//------------------------------//
// The Southern Front 
// Story: Southern Front 
// by Impossible Numbers 
//------------------------------//

The altar was strewn with clay tablets, twiggy styluses, and pots of beeswax and oil. Mystic runes ran across and down each surface, cramped and contorted as if tortured by their own hidden messages. Brown stains covered the surface, and an obsidian knife lay next to something pink and gleaming.

Ahuizotl’s long tail reached across and plucked the hilt of the knife. He himself leaned over the altar, ears quivering, and narrowed his tiny eyes at the runes. He muttered a few curses in his native tongue.

The knife dashed forwards and slit the envelope he was holding. With a snort, he tossed the remains aside and peered at the neatly typed squiggle on the paper. A purring rose up from his lap, and he reached down and stroked the curled-up kitten along its back.

“We got it from the filthy trespasser, my lord,” said the pony opposite him.

As lazily as he could, Ahuizotl lifted his long head and squinted up at the feathery headdress. To his satisfaction, the stallion shuffled where he stood.

“He said it was for you, my lord,” the stallion added uncertainly. “Only he couldn’t find the temple, and we remembered you told us not to let him come near. We’ve still got him down by the river, my lord,” he added, this time with a bit more fire in his voice. “I could have him sacrificed, if you like.”

Ahuizotl waved him into silence. Drawn by some dark fascination, the pony’s gaze landed on the pink, gleaming mass.

“Tell me, Olmeca,” said Ahuizotl in a smooth drawl. “Have you ever heard of such a thing as… the ‘overdraft’?”

Still transfixed by the mass, Olmeca shook his head slowly. Some of his tiger-stripe face paint was starting to run.

“Let’s just say it is a power I have been… granted.” Ahuizotl paused and scrunched the paper into a ball. It soon joined a pyramid of the things in the corner. “Along with the power of the ‘loan’, the ‘redirected charity funds’, and the always-popular and omnipresent ‘bill of charges’.”

“It all sounds strange, my lord,” said Olmeca to the pink gleam.

“This temple is ancient, and looking after it – protecting it – requires power and wealth. Much like in the old days, Olmeca.”

“Yes, my lord. My grandfather told me, my lord. He said it was much better in the old days, my lord.”

Ahuizotl didn’t look away from him as the hand-ended tail curled through the air with the knife. A flick of the wrist, and the pink mass was flying in a shaky arc before the razor-tipped jaws leaned back and snapped. Even with his eyes pointing to the ceiling, Ahuizotl fancied he saw the stallion flinch from head to hooves.

“I remember your grandfather.” Ahuizotl began scratching the kitten behind the ears. “He was a loyal pony with a strong heart, if rather soft brains.”

Olmeca clutched tightly at his spear. He wasn’t sure whether he was listening to metaphors or not.

“He was right, of course. It was better in the old days. Gold pyramids as far as the eye could see – assuming, of course, you were standing above the trees – and stampedes of slaves and servants.”

Ahuizotl sighed and peered out the temple portal. The stars had been up and standing for far too long. He shifted on the stone pillar; his ancestors had co-opted it as a seat, pointed out its longevity value, and said problem solved, which his posterior now felt was missing the point entirely.

Ignoring the yowl of protest and the lightening on his lap, he leaned forwards and checked the sundial beside him. It was no ordinary sundial. Even with the moonlight failing to penetrate the temple vault, a shadow fell across one of the carved runes around the rim as clearly as if it were held up to the morning sun. He’d technically inherited it from his grandfather, the agreement sealed with a blob of wax and a carefully aimed throwing knife.

“Well, we’ve got to move with the times, as they say in pony land.” Ahuizotl pulled a clay tablet towards him, plucked a stylus from the desk, and began etching with a dancer’s ease across the wax surface. “Send the trespasser on his way.”

A cough tickled the edge of his hearing. He frowned. In theory, he was all for moving with the times, but mostly so he could keep its shoulder blades in his sights. His tail twirled the knife over his shoulder.

“Did I say something wrong?” he said in a tone of voice that more clearly said, “You’d better have a good excuse for that.”

