New Rome

by dragonridergoku

Empires

The room was dark, the only sound was a slight hum of electricity being used to power who knows what. Her head throbbed as she could feel power being drained from her. Her hooves were stiff and sore as metal bracers kept them in place on the floor. Her body was bound with a heavy metal chain that kept her from moving much. Then there was the worst fact of all, she had no memory. She knew there was something she should remember, but she had no idea what it was. If only it wasn’t so dark and she could see her beautiful white coat. Wait, white coat, how did she know what she looked like? This was a very confusing situation for the mare. She had no idea where she was, what had happened, or even who she was.

As she wondered about her predicament, a hissing noise was heard and a light flooded the room. Now she saw the various machines around her, their intricate designs losing meaning in her addled brain. Then there was the figure in the doorway. It was just a silhouette, but she recognized the shape, even if she couldn’t tell what it was. It filled her with fear as she looked upon the dark form growing ever larger. There was nothing she could do as it moved towards her locked in place body.

As the dark form was within inches from her, it lifted an arm and pushed a glowing button on it. As the button was pressed
down, the lights suddenly flashed on with a blinding glare. The mare couldn’t stand the initial shock after being in darkness for so long. She quickly closed her eyes and reared her head back as much as she could with the machines hooked up to her. When she finally opened them again, she was met with a terrifying sight.

Before her stood a creature with long lanky arms, wearing a suit of shining grey armor. It had a black robe of some sort hanging from its back as it stared at her with black, soulless eyes. Its face was riddled with scars and it had a wide fanged smile that made its light green skin even more terrifying. Then it spoke in a language the mare knew from the deep reaches of her locked away mind.

“Tu ergo qui cessit consiliis, so you are the one who foiled our plans. Magna virtus tua, tamen non justo libros indicia. You possess great power, yet it does not hold signs of the godly books. Num invenisti viam circum. I wonder if you found a way around them.”

“What are you? Where am I? Who am I?”

“Stultus minorem genus, vos debeat honorari esse in praesentia Sideran navis magistro. Foolish lesser race, you should be honored to be in the presence of the Sideran ship master. Tibi soli reginae petis indicio non egeant. You, sun queen, have no need for the information you ask for.”

“Answer my questions! I demand that you tell me what is going on and why you call me the sun queen!”

“Very well then, you want answers, you shall receive them. Fear us, sun queen, for you are about to witness the truth behind lies. You shall witness for yourself the rise and fall of an empire. You wanted knowledge, well now you will know the horrors that plagued our people. When all else failed, we succeeded. Now prepare for your judgment.”

With that, the machine began to hum and the mare began to feel a sense of drowsiness overcome her. Her vision faded before her eyes and her mind began to fall out of her body as she was pulled into a deep slumber.

~~~~~~~~~~

She awoke to find herself in a large room of some sort. There were a great many soldiers dressed as the ship master had been; only having no medals or other status symbols. They carried strange objects and were all lined up facing commander of some sort. As far as she knew, they couldn’t see her watching them. She was inspecting the banners along the walls when the commander at the front of the room began to speak.

“Alright troops, listen up. We have been given a mission to invade the enemy territory and hopefully capture their leader.

"This will be dangerous, and many of you will likely be killed, but if we want to finally bring peace to this galaxy we have to defeat these humans. We will participate in the assault on their orbital defenses. The objective is to find their control room and take over their station. With that, we can finally destroy their forces and end this war. Are you ready?!”

“YES SIR!!”

“Good, then let’s go burn some humans to ash.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The vision then changed and the mare found herself in another metal hallway while explosions could be heard from around the corner. She moved in to see what was there and was shocked at what laid before her. There were innumerable bodies of both Sideran soldiers and another group that stood between her and an advancing wall of flames. She only guessed that these were the humans the commander had spoken of in the last vision.

She looked on as the approaching wave of flame let out shots of green plasma. These shots usually hit a wall or the floor, but occasionally they struck down a human soldier who screamed in agony as his armor was melted by the heat. Every few seconds a Sideran soldier would jump out of the fire only to be mercilessly fired upon by every human in the area.

The mare watched in horror as soldier after soldier fell in this assault. She quickly turned and ran down the hallway she had come from. She ran past human soldiers gunning down Sideran forces as well as more walls of fire traveling slowly towards a group of humans who fired everything they had at the blazing inferno. Soon she reached a large room where she found a group of humans sitting around a table and watching as a screen before them showed footage from across the station.

One human pressed a button on the table in front of him which caused a great hum to fill the air. Seconds later the screens flashed and a bright light shone from many of the screens before they suddenly went dark. At this time, a powerful tremor shook the entire room. The humans looked on with expressionless faces as the doors began to glow red from the heat on the other side.

Seconds later, one door fell inward with a hiss and a shower of sparks as it hit the ground. On the other side were many sideran soldiers who slowly progressed into the room as the humans watched with eyes devoid of any emotion. One human pressed a button on the table before a blinding light engulfed the entire area.

