Oh geez. Oh holy me. I mean, I'm not holy, but ponies say "Holy Antares" when they're freaking out, and I hear them a lot, so...
Uh...
Bgwah?
I couldn't really decide which fact I find more disturbing at the moment: the fact that a changeling had managed to sneak into my palace, or the fact that Ara and Veritas didn't seem to be fooled by it in the slightest, so they decided to kill and eat it.
Before that I had to do something about the screaming. I folded my ears and put my hoof on Tulip's back, only succeeding in getting her to sit down. She still shrieked in horror at the sight of her foals eating a changeling. I groaned and cast a quick silencing spell over her. Her screaming would not help the situation in the least.
Well, noticing that no sound was coming out of her mouth, Tulip closed it and put her head in her hooves, tears of horror streaming down her face.
Yeah, I could kind of get where she was coming from. A lot, really, but screaming wouldn't help anypony right now. I ignited my horn and turned Tulip to face me, dissipating the sound spell as I did. She seemed to be about ready to start screaming again, but I raised a hoof to cut her off.
"Okay, Tulip, I know this is shocking, but I need you to go outside while I handle this." I tried not to look over at the foals, who continued happily munching away on the dead changeling. I failed. Shudder. "I don't know what they're going to do when I try to take it away from them, but I know that they can't hurt me, okay?"
Tulip's reply came out as a whimper, but she nodded and slowly walked out of the room. I didn't miss her body convulsing with heavy sobs. I couldn't really blame her. I wanted freak out myself. Once she left, I gently closed the door and turned back to the foals, who were still happily eating the dead changeling. I laid down in front of the two of them, catching their attention. They looked over in my direction with a curious expression, but smiled when they noticed it was me. I weakly returned it.
"Uh... hey, you two. You, uh, should probably stop eating that. You wouldn't want to get a stomachache, right?"
Ugh. Not my best line. Their looks of confusion returned.
"What, uh, what I mean is, that's not really something that you should be eating." I ignited my horn and gently lifted the two of them off of the changeling before sliding the changeling out from underneath them and setting them down away from it. Their eyes followed the changeling as I put it in a corner of the room, but they didn't make any effort to get to it. Good thing they had that connection with me. Any other pony and it might not have gone so well. I gave them my best attempt at a comforting smile, given that my heart felt like it was beating a thousand times a minute. I levitated the foal bag over to me and took out some wipes.
"Okay, let's get you two cleaned up."
Their looks of confusion didn't fade away, but they didn't resist as I wiped the green changeling blood off of them. It took a few minutes and a lot of wipes, but eventually they didn't look like characters from an Eli Roth film anymore. I continued smiling weakly at them and once more ignited my horn, lifting their crib up and motioning for them to go under it.
"It's about naptime, don't you two think? You've had a... busy day. You two need your rest."
They tilted their heads at me, and I motioned to the direction of their crib. After a moment, the two of them grumbled something in foal-talk, then crawled underneath their logs with continued encouragement from me. Once I felt they had settled, I gently set the crib down and turned off the lights.
Well, that's one problem solved. Now I have to deal with the me dammed dead, half eaten changeling in the room! I gulped and turned to the corner I had laid it in. Nope, it hadn't gone away just because I really, really wanted it to. I groaned and levitated the foal bag into the air. I figured that I could get it out that way. Just cast an extending spell on it and...
Huh...
There was already an extending spell on it. Not a great one, but it would have done the job. Guess I know how they were going to get the foals out. I levitated the changeling and gingerly slid it into the foal bag, trying to make the process as clean as possible. Ara and Veritas had done a number on this thing. As such, I failed miserably. I cleaned the bag off as best as I could before zipping it up and walking out the door. Tulip waited for me on the other side, her face, already tear-streaked, went a little green when she noticed the bag. I groaned and flattened my ears.
"I'll... I'll buy you a new one." I began walking towards my secret laboratory. I had to be discreet about this thing. Tulip quickly followed.
