Chapter 4
“Well, this is all very ominous,” I said to A. K. Yearling, as we marched into the ancient chamber. “Do long-abandoned tombs often glow like that?”
“Only the haunted ones,” she said, grinning to show that she was joking. I, however, didn’t find that particularly funny, and you, dear reader, might begin to understand why when I describe this hall in greater detail.
The space was about the size of the interior of Canterlot Cathedral, but with none of the light and airiness about it. Where the spiritual centre of Equestria was designed and built in a way calculated to demonstrate the true majesty of Faust’s creation and our glorious part in the story she has crafted for this world, this entire space seemed to be entirely constructed in such a way as to evoke the very opposite feeling. Granted, that might have been due to my own expectations colouring my own perspective of things, but it is difficult to describe the interior of this vast hall in anything approaching appealing terms. The darkness that surrounded us was suffocating, more so than in the rooms leading here, and seemed more than merely the absence of light that is Princess Luna’s night sky, which makes what little light remains in the stars and the moon seem all the more glorious for it, but an unnatural thing that absorbed and quelled whatever illumination dared to try and banish it. It gnawed at the very edges of the glow of my horn like a rabid beast upon wounded prey, until I feared that I too would be consumed by the gloom and lost forever.
Yet as more unicorns followed me inside and added their own illumination to my feeble light, and my eyes adjusted with irritating lack of urgency to the darkness, I could make out more clearly the features of this thoroughly unpleasant place. Vast pillars held up a tall, vaulted ceiling that to me seemed to reach much further than the depth of our descent would otherwise allow. There seemed to be little to no ornamentation to the entire vista, merely clean, straight lines that appeared to my untrained eyes to be just too perfect to be made by mortal hooves. Much of this furnishing was crafted, or perhaps grown, from sleek crystal that shimmered with the feeble light of our horns, and as we walked our metal horseshoes ran out like the tolling of bells on the crystalline surface. Those lights in the distance, towards which Corded Ware was leading us towards, were the only other sources of illumination here, and even they, glowing unnaturally, could only pierce the oppressive darkness as though they were lamps seen through dense fog.
Speaking of the apparent leader of this expedition, he strode confidently towards those lights and his entourage followed. In fact, only A. K. Yearling and I were at all perturbed by our surroundings, though she took this all in with a sense of quiet awe as opposed to the abject terror that I felt. Cannon Fodder remained thoroughly unbothered by all of this, for which I was thankful; the sound of him chewing on his chocolate bar, usually exceptionally off-putting as he tended to do so with all of the grace of a griffon helping himself to a nice, tasty rat, actually helped to dispel some of the bleak atmosphere of this place. His habitual lack of tact exemplified that when he ruined the reverential tone that Corded Ware and the Crystal Ponies were trying to maintain when he blurted out:
“How did the Changelings get through the door?”
Corded Ware stopped and turned to face me, and not, curiously enough, my aide, as though I was somehow responsible for everything he said and did. “What?” he asked.
“It’s a perfectly valid question,” I said, feeling strangely reluctant to be speaking for Cannon Fodder, but I wanted to know the answer, too. Every little discrepancy was adding up, each a small piece to the mental puzzle that was becoming very readily a giant exclamation mark in my head. In fact, I felt a little embarrassed that I didn’t think of that particular problem myself; I had been there, after all, and sent engineers and soldiers to desperately plug the entrance from which the enemy were spilling out into the keep, and I hadn’t thought to consider that I should be seeing where they had all come from. “How did the Changelings get through the magically-sealed door? Did they also read books?”
He held that stare, and I could see the impatience in his eyes at having his ‘destiny’ delayed by my needling of this rapidly-unravelling cover story he’d raised around his true intentions. “Maybe,” he said, presumably having failed to come up with a more convincing lie. “How should I know? I’m an expert in the Crystal Empire, not the Changelings. Perhaps they came up through an alternative entrance.”
“I didn’t see one in there.”
“Perhaps it was a hidden alternative entrance.” He snarled at me, and I felt the patrician urge to slap it out of his stupid face. “I am on the cusp of rediscovering our ancient history, and you keep on interfering with these pointless questions. If you don’t want to take part in this venture, then go back upstairs and let the professionals manage this. Until then, be quiet, and you might learn something for once.”
