Nightmarish Diplomacy

by Dragonborne Fox

Chapter II— Brewing Machanations

King Cauchemar lifted his head as the doors to the throne room opened, wreathed in golden flames. At the same time as the double doors opened, another one of gold and opal spontaneously appeared beside them and itself opened. First came in Rainy Parade from the spontaneous door, which vanished upon her departure from it, then Trypo and Nocti, both of whom sported glossy manes, uniforms and coats indicating a bout of trotting in the rain. They were followed by the other five Champions who kept at least a full ten feet of distance from one another with glares being exchanged between them. "Excellent. Did any of the Champions give you trouble?" he asked, turning to Nocti.

"Some, but once they learned of the summons, the trouble more or less ceased," Nocti confirmed with a nod.

King Cauchemar grinned, but he had the decency to not let his smile widen enough to show his fangs. "Very well. You and Trypo are dismissed for the evening. Head to the barracks and do as you will for the evening, you two have more than earned it."

"Thank you, King Cauchemar," Trypo and Nocti said in unison with a bow, with Nocti grinning slightly and Trypo more or less maintaining her poker face as they took their leave. The doors closed behind them, leaving the royalty alone with the Nightmarians they had summoned.

Silence held, for the barest of instants. Then Redsky Morning more or less kicked things off. "So what the hay are we gonna do, y'know?" Here, she looked at King Cauchemar directly and added, "You didn't tell your lackeys jack, and we don't know jack because of it, y'know!"

That, in turn, got Agora to huff before she regained her cool composure. "While I deign fit to disagree with my fellow Champions on most things, I am inclined to agree with Redsky Morning on this matter. Why, exactly, were we all summoned?" Murmurs of agreement rose from the other four Champions, all echoing the question.

The murmurings only hushed when King Cauchemar rose from his throne and directly approached the six, halting just in front of Broken Mirror before glancing towards the rest of them. "Something… heavy has weighed on my mind recently. It simply would not stop pestering me," he admitted.

Broken Mirror's eyes narrowed, her head cocking as flames wreathed her hooves, highlighting a myriad of old, discolored scars that decorated her sunset orange body alongside her brilliantly golden mane. "What?" she asked.

"The task is a relatively simple one," King Cauchemar began, causing the Champions to glance at each other with questions flashing through their brains and confusion smeared across their eyes.

Rainy Parade tilted her head, her bluish mane loosening its hold on her purplish neck to droop to the side slightly. "A task?" she echoed, her deadened voice stirred by somewhat mild curiosity.

King Cauchemar nodded resolutely. "Well… more like a series of small tasks that shall culminate into a far larger, delicate operation, but yes," he confessed, still maintaining his rather calculating grin.

Agora perked up a little, her visor glinting in Broken Mirror's flames alongside oddly metallic legs only slightly darker than her viridian coat and mane. "Something delicate…" she mused, pursing her lips the slightest bit. "How would this be… delicate, my liege?"

"It requires… some tact and grace, preferably without bloodshed for once…" King Cauchemar sucked in a breath through his nostrils, and closed his eyes briefly as he thought of how best to describe what he had in mind. "For you see… it involves the former homeland of our distant ancestors."

Glances were exchanged amongst the six again, bewilderment starting to take hold on each Champion. Even Broken Mirror's flames diminished as soon as the words hit her ears. Then, they turned to their King again, and Arachno piped up with an oddly quiet, "Equestria?"

At the king's nod, Nycto tossed in her two bits, "Do we get… to do diplomacy?" Her face soured into a pout as 'diplomacy' rolled off her tongue, her dark purple face twisting into narrow-eyed distaste. "Your majesty, not to speak out of turn, but that's boring stuff—boring stuff even the stuffiest of brownnosers wouldn't touch around Nightmaria."

"Hah!" Arachno laughed, grinning smugly as Nycto turned to glare at her. "As if you could do diplomacy without sucking at it, you worm!" she thought, wisely keeping the musing from applying itself on her tongue. She instead said, "Diplomacy? Towards Equestria? What have they ever done to us to earn it?" That got another few murmurs to rise, but other than that everyone was silent.

King Cauchemar's grin faded, and his head grimly shook. "No, it's not a lie, I'm afraid. You'll have to practice diplomacy… I know you would rather be scouting Equestria for weaknesses. Probing the chinks in the armor before you shatter it completely, irreparably—though that won't be as easy as it seems, should you choose to go down that route without my permission."

Before Nycto could protest, he lifted a hoof and added, "We don't want them suspecting any ulterior motives or the like. Naive though they could be, they could also be far from stupid. From there…" His face hardened into something regally befitting of him, "Our forces will handle the rest, if things should not progress smoothly."

A chorused "Ooooooh" answered him. Redsky Morning piped up again, rubbing her multicolored mane with a white hoof, "So, about that…" She awkwardly continued scratching, face twisting into somewhat of a pout, "Aren't there only, like, three tribes in Equestria, y'know?"

