The Nether Wars

by Blackdrag-rose

2: The Gala That None Forgot

Eclipse looked over the ponies, and changelings, that were currently attending his gala, pleased that he had forbidden the obnoxious Blueblood from attending and equally pleased that so many of those he had invited had actually shown up. Apparently both Celestia and Luna decided against their better judgement and started dating the captains of their respective guards, though both stallions just happened to be strangers to him. Cadence and Shining seemed to be doing well and Twilight, well, it seemed that she finally got over a hold of her feelings and asked Flash Sentry to join her.

He had a feeling that the display of affection between Twilight and Flash would have annoyed Sunset Shimmer, but she was distracted by the fact that Tonto had tapped her on the flank with his hoof. He didn't know if they were ever going to be a couple, but at the rate they were going he suspected it wasn't on their minds.

"What's the matter Eclipse?" Viscarias asked, noticing that he wasn't paying attention to what she had just said.

"What? Oh, nothing," he replied, blushing as he returned to the ponies around him, "I was just wondering where Copper trotted off to this time. I haven't seen her all evening."

"She sent a letter a few hours ago," Viscarias explained, "She said that she was running some tests on Northern's specially commissioned Netherillium Blade, something about how the weapon was reacting to her clashes with Peachy. Apparently every time the two of them clashed she recorded that the sword pulsed and seemed to energize her own mechanics, like some sort of energy source. Copper's got a few shards of Netherillium left and she said she was going to fiddle with the frequencies until she discovered what was causing the abnormal surges...and then she lost me in her mechanical musings."

Sometimes Copper liked to talk in a technical tone, it meant that most would fail to follow her train of thought and would eventually try to grasp what she had said. They would summarize what she had said, to the best of their ability at times, and she would laugh before telling them exactly what she had meant in their terms. It made conversing with her difficult to those who didn't know her very well and somewhat enjoyable for those who actually knew her well. Eclipse knew that if she had some new experiment going on at the moment then she wasn't in the mood to be bugged and would turn his invitation down as much as she liked.

Still, Eclipse had the feeling that a storm was brewing and the first lightning strike would come soon.

~Manehatten, Clockwork Engines~

The shop, located in what was the heart of Manehatten, was closed for the night and the doors were locked tighter than the old storage room for the Elements of Harmony. The doors had special locks, developed, constructed, and installed into her system by her own mechanical hooves. She had developed the extra security in the off chance that a thief would dare stake out her store and try to enter it while it was closed for the night. She was not concerned, she had dealt with the sheer power of a god before and knew she could deal with a thief if they happened to come.

At the moment she was in the workshop section of her shop, looking at a monitor while she attempted to work out what was happening the the metal she had discovered. Netherillium, a magically charged metal created by the union of Peachy's dark magic and Northern's nether magic, as that was what she had taken to calling it. The metal was common, seeing how the two clashed and it rained down shards of it all the time, giving her an endless supply of the strange and powerful metal.

Every time she attempted to breach the magical matrix of the metal she was either forced right out of her search or she might have weakened the barrier enough to get a glimpse of what awaited. She had learned much from the strange metal, enough that allowed her to melt down several shards into a pure light purple colored blade. A part of the blade was white colored, allowing a spark to travel the width of the weapon before disappearing, and even now the weapon sat silently in it's sheath. It would shimmer whenever she breached a small section of the barrier, protecting the secrets it wanted to keep hidden from her.

The shard she was experimenting on shrieked and magic sparked out of it, the area glowing right before the magic was sucked right back into the metallic surface. Copper growled in frustration, this was the third time that day that she had gotten closer to uncovering the secrets of the Netherillium and the powers that it could hold. It was the third time the metal had rejected her and her magic, forcing her back to square one and making her grind her metallic claws. She was getting nowhere fast and had spent four years trying to learn something that might not be able to be acquired.

She was just about to give up for the day, but then the matrix of the shard unraveled before her eyes and magic began to pour out of metal that rested in the center of the workshop.

"What's this now?" Copper mumbled to herself as she stared into the center of the magic, seeing a dark blue coated unicorn stallion staring back at her, "Who in Celestia's name are you supposed to be?"

"No one cared who I was until the bombings occurred," the stallion said in response, referring to the recent explosions that had happened across Equestria, "Even now your Princesses are scouring their country, looking for the one responsible for terrorizing half of their important cities. I AM NEXUS. I am the one who will deliver Equestria into destruction, erasing those who would dare to stand in my way. And you, Copper Sprocket, shall be the first one to see the destruction of what you hold dear. I shall erase your compound from the face of Equestria."