Well, that was that. I tend not to lose my temper very often, but right there I was very tired of being pushed around like that, of being just on the verge of finding out the truth of what this fellow was really about but always having it yanked away from me like a dog being tormented with a treat just out of reach. Now I was about to bite him, metaphorically. I raised my hoof to strike his cheek. “How dare you presume to speak-”
It was A. K. Yearling who stopped me from doing something that, perhaps in hindsight, I ought to have done earlier. She darted in with surprising speed and alacrity for her age, intercepted my hoof before I swung it, and quite firmly guided it back down to the ground. As the clarity of good sense finally cleared the haze of aristocratic indignation and I realised what I was doing, I saw that his fellow archaeologists had quickly swarmed to his side, ready to pounce before I could complete the swing of my hoof before Ms Yearling stopped me. Something seemed different about them, no longer timid and easily cowed, but ready to defend their boss should the need arise, as it very nearly just did.
“If you two could stop behaving like foals for a moment and focus,” she snarled. “Professor Corded Ware, Prince Blueblood is allowed to be curious about the circumstances of a battle he took part in years ago. And Prince Blueblood, archaeology is a slow, careful process, and you aren’t going to get those answers immediately. Now, we have work to do.”
The silence that descended wasn’t just awkward, it was downright hostile, as we held one another’s gaze in the cold, oppressive gloom of this ancient place. That stallion was up to something, I was now sure of it, but that little quantum of doubt, that I was an uneducated imbecile with irrational fears up against frightfully clever and rational ponies, remained. If A. K. Yearling was satisfied with Corded Ware’s integrity, then who was I to contradict her? And if it turned out that I was right all along, I could at least indulge in a moment of insufferable smugness as a result.
Corded Ware was the first to blink. “Fine, so long as there are no more interruptions,” he said.
“I’m quite eager to see where this all leads,” I said, by which, of course, I meant that I would be keeping my eye on him. It was at this point that I belatedly realised that I ought to have brought a team of soldiers with me as insurance, but, perhaps, considering what happened next it was better that I hadn’t -- fewer lives to weigh on my conscience now.
“Good,” said A. K. Yearling, with the air of a teacher who had just convinced two foals to stop fighting and make up. “Now let’s get on with it.”
We did indeed ‘get on with it’ in that same hostile silence as before, which allowed my overactive imagination to make all sorts of monsters out of the half-glimpsed shadows in the darkness all around me. My nerves remained twitchy, and I found myself almost jumping out of my hide at every unusual noise emanating from the stillness all around. The air, I noticed, was cold, and much more so than one would expect for this part of the world even underground; it felt more like the climate of the frigid north, where these Crystal Ponies came from, and I silently wondered to myself if the original inhabitants had magically enchanted this place to evoke the feeling of home. This place still radiated that ancient magic, and though I could sense that most of it came from those peculiar lights that Corded Ware was leading us towards, I detected that it was more faintly coming from all around too, as if the walls themselves were magic. I, of course, claim to be no expert on such things, but from what little that I could remember from magic school I knew that there had to be some sort of mechanism maintaining all of this magical equipment, and that it was unlikely to still be working after these untold millennia, or however long it’s really been, without somepony or something keeping it all in working order.
“I say,” I said, more to fill the absence of any noise besides our hoofsteps and my aide still feeding, “Prof, is this what you expected to find down here?”
“Hm?” He glanced over his shoulder at me, irritation in his eyes at having this moment marred yet again by Yours Truly being annoying. “Yes, of course.”
“And what, pray tell, is it?” I made a show of looking around at the high-vaulted ceiling and the tall pillars that supported it. “This is an odd-looking trading post.”
Corded Ware sighed in frustration. “That’s because it isn’t.”
As we neared those glowing lights, I quickened the pace to catch up with him, only for his associates, no longer appearing as the weak nerds that my foalish instincts had yearned to bully, to close in on me. It is remarkable how much a mere change of posture and attitude can do to hide one’s true nature, but in my defence and, well, everypony else’s, we had little reason to think otherwise of these ponies beyond my now-vindicated paranoid conjecture. They stood taller, no longer hunched as though they’d spent a lifetime pouring over books, and their stride so much more confident; had Corded Ware here given the word they might have pulled me limb from limb.
“Then what is it?” asked A. K. Yearling, her suspicions finally catching up to where mine had already crossed the metaphorical finish line and had wasted perfectly good champagne by spraying it all over a pretty mare in a sash. “You said you didn’t know. That was the whole point of this expedition.”
“Fine,” snapped Corded Ware. “Allow me to illuminate you.”
We’d reached the lights by now, which, as we drew closer, were revealed to be from some sort of crystalline panel that looked as though it had been grown from the floor itself than constructed and placed there. It was about the size of a ping-pong table, circular, with a thin pillar in the direct centre that reached up and disappeared into the darkness, presumably reaching the shadowed ceiling. The lights emanated from a series of crystal nodules protruding from it, arranged in a manner that seemed haphazard to my ignorant eyes but probably had some sort of real reasoning behind it.
