My Little Pony: Chaos in Equestria

by Snake Staff

Battle of Manehatten

Twilight swallowed nervously as the advance began. For all her mental preparation, for all her rationality, for all her fortitude, she was still be asked to march into a city filled with the defiled corpses of innocent ponies and fight the monsters who did it. “And kill them,” she reminded herself. That terrified her more than anything.

The vast semicircle of Royal Guard advanced slowly on the outer rings of Manehatten. The bulk of the city was on an island, connected to the mainland by several vast bridges, but first the outer districts had to be secured. Resistance was expected to be heavy and only get worse as they advanced.

The ponies around Twilight split into preordained groups as the army reached the suburbs’ edge, advancing slowly into what had been a small neighborhood that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Ponyville. The street sign had been obliterated reduced to a small metal rod sticking out of the ground. The houses were trashed, looted, and covered in blood. Some were burned in certain areas, though not nearly to the extent the previous villages had been. Twilight resisted the urge to cry again as she saw yet another pony carcass, this one impaled on the broken remnants of its mailbox, half-eaten and half-rotted. It reeked of some disgusting black mold.

Eying the houses as they passed, Twilight didn’t need to be a military expert to know that these were the perfects points for an ambush. The Royal Guard knew it too – two-pony teams broke off at each building to check it for hostiles, while the main force, Twilight included, secured the street. Once they were sure the area was clear, they would hold position and wait for the signal to move ahead and do the same thing to the next block down. Street by street, block by block, building by building, the guard intended to totally secure the outer districts before pushing an assault on the far denser island population center.

Twilight didn’t have to wait long for her suspicions to be validated. A crash and a roar emerged from a small, yellow house not more than a few yards from Twilight’s current position. One of the two ponies that had gone in was backing out frantically, jabbing his spear at an opponent Twilight couldn’t see. Then he back up some more, and she could.

It had been a stallion once, that much was clear. Emphasis on had. The hunched creature before them was utterly hairless. It lacked more than a bare patchwork of skins, attached to random parts of its body by grossly oversized stitches that looked as though they might have been made of dried intestines. Its undulating musculature was a demented shade of violet, and oozed some bizarre viscous black ooze. Its tail had become a grasping, boney claw. It jaws had nearly doubled in size, blue gums sprouting sharpened yellowed teeth at seemingly random intervals. Its eyes had gone entirely black, and continuously wept some sort of greasy gray fluid. It had what looked like a piece of mangled pony flesh impaled on its teeth, dripping blood. And it wasn’t alone.

Perhaps a dozen ponies poured out of the house behind a mutant. Manes and tails shaved, flanks covered in pulsing tattoos that hurt to look on, they carried an assortment of sharpened cutlery knives, cords tied into whips, and other pieces of random junk sharpened or otherwise weaponized. Riotous grins covered their faces as they bounded past their mutant leader, charging headlong at the nearest ponies headless of tactics or their own lives.

The first pony to reach the guard was a mare with a knotted whip covered in broken glass and rusty metal. She swung it randomly at the stallion, raking it along his face and drawing blood from several thin cuts. His helmet was able to absorb the worst of the blow, and he retaliated with a spear blow straight to the chest. She laughed as if in some kind of demented ecstasy, pulling the weapon out of his hooves as she fell backwards, bleeding profusely. Before the guard could do anything, another mare was on him, stabbing wildly with a broken glass bottle and an enormous knife. The guard fell, his flank perforated with wounds. The pony didn’t stop stabbing him until she too was run through with a spear.

The guards formed a wall of spears between Twilight and the madponies. Twilight shook her head hard, trying to dispel her battle shock and instinctive urge to stand quietly or run. She saw the mutant finish tearing the throat out of the guard it had been chasing, then turn to the formation in the street. Roaring, it charged.

“Oh no you don’t.”

Twilight reached out with telekinesis to the best object she could see for the job: a splintered, sharp beam of wood lying on the ground. Twisting her head around in synchrony with the heavy object, she hurled it at the charging mutant’s flank as hard as she could. It went through his spine like it was nothing, impaled itself into another madpony before stopping. The two squealed and squirmed on the beam as their lifeblood filled the street. They squirmed and moaned with pleasure.