~~~~~~~~~~

The mare was then transported once more. She found herself floating in space watching a large station before her. Then, the station lit up in a flash of light and exploded in a ball of fire. The shock at this event had just begun to recede when the voice of the sideran ship master appeared from nowhere.

“We fought the humans so that we may be free of their tyrant of a leader. The chaos emperor, as they called him, had ruled the Empire of Rome for hundreds of years. He was an undying monster, who only cared for the power of his empire. He was a merciless tyrant who would stop at nothing to have us destroyed. They say he made a deal with the devil, unlimited power and everlasting life in exchange for his very soul. He was a mad lord who had enough power to decimate entire armies with a snap of his fingers.

“It was the duty of my ancestors to stop him. We were the only ones with the power to do so. We obtained a powerful book from the gods, and with it, we were capable of sealing the chaos emperor within the book and splitting it into six pieces so that he could never escape. With their leader gone, the humans fought back and fought bravely to get him back. In the end they failed, but instead of come quietly, they used their dying breath to destroy our armies.

“In the end, we took the remaining humans under our wing and saved them from their own idiocy. We ruled for a long time after that, and we made sure to keep things fair and equal for all races. It was a few thousand years later that the humans decided to rebel once more.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The scene changed once more, and now the mare stood within a ship, looking out of a large window at a battlefield in space. A planet could be seen below and a large multitude of ships sat there in space, explosions lighting up on their sides as beams of light and fire stretch between two groups of the massive machines.

The mare watched as ships on both sides were exploding in blasts of energy. Most of the ships opposite her were surrounded in a dark aura that would protect them from harm, but the occasional ship would lose its dark surrounding before the firepower overwhelmed it and it burst into millions of pieces. Most casualties, however, were on the side of the two fleets. The sideran ships were not surrounded in the dark aura that covered the Human fleet and were falling much quicker than Human ships.

Soon, the humans had taken out nearly every sideran ship with very few casualties on their part. The sideran fleet was in a retreat as human ships fired a constant flow of plasma at the escaping siderans. Very few ships managed to escape through the blue portals allowing escape. The ship the mare watched from was almost through when a blast of plasma suddenly hit the window, vaporizing everyone inside as the vision suddenly went white.

~~~~~~~~~~

The mare now found herself in a large city. The buildings rose high above the streets and had obviously seen better days. Many of the grand towers were damaged and quite a few had been turned to rubble as their bodies exploded from massive slugs of metal blasting through their magnificent structures.

A loud electrical whine filled the air as one of the dark human ships moved over one of the larger buildings. A bright lite shone from below the war machine before a beam of pure energy shot out and destroyed the tall building with an explosion of heat and power.

On the ground were waves of human soldiers, only they were much larger and each soldier was surrounded in the same dark aura the ships were. The soldiers were swarming through and decimating as many siderans as they could, be it soldier or citizen. To top everything off, a group of armored tanks were destroying any building that survived the orbital bombardment of the large spacecraft.

The mare could only stare at the destruction being caused by the human forces tearing apart the city in their quest to destroy all of the siderans. As her sanity was at its breaking point, the vision faded once more and changed to a destroyed version of the city with only a handful of buildings remaining and no signs of life among the rubble. Then the voice of the shipmaster returned.

“We spent thousands of years with a glorious empire. We were the crown of the universe as well as the sword and shield. We protected the many that lived beneath us, and we repelled the threats that entered our territory. It was a legendary time of peace and prosperity that came to a screeching halt when the books of the gods, used to seal their old leader, were stolen from us by the human armies. They used our power to launch their attack.

“First they destroyed our fleets, and then they lay waste to our cities. After the war was over, and our army destroyed, we were hunted down like the pests we were to the human scourge. By the time it all ended, our race was at the verge of extinction. The last of our once proud civilization was in hiding across the galaxy.

“For thousands of years we hid, while the human empire of New Rome rose from our ashes and those of their next victims. The many small pockets of siderans soon grew, all but forgotten by their destroyers. Eventually, we managed to rebuild our civilization, without the knowledge of the Human armies. Even together once more, it wasn’t until a thousand years ago when we felt the books power being used once more that we set our plan in motion. For the last thousand years, we have been building our armies and now we have begun to take back our empire. The first step is retrieving the books.”

