Cigarettes & Gunmetal

by MonoGlyph

Nox Aeterna (Exeunt)

Applejack inspected each of the distribution boards in turn and sighed, closing her maintenance kit. Next to the toolbox, her discarded cellphone hummed quietly and Twilight’s face materialized on the screen.

“How’s progress, Applejack?”

The farmer spat out the screwdriver she’d been clenching in her teeth and nodded at the wrecked fuse cases behind her. They looked like they’d been melted through.

“Not good,” she said to the phone, letting it continue lying face to the ceiling. “Sorry to say the main circuit is completely FUBAR. Whoever was down here did a real thorough job.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?” asked Twilight in a tone bordering on accusing.

Applejack screwed her lips in the dark. The unicorn’s abrasive mannerisms were starting to grate.

“Nah, the auxiliary circuit seems salvageable, so I’ll try and reroute the power through there. Dunno what it does though, so I couldn’t tell you what that means for our incursion.”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” said Twilight. The screen of the phone went black again, plunging most of the room back into darkness.

Applejack adjusted her spotlight tripod and turned to the case housing the auxiliary distribution board.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.”

The heavy ebony doors leading into the palace interior stood proudly obstructing entry. On each polished slab the detailed pony-carved designs were pristine, displaying stylized reliefs of assorted creatures kneeling prostrate before the piercing rays of the sun. A single serene eye was carved into the solar centerpiece. The Eye of Providence; a pre-equine symbol plagiarized and adapted from several unearthed anthroid relics.

Twilight chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.

I guess the dominion of one of the largest nation-states in the world affords one the luxury of having questionable taste.

Standing there, she heard steps behind her. A unicorn stallion and an earth mare in business attire crossed the threshold beneath the roof of the veranda, shielding their heads from the hail with rolls of newsprint. The stallion wore several small piercings beneath his lip and over his right eye, and an eight-pointed solar emblem hung from his neck. The assorted bling didn’t complement his tie and waistcoat. An unlit clove cigarette hung loosely from his lips.

His companion was similarly at odds with her suit: the collar of her dress shirt was unbuttoned and flared, and decorative ink was printed across her forehead, sharp, angular letters made to resemble Cyrillic script spelling “BLESSED IGNORANCE”. The vertical line on the reversed R continued below the brow, through her left eye and over the gentle curve of her cheek, bringing to mind scars or exaggerated clown makeup.

They were both armed, the unicorn wearing a holstered Levitus bear-slug and the mare supporting twin SMG turrets around her midriff and corrosion grenades clipped into what looked like a homemade utility belt. Giselle brushed past Fluttershy and Angel to intercept the couple before they could reach Twilight.

“We gonna have a problem?” she asked them.

Her own piece was fastened to her breastplate with static strips, but at this distance she didn’t need it; if either of the strangers made any sudden moves, the gryphon would claw them apart well before they’d be able to prime their arms.

The printed mare squinted balefully at Giselle.

“Just like a typical ratbird, don’t know to mind her own fuckin’ business. We’re here to talk to your stick-up-the-ass boss.”

A grin crept across Giselle’s beak. Sharply contrasting Equestrian values, in gryphon cultures the baring of teeth is almost always intended as a threat. Perhaps the stallion was aware of this as he chuckled warmly and nudged his companion’s shoulder, trying to diffuse the tension.

“Excuse her please, the weather’s put her a little on edge; colder than a wendigo’s heart out here. My name is Baroque Belobog and this is my partner, Yaga.” He made an elaborate bow as Yaga rolled her eyes. “Mister Pants related to me that he would never forgive himself if any harm were to befall Miss Sparkle as a result of his inaction here. Yaga and myself volunteered to ameliorate Mister Pants’ conscience by accompanying you into the palace.”

Twilight idly consulted the Grapevine’s weather forecast; the hail would continue for the duration of the day and the next night, until the warmth of the next morning’s sun would convert it into rain.

“Yeah? Mister Pants said that, did he?” she asked. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand, Mister Belobog?”

“Of that I am quite certain.” The stallion winked, beaming at her around his cigarette. “And I would never fabricate or misrepresent the facts, Twilight. Can I call you Twilight?”

“No,” she told him icily. “Miss Sparkle will suffice. I guess I’m not really in any position to turn away help. But keep your distance.”

Three notes of Oscura’s eighth symphony escaped Twilight’s pocket before she withdrew her cell and hit the receiving switch. The screen blinked to life, broadcasting a close-up of Applejack’s mouth. Twilight had to stop herself from visibly recoiling from the phone in the presence of her new escorts.

“The auxiliary circuit is online,” said the mouth. “I’ll meet y’all in the foyer.”

“Right,” Twilight answered and, searching for something else to say, “T-thanks.”

The screen returned to neutral as the call ended. She slid the phone back into her pocket and nodded to the others.

“Well then. After you.”

There was little change to the palace interior since Twilight had last seen it, besides the gloom that permeated every corner and crevice of every room. The usually luminous chambers and halls were shrouded in pervasive darkness.

They reunited with Applejack in the lobby as agreed. Two curling rug-covered staircases climbed behind the secretary’s desk and merged with a marble catwalk that skirted the chamber and led into the second floor of the palace, home to the ballroom and the royal court. Beneath the stairs, a broad entrance hall led deeper into the building.

“So did that rewire really accomplish anything?” asked Twilight. “The whole place is still pitch-black.”

The fluorescent tubes inset in the walls ignited almost before she’d finished the sentence. Dim lines of light spilled from the narrow glass apertures, reaching several yards into the hall before fading back into black. The palace remained dark beyond.

“Is that it?” asked Thunderlane, brushing the grains of hail out of his mohican. “Alright, clip in your torches, gents.”

Applejack shot the stallion a sidewise glance and started wordlessly into the hall. As she walked, the tubes appeared to warm up, reaching their maximum brightness just as she passed them, light reflecting off of the polished coltan of her robotic hips, and dimming again behind her. After making some twenty paces, she turned back around to regard the rest of the group.

“Motion sensors in the walls toggle the lights,” she said with a smirk. “Not what you’d call optimal, but it’s energy-efficient and I don’t think we’ll be taken off-guard with these doodads lightin’ up any movement.”

Thunderlane returned the grin, shrugged. “Alright, fair. I think we’ll take the lead then, missy.”