Twilight couldn’t help it – she vomited again.
…

“Three dead, one lightly wounded. Area secured,” read the message Twilight’s group had magically sent back. The remainder of the houses had been checked and proven clean of enemy presence. They had accomplished their mission, but…

“Three of our ponies dead? A dozen enemy dead?” Twilight looked over the ruined street. “Over this?” She looked out at the several mile expanse the army had to secure before they even reached the ocean. “How many more?” she wondered.
…

Many more, as it transpired. Twilight’s group was relatively lucky in the streets it was chosen to secure. The next block had proved clean, and the one after that had only contained five blood-maddened lunatics holed up in one of its houses. Those had gone down with only one serious injury on the guards to show for it. But then they had begun to leave the suburbs and enter the more urban Manehattenite area. The next block they were assigned had featured more than just houses – some stores and other small buildings were in evidence as well. An ambush from a garden-supply store had proved costly: five ponies were killed and six wounded by screaming maniacs shrieking about the Skull Throne. They had ignored their own injuries until they had almost been torn to piece by the guard. Reinforcements began to filter in from reserve groups, replacing the wounded and corpses sent back towards the wagon caravan. Another block and Twilight group had left the houses and entered a full commercial area. That is where things began to get tough.

“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!” screeched a stallion as he brought his knife down into the jugular vein of a wounded guard pony. “SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!”

The guards were in retreat, disciplined spear wall formation clashing with dozens of fanatical lunatics, backed up by what looked like the rotted skeletons of ponies covered in green slime.

Twilight let loose another blast of magical force, shattering the stallion’s sternum and flinging him several dozen yards through a broken window. Another guard quickly assumed the dead pony’s place in the formation. They were holding against the raw fury directed at them, but only just.

Twilight’s horn glowed again, rapidly condensing water vapor into a cloud, then an extremely localized electrical storm. Lightning rained down on the berserkers, flash-frying half a dozen in as many seconds. They crumpled to the ground even as the cloud disappeared.

The skeleton ponies slowly advanced into the vacated area, bones creaking and somehow seeming to bubble. Twilight had all of half a second to ponder this before the leading skeleton exploded, spraying green goo over friend and foe alike. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the ponies hit, berserker and guard alike, began to scream and convulse, dropping to the ground. Their bodies shook and seized at random, eyes glazing over, then slowly contracting inwards even as they continued to screech their agony. Fur and hooves turned green, then black. Growths appeared from out of their rapidly deflating bodies. Muscle, meat, and fat were exposed as skin flopped off, only to themselves rapidly turn brown and shrivel. Bones appeared as the meat vanished, quickly going from a healthy white to a cracked, brittle yellow. And still the screaming didn’t stop. Only once the bones themselves crumbled to dust were the ponies at last granted the peace of death.

Twilight stared at the process in slack-jawed horror, seeing healthy ponies decay alive in mere seconds. It took another scream to wrest her attention away from the dust piles.

A guard pony, eyes wide with terror at the sight of his fallen comrades, had dropped his spear and was fleeing in a blind panic. The others attempted to fill in the sudden hole in their line, but the berserkers were quicker. A mare with a short sword jammed herself into the gap, running a pony through the flank. He collapsed, widening the gap as more madponies surged through. The guard quickly retracted, trying to form small circles of four ponies each. These held the berserkers’’ attention, but left Twilight, behind their line, exposed. A mare charged wildly at her, swing her knife hard. Twilight vanished, teleporting herself behind the crazed pony, before giving her a hard magical shove. The pony went flying.

Twilight turned back to the others to see one of the pony circles had already fallen, overwhelmed by the enemies’ numbers and aggression. A mob surged around what was left of the guards, hacking wildly and hurling body parts everywhere. The remaining skeletal ponies advanced towards the four remaining circles, intent obvious.

“Celestia forgive me.” Twilight thought, as she seized one of the skeletons telekinetically. She hurled it hard into the berserker mob, where it exploded. The mob, too busy hacking at the fallen guards to pay attention to tactics, was almost entirely covered in the slime. Twilight shut her eyes as they screamed, desperately trying not to look on her gruesome handiwork. In seconds, they too were but silent dust, joining their victims in death.

Twilight forced her eyes open again just in time to duck a wild swing from an oversized cleaver. The stallion holding it overbalanced and toppled. Before Twilight could do anything more to him, she had to hurl herself to the side to avoid a spear thrust. She hit the ground hard, only to roll to avoid an axe blow. She wasn’t quite fast enough, and a portion of her tail hair was ripped out painfully. Desperately invoking her already worn magic, she vanished, reappearing a dozen or so yards away.

She saw that a mob had broken off from attacking the guard ponies to attack her instead. Clearly, even these lunatics couldn’t fail to notice what she’d done to their colleagues. But she hadn’t noticed them. “Never close your eyes on a battlefield! Stupid stupid stupid!” Twilight cursed herself.

