//------------------------------// // Chapter 47 - Luna, Adam, Tia // Story: A Journey Unthought Of: Revival of Chaos // by Hustlin Tom //------------------------------// Eight rifles were pointed at the detention level’s elevator doors, each barrel of which was steady in the hands of the men and women that held them. Most of the security force had seen conflict in one form or another, whether as soldiers under a nation’s flag, or as soldiers of fortune. None of them were green to combat, and each was willing to use lethal force if necessary. In this case, their orders were clear that the intruders had to be alive, so their primary weapons of choice were prototype pulse weapons created for crowd control. The fifty by forty foot chamber which served as the hub for the thirty-two cells on the prison floor had hastily been filled with several crates to give each officer cover against any return fire. Two guards held each of the floor’s three wings at their back, while the last two held the corners of farthest from the elevator. There was no way for an enemy to escape their attention or their fire. The elevator’s arrival tone sounded, shattering the silence like a crashing bell. The doors slowly opened, revealing..absolutely nothing. There were no targets in the elevator. In fact, it looked like there was nothing but darkness inside the little room. The lights above the eight officers began to flicker, and then brightened rapidly. The halogen tubes in the ceiling lights exploded one after the other, until all of the lights was destroyed. Unfazed by the theatrics, the soldiers waited for the emergency lights to kick on in response to the outage. They never did. The room was consumed by total, all-encompassing darkness. “FOOLS,” a deep voice boomed, slightly startling a few of them. They each slowly looked for the source of the voice, but no one could pin down where it was coming from. “FOOLS!” the voice repeated even more loudly, “FOOLS AND WELPS, THE LOT OF YOU. DOST THOU KNOW THINE ENEMY, TO THINK SUCH PUNY WEAPONS WOULD BE SUFFICIENT IN STOPPING ME?” A purple fog formed out of nowhere, which seemed to drop the temperature in the room by several degrees, “I HATH SLUMBERED FOR A THOUSAND YEARS, AND EVEN IN THAT TIME I WAS MORE POWERFUL THAN ALL OF YOU COMBINED!” The fog exploded out in all directions, sending a cold wave of power that chilled each soldier to the bone. Still, they did not give ground. From out of the fog appeared a pale warrior, clad in black and deep purple armor. A helmet with a jagged black horn adorned its head. Its eyes were cold as death, and its teeth were vampiric in their sharpness. In its hand it held an enormous sword, something that looked as if it should have taken two hands to wield, yet it held it in one. The soldiers opened fire, their electric slugs filling the air, but not a single one made contact with the entity. “YOUR TOYS ARE PATHETIC,” the warrior boomed, “SURRENDER NOW, WHILE I STILL ENTERTAIN THE THOUGHT.” The first soldier to panic took out his pistol, flipped the safety off, and fired three volleys with a yell. The shots made impact in the entity’s chest. The warrior took an involuntary step back as it reeled from the blow. Where it had been struck, three points of silver light shone. As the soldiers watched, the wounds slowly sealed up, and even the armor around the shots regenerated. “VERY WELL,” the entity declared as its eyes narrowed, “THE GAUNTLET IS CAST.” The warrior joined with the fog once again, which furiously boiled as it spoke one final time, “WITNESS MY MIGHT, THEN. COWER BEFORE ME, NIGHTMARE MOON!” Every soldier opened fire to no effect; the bullets all passed right through their enemy. In response, the fog reached out with its shadowy tendrils. Snatching the soldier who had fired at it first, it dragged him towards itself. He fruitlessly continued to scream and fire at it until his magazine ran dry, and his comrades watched as he was finally consumed by the darkness. The whole squad finally cracked, each of the supposedly hardened soldiers running for their lives to get to the emergency elevator on the opposite end of the detention level. After the soldiers were completely out of earshot, the emergency lights flickered on, and Princess Luna stepped out of the fog laying the soundly sleeping eighth guard down at her feet. The darkness also lifted from the elevator, and Adam stared at her as he cautiously walked over to her. Momentarily looking down at the guard, he then glanced back up at Princess: a large chunk of her hair was now straight and devoid of its magic, with only a few wisps of her astral hair remaining as it had been. The wounds she had