Applejack fell behind with Fluttershy and Twilight as the four Carousel sec-ops and two Stalliongrad mafiosi scouted the passage ahead, squinting into the darkness of branching corridors and connecting rooms. Applejack managed to negotiate a spreadgun from one of the mobsters outside before entering the palace, while Fluttershy was armed with a fletcher crossbow. Assorted pouches of flechettes were slung across her back, beneath her pet hare. Angel was trained to keep his master supplied with clips whose payload was appropriate for the situation.

Only Twilight remained conspicuously unarmed. Her only prior experience with weapons had been a beam pistol, and neither the Carousel security force nor the Stalliongrad mafia had access to anything of the sort. Beam weapons were expressly forbidden in Equestria outside active warzones, without the possession of a specialty hunter’s license, which were notoriously difficult to obtain and almost impossible to forge thanks to their holographic serial fingerprint.

“Maybe we should split up?” ventured Flash Sentry. “We’d cover more ground.”

“That better be a joke,” Thunderlane said grimly. “We don’t even know what we’re up against, Sentry.”

This stretch of hallway appeared to be devoted to servants’ quarters. The rooms were comparably small and spartan, their entirety illuminated by the sparse light filtering in from the hall. In the hall proper, even here, the floor was covered in decadent crimson fuzz and the walls were adorned with portraits of past rulers and artist’s interpretations of famous events in Equestrian history. Twilight’s studied eye recognized the signing of the peace treaty between the Three Tribes, the coronation of Clover the Clever and the coming of the Celestial Diarchs.

Nostalgic recollections of the past, rendered by some deluded romantic, ringing hollow in the silent gloom.

The entire floor seemed to be utterly deserted. No bodies, nor any hint that there ever had been any residing here.

“Shouldn’t this place be swarming with posh inbred aristocrats?” Yaga asked loudly.

“Stay sharp,” said Thunderlane. “We know that a scouting team had already disappeared inside the building earlier today.”

“No kidding, inspector chucklefuck. It was mostly our guys that went in here. Don’t think we don’t know the score.”

Flash raised his eyebrows at Baroque.

“Your partner sure has a gift for making friends,” he said under his breath.

Baroque chewed on his unlit clove and shrugged, smiling faintly. “That’s one way to put it.”

As they neared the rear staircase, the lights they ignited finally fell on a discrepancy in their surroundings. A single suited stallion lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, his limbs a disturbing parody of equine joints, the flesh of his meatier components marked and torn by something resembling teeth.

“Sun preserve us,” Baroque whispered, touching the solar emblem around his neck. “That’s Koschei, isn’t it?”

Yaga rolled the stallion over, flinching at the terrified expression frozen on his face. “Yep. He was a tough motherfucker too. And whatever got him, he was running away. See the blood?”

Twilight got closer for verification and, sure enough, a trail of deeper red had seeped into the crimson of the rug covering the stairs. The stallion was already bleeding when he stumbled, rolling down the steep incline of the staircase, probably injuring himself too severely to continue running. His pursuer caught up and tore him apart while he was still alive and conscious.

The eyes of her escort felt hot on her back. She took a cylinder of quiesenathine out of her jacket pocket and dry-swallowed a tablet, still facing away from the others. Then she allowed herself an exasperated sigh, not entirely manufactured.

“Look, anyone want to back out, stop wasting my time and piss off. But I’ve got an obligation to the Princess and to my brother to keep going. Everyone else, we’re moving on to the second floor.”

Pinprick looked to the stretch of hallway behind them longingly, but Thunderlane stopped him dead with a warning grunt. Twilight ascended the staircase with the rest of the team trailing closely behind her.

A pair of ornate double-doors, (apparently a dime a dozen inside the Celestial Palace), swung open into the rear of a lavish ballroom. Most of the lighting was nonfunctional but the musical podium was a stunning ebony silhouette, suggestive even in the darkness. The reflective pipes of the organ gleamed in the auxiliary light and stretched towards the grand painted ceiling high above. The deserted atmosphere ran counter to the pristine condition of their surroundings; the wax on the tiles was fresh enough that one could almost see his reflection standing opposite below.

“Oh my, is this where the Royal Family hosts the Grand Galloping Gala?” asked Baroque, and she could almost see the sparkles in his eyes. “Please, Miss Sparkle, you have to enlighten us! Have you ever attended a Gala?”

“Not since I was ten,” Twilight answered disinterestedly. “Dresses, dancing and alcohol aren’t my idea of a good time. Neglecting to mention the vacuous gossip and circle-jerking between the blowhard politicians and the ‘inbred’ aristocracy, as your friend so elegantly put it.”

She tossed her head in the mobster’s direction. “Anyway, I’m not here to be your tour guide. Move it or lose it.”

The ceiling was supported by six marble wendigo gargoyles, grimacing down at them from their loadbearing columns overhead. Fluttershy kept her eyes trained on the statues as the party crossed the wide, exposed ballroom floor. The shadows cast by the borrowed light played on the wendigoes’ features, lending them an air of malevolence as if they were watching for an opportunity to descend into the trespassers’ midst and put their incursion to a violent end. The memory of Koschei’s mauled and shattered body played in her mind, and she couldn’t shake it loose.

A grand staircase climbed from the midsection of the ballroom onto the next floor, leading directly into the Hall of Indulgences. The staircase itself was tall but not overmuch, so as not to dilute the effect of a royal entrance. The distance was expertly measured; each time the Princess descended the marble steps, her audience would collectively cease their conversations and catch their breath. The crimson of the rug complemented the immaculate white of her coat, which put even the polished marble and ivory of the walls and floor to shame. The effect was that of a goddess drifting from the heavens to mingle with the groveling mortals below.

Twilight had always suspected that the palace architects had made the building interior ever-so-slightly off-white, so as not to overshadow the Celestial Princess. The memories of her time in the palace set her teeth on edge.

If Shining wasn’t around here somewhere…

She stopped. Then what? Would she knowingly allow the Nightmare to stage a coup?

At the summit of the grand staircase stood an imposing gate, equipped with a wrought iron portcullis. The portcullis itself had been raised by force, if the damaged electric winch next to the door was any indication. Giselle shouldered the gate open and they entered the hallowed Hall of Indulgences.

The Hall was intended as a superficial method of impressing foreign ambassadors on their way to the throne room. Breathtaking murals of Equestrian landscapes and romanticized modern interpretations of grim-faced past rulers covered the massive walls inspiring feelings of reverence and personal insignificance that were appropriate to prepare oneself for an audience with the esteemed sovereign-cum-matriarch.