It didn’t take long for the ponies to spot her again and they charged, screaming oaths to Khorne. Twilight heard the sound of an explosion and screaming from near the guards, but she didn’t have time to look. The ponies were almost supernaturally fast, and were almost on her already. She concentrated hard, then mentally summoned a glowing purple wall between herself and the enemy. The first pony, the stallion with the cleaver, smashed into it so hard that he cracked his skull. He rolled over and bled while the others impacted hard. Twilight struggled to maintain the wall’s integrity, but just as suddenly as it had appeared the ponies had forced their way through.

Twilight hit the first with yet another wave of raw magical force, hurling her into one of her companions, before ducking under another knife swing. Before she could do anything more, a hoof smacked hard into her jaw and she fell over backwards. She looked up at a young mare, barely into adolescence, raising a shard of shattered glass for the final blow. Drawing on what power she still had, she vanished before it could hit, reappearing near the edge of the block.

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as she saw reinforcements moving in to engage. Her relief turned to yet more trauma as she saw that there was nopony left of the guards she’d come in with. Corpses from both side littered the area and the skeletons were gone, but the berserkers still gladly threw themselves at the incoming Royal Guard. Twilight hung to the rear as the two sides met, feeling ashamed that her magic needed a brief cooldown. As soon as she was able, she hurled herself back into the fight. Thankfully, the enemy had been bled so thoroughly that finishing them off didn’t take long.

That was the first time Twilight was the sole survivor of a group. It would not be the last.
…

Twilight was with her fourth group of ponies by the time they finally reached the waterfront, hours later. She was exhausted, dripping with sweat, and covered in dirt and gore. If she thought her first brush with serious opposition had been bad, the rest of the day had been far worse. The enemy was everywhere once they had entered the urbanized area, and the split groups were forced to recombine into much larger ones. Tall buildings could conceal hundreds of enemies, ready to pour out and attack the Royal Guard at any seconds. The skies were filled with dueling flights of pegasi, and more than once Twilight had been “treated” to the gruesome sight of a small rain of bodies around her.

The enemy seemed to have no end of madponies and mutants and zombies to hide in buildings, parks, and sewers. Every time the guard advanced they risked triggering yet another tide of enemies in their dozens and hundreds. Twilight couldn’t decide which ones were most horrible: the random mutants, their pony forms desecrated by powers beyond her understanding? The rotting skeleton zombies, who exploded to kill friend and foe alike? The writhing deviants, covered in tattoos and Celestia knew what kind of fluids? The crazed berserkers, seeking nothing but death, be it the enemy’s or their own? Twilight had met plenty of each. She’d seen ponies dismembered, decapitated, burned, rotted, and otherwise viciously killed in their hundreds. She herself had accounted for at least one hundred and forty-three enemy deaths, by her own count. Not including the times she had hurled the exploding skeletons into massed enemies to rot their flesh and bone. She was a mass-killer in her own right. And they were only partially done.
…

Twilight lay on a street near the water’s edge, surrounded by dozens of guards from her latest group, who kept a wary eye at all times. She was resting her tired body and mind, trying not to picture all the ponies she’d seen die that day – or all the ponies she herself had killed. Instead, she absentmindedly went through math problems in her mind, just trying to keep herself busy.

“The square root of 567 rounded to the fifth digit is 23.81176. The square root of 568 rounded to the fifth digit is 23.83275. The square root of 569 rounded to the fifth digit is…” Twilight’s thoughts trailed off as she heard a familiar horn blowing. One long blasts, two short, one more long. That meant the enemy was starting to move across the bridges. Twilight roused her aching legs despite their protests. Despite the many hours they had spent fighting under it, the sun was still up in full bloom, providing the Royal Guard with plenty of light to see their enemies. There could be no doubt which pony was behind that. Peering across the waters, Twilight could just barely make out small figures moving forward, crossing the long bridges at a slow but steady pace.

“Odd,” Twilight’s most rational side thought as she slowly began marching with the rest of her group to their designated position close to the nearest bridge. “Abandoning defensive terrain to come fight us on narrow chokepoints is consistent with earlier extreme levels of irrational aggression displayed by enemy forces. However, such a slow pace implies a deliberate, planned action rather than a mindless charge of suicidal fanatics. Something’s up… But what?” Twilight frowned, puzzled. For the life of her, she couldn’t think of a reason to husband those troops during earlier stages of the battle, only to hurl them through narrow chokepoints directly into the massed formations of Royal Guard now. “If they didn’t mind them dying, why didn’t they engage us here, farther from any inner sanctums or vulnerable points they might have? But if they wanted to preserve them, why send them on a suicide mission? It just doesn’t make sense. I know what Discord said about chaos and making sense, but…” Twilight’s mind trailed off. She didn’t have an answer. Especially given what was about to happen.