Corded Ware’s horn flashed with a particularly pustulent shade of green magic, and he directed this at the panel before him. Light then filled the entire hall. I blinked away the stars that danced before my eyes, and the glare died down gradually until I could finally take in the entire vista that had finally been revealed to me.
The hall was long and narrow, relatively speaking, and along its sides were arrayed a great number of perfectly uniform and identical crystal cylinders. They were somewhat opaque, but were just translucent enough for me to make out something vaguely pony-shaped within each. I was put in mind of those pods the Changelings used to store and transport prisoners, but without their distinctly and disgustingly organic construction. There must have been hundreds of them, not that I was in the right frame of mind to start fastidiously counting them. The entire chamber itself looked thoroughly sterile, crafted out of clean, sleek crystal and glittered in the bright light shining from the lamps in the high ceiling, and despite its apparent age, not a speck of dust remained on the floor, nor on the panel or those strange cylinders.
“Impressive,” I said, trying to sound anything but impressed and likely failing miserably in the process. It truly was stunning, and far from the dusty old ruin that I had expected. “But I’m no less ‘illuminated’ than I was before.”
Corded Ware smiled, and it was a smug, self-satisfied sort that I yearned to wipe off his face with a chainsaw. “You, Prince Blueblood, were so very close to figuring it out,” he said. “But your lack of commitment is your undoing. If only you had pushed just a little bit harder, then you could have stopped what is to come.”
I stepped forward, and his cronies moved to bar my way. Cannon Fodder, having finished his chocolate bar, moved to my side, his hoof reaching for the spear strapped to his back.
“Corded Ware, what’s going on?” demanded A. K. Yearling. She too, marched to my side without fear, all but attempting to force her way past the bodyguards. It was then, rather belatedly, that it all fell into place for me, and the feeling of vindication over my suspicions was quickly overridden by both the embarrassment that it had taken me so long to see what had been staring me in the face and fear over what it truly meant.
“You were there, weren’t you?” I said. “Here, I mean. More than a thousand years ago. You’re no mere archaeologist.”
“Finally, the stupid Prince gets it,” said Corded Ware, his smile growing ever more smug. He untied his bow tie and wrenched it from his neck, letting it fall to the ground, likewise tossed his glasses away, and he allowed himself to stand straighter, radiating the sort of authority that I normally only saw with supercilious commissars who exercise their authority in petty and meaningless ways. The group of ‘archaeologists’, now revealed to be his henchponies, parted to let him approach and stand face-to-face with me. “Yes, Prince Blueblood, I was there. We were all there, one thousand years ago, when the Crystal Empire brought King Sombra’s perfect order to Equestria.”
“You mean slavery, I suppose,” I said. Then, to A. K. Yearling, I remarked, “just like Chrysalis, really. I suppose she’s not all that original.”
Now, I expected that this quiet, introverted author approaching the wrong end of middle age to be as absolutely terrified of this turn of events, utterly predictable in hindsight, as I was pretending not to be, but if anything she seemed rather more put together than I. In fact, I’d have said that she had somehow lost about three decades of age, and stood tall, alert, and ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. It was the same reaction that I had seen in trained soldiers, of course, and perhaps to a lesser extent in the likes of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash when they were exposed to mortal peril in my presence. She said nothing, apparently content to let me take the lead for once, but I assumed that now that it had become abundantly clear that my paranoia was right all along, she felt it best to keep quiet and let the alleged war hero take charge.
“Everypony knows their place in the King’s order,” sneered Corded Ware, though I began to doubt that was truly his name. “Not like now, where you raise commoners to become princesses.”
“And what would your place be? I can’t imagine there was that much need for archaeologists in Sombra’s time; there was barely any history to uncover.”
Corded Ware chuckled and shook his head. “Ignorance is alive and well in this time, I see,” he said. “Has so little of our glorious history survived to this day?”
I could keep him believing that I was little more than an imbecile, which I found never required too much effort on my part as ponies seemed to just assume, with some justification, that I’m not terribly clever, and let him waste time indulging in puffing himself up by validating the suspicions I’d had about him since about the time I’d met him. The panel seemed important, as it continued to glow ominously and the magic radiating off it was like the glare of a lighthouse piercing through the dense fog. If I shot it with my magic then it might do something to scupper whatever plan this ancient maniac standing before me had concocted, but one of his guards stood in the way. Not that I was particularly concerned at all with hitting one of them, as distasteful as I found the thought of killing, but I had but one shot at this and there were enough of them to strike me down before I could get a second shot. Yet, if I could nudge Cannon Fodder close enough to the panel to shut it off before it could do whatever it was supposed to do…
“I see what you’re doing,” said Corded Ware, the grin on his face was gone, and the blank expression that replaced it was all the more jarring and horrifying for its absence of emotion. “There’ll be no villain’s exposition from me for you to exploit. Seize them, and hold the Prince down while I fetch his mask and awaken the shards.”