Enormous stained glass windows towered over the hall, depicting individuals whose school-taught historical significance bordered on religious worship. The valiant Commander Hurricane. The hedonistic Duchess Platinum. The deranged Chancellor Puddinghead. Below them, Star Swirl the Bearded and his pupil, Clover the Clever, harbingers of the Post-Classical Era. As the Hall progressed, their surroundings became more difficult to define. The murals dissolved into impressionism, then abstract art. Fluid, nonobjective statues flanked the passage. Though they didn’t seem to represent anything in particular, Twilight found the statues to be vaguely erotic, slick couplings of polished bronze caught mid-coitus.

Another stallion was reclining against one of the statues, his head forced through an opening in the sculpture and twisted to the breaking point of the neck. His cooling body lay limp and bloodless in the unyielding embrace of the amorphous figure, looking as though it was being devoured by some newly surfaced amphibious lifeform.

Twilight swallowed, involuntarily checking the position of her own neck and throat.

“Triglav too,” muttered Yaga. “Shit.”

As they neared the ornate white gold door leading into the throne room proper, Twilight heard something mechanical stir in the corners of the Hall. Members of her escort raised their arms as one. The emergency lighting flickered on, exposing the source of the commotion.
Two identical, vaguely equine machines came shuddering to life, seated on stools to either side of the door and, using their jarringly unequine claws, began keying a pair of elaborately painted harpsichords.

The automatons were a sterile white, faceless and composed of overlapping plates made to resemble rippling musculature. Meanwhile, the instruments they played looked like refurbished antiques, the black and white of the keyboards inverted, overlooked by finely painted lids. The resulting duet sounded like a neoclassical rendition of the popular Equestrian military hymn Ode to the Sun (Light of Heaven Guide Us).

Thunderlane glanced over his shoulder at her anxiously. “What is this, some kind of security system?” he asked.

“No, nothing so practical,” said Twilight, lip twitching with distaste. “It’s the Two Heralds. Purely decorative. Leave it to the Celestial Princess to flaunt her wealth, even in the absence of a reliable power source.”

This wasn’t true in the strictest sense; The Heralds had foiled at least two intrusion attempts in the past, but not in and of themselves.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Few assassins are brazen enough to enter through the front door these days.

The throne chamber doubled as a panic room; its door was a gilded, jewel-encrusted affair, with a complex, gear-based locking mechanism that would put many high-end vault hatches to shame. The assembly had all the grace and subtlety of a thermonuclear suicide vest.

Giselle ran a claw over the fine engravings of the arch. “Is this some kind of expensive self-parody attempt?”

Twilight shrugged. It occurred to her that she barely even knew the Princess, despite all the years she’d spent in her tutelage. Maybe Her Ladyship was intentionally milking her crème de la crème public image. Twilight had certainly never been brave enough to broach the subject.

“Ready your guns. I think we’re approaching the endgame here.” With that, Twilight focused on the external bolts, pins and tumblers decorating the door. They didn’t offer any resistance as she manipulated them in the correct sequence with her horn, and each slid smoothly back into its sheath, unlocking the gilded lid leading into the chamber.

The gaudy door swung open, sparkling dully in the hallway glow and sending shards of broken light dancing across the darkened heart of the Celestial Palace.

The crimson carpet raced from the door into the center of the room, disappearing into the darkness. Another set of statues stood bordering the carpet in pairs, leading up to the dais supporting the throne. Twilight knew from memory that the statues were busts representing a grab bag of pre-industrial gods. Some were equine, some avian and some caprine, expressions ranging from studied indifference to grimacing rage, smug half-smiles and grief.

You didn’t need a degree in psychology to understand the symbolism.

Cast aside your primitive superstitions. The Celestial Princess and her confidants in the Royal Court are your new gods.

A matronly voice rang out against the darkness, sudden enough to make her flinch.

“And so another flock of licentious lambs wanders into the lion’s den…”

The emergency lighting around the throne finally kicked in, the motion sensors only barely registering the movement of the speaker’s lips.
The Nightmare sat reclining on the cushioned golden seat, a fetlock casually supporting her chin. Her head was covered by her iconic cobalt galea, her azure-bathed pupils contracting momentarily from the light, though the rest of her sunken, radiation-worn features remained motionless. She was clad in elaborate plate mail to match her headdress, save for her horn and wings, which remained mostly bare.

Twilight choked out a small giggle, with an edge of genuine hilarity. The lighting change was sudden enough that the whole encounter could have been taken for a scene out of some nostalgic holofilm melodrama.

“I don’t know how it was two hundred years ago, Luna,” she said, trying to regain her composure, “but in the present day lions and sheep are generally not found living in the same habitat.”

The Nightmare shifted in her seat, leaned forward to consider the party more closely.

“Twilight Sparkle,” she said finally, experimentally, as though she was unused to how the syllables were strung together. “Filled to overflowing with the hubris of youth. We meet for a second time.”

“Excuse me?” asked Twilight. “I don’t know you.”

“Does your memory betray you, lamb?” The Nightmare leaned back on the throne, tossing her star-pocked mane apathetically with her forehoof. “Regardless. Nothing you do here will serve any purpose. Much too late… The new moon will rise again, as it must; it is beyond the means of mortals to stay the sunset.”

“You wanna drop the theatrics and tell us what the fuck you’re doing here?” Yaga demanded.

The Nightmare remained silent, no indication that she even heard the question.

“What is your plan, exactly?” Twilight tried, stepping forward. The indentations between the floor tiles around the carpet lit up in pale yellow, casting the stained patterns of the tiling into elaborate silhouette. “You think that, assuming you somehow overcome Princess Celestia and her Royal Guard, you can just outlaw anthroid technology and bring back the good old days? You can’t kill progress, Luna.”

The Nightmare’s lips quirked up, and her smile felt as warm and reassuring as it would on the face of a Manehatten sewer gator. “Perhaps not,” she conceded, “but it is only a matter of time. Poverty, strife, immorality, these are the wages of your sin. Industries arise, built on slavery, prostitution, intoxicating substances and tools of war, to name but a few. Countless lives, lost at the flick of a switch. Others, sold, piecemeal, to the highest bidder. Wars, regimes established for natural resources. For profit.

“Society cannot exist at length under such conditions,” she said matter-of-factly. “Rioters will flood the streets, storm our halls; put their clerks and senators to the sword. The poor will devour the rich.”

“You really believe that societal discord and upheaval alone is going to be enough to set the world back two hundred years?” asked Twilight. “Care to make a wager on that?”