"Prince Antares, what are we going to do?" Tulip moaned.
"We're going to get rid of this thing, then I'll talk to Celestia and Luna about it," I said, trying to keep my voice as even as possible, despite my inward screaming.
"That's not what I mean," she replied. "I'm talking about my foals! I d-didn't know that they'd do something like this!" Tulip paused for a moment to wipe her eyes, then ran to catch up with me. "What do we do about them?"
"Tulip, if you can figure that out, please do let me know." Realizing that I said that with a bit too much bite, I adjusted my tone a little. "I'm going to be working on this. I'm not just going to get rid of the body and be done with it. We're going to figure out what happened here today, so don't worry."
Tulip nodded glumly, but didn't say anything else. The two of us reached the door to my research lab, and the pegasi guarding it saluted me. I returned that with a small head tilt.
"Okay, I need to get in there pronto." I hoped they remembered the stress password. "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!"
The two pegasi looked at me like I had gone nuts. I groaned and tried again.
"It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told!"
"Uh, Prince Antares, are you...?"
"That's the stress password, remember?!" I snapped. "Put the freaking lotion in the basket!"
The two guards flinched back, but saluted me and opened up the door. I held my hoof up so that Tulip wouldn't follow me before rushing inside. I closed the door behind me and threw the bag underneath the closest table before sitting down, grasping my head in my hooves, and letting out a shriek of uncertainty, fear, and horror.
Good thing the room was soundproof.
* * * *
After taking a few minutes to calm myself down a little, I focused my attention back on the bloody bag full of dead changeling. I grimaced and got to my hooves. Celestia would definitely need to know about this. I mean, if changelings were sneaking into my palace, then that put a definite damper on our plans to move the Elements to Canterlot. I mean, who's to say that they hadn't started sneaking into Celestia's castle, too? It would be a bad idea to move the Mane Six there, only to have them captured or killed by changelings.
They only needed to get one for them to not work. We would have to ward Canterlot Castle and hopefully get them there in a couple of weeks. We'd also double the Blade Wings in Ponyville until then.
I needed to talk to Celestia about all of that first. She might not be in the best physical or emotional state being that she's pregnant with our foal and... gah, I did not need this right now! One stressful event at a time, please!
But, given that our latest intelligence reports indicated that the minotaurs were massing on our western border, and had already had a few skirmishes with Saddle Arabian and buffalo scouts, it would probably get worse before it got better.
I sighed and walked out of the room. The changeling would keep for a little longer while I figured out what to do with it. I had to calm Tulip down to start with. That and find the real Sunny Breeze. There was no way that the mare I initially hired was a changeling. I hope.
I shut the door behind me and nodded to my soldiers before looking down the hall, expecting to see Tulip waiting for me there. I turned out to be mistaken. Frowning, I turned back to my soldiers.
"Do you know where Tulip went?"
The one on the left shrugged. "She just kind of ran off. She said she needed to go get something. Something that would help her protect her foals and Equestria." The guard looked to her fellow. "I think that's how she put it."
My frown deepened. "So wait, is she still in the castle?"
"What castle, Prince Antares?" said the one on the right. "I've been standing here so long, that my whole world has become this door and this bit of hallway."
"Okay, so you don't know." I groaned and rubbed my temple. "So that's... okay. Sure, whatever."
So I suppose that I had to add "find Tulip and figure out what she's up to" on top of everything else. Great.
* * * *
It turned out that, yes, she had left the palace. I didn't really find that ideal, of course. Now more than ever I needed my consigliere, and she needed to be there for her foals. I know she said that she was going to get something to protect them, but come on, she still needed to take care of them!
I guess that's why it's a good thing we found the real Sunny Breeze. Yep, the changeling had left her tied up and gagged in a storage closet. We found her while scouring the castle for any more changelings. Of course in each room we put a changeling detection spell over each doorway. So I guess those were a few more things off of my list.