received and healed from, as well as the show she had put on, had obviously put a great strain on her. “Time is short,” the Princess muttered. She took some initially uneasy steps as she walked towards the center hallway, but her stride strengthened as she continued on. “Maybe I should take the lead,” Adam offered as he jogged to get in front of her, his Dominion Gauntlet at the ready. “I won’t stop you,” she wearily replied. While she wouldn’t admit it aloud, the act she had put on to scare those soldiers out of their minds was rather enjoyable to perform. I suppose we truly are beginning to cooperate well, aren’t we? Nightmare Moon chuckled faintly inside her head, You certainly shouldn’t have used as much energy as you did though. It’s bound to only get more difficult from this point on. Is there any chance you can find a little more for us? Princess Luna asked. You know, this may be magic, but it doesn’t just appear out of thin air like in Equestria. What little I can find, I’ll spare. “Princess,” Adam called out as he glimpsed into a cell, “There’s someone else here!” Shaking her head clear, the Princess looked to where her partner was down the hallway, and she faintly sensed a being coated in residual magic. As she came closer, she glanced through a small slate at eye level, and saw a blonde haired woman sitting glumly in the cell. Unlocking the door with a heave, Adam pulled it fully open. In a blur, the blonde haired woman had lunged for him, trying desperately to punch him in any way she could. Before she could land any kind of blow, Adam instinctively constructed a grey colored force field which she banged on senselessly, “Woah! Hang on! Hang on! We’re not the guards!” As she realized her arms weren’t hitting anything material, the woman actually began to look at the people in front of her. “There. You see?” the middle aged man said with a wave of his mechanical arm, “We’re the good guys, alright?” “All is well, citizen of Earth,” a tall woman bedecked in dark purple armor declared as she put out her hand for a shake, “I am Princess Luna of Equestria, and this is Sir Adam, Knight of Equestria.” Blinking in bewilderment, the woman shakily took the Princess’ hand and stammered, “I’m Serana Pryce.” “Pleasure,” the armored woman said with a tired smile, “We seek two other captives who were brought here not but a few hours ago.” “You’re with Tia, aren't you?” Serana asked, before she rolled her eyes at her bizarre rescuers, “What am I kidding; you have to be with Tia. Why should I be surprised at this point?” “You’ve seen her?” the Princess asked excitedly, “Then you must help us find her; our country depends on it!” “Can’t you feel her or Lyra?” Adam asked worriedly. Princess Luna tried to clear her head by shaking it again, but it didn’t seem to help, “Not anymore. I’ve used too much magic for that, but I do remember where I last sensed them.” She pointed further down the hall, past the last of the cells in their current wing, “They were somewhere that way!” “If they’re not here, they’re probably in one of the examination rooms,” Adam declared as he made a dash down the hall, “Follow me! We need to hurry!” “Come Serana Pryce!” Princess Luna called over her shoulder, “There’s little time left!” “Hey, wait up! Wait up!” Serana called out as she scrambled after the two strangers. Tia slowly opened her eyes to sterile, bright light. Groaning, she tried to bring her arms up to block it out, but found that they were restrained. She instead held her eyes as tightly closed as she could manage and tried to turn her head away, only to find her head was restrained in place as well, as were her legs and torso. “Subject appears to be Caucasian of Mediterranean descent. Age is believed to be mid to late forties by measurement of femur, but subject appears to be remarkably young in appearance.” “My name is Tia,” she woozily declared as she shook off the last of the knockout gas from her mind, “I don’t care who I am or what you’ll do to me, but the woman who was with me did nothing wrong. Release her, and I will do whatever you wish.” A masculine head leaned over her, his face made unperceivable by the brightness of the light around him, “You assume there is room to negotiate? Everyone thinks that at this table, but bargaining for someone else’s freedom? That, I must say, is a first.” “All she ever did was give me a place to stay. Your country has no right to hold her against her will.” The man cocked his head, “Ah, but there’s the chink in this argument. Under the organization I represent, which by the way supercedes any local national government, I am required to investigate and learn about any threat to my