“Look upon my masterwork arrows, cried the fletcher, and quake, for I hold in my hooves the power to end this world,” Luna went on, unmoved. “But he did not foresee that other stallions, too, would discover the secret to crafting his mighty arrows. And so, when next the kingdom’s squires, knights and archers marched to war, the earth was charred black and ash eclipsed the sun.”

Something seemed to stir in the shadows surrounding the throne, something nebulous and suggestive. The busts framing the carpet took on a more sinister aura; trophies. Beheaded criminals and leaders of rival tribes, mounted on pikes standing before the throne of a cannibal chieftain. Shapes in the dark, trick of the eye.

“This façade of prosperity and intellectualism is doomed to crumble in time,” she concluded. “My followers and I aim only to destabilize it quickly, and with a minimum of collateral damage.”

“There’s something moving out there,” Fluttershy whispered.

Applejack tapped Twilight urgently on the shoulder. “Maybe we should—”

“You know what, you’re right, pre-industrial life was so much better,” said Twilight, rolling her eyes. “I would much rather starve or die of smallpox or be crucified and stoned for my religious skepticism.

“You know why you think things were better during the dark ages?”

“Please enlighten me,” said Luna, deadpan.

“You were a pampered diarch whose chief duties were to gorge yourself at the tax payer’s expense and pretend to move the moon across the sky for the ignorant masses,” Twilight said heatedly. “Once the peasants got any means to improve their miserable lives, however small, you just couldn’t let it lie, could you?”

But Luna wasn’t rising to the bait this time.

“You are more recalcitrant than I would expect from my sister’s protégé.” She smiled again but more gently. “Though perhaps… that is precisely the reason.”

“Save your amateur psychoanalysis for someone who gives half a shit.” Abruptly Twilight understood that continuing the exchange just wasn’t worth the effort. “Where’s my brother, Luna?”

The Nightmare’s eyes lost focus, as though she was staring through Twilight, through the palace walls and somewhere far beyond.

“The flock, lost to the folly of the old ones. Stallion, mare and foal under the influence of evil, ancient beyond imagining. I am among the stars, unable to intervene, passively watching as my body and the world below wither away.”

Twilight held down a shudder. More than a century’s worth of isolation on the moon. It’s no joke.

She took another step forward. “Where is my—?”

The floor in front of her shattered in an ultraviolet flash. She yelped, shielding her eyes from the tile fragments as they buffeted her.

When she felt it safe enough to sneak another look, the distance in the Nightmare’s eyes was gone, replaced by barely suppressed fury. Her long, slender horn glowed a menacing azure.

“Tread softly, lamb. Draw any closer and I will eviscerate you where you stand.”

Behind her, Twilight heard the dry clicking of firearms being primed.

“That’s pretty impressive,” said Thunderlane. “Can you stop bullets with that horn of yours too?”

As before, Luna refused to acknowledge outside commentary.

“Your brother, you say,” she said, visibly composing herself. “Perhaps you are referring to the foolhardy white unicorn that blundered in here sometime prior. He too walked with a cohort of armed commoners. They were, quite appropriately, decimated. Before we could rout the interlopers in their entirety, however, the unicorn and two others barricaded themselves in the wine cellar.”

She inclined her head dismissively.

“His wards are… competent. But alas, even these won’t hold us back indefinitely. And so, I present you with a choice, Twilight Sparkle. Or rather, an ultimatum. Reveal to me the location of my treacherous elder sister, and you and your kin may leave the palace grounds unharmed.”

Twilight ran a forehoof over the side of her face; her cheek was bleeding in several places. She found herself disproportionately preoccupied with the likelihood of the cuts becoming infected.

“She’s not here then, is she?” Almost casual, but the crack in Twilight’s voice belied her calm veneer. “What do I look like, her secretary?”

“So you are not privy to her whereabouts,” said Luna. “That is most unfortunate. Though mayhap I can still turn this situation to my advantage.”

Something in the Nightmare’s tone made Twilight’s heart sink.

“If I take you as my prisoner, I may be able to coerce her into granting me an audience. Won’t you agree, my little lamb?”

“You’d have to go through us first!” yelled Flash Sentry.

“Right.” Giselle stripped her pistol from its static holster and pulled the slide back to check the chambered round. “Think you can polish off all eight of us by yourself? With the lights on?”

The Nightmare’s lips peeled from her teeth in an unpleasant smirk as she regarded the others for the first time. “You seem to be under the impression that I am here alone.” The darkness behind the throne started swimming again. Twilight’s blood ran cold. “Allow me to address that… misconception.”

Shadows spread from the throne, unaffected by the emergency lighting. As Twilight and her companions watched transfixed, the dark shapes started to inflate into the third dimension and dress in thin blue-white fog. Then, as the light danced over their features, Twilight saw them for what they were.

Equine. Their ears were pointed, reminiscent of bats, and their leathery, ethereal wings compounded the effect. Nevertheless, their facial structure was distinctly pony-like, though in some cases worn to the bone. Those that still wore the scarred skin and muscle on their skulls contorted their faces in pain or anger.

As the mob swelled and rippled, ghastly will-’o-the-wisp lanterns ignited above, and beaten, gore-spattered war hounds began to circle restlessly below, snarling and spraying spittle over the gleaming tilework.

“Wild Hunt,” Fluttershy whispered. Twilight barely heard her over the barking of the phantom dogs.

“Martyrs of my Separatist Lunar Guard,” Luna explained. “Two hundred years ago they fell trying to repel their brothers among Celestia’s royal army. Even now, even in death, they are loyal only to me. Surrender yourselves and prostrate, lest you all be torn—”

A burst of gunshots echoed around the dome of the throne chamber.

Giselle’s pistol spat out three hollow-points, two passing through some of the apparitions and temporarily distorting their forms, while the third pierced the Nightmare’s outmoded breastplate and buried its cracked shrapnel inside her ribcage.

The phantoms surged forward, screaming and snapping. Before them, the stands supporting the deific busts toppled and the marble heads cracked on the tiled floors. The decorative candelabra standing on the outer edges of the chamber were thrown backwards against the walls casting their extinguished candles every which way. The massive chandelier hanging overhead took to swaying ominously, the pendulum of a giant’s grandfather clock.

And over the pandemonium, they heard the Nightmare’s outraged howl.

“Then perish and smolder in the pits of Tartarus, you insolent churls!”

Twilight felt Thunderlane pushing her backwards with the length of his wing.

“Scatter!” shouted the stallion.