A nod answered her. "Unified, yes, from what little my scouts have relayed. All ruled by alicorns." He swept his raised hoof aside, sparking fire that coalesced into four images. "Only four, two in the capital, one in a vassal state, and the fourth near said capital. Barring the alicorns, who are magically strong in their own right…" The flames dispersed, and the hoof lowered. "Nopony else can compare. Incapacitate the alicorns, and the rest will be easy pickings… and yet, the alicorns have been incapacitated time and time again. The nation still stands, somehow."

"What else have your scouts gleaned about the alicorns, my liege?" Agora asked, curiosity flashing in her eyes again. This was a prime opportunity for answers, and the cruel, yet somewhat appreciative smile turned to her as she asked.

That hardened expression the King wore, however, turned into a solemn expression that seemed more disappointed than angry—it wasn't as firm as they were expecting, but still kept the relative quality just enough to maintain itself. "As I have yet to assess the situation with my own two eyes, I would caution you all to take what I have heard with several grains of salt if at all possible."

When six nods answered him, he elaborated to them what he had heard, and the longer he went on about it, the more the initial bewilderment melted to narrow-eyed expressions best summarised as 'What the Tartarus?' Even Rainy Parade seemed surprised, her deadened eyes growing perceptibly more confused as she beheld what she was listening to.

Once the extrapolation of the nitty-gritty came to an end, the six assembled Champions shared looks of concern marred with various emotions. Redsky Morning spoke for all of them as she turned back to the King with a particularly potent frown. "That's just… wow. I haven't heard of a country running like that bad and keeping itself somehow standing, y'know."

Agora crossed her forelegs, then lifted one to rub her chin with a fetlock as she contemplated the information. The mission seemed simpler than previous ones: assess Equestria, play diplomats, figure out what in the world kept that whole nation running. Yet… she couldn't help but notice that something about the whole situation reeked of something quite rotten. Whatever it was, though, she couldn't pin a name to it.

Further, there were unknown factors that could complicate the whole operation to varying degrees. This made her brow furrow, so she turned to the other Champions and said, "We might have to set rendezvous points during our little visit to Equestria. I'd suggest we gather all the intel we can first, and act last."

Broken Mirror snorted and shook her head, but even she could not fault that logic. As much as she wanted to punch Agora in her calculating face, as well as the rest of the Champions, she had to admit that the advice was sound. So she turned to King Cauchemar and asked, "Any areas of interest in Equestria?"

Fortunately for them, the King was smiling at the query. His glinting teeth reminded Broken Mirror of someone playing something very close to his vest. "There are a few notable areas, the most prominent of which is a little hamlet called Ponyville. I've heard it's a delightful magnet for many a catastrophe." He lifted a hoof wrought in flames and waved, conjuring a map that took on a globular shape. It spun around for a second, then stopped when it centered on a continent with a tall mountain in the center, showing a city built into the rockface.

At the foot of that mountain was a smallish town, roughly as big as the average neighborhood in Nightmaria, which the King gestured to. "I've heard it attracts all sorts of disasters…" he went on, the utterance causing the Champions' eyes to widen as they beheld the town in its seemingly mediocre glory. "Eternal night, chaos, escaped fiends from Tartarus… it always seems to stand out the most, because something about it just so happens to avert whatever catastrophe visits the rest of Equestria…"

The globe shifted aside so the King could look squarely at his Champions, a gleam of pride in his crimson eyes. "Find out what that something is. I want all the intel available. We will move from there." He grinned with a delight that only the damned would see just before their execution, as regal and poised as ever, yet as predatory as a hungry bugbear. "Do you have any further questions?"

Nycto nodded. "When will we depart for Equestria, and what will we do before the endgame?" she asked.

The King chuckled, but the sound held no mirth. "At the eve of next week. We will arrive by boat. From there, you will leave by airship, and seek Ponyville out from there by train. There, you'll witness what draws the disasters of Equestria to it, seeking as much information for diplomatic reasons as possible. Do not bring anything that could tip them off to our goals. I will send other scouts to the less important cities to scour them as well, on the off-chance they contain something equally important. When the time comes all of the groups, including yours, will rendezvous at the shores of the land." His grin faded into a firm and calculating expression. "I shall come along, for I have… a very different matter to settle with Equestria myself."

The Champions couldn't help but share glances again. Then they looked at their King and asked a single, unified, "What?"

King Cauchemar's eyes burned with resolve, yet his calculating expression remained. "A matter to settle with the alicorns who rule over the land, before any… final preparations," he answered cryptically.

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Once the briefing was over and done with, and Nycto was certain that the other Champions would stop bugging her for the night, she returned to her manse with a snort leaving her snout as she touched down on the walkway. She galloped to it, and then through rooms and hallways she couldn't care to bother with names and categories as her mind shifted to something very dear to her.

"She's going to be angry at me," Nycto thought with a reluctant sigh leaving her lips. But when she reached a seemingly-innocuous door on the second floor of the manse, she opened it and poked her head in. "Sour Note?" she called. The filly in question poked her head around the door with a frown on her face.

"Yes?" Sour Note asked, smiling at first before noticing the rather grim look on Nycto's face. "Are you going to have to go on a mission again, mother?" she asked, her smile falling.