~~~~~~~~~~

At this, the mare blacked out and awoke in the room she had begun in. She could see the sideran shipmaster standing over her as she took in the information she had just been given. He walked over to her and pressed a button next to her. The throbbing in her head then began to recede until it was nothing more than a simple headache. Then the shipmaster began to talk once more.

“You have seen what the empire of New Rome did to us long ago. You now know why we have waged war on them and must acquire the books in order to be successful in our endeavors. We know where most of the books are hidden, but we must have the support of these lands natives before we can retrieve them all. You are the leader of this planet, the one to whom all will look in times of need. You can help us, and with your help there will be much less destruction and mayhem than otherwise. You are the solar queen, Solar Radiance.”

===============

The hallways were quiet as the lunar princess and her five mare escort walked down towards Celestia’s bed chambers.
They reached the doorway and proceeded to open it so that the group could access a secret known only to the celestial sisters. Within the bed chambers was a secret doorway to a wing of the castle that didn’t exist. Through this door and up a flight of stairs was a room filled with secrets. The most important of these was the grey book sitting in the middle of the room.

Luna picked up this book and left with it. Through this entire trip, all was silent. The six mares walked out of the chambers and back into the throne room. In the throne room was a large number of guards trained for fighting monsters. They were an elite division of the guard dedicated to protecting the civilians from monsters like those within the Everfree forest. They were the best suited for defending Canterlot from this new sideran threat, but even they were hopelessly outmatched. Luna sat on the throne before addressing the gathered ponies.

“Gathered members of the guard, we have brought thee together for the sake of defending this city from the dangerous new threat of these siderans. We shall be honest; most of you shall die in the fighting to come. The royal guard has severely lost its touch in the thousand years since my days as Nightmare Moon, but we still have honor and ability. Our formal guard may lack the training and experience of old, but we can still fight, and fight we shall. Our sister was likely killed by these invaders, and as such, I will do everything in my power to defeat them and return this land to the harmony and peace Celestia always wanted. The elements of harmony are useless with one of their bearers gone, and as such we must rely on the strength of our steel and the determination of our finest. We will stop this threat, and we will make sure they are too afraid of our power to ever return. Now who’s with me?”

A chorus of “we are” and “I am” was met with an uproar of cheers as every member of the guard raised their sword or spear into the air. The cheers lasted for a few seconds before Luna raised her hoof for silence. She then began to speak once more.

“We thank Thee for thine determination to protect those who truly need it. Now we must fight to defend our homes and our lives from the enemy. We shall be providing additional training to any who wish to join. The tactics and strategies of old shall be taught as quickly as possible to all who want it. These training sessions will be the hardest any member of the guard has faced in a long time. It is not for the weak; rather it is where those with true willpower shall rise to the top. We have little time, tonight we start counting the days until the beast before us finally hits our walls, and we make our last stand. When they arrive, we shall either defeat them and achieve victory, or die trying. We applaud thine courage, and we wish you the best of luck. May the stars guide us to victory.”

With this said, Luna bowed to her guard, and left the room. She was followed by the five elements into the private back rooms. Once there, Twilight was the first to speak.

“Princess, do you really believe that we can win against these monsters?”

“No, Twilight, we’re afraid we are out matched in every way. If these creatures attack now, we will all die. Only a miracle could save us now. Our only chance is collecting those books like our sister said. May the gods have mercy on our souls.”

Author's Note:

A/N: Here goes chapter two of this story, like last time, I am extremely sorry for my much too long absence. I have no excuses, so have fun with this. ~Dragonrider Goku~

Comments

[dragonridergoku]

2889631 I like Greece and Carthage, but New Rome sounds better. It really has nothing to do with any of them anyway though.