As Twilight assumed her position near the rear of the ranks guarding the Colt Gate Bridge, she felt a powerful, familiar aura of magic. She smiled genuinely for the first time in what felt like forever. Twilight craned her neck back to get a better view.

Princess Cadence rose above the army, wings spread wide, eye closed. Pegasi guards clustered around her protectively. Twilight could see Rainbow Dash among their number and felt a surge to know that her friend had made it so far. Cadence’s front hooves closed slowly over her chest, as if hoarding something close to it. Her horn began to glow with its bright pink aura, slowly becoming brighter and brighter. Cadence held the position for what felt to Twilight like an eternity, poised on the edge of something great. Suddenly, without warning, Cadence’s eyes snapped open even as her hooves went wide, as though showering a gift on the army below her. Her horn and eyes shined with an almost blinding pink glow, and, just as suddenly, the army was enveloped in a vast pink sphere.

Twilight breathed with relief that nothing had gone wrong. The barrier was an extremely potent piece of magic, one not even she had mastered yet. A more complex version of the spell Shining Armor had used around Canterlot during the changeling attack, it would serve to block enemies, even their weapons and spells, while simultaneously allowing the spells and weapons of the Royal Guard through as though it did not exist at all. A very complicated spell, it required the whole of one’s focus to maintain it. In her current state, Cadence herself was basically helpless, and even ceasing the spell was likely to cause intense feedback that could shut a pony down for hours. Hence the swarm of bodyguards soaring protectively around her.

Twilight turned her gaze back towards the enemy. If anything would give them pause, it should have been that. The barrier was such a defensive advantage that any commander worth his stripes would immediately turn his army around and adopt their own defensive position. The Chaos commander hadn’t done that. As far as Twilight could tell, the marching ponies hadn’t even slowed down at all. She shook her head. “They’re insane. They’re just plain insane. They’re marching to their own deaths for nothing!”

Still, Twilight had a job to do, entrusted to her by Princess Celestia. These ponies had to be defeated. If that meant she had to kill a foe too violent and out of their mind to bother with tactics, she would do it. It was time for her to do a little magic of her own.

Even as her horn glowed, Twilight felt another pang of regret on her sorely overburdened conscience. “I promised I’d never use this spell again,” she thought sadly. She shook it off. “I don’t have a choice now. This is a war we can’t allow ourselves to lose.”

Her conscience temporarily subdued by this line of reasoning, Twilight scrunched her eyes and pointed her horn at some sharp rocks in the bay and cast the “want it, need it” spell. The effort was enough to seriously drain her already severely taxed stamina, but when she took a peak she saw it had been worth it. Dozens of ponies had suddenly stopped marching and thrown themselves off the bridge, desperate to possess the magically irresistible rocks below. They smashed onto them, blood and body parts going everywhere. Stallions, mares, young and old, berserker and mutant, all found they suddenly could not resist the allure of the spell. They died by the handful, soaking the grey rocks red. But even as Twilight watched, a bolt of lightning emerged from the crowd, ripping through the rocks and dashing them to pieces. That seemed to break the spell.

The horde pressed on, Twilight now temporarily too exhausted to try another spell. With much of the living vanguard having thrown themselves to their deaths, the plague zombies were the first to reach the barrier. They exploded in bursts of gore and slime, flinging countless drops of the ooze at the front lines. Twilight closed her eyes and braced herself for the screaming. It never came.

Opening one eye a crack, Twilight saw that the barrier had done its work well; not one drop of the foul substance had reached the Royal Guard sheltered underneath. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief, then smiled up at Cadence. “I know you can’t hear me like that, but thank you.” She wasn’t the only one, but Cadence gave no sign of having heard.

Turning her focus back to the bridges, Twilight saw that the enemy had reached the barrier. Ponies with wild piercings, mutilations, and tattoos attacked the pink sphere with blades, hooves, arrows, and the occasional unicorn spell. Nothing took. The spears and arrows of the Royal Guard, by contrast, passed through with ease. Ponies fell by the score, fruitlessly trying to strike back at their attackers, moaning in pleasure as they were impaled by the guards and then trampled by their own comrades, desperate to reach the front lines. Bodies began to pile up.
…

An enormous creature strode forth from between the tall buildings. At least thirty feet tall and half again as wide, it was barely recognizable as having once been a mid-sized dragon. Now its wings had fused to its back, enormous insectile antennae emerging from their joints. Its tail had split into three, each becoming more and more like a tentacle the further from its body they became, ending in several suction cups and at least one eye. Its scales had become a slimy, pink, rubbery skin. It had sprouted five new legs to add to its old four: two spiderlike on one side, one birdlike, one that of an antelope, and one that resembled the tail of a grotesque fish. Its proud horns and crests had receded, becoming a flat disk of what looked to be bone. Its trunk had bloated to perhaps three times its natural size, white its neck had shrunk inward but gained in flexibility, allowing the once-dragon to turn its head in almost any direction. The favor of Chaos was in much evidence with this being, and it roared its fury to the sky.

