Princess Celestia stepped out of her chariot with regal grace, the half-dozen ponies of front of her bowing low in respect. As her gaze swept around the clearing, she took in the tools and tents of a research outpost, all unoccupied as their owners were busy greeting their ruler.
"Thank you for coming so quickly, your highness," said the pony at the head of the group, a male unicorn with whose black coat and mane were heavily streaked with grey. He raised his eyes to meet hers, and she saw he was nervous, but doing his best to hide it. "While it may be our job to study manticores, this one has us stumped." He stood, and gestured for Celestia to follow him. "We were hoping you could lend us some insight."
"I'm always happy to help any of my subjects, especially a pony as distinguished as yourself, Life Weaver, " Celestia said amiably, silently wondering whether this was actually more important than planning the upcoming summit later that month. She hoped so, otherwise this entire trip would have just been a waste of time.
"We found the body after the roaring woke us up last night," Life Weaver continued as they stepped into the forest surrounding the clearing, heading north by north-east at a brisk pace while the rest of ponies fanned out behind them, scanning the brush for would-be ambushers. "Whatever did this was easily as loud as the manticore it killed. However, even though nothing else out here roars like that, it didn't actually sound like a manticore. The roar was pitched too high, and almost refined, in a sense. That combined with the marks... it's best if you see it for yourself."
They walked onward for a few more minutes, picking their way along one of the forest trails. Soon enough, the undergrowth cleared, and the group walked out into a rocky clearing spotted with boulders about 100 tails* across. Celestia pulled up short, stopping at edge of grass to keep from getting blood on her hooves. Under a tree to their left lay the fresh corpse of a bull manticore in the prime of life, partially submerged in a mostly dried pool of bodily fluids. The poor creature was slumped on its left shoulder, its eyes blank and staring straight ahead, frozen in a moment of pain and terror. The sight turned Celestia's stomach, but she was strong enough not to let it show. The other ponies weren't so lucky, and a few of them who hadn't seen the display earlier emptied their stomachs into a convenient bush.
"I'll let you get a first impression before we add what we've found out," Weaver mumbled to Celestia, looking a little green himself as the stench hit them both, a mixture of fresh and rancid meat fit to turn any herbivore's stomach. "Prevent bias and all that stuff. Excuse me for a moment." He stumbled off to join his coworkers as Celestia approached the body.
At first glance, she saw the manticore's hide was covered in claw and bite marks, both approximately lining up with the size and shape of another manticore, which would point towards this death being a simple dominance struggle gone wrong. However, there were also a couple of slash and stab marks, like those made by a sword or a spear. Taking a closer look at one of the slashes on the beast's side and wrinkling her nose at the stink, Celestia concluded that whatever blade had made it was large, at least one tail long, and almost impossibly sharp, as the cut was perfectly clean despite having gone straight through five ribs. Noticing the blood staining the Manticore's mane was a shade lighter than the rest of it, Celestia checked the creature's neck and found what obviously the killing blow: an horizontal slash across the throat, as professional as the executioner she'd had to fire back when she banned the death penalty. "What could have done this?" She muttered to herself, reaching out to but not quite touching the lethal cut.
"That's not all," Weaver said from her right, standing next the beast's head. Glancing up, Celestia saw the ponies had recovered and were busily collecting samples, including one pony who was extracting a tuft of orange fur from under one of the manticore's claws. "Whatever killed him didn't do it for food. There's only one body part missing." He gestured towards the head. Celestia followed his gaze, and saw something that made a slightly confusing situation into a totally baffling one. The manticore's ears were missing, both of them, neatly severed right at the base. When Celestia raised an eyebrow at Thread, he just shrugged, "We found a few bloody paw prints leading to a nearby stream, but after that the trail went cold. Do you have any idea what responsible for this?" His gaze hardened, "I don't like it when ponies mess with my charges."
Celestia merely shook her head. In all her years on the throne of Equestria, she'd never seen anything like this. Although something had been bugging her ever since they got here, and Thread's about food had finally pushed it to the front of her mind, causing her to glance around cautiously. "Life Weaver?" she asked slowly, powering up a scrying spell, "Where are all the scavengers?"
Weaver froze, his ears splaying back against his head and his pupils shrinking as the implication sank in, then scooted a bit closer to her. As he did so, a multitude of screams reached their ears: the terrified braying of a group of ponies, and a single, overpowering screech that made Celestia want to curl up into a ball and run her legs off at the same time.