The company broke apart. As she raced for the exit, Twilight caught quick unfocused glimpses of Baroque and Yaga taking off toward the royal bedchambers. From the corner of her eye she saw Giselle, still firing into the murky depths of the mob in a futile display of defiance.
Sprinting beneath her bullets, leaving smoking paw prints in their wake, the phantom war hounds sprung at the gryphon and bit into one of her wings as she instinctively raised it to defend herself. There was a shrill scream and a flash of sanguine as their incisors drew blood. Twilight forced herself to tear her eyes away and remain focused on her escape.

Ahead of her, Flash Sentry stumbled over a fragment from one of the busts and went flying head over heels. Thunderlane stopped somewhere behind her as she left them in the dust.

“You’ve got wings son, use them! I’ll buy you and Sparkle some time!”

She wanted to shout over her shoulder as she ran, but she knew that she had to conserve her wind.

Buy us time? You’re not even going to slow them down, you moron!

Flash Sentry closed the distance. Twilight felt him grabbing her roughly around the midriff as he barreled past, his wings flapping madly. Her mind drew inappropriate comparisons to hummingbirds.

They shot through the throne room door like a bullet, and landed sprawled before the Heralds next to Applejack, Fluttershy and Angel who seemed to have gotten an earlier start.

“Close… the door!” Twilight yelled between pants.

Forget combat training, you need to take up cardio.

Applejack and Fluttershy shouldered the massive gilded vault door, slamming it shut. Twilight noticed that her mane felt looser than usual. Somewhere in the chaos she’d lost the band keeping her ponytail in place. She attempted to brush the wild tufts of hair out of her eyes without much success.

“What in the Sam Hill just happened back there?” asked Applejack. “Did anybody else make it out?”

“Pinprick and Thunderlane are both gone, I’m pretty sure,” said Flash Sentry somberly.

“The gryphon too,” said Twilight. “Uh. What was her name again? Gazelle?”

“I should deck you for that crack, Sparkle.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from the corners of the ceiling. Its rasping undertones were familiar.

“Is that you, Giselle?” asked Flash Sentry. “Are you okay?”
A choking snicker sounded through the Hall of Indulgences. Twilight couldn’t determine whether the strained quality of the sound was a product of the cheap speakers or the speaker herself.

“Peachy, thanks for asking. Thunderlane managed to pull me out of the mob before he got mauled. I crawled into what looks like a tech closet, there’s a shitty little intercom in here.” She coughed into the mic, nearly blowing out the woofers. “My wing is seriously fucked. I’d bleed out, but I think they’re gonna get me before I get the chance.”

“There's no lock on the door?” asked Applejack.

“Oh there’s a lock,” said Giselle. “But the door itself isn’t what you’d call vacuum-sealed. The mist is starting to seep through the cracks. Hanging over the floor like a byproduct of one of those vintage smoke machines you see the fossils use at concerts from fifty years ago.” She paused, lost in the metaphor. “I figure as soon as it gets thick enough to reconstitute into something, I’ll be properly boned.”

“We lucked out then,” said Flash Sentry. “As far as doors go, this one seems to be pretty airtight.”

“Uh, g-guys…” Fluttershy pointed. “I think this was a bad place to stop.”

A fine blue-white fog was escaping into the Hall of Indulgences through the gold-plated vent grates high overhead. It drifted gently to the floor, pooling into puddles that had already begun stirring unnaturally, building on themselves.

“Well? You’re the book-learned egghead!” Applejack told Twilight. “Ain’t there any way to fight these things?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never heard of anything like this before!” Twilight took a step backwards. “Maybe if we could get the fans working…”

“Does keepin’ the air from getting stale sound like a productive use of diminished voltage to you? The ventilation system isn’t wired into the emergency circuit!” shouted Applejack.

“This is a Wild Hunt,” Fluttershy said quietly. “It’s a congregation of spirits animated and united by a common purpose. I think I could arrange to have them dispersed, but the process might take a minute or two, and I’d need someone to protect me in the meantime…”

“Vengeful spirits?” Twilight asked. “What do you take me for?”

“I don’t think this is the time for skepticism, Miss Sparkle,” said Flash Sentry.

“The Nightmare said that your brother blocked himself off from them, didn’t she?” Applejack nudged Twilight. “Can you do that?”

Twilight fidgeted sheepishly in place.

“Well, honestly, Shining was always much better at magical barriers than me…”

The first of the clouds had fully reconstructed itself into a skeletal thestral, its bleached skull grinning at them as it drew closer. Behind it, two more Lunar Guards and a hound had also started drifting forward, though not yet whole.

“Doggone it Twi, can you do anything besides talk shit?!”

The thestral specter darted forward, an ethereal staff lance materializing in its teeth moments before impact.
With a deafening clap, the weapon glanced off a partially transparent lavender sphere that encased the four corporeal ponies standing opposite the specter.

Applejack chuckled, the relief forcing itself from her throat. “Alright. That’s more like it.”

Eyes firmly shut and augmented horn glowing to match the color of the shield, Twilight exhaled.

“Refrain from talking and control your breathing,” she said calmly. A faint sheen of perspiration was forming on her brow. “Bubble’s sealed and airtight. We have something like five minutes of breathable oxygen. Fluttershy, whatever it is that you have to do, do it quick.”

Fluttershy nodded, and Angel skipped obligingly from her back onto the floor. As Applejack and Flash Sentry watched her uneasily, she sat on her haunches and eased her eyes closed.

The Celestial Palace disintegrated around her piece by piece as Fluttershy entered the Duchy of Crossroads. The building’s foundations were still in place, but parts of the ceiling were missing and the paintings—those that still hung—were torn and sun-bleached. Debris littered the tiled floor and the rug was scuffed and discolored.

She caught pony-shaped distortions in the air around her, the afterimages left by the restless spirits of the Lunar Guard. She understood with the certainty of dream logic that they couldn’t harm her here.

She trotted towards one of the windows—stained glass long gone—and stared at the stationary red sun hanging in the blue-gray sky.

“Shusteht.” The name fell from her lips with a curious lack of urgency. Half a minute of silence passed. She remembered that the spirit had little consideration for visitors. She might wait there until Luna’s Guard broke through Twilight’s barrier and get no answer, though admittedly she wasn’t sure if time passed in the Duchy at the same rate as in the corporeal world.

Finally the Duke of Dust’s voice echoed through the palace.

“Again you visit my domain, traveler who yet lives. What would you ask of me on this occasion?”