Her emergency light popped on and the siren, made so only she could hear it so she didn't disrupt other ponies, went off as a warning sign appeared on the monitor. The stallion had found one of her safety power generators, one of the items that allowed her to repel Sombra long before she had even met Eclipse. Somehow he had overpowered the power inside the generator and was using the connection between it and her main shop for his own devices. If that generator went critical and exploded, which was what she assumed was the stallion's plan, then the entire shield around Manehatten would fall and she'd lose years of research.

Copper tapped a panel on her front left leg and had a portal to her private storage area, located somewhere where she knew nopony would be able to find it without getting it from her, open before her eyes. Without wasting a second she tossed in every shard of Netherillium, excluding the one the stallion was controlling, and several of her projects she couldn't let be destroyed. She was playing for time, wondering when the generator would go off as she would have a minute at max before her entire shop went up in flames. As the storage portal closed she glanced to Northern's weapon and grabbed it, tightening it to her body as she looked back up at the monitor.

She tapped a part of her front right leg and a small screen appeared, allowing her access to her personal prototype warpdrive software she had been developing for the last four years. She pushed a couple of buttons, inputting the coordinates for Eclipse's Hive and prayed that the software would actually work before she was engulfed in flames. Just as pieces of her shop were engulfed in flames the air shimmered around her, her body moving between spaces as some of the flames torched part of her left side. And, right before the rest of the shop exploded, she was gone in a blink of an eye.

~The Hive, ten minutes earlier~

"Princess Celestia, Princess Luna," Eclipse greeted yet again, noting both princesses had been accompanied by the stallions they had brought with them, "Forgive me gentlecolts, but I'm afraid that we have not been properly introduced. I am King Eclipse and this is my wife, Queen Viscarias."

"We were waiting for such an occasion to introduce our coltfriends," Princess Celestia replied, wrapping a leg around the golden armored stallion she had brought with her, "Allow me to introduce Rex Sunrise, Captain of the Solar Guard. He's got the ability to regenerate certain parts of his body by using the sun for a period of time. Not the heart or the brain mind you, but the majority of his body, like a leg or part of his mane, can be recovered without a problem."

"And this is Dax Nightly," Luna nearly proclaimed, giving her already blushing coltfriend a kiss on the cheek, "He may be an earth pony, but his skill at blending into the surroundings during the night, and a similar regeneration ability that matches Rex's, has earned him the rank of Captain of my Lunar Guard. We figured that if every single princess and prince were getting into a serious relationship then it was high time we found our true loves."

"It is a pleasure to meet the two of you," Eclipse said, Rex bowing slightly and Dax just hanging a hoof behind his head, "and it is a pleasure to introduce my daughters Northern Sky, Harvest Moon, and Echo."

"Really Eclipse?" Princess Cadence asked, bowing slightly to Celestia and Luna as she joined them, "I know you love Viscarias and all, but was it really wise of you to have three foals with her? They'll split the Hive apart when you guys decide to retire."

"Nonsense my dear Cadence," Viscarias responded, "We adopted both Harvest and Echo from an orphanage in Ponyville just four years ago, when they were both only three years old. We brought Northern along, so she could meet her new sisters or brothers, as we had yet to decide, and what can we say, she saw them and they got along just fine. Originally we had been looking for a young little colt, but seeing how Northern was around both of them made us change our mind and we brought both of them into our family. When Northern is old enough, and we decide to retire, then I'm sure her sisters will support her and lend her their strength."

Before Eclipse spoke up he heard the wind pick up as a portal opened above the gathered ponies, similar to what he had done, but without the flames coming out after whoever had arrived. The fiery pony landed between him and the princesses, the flames suddenly cooling off as if something was chilling them out from within their fiery grasp. He would have been surprised if he had found somepony else instead of Copper Sprocket standing before him, with part of her side burnt and her dragon claws showing. He could have sworn she had prepared to fight somepony, judging from the weapon she carried on her back.

"You know Copper you could have just told me you planned on showing up in style," Eclipse chuckled, watching the mare stare at him as all the flames, and the portal, disappeared, "I would have told some of the ponies here that you were coming and you would have had a large reception waiting."

"Never mind that for now," Copper replied, turning to face Princess Celestia, "We've got a serious problem. I know who is responsible for the recent explosions and I know part of what he's currently planning."

Eclipse sighed, the storm was just arriving and he could tell that the gala was going to be over soon. Oh well, at least those of his guests that would be leaving soon would have had a wonderful time seeing the flames and Copper's arrival as if it had been planned.