At least, that's what Celestia, Luna, and I had discussed. We managed to incinerate the body of the changeling Ara and Veritas had gotten to, and had the Blade Wings scouring Ponyville to see how many more there were.
Hopefully the answer was zero. I didn't need the Elements in danger.
A week passed and there was still no sign of Tulip. Sunny Breeze had been looking after the foals all of that time (with an armed guard, of course) which had proved a little more than difficult. Ara and Veritas were quite aware that Sunny was not their mother, and so they became rather fussy whenever she tried to do anything with them. When it got really bad, I had to come in to calm them down. They listened to me. However, I suspected that wouldn't last much longer if their mother didn't appear. I would consider having Valiant come back to the palace to help with them, but I needed all of the veteran soldiers that I could get to train the draftees.
But, every now and again the universe looks at me and decides that it's been too hard on me, so it decides to give me a break. It happened while I sat in my office, doing paperwork, trying to get lost in it so that I didn't have to think about how rough things were.
Then I heard a knock on the door.
I groaned and put my quill back in the inkwell. I ignited my horn and opened the door without even standing up. To my chagrin, I saw Time Keeper on the other side, bouncing up and down like a filly who had no clue where the bathroom was. I subtly grimaced, making a mental note to slip some Ritalin into his morning coffee sometime.
"Yes, Time Keeper?" I said, trying to mask the exasperation in my voice. "Is something the matter?"
"No, I mean, yes, I mean..." I raised my hoof ever so slightly, giving him the signal to calm way down. His eye twitched, but he took a deep breath before continuing. "Tulip is back, your majesty, and you need to see what she brought with her!"
I frowned and stood up. Tulip being back was indeed good news. Her foals would be happy to see her, at any rate. That didn't explain why Time Keeper was going nuts, though. What could Tulip have brought back that would make him act this way?
"Where is she, Time Keeper?" I walked over to my office door and Time Keeper moved aside so that I could get out. "Where is she and what has she been doing?"
"In the courtyard!" Time Keeper yipped. "Tulip has them in the courtyard! More ponies!"
"More ponies?" I began walking down the hall in the direction of my courtyard. "What do you mean? You know I don't like the pronoun game."
"I don't know how to describe it, Prince Antares." Time Keeper whispered dramatically. "I don't even know who these new ponies are!"
That troubled me. It could definitely be Time Keeper being his nervous self, something that the war didn't help in the least, but this was Tulip we were talking about. Her loyalty towards me bordered on fanatical, so I couldn't discount the idea that she'd done something dramatic, especially with this talk of more ponies.
Still, even thinking like I was, I found myself unprepared for the sight before me when I entered the courtyard.
There had to have been at least a hundred ponies standing at perfect attention before me. Each of them wore ornate battle armor, emblazoned with my cutie mark on the breastplate, The armor style itself struck me as something out of the Middle East, but I knew enough about my subjects to know that these ponies were from the southern tribes in Equestria. Standing at the front of the formation, head held high and also decked out in armor, was Tulip herself. She looked like a commander showing off her fresh recruits to a nearby general.
And it kind of freaked me out.
When the soldiers saw me come out to the courtyard, each of them, Tulip included, sunk into a low bow. Not the usual kind to show me respect, no, this was reverence. Bordering on worship.
And I thought I was freaked out before.
I slowly walked up to Tulip, stopping inches in front of her. I had to wait for a moment for my brain to re-boot, but when it did, I spoke quite eloquently, if I do say so myself.
"Huh?"
Tulip snapped to attention, and the rest of the ponies did the same. They had practiced this, it seems.
"Prince Antares, may I present to you my kin." She motioned behind her. "I went to my homeland because I knew we needed more troops. And, um, I talked to the nomadic tribes and told them the situation. These are the sons and daughters of the nobility of those tribes, here to assist you in any way that they can. They came to protect Equestria, its ponies, and, most importantly, you. So..." Tulip bowed to me again. "So yeah, I got some more ponies for you."
Given her speech, I began to wonder if she thought I'd be mad at the offering. I totally wasn't, more troops was always a good thing in this situation, but who she had gotten baffled me.