It roared even louder when Princess Celestia bathed it in golden flame.

The mutant’s skin, ironically, proved highly flammable. The beast shrieked in its death throes, blundering around, smashing and burning all that it came into contact with. A dozen ponies and a pair of building constituted its last victims before it finally ceased its struggles and lay still to burn.

“778,” thought Celestia, before she sent a golden beam of light to spear through the head of a crazed, charging pegasus, “779.” It was important, she felt, for a ruler to know the exact price of her wars, that she might never take them lightly.

Luna, her sister, was not far from her side. Tendrils of inky blackness reached out from around her, seizing, crushing, smashing all enemies within their reach. A berserk mare hurled herself out of a building towards the princess of the night, falling far short, and then falling to her death dozens of stories below.

The two alicorns flew high above Fillydelphia’s streets, unashamedly remaining far above the reach of the screaming mobs of Chaos ponies below. They bayed for royal blood, but could do nothing to the princesses. Only those that could fly or cast spells had a hope of touching the rulers of Equestria, and those seemed in short supply.

“In suspiciously short supply,” Celestia noted, unleashing another wave of flame on the crowds below. “801.” In their hours of fighting, there had been no more than a few hundred fliers, and perhaps two or three thousand ground fighters were below them. That didn’t jive with intelligence and divination reports of a force of tens of thousands of madponies and mutants holding the city, with more constantly pouring in. The sisters had expected they would need to fight a series of running battles over several days, using their superior mobility and control of the sun and moon to hit the enemy where and when it hurt most until they had whittled them down to a manageable number. Powerful as they were, even they could be overwhelmed – Queen Chrysalis had proven that.

But the enemy hadn’t proved nearly so fearsome. Most were ground-bound, making them effectively powerless until such time as the alicorns chose to land. What aerial fighters there were were uncoordinated, unorganized, and random. Dispatching them had proved simple.

Celestia felt as another charging pegasus crashed into her protective barrier, breaking his neck and plunging to his death. “802.”

Celestia turned to voice her concerns to Luna. “This is…”

“Too easy?” Luna finished. “I agree.”

“But what’s the game? Trap?”

“No, we’ve seen most of the encampments – too few to support the numbers reported. Unless… magical trap?”

“We would have sensed something. And no reason not to have activated it.”

“Hmmm… distraction?”

“From what?” Celestia let out another burst of her flame on the ground ponies. “836.”

“Attack on eastern cities?”

“We’d have seen coming here. No signs of armies or supply gathering.”

Luna’s tendrils lashed out to grab three more raging pegasi, snapping their spines before throwing them to the ground below. She let loose her own stream of blue fire on the horde. “Exit by water?”

“Not enough ships.”

“Hmmm…”

“Sacrifice?” Celestia wondered, recalling Twilight’s description of Pinkie Pie’s abduction.

“Of their own troops? In such numbers? And where’s the alter?”

“Somewhere large enough to hold tens of thousands that we haven’t looked…”

“The stadium,” the sisters said simultaneously.

Fillydelphia’s Ponyball stadium was right held up as one of the biggest and most impressive in the nation. Capable of seating up to fifty-thousand ponies at its peak, it was equipped with every convenience modern technology could provide. Including a roof.

The sisters had bypassed it when entering the city, seeing as the area appeared looted, destroyed, and empty. Bodies and ruins were everywhere, but living ponies were in short supply. As they had been seeking the enemy, Celestia and Luna had abandoned the area after a cursory mundane and magical search, heading for where they sensed more life, further east of the stadium and surrounding districts. Now, spurred by a worrying hypothesis, the alicorns quickly flew back that way, easily outpacing the ground horde and dispatching what scant flying pursuers appeared.

“857,” thought Celestia as they approached. The roof, as they remembered, was sealed. That was no obstacle to the princesses of Equestria, and they simply sheared off a section and flew low to peer. Their eyes widened as they beheld what lay within.

