The Sooner the Better
“Unngh!” Kera grunted as she was shoved towards the wall of a large, open chamber. She clung to the rock wall and spun about, watching the parade of prisoners with a gaping expression. “What… what are you doing?”
“Stay there, child,” Dalen said, all the while directing his fellow guards to usher the dozen and a half ponies into a barred cell at the far end of a dark-lit stone chamber. As they were forced through the metal-hinged door, Zetta spun about--face aflame with anger.
“You promised that we would be safe!” She stamped her hooves. “You gave your word that my fellow enforcers and I wouldn’t be harmed!”
“And I kept that promise, Ledomulient trentte!” Dalen barked, the lines on his forehead growing thicker. “Believe me, compared to where the rest of the heathens are, you are very much safe.”
As Zetta blanched, Basso leaned against the bars. “What in spark’s name is that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t have to know,” Dalen muttered. “Besides, you could not even begin to understand the glory of Nagu’n.” As the bars were slammed shut with a metallic clang, he stood in a breathy slump outside the cell. “She does not forgive those who cross her wrathful gaze. So, be thankful for where you are.”
Kera gawked at the cell, then at him.
Zaid sighed, pacing about until he found a spot to sit on the far end of the cell. “Well, I don’t know about you all, but for me this is an upgrade in real estate.” He groaned and rolled over, laying his head on the stone floor. “Wake me up when the apocalypse is over…”
Basso hung his head, but squirmed upon feeling Zetta’s shuddering figure beside him. “What is it?”
“The whining noise…” She clutched her head as her horn flickered at the tip. “I swear… it’s… it’s louder than ever before…”
“Just try and rest, Zetta,” Basso said, patting her shoulder with his thick hoof. “We need to preserve our strength.”
“I… I c-can’t…” Her eyes clenched shut, streaming with tears. “It’s getting louder and louder. It’s as if it wants me…” She gulped. “Wants all of us.”
Basso didn’t know what to say. Awkwardly, he pulled the mare into a tender embrace. Zetta leaned into his girth, sobbing quietly.
Dalen stared at the cell. After a deep breath, he turned to trot out of the room, but shuffled to a stop besides Kera. He turned and spoke to her, “You. Come with me.”
Kera gawked up at him. “What the crap for?”
“You are not one of them,” he said.
“Oh, and I’m supposed to be one of you, r-right?” She frowned.
“You misunderstand,” Dalen droned. “You are free to go as you please. The Sacred Hold is yours as much as it is mine.”
“Oh yeah?” Kera stomped her hoof and leaned forward. “Then put me in with them!” she hissed.
Dalen blinked. “You cannot be serious--”
“Look, you just told me that I’m free to go where I want so send me there!” her voice cracked. “Open the cell and let me trot inside to stay with them!”
“They are heathens and abominable enemies to the glory of Nagu’n,” Dalen snarled, his voice rising. “One of them is a manipulative mare who even betrayed your trusts more than once--”
“Yeah. And I’d rather hang out with them a hundred times more than the likes of you!” Kera spat.
Dalen was silent. Slowly, he sighed, and nodded towards a nearby guard.
The guard nodded back, then hesitantly opened the cell door with a metal squeak. Slowly, Kera padded her way into the room on tiny hooves. Everypony watched as she shuffled over to the corner besides Zaid’s sleeping form and squatted down.
As the door shut, Dalen sighed out through his nostrils. He turned to move, but his eyes locked with another pony’s.
Nightshade stood against the bars, staring him down with a piercing gaze.
Dalen bit his lip. The hairs rose on the back of his neck, and he frowned. With scuffing hooves, he spun about and marched firmly out of the room.
Nightshade remained close to the bars, staring into the shadows with thought.
“What is this?!” an enforcer shouted, one of a hundred--all cramped into a tightly a giant metal cage. He and several of his fellow soldiers slammed and rapped their hooves against the bars around them. “You can’t keep us in here like this! This is cruel! Let us out!”
“Let us out, please!” another voice echoed from the far end of a dark, dark corridor. “For the love of the Spark, let us free!”