The two closest stallions did just that, grabbing me by my upper forelegs and then forcing me to the ground with a strong application of force to my scarred back. I fell upon the floor, bashing my chin against the cold, crystalline surface in the process. Cannon Fodder shouted something, but I was unable to turn my head to see what they were doing to him and A. K. Yearling, yet some sort of struggle persisted judging by the sounds of shouting going on. I tried to push up against the two pinning me down, each with a forehoof placed upon my back and pushing me against the ground with sufficient force that breathing became a chore. They were far stronger than their all-too-convincing disguises had otherwise led me to believe, but that didn’t stop me from trying.
With my head on the floor and my lower jaw aching and ringing with the impact, I could just about see Corded Ware’s four legs step towards the panel. He bent over, fiddled with one of the glowing things, and I heard the clanking of some ancient machinery followed by a deep hiss of escaping air from seemingly all around, yet from my position on the floor I could scarcely see anything else of what was going on. However, I still had the use of my horn, and his shiny crystal flanks presented an absolutely perfect target I could hardly miss. Unfortunately, this thought also occurred to his henchponies, and the one on my right raised his free hoof directly in front of my horn.
“The moment your horn starts glowing,” said Corded Ware, not bothering to turn his head to look at me as he spoke, “he will snap it off before you can fire a single shot. You will be a much more useful servant to me with your horn intact.”
Judging by the ease at which they pulled me down, and I was still not exactly on the light and delicate side back then, I was assured that his confidence was not misplaced. Still, it meant that he did not plan on killing me, at least not yet, which gave me time to figure out how to get out of this, though I admit that it looked pretty damned bleak from where I was.
Corded Ware then turned from the panel, and held in his magic a mask made from a dark metal, with narrow slits for eyes and two red spikes protruding from the top and centre that put me in mind of the peculiar diadem that his fallen King was often depicted wearing. I had no idea what it did, but something told me that it was decidedly not merely for ceremonial purposes and that it should go nowhere near my face. I thrashed my neck from side to side, but the second of those strong stallions placed his hoof on the top of my head, knocking off my cap in the process, and pinned it down.
“That’s better,” said Corded Ware, as he crouched down next to me with the mask hovering in his magic close by. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it was to pretend to be this weak and feeble academic for so long, how insulting it was for a stallion of my station to have to ingratiate myself with the likes of the two of you? To awaken in a world that knew nothing of my King’s perfect order except Equestrian lies, and to have to tolerate that false Princess sitting on his throne, and to hide myself amongst those I once commanded in his name until I can finally enact his Contingency?”
The mask moved closer, and I saw Corded Ware grinning at me through its slitted eye holes. Despite what he said earlier, he could not help but indulge in gloating over a beaten adversary. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.
“A Nightmare Night costume mask,” I spat. “Did you get it from Barnyard Bargains?”
He laughed mockingly. “Get one last quip in while you can, dear Prince. When I put this mask on you, you as you know yourself will cease to be. A mindless, obedient servant, incapable of even completing bodily functions without my permission. There won’t be enough of you left inside to even pray for the release of death. But before that happens, I want you to see this, and you can receive those answers you desire.”
I still couldn’t see what was happening to A. K. Yearling and Cannon Fodder, but the cessation of sounds of struggle from over there did not fill me with much hope. This felt like the end, and not at the hooves of Changelings either, but by this petty, power-hungry lunatic indulging in a fantasy of an empire long-destroyed. He turned, mercifully taking the mask with him for now and with a barked direction, the strong pony pinning my head down grabbed it by my chin and forced it to the right to see somepony emerge from the closest of those crystal tubes.
The entire front swung open on a hinge on the top, and a peculiar, shimmering, silvery liquid discharged onto the floor and spread like mercury. The pony inside, if it could even be called such, fell from its upright position on hindlegs onto all fours, where it shivered and wobbled precariously like a newborn foal. There seemed to be something very wrong with it; it was a Crystal Pony, certainly, but where a normal Crystal Pony, if one could ever be called ‘normal’, was a pony that happened to look as though they were made of a sort of organic crystal, this one looked like a lump of inorganic crystal hewn by a clumsy artisan in a rush to resemble an alicorn, with a long, spiralled horn and a pair of wings made from interlocking slabs of thin crystal. Within its chest something glowed, and I realised that it was the same light as those mysterious orbs that Pencil Pusher had found earlier. Its four legs were sturdy, though they shook with what I took to be years of underuse, and its joints clearly hinged in some way to allow movement. Its sharply angular head bent down to the ground in a jerky, mechanical motion, and its jaw opened to discharge more of that mercury-like ichor onto the ground. Whatever it was, it did not look well.