Olmeca pawed at the tiled floor and didn’t look up. “I mean no disrespect, my lord, but I wish to ask if there is an end to this business. I – I mean, some of the ponies – don’t trust our fealty towards these… these foreign powers.”

If Ahuizotl had worn steel-rimmed glasses – and had enough snout to perch them on – his eyes would have peered over the top of them. Olmeca had always been a weather vane for the tribe’s current mood, and he tended to squeak whenever pointing due south.

Ahuizotl waved an arm to the hieroglyphs around them, the dull statue behind him, and the altar between them, before adjusting his bronze neck brace. One eyebrow towered over the shaking feather headdress.

“They are what kept us going,” he said. “There will be a reckoning, naturally, but that as ever will be met when it comes. And we are no strangers to sacrifice. So long as we continue as servants to the great powers, then we shall be rewarded. Welcome the new gods, same as the old gods.”

Yes, he thought bitterly. They might exist on bits of paper-leaf instead of within the elements of nature itself, but both want an arm and a leg sooner or later. One of his tablets had required a completely new class of numbers, and it didn’t take long to figure out why they were called ‘negative’.

“Now, I’m expecting a visitor,” he continued. “It is a mysterious and promising creature. In pony land, they call it… what’s the word? Ah yes, a ‘client’. I have not met such a creature in years, so the art will be a little rusty at first, but it shall come to me. I shall be seeing this ‘client’, and if all goes well, our humble remnants of the empire will be richly rewarded. That means – and I cannot stress this enough – that I want no one to come barging in while we discuss matters. Is that understood?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good. You’re dismissed.”

After several bows and apologies, Olmeca galloped out the portal and down the steps. It was a while before the panting died away.

Ahuizotl leaned over his sundial and pinched the bridge of his nose, or at least pinched the bony bit between eyes and fangs. It didn’t matter how many times he emphasized that they were tribal ponies. He still had to face the fact that each one was a pony, which in his book – or rather, clay tablet – was synonymous with ‘superstitious moron’.

At least they took orders from him. Others of his own kind had been as cooperative as cats in a sack. He considered himself a beast with a level head and a piercing eye, and even he found himself drawn to the pleasures of a knife and someone’s exposed shoulder blades. It had taken him years to curb such urges; he hadn’t the heart to admit the pink mass had been a blob of jell-o.

No wonder the empire had fallen. A parrot tying its leg to a boulder and pushing it over a cliff couldn’t have encouraged its own destruction so gleefully.

The tribal ponies had their uses, too. They were the ones who could see and touch the outsiders on his behalf, especially these foreign ponies. Ponies playing dress-up was hardly new, but he himself was supposed to be extinct. Showing himself to a foreign pony was likely to cause comment, at least if the pony in question managed to gallop outside the jungle in time.

He shuddered at the memory of seeing the white princess. Even under a burlap cloak at midday, he’d suddenly felt as cold as a midwinter’s night, and for a tropical species that was no laughing matter. No, better for him if he kept a low profile.

He peered at the sundial, and then tapped it with a finger. His tail dropped the obsidian blade onto the altar with a clatter.

“Late,” he hissed.

He raised the lid of the altar – lowering it when the tablets started to slide off – and with his tail yanked out a ceramic dish. Rattling around inside of it was a crystal ball, small enough to fit into his palm when he tipped it out. One of the tribal ponies had raided a passing caravan miles beyond their borders and brought this back as plunder. After a few cracked teeth had taught him not to eat it, he’d summoned all his dark arts and delved into the crystal’s innermost secrets.

Ahuizotl rubbed his forehead with his tail hand. Turned out you just had to ask nicely.

“I invoke the magic of the ancients,” he intoned, and in his mind’s eye he saw legions of demonic nightmares emerge from the shadows. “Reveal unto me the one they call the Mare in the Moon, and carry our words across the boundless dimensions of the netherworld!”

He gritted his teeth and added, “Please.”

The speech wasn’t necessary. It just made him feel less stupid.

