[Forlorn Ascension]|[Rites of Dominion]

by Desrium

Forlorn Finale

There was a lone planetary goliath far along its celestial trek around its home star. It was a rocky world, its expanses of land tinged with greens, blues and purples; its skies dyed pink and yellow on the side facing the sun. Over its equator was a wide, flat disk: rings of densely packed particles of ice and rock. The rings of this giant planet were inclined at a shallow angle, matching that of the planet’s axial tilt. In its current position, the planet was pointing towards the starlight, the brown and cream colored bands illuminated in brilliant fashion. Located several hundred kilometers above the surface, hidden in the outermost ring, was the sprawling space station -though it was not so big in comparison to its heavenly neighbors. In fact, despite its size, it was almost lost in the debris field, surrounded by thousands and thousands of glittering shards and fragments that seemed static around the G.S.O, though they were moving at several hundred meters with each passing second around the goliath world.

Back in her personal quarters, Uolix was overseeing the projects she began at her workstation. It was clear from the crushing defeats the Harmony suffered; they were ill-equipped to face threats of magical origin. As such, it was her initiative to better the technology available to them. Repurposing the Hoof-Talon communication relay and developing the stabilizing spell were small steps, but they were a start of a much larger and rapid advancement for the galaxy’s defenders.

The Commander’s robotic arms glided across her console, claws tapping away at keys and maneuvering holographic interfaces all simultaneously. She worked with impressive speed and efficiency, seeming to absorb the information displayed in front of her in seconds, completing one task and immediately going on to the next. Small windows of light hovering over the computer provided real time feeds from several different research departments, allowing Uolix to view the scientists and engineers as they worked in their white walled labs and busy hangars.

”This is the right thing to do, right Tsubar? You would have wanted to keep innovating and improving... even after this whole debacle…”

The light from the projections ran across her black visor, glinting and glimmering as she worked at her speedy pace. Though she carried out her duty as leader with utmost dedication, her thoughts were drifting away, leaving her physical self to carry out its automation.

”Gaali, lend me your wisdom so that I could prevent this disaster from ever happening again. Romaz lend me your strength so I could be strong for them all. Javic, share your presence with me so that I am never truly alone…”

“Commander,” she heard one of her sentinels in the observation chamber say over her comm-link. “The Space Rangers have just left warp transit. They have the Federation pony with them.”

Forced back into awareness, Uolix said, “Grant them express docking and summon them to my quarters for a full mission report.”

There was no reply for a few moments. When the officer spoke again, it said, “Ryagna-Elysia is sorry to say that she has to delay that. The pony is in need of immediate medical attention.”

“Very well,” Uolix replied evenly, not betraying her surprise. She hastily typed in a command on her console. “I have alerted a response team and have requisitioned a transport at priority dock one. Direct them to enter the station there.”

“Roger.”

With the conversation having ended, Uolix let out a distressed sigh. ”If only I could speak to you all still… I would ask if I’ve done the right thing…”

Uolix turned her attention back to the different divisions of the G.S.O’s development staff, doing her best to not jump to any negative conclusions. Like her talk with Startrot before, she could only study the facts after she was provided with them. She knew that doubting herself was not going to help anything, especially when the future of the galaxy was dangling on such a fragile thread. The defeat at Thymal and the subsequent fall of the Harmony was a brutal lesson for her as to the merit of a leader. A leader had to be strong for the sake of others, even when they themselves were lost and uncertain.

***

”I can still walk, you know!”

The stallion was loaded up on a medical stretcher designed to be universally applicable to all of the galaxy’s spacefaring races. Consequently, he was strapped onto a padded bed that was many times larger than himself and said bed was mounted upon a treaded transport drone. It was speeding down the length of hallway with doctors in white uniforms on either side of it, their positions denoted by the four light blue stripes that ran across their shoulders.