“I thought you said you would spare no memory for me and my ilk,” said Fluttershy.

There was another pause. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could almost feel an atmosphere of resentment suspended in the silence.
“Perhaps you misunderstand me, Child. I have no patience nor inclination to indulge in idle conversation. State thy request.”

Then she knew she hadn’t imagined it, despite the fact that the spirit’s synthetic tone and volume remained level. The Duke of Dust only took to using the archaic ‘thou’ and ‘thine’ when he was annoyed.

“My…” her tongue caught in her teeth on the word friends, “…companions and I are being accosted by the spirits of Luna’s Guard. The mob has all the characteristics of a Wild Hunt. Would you be able to put these wrathful spirits to rest, Shusteht?”

“I would,” the Duke said slowly, “but I am not in the business of bestowing gifts without compensation. As always, I demand payment for services rendered.”

Fluttershy swallowed. She’d suspected it would come to this. “What do you want in return?”

Around her, a faint breeze picked up through the ruined palace halls. In the window, she saw the celestial banners dance over the spires of Canterlot.

“It’s a fetching façade you’ve constructed for yourself, concern for others, for those that have led you to this unenviable position. In spite of this, there are few things in your life that you’ve come to truly value.”

Fluttershy tossed her mane over one eye and lowered her gaze to the floor. She couldn’t see the spirit, couldn’t be sure there was anything to see, but she sought refuge from its voice, which abruptly seemed to turn accusing.

“My offer is as follows; surrender the life of your arctic hare to me, and thy will shall be done.”

Her head jerked back up reflexively, and she found herself glaring at nothing in particular. “I refuse.”

“Oh? Intriguing. Are you perchance aware that in the past your lot, the awakened, the shamans, would breed and raise their familiars specifically as bargaining chips for their dealings with their patron spirits?”

Her breath turned shallow. “That’s… barbaric.”

“Is this truly what you believe, Child of the Sun? The strong benefit from the sacrifices of the weak. Is this not the way of things?”

“No,” she said stubbornly. “Angel’s life is off the table.”

The banners fell too suddenly to be a result of natural currents. The air inside the palace corridors likewise turned deathly still.

“Certainly,” said the Duke. “Then we will have to discuss alternate payment options.”

Fluttershy smiled, relieved. “Please.”

The air inside Twilight’s protective bubble was becoming thin as the phantoms continued to batter its exterior. Applejack took greedy gulps, but her shortness of breath would not go away. Her vision was steadily dimming. Next to her, Twilight had already collapsed, struggling to stay conscious enough to maintain the barrier. Flash Sentry had fallen to his knees as he frantically checked the safety on his leg-mount. The situation brought to mind the training sessions prior to her expedition to the distant Artemis II.

Angel started to chatter excitedly. Applejack turned in time to see Fluttershy’s eyelids part. An unearthly scream of undiluted agony erupted from her sickly lungs, honed to a razor edge by the microphone built into her mask.

Twilight’s barrier cracked and shattered as the unicorn lost her concentration, clutching her ears, cursing to herself. As Fluttershy fell into a fetal position, screaming, clawing at her face, an immense, almost physical shockwave burst from her writhing form.

Applejack caught herself on a railing and remained standing, vaguely nauseous, but the phantoms flew apart and dissipated into mist as the wave expanded.

She watched the clouds for some seconds to make sure. This time, they remained static.

Twilight crawled over to the sobbing pegasus.

“Hey, hey. Are you… okay?”

Fluttershy took her trembling hooves off of her eyes and Twilight recoiled with a gasp. Her irises had been bleached a milky white, and her pupils had misted over. Twilight raised a hesitant foreleg and waved it in front of Fluttershy’s face. Her eyes remained motionless.

“She’s gone blind,” Twilight said numbly.

Fluttershy’s cheeks were streaked with tears and her chest heaved. “The Duke of Dust gave me his assistance… And in return I gave him my eyes.”

Twilight looked away. Her lungs felt heavy with a vague feeling of guilt. “Holy shit.”

“Buck up now,” said Applejack. “She’s given us a straight shot at the Nightmare. Best not let the chance go to waste.”

Twilight looked back at the gilded vault door. “I guess you’re right. Though someone should stay behind to keep an eye on her.”

Fluttershy shivered. Applejack exchanged a glance with Flash Sentry. The stallion sighed.

“Roger. I’ll extract her from the building. You two better come back alive though, you hear?”

Applejack clapped the stallion on the shoulder. “There’s a good sport,” she said with a smile. “Come on, Twi. Let’s finish this.”

Fluttershy stood back up shakily and Angel reclaimed his perch on her back. “Good luck.”

When they reentered the throne room, the ghostly members of the Lunar Guard were gone, reduced to stardust. The bodies of Thunderlane and Pinprick were still present however, laying several yards from the entrance, stripped nearly to the bone. Twilight wondered if they would have made it out had Applejack and Fluttershy not sealed the door quite as quickly.

Luna stood facing away next to the throne, and although the rest of the chamber was clouded in fog, a globe of clear space surrounded her standing figure.

As the sun peaked out from behind the clouds of hail outside, the dim stained glass surrounding the throne turned momentarily brilliant. Elaborate hypotrochoid patterns resembling the sun and moon over the spherical earth above. Below stood Star Swirl the Bearded, levitating aloft his elder oak staff, the legendary Rethalvius Tome held close in the clasp of his left foreleg. His aging face regarded the throne chamber gravely as the young Clover the Clever stood just beneath, eyes cast upwards at his mentor, as though invoking him for guidance.

“Whither did they vanish?” Luna pondered aloud.

“Gone into the ether,” said Twilight. “I laid your undead slaves to their long overdue rest.”

Luna turned, seemingly only just noticing her. “Indeed? I find that rather difficult to believe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Luna raised her eyebrows beneath the curve of her headdress. There was something wrong, something deranged in the depths of her eyes, shark fins slicing menacingly through pools of azure.

“It means,” she said emphatically, mocking Twilight’s offended tone, “you and your kind are weak as mewling newborn babes. Grown fat and complacent in the two centennials that I’ve been away. Just look at yourselves; bloated, ignorant livestock, ripe for the slaughter.

“Look at you, lamb,” She started walking forward, descending the dais. The clouds that remained of the bygone souls stirred in her wake. “Look at that farcical tin cone grafted to your head.”

Suddenly she was right in front of them, leaning in close enough that Twilight could smell her sour breath. “You cannot even muster a rudimentary teleportation spell, can you?”