“What in Tartarus is that thing?” I blurted out.
“That ‘thing’ is the future, Prince Blueblood,” said Corded Ware, beaming with pride as though he was a father presenting a son who had just earned his cutie mark. “The shards were our failures in our quest to conquer death itself. We extracted a soul from its body, and placed it within a vessel of undying crystal. Only, the soul didn’t take well to being removed from its body. They began to lose themselves. Still, they make excellent soldiers: obedient, loyal, they require neither food nor water, and they have no will of their own. A convenient accident made useful by the unparalleled genius of the King’s archmages, of which I was- ah, still am a member.”
This thing, the ‘shard’ as he had named it, lifted its head up and stared at Corded Ware. Its face was blank, not in terms of expression, but in terms of features. There was nothing there, no eyes, no mouth, and no nose; merely an empty, blocky slab of crystal carved or grown into the approximate shape of a skull and a muzzle. Yet even lacking eyes as it did, I could sense the tortured presence within, staring at me, and hating me with a fury that it was incapable of articulating.
[The knowledge required to extract a soul from a living being and place it within an object has been suppressed over the years with good reason. Corded Ware is correct in that a soul cannot survive intact without its physical form and vice versa, and all attempts to prevent the gradual decay of the ego, the sense of ‘self’, once removed and captured ended in costly failure. No good can come from this line of research beyond the purely theoretical and it will remain suppressed, as its practical implementation is nothing less than a form of spiritual torture. Just in case any of the few ponies cleared to read this gets any ideas about picking up where Corded Ware left off, pursuing this will be punished by petrification.]
“They killed the Diamond Dogs,” I said, as the whole horrible picture formed before my eyes. “And destroyed the Badlands pony kingdom here, just as in that story. At least they were good enough to tidy up after themselves.”
“The shards, ever loyal, are carrying out the last set of commands they received,” explained Corded Ware. “Keep this place safe and secure for our King to return, destroy all interlopers, and clear up any evidence of their actions. The Changelings must have dug a tunnel into the previous chamber, but the shards still filled up the hole. That is how they bypassed the magic door.”
“And those orbs you tried to smuggle in,” I said, “they contained souls?” An instant sense of revulsion struck me as I pictured in my mind that box of crystal spheres, and how my aide’s presence had caused them all, each apparently having held the living essence of what had been a pony, to go irrevocably dark. Perhaps, I thought, that Cannon Fodder’s abilities had merely broken the spell that kept the souls trapped within and finally released them into eternal rest. A better fate for them than to remain trapped within those crystal prisons.
“Yes, from a secret cache in the Crystal Empire.” He sighed. “Part of the Contingency. No matter, there are others, and there are enough already here to make short work of your army above, and once we activate the other tombs out there, we will retake what was ours. Our King may be banished again, but through me his legacy will live on.”
I felt my stomach give way; there were more of these hideous places out there? How many, filled with those murderous, soul-damaged husks, those ever-so-loyal killing machines that were the remnants of a long-dead and scarcely-missed empire, were dotted all across our fair realm, each awaiting the order to rise up? It didn’t bear thinking about, not until I could free myself and warn everypony else, assuming that they didn’t think I was mad for it.
“There is an entire crack division of Royal Guards above,” I said, trying and likely failing to inject some confidence in my words. “Battle-hardened veterans who have won battles that make the ancient wars you’ve seen look like schoolyard scraps, each armed with weapons your backwards mind couldn’t possibly comprehend. They’re no band of Diamond Dogs or Badlands savages, they are disciplined and efficient soldiers, and once they find out I’ve gone they’ll come down here and put an end to your silly little rebellion before it even starts. Let me go now, and I can arrange some form of clemency for you and your ponies.”
It was all futile, of course, to try to negotiate with the pony who believes he has all of the cards when I have none, but it was worth a shot. He stood there, smiling the insufferably smug smile of a pony who knows that he has won and has all the time in the world to indulge in that feeling of triumph, and waited for me to finish voicing my empty threat. At the end he shook his head, and said, “I think a demonstration is in order. Bring his friend, the stallion.”
My head was still held firm, so I could not turn it to see what was going on behind me, but I heard some sounds of struggle. Cannon Fodder was dragged forward, still clad in his heavy armour, and tugging in vain against the two burly stallions who held him.
“Over here.” Corded Ware pointed to a spot, just before where I was still pinned to the ground and next to him. Then, addressing the crystal monster still vomiting quicksilver like Yours Truly after a late evening, “Kill him.”