Nycto grimly nodded. "I'll leave next week," she said bluntly. "I can't share anything about the mission except the fact I'll be gone for at least a few weeks," she added as Sour Note's face began twisting into a pout.

"But why?" Sour Note asked. "Is it an expedition?"

Nycto shook her head. "You know that boring thing called diplomacy?" she asked, garnering a hesitant nod from Sour Note. "That's why I can't share anything; it would bore you to tears."

Sour Note made an "oh" face. "Because the stuffiest brownosers wouldn't touch it, mother," she said, earning a giggle and a pat on the head from Nycto.

"Exactly," Nycto said with a genuine smile. Her smile fell seconds later. "But I've got to suck it up and play along for once; the other five bozos are also in on it, and they're not thrilled about this either." She sighed and looked out the window at the dark and dreary Nightmarian skies. "And I'll need to start preparing before the week is up." She turned to Sour Note again. "I would ask if you'd like to train with our pet basilisks again, but I think we may have to pass that up this time."

Sour Note stomped a hoof. "But I like training with the pet basilisks with you, mother! That way, they can protect us when they need to, like the guards can!" she griped.

"I know, and as much as I enjoy training with them until something interrupts us or they need to eat, I'm afraid…" Here, Nycto sighed reluctantly and winced, "you'll have to be a good filly while I'm gone."

Sour Note blew a raspberry, and Nycto smiled before doing likewise. "I know, it's boring," Nycto continued, shaking her head even as she patted the child's mane with a hoof. "But I'd rather you not get questioned by the King's lackeys and then having your whole existence exposed to all of Nightmaria." The older mare leaned to the filly and whispered in her ear, "Besides, the other Nightmarians who aren't Flashforce Focus, Glitz, the Bloodspray Squadron, the King, and his Queen, are all blowhards."

Sour Note giggled and snickered at that, grinning broadly as she remembered the look on Nocti's dumb face when he came strolling in earlier that day. Nycto pulled away and added, "But when I get back… remind me, and we'll train with all the basilisks you want. Deal?"

"Deal!" Sour Note replied with a wide and toothy grin showing off small, but sharp and fierce Nightmarian teeth. Nycto smiled and patted her head again, when someone knocked on her door.

Nycto turned to the door without opening it. "Who dares?" she growled.

A stallion on the other side answered, "Flashforce Focus wishes to see you, Lady Nycto!"

Nycto sighed, but smiled all the same. "Tell her I'll be there in a few minutes," she ordered. Immediately, the stallion galloped off, and both waited until the sound of his hooves fully faded before turning to Sour Note again. "Any other creature you want to fight when I get back?" she asked.

Sour Note tilted her head, before grinning. "Rocs!" she replied. "The stronger the better, mother! They'd make excellent guard beasts!"

Nycto's smile widened. "A challenging one, I see… alright, I'll see if we can wrangle that into the training schedule," she said before trotting out the door. "Remember, best behavior!"

"Roger that, mother!" Sour Note replied, prancing in place as Nycto trotted out of the room.

Nycto traversed a few hallways, down some stairs, and didn't bother to take note of where she was until she reached the grand foyer of her manse. There, seemingly loitering, was Flashforce Focus, who looked up to smile at her.

Flashforce was the first to speak, "So some of my spies might have… talked to the King's lackeys," she said.

"What did those brownnoser lookalikes have to offer?" Nycto asked, trotting down the stairs to be face to face with Flashforce.

"Well, the King might have been agitated when he made the summons. From the reports, something seemed to have troubled him greatly," Flashforce reported. "In turn, troubling the lackeys. You know how they get; if the King isn't calm, they aren't, either, try as they might to say otherwise."

Nycto's brow furrowed. "Come to think of it, he did look angier than normal, even if he tried to smile it away… weird…" she noted in the back of her head. "Yeah, he tried making it go away with a few smiles, but that… that failed," she said aloud, causing some of the guards to mutter when they heard it. "He said me and the other five bozos have a week to prepare."

Flashforce nodded. "Need me to keep tabs here while you're gone?" she asked.

Nycto nodded back. "Yeah; the King's gathering forces of his own to scout another kingdom. Why, I don't know, but he did say he had something to settle with that kingdom's leaders," she said. She shrugged and added, "I don't know what the kingdom did to upset him, but trust me, he was miffed. I already figured out he has an endgame involved, I just don't know what for yet."

Flashforce sighed, taking in the disturbing news as well as a professional spy could, albeit with a hint of restrained internal screaming flashing in her eyes. "The kingdom in question?"

"Equestria," Nycto replied. A collective gasp rose from the guards, and for once, she didn't blame them for the gaffe. Even Flashforce gasped, albeit hers was more restrained and less outward shock.

"You mean… the land our ancestors were cast from?" Flashforce asked, her voice betraying a hint of disbelief.

Nycto nodded firmly. "Yep. That land. The King's planning something big, that much I can guess. Whatever it is, it might get messy…" She smiled despite the development. "For the Equestrians…"

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Agora was doing mental checklists as she worked on her forelegs back in her lab, gritting her teeth in concentration. Even among the pointless tawdry drabble and blathering of the other Nightmarians, there had been one area she excelled at, and another whose mere mention only elicited scorn from her.