Phineas’ helmet was off of his head. In its place was a strange device that the doctors put on him shortly after he left the shuttle. First they put him on the stretcher and then they took off his helmet. They put a clear, semi-transparent gel over his mouth, which hardened into a mask in seconds, adapting to the shape of his snout. Over the mask they attached a breathing apparatus, a bulky filtration machine that had many straps running around the pony’s head to keep it secure. Attached to the filter were many tubes that ran into a storage unit in the transport drone.

In their urgency, the doctors did not listen to him when he tried to explain how his suit’s life support systems worked. In their urgency, the doctors did not inform him of the fact the air supply he was now hooked up to was mixed with anesthetic chemicals. As such, the onslaught of nonsense that took hold over his rational thought came unopposed. He looked over to one side, seeing his helmet lying beside him, its impassive yellow eyes staring at him.

”Don’t give me that damn look,” he thought, his eyes scrunching up as he glared at it. ”I didn’t ask for this!”

“He’s had two stabilizing spells,” Elysia informed the doctors as they went, Alikir walking briskly beside her as she kept pace with the team.

“How soon after exposure to the impurity was the first spell administered?” one of the doctors asked.

“Not long… couldn’t have been more than a few minutes for me to clear out the soldiers that had him pinned,” said Alikir.

“Hmm…” the medic hummed. “Intuition would dictate that the damage should not be extensive… but we have not had survivors of the undead’s magical weaponry make it to our facility before now. The spells could have prevented the infection from causing irreparable damage, or they merely delayed the pony’s death long after the damage was done.”

Elysia shook her head in disagreement. “Hold on there,” she began to say, “he seemed pretty steady on his feet -hooves- back on the flagship after he took them. You saw how he was when we were back at the dock!”

“Like I said, we simply do not know how the spells work in the field,” the doctor replied. “And we won’t know until we investigate the state of his… internal affairs.”

Elysia fell quiet at that. Now it made sense why they were so quick to rig Phineas up to the transport. This wasn’t a matter of medical assessment; they were taking him straight to surgery. The rangers did not say anything to the doctors after that. They only listened as the medics chatted amongst themselves, saying all kinds of technical terms and passing handheld displays around to keep check on the pony’s vital signs.

After a while, they reached one of the G.S.O’s medical facilities. It had a large sign on the wall over its wide lobby entrance. The doctors wheeled Phineas through the lobby, past the front desk that had no one on station and through the set of doors leading into the sensitive areas. One of them stopped in front of the door to address the two rangers.

“I’m afraid we can’t let you past…”

“Did you really think we expected to be in the same room as you all as you cut him open alive?” Alikir asked with a slightly harsh edge to his tone.

“…It’s a formality…”

Elysia raised a hand in a gesture of good will and understanding. “We won’t be a bother.” She nudged Alikir in the leg. “Right?”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll wait in the unsupervised lobby, keep people from trying to swipe-“ Elysia nudged him again. He inhaled sharply to convey his annoyance and grumbled, “Yeah. We’ll wait out here.”

The medic nodded. “Our work might take a while… might be an hour… might be a lot longer than that. Depends on the pony’s condition… we’ll do our best if things aren’t…” trailing off, the doctor stopped speaking and with those last words; the doctor stepped through the doorway. With a rush of air, it closed, leaving the two rangers standing alone. The tall one sighed.

“We could go inform Uolix of our mission results, seeing as the Federation pony is going to be busy for a while,” Elysia suggested.

Alikir nodded. “Would give us something to do in the meantime, and the sooner she gets our report the better. We’ve delayed it long enough following them here.”

Without further pause, Elysia made her way out of the lobby area with Alikir by her side. She walked down the hallway a few yards until she reached a terminal, where she started typing away at the holographic keypad.

“Commander Uolix?” she asked after a line was established with the situation observatory. “This is Space Ranger Ryagna-Elysia and-“

“She is not on duty,” one of the observatory officers said, cutting her off. “Redirecting this link to her personal comms.”

“Thank you-“ Elysia replied, but by then the link had been terminated and was in the process of being rerouted. Before she could have made a comment about it to Alikir, she heard Uolix’s voice.