Not a bloodstained alter, surrounded by thousands of bodies, as they had worried. Instead, a vast swirling vortex of purple-pink energy occupied the center of the stadium, covering much of the field. A single pony was there, his voice unnaturally loud, echoing throughout. It was magic of some sort, that both sisters could tell, though the source was unfamiliar to them. Celestia’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the pony. He was blue, with a similarly-colored mane. She could sense great power emanating from him, and the closer she looked the more she could swear she saw some hints of visions in the corners of her eyes, faint whispers heard below the chanting.

It took Celestia all of half a second to recognize Pinkie Pie’s abductor.

Her horn glowed as an intense beam of golden light emerged, launching itself at the chanting pony. But as it grew closer, it seemed to weaken and change course, until finally it bypassed its target and disappeared into the swirling vortex. But it did get his attention.

The chanting ceased as the earth pony turned and looked up, meeting Celestia and Luna’s gazes with his own. He smiled and laughed. “Oh, well met, great princesses,” He gave a mocking bow. “So nice of you to come visit me here. Though I’m afraid I haven’t much hospitality to offer you.”

“What have you done with Pinkie Pie?” Celestia demanded, her voice hard. “Tell me!” she snapped in a voice that shook the stadium as the pony grinned at her.

“Oh, but why spoil the surprise? I- ugh!”

The pony staggered as Luna unleashed one of her tendrils on him. A blue field sprang up to shield him, but the force of the blow staggered him back towards the portal.

“No more insolence!” Luna cried, her voice causing the ground to rumble. “Tell us what you have done with Pinkamina Diane Pie!”

The earth pony’s grin and lighthearted air were gone, replaced by a look of indignant rage. “Never! The next time we meet, I’ll take your head for that!” With one last glare, he jumped backwards into the vortex.

The stadium shook violently. Pieces of the roof started to come down. Pillars began to crack. The alicorns began to move in, confident they could hold the place together and deduce what had happened, when the flow of the vortex suddenly reversed itself. The ground shook harder than ever, and cracks appear everywhere. Hunks of masonry crashed to the floor as the portal itself glowed and shook violently. Celestia and Luna looked at each other, then retreated, unwilling to risk their lives in an unknown magical reaction of such power for uncertain gains.

The Princesses hovered hundreds of feet above the Fillydelphia stadium as it came crumbling down. The roof went first, tumbling to the ground below in pieces. Next, the supports on much of the wall structure gave out, sending cascading avalanches of metal, wood, stone, and glass in every direction, covering the streets. Finally, a purple light flared up beneath the debris, blinding everypony for miles. Even the alicorn sisters needed a few seconds to recover.
When they descended again, all that was left was rubble. No sign of the vortex could be found, despite their efforts. It was when they attempted to scan for what type of magic the vortex had been that their questions were answered and their minds struck with horror. It wasn’t sacrificial magic.

It was teleportation magic.
…

Twilight looked at the scene of slaughter with growing disgust. Corpses by the hundred and thousand were piled high across the Colt Gate Bridge, but they still kept coming. Ponies of all shapes and sizes had continued to march across the bridge in seemingly endless waves for almost an hour now, climbing over their dead comrades to reach the barrier, only to join them almost immediately. Each spear thrust found a target, every arrow and magic bolt struck home. The bridge was slick with blood and gore, but the lunatics didn’t seem bothered in the least. A few forced their way through the sphere, many of them wearing spiked brass colors with the symbols of Khorne. They died almost as quickly, cut off from support or retreat.

In the air, the story was much the same. Pegasi of the Royal Guard swooped in and out of the barrier, hitting their Chaos counterparts hard and then retreating back in. The tactic was bloody and effective, dozens of enemy pegasi plunging to their deaths with each sortie, or throwing themselves fruitlessly against the barrier. And yet they still came, seemingly immune to fear or the slightest traces of common sense. Twilight couldn’t see, couldn’t understand what this was all about.

“What kind of pony could do such a thing?” she wondered, “Who could send their own ponies to die like this, for nothing? What could they gain? What kind of madpony would listen to that kind of order?” Twilight had moved near the front now, more rested and feeling safe behind the barrier. She looked at the madponies, not twenty feet away, hatred and desire and madness and Celestia knew what else visible on their faces. “Perhaps they really are just that insane…”

Twilight thought and thought. This was troubling her. “But… if they are that insane, how has it come to this? Their strategy so far shows plenty of insight and planning, with well-timed mass uprisings and strategic scorched earth campaigns. If they were that insane, how could they have waited so long and done so much damage with their first attack? Somepony with military insight has clearly been directing this thing, so why this? What will they gain?” Twilight wracked her brains for anything she knew about Chaos. She thought of the attack on Ponyville, the flight to Canterlot, the knowledge she’d gained there, the hydra, the burnt villages… “Nothing. It’s no good. Nothing I’ve seen accounts for this. Nothing explains why they would sacrifice so many…”

Twilight’s eyes widened as a realization hit her. “Sacrifice… That pony said he wanted to sacrifice Pinkie. But what if…” she paced a little bit, walking back and forth in the confined space between guard ponies. “What if Pinkie’s not the only thing they can sacrifice?”