"Uh..." I blinked once, scanning the scene before me. "Well... I can say for sure that I'm surprised. This is... good."
Tulip looked back up to me, a hopeful smile on her face. "We want to help however we can, Prince Antares. We'll follow you to the end." She followed that up with some kind of war cry in some language that I couldn’t understand, something that the new troops promptly mimicked. But not only them. As the war cries went through the room, I heard the shouts grow louder, until the noise became almost deafening. It seemed that Tulip had brought more than just these few nobles. I flattened my ears to block some of the noise. I have to admit, it was kind of intimidating.
This is going to be interesting.
* * * *
I walked through the muddy, chaotic field that we were using for our supply train. After six more trains exploded during attempts to move troops and supplies into Equestria to begin combat, we decided to forego them. Not that they would have gotten very far anyway. All intelligence indicated that the tracks had been severely sabotaged.
I didn't like it. Supply trains are slow and far too vulnerable. Not to mention the fact that this accursed rain had made moving the wagons nearly impossible. It always came at night, when most of the troops were too exhausted from pulling the supply wagons. We had attempted to put scouts up to catch the ponies involved in this weather, but the first night we tried that, we woke up to find all of their heads on pikes outside of my tent, one of whom had the words "nice try" scrawled on his forehead in blood.
It went on like that for a week. I couldn't understand how they kept doing it. It wasn't until we noticed that the clouds were mixed with some corrosive element on top of sound and camouflage spells that we understood why our scouts weren't coming back. That plus the speed and skill of whomever was doing this, likely Cadance's accursed Blade Wings, meant that no griffins wanted to go up to disperse the clouds. Especially since one head read "acid rain next time" when we found the latest patrols.
Morale was low, and I wasn't sure how it could get any worse unless the ponies followed through with their threat of acid rain.
I reached my tent, ignoring the salutes and murmurs of 'General' from my guard, and set my helmet down on the table that had been set up for me. I ignored the pang of hunger in my stomach as I looked over maps, troop reports, supply counts, and the rest of the boring nonsense that goes into being a field general. I confess that if I was in charge, I'd end this rotten war. We'd lost too many troops with nothing to show for it, and that was just on the western front. I didn't want to know how bad things would get when Mesud finally sent his troops into Griffonia.
We were in for a rough time, and I wasn't sure that whatever our Glorious Emperor had cooked up would get us out of it.
I heard my tent flap open and saw a servant coming inside, a fully loaded plate and a goblet of wine in his claws. I pushed aside some papers and motioned to the empty spot I had created. Some food would likely do me good. The servant put the plate and goblet down before bowing to me and backing out of my tent. I picked up my fork and absentmindedly took a bite of the steak I had been provided, just as my tent flap opened again and one of my subordinates, some lieutenant whose name I didn't quite remember, walked in and saluted me.
"General, I'm here to report on the current state of the war."
I nodded and motioned for him to continue as I took another bite.
"The troops are, well, not happy." He uneasily scratched the back of his neck. "Between the rain and our losses just getting this far, there's talk of desertion among some of them. I had anyone who spoke such nonsense put in the stockade for the night."
"That's a tactic that will only work for so long, I imagine," I muttered. "We need something to get the troops' morale up. Something that shows them that we can win this war!"
At that, the lieutenant grinned before pulling a piece of paper out of a satchel he had strapped to his side. "I think this will do nicely, sir."
"What is it?"
"It's some intel from one of our agents." He placed it down on the table in front of me. "I think this might do the trick."
I picked up the paper and quickly scanned it. It had better be as good as he promised or...
My eyes widened as the words registered in my mind. No. It was impossible. It had to be. But if it was true, then...
I put the paper down and put a claw up to my beak. "Is this accurate, Lieutenant?" I whispered.
His grin widened and he nodded. "Yep. There's no doubt about it at this point. Princess Celestia is pregnant. Antares is the father."