“Space Ranger?”

“Ah, Commander!” said the small ranger, “the Federation pony is now in medical care and we are free to share our mission results. Are you still available for a meeting?”

“Yes,” Uolix responded. “You are due at my quarters with utmost urgency. I will speak to you when you arrive.”

“Understood, Commander.” The comm-link was closed off and Elysia stepped back from the computer. “You heard her,” she said to Alikir, “utmost urgency.”

***

The two made great haste to Uolix’s personal chambers. They ascended several levels of the station’s decks, walked down numerous passages and waited on many lifts until they came to her door. When they arrived, they noted that it looked no different from any other of the doors they passed on their way there. There was a black plate on the door and the rangers’ Universal Translators sprawled the inscription across their HUDS in their respective written languages: “Commander’s Quarters”.

Alikir pressed the plate with a finger. A split-second later, the door split apart. The two rangers walked through into the Commander’s room rigidly, turned to face the Shu’badi opposite them on the other side of the room and saluted. Uolix pressed a button at her terminal and closed her door before facing the two rangers.

“At ease,” she told them. “And speak freely.”

Elysia and Alikir relaxed. The small ranger said, “What we believe to be the leader of the undead faction has been eliminated. Its vessel of command has been destroyed.”

“In addition,” Alikir began to say, “it seems that without their leader, the undead have turned against each other. It could have been an isolated incident and we did not spend any extensive time to observe their behavior, but in the final stage of the mission where we crippled the flagship’s Hex-core we found that the soldiers there were attacking each other.”

Uolix nodded and hummed thoughtfully. “So the mission was a success, then?” she asked. The two rangers nodded. “So what happened to Phineas?”

“He… was taken off guard by our intervention,” Elysia replied. “And the enemy took advantage of that moment… we don’t know what this means yet but the medics are currently carrying out surgery on him to find out.”

“Ah,” Uolix replied simply, mulling this over. “What were the circumstances like when you made the decision to act?”

“The Federation pony was outnumbered by a great sum, commander,” Elysia started to explain. “He would have been overwhelmed had we not shown ourselves.” She looked over to Alikir, who at that moment was crossing his arms.

“And at that time, their leader was not dead. Temporarily incapacitated, but not dead,” the ranger said.

“And this leader…” said the Commander, “could you describe it to me? Things it might have said… strange powers it might have displayed…?”

“It was… ugly,” Alikir deadpanned. “And it had several voices… like its mind was that of several people. It kept referring to itself as ‘we’…”

“As for strange powers,” Elysia began, “it had several. I believe we hadn’t even seen them all… it was distraught and angry. After making itself into a giant using the bodies of its underlings it started to rant at the pony about gods and then flew into a state of madness…” She started to shake her head at the images that flashed before her eyes.

Uolix nodded, not letting on that she was scrutinizing the rangers’ words. What she heard supported the things Phineas told her, and his warnings drew greater weight because of it. After a moment of thought, the Shu’badi asked one final question.

“How was the leader destroyed?”

There was an uncomfortable silence between the two rangers at first which made Uolix very worried, though she did not convey her uneasiness. After another moment though, Elysia was the one to speak. She cleared her throat and said,

“It melted, commander.”

Uolix cocked her head. ”Melted? How?" She did not voice her confusion and instead simply nodded once more. “I request a detailed documented log of this excursion, Space Rangers. You may report to the observatory chamber to assemble it and submit it for review. Dismissed.”

The two rangers saluted and Uolix opened the door for them. They stepped out of her room and the leader started to dissect what she was told, moving away from her terminal and floating over to her room’s window. She raised an Arcane-Manipulator and with a pulse of light, the vented shades opened, allowing the light from the distant star to flood the room.

Uolix stared out into space as she thought, her view being that of the rings extending far into the distance, rippling shadows and glimmering lights defining each individual band until they simply blended together the further out they were.

