//------------------------------//
// Advancing 
// Story: The Dark Ones 
// by Snake Staff 
//------------------------------//


++Astropathic Choir Intercept ZY023, Kyne’s Fury 3.729.873.M39++
++Message to Inquisitor Tas Rovini++
++ Transcript Appended++
Thought for the Day: By the manner of their death we shall know them.


My Lord,
We are finally getting somewhere of true and immediate significance in the debriefing of this creature. I am pleased to report that I was able to wring several more important bits of information from the xeno today, albeit with some difficulty, due to the ever-irritating mental derangement. The mental effects of this trauma, even so far removed from Equis III, are proving annoyingly resilient. And I worry that this creature’s willingness and/or ability to talk is close to reaching its end. Hopefully, they will be followed shortly by its wretched life.


++Interrogation the Sixtieth++


Setting: Cell 59XBA. Cell remains as brightly lit as ever. A human continuously exposed to this degree of lighting would have developed severe ocular problems by this point. Xeno is curled up on bed.
Twilight Sparkle: Don’t let them get me… Don’t let them get me… Don’t let them get me…
Kylara: Twilight? Are you alright?
TS: Huh? Wha- Oh… Oh, it’s you, Ky. Hi again. [The xeno stared at me for an abnormal period after this. It never blinked.]
K: Twilight, can you…
TS: Talk to you? YOU BET!!! [The manic grin on her face was more than a little unnerving.]
K: My thanks.
TS: Whadda ya need?
K: I still need to hear the rest of your story. Millions of lives are depending on-
TS: *incoherent screaming*
K: Twilight! [It took me three minutes to get her to cease screaming and rolling around on the floor. I worry that forcing her to recount the story this way may be unraveling what’s left of her mind. I suspect she maintains what little sanity she has by suppressing the memories.]
TS: Oh… Oh… Where were we?
K: Spike had been… taken, I believe, was the word you used?
TS: Yes… Yes… That’s right. [The manic grin appeared again.]
K: Do go on, please.
TS: Right. Well, my friends and I were scared, see? You know how it is. Everypony was freaking the buck out and Spike vanished. I wanted to go and tear the world apart until I found him, but as a princess I had a duty to lead. With Mayor Mare dead and Ponyville obviously compromised, I had to get everypony to safety. The safest place in Equestria… well, that’s obviously Canterlot! Everypony knows that! [Emperor, that grin sends chills down my spine. And I’ve seen the grins of men possessed – literally.]
K: Uh huh.
TS: So anyway, my friends and I and some other ponies managed to get the train started up. There’s a railway from Ponyville to Canterlot. Only a few hours ride. Fastest way of moving that many ponies. So we loaded everypony up into the cars. I would stand with the drivers up front to make sure nothing happened to them. Rarity and Fluttershy mingled with the passengers. Pinkie Pie took the coach. Rainbow Dash and some other brave pegasi flew around the cars. Acted as escorts and scouts, see? That way nopony could sneak up on us while we evacuated.
K: I see.
TS: Nopony could sneak up on us! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! [Random switching between laughter and sobs did not do much for my opinion of her mind.]
K: Please, continue.
TS: Yeah, so, we set off with all of Ponyville crammed into little train cars. Everypony was scared out of their brains, but they trusted me! After all, I was the hero! The princess! I’d see them there safely myself, then I’d go find Spike! Great plan! But then it was all dark!
K: What do you mean?
TS: Well, clouds don’t move themselves, silly! But suddenly there were a lot of dark clouds overhead, blotting out the sun! It was mid-afternoon or so at that point! I thought about trying to get some of the clouds out of the way, but then I remembered that would take a long time. There were an awful lot of them, you know?! So I asked some pegasi to go up there and take a look around! They didn’t come back! Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!
K: Are you… feeling alright?
TS: Never better! Why?
K: … No reason. Continue.
TS: So anyway, Rainbow Dash got all mad and stuff. Said she wouldn’t be cowering down here with us while the others were in danger. I tried to talk her out of it but she wouldn’t listen. So she went up there too. Hee hee hee. And she didn’t come back! Fluttershy was crying. And so was I, I think. I wanted to go help but I couldn’t just leave hundreds of ponies by themselves. They might have gotten lonely! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! So, yeah, we had reached the mountains where Canterlot was. Lovely place, really. You should see it sometime, Ky!
K: … I have seen it, Twilight.
TS: Really? Hunh. Guess it must have slipped the ol’ noggin! Hope you liked it!
[I honestly had no idea what to say here, with the obviously deteriorating mental state of the xeno, so I opted for silence.]
TS: Now, where was I? Oh yeah! We were starting to climb the mountain when one of our pegasi came back and said somepony had been awfully naughty. They’d torn up the tracks ahead of us! So we had to hit the brakes! It was close, but with a bit of magic everything worked out in the end! The train didn’t go careening off the side of the mountain with everypony still inside! Hee hee hee! So I had to get everypony out of the train cars again. We had to walk the rest of the way to the city!
K: I see.
TS: Yep! But that’s when I saw those… fly-y thingies.
K: Fly-y thingies?
TS: Yep! I could see Canterlot in the distance. With a bit of magic magnification, I saw some weird thingies swooping in and out of the clouds above it! They were firing something down at the city. Inconsiderate of them, wouldn’t you say? But somepony was firing back, and eventually they went away. I saw one of BBBFF’s shields go up! It was pink, just like at the wedding!
K: These things. Describe them.
TS: BBBFF…
K: Twilight… [I knew this creature well enough to see something coming.]
TS: BBBFF!!! NO!!! NO, DON’T TAKE HIM! PLEASE, NO! HAVE MERCY! NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
K: TWILIGHT! TWILIGHT!
[It was, naturally, of little use to attempt to reason with the xeno in its utterly irrational flashbacks. Ten minutes of trying availed me little. Recordings indicate it continued alternating between begging for mercy and fits of hysterical laughter until it passed out from exhaustion hours later.]