With jerky, unnatural movements, the shard lifted its head up straight and looked straight at Corded Ware, its face blank and its body rigid and still as though it was a statue. A moment passed, as my aide continued to pull at the strong hooves holding him in place, and Corded Ware observed with visibly mounting frustration.
“Didn’t you hear me?” demanded Corded Ware.
“It appears that a thousand years have left it a trifle deaf,” I said.
Corded Ware ignored me, and stepped closer to the shard, who continued to observe him without the slightest hint of anything resembling emotion or recognition. “I am His Majesty’s Thaumaturgist, and you will obey me. Kill this pony!”
I felt a sudden blast of intense heat. The shard’s horn flashed with a malignant green light, the air split with a metallic shriek, and Corded Ware was gone. In the split second between the last moments of his existence and the cessation therefore, I saw a glimpse of his body, bathed in that horrible glow, disintegrate, as if peeled layer by horrible layer to the bone in a less than a fraction of a second, and all that was left of him was a small pile of ashes, scorched bone, and the mask he was holding. The air tasted foul, as smoke rose from the smouldering crater where the would-be tyrant stood. The shard turned its attention to the two ponies holding Cannon Fodder. One turned to flee, but was likewise caught in the light and reduced to grey powder. The second was frozen in terror, and stood perfectly still as the warped creation killed him.
[Performing such a potent disintegration spell several times in succession without burnout should be impossible for most ponies. Where the requisite energy stems from confounds us to this day, but it is suspected that souls themselves were consumed to fuel their spells.]
Thinking Cannon Fodder had been slain, I let out a wordless, anguished cry, and pulled myself free of my captors. Whether I was filled with an insensate rage-fuelled strength or two burly stallions were stricken with such justifiable fear that they loosened their grip on me I do not know for certain, but I threw them off me with ease. I staggered to my hooves only to see my aide standing there perfectly unharmed, and only a little bit alarmed at what he had just witnessed.
The others ran. Before me, the shard stood there, regarding me with an inscrutable coldness. There seemed to be nothing behind where its eyes should be save for malice and madness. The thing hesitated, as though it tried to ascertain what exactly I was, but I was not about to stand around and hope for it to come to a favourable conclusion. Fear, colder and sharper than that I had ever felt before or since embraced me. There was no time to feel relief at Cannon Fodder’s inexplicable survival, and I resorted to the usual response to such mortal terror by turning on my hooves and running away, diving behind the panel for cover, and straight into the very last pony I’d ever expected to see.
Daring Do, as I’d always imagined her from the stories: a slim, lithe pegasus with a build that put one in mind of a coiled spring ready to burst into action, wearing a crumpled linen safari jacket that seemed to contain multiple shades of tan and a battered pith helmet that looked as though it had been fished out of the Amarezon many times.
“What?” was all that my fevered, fraught nerves could muster to say at the sight of a beloved fictional character come to life before me.
“I’ll explain if we survive, Blueblood!” she yelled, her voice not all that different from A. K. Yearling’s. “Now, run!”
The order was completely unnecessary, as I was already sprinting past her. The other pods in the hall were opening, too, and from each, another shard stumbled out into the hall on quivering legs. Given the vastness of the hall, I could assume that there were hundreds of the wretched, soulless things. I was not about to stop and count them, being much too busy running for my life. Fleeing the way we came from would mean running through a gauntlet of them, and I’d be dead before I could even make it past the first pod, which only left fleeing deeper into the underground complex. We galloped into the darkness, while those things massacred the remaining Crystal Pony researchers. I would have liked to have rescued one to interrogate them, but given their subterfuge, my near-death experience, and the fact that this was all their own fault I couldn’t feel particularly sorry for them.
The sharp, metallic sound of their lethal rays accompanied that of our horseshoes pounding on the crystal floor. My heart pounded frantically in my chest, gripped tightly in the icy hold of mortal terror; Changelings were a threat I knew, even if they were inherently sneaky and liable to attack without warning, but these things were something else entirely. There was no love lost between Corded Ware and me, but I hardly wanted to suffer the same fate as he. Besides, I told myself in an inane attempt to stay calm, it would be terrible form for a Prince to deny his people a funeral without even ashes left.
The hall stretched on before us, seemingly into infinity, until through the darkness and the feeble light of my horn I saw the far wall. Here the hall shrank somewhat, to the point that I could see the ceiling and the walls either side. There were no metal tubes occupied by slumbering husks here, but instead giant statues, each depicting an austere and stern-visaged Crystal Pony standing upright on its hindlegs, holding an ornate staff.
“The door!” shouted ‘Daring Do’. It was another one made of shimmering crystal, and my suspicions that it was sealed with magic were confirmed when I barged into it, shoulder-first, and painfully bounced off it.