"But that means she won't be able to take to the field. A royal foal... they're not going to risk that." I could feel my face growing red at the idea. "This is... this may be exactly what the troops need. We won't face Celestia until she delivers the foal. Maybe we won't have to!" I stood up and began pacing around my tent. I felt a small itch at the back of my throat and I coughed to clear it up. "We... ah..." I cleared my throat again. Shock does odd things to me, I suppose. "We have to tell Emperor Cromwell if he doesn't... doesn't know already. If the war is still going on when Celestia delivers, we'll have to try to get ahold of it as a hostage to..." I felt the air around me become warmer by the second. I coughed and thumped my chest to satiate the itch. "To sue for peace. Antares and Celestia won't risk their foal for anything. Not even..."
"Sir, are you alright?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said with a wave of my talons. "Just..." I thumped my chest again. "I think something went down the wrong pipe. Just need something to drink." I walked over to my desk where my goblet sat. My steps were becoming heavier, as though weights had been attached to my legs. I collapsed onto my chair and shakily grabbed my goblet to take a sip.
The moment I did, pain shot through my body, the likes of which I hadn't thought possible. I fell to the ground, twitching, not even able to scream. I heard the lieutenant rush out of my tent, shouting for help, but I knew it was too late. It wasn't more than a few moments before everything went black.
* * * *
"It sounds like everything went according to plan," I said, putting the listening gem back in my saddlebag. I took out a sheet of paper which bore the images of each of the high ranking griffins and minotaurs, and put a big red X through the picture of the griffin general we had just poisoned. "Agent D, if you could sent word back to Canterlot of our success, I'd appreciate that."
The pegasus mare behind me saluted. "Yes, Commander Skies."
"One more thing, Agent D. Don't tell anypony about Princess Celestia's pregnancy. We can't have that getting out. Obviously she'll start to show here soon, but the royals want to keep it quiet for as long as possible."
Agent D saluted me again, and took wing towards Canterlot, allowing me to turn my attention back to the tent below me, which was already being flocked by griffins hoping they could save their already dead general.
"It seems things are going well, Agent L," I said with a grin. "Have you gotten to the rest of their food supplies?"
"The next phase is ready to go," Agent L said, saluting me.
"Excellent." I nodded. "We'll see how willing the griffin army is to get any closer to Equestria when they all have the runs. They're all going to go back to Iselin and let their dear old emperor know what they think of this war."
"Of course."
I stood up and stretched my wings out. I felt we'd had a really productive day, if I do say so myself. Time to get some rest. As I walked back towards my cloud tent, a thought struck me, and I turned back to Agent L.
"By the way, in case the poisoned food doesn't get the point across, activate the acid rain tonight if you would."
Agent L enthusiastically saluted me. "Yes, Commander Skies."
Content that the griffins would be out of this war soon, I went back to my tent for some shut-eye.
Huzzah! A new, long awaited chapter, has arrived!
Oh my god the story lives! :D Its an early Christmas miracle!
Love the references.
And it's here!
Tulip took the fact that her babies ate a changeling quite well, actually.
And the steak was poisoned, wasn't it. It had to be the steak.
Hmmhmmmm, I've noticed something strange about the story. Honestly, it's a bit hard to take the war side of the fic seriously. Call me crazy, but the setting you've created feel more like the enemy alliance is the underdog in this battle, and they're out of their leagues. Tension wise, it's a bit hard to be invested. More like, the only thing that can worry the readers happen on the micro scale, the personal level. So, I sort of feel nervous about things like 'will the scorpion babies be taken away and raised in special institutions and have no childhood to speak of?', 'will either of their parents see them as monsters?', 'will someone we care about be assassinated?'. But truly, the fic never makes me think 'Equestria might lose'.
I dunno if you consider that a negative or not, but that's more or less what I experience when reading the story. I mean, just this chapter, we have acid clouds taking out griffon troups that have no supplies because train bombings. Someone's already thinking half the enemy forces will be out of the war soon. I am certainly not on the edge of my seat about these battles.