“I want to see my beloved!”
“My foals! My foals need me! Please!”
The interior stretched for hundreds of feet. Rows upon rows of small cages lined the floorspace beneath blue flickering manatorches. Xonan guards marched up and down the aisles, training their weapons on these containers packed to the brim with sweating, panicked Ledomaritans.
“Just walk in here, you tattooed freaks! I’ll rip your tails off and shove ‘em up your nostrils!”
“Just wait until Seclorum finds this place! He’ll blow it out of the sky!”
“For the love of Ledo, just some water! Just some water, it’s all we ask for!”
“Get me out! Get me out! I… I wanna go home! I wanna go hooooome!”
Above all this, clinging agilely to a long series of metal pipes, a metal mare quietly slithered. One hoof at a time, she shimmied her way down flanking stalks of manatorches, eying the prisonscape below with reflective eye-lenses.
At last, Roarke hung over a lone cage where the occupants had formed a rough circle. She could see through the bars at the top--aside from one blue crystal that was obstructing the view. Inside, an elderly Ledomaritan officer had collapsed--breathless--and another soldier was hunched over him, struggling to resuscitate the stallion. As the efforts went on and on, unsuccessful, he stood up with a teary expression and shouted through the bars for help. One Xonan passing by shuffled to a stop, turned aside, glared at him, and lashed forward. With flicker of metal strips, a serpent materialized and flashed its fangs before the bars. The prisoners inside jumped back, and soon the Xonan kept marching on, apathetic to the plight of the dying stallion.
Roarke’s jaw clenched and unclenched. At that precise moment, a loud horn could be heard blaring through the corridor. Curious, she glanced towards the far end of the place. Several Xonans were galloping away from a random cage full with no less than eighty Ledomaritans. Right as they left, the horn’s noise dwindled away, and in its place came streams of synthetic thunder. The blue crystal at the top of the cage proceeded to flicker and brim with electricity. The occupants within gasped and clamored at the bars of their cell, flinching away from the phenomenon strobing overhead. In a matter of seconds, the electrical beams shooting from the blue crystal intensified, even sparking off the coats and limbs of the enforcers below. Then, with a great blue flash, everypony inside vanished. The nearby cells gasped as a heavy silence fell over the entire corridor.
Roarke’s brow furrowed. She scanned all areas around the empty cage, breathless to find an answer to what happened to the prisoners. Just then, the most horrendous sound imaginable echoed from the far end of the corridor: the noise of nearly a hundred equine voices screaming at once. They were hideous bellows, gargling on death rattles and shuddered breaths cut far too short.
A cold chill ran over the bodies of the occupants in the many remaining cages. Sobbing voices mingled with the angry outbursts, and soon a deep rattle echoed from cell to cell. The Xonans barked at the enforcers to keep quiet, but even their most threatening snarls were largely ignored at this point.
All the while, Roarke’s lensed eyes had finally locked onto a strange blue aura emanating from an opening at the far end of the chamber. An ethereal mist rolled in, then dissipated as soon as it made contact with the nearest manatorches.
Curious, Roarke crawled her way to a junction of pipes, then chose to shimmy her way down a length of ceiling-pipes that took her towards the source of that eerie light, passing over the cages full of panicked ponies below.
At the sound of shuffling hooves, Kera looked up from where she was hugging herself. She glanced through the bars as several Xonans re-entered the chamber on the far side.
Dalen had returned, along with several guards from the Lightning-Bearer. They carried with them boxes full of plundered loot and began piling them onto a stone slab in the corner of the room. As they placed down one box, it tipped over and fell, spilling its contents loose. One of them was Princess Luna’s midnight satchel. Another…
With a clattering sound, a familiar hoofband rolled across the floor. It had almost reached the bars when Dalen’s hoof came down, stopping it firmly. He telekinetically floated the thing up, ignorant to the Odrsjot symbol brandished before him, and marched back to the Xonan grunts. He chewed their heads off verbally, holding the hoofband up for emphasis. Slapping the item back into Luna’s saddlebag, he gestured for the ponies to keep stacking boxes. They obeyed, murmuring nervous monosyllabic words under his furious gaze.