The first thing was controlling her emotions. Such things were unbecoming of most, and if she could, she would have done away with the concept entirely. But alas, she could never fully shake them off, try as she might—by Tartarus, not even the King's two lookalike lackeys were capable of the feat. Which was irritating, because the thing that elicited scorn from her just had to have been brought up in the meetup with the King. Her mind raced, trying constantly to bat it away to no avail.

Equestria. Equestria. A thousand damned times, Equestria. The former homeland of the ancestors of all Nightmarians, before they were banished to this cold and dreary place. The history behind that was as wrenching and depressing as the history of any other nation that rose to prominence, and Nightmaria's was no different.

She could hear the recitals in her head, even now, and worked furiously to quell them. It did little good; the recitals continued, rising in volume as if to drown her tinkering out.

"Long ago, before the first King ascended to the Sable Throne that stands today, before Nightmaria drew her first breath, the ponies who became our ancestors lived in a very different land. Lush, verdant, and full of life as far as the eye could see, the first Nightmarians lived in harmony with the world. For a time, uncounted as the first breath of history was expelled into the echoes of time, we laughed, we harmonized, and we grew to expand in a continent on the edge of the world."

Agora opened a hatch on the bottom of her left forehoof, extending various mechanical devices from within it that shapeshifted to different things thanks to green flames. Knives, a magical blaster, casting nets, clubs, spears… some with barrels and some without. She checked thoroughly that everything was in order, then closed the hatch on her left forehoof to move to her right. Even then, she could hear that distant voice she couldn't place, reciting the tale passed down from previous generations of Nightmarians who came before her.

"But then, as all seemed right in the world, everything came. First the pegasi, then the unicorns, and then the earth ponies, all with the Dread Winter on their heels. At first, they fought with the first Nightmarians as much as each other, only worsening the cold and the storms of Tartarus. A fourth tribe, the Thraceans, fought just as much, though none could say whose side they were on. After a decade of fighting, the Thraceans moved on, their whereabouts unknown. The pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns, however, unified—a strange occurrence that drove the Dread Winter away."

The hatch on the bottom of her right forehoof opened. A barrel slunk out, round and thin and hollow in its center. Agora huffed upon seeing tiny scratches in its metallic surface, but shook her head. Such things were only cosmetic, and the scratches weren't anything special. The barrel shapeshifted with the aid of green flames, turning into a knife, and then a spear. Everything seemed to be working here too, so the entity retracted and the hatch closed.

"Once the three remaining tribes unified, they set to work casting out the first Nightmarians. Villages were burned, warriors slain, mares and foals forced to flee the carnage as the enemy forces swept through the budding empire. Despite reports that the unified tribes refused to partake in the plundering and ravaging that other empires were wont to commit, the first Nightmarians didn't let themselves be fooled. They rallied their best forces, their strongest magics, and mightiest weaponry to fight the coming tide of the first Equestrians."

Agora scoffed. Such a report was obviously made to fool naive children into thinking that war was easy, quick, and without all the bloodshed and brutality. Whoever was reciting the tale seemed to have forgotten that, long ago, the Nightmarians lost their innocence, and turned into what they were today through pain and hardship. Such was the way of life—suffering was as universal and immutable as time itself. The tale kept the recital going in her head, though, and didn't seem to account for her musings.

"But even that failed, and the budding empire was cut down where it stood. The survivors were forced to flee to the other edge of the world, to where the Equestrians could not follow. Across tumultuous waters, and under dreary skies that cut down most seafaring vessels, the Nightmarians sailed, though at a great and terrible cost. As they shored, they grieved for those who could not make it with them, their innocence fully sundered, scattered and lost to the winds. They lingered on the shoreline just long enough to build the first graveyard of their dead in the new land, using the vessels that remained, which now stands today as the Forlorn Sanctuary."

A pang of pity rose in Agora as she recalled the Forlorn Sanctuary. She recalled having visited it long ago, as a little filly, on a school field trip for history class. Such despair, anguish, and rage, all compacted into one place, intermingling with grief and confusion. Even now, she could swear she heard those lost to the ocean ages ago, calling for retribution upon those that had forced them to make their deadly, and decidedly last sojourn. She smothered the pity within her, and continued working.

"Then, when construction of the Forlorn Sanctuary was completed, and their remaining supplies retrieved in preparation to make a new home, they scouted the new unventured territory around them. There, they found a land of snow, sleet and clouds, as dreary and cold as the fabled Shadowlands. But here, there were mighty and terrifying creatures that dwarfed most armies in sheer scale and inhospitable land, two things that stood between the survival of the Nightmarians. Through carnage, mining, and agony, the first empire was reborn anew, a shadow of her former self."

Agora idly nodded even as she checked one of her hind legs, opening a hatch on the bottom of its hoof to see its gadgets in functioning form. A different array came out of the hiding hole: axes, halberds, swords, all detachable and reattachable. She removed and replaced each one as they shapeshifted, checking them over to see if they needed to be retired. Alas, though, she found the results satisfactory, and moved to check her last hoof.