planet.” The man leaned a little closer, and Tia could see that he was an old, balding man. As he spoke, she could smell his sour breath, and she involuntarily wrinkled her nose in disgust, “If it’s alien, it’s ours, and you my dear are most certainly alien.” As he returned to his position above the light, Tia’s mind began to cloud once again with strange, unconnected thoughts. Sol Invicta? An old friend’s voice called out to her disapprovingly, I name you Solarus Tyrannus! I am a god, dear sister. Just like you, a dark phantasmagorical presence with chilling eyes whispered to her. A mismatched serpent with limbs and wings flew through each of her thoughts, but above it all, one phrase kept repeating over and over. In different voices of different races and ages, she kept hearing, Dear Princess Celestia. Dear Princess Celestia! DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA! It began to drown out everything else, until there was nowhere she could go to avoid. She fell deeper and deeper into her mind; disjointed carved stone stairs, marble floors, and dirt paths spiraling all around. A solar eclipse appeared that frightened her beyond all sense, until it was replaced by a red boiling sun, which scared her all the more because once again her face was coming out of it. “What does it mean?” she mouth quietly in the real world, “What does it all mean?” Five syllables snapped her back to reality in a single instant, “Taking blood sample.” “No, don’t!” Tia cried as she struggled as much as she could in the straps she was in. The mantra in her head grew louder as the needle came closer, DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA! DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA! The needle broke the skin, and the shrieking phrase stopped. A mismatched goat’s head consumed her mind, its yellow eyes gazing down at her with a combined predatory and mocking stare. It grinned, a single long incisor sitting out pronounced from the rest of its draconic jaw, Dear Princess Celestia, The pump of the needle pulled backed, but instead of filling with blood like the restrained Tia and scientist had expected, gold sparkling lights filled the vial, bouncing excitingly against its glass walls. The creature grinned even more, and it placed a floating extraneous digit on her forehead, Gotcha! The face began to laugh madly as it disappeared, and Celestia’s mind became flooded with her memories. All fourteen hundred years of them. Every single bit of information about her life streamed into her consciousness all at once, and she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes lit up brighter than the light shining down on her. A hair-raising scream escaped her throat, and with a strength she had not known she had a few seconds before, she tore her left arm completely out of her previously inescapable restraints. “Guards!” the scientist screamed as he banged on the door leading out of the examination suite, “Get me out of here, right now!” Celestia’s eyes began to change from a shining white light into a deep fiery yellow and orange color, and thin wisps of plasma began to vent from them. The remaining straps holding her body in place began to spontaneously melt, the rubber in them oozing to the floor like molten tar. The metal table underneath her began to buckle as it reached the beginning of its melting point as well. Golden particles began to envelope her body once again, only this time her magic began to construct a white, pearl, and red colored set of armor for her. The door to the room quickly opened as the guards dragged their colleague through, firing their conventional rifles as they did. The bullets liquidized from the intense heat being put off by the Princess, and all they managed to do was splatter her armor with flecks of bronze. The door was then slammed shut and bolted. The Princess began to slam her newly gloved hands into the door with an almost animalistic ferocity, bending and dissolving its metal as she did. Finally, with a mighty kick, the door was blasted free of its hinges, and it slammed into the other side of the hallway. Her magic was out of control: her armor began to sporadically burst into flames and reconstitute itself over and over again. Below her she could sense a means of escape; a tear in reality that she could use. The mad Princess began to walk towards the end of the hallway, her armored boots leaving glowing footprints after her. It was all burning. Her world, her mind, her body was all burning. Why was everything so cold compared to her? It all needed to be warmed. Everypony needed to see her light and feel her warmth. Everypony needed to feel just like her.