As Kera sighed, she heard a voice murmuring from behind her.
“I keep thinking and thinking about it.”
Kera turned around. “What?”
“Didn’t know I was capable of thinking, did you?” Zaid smirked from where he reclined like a fancy mare.
Kera frowned. “No, I mean what do you keep thinking about?”
Zaid motioned out the cage with his head. “The hoof-brace. It was supposed to guard against the powers of the book.”
Kera raised her eyebrow. “Really, guy? Really?”
Zaid sighed. “At least that’s what I thought Khao had explained. But, like, it doesn’t make sense.”
“How so?”
“Well, I mean… the runes!” Zaid gestured with his hoof. “All those funny looking images that are all linked with the Austraeoh. You think they would all work for her and not against her, y’know?”
“Right…”
“So, why would the ancient pegasi angels or whatcrap invent a rune simply to help Austraeoh with some nasty effect that the rest of the runes--caught aflame--would give her? It just seems contra inuit.”
“Counter intuitive.”
“Whoah! Heh…” Zaid smiled. “Smart kid.”
“Yeah, well…” Kera glared across the way at Nightshade. “I’ve been in plenty of eggheaded company.”
“It totally burned my balls off that the thing didn’t work, though,” Zaid said. “Your colorful big sis probably thinks I had it out for her all along, but that totally isn’t the case. I mean, they gave us the hoof-brace thingies so we could help her. We were elephant jade brown, after all.”
Kera squinted at him. “You? You were Eljunbyro?”
“Well, again, Khao was pretty dead-certain about that. All she wanted to do, really, was help Austraeoh past all the crap of this world between here and the very edge.” He pointed at the bars around him. “Crap like this. Ya smell me?”
Kera slowly shook his head. “I don’t think any of you guys had anything figured out. But it definitely didn’t stop you from going in over your head and ruining the lives of others.” She sighed and glared at Dalen from beyond the bars. “Just like the melon fudges who run this place.”
“Hey, I wasn’t too hot on the whole ‘Herald’ thing myself. I only stayed for the food, to be honest.”
“And that somehow makes you less lame than the rest?”
Zaid bit his lip.
“I have two friends… two really, really swell friends,” Kera muttered. “The real Eljunbyro.” She gulped. “Pilate… Belle. They’re the first adult ponies in forever who really, really wanted to he.lp me, to give me a home n’stuff. And because of all the crap that your boss started…” Kera winced, her eyes growing misty. “That I started, I might never see them again. And that kind of sucks, because I was getting really close to… to calling them…” She went silent, biting her lip.
“Hey, s’all good, kid. I get it.”
Kera glanced over.
Zaid winked. “Who said you gotta be flesh and blood just to be flesh and blood, ya dig?”
The foal blinked several times. She jerked at the sound of another crate being stacked onto the stone slab outside.
Dalen was overseeing another container of Ledomaritan possessions being slapped into place. Once again, an item fell out--a trinket at the end of a necklace. This time, Dalen didn’t laugh at any of the Xonan laborers. He simply picked the thing up and opened the clasp. Some enforcer’s beloved and their young foal sat in black and white photos, smiling at the viewer. A cold breath fountained from Dalen’s lips.
“War separates us viciously from the ones we care about.”
Dalen glanced out the corner of his eyes.
Nightshade was leaning back against the inner bars, her shoulders to him. “It is one reason why I want this horrible debacle to end. Nopony benefits. Nopony ever did.”
The stallion’s jaw went shut. He clasped the necklace shut and shuffled over to the cell. “A mare so manipulative and cold does not deserve loved ones.”
“Of course she does.” Nightshade glanced over with a sharp eye. “How else does she learn to be manipulative and cold in the first place?”
Dalen shuffled to a stop, dead silent.
With a breath, Nightshade pivoted about. “His name is Novus. He’s my brother. The war tore his body to shreds, and though I’ll likely never be able to speak with him again, I at least owe it to him to bring the holocaust to an end. It’s what has driven me this far.” She grasped the bars with two feminine hooves and murmured, “I wonder, what is it that drives you? And is it something else just as ghostly and familiar?”