I didn’t know the spell to unlock it, but panic can do one of two things to a pony: reduce them to a useless, gibbering wreck, or purge the mind of the distraction of conscious thought and allow one to act purely on impulse. Reaching out with my magic, my heart hammering in my chest, I could sense the network of energy maintaining the lock. Had I the time I could find the weak point and dispel it, but time was not a luxury we possessed. I would have to brute force my way through. The spell was powerful but ancient, its cohesion peeling away at the edges. All I had to do was apply enough strength and the arcane lock would be undone.
[Prince Blueblood had the potential to be a powerful unicorn, but has admitted to lacking the motivation and discipline to study for it, as his reports from the School for Gifted Unicorns attest. He was, however, capable of drawing upon large reserves of magic, but had insufficient skill to wield it properly.]
“Blueblood!” I heard Daring Do scream above the din of my own thoughts. I spun around to see her up in the air, hovering just behind the closest of the huge statues, pushing between its shoulders to try and send it toppling over. In the distance, through the gloom, a multitude of bilious green lights glowed, accompanied by the sound of heavy hoofsteps on the crystal floor. They were coming, and they were already close.
She’d never tip the thing over on her own, but lacking wings to fly I could hardly help that way. Yet the upright rear legs of the statue were quite thin, being of a rather stylised design. I summoned enough magical energy to make my horn hurt and directed it as a blast to those legs. The shards emerged into view just as my magic struck the statue’s legs - there were a dozen now, lined up in ranks, their chests glowing with the light of their twisted, mutated souls, and their horns, lit with that foul magic, directed squarely at Yours Truly.
I heard Daring Do cry out with exertion. Where I had struck the crystal statue’s legs had cracked under the force of my magic, but it was enough. The cracks spread across the width of the statue’s limbs, and then shattered, and the entire top three quarters of this ancient monument came toppling down onto the shards, whereupon it shattered with a tremendous crash and broke into a pile of glittering rubble before us twice the height of a pony. A feeling of triumph swelled within me, but was quickly deflated when Daring Do swept down from above, landed, and shouted in my face.
“That won’t hold them for long,” she yelled. “Open the door!”
Biting back the instinct to demand a ‘please’ from her, I dashed back to the door. My horn still ached from the exertion just before, but still I poured as much raw magical power into the arcane lock as I dared to without burning myself out.
“More of them are waking up, sir!” Cannon Fodder shouted, his dull monotone only slightly inflected with something akin to panic.
That was enough to motivate me to push past my limit. White-hot daggers plunged into my brain. Just as my vision clouded at the edges, the world turned slightly grey, and my hooves began to tingle, the spell unravelled. The concentration of magical energy binding the door shut burst, and I felt the backlash as though I’d been punched square on the nose. Somewhat dazed, I hazily saw Daring Do and Cannon Fodder through the stars before my eyes together buck the crystal door wide open, whereupon it struck the adjacent wall with a hefty thud.
“Come on!” She grabbed my foreleg, and, being much stronger than she looked, pulled me through the door. My hooves obeyed the command to run about half a second later, and together the three of us scrambled into the corridor, pausing briefly to slam the door behind us as though that might stop our pursuers, and fled into the dark corridor.
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And so the Pony Necrons arrive! Or is it Necrony? Either way fingers crossed if they have a Pharon, hopefully as a Trayzin expy so he and Daring can geek out together.
Ah, once more Hubris dooms a villain with exact wording. It's only safe and secure for the King. It says nothing about his fanatics and their imagined authority.
Oh dear, that certainly could have gone better. (Also, it's more likely that Cannon Fodder's earlier interaction just disabled the magic keeping the souls from dissipating rather than actually wiping the things out. The alternative has some... concerning implications.) I admit, I hadn't considered the possibility of Sombra making the leap from Tomb Kings to Necrons, but it's obvious in hindsight.
Now there's just the matter of destroying the pitiless, disintegration-happy automata. I'm sure that won't be a problem or anything.
You know what would be funny but probably mesh horribly with the lore of the series? That these things somehow have a secret command to build Sombra an heir if he were to fail in his return, and decided that Blueblood would make a good base to build the perfect successor.
“The Black Prince shall become a king. The King of Shadows shall reign supreme for eternity. Accept the the gifts of Sombra the Umbra, and purge the frailty and weakness from your vessel. Take the Crown of Thorns and rule for eternity as lord over all. Glory be your name, for your reign shall bring darkness eternal and everlasting.”
There’s so much edginess and angst in what I just typed that I wanna die. Please, laugh at me and bury my body deep.
Ah, and Cannon Fodder's blankness saves the day once again. Good work, old boy.
Man, I wish I could dislike my own comment.