***

Swelling shadow gave way to blinding light. With his first conscious thoughts, Phineas assumed he was coming out of stasis and cringed a little. When did he put himself in to the pod? He should have remembered that, as he always had. Every time he put himself to rest in the stasis pod, his perception of realty paused, with his memories picking up immediately upon being awoken. Why was that not the case now? He worried that his sanity was beginning to drastically slip away from him, to the point where he was losing his grasp on his memories –the only things that were undeniably his and his alone.

He opened his eyes and was greeted with the darkened visages of numerous beings staring down at him from his sides. Reflexively, Phineas tried to scramble away from them but quickly found that he had been restrained. His forelegs and hind legs were strapped down. Several tubes of various colored liquids were leading out of his body to all kinds of machinery around him, secured to his hide by needles and clamps.

“What is this?” Phineas demanded to know, his voice sounding hoarse.

The doctors stepped back from the operating table, a few of them beginning to congratulate each other while others simply walked away, leaning against the room’s walls, visibly relieved. One of them stayed, however.

“We needed to examine your body for traces of the impure magic that you were assaulted with,” the doctor replied.

Phineas looked down at himself. His body was bare and he noted that it had been a long time since he actually saw his own coat like this – since he laid eyes on his own cutie mark, at that. He was unaccustomed to being out of his Federation barding and looked around the white room for his black suit and orange oversuit. It did not take him long to locate his clothing for they stood out against the plain operating room, laid out on a nearby counter along with his toolboxes.

He looked back to the doctor and asked, “So what’s the verdict? Why’d you stick me with so much stuff?”

“You had quite a concentration of harmful magical energy within you. By all means, you should have died seconds after being hit by it. We think your suit’s bio-sustaining technology might have kept your vital functions active long enough for the ranger’s stabilizing spell to work but it is unlikely to say the least,” said the medic.

“Some of us are just too stubborn to die,” said Phineas.

“Whatever the case may be,” the doctor started saying, “you are quite fortunate. A sustained, concentrated form of the stabilizer spell was able to reverse the damage done to you in its entirety. It is a remarkable result.”

“There’s plenty remarkable about this whole thing,” Phineas replied. “But I don’t have time to appreciate them all. I need to speak with the Commander, so I’d appreciate it if you would get these things out of me.” He gestured with his snout to the tubes.

“But you just underwent surgery!” the doctor replied, taken aback by the pony’s indifference to the situation.

“If there are any complications, there’s a stasis pod for me to go to. I appreciate you and your team over there saving my life and all, but the fact of the matter is we are in a critical period of time and it is paramount that I speak to your commander!” Phineas retorted.

”For any of us to let you go would be a neglect of our duty!”

“And for me to stay here would be a neglect of mine!” Phineas responded hotly.

“We cannot have a patient just leave after going through such an invasive procedure-“

The pony growled, a scowl on his face. “If you don’t let me go willingly, then I suppose I have to leave by force!”

“And how do you intend to do that?” the doctor inquired, looking as amused as it sounded.

With that, Phineas stretched his neck and bit at one of the tubes. Before he could do something brash, the doctor said, “Enough, enough! Alright!”

***

Phineas left the medical wing, suited up in his battle scarred armor. The doctors were quick to disconnect him from their machines and release him from the operating clamps. They left him to ready himself and watched him leave, some of them clearly unhappy about it. But what could they say to stop the Federation pony, especially when he was more than willing to back up his stubborn words with force? He didn’t like having to be a bully to get his way, but sometimes the right thing to do wasn’t the most favorable option.
”I feel fine, regardless,” he thought, trying to rationalize his choice. ”They are just worrying about nothing,” though he knew full well that their concern was well placed.

Phineas spent roughly half an hour making his way to the situation observation chamber. The route was something he’d gotten somewhat used to after going down it a few times, so it did not take him as long as before to reach its doors. It was just that it was a long walk and he did not trust his jetpack to work without him giving it a thorough onceover, and he did not want to chance running should there be actual complications after his unplanned doctor’s visit.