Instead of snapping at her, Dalen lingered, his gaze falling to the stone floor. “I will not attempt to gain sympathy from a Ledomulian heathen.”
“And do you sincerely plan to receive any more clemency from the zealots who lord over you?”
Dalen’s teeth gritted.
Nightshade tilted her head up towards the ceiling of the place. “I saw how the stallion disregarded your honorable offering. What title did you attribute to him? Arcshod?”
“You hear too much.”
“Only because you speak too much,” Nightshade said. “You are gifted in many tongues, but none of them are what you wish to express yourself with. What robbed you of that gift, I wonder?”
Dalen hung in silence.
Nightshade pressed forward. “What stripped you of being Second Born?”
Dalen looked up with a sad expression. “I did not want to associate with the filth of those who defile the very name of Nagu’n with their existence. I would much rather have acquainted myself with rats and vermin than the likes of you.”
“But something dirtied you in the first place.”
“I had no choice,” Dalen murmured. “My family’s honor needs to be restored.”
“And what did they do that was so treacherous?”
Dalen’s nostrils flared. At last, he blurted, “They died.”
Nightshade blinked at that.
“They perished at the hooves of a Ledomulien engagement along the southern seas,” Dalen muttered. “My mate. My two sons. My mate’s mother and brother. All slain in their homes.”
Nightshade slowly nodded. “A horrible tragedy to befall anypony.”
“It was shameful,” Dalen spat. “Do you not understand? They perished to the sword and bullet like weak chaff of the fields. They did not struggle and they did not fight.”
“They… were innocents,” Nightshade declared.
“They were weak,” Dalen muttered. “They cowered and fell out of chorus with Nagu’n’s song. And because of that, they are forever tainted.” He gulped. “I am forever tainted.”
After a few quiet seconds, Nightshade said, “That’s a harsh faith to keep.”
“The only thing harsh is the shame I feel for not salvaging their honor,” Dalen muttered. “I thought my sacrifice as the phantom ‘Straker’ would suffice. Alas, I was foolish.”
“And you think anything you’ll ever do from now on will exonerate you in the eyes of Nagu’n?” Nightshade cocked her head to the side. “Or Archshod?”
Dalen stared at her, lips pursed. Eventually, he frowned and said, “Arcshod and Lasairfion, blessed by Nagu’n, are the intercessors of the Most Holy Goddess. Only they will find me a place once again in the chorus of the Almighty Serpent. My family’s spirits will forever writhe in dishonorable agony unless I die a redeemed pony.”
Nightshade slowly nodded. “And will you feel like you’re honoring them, doing everything out of guilt than out of love?”
“I am prepared to die for their eternal legacy!” Dalen hissed.
“Then I would feel sorry to disappoint you,” Nightshade said. “But, so long as you’re endeavoring to impress the likes of Arcshod and Lasairfion, I feel as though the job is taken.” That said, she shrugged her shoulders, pivoted about, and trotted coldly towards the far end of the cell.
Alone, Dalen slumped in place, exhaling heavily. His face scrunched in painful comprehension, and he ran a hoof through his hair as he slumped back towards the stack of crates, hesitantly dropping the locket back in.
Breaking through a sun-lit cloud bank, the Noble Jury rocketed its way southeast on searing jets of steam. Along the top deck, Props scampered from stern to bow, thrusting her head into the cockpit.
“Hey! Handsome!” The mare gulped and rubbed the sweat from her brow. “We need two more canisters!”
“Already?!” the elk retorted, sending sparks from his antlers into the cockpit controls. “Blonde boomer has already restocked Nancy’s womb thrice!”
“Yeah, well, if somepony didn’t stop accelerating this ship after every wind gust, then maybe we would conserve the backups better!”
“Do we wish to save paint bucket or do we not?!”
“Hey, I wanna save every color of the rainbow and the adoracute ponies attached to them at the head!” Props shrugged. “But at this rate, we’re gonna ram Nancy into the ground! And not in the consensual way!”