Twilight started to sweat a little. She knew almost nothing about sacrificial magic. Such studies were absolutely forbidden to anyone. To sacrifice another being’s life for power was anathema to every rule and code of magic Twilight believed in.

“But they don’t believe them.”

Twilight started sweating even more, though she suddenly felt cold. Yes, it made a certain twisted kind of sense – if the sacrifice of one pony would grant power, what could the sacrifice of thousands of your own do? “But what could be worth all this blood? All these ponies?” She shook her head. She had no answer. And it wasn’t as though she could just go up to the Royal Guard and demand they stop killing the ponies they had come here to kill. “I guess I’ll just have to-”

Twilight was interrupted by a tremendous surge of magical energy. She cried out in pain, doubling over as her head seemed to explode. Though she couldn’t see it, every unicorn in the army cried out with her, falling to the ground and writhing as their innate senses detected magic that simply should not be.

Twilight, a unicorn of uncommon willpower if there ever was one, forced herself to her feet in defiance of her pounding head, opening one teary eye.

On the other side of the bay, on the island districts of Manehatten, there were tremendous flashes of purple light. The ground shook, the bridges wobbling along. The sea seemed to writhe and flow in all directions, as if seeking to escape what it somehow knew was coming. Smoke of every unnatural color poured from the island, blotting out Celestia’s sun. Screeching and roars and mad cackling could be heard as if they were right next to the hearer. The guard ponies whispered in silent awe. The crazed mutants and madponies cheered, screamed, or fell to their knees in worship. The guards by the edge of the barrier even halted their spear thrusts momentarily, mesmerized like everypony else.

The first sign of what had just happened came in the skies. A vast host rose up from the island, hovering above even the tallest of skyscrapers. Many were pegasi, yes, but many were… other. Vast numbers of red beings soared through the sky on batlike black wings. They had arms and legs ending in razor-sharp claws, elongated faces resembling twisted avaians, and vicious horns protruding from their heads. There were packs of what resembled nothing so much as flying blue manta rays. They had vast fangs, multiple yellow eyes, and sharklike fins. Some ponies rode among their number, on great flying disks. Finally, swarms of bloated flies buzzed above Manehatten, ridden by disgusting, humanoid figures with horns and one eye.

A single pegasus mare covered from head to toe in red and brass armor, wielding an enormous, rune-encrusted axe, positioned herself at the head of this vast aerial host. She swung the heavy weapon easily, with one hand, pointing it towards the ponies of the Royal Guard. A great cry could be heard from anywhere in the city, no matter where one was, carried to a pony’s ears by the power of Chaos.

“SLAUGHTER THEM!!!”

The aerial armada charged, with a great multitude of unholy cries that Twilight felt to her very core. The pegasus lead the charge, countless unholy beings following in her wake. Twilight stared in unmasked horror. She was far from the only one.

Twilight’s attention was ripped away from the incoming air attack by soul-chilling howls from the ground. From the other side of the bridge, a new force appeared. Hundreds of bizarre beings had charged over the ground, trampling any too slow or stupid to get out of their way. They were quadrupeds, like ponies, but there the similarities ended. They looked like some horrific red fusion of lizard and dog, wide purple frills and vicious-looking spikes coating their necks. Their feet were clawed, their teeth sharp, and their tales split. They all wore the brass collars Twilight had seen earlier, and even at this distance she could feel their baleful effect on magic.

Behind the lizard-dogs charged yet another new monstrosity. These were red bipedal creatures, rushing forward on two clawed feet with double-jointed legs somewhat resembling the rear legs of a pony. Long purple tongs dangled from their elongated heads. Massive horns protruded from these, some capped with brass. In their hands all carried hellish red-black swords. Some rare few carried horns or banner bearing Khorne’s symbol. Many now blew these horns, a sound that reminded Twilight of nothing so much as impending, inevitable death.

Those ponies now between the daemons and their prey scattered, ran with the monsters, or else threw themselves into their path to deliberately be trampled. The daemons did not seem to care either way. The ponies already at the barrier redoubled their efforts, a few managing to slip through. The Royal Guard, roused from entrancement by this new threat, redoubled their own efforts, felling dozens of ponies even as the daemon horde drew near.