… So it was understandable that when he found out that Uolix was not on duty at the super projector and was in fact in her own room elsewhere in the station, he was more than a little irritated. The officers at their computers asked him why he wasn’t in a medical suite when he walked up the aisle and the Space Rangers were quite elated at his return, though sharing the same confusion as their peers, but he couldn’t spare the time to engage any of them.

“I’m fine!” he assured them all as he started to make his way back to the elevator.

The others watched him go for a short while before they went back to their jobs, the officers keeping a diligent watch over system-space and the rangers going back to completing their mission report. Phineas rode the lift up, lamenting his lack of boosters all the way.

After yet another trek through the station, with many consultations with his holo-map, Phineas arrived at the door to Uolix’s room. He raised his PDA and saw in its sphere of light, “Commander’s Quarters” in a light blue text.

”This is it,” he thought as he deactivated the display. He eyed the door, looking for some way to announce his presence outside the Commander’s room. The door looked like any other door, however, and the ones he used regularly were for public access. He doubted he could use his PDA or some nearby terminal to open it.

”When all else fails…?” Phineas raised a hoof and knocked against the door a few times. There was no immediate response. He knocked on the door again, once, twice; before he could knock a third time the door slid apart.

The stallion entered cautiously, knowing that he would have been annoyed with an unannounced intrusion if he were in the Commander’s place; especially if he was in the middle of something important, but he was convinced what he had to say was well worth the interruption.

“Uolix?” Phineas asked.

“Phineas,” Uolix replied without looking at him directly. She closed the door then drifted away from her computer, stopping at the window again. “I was told of your… heated insistence on being released from medical early and your short time in the observatory…”

“Then you knew I was coming?” Phineas asked, cocking his head. ”Not as unannounced as I suspected…”

“I didn’t need the others messaging me to know you would be coming here, Phineas. But they gave me an idea as to when you would be making your appearance.”

“Fair enough.”

“I have already spoken to the space rangers and they are currently making a formal mission report. Now that you are here,” Uolix said, slowly turning her gaze in his direction, “what is it that you have to say?”

“Things are more complicated than I anticipated.” Phineas joined her at the window.

“More complicated?” Uolix responded, “How?”

“The undead leader… ‘The Immortal’ as it called itself…” Phineas began to say, “when I first confronted it… it tried to take control of me.”

“What!?” Uolix snapped as she turned her body towards the armored pony, her mechanical arms rising up slightly as she got ready to defend herself.

“It failed!” Phineas exclaimed, waving a hoof dismissively. “I know it failed and it isn’t some act to establish a false sense of security.”

“How can you be so sure?” Uolix inquired warily.

“Because I broke the artifact it said the Star Terrors gave it, and afterwards it started talking about how they abandoned it.”

“So what has changed? The Star Terrors are still our ultimate enemy and we have to ensure that they are not able to meddle in our affairs ever again,” said Uolix.

“I… don’t think the Star Terrors are… unified, so to speak,” Phineas replied.

“What do you mean?”

Phineas took a deep breath and said, “The Iopteryx… it woke me up after prolonging the stasis I went into after fighting the chimera, of such I am certain. I have a feeling it is this interaction with the Iopteryx that made The Immortal’s magic fail… it failed because the Iopteryx did not allow me to become its slave.”

The pony shook his head and added, “If I’m right… that means a Star Terror saved me… for some reason I do not know, but I know enough to say the Iopteryx is not following some plan. That either means the Iopteryx is an enemy of its own kind… or that the Star Terrors as a whole are constantly fighting each other like this…”

Shocked into silence, Uolix considered Phineas’ theory, drawing it out to its logical conclusion. “… If the Star Terrors aren’t united that means these wars they start… they aren’t for the benefit of them all…”

“It’s for a select few, or a select individual wanting to become stronger than the rest, and the rest plot to stop them. It really is a cosmic game we’re caught in,” Phineas said. “The chimera supposedly tried to escape it by becoming a Star Terror itself but then… I happened. The Iopteryx happened…”

Uolix put a claw on his shoulder in a strangely endearing show of comradery. “The Iopteryx did not give you your fighting spirit though, and the Iopteryx cannot take it away,” she said, “your drive is the one thing it cannot manipulate. This is the truth for everyone alive strong enough to fight. This is the true strength of the Harmony.”