"As the new empire grew, and the hostile land slowly transformed into what it is today, the world began to forget that the Nightmarians ever existed. None dared set foot into the land, none dared cross the turbulent waters surrounding it. No attempt was made to clear the skies of snow and thunder, or to traverse them, for such follies were beneath the Nightmarians. Rather, the weather gave them an advantage we share to this day: those who attempt to cross the skies will be ravaged where they hover, cast into the Ocean of Souls or to the frozen wastes on the outskirts of the nation. And as we stand now, someday we will make the world reflect on its forgotten history, and weep for what will be lost to regain our former glory."

Perhaps, Agora mused as she finished the final checkups of her legs, the tale might have been bugging the King as it had been bugging her. Perhaps he sought to regain the lost glory from so long ago? That would have been the best explanation for his recent antics, yet she wondered about a lot of things there and then. Where did the alicorns come from? From what, and how, did they rule Equestria? A part of her began wondering what Equestria was like now under their leadership, hoping that they were as brutal now as they probably were in the days of yore.

A spike of excitement rose in her, and she was able to contain it. Such emotions were beneath her, but even she could not fully mute them.

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Broken Mirror huffed, frowning as she punched and kicked at a training dummy with as much strength as she could put into the motions. Of all the things she could have heard from the King and his stupid lackeys, it had to involve one of the parts of the world she liked the least. But some thoughts proved immutable, and she wondered if she could fight those probably prissy and frou-frou alicorns in a proper battle. Maybe they were strong opponents, and hopefully would be challenging in that regard.

But what if they weren't, and instead nothing more than paper tigers trying to pretend to rule while the real strong ponies did everything behind the scenes? Government was tricky business after all, and whoever had those battlements under their hooves were probably pretty top-notch. Then again, that was her Nightmarian perspective coming into play; the hamlet she was being sent to check out seemed to have been backwoods in comparison.

And if that town was backwoods, then what did that say about the rest of Equestria?

Even as she made the training dummy regret everything it ever did, she couldn't help but wonder. The questions circled in her mind again and again, threatening to bore her to death with their mundane, unquenchable natures. She kept going, slowly grinding the dummy to dust with her powerful strikes. It was all the dummy could do to keep itself together as it bounced back and forth with her thrashing it, and the splitting seams told the dummy it was fighting a losing battle.

Maybe the hamlet had a reason for looking like it came out of the backwater, Broken Mirror mused as she halted her beating of the dummy to scan the rest of the room she was in. All around, training dummies stood, accompanied by spears, halberds, shields and even armor on the appropriate racks, all the best and highest tech Nightmaria could have asked for. Why, if she recalled correctly, the King's lackeys practically paraded that stuff around when they were out and about.

Her thoughts turned back to the hamlet. Equestria still looked lush and green and… oversaturated on the map the King had conjured, if memory of Nightmaria's origins served her correctly. By all that was unholy, were the maps updated recently, and if so, was she being sent to a farmer's community? And what on the planet justified the oversaturation in that one land? The rest of the world had more muted colors; Equestria practically glowed in comparison and threatened to burn her eyes out.

Then again, the King had said the community was a disaster magnet, so maybe there was something about it that piqued even his interest. Which was strange; such small towns never did tickle the King's fancy for any reason, unless they were of Nightmarian origin and something happened to them that necessitated his interest.

Broken Mirror moved to another training dummy and started whaling on it, still trying to make sense of it all. She heard the door to the room open, and some other schmuck's hoofsteps, but didn't take note of who they were until they came over to start beating on the dummy that was next to hers. She looked over and scowled; it seemed the King's female lackey had decided to waltz in uninvited, her own face furrowed in as much concentration as her visor could allow. Behind her, eyeballing a spear's rack was her male companion, whose face was turned away from the mares and thus unreadable. Both had freshly-groomed manes and coats, and their garments seemed to have dried, but that didn't distract either in the least.

For a moment, neither said anything to each other. Finally, Broken Mirror spoke up. "Aren't you two supposed to be in the barracks?"

Trypo nodded, mouth pressed into a thin line. "The King never said we couldn't continue our training," she pointed out.

Broken Mirror growled, but nodded reluctantly and went back to her second training dummy. Try as she might, she couldn't fault Trypo for wanting and needing to stay sharp just in case something happened—for her, it was practically duty after all. Though she might have needed to bring Nocti up to speed in that regard, as he was still checking out the weapons' racks.

Finally, Nocti came and claimed a dummy next to Trypo, and started to bash it. He struck up a conversation with Trypo that Broken Mirror simply tuned out as she furiously worked on splitting the dummy at the seams as fast as possible. They seemed to ignore Broken Mirror, and she preferred that as she saw the splitting seams and trotted away to bash another unfortunate dummy all the way on the other side of the room.

Sure, the pair were asking questions they probably had no business asking, but that simply wasn't Broken Mirror's business; her business wasn't theirs, either. Although, she reluctantly noted, they seemed to have been jabbering about the recent summons, even after Trypo told Nocti to put several socks in it. Then again, the summons for all six Champions of Nightmaria had heavy implications for the country as a whole; Broken Mirror shook her head and kept trying to grind the third dummy to dust.