Twilight, feeling her magic weaken as the enemy drew closer, began to back away, putting distance between herself and the barrier even as other ponies flocked to meet the charging enemy. She sensed her magic would do little to these creatures – the god they served seemed to reach out to nullify its effects on them. More than that, she was afraid. She thought she had been afraid before, but no. This, this was fear. More and more, her body, mind, and soul united as one to urge her to run. “Run,” they said, “Run and never look back.” It took all of Twilight’s mental power just to stop herself from fleeing blindly in a panic.

Twilight forced herself to turn around, against the protests of every instinct she had, staring at the daemons.

They had breached the barrier. Many were still outside, yes, but dozens of the Flesh Hounds had already shoved through Cadence’s magic, their god’s blessing providing the way. It took them all of seconds to tear through the front line. They moved impossibly fast, ignoring what should have been mortal wounds, always focused on the next kill. Guard ponies were dying like flies to the vanguard of Khorne’s army. Here and there a group would force one of the hounds down and pierce its unholy flesh, but more came through each second. Twilight watched in fearful fascination as one Flesh Hound tore through the barrier, ripped a pony’s head off in one swing of its claws, then leapt directly into the greatest concentration of enemies, eviscerating over a dozen before finally being brought down. The ponies who did it were immediately set on by five move, torn to so much gore in mere moments.

Twilight backed off still further as reinforcements from the rear rushed forward to contain the breach. Hundreds of ponies swarmed, but now the first of the Bloodletters had forced their way through Cadence’s barrier. Roaring with unholy delight and rage, they swung their blades through ponies like a thresher through wheat. Each swing seemed to kill, and each kill only seemed to drive them to further kills. It was horrible. Twilight vomited yet again as cold fear clenched her stomach. She back off even more.

Horrible screeches made Twilight look back at the sky. The flying host had already cleared the skies beyond the barrier of ponies with blade and fang and plague and magic. Now the first of them had cleared the barrier, Khornate pegasus still in the lead. She swung her axe, killing the first pegasus to reach her. Twilight’s heart nearly gave out as she watched Rainbow Dash charge the pegasus, only to in turn be tackled by another pegasus from the side. They wrestled in the air, tumbling beyond Twilight’s sight.

The daemons were within the barrier now, and in numbers. Swarms of Furies descended on the ponies below, clawing and kicking and biting. Screamers screeched through the sky in great flocks, dueling pegasi and feeding on their corpses. Plague Drones swooped down on ground ponies, carrying off dozens even as they screamed and decayed before their very eyes. Armored ponies on disks waved staffs and wands and all sorts of fetishes, unleashing bizarre magicks to deadly effect. Twilight saw one strike a pegasus with lightning, heard his screams as his body broke out in uncontrolled mutation as he plummeted to earth.

Despite everything, the Khornate pegasus in her heavy armor maintained her lead, killing every being the dared attempt to stand before her. Twilight even watched her kill a Screamer that dared pull ahead of her in the headlong charge forward. Even petrified with fear as her mind was, Twilight did not take long to see her destination. She was closing fast on Cadence’s position, a flock of pegasi and Screamers at her back. Cadence still floated there, immobile and helpless. Though her barrier had been breached in many places, it still held the great majority of daemons and ponies out, and she struggled to maintain it. Her guards still stood between her and the pegasus, but Twilight’s already panicked mind went into overdrive.

Twilight bolted, running as fast as she could through the streets of Manehatten, desperate to get beneath Cadence. She took the back ways, through areas already taken, rather than try to struggle through the chaotic melee near the bridges. She didn’t know what she could do if she got there, didn’t know if she could even hurt the pegasi, but she knew she had to try. She’d already lost so much – Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Ponyville – that she couldn’t lose Cadence too. She just couldn’t.

Twilight emerged from an alleyway. Cadence hovered above her. Her were guards occupied or dead. The pegasus beheaded the last guard between herself and the alicorn. She charged. Twilight’s horn glowed as she hurriedly tried to work a spell on the Khornate.

Nothing.

The pegasus reached her. The axe swung.

“CADENCE!!!”

“SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!!”

Author's Note:

*Phew* This one took a little while to write and rewrite until I liked it better. Please tell me what you think. Rate, comment - I'd like feedback.

Comments

[Word Bearer]

blood for the blood god

[Moonreaper666]

We need casualty list for the individual battles and the war entirely. Also, general number of troops involved and categorized by what kind of soldier they are i.e. loyalist militia, royal guard, chaos fanatic, etc.

Also, can you give an estimation of the population of Equestria?