“They gain power by consuming the souls of warriors… as long as they keep getting support-“

“Then we will stop them!” Uolix interjected passionately. “The Harmony will see to it that to even the smallest association with the dark beasts of the stars will be a crime that only the most bold and foolish will even attempt. We will see to it that the hope of a future better than this one will trump any will to cause such pain and misery the likes of these horrible wars!”

Phineas turned his gaze outwards to the scenery outside of the Commander’s window, silent as his thoughts turned inwards."We can lose our way. We can falter and make mistakes, but in the end we are all alive, aren't we? We would help each other make something great before we tear each other apart to live in the ruins of the aftermath, right?"

The memory was a sobering one for the pony. The Shu’badi’s words invoked it, reminding him of his cause, the unshakable core that justified his rage. He fought because to do nothing else was unacceptable! And he wasn’t some tool to be used and cast aside! He was Phineas Startrot! No force of heaven and hell could take him and they would all be damned should they even try!

“Hope,” Phineas said, feeling a power from that word greater than any brute strength he could gather from his muscles. “Hope is what’s gonna kill the Star Terrors.”

“It is the greatest form of magic I know of,” Uolix said. “It keeps people with nothing left to live for living. It keeps soldiers with nothing left to fight for fighting.”

“Is hope the reason you can bear the burden of leadership?” Phineas responded.

“I have hope in the Harmony. In return, they have faith in me. Though I don’t know if victory is certain, or if I could have prevented any of the losses we have suffered, I know that we all need to stay as one if we are to stand any chance of survival,” said the Commander. “If we can do what so-called gods can’t, then that would be proof enough of our worth.”

Phineas nodded. “Then hope and harmony will be our salvation.”

With that, the conversation came to an end, the pony and Seapony looking out into the rings of the goliath world and past them into the far reaches of space.

-Epilogue-

The Harmony reappeared with a vengeance. The undead, gripped by the very chaos they unleashed upon the galaxy without a leader, stood no chance. Whereas defeats for the Harmony were absolute and horrific in the past, now small navies went up against armadas… and won.

It was not long until the deathless tide was ebbed and the survivors of the great galactic culling started the tentative effort to rebuild. With previously owned territories decimated beyond use, the Harmony converted its strongholds into spacefaring citadels, providing homes for millions displaced by the onslaught of war. Many strongholds combined through engineering genius and sheer will of those who inhabited them, become sprawling mega cities in space. In time, these metropolises blossomed across the stars, with the war-torn planets providing resources and jobs for those who gathered said resources.

The Harmony maintained peace and the newly formed Federation of Hope sought out the taint of the Star Terrors. The Space Ranger Corps was reformed, headed by the two which fought side by side with the Federation pony. Together, these factions were wards against the wretched evils that waited in the darkness.

***

The Federation personnel on site wore dark gray combat hardsuits with stripes of red and blue that decorated their sleek designs. Like the Space Ranger suits that preceded them, the Federation armor had sets accommodating all kinds of builds across the many denizens of the galaxy. A few Shu’badi soldiers hovered across the dusty terrain, using their adept magical skills to set up the prefabricated forward command posts in areas clear of rubble and debris. Humanoid sentinels stood on watch, rifles in hand, securing the operation zone’s perimeter. Even familiar Equestrians found a place in the new Federation, from ponies to dragons.

Spread out around the work site, small and medium sized mechs stood, while above several spacecraft hovered in the sky, all bearing the Federation insignia: a black circle ringed by white. An eclipse.