Across the glass surface, rainbow contours drifted and curled around each other. A flash of light made him blink, and he could now see a mass of stars and darkness, all swirling around a dark pony-shaped thing. The sound was muffled, but he was sure he could hear cackling.

He tapped the ball irritably. “Stupid interference-glitch.”

The dark figure whipped up and burst out of the swirling night, leaving what he guessed was some kind of wooden temple. A few distant figures looked like ponies running about.

“Hello?” he said cautiously. “Hello?”

The cackling echoed from the ball, and now he could see the countryside dashing past as though he were looking down on it. This was why the voice, when it came, made him trip over his own pillar.

“I am free! Free, at last!”

“Finally,” he whispered. She might not have the same “muffled sound” problem he had.

After a while, countryside gave way to desert. Ahuizotl watched the sand dunes fade away, and then tucked the ball and the dish back before straightening himself up, hands clasped on the altar. At one point, he adjusted the pot of oil and the pot of wax in case they looked too carefree.

This was happening! he thought with joy. Years and years of scrounging up money-funds and leeching off Equestria from a safe distance, and now the old days are finally coming back!

Still, he thought as he drew one of the tablets close to him and dipped his stylus’ nib in the oil pot, no need to overreact. After all, I am the criminal mastermind here. I am totally in control. These high and mighty pony types need a reminder of who is in charge. Best to emphasize who needs who, after all. “Play it cool,” as they say up north. Yes. OK.

All the same, his stylus stumbled a little more than usual over the wax on the tablet. Twice, he misspelled “the”.

Something bright whooshed through the temple door, and he saw for one moment a patch of starlit sky swirling like cloth in a wind. However, he simply bent down again to continue writing. He ignored the flash of magic, and he paid no heed to the clop of hooves. Even when the shadow of wings and undulating mane washed over him, he slid the tablet across the stone and continued writing in the small patch of moonlight left on the altar.

After a carefully timed pause, he looked up politely. “Yes? Can I help you?”

The dark mare towered over him, all sapphire armour and black fur. Two emerald slashes glared at him. From the way she was standing, anything less than pathetic grovelling was worth instant capital punishment. It was all he could do not to smirk.

“Do not presume to be familiar with me, southern beast!” boomed the mare in the temple, and her army of echoes made him drop his stylus. “I am the mistress of all darkness, beautiful and terrible as the void, the sole and rightful ruler of all Equestria! The heavens themselves bow to my will!”

Lightning flashed beyond the four walls. Thunder roared down at them. Wind slashed and spiralled around Ahuizotl, sucking at the hair on his body and pulling the tablets and stylus off his altar to spin in the mare’s gossamer mass of mane and tail.

“Yes! Yes!” shouted Ahuizotl over the noise. “Very! Impressive! But if you don’t mind! Your Highness! Perhaps we should!” He ducked the nib as it flew at his face. “Discuss our business arrangement!”

The wind and the storm vanished at once, while the mare’s hair shrank back to swirling and undulating banners of stars. Tablets and styluses smashed into the granite all around them. The pieces tinkled.

“It took me hours to bake those,” he said in alarm.

Oil slopped over the kitten’s face. It screeched and started clawing at the air blindly. Ahuizotl noted this and privately added another item to his mental bill of charges. His body, on the other hand, curled and leaned forwards attentively.

“Your Highness has my full attention,” he assured her. “Please excuse my former behaviour. We have a… casual work ethic here.”

The narrow eyes widened, and he nodded with approval at her cat-like pupils.

“You surprise me, though,” he added. “I believed you were imprisoned forever. How did you finally manage to escape?”

At this, the dark mare stared him down with the cool patience of a glacier. He drummed his fingers on the altar and tried to ignore his eyes watering.

To his shock, she threw her head back and laughed at the vaulted ceiling. Every blast of mirth lasted far longer than his bones felt it rightly should have done.

“Hah!” She snapped her fangs over the shout, and he almost fell off his pillar. “My imprisonment only delayed this night’s coming. While I couldn’t leave the moon, I was far from powerless. I could send fear and nightmares down onto the world to torment my enemies. I could see and hear every timid reverie, every idle daydream, every window onto the dark side of the soul. There has been no small corner, and no hidden detail, that has escaped my sight. My power has only grown along with the fat and the sloth of my subjects. Even my own sister has been dreading this moment for every day of these thousand years. It was my destiny, eventually, to return.”