Pilate and Belle shuffled in from the top deck. “What’s all the commotion? Is something wrong?”
“Mr. Pilate, maybe you can talk some sense into Mr. Handsome! We need to conserve our fuel and this totally isn’t the way to totally go about dotallying it!”
“Stop trying to sprinkle stars onto your spit! It glitters enough as it is!”
“No you!”
“Everypony, just calm down,” Belle said with forelimbs outstretched. “I’m sure we can reach a reasonable compromise. After all, we’re in this together and we mutually seek the rescue of Rainbow and her--”
”Scrkkkk! Hey. Striped breeder. You there? Answer if you can.”
Everypony’s eyes jerked to Pilate as the zebra jumped and whipped out the sound stone. “Uhm. Yes! Y-yes, Roarke, we read you! Do you have an update from your end of--”
”How close are you p-ponies to the w-warfront?” Roarke’s voice desperately asked.
Belle’s face flexed with concern as she stared at the other’s faces. “We… we suspect a few days at our current speed.” She gulped. “Roarke, is… is everything alright?”
”I-I really think th-that you should endeavor to f-find a way to get to Seclorum faster.”
“Roarke, darling…” Belle trotted closer to her beloved’s sound stone. “Are… are you stuttering?”
Silence.
“Roarke…?”
”I… I have seen things…” the voice stammered from the other end.
Roarke sat in a rocky alcove somewhere deep in the Sacred Hold, her body bathed in a faint blue aura as the echoing traces of a whining noise lingered like a dying siren all around her. Her body hunched tighter against the craggy stone as she hissed into the sound stone.
“In all m-my years of sp-spilling blood and collecting b-bounties, I thought I would be prepared… but… but…”
She lingered. Her teeth glinted in the blue light. As a shudder ran through her body, she leaned into the shadows and reached a hoof up to her face. There was a hissing sound as she removed her lenses and rubbed her eyes. A voice mewled from the darkness.
“Rainbow… R-Rainbow Dash…”
”Roarke? Roarke, what’s wrong? Is Rainbow there? Can we speak to her?”
Roarke took a deep breath. Her body went rigid, displacing the trembles in her limbs. She snapped her lenses back on and leaned forward into the blue light once again. “Never mind that. We’ve arrived at the Xonans’ Sacred Hold, and we need a way out of here. Now would be a good time to intervene on Seclorum’s behalf. If he’s the one pony who can provide a distraction, then so be it. The sooner we’re out of this place, the better.”
“But… but Roarke, how--?”
“The sooner the better,” Roarke grunted.
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Rainbow must have found the center of the tootsie pop... and so did Roarke
Roarke just took at least 8 san loss right there, and probably gained at least 5 mythos knowledge on seeing the fate of Rainbow Dash (and the ledos from the cage). [Call of Cthulhu]
I am thinking coatl...
images.wikia.com/labibliotecadelviejomundo/es/images/a/a6/Rainbow_Coatl_by_ArnaTornwolf.jpg
OH SHIZZZZZ
...Something that's enough to rattle Roarke like that has GOT to be bad news...
Roarke isn't easily scared. This is bad.
~Basso
arcade.svatopluk.com/konami/contra/contra_01.png
wearecanadians.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/inuit-people3.jpg
Why is this not being made?
If Roarke is scared, it's really, like really bad news. Still, good at least that FINALLY we met something that scared Roarke, I thought for the moment that she's fearless.
Honestly, making the greatest badass character be afraid of something not known to the reader has to be one of the cheapest tricks there are. I... I am almost ashamed to admit that it worked to the point of me being genuinely afraid right now. For the love of Skirts, Skirts, you scare me as much as your story. Oh so related picture for today:
features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g67/196067/196067_1202138363_large.jpg
"Feed the Giants" is what it's called. I think I need a break.
Alright.