"Are we going to have any new laws implemented?" Nocti asked.

Broken Mirror shouted from across the room, "I'd have told you by now if that were happening, you darn bone-white knucklehead!"

Nocti shook his head and went back to his training dummy. Even then, he couldn't help but feel a bit disturbed by that confession.

Trypo spoke up for the both of them, "If we had new laws, we'd have been the first to hear about and relay the news thereof to the rest of Nightmaria." She paused her training to thwack Nocti upside the head, then went right back to her training like nothing happened as he grumbled and rubbed the spot where he'd been hit. "You've asked enough questions today; cease at once."

"Yes, Trypo…" Nocti grumbled as he resumed his training. Broken Mirror smirked and resumed her training as well, glad that for once he was shut up.

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Rainy Parade stewed in her pocket dimension, the peal of thunder echoing and rattling the walls of her modest abode. Long and hard she thought of the summons, what everything meant for both Nightmaria and Equestria. For a time, hours uncounted, she stewed. If she had been capable of laughter now, she would have done so in that moment. As it was, laughter was unbecoming of her, an unreachable goal she could never hope to attain.

The sudden turn of events, of scouting a foreign town to find out what made it special, in a land where the ancestors of the modern Nightmarian had been given the firm boot would have surprised most. Indeed, it surprised even her, and it would have been a folly to admit otherwise. Word must have spread throughout Nightmaria by now of the summons, and surely others were now talking about it and its ramifications.

She turned to the door leading into her pocket dimension, and got up to trot to it, the thunder rattling its frame as she opened it to find an alleyway. She shut the door behind her, lit her hooves with fire, and galloped off to the sky to check on something. She noted that the rain before had turned into sleet and snow, chilling her coat but not without dampening her flames.

She looked around the vast Nightmarian landscape, idly hovering there as the first snowflakes fell. Her breath began to cloud the air, more so than usual. She glanced down, seeing the Nightmarians who hadn't opted to fly galloping below, seemingly rushing into any building that would accept them. She knew the sign and descended down to a street, and looked around for a building that would suit her current needs.

She galloped down that street, watching as the other Nightmarians galloped past her. Many heeded her presence, and gave her a wide berth. One in peculiar armor stopped in front of her, and she skid to a halt to keep from crashing into him. "Report," Rainy Parade ordered.

"Massive blizzard incoming. It seems another Dread Storm's brewing," the armored Nightmarian replied, face firm but with a flash of genuine fear and respect in his eyes as he beheld Rainy Parade. "The Rainy Corps are getting every citizen inside their homes. We'll head home ourselves once all the other Nightmarians are safe." He managed to not let the fear in his eyes show anymore than he already had, and he added, "That being said, we'll also take measures to make sure every Nightmarian is warm for the night."

Rainy Parade nodded, a teeny bit satisfied with that even if her face didn't show it. "Keep up the good work," she said in her deadened monotone. The armored Nightmarian saluted her and galloped off to herd more Nightmarians towards their homes and to make sure they were warm and cozy as he promised. She could appreciate that in him, his resolve and diligence, but that meant she would have to head home as well. She turned down a street, conjured an opal-gold door to her pocket realm attached to an innocuous side-building, and entered it again to move in front of the furnace.

The door rattled as it shut behind her, as did the boards of the windows. Strange, she could hear a light tinkle-tonkle sound hitting the abode every two seconds. She was tempted to see if the weather outside the windows had changed, before shaking her head and taking a moment to warm back up. Even if physical heat rejuvenated her body, it could never quite do the same for her deadened soul, but she appreciated it all the same despite that and her expression seemingly saying otherwise.

Then, when she was certain the cold had left her body, she turned to the stairs of her pocket realm and trotted to them before going up them. It lead to a second hallway, stretching on to reveal a hoofful of more rooms, all shut with doors of mahogany. At the end of the hall rested a ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling, and that is where Rainy Parade went to as she saw it. Finding herself in an attic whose windows were boarded shut and some seemingly innocuous wooden crates nestled neatly into whatever corners they could fit into, she trotted to the window to peek past what little gaps there were in the planks.

The rain had changed to snow and hail. Or was it sleet? It was hard to tell through those tiny gaps, but that would have explained things. She pulled away from the window and turned to the crates, conjuring flames and using them to drag one crate away from its brethren to pry it open and see what it had inside.

Huh, a rusted dire flail. Tenderly, she removed it from the crate and looked inside to see what else was inside it, but nothing of the sort popped out at her—just dust, cobwebs, and emptiness. She closed the crate and put it back with the others, trotting across the attic and down the ladder with the dire flail in her magically-burning grip, idly recalling that she had found it in the snowlands just outside of Nightmaria. She turned to one of the doors on her left and opened it, finding a seemingly innocuous washroom with a fully furnished tub, sink, toilet with amenities, mirror, and a boarded window.