++Interrogation Ends++

++Thoughts++


Firstly, here are the new pieces of information on the nature of our enemy. As before, they enemy appears to have had a strong information network in place, accurately plotting the train’s intended destination and heading it off, forcing hundreds of civilians to make a dangerous trek up a narrow path to presumed safety. They would make easy targets for a massacre by ground troops. The same information network allowed them to locate and eliminate any xenos that breached their cloud cover, which was presumably artificially made. Eldar holo-projection, perhaps? Or maybe they had some way of manipulating the existing weather control system?
We have confirmation on aircraft of some sort, though the exact details have yet to be determined. These craft seem, at least thus far, would to be more for strafing and dive-bombing than high altitude attacks, as indicated by the xeno’s comments on “firing back”. Nothing we found in their civilization indicates any proficiency with antiaircraft weaponry. This tells us that the xeno most probably spoke of retaliating with psychic energy blasts, none of which could be expected to accurately hit or damage aircraft very far above the xenos’ collective heads. We can thus assume that the enemy makes use of such variety of craft for preliminary airstrikes on fortified positions. Canterlot, from its ruins, was one of the best defensive locations in the xenos nation, and would have been difficult to attack conventionally without at least softening it up first. We thus learn that the attackers are at least somewhat reluctant to commit to open battle on a defenders’ terms. This is valuable information for us to pass to our commanders. We may also presume the existence of some sort of fighter analogue, which is presumably what eliminated trespassing xenos flyers above the clouds.
This reluctance to commit to a straight attack right off the bat is well within the established combat doctrines of both the Eldar and Night Lords. Neither xenos nor heretic is willing to give open battle, slinking, faithless curs that they are. They know that they cannot stand to confront the Emperor’s wrath face-to-face, and thus hide in the shadows like the cowards they are whenever they can. The Eldar are, at least from my limited experience with their kind, more likely to employ outright airstrikes than the Traitor Astartes, but one should not underestimate the willingness of the foul heretics to do whatever it takes to win. 
I believe that, with this new evidence, we can safely discount the theory of a daemonic incursion. Daemons are not known to employ aircraft, having little patience for softening up an enemy before attacking. In any case, it is doubtful that they would have had the time to do so, as they can generally only maintain a foothold in the Materium for a few hours at a time. By this point, the xeno describes the attack as having continued for days. Any daemon army would have overrun the planet or else have been pulled back to the foul hell of their Dark Gods by then. I do not know whether I should take comfort in this new knowledge that the Warp's progeny were not directly behind this or not.
On the subject of the xeno specimen. My Lord, I feel our subject is breaking down rapidly. While the information I am getting continues to be plausible and of some strategic and tactical value, the creature’s mental state cannot be relied upon for much longer. Indeed, it may already be unwittingly feeding us false information via inaccurate or damaged memory. If I keep dredging up its past, I believe it will soon lose all grip on reality. If this becomes the case, even torture will do us no good whatsoever for the purposes of acquiring further information. Speaking as a woman who has tried on more than one occasion, one cannot gain knowledge from a mind that no longer meaningfully functions. I must again request you orders, Lord Rovini. How do I proceed?



Your servant,
Interrogator Kylara
++Message Ends++