Hurray, the Xonans just went full Searonese. Yet another culture that doesn't just deserve to be taken down a notch, but to be wiped from the face of the planet. All of my hate. All of it.
stream1.gifsoup.com/view/143332/nc-genius-o.gif
Oh, she's so good at what she does. And the situation makes her use her evil for good! She's almost like Roarke's better half!
She has eyes.
This story is getting harder and harder to read by the chapter...
I was going to comment on Kera's determination and loyalty.
Or Dalen's tragic past, and Nightshade's attempts at eliciting a response from him.
Or the awesomeness of the Propdien combo.
Or how nice it is to know I'm not completely detached from reality, and actually care about what happens
But frightened Roarke trumps them all.
You know I think the thing that shocks me the most here is that we aren't even half way finished with Odrsjot and stuff is already completely out of control, has been for a while now; and is clearly about to get much worse.
Ok fuck...
3479557
You know shit is beyond terrifying if Roarke is scared. I'm afraid for Dash.
Also, since when did she have eyes? Holy shit.
Floydien and Props are destined to be shipped. Quote me on this, too.
And I now sympathize with Dalen. The war has taken so much from both sides that you can't really say either of them are right and wrong.
Please don't let the chaos strips be made from ponies, please...
Serpent, eh? To echo what's already been said, if something's daunting enough to set Roarke's sphincter a-pucker, it must be hellish indeed. Nagu'n reveal incoming? And seriously tho... I never thought I'd say this, but go Ledomare! I once held some hope that Xona would have a level head on its shoulders, but gawd, they're just awful! Where's the napalm when you need it?
Also, soooooo much character development.
Well, it seems they took off the pendant and Rainbow has fully transformed.
RD turning into their pet chaos monster?
I feel kind of bad for Roarke. Fear isn't something she's felt much, if ever, so she has to deal with double the overwhelming strangeness. If she manages to pull herself together quickly after being shaken like this, I want give her a congratulatory hug. If not, I would give her a hug anyway.
Meanwhile, I only just found out that Noble Jury is an anagram of Eljunbyro. Thanks TV Tropes!
Fucking shit on a stack of corpses, this is getting terrifying.
3480164 Oh you can: they're both, very, very wrong.
3480537 Interesting anagram.
3480353 I wouldn't say that would be all that terrifying per se? Pilate saw, err felt, RD as chaos personified. I would expect there to be something far worse than Discordification going on here.
Ooh, this chapter is pretty dark.
Also, Props is pretty good at comebacks.
Gets them every time.
It may not necessarily be the violence that scares Roarke - I studied genocide for my degrees, and that included videos and such. The kinds of attrocities you can see and bear witness to singularly may not be that bad. But seeing them on a grand scale, or witnessing someone who takes pleasure in what they do, not purpose, but downright pleasure, can be more disgusting and unnerving to a creature than you might think.
Regardless, I think Roarke may have seen what Dash can be turned into.
Shit MUST be bad if she's not only stuttering but..also removed her lenses...I mean BAAAD.
I'm guessing they removed Rainbow's Element and are using her to murder those Enforcers...At this point I lost a lot of sympathy for a lot of Xonans....
3480353 Only so long as they feeding her...but what happens when Kera finds her?
Hurry up Floydien! Less spit more speed!!!
Back when Dash was dead, she was , saved, by being placed into a heavy sarcophagus made of chaos metal, the only time it was opened was in a sealed room full of enforcer beloved inocents.
The Xonans are repeating the action, feeding the Enforcers to Chaos Dash.
Roarke has seen what Dash is turning into without her pendant, and the, delicious enjoyment, that form takes in destructive chaos.
Meanwhile, overhead, between Equestria and the moon, there is a Severe lack of Dr Robotnics planet cracker from Curse Of The Werehog.
Nancy Jane needs to get there faster. Someone needs to purchase fuel scoop. Fly lower. If there is a river going in the right direction, they could do the Flying Scotsman trick. Refueling at 90 mph. Well, picking up water, but the principle, and the near ton per second flow is there. Im pretty sure only the Saturn 5 has a higher mass flow per feed line.
3480814
3481038
^This guy's theory?