She closed the door, and opened the one directly opposite of it. Aha, a room with weapons, racks, another furnace big enough to house said weapons, a large wash basin as high as her knees that was blackened with age and use, bottles of vinegar, and wire brushes. She trotted inside and put the flail in the basin, grabbed the wire brush, some vinegar, and set to work on removing the rust. While the vinegar wasn't her first choice due to its smell, it was more tolerable than what she would have used otherwise to clean the flail.

As she soaked and scrubbed the flail to remove its rust, she thought long and hard about the summons. It was difficult not to, but all the same she had to brace herself for whatever Equestria would throw at her—the ponies of now would likely be very different from the ponies of yore, as dictated by the laws of time, society and change, that much she was certain of.

It was only a matter of finding out how stark that difference was. Oh well, that could wait until she visited that little innocuous hamlet proper—right now, she had a weapon to clean.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Redsky Morning trotted around the house that she had been summoned from, sprucing up the rooms therein. The sheets from the bedroom she got done using were washed, the blankets ironed, and that gamey smell no longer lingered between doors. She had been working furiously to clean it up, grumbling about how she needed to keep a better eye for the lackeys in the future, remembering one incident when both walked in on her with a stallion in… a compromising position and having to make herself presentable for them.

At least those knuckleheads had the decency to knock first. And to be fair, that was the first time Redsky Morning had seen them blushing furiously—and in her opinion, that stupefied look suited them just fine, even if she couldn't see their eyes through those visors. She imagined the full treatment: wide, shrunken pupils, trembling as they beheld the spectacle that they knew they shouldn't have intruded on. And hey, they learned their lesson, so at least she got something out of that potentially hairy situation. The blissful tryst with the stallion she had already wooed at the time was just a big bonus to it all.

But her mind couldn't help but flit back to the summons. Her fur bristled when she recalled Arachno scoffing at the mere notion of being diplomatic to Equestria. Granted, the legends of yore on how Nightmaria came to be might have had something to do with that, but it was still so… out of the left blue fields that there was no way that it wasn't unnerving to think about.

The only thought she could voice on the matter left her mouth before she could regain control of it, "Arachno's acting… weirder than normal, 'yknow… that's just not like her…"

As the thought expelled itself on her tongue, her blood began to simmer at it. Sure, Arachno had behaved rather strangely when the King informed them all of what they were doing, but that didn't mean she hadn't wanted to personally see to it that Arachno wouldn't have foals of her own, ever. Besides, in Redsky's opinion, none of the other Champions were particularly worthy of foals either.

Or of most things they had in life for that matter, the petulant blowhards. Redsky's brow furrowed, and her cleaning turned more furious as she thought of the other Champions and what she hated most about them, her own voice echoing in her head as she complained to a previous lover of hers.

"Arachno's completely nuts, did I ever tell you that?" she had asked.

"No, you didn't," her lover replied. "How is she completely nuts?"

"Well, she has this constant… need for attention, y'know. Can't go for one second without making herself the most important Nightmarian in the room, even with the King around, y'know? She just can't tell who the actual most important Nightmarians are except for the King, and even then she thinks she's smarter than him! I've seen it in her bucking eyes, too, and that's just wrong, y'know!"

She recalled her lover going wide-eyed and blinking as he shifted in bed to look at her more evenly. "Whoa… and I thought my cousin was bad," he said.

"You don't know the half of it. What's even worse, she'll just treat you like rotten horseapples if you don't think that she's the so-called 'Smartest Being in the Universe,' y'know."

"... wow…"

"Yeah, and I wish I could punch her in the face for that. It would be so satisfying, y'know? Just to wipe that smug smile right off her stupid bucking face."

Redsky Morning smirked at the thought. Oh how she would have loved to do that, to be the Nightmarian to show Arachno her place in the order of things, to show her that no, she wasn't truly the 'Smartest Being in the Universe.' But no, Arachno had to have decided to become a Champion of Nightmaria, making that musing nothing more than a wishful flight of fancy.

"And Broken Mirror is just as bad, in a completely different way. She just… she seems to drink in, bathe in hate, y'know? Like… like she can't stand anyone else."

"How so?" Redsky's lover asked as the memory continued to replay in her head.

"I hear that every time the King summons her through one of his lackeys, she keeps trying and failing to punch them in their bucking faces. I swear, if I didn't know any better, I'd have thought they were eqdroids, y'know?"

"Yeah, I heard those two can be real sticks in the mud. How they became the King's personal guards, I'll never know."

"Me neither."

Redsky laughed as she straightened out a pair of backup sheets and slung them onto the bed, making sure there were no creases in the fabric and that they were as straight and crisp as the day they were sewn. She fluffed up the pillows and aligned them against the headboard, making sure they were nice and snug for when she would next lay her head on them. She looked out the window when she was done sprucing up the bed, and saw a thick blanket of snow already forming in the streets outside, the howling winds fueling it beating against the glass slightly and letting their song echo through the house.

Redsky Morning finished sprucing up the rest of the room, and trotted to the window to better observe the snow. It was a stark reminder of what Nightmaria still was, and all it could be against the rest of the world. It filled the street outside with its cold and cruel beauty, a constant acknowledgement to the country's present reality.