Alikir walked across the blackened ground to one of the command posts, a large gray dome with a spire rising ten feet above it which ended in a lookout platform occupied by three rifle wielding soldiers. There was a lot of gray with this division, he noted. Perhaps it was due to the reasoning that less vibrant colors made encampments less of a target. Maybe it was because the original Equestrian Federation had a penchant for gray in its designs. Alikir did not know the reason; he just knew that he would take the red and white of a ranger than the gray of Federation infantry any day.

The Space Ranger stepped through the ovular entrance into the post, seeing Elysia supervising a group of officers manning the communication equipment.

“The artifact has been confiscated,” Alikir said to her.

The small ranger nodded once and then said to the officers: “Contact the retrieval team.”

The officers started typing away at console keyboards, occasionally glancing up the holographic interface.

To Alikir, she said, “This operation was fast. What happened out there?”

“This time they just had their idol out in the open and they were doing some kind of… dance around it. It was strange…” Alikir replied.

“Wow. Was it really that easy?”

“Hard to believe, I know. But that’s what happened.”

“And what about the Federation pony?” Elysia inquired.

“He’s having a few words with their leader…” Alikir answered.

Several yards away, there was a structure cobbled together around the decently sized skeleton of a crashed necrolier cruiser. It was level on the ground, having sunk into the soil until only roughly half of it remained above the surface. The ship’s hull had metal beams jutting out of it and hanging from them were crudely made sheets made out of scrap metal plating covered with dark red, crusty runic writing. The sheets blew in the breeze rolling across the desolate wasteland of a planet, the plates scraping and jangling.

Inside was a somewhat large room that was mostly empty save for bins of garbage and other assortments of litter. The ceiling had gaps and holes, allowing beams of sunlight to shine into the murky hovel. A small squad of Federation infantry accompanied the armored stallion; they stood a few feet away behind him with the ends of their guns still glowing, magical vapor wafting out from them. On either side of the pony, piled up in heaps, were the bodies of the slain, undernourished and underdressed, dirty rags clinging to their starving frames.

Of all the things that called the necrolier home, dancing on the dirt floor around the golden jewel, only one remained living. And that one was currently being held by the furious pony by the neck, the yellow eyes of his helmet staring unblinkingly into the sunken eyes of the foul, imp-like creature.

“Hit me!” it rasped, the skin on its lips and nose peeling away, letting dark yellowish ichor ooze freely from its face. “The Great One relishes the pain of its faithful!”

“This is an interrogation, not a torture session,” Phineas reminded the twisted creature with a snarl. “Now I will ask again one last time… tell me… how did you get the item?”

“May you die in writhing anguish, and may you wish the same upon me!” the crazed creature screamed. It broke down into rapturous laughter, its bloodshot eyes going wide in its head.

With a strong shove, Phineas sent the abnormally skinny creature stumbling across the black dirt floor until it finally fell over on the far side of the room.

“Interrogation results: subject proved to be irrational beyond reason. No useful information was acquired.”

With a flick of his tail to one of the soldiers behind him, Phineas gave the order to execute the deranged creature, which continued laughing hysterically. Phineas turned away from it, making his way out of the room when he heard the high pitched, rapid screeching of the soldier’s rifle go off, promptly putting a stop to the cackling.

There was no sense in killing the cultists which embraced the ‘gifts’ granted to them on sight. It was Phineas’ way to at least attempt to learn something about the threat from them. But most of the time the effort proved fruitless.

But that didn’t stop him from trying, not as long as he had hope that there was a better find waiting for him in the future. Not as long as long as he lived to continue to parrying the blade of war. Though peace of mind was the cost of a warrior’s spirit, it was a cost Phineas was willing to pay. Regardless of the nights he found himself haunted by his greatest foes and his own inglorious deeds, the pony never lost sight of his priority. Thus was his pledge,

For the friends he robbed himself of having,

For the ones he hardly knew,

For the countless many who died to bring about this age of peace.

[Rites of Dominion] End

Comments

[Snowfyre]

another end to another epic arc, im hoping that in the future you will have the pony race come together again though, maybe have another pony join Startrot in his adventures

[Desrium]

3086398

Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate them.