3480537
And Odrsjot is an anagram for....DJ Torso! In da house
3479557 Something (either Chaos-Dash or else) is killing 1 d3 enforcers per round.
3480233 Maybe this fortress is fueled by heathen souls?
Damn. Something that showed Roarke fear has got to be pretty bad. I've said this before- I'm no fan of the Ledomaritans' methods, but they are preferable by far to what the Xonans appear to be doing.
Hopefully the gang will find a way to pull together and put a stop to these horrors soon.
Nobody's ever actually seen Chaos Dash and lived. The only one who came close was Pilate, if I recall correctly (or it was Belle in the dark, same deal) and even the faint image they got by -ahem- feeling Dash up was a pretty scary one.
Point being, if you're looking for something that could scare the shit out of Roarke, that would be a good place to start.
I'm guessing roarke saw chaos dash. no bueno
You could easily have this as a play, the dialogue works so well.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
Alright, first off, good backstory for Dalen. Second off - and I didn't want to mention this for a long time because I hate Ledomare - but these Xonans are cruel. They're as bad as Ledomare, truthfully. And Roarke's reaction...get to the Xonan stronghold, Nancy Jane. Get there NOW. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
I'm seeing another connection to Windthrow; chaos metal summoning/controlling chaos beasts. Mysterious fog, kept at bay only by mana-torches.
I'm not sure that Chaos-Dash is eating the enforcers. Could be, but I suspect something else. Guess I'll find out soon.
Edit: thought about this at work all day. I'd like to articulate why I believe Dash isn't the one eating the enforcers.
1. Dash mutilated/ate the ponies at Blue Shelf because she believed that she was already a monster, with no choice in the matter. They told her that she was the one who killed the entire village where she was found. She believed it, and fell into the classic trap of substance abusers and abused partners everywhere - you have no choice, no control, just let it happen. She knows better now. She has to have some level of control, even when "chaos'd." In fact, I bet that the only way she can travel on the dark side is to be "chaos'd" but without her friends, I wonder if she will lose control. Maybe she'll be able to go with them, maybe they will be partially-chaos'd enough to accompany her. Just an idea.
2. The cages were built with the teleporter crystals in mind. They were built long before Dash was even known of. They clearly had a purpose before she showed up. Ergo, the teleporters were not meant to feed Chaos-Dash.
Chaos Dash? An even eviler, creepier snake demon thing? What did she see? Like, seriously, what the crap did she see? I'm so curious/nervous right now it's ridiculous.
The one good thing about being a million chapters behind is not having to wait. Onward!
Heavy
... Roarke... Roarke is scared...
-Spirit
Shit, if something rattle Roarke....
IM scared...
what....the FUCK.....could get a solid-hardflank like Roarke shaken up like that?!?!?!
also
3479538
THAT is funny lol
All praise the mighty Nagu'n!
TAKE OFF THIS UNIFORM AND LEAVE THE SHOW
Well, Nightshade's found a crack to chip away at with Dalen. Knowing her, she's gonna chisel all she's worth at him. And I know that Xona's religious zealotry was intense, but the things revealed here has put them on par with Ledomare's useless war effort. Both sides are now equally weighted for both being despicable wastes of oxygen and carbon.
As for Roarke's terror... I'm not sure if it's Chaos Dash. It might be, and oddly enough, I kinda WANT it to be, but...
Something's amiss.
I know I said I wanted Chaos Dash to help out....not like this....a cruel abominable act at the least
And Rainbow Dash, how else would you learn that term
? And if Roarke is worried, what could she have seen?
"Almighty Serpent," eh? A giant chaos monster, or one of the Divines? Either way, seems like they're feeding prisoners to something at a prodigious rate.
This epic keeps on getting more... epic! What in the world is in store for our Noble Jury in the coming chapters? I wish I could read more and find out faster, but alas I have work in the morning and stuff. At least school is over for about a month.
~SolidFire
If Roarke's scared of it, that ain't good...also, for some weird reason I thought (up til this point) that her "lenses" were synthetic eyeballs that replaced her original ones, much like they did with her internal organs. I guess it's easier for me to...envision her now.