6467210
I felt the same every time Pudge, Sinosis, the Diamond Dog Chief, etc... gets uppity with the immortal demigodesses with absolute control over the Sun, Moon, Stars, Dreams, Emotions...in their faces. Is not fun when the villains are written to be suicidal stupid.
Love how the agents are cocky motherfuckers. They know they are good and they are happy to strut their stuff.
These POV changes are a little... uhh... I dunno, I think they just kinda disturb the flow of the chapters. I guess I just have to deal with it,
I'm glad to see this story again. I didn't expected Tulip to adapt so quickly or for her to bring in more troops. Also, the assassination of the Griffin general along with the acid rain tidbit was well written. Hope to see more of this story.
Ah so Antares read the book of Tsu Tzu then, je he is using very wisely the terrain to her advantage and putting tension on everyone.
Also this general is proving to be a very good general following the saying 'a good general only has to shoot once, a great general doesn't has to shoot at all'
Also, things are getting good, for now I imagine, and it will be good for Antares that he at least will had that good news, but the minotaurs are yet to reveal their plan, and something tells me that Chrysalis will not be very happy about her soldier being eating alive.
Something tells me that the war is yet to start
6467210
The war hasn't started yet, Antares is mostly trying to gain time and decrees morale as much as he can, and its working but remember there are still 3 treats looming over their heads, the changelings forcing them to divide their attention to see if they are around, making even their spies look for changelings and not other spies like ponies mercenaries that could be pay to do something.
The minotaurs that are yet to reveal their cards.
And of course how much more do their attention will divide when Celestia need more attention.
the only thing that is for sure at the moment is that, they had advantage of terrain, and that can always change in a blink of an eye, that is how war works is unpredictable and the favorable situation can change rapidly at any moment, they only need that someone make a slip
I believe in the childrens case it's because scorpions are apex predators very early on in there maturity that scorpion instincts probably identified the changeling as a lesser insect and therefore prey. it may also be simply that they registered the changeling as a threat and killed it forst then simply ate it out of instinct again. being that scorpions are highly successful arachnid killers there are a lot of less disturbing reasons for why they resorted to eating it.
6467209
Are you sure it wasn't... the salmon mousse?
6467262 I agree. I always get a few paragraphs in before I realize that it switched.
6467210 oh, I still have some surprises up my sleeve.
I forget that the Snarcastic Guard was a thing. I'm glad it is.
Wait. Does this mean the Scorponies are Omnivores?
6467335
With all that has been going on I forgot about them.
Also, what the hell Tulip?
I've got a feeling that a spy for the griffon emperor works the mess and was ordered to kill the general if it looked like his loyalty started becoming questionable.
Perpetual shits and acid rain. I can't help but smile.
I wonder. Do the ponies have a spell that lets them play music via magic? If so, blasting some choice earth songs at the griffins at all ours of the day and night, maybe with some choice nightmares (courtesy of Luna) inspired by some choice earth culture sprinkled on top to really push the griffins moral just a little bit further.
"Antares akbar!" Ghem...i mean democracy and stuff?
Lyrics aside, i cant see why no one noticed how Tulip managed to gather damned army of well armed fanatical Antarian nomads in one week?
Obviously, preparation of said army should take a lot of time, not one week. In purpose to do that, Tulip will have to:
1. Take control over scattered tribes or their union. How? On what grounds?
They shouldnt abide to Tulip or follow her because of her role in Equestrian Antarian religion. Judging by their symbols, they were Antarians long before TD`s appearance, there religion are older, they could take Tulip as heretic or blaspehemer and kill her. Obviously merging of religions happened. Such things take times and a lot of efforts.
Or Tulip might happen to be "princess" of said clans so political and religious unification would go faster with less blood?
2. Organize tribes people into proper military force, that should take a lot of time to.
3. To have a lot of money, number of money that will be enough to buy proper armor and weapons. There is no other way for desert nomads to lay hands on modern equipment.