11881269
Cringe
Awesome chapter
Time to rally the troops, the Undead awakens.
So... I was completely off with my predictions these are much more like the Necron than the Warhammer Fantasy Undeads. I don't know why, I kept picturing ponies that looked much more like Somnambula despite you constantly referring the Crystal Empire. I guess it's the Egyptian theme of either the WH40K Necron or the Undead in WHF that made me focus on the look.
But your design of Crystal Alicorn Undead soldiers? They kick ass. Once again the Guards will have to fave an ennemy that can fly but this time, has deadly magic and are built like tanks. Let's hope muskets are good enough to damage those crystal bodies.
Speaking of muskets, why does Cannon Fodder have spear instead of his usual gun? Not that it matters, it wasn't mentioned but it would make sense if the Sombra underlings disarmed them when they captured them. Cannon might have a grenade stashed away in his multiple pockets but so far it's not a weapon he was shown to keep on himself in these books.
About Cannon Fodder, my theory about why he wasn't shot down was because his soul is negative (or he doesn't have one? I would have to check again), and the Necron can only see the souls of others so Cannon appeared as a "not pony" to it. It got confused and still tried to follow his given orders to kill the Pony that was present in it's eyes. With Corded Ware dead, it defaulted to their previous order to defend the tomb and Jill intruders.
The disintegration beam explains why there was no corpses beyond the rubbles and the door and why it was locked or there was no tunnels for the changes. All plot holes have been filled. Not that Blueblood is peculiarly happy about the answers to his questions.
Corded Ware met his doom by his own hubris. Blueblood killing him himself would have been satisfying but this situation is much more terrifying and traumatic for Blueblood to our enjoyment. And oh joy for him, there are plenty more tombs spread across the world that will need to be dealt with eventually.
And Daring Do is in the house!! Let's go!
Cannon is so sneaky that the text forgot to mention he was running with Blueblood and Daring Do.
Can't blame Blueblood's confusion there when he met his favorite heroine in a life and death situation.
Love the description of Sombra's Pony Necrons. And like many followers of a tyrant, Corded Ware believed himself to be more important than he actually was. He probably didn't even have the time to realize what went wrong.
11881159
11881497
I prefer Bookeater_otaku's take. It's not only more logical, but avoids painting Corded like a complete moron (I don't think he could have raised among the ranks of Sombra's mages or survive the fall of the Empire until present day without enough brain cells.)
Speaking of stupidity, why neither Blueblood or Daring tried to have a bunch of loyal soldiers discretely following the main group, awaiting for the inevitable moment when the "scholars" showed their true colors?
11881687
Blueblood didn't order any soldier to follow because he was still ignoring his gut feeling and he didn't have proof and he was under the impression this was a bunch of weak nerds.
Probably he also subconsciously didn't want to appear paranoid or in a bad light in front of miss Yearling.
And thus, the bloody battle for survival begins.
And you just love to see a self-important bad guy realise too late that being part of the "Tigers eating people's faces" Club means his face too
11881733
In this case, it's more like following the Evil Overlord rule of "when commanding robots, golems or any artificial minion with a literal mind, remember to use exact words."
11881749
Ahem, yes. Such minions do tend to have a rather.... limited capacity for interpetation.
Plus Corded forgot that his former boss was not exactly trusting, especially when it came to those who worked on his super weapons. So naturally he would put in a failsafe against betrayal.
He probably had just enough time to realize he goofed. Fitting.
11881269
No. Your grave shall be shallow for the edgyness you brought about to the world.
I like the faster pace of the story so far but it give the impression that it be a much shorter one than the previous two. However it's quite possible that the story will take us out of the army fort to travel somewhere after that.
Thus unto tyrants. Even with the foreknowledge of the Necrons being the enemy for Cain in that book, this angle of delivery feels legitimate and in-character. Sombra's appearance in the show even fits him being the Silent King.
Even though I don't think he existed at the time, I'm passively rooting for someone to stand in for Trazyn the Infinite...and as soon as I typed that, one character immediately comes to mind. I'm going to stop there, though, and wait to see how the story plays out.
Well that went about as well as could have been hoped. Consider me curious to hear what 'Daring Do' is!
It was at this moment that he knew...he f***ed up.
I do love it when the super weapon you expect to win your war, hidden for a thousand years, is past it's warranty when you finally get around to digging it up.
Well, looks like Corded Ware got an appropriately Indiana Jones-esque death.
derpicdn.net/img/2017/10/29/1572584/medium.jpg
Minion mode on.
pbs.twimg.com/media/E0JFoSTWUAgL7Qz?format=jpg&name=large
Ah, so the weakness of flesh disgusted them as well (I don't know much about WH40K lore, but I guess the Techpriests handled this feeling better).