Despite himself, Ahuizotl stood on his hind paws and bowed low, one professional to another. Save for a few decades, she would have fitted in wonderfully with the other gods.

“Which, I presume, brings us to the current business,” he said in his silkiest voice. “I am truly honoured.”

The sapphire horseshoes tapped hard on the tiles as she approached him. He was suddenly very glad to have a ton of granite between him and those emerald eyes. His gaze met the long unicorn horn waving spear-like above them, and he swore it pulsed midnight blue for a moment. He was suddenly not so glad.

“My time is short,” she boomed. “I must return to Equestria soon to ensure the last vestiges of hope are crushed forever. I have been informed that you can handle other… undesirables.”

She was looming over him, snout to snout. Ahuizotl held his position. He wasn’t sure which was worse; getting out of biting range, or suggesting in any non-verbal way that she had bad breath.

“Your Highness,” he said, trying not to breathe too hard in her face. A trickle of sweat dribbled down his temple. “The agency as a group can handle… undesirables. In the many-plural. My humble role is to handle one in particular. A certain high-profile one of many unusual and frightening talents,” he threw in quickly. Commerce wasn’t something that came naturally to him, but he’d picked up the principle of self-advertising within seconds. It wasn’t much different from worship; just make the god and the priest the same person.

“It matters not. I am far-sighted enough to foresee the risks,” said the mare, and finally she drew her head back. Ahuizotl let out a breath he hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding. “This one has encountered beings of my calibre before.”

Ahuizotl clenched his fist and nodded. He was going to miss hearing Huitzilopotchli’s manic giggling. His kids would have loved the god, if he’d had any kids.

“I could crush her like an ant,” said the mare thoughtfully.

“With all due respect, Your Highness,” said Ahuizotl while inside he was rolling on the floor laughing, “so could the living stone jackals of Tenochtitlan, and we are still fishing for the heads in the Amaponian river. This one is not a mare to underestimate. She is not just any… undesirable. I believe she is the true… undesirable of all Equestria.”

The dark mare laughed again. “You impudent, insignificant fool! You dare to believe I cannot handle one mere little pony?”

Once more, Ahuizotl pinched his nose.

Long ago, he’d heard stories about the ponies beyond the jungle, who’d told his pony tribe, who’d occasionally and with some blushing and suppressed chuckles told him. Stories of ponies bursting out into song for no good reason, and then seemingly carrying on as if nothing had happened. As if, he noted, they had been possessed.

He hadn’t seen what was so strange. He himself used to sing hymns and lullabies day-to-day, especially the ones that ended with something like “And then he ripped the heart out of their chest and told the sun ‘Come get it while it’s hot’.”

“She is not a mere little pony,” he said to his altar. “She is a song. A very ancient and powerful song that has stolen upon the bodies of many… undesirables throughout history. I know. I have read your chronicle-books.”

“She is nothing! I do not fear this mare.”

Then why are you here? Ahuizotl thought angrily. He knew about the value of haggling, and didn’t hold with it. It was bad enough to hear bluffs, but at least his older clients never expected him to believe them.

“This song was what stole upon the great Star Swirl the Bearded, the founders of your country-land, and your former self.”

For a moment, the emerald eyes flickered. Interesting, he thought to himself. So you do have some latent memories.

“You have seen what this… undesirable of which we speak can do to a god,” he continued. "There has been no shortage of living examples."

“She is but a lucky mortal,” said the dark mare, but without much conviction.

“Exactly! And when a ‘lucky mortal’ goes up against a dark entity of godlike powers?”

He let her digest that titbit for a moment, amusing himself with the twitches and spasms playing across her face. Then he stood up, dislodging the kitten that had just then tried to leap up onto him. Opposite him, two pointed wings flared.