I think she started to prepare that army before events of war. Was she fighting for power over southern Equestria while serving Antares? Did she use her position for that? What purpose this army should serve in time of peace?
Aha, instead of ancient peacemaker with attitude of young mother you will recieve enemy in form of new godling, whom full of hormones and testosterone that was enough to impregnate ancient construct like Celestia, new godling that do not know horrors of war, that do not know proper limits, which inherited diabolical egoсentrism and cruelty of his homeland: Antares is neurotical mess, he was ready to burn simple folk with napalm because of it. Antares do not have full grasp over his Divine domain, he might be God of War. Им пиздец.
That was mean of antares, taking away the foal's snack.
How are they supposed to learn that you always finish your food if you don't let them?
6467665 To say nothing of the availability of other earth-based weaponry such as napalm.
SO Glad to see an update. This is one of my favorites :D
6467210 I think the worrisome question is less "will the ponies lose" as much as it is "how many ponies will be lost." There's no such thing as a good war.
Woot!
6467665
"Sarge, why do we have to listen to this old stuff anyway?"
"Boy! Its your history, it's what you're fighting to protect!"
"But Sarge... It's the Spice Girls... We use them for psychological warfare."
*Spice girls, 'Do You Wanna be my Lover' blasting in the backgroud*
- There is Something About Halo
This is why you don't mess with those in charge of the weather. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
You sure took your sweet time with the update....
6468960 That might have had something to do with my horrendously bad health. Something I made a fair few blog posts about.
6468966 I have MRSA now, so we're both filled with disease! Yay us!
And tomorrow, butt surgery! Woo-hoo! No wait... that's a bad thing...
Antares is pulling no punches.
He'll kill you, bring you back to life, scream in your face and then kill you again just so that you get the message.
6467719 that new godling is also fighting for his unborn child. He's also a former human, and a human who is defending his/her family can be EXTREMELY vicious.
6469260 Heh, vicious will be an understatement. Attacking his unborn child would turn you into an afterthought in the annals of history.
In other news, I started air-humping when I saw this story updated. That was awkward.
This is why Pegasi are the ultimate warrior race. They control the terms of engagement at all times.
Nice work, BronyWriter!
6467719
Полный пиздец.
And it is really unlikely that Tulip could gather this army on such short time, I agree.
This is not the Earth, with its holy wars and need to bring faith to others by a blade's edge.
6467665
This one, specifically:
Oh man, everything is just building up for the great crash and I enjoy every bit of it.
It doesn't have to be a song that blasts lyrics at them. Something purely instrumental will do, with a natural rise that will keep them on edge at all hours of the day and night.
I hope you don't go too overboard with magic. The stuff can make stories stupid hellacious boring considering how OP it is in pretty much all fiction (like TES, DnD, Warcraft, Harry Potter, Diablo). Those fictitious universes get around their OPness by making mages, sorceresses, wizards rather rare. MLP doesn't have that with a third of the population of Equestria being unicorns.
This has been one of my favorite story series on here, I just hope you don't go full Mage like far too many stories do on this site.
impressive the pony's are playing to win this war and they are defiantly playing fro keeps.
a vary good chapter.
6470145 Oh, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Remember: they have half a million minotaurs on the other side of the country.
6470965 yay!
6469385
Ah, me too! Where were you when the hump-date was uploaded?
I was mentoring children in a middle school. Luckily those are dirty little bastards.
6473273 I was eating dinner with the family. They're used to it at this point.
No shit. Imagine coming home to see your half-arachnid mutant toddlers munching down on a xenomorph. There are some things that even a young mother couldn't possibly love about her children.
Couldn't Celestia just transfer her magical power to Antares? It has already been shown that it is possible. Or like half of it, it wouldn't do her any good if she can't even defend herself when needed.
6473605
I've seen those types of things upon returning to my ship. You get used to it after a while if you work with Grineer or infested. I've been covered in the blood of so many different people that it doesn't faze me.