“That’s enough yowlering out of you.” Applejack chambered a shell into her spreadgun and fired.

The fragments bit into Luna’s breastplate point-blank, shredding the armor and the flesh beneath.

The alicorn grunted. With an azure flash, Applejack was tossed backwards over the waxy tiles. Twilight’s nostrils stung as the smell of burning leather filled the air. The chest of Applejack’s duster had been reduced to a charred crater. The farmer propped herself against the far wall of the chamber, moaning, drawing breath through clenched teeth.

“Two centuries on the moon, poisoned night and day,” the Nightmare bellowed bitterly. “You believe you will lay me low here, armed with naught but gunpowder and pellets of hot lead?”

An ultraviolet blade materialized around the length of her horn. She tossed her head, winding up. Twilight could almost feel the hairs of her tail get sheared as she tumbled to the side, trying to avoid the downward cleave. As Luna wound up for a horizontal swipe, Twilight lifted a marble stand that had been supporting one of the busts, and cleanly stopped the blade before it could reach her exposed neck.
She felt a warmth of gratification in her belly as a crack spider-webbed across the face of the Nightmare’s blade like a drunk driver’s windshield.

“Didn’t get the memo, Luna?” she asked derisively. “Materialization is for bitches.”

The Nightmare clicked her tongue. Her blade flashed momentarily as she adjusted the spell, mending the cracks. Then a set of serrated teeth spouted on its edge.

Oh shit.

The marble screamed as the Nightmare’s weapon sawed through it nigh effortlessly. Twilight stumbled back, barely clearing the sharpened tip. Before she could regain her equilibrium, the Nightmare opened her mouth and let out a ghastly, banshee-like screech that physically knocked her backwards.

She landed ass-first, feeling emasculated and disoriented. The Lunar Ex-princess’ wail seemed to have irritated her inner ear, leaving her off-balance and defenseless.

“You are not deserving of the horn that you bear,” the Nightmare spat as she unhurriedly approached. “Perhaps I should hew it clean from your wretched skull.”

Twilight sat up, somehow finding the strength to crack a tired smile. The threat should have terrified her. Magic was among her only talents, after all, the subject of her brand. Without it, her life would become meaningless. In spite of this, the only emotion she could muster was sardonic resignation.

“Be my guest,” she grunted. “You don’t even see it, do you? You thrive off of suffering, just like her. Talk about the leprechaun calling a dragon greedy.”

As Luna drew closer, Twilight saw Applejack rise unsteadily to her feet and inch forward.

And then—

A metallic thunk as a silver stake slammed into the Nightmare’s shoulder guard and dug into her side. Twilight turned her head towards the source and the sudden motion made her sick to her stomach. With some effort, she kept her gaze steady.

Baroque stood at the summit of the staircase leading to the bedchambers, excitedly jamming another oversized round into his levitating firearm. The bear-slug rifle was designed specifically for hunting big game. Bears, buffalo, rhinoceroses, there are even accounts of elephants succumbing to a single well-placed shot. The recoil is monstrous, so the gun comes in only two flavors: spinal mount and Levitus.

Before the mobster could finish reloading his arm, the Nightmare fired a single precise beam from her horn. Baroque lost his telekinetic grip on the weapon and toppled awkwardly down the stairs, clutching his smoking foreleg.

The Nightmare’s breath came in ragged bursts as she started toward the fallen stallion. When she crossed the halfway point, Yaga rolled from her cover behind the staircase and peppered the approaching alicorn and the room at large with unfocused suppressive fire.

Shredder rounds, the small-arms equivalent of artillery shrapnel shells. Built to burst into dozens of smaller projectiles mid-flight for maximum surface coverage.

This time, Luna was prepared. Her horn projected a thaumaturgical wall, stopping the disintegrating bullets as the twin SMGs barked. Yaga shuffled backwards, but it wasn’t enough. The Nightmare darted forward, impaling Yaga against the wall with her horn, not even bothering to conjure another sword.

The sanguine of the mare’s blood dripped over the deep navy of Luna’s horn. Somewhere else, Baroque Belobog was shouting Yaga’s name.

“Do you understand now,” Luna rasped, “how utterly insignificant you are?”

Something small, oblong and metallic fell from Yaga’s grasp and landed between Luna’s forelegs.

Yaga grinned. There was a safety pin lodged between her teeth.

“Choke on it, you mouthy aristo cunt,” she seethed.

Luna hardly had any time to react before the corrosion grenade detonated. Acid-based explosives are generally not known for their explosive yield. A powerful explosion isn’t necessary to achieve significant damage and is actually counter-productive; if the detonation is too hot, most of the chemical payload will evaporate, effectively becoming redundant.

Her barriers would have been more than sufficient to suppress the explosion, but her lack of experience with pocket explosives ensured that she was caught flat-footed when the device went off.

Luna found herself sprawled on the broken tiling, ears ringing, and a searing pain along half her face and most of her body. Her wings had burned to uselessness, her legs were aching badly enough that she feared they wouldn’t hold her upright.

Twilight stood up, but stumbled and fell. The disorienting effects of the Nightmare’s shriek were starting to subside, but she was still not stable enough to comfortably walk. With this in mind, she slowly crawled towards Luna’s prone body.

When she reached the acid-burned, barely-conscious ex-diarch, Twilight lifted the partially-melted galea from Luna’s head, wrapped her forelegs around her neck and bit into her slender, blood-stained horn.

“Loathsome sow,” the Nightmare managed, shuddering. “Release me at once…”

I don’t think so. You could use a lesson in humility yourself, Luna.

Horns are the only known piece of equine anatomy that remains completely magic-proof. In the past, a number of warlords and chieftains independently attempted to craft anti-magical armor using severed unicorn horns, but these attempts were ubiquitously doomed to failure; the ivory of the unicorn horn quickly flakes apart and crumbles once separated from its host.

Twilight clenched her teeth and pulled.

Time to take you down a peg or two. Or ten.

Luna struggled upright under Twilight’s weight. “What, what are you doing?” She tried in vain to shake Twilight loose. “Remove your filthy personage…”

The temperature of the bloodstained horn started to rise. As Twilight wrestled to shatter it, the shaft started to smoke, glowing red; the Nightmare’s last-ditch effort to uncouple Twilight’s teeth from her person. Doggedly she clung to the horn, even as it turned white hot, even as the corners of her mouth were agonizingly charred.

There was a minute crunch as something inside the curling ivory started to give.