She doubted that Equestria remembered its past with the Nightmarians.

A part of her vowed to make Equestria like this, no matter what it took, so that the Equestrians could be reminded of what Nightmaria had lost when their ancestors had been unceremoniously kicked out so long ago.

They would be reminded alright, and she would see to it. For those who could not remember the past… were destined to repeat it.

~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~-—-~

Arachno stewed in the top of a spiked tower attached to a hellish castle, surrounded by fire and lightning on top and the moat of frozen water on the bottom, isolated from most of Nightmaria but still attached to it out of necessity. The snow and winds howled around the tower, their chorus filling in for the silence as she stood outside watching the white fluff pile itself onto the streets with as much hate for the country as she held for the other five Champions of Nightmaria.

Confusion had taken firm hold of her, and refused to let go. Diplomacy? With Equestria? She heard the sordid stories of Nightmaria's founding, as well as the fouler rumors regarding some… of the early Equestrians' activities during that time period that left many sour-bitter tastes in her mouth over even remembering them. And who in Nightmaria hadn't, besides those not yet old enough for those particular wrongs to become common knowledge yet?

By Tartarus, even the King's dumb lackeys were familiar with them, though both neglected to comment about it. Anopheli knew as well. That random Nightmarian who had the gall to talk bad about her knew. The King was the most familiar with those sordid stories of every Nightmarian in the land, as he had access to practically all the libraries and other such knowledge-centers with authority alone.

A part of her was wondering if there were any Nightmarians in Equestria, descended from the… unluckier ones of the masses of yore. Another part of her doubted it; if there were, then that part of the family trees of Equestria would have been effectively swept under every single rug imaginable, lost to the annals of time, space, and even memory. The blood would have been extremely diluted by that point anyway, so there truly was no telling even with any testing involved.

She watched as the snow fell, its winds chilling her to her bones as she entertained some very dark ideas of possible payback upon Equestria for the sins of long, long ago. The grim thoughts of bloodshed, warfare, agony all swirled about in her head just like the storm outside, laying contingency after contingency after contingency. She even accounted for the fact that the Equestrians of present would probably be soft and squishy and delicate helpless things that couldn't harm flies, much less defend themselves against any world-wide threats.

Given that, then… how was that whole nation of possibly soft, squishy, delicate helpless things still up and running? That boggled her mind immensely, nagging her like a microscopic thorn in her hoof that she would need an expert farrier's help simply to remove.

But those questions could be answered later, for now she had time to prepare the red rug for the Nightmarians' re-welcoming ceremony into Equestria. Arachno smirked diabolically, teeth glinting in fire and snow and lightning as she turned away from the tower window through which she had observed the rest of the country. She trotted down, down, down the tower, for flight wasn't necessary now.

Her mind went into overdrive as she emerged into a hallway attached to the tower, and trotted down its dark and dreary corridor with her hoofsteps brisk and purposeful. All the stops needed to be pulled for this one, and by all that was unholy, she was going to do it, and do it so amazingly well nothing could hope to compare. As much as she loved pulling jabs at the King's less-than-bright lackeys over the fact that they couldn't confront her even inside of a wet paper bag, this showed more promise than them being flustered over Nightmaria's glory.

She veered down another hall, the peal of thunder rattling the castle with a pleasant rumble that had her diabolical smirk widening. She was going to do herself extremely proud, and then the rest of Nightmaria proud with her machinations, she knew. Her soul sang dark praises, mind racing in invisible applause only she could hear that further fueled her twisted genius.

As far as she was concerned, reality could go choke on her sharp wit and superior intellect. In fact, it could choke on all of her sharp wit and superior intellect. She would make it do so even if the universe had to burn just to make it possible. The invisible applause roared again, rising to a crescendo as they chanted and cheered for her unabashed cruelty.

Another peal of thunder echoed through the building, hushing the invisible applause, bringing in a soothing echo of silence in anticipation for what was to come. She could hear the tortured screams of Equestrians, pleading for mercy that would never come due to what their ancestors had done in the dark, immutable past. Oh how those imagined sounds made her ears curl in delight, how it made her heart drum harder in her chest, how it warmed the blood in her veins.

And best of all, they would sound even better in the real, immutable, physical flesh. Evils best left unmentioned raced through her mind as she trotted down another hall, although a particular one almost derailed her train of thought as she thought of smiting the power-seeking perpetrators responsible for that atrocity. Oh how such types of creatures deserved nothing less than being completely, irreparably broken beyond all functional repair, unable to breathe so much as live to perpetrate that particular heinous crime again.

A fitting fate, for those who decided to do the same to the victims of that particularly heinous crime that made her blood boil even thinking about it. Arachno was several things, but she would never stoop that low no matter what opportunities presented themselves to her.

Then her mind rerailed its thoughts and went right back to sadistic glee as though nothing had happened, making a mental note to pulverise any… of those sorts that managed to earn her ire while she was in Equestria.

And speaking of… it had a little too much vibrant sappy green on its map. Oh well, she thought with her smirk widening, she could always fix that.

And she knew just the thing to do. All she had to do was prepare.