Celestia teleported to her subjects in haste and appeared in front of the ponies who had backed themselves into a corner of a boulder, turned outward to face the manticore killer. Her first impression of the being was that a minotaur and a big cat had somehow produced a child. The creature was massive, five tails tall and three across while standing on its hind legs, with a pure black coat that was splashed with yellow spots. It's face was feline, snarling at the group as it crouched and prepared to spring, its hairless ears flattened against its head. Its bald tail slashed back and forth behind it, bumping against the body of a pony with her throat ripped out, slowing staining the ground around them crimson.
As fearsome as it looked, the creature's appearance was not why Celestia was preparing to fight him with everything she had. No, it was the sword in its hand, the helmet on its head, and the armor plating snaking across its shoulders and down his back. Those things marked him as a sapient being, and a far greater threat than any animal, no matter how strong. The pair of pony ears taken from the researcher it had killed hanging on a loop in its belt alongside many other sets she couldn't identify didn't help.
She threw a shield up between them in record time as it sprang, and the feline smacked into it face-first, causing the ponies to wince. It didn't seem to deter it in the slightest, however, as it simply got back and attacked the barrier again. When its claws raked harmlessly across the magical energy, Celestia relaxed slightly, and wondered whether this would be enough to keep him at bay. Then the sword came into play, and it sliced clean through the shield without slowing down. The wall held despite that, but the strain of maintaining it went up considerably, and Celestia grunted as she shoved more power into her horn. It didn't last, though, as the Cat just kept attacking and attacking, until a hefty blow finally shattered the defensive spell.
It roared again (in truth it was closer to a scream than a roar), and leapt. This time, instead of meeting a wall of magic it landed on top of a skewer made of solar energy, one that blasted it across the clearing and through a tree. Celestia let out a gust of air. A blow like that could put down a griffon, let alone this big cat. However, as she walked towards the splintered remains of an oak, the ponies she was protecting frozen in shock, her ears twitched as she picked up a combination of hissing and spitting interspersed with groans.
She gaped in disbelief as she rounded the stump: The creature was not only still alive, but both conscious and trying to stand up! It wasn't succeeding, but it was still trying. Then it screamed, and collapsed, but before Celestia could decide whether to help it or end it the answering screams came, seemingly from all around her and at least four different throats. She had to get her subjects out here! She turned and sprinted back to the group, but she simply wasn't fast enough. By the time she arrived, the ponies were dead, killed by five more of the creatures in much heavier armor, and a bizarre animal that looked like a five petaled flower made out of arms.
They saw her at the same time she them, and advanced as one, drawing weapons she couldn't identify as they stepped closer. While she may have been able to take out just one armed with only a sword, she doubted she could last against a group. Then a beam of energy shot from one of the weapons, slicing a piece of her mane off as she dodged, turning that doubt into to shock and a sliver of fear. They'd hurt her. These creatures could actually hurt her. She teleported back to her chariot, the fear in her eyes transferring to her escorts as they met her gaze. She ordered the pullers to get them out of there as quickly as possible, and only after the campsite had been left far behind them and she'd sent orders ahead to scramble the guard for war did she allow herself to weep.
She was going to find the monsters that had slaughtered her people, and she would make them pay. Every. Single. One.
8888888888
Engine-Technician purred in pleasure as he bit into the first fresh meat he'd tasted in over a cycle. These colorful horses were delicious, sweet and flavorful without any special preparation. The rest of the crew tucked in around him, filling their bellies after a successful hunt, and for Plosk-Scientist a successful mission. According to him, that much larger, white horse was the source of the anomalous readings he'd been picking up. The idea of a single creature controlling a star was ludicrous, but so were horses that made it rain, flying lizards that ate gems, and a bear the size of a capital ship, all of which had been thoroughly recorded on the cameras. Trak-Sergeant was still recovering from the brutal hit he'd taken, but he was healthy enough to gobble down a few hunks of meat before the sleep drugs kicked in, so he'd be fine. In fact, it was thanks to his distraction that they'd killed the others and taken their first slave (one of the horned grazers), who should be waking up right about... now.
The horse stirred, raised his (thankfully) grey and black head, realized just what the Kzin were eating, and passed out again. There wasn't anything it could have done in any case, they were already on their way back to Hunter's Rest. The Empire needed to know about this new world, and the riches it contained. With their new slave as proof of their claims, soon they would all earn full names and the right to homestead on this world, the most wondrous the Kzin had ever encountered. The only downside was that it was a full cycle and a half each way when moving at 4/5 the speed of light from the perspective of the crew, plus the 1-2 cycles it would take to actually get the fleet organized. Slowly than light travel was boring, but at least the gravity drive made the time short enough to be bearable. They'd all die of old age before they completed the six and four eights cycles it would take for a round trip without time dilation.
The Jotok crawled over to the horse and poked at it curiously, causing Engine's ears to twitch amusement. The future was looking bright, and soon the Empire would claim the light of yet another star. Life didn't get much better than this.