“No!” Luna renewed her struggle, flailing desperately, the scalding surface of her horn brushing against Twilight’s cheek. Finally, she threw herself towards the edge of the chamber at random, trying to dislodge Twilight by bludgeoning her against the wall. Twilight braced herself for impact.

When the impact came, it wasn’t with stone.

All she heard was a high-pitched ringing as the surface gave beneath their combined weight. Sharp-edged spots of color danced in her vision. At first, she thought she was seeing stars as a result of the trauma; then as they shifted into focus and started to drift gently past, she understood that they were shards of stained glass.

The Canterlot cityscape beyond, buildings reminiscent of teeth in the gargantuan maw of some prodigious horror. The bitter cold, punctuated by stinging hail.

They were falling, the two of them. Twilight understood in a vague way that she had drawn the short straw. When they finally hit the pavement below, she’d be the one to absorb the impact, sandwiched between the unforgiving blacktop and the merciless alicorn. It was unlikely that she’d survive.

You cannot even muster a rudimentary teleportation spell, can you?

She blinked as the memory stirred in her skull. As they approached terminal velocity, she released Luna’s horn and watched the alicorn’s body start drifting away.

Fuck it. What have I got to lose at this point?

The mythril base around her augmented horn glowed a brilliant lavender. She was familiar with teleportation theory, but only in passing. She closed her eyes, clearing her mind of distractions. It was easy to let go: succeed and live, or fail and die. She visualized the ground far below, imagined it steady beneath her hooves. There was a spark.

Abruptly, she was standing under the freezing hail. Her knees, unready to support her weight, gave out and she collapsed. As she opened her eyes once more, she saw Luna land ungracefully several yards away with a dull thump.

She flexed her lips and winced. The corners of her mouth were burning almost unbearably.

“Hubris of youth, huh,” she said to the hail. “How did you expect to defeat Celestia and her Royal Guard if you can’t even handle a bunch of nobodies like us?”

The alicorn stirred on the blacktop, looking like nothing so much as miserable half-dead roadkill.

“I didn’t,” she gasped.

Twilight raised a quizzical eyebrow. Above them, a flying limousine parted from the currents of air traffic and began to descend nonchalantly.

“I expected to die,” Luna continued. “As long as I could deliver my message, I would be satisfied.”

“Message?” Twilight repeated.

The limousine touched down, expelling clouds of steam into the chilly evening air. The door of the vehicle’s passenger compartment hinged open and a slightly-built brunette unicorn mare wearing horn-rimmed corrective lenses stepped out into the hail. She was dressed in a simple off-white suit and an unobtrusive anti-precipitation collar, which projected an invisible static umbrella over the mare, keeping her dry. Unlike the business outfit Rarity had been wearing when Twilight met her, this one was plain and conservative, no frills, no jewelry. A pair of unexpressive Royal Guards clad in anti-ballistic mesh exited the front half of the vehicle and took up positions flanking the mare.

Twilight wrestled her body upright. “Great,” she said morosely. “Which one are you?”

The bespectacled mare smiled thinly. “One.”

Twilight sniffed. “Nothing but the best for the occasion, eh? I’m sure we feel all the more special for the gesture.”

Raven One’s eyes lost focus as she consulted the readouts on her holographic horn-rims. “It would appear that you have preserved the Equestrian quality of life. Canterlot and its people owe you a great debt, Twilight Sparkle. Thanks to you, our glorious nation retains the joy and prosperity that—”

Twilight waved a forehoof impatiently. “Spare me the script, One. Get to the point.”

Raven One stopped and bit her lip. The lines of text on her horn-rims advanced as she scrolled through the rest of the monologue. “Her Ladyship requests a vis-à-vis, to congratulate you in person,” she concluded and stepped back from the limousine, beckoning. “Please have a seat.”

Twilight gestured in Luna’s direction. “What about her?”

Raven One nodded to her royal escort. “The Guard will take over from here. Her Ladyship will address Madam Luna at another time.”

The alicorn shivered. Her lips were twisted in a sneer. “You think you’ve won,” she said. “Your victory here means nothing, lamb. Even as we speak, the Children of the Night continue my work. Even now, a spear of the new world races towards the sun and once it strikes, the folly of this age will be undone.”

Twilight stiffened. “What did you say?”

Raven One leafed through the files stored in her lenses, face devoid of expression. “Ah yes, you must be referring to the launch of the CME Enticer warhead. Regrettably, that has been indefinitely postponed. The rocket and the silo housing it have both been forcibly decommissioned as of approximately… forty-two minutes ago.”

Luna laid in silence for some seconds. Behind the chemical scarring, her face suddenly looked lost and listless. Twilight almost felt sorry for her.

“Decommissioned?” she rasped, blinking the tears from her eyes.

Raven One nodded. “I’m afraid so. Via surgical killsat strike. Everything inside a two mile radius surrounding the facility had been precisely and thoroughly incinerated. You have my sincerest condolences.”

As the two Royal Guards lifted the alicorn bodily from the pavement and carried her away, the handmaiden turned to Twilight and nodded towards the limousine. “Shall we?”

“Hold it. There are still wounded in the palace. Maybe you’d better stick around here and arrange for medivac.”

“Miss Sparkle, I apologize, in all sincerity, but that isn’t my department.”

Twilight glared.

Later, she’d recall the scene and wonder what she must have looked like to the handmaiden, cheek scarred and bloody, hair wild, a dark line of burned skin bisecting the corners of her lips, eyes one step away from murderous.

Raven One broke eye contact and cleared her throat delicately. “I understand. I’ll stay behind and direct the trauma team, yes?”

Twilight nodded wordlessly, stepped into the vehicle and eased herself into the velvet cushions. The engine purred and the chauffeur commenced the lift sequence. Twilight drew the silky mauve curtain over the window, plunging the passenger compartment into darkness. She didn’t want to see the handmaiden watching the car from below. All she wanted now was some time to herself.
The city swam past unseen as Twilight leaned back against the headrest, eyes shut and her slumber dreamless.

Author's Note:

This isn't the end, but you can see it from here.

Comments

[Pinkacalypse]

Awesome chapter, probably my favorite of the story. That fight scene was beautiful with good buildup and payoff (Twi rippin out NM's horn was just brutal). Excited to see the closing chapter(s).

[MonoGlyph]

5939239
Thanks buddy, I'm glad I was able to deliver a satisfying climax. Now, with some luck and maybe a little less procrastinating from me, you won't have to wait another three months for the epilogue to come out.

I make no promises.