“Fate is on her side,” he said simply. “There is no future in denying this. We all know the rules. Undesirables always win against their biggest enemy, no matter how hopeless it seems. It is built into the nature of this world. Powerful as you are, you cannot handle more than a handful of them, and I believe you will have your share to keep track of as it is. And this one is a rising moon among the stars of the world. Her past shows this clearly enough. Once she learns what is happening and who you are – and believe me, she will and she always will – then she will come for you. She will mark you as her biggest enemy, and the result will be something your bookie-gamblers would run a mile from.”

His words echoed and faded away. The dark mare folded her wings again and blinked, a look of lazy unconcern creeping over her face. As he followed her gaze, he noticed his fist had slammed into the altar at some point, and he hastily sat down.

“Of course,” he said with the air of one treading over broken glass, “this is how I see it, but I could be wrong. How you see it might be a totally different matter.”

A flash of her horn made him cover his face with shielding arms.

“I see you are not just some uncultured backwater beast,” she said. “But I grow weary of these pointless speeches. Now is your chance to show your loyalty to the Princess of the Eternal Night.”

The next flash was a burst of white light. Ahuizotl flinched, and then something heavy cracked the altar. Nothing moved for a while.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a burlap sphere obscuring the dark mare and almost splitting the altar in two. Gingerly, his tail picked up his knife and he poked the thing with the tip.

A trickle of coins rained out of the cut. He smiled. A shark would have fled from a smile like that.

“Consider this a royal gift,” spat the dark mare as if he barely deserved it. She turned to the temple entrance and began striding towards the night. “I shall return once I’ve dealt with a few insects to see it has been spent wisely.  If it pleases me, you shall be rewarded with another gift. You are in command now, Lord Ahuizotl. Pray you don't disappoint me.”

Ahuizotl bowed as low as he could without head-butting the altar, though the spherical sack obscured him entirely from those eyes. Still, you never knew with these god types.

“Your wish is my command, Your Highness,” he said.

He didn’t breathe easy until he heard the distant flap of wings, and then the last trickle of coins hit the floor. Silence reigned in the temple.

At his rear paws, the kitten began mewing. He rubbed his hands together and rolled the sack off his altar with a thump. Coins spilled out and he picked one up and bit it while staring out at the stars.

The top of the altar came off, and he reached in and pulled out a clay tablet, a stylus, and a fresh pot. As an afterthought, he pulled out a paper cup, sipped it, curled his lip, and placed it on the surface, leaving yet another brown stain. For a while, he busied himself with a few notes, pausing only to check the sundial that had fallen onto the floor.

“Four thirty three ay em,” he muttered. “Note to self: add one item to the list of charges. To whit, equipment damage and pet cleaning bill.”

A punch of the stylus’ nib marked the end of the tablet’s message. He replaced both and came out of the altar with an armful of shackles and some rope. Then he noticed the spilt cup on the floor and shrugged. The kitten mewed again and followed him across the vault.

“Yes, my precious,” he cooed to its blue eyes. “It seems PHANTOM is back in business again! Call the old guard and round up those tribal idiots. We have a traditional fetch quest to arrange."

The kitten's paw tapped a secret pad in the wall, and the statue groaned and creaked and threw off a cloud of dust. Its podium slid back with glacial ease, revealing a staircase leading to darkness.

Ahuizotl edged his way into the shadows below. The kitten mewed again as it scampered around his paws.

"I think the trap-filled corridor of doom should make a decent starting point. Give me a few moments to forge a suitable-looking ancient document and a plausible-sounding legend, and I think we’ll be ready before tea-time. That should keep her occupied for a few days, I think. Or whatever passes for days now.”

He allowed himself an indulgent guffaw at the thought of seeing the piranha tank again. No more rotten apples to keep them sated any longer.

“Of course, we’re changing address again,” he said. “Just because we can pay off our owing-debts, doesn’t mean we should.”

In the dim torchlight of the chamber below, he could make out the glowing eyes of four growling creatures. All of them turned towards him.

“This will be our greatest performance-show yet!” He licked his lips and fangs, almost slicing his own tongue off. “Look lively, my faithful monster-pets! Something tells me this is going to be the start of a bold and new – and above all, profitable – era!”