts already, fleeing in whatever directions they saw fit in their wild, panicked state. If not for his sense of duty to his men, he knew he’d have joined them.
The daemons before him were like no enemy he’d ever fought, or even been trained to fight. He’d engaged ponies, changelings, griffons, even rogue dragons, but nothing like these creatures. Dozens of pink, humanoid creatures with bizarre fetish outfits and massive crab claws danced along his last lines, cutting down ponies where they stood. The degenerate freaks with all sorts of tattoos and piercings and flamboyant clothes had joined them. They, at least, died when a pony stabbed them. The commander couldn’t say the same for the daemons.
“Damn, they’re tough,” he told himself, in the understatement of his career, as he watch one shake off being impaled with twin spears, laughing at the sight of its own blood.
He had already given the order to sound the retreat, trying to at least get his troops to withdraw in good order. Often, that was beyond their crazed, fearful minds. Just as often, they couldn’t, trapped and massacred by the daemonic hordes. That was the position he found himself in, trapped inside a small circle of spear-carrying ponies, itself encircled by a hordes of Daemonttes and Furies.
Dawn Spear knew he was going to die here. There was no way out of the encirclement, no troops close enough to relieve them. He’d accepted that as the price for his failure, his inability to do what was asked of him. He wished that the ponies around him didn’t have to pay with their own lives, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. He’d done all he could, the only thing left was to make the enemy bleed as much as possible and keep their attentions away from whoever might manage to get themselves out of this death trap.
The pony beside him shrieked in what sounded like both pain and joy as one of the Daemonettes removed first his front limbs, then his head. It licked the head lasciviously. Dawn Spear shuddered before moving into the vacated position and retaliating, jamming the fallen pony’s spear into the monster’s neck. It fell, laughing all the way, even as its body dissolved back into whatever hell it had come from.
“Commander, you – ugh – shouldn’t be – ghh- in the line. Against – nrgh – protocol,” came the voice of the pony next to him, Faithful Fellowhip, as he jabbed at the daemons with his spear, grunting with effort and pain.
Dawn Spear felt a small amount of amusement. “Always a stickler for the rules, that one.” Aloud, he replied, “Way I – geh – see it, we’re all dead anyway. Might as well – ugh – do a little something useful for once before I die.”
Fellowship never replied. He couldn’t, as his lungs had just been impaled by a Fury’s talon. He coughed and choked on his own blood. As he fell, the last thing he managed to do was headbutt the daemon. It didn’t hurt much, but it did off-balance it enough for Dawn Spear to give it a spear through the skull. The Fury collapsed as the pony circle drew in even closer to fill the lost rank. There were perhaps a dozen remaining against hundreds of onrushing daemons.
“At least we’re giving the others a chance.” Every daemon here was one less hunting down fleeing survivors.
A gurgled gasp from behind him told the commander another pony had fallen, and the circle contracted further. “Bet you’re not so angry I made you run those drills now.” Dawn Spear thought with the slightest trace of validation. Whatever he felt was quickly crushed when he reminded himself that this whole mess was his fault, that he was commander and thus it was on him to have seen this coming and stopped it. That he hadn’t had shown he wasn’t worthy of his rank. He deserved to die for all the pony lives he’d lost today by his wretched incompetence. He’d hang his head if it wouldn’t break formation.
Two more ponies fell, and the circle contracted again. Dawn Spear and the pony besides him impaled another Daemonette, bringing her low with repeated blows. Before he could so much as turn his head from her, an underhanded claw smashed across his face. He fell forward, out of the circle. Another Daemonette loomed above him. He tried to jab her with his spear, but his position was too awkward and he missed, the tip impacting onto something else he couldn’t see. Dawn Spear had always wanted to say some famous last words that would be recorded in every history book, but now that the moment had come he found he couldn’t say anything at all. And nopony would remember them in any case.
The Daemonette reached down and sheared his head off with one claw. Dawn Spear’s death was at least quick and relatively painless. The same could not be said for many of the other ponies that day or on days to come. Though he would never know it, his head, like that of Princess Cadence and so many others, was to become a trophy, desecrated and carried around as a sign of power and prowess. Daemons and ponies fought around his corpse for a few more moments, but the outcome was never in doubt. The circle of ponies was slaughtered to the very last by the daemon hordes, then trampled into the ground as the creatures of the Warp ran in all directions, seeking fresh victims.
It was a pattern that would repeat itself throughout the day. Ponies were encircled, trapped, and slaughtered to feed the unholy bloodlust of Chaos. Compared to the army that had entered the city, only a bare handful escaped. Perhaps a few hundred out of several thousand, and even that was because the daemons were so unorganized and often hostile to each other that they neglected to pursue groups that didn’t catch their whimsy. As the sun slowly set in the background, vicious and unnatural cries of victory resounded throughout the city.
Two armies had clashed in Manehatten, and Chaos had triumphed.