> PONYHAMMER 40,000. The Warp Incursion.
>  by Duskrunner
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

PONYHAMMER 40,000.

CANTERLOT CASTLE
CORONATION AFTER-PARTY
FIVE HOURS POST-FINALE SEASON 3

THE ROYAL BALCONY

Princess Celestia, alicorn ruler of Equestria, found herself looking out over the castle grounds. Beyond its walls and gardens the city of Canterlot glowed with the reflected light of countless individual lives. Ordinarily the princess would have retired to her chambers by this late hour but tonight was a special occasion. 
 It's a beautiful night. Sometimes, in my haste, I forget to stop and take it in. Tonight the natural order is suspended and we put aside the clockwork precision of our lives to indulge in a little change. I wish that was the reason I'm motivated to stop and look over all I've worked so hard to protect, everything I love.

She sighed.

 But it's not. I'm not here because of changes I'm celebrating but because of changes I dread.

'We are all your students now.'
Bold words. Powerful words.
Terrifying words.
For my sister and I these are words almost beyond comprehension. For the span of millenia we have watched over the world, together. For the last thousand years we have also watched, alone. She from her prison and I from mine. For most of Equestria there is only a fragmented memory, an annual custom reminding them of the fear that was once Nightmare Night. It would be easy to believe their joy at my sister's return is the product of ignorance or a lack of understanding. Anything other than the truth. But such are not the thoughts of a pony.

"They really aren't, are they?"

The devil on my shoulder speaks. I find myself agreeing with him.
It is hard to acclimate myself to the fact that I allow him communion with me, particularly communion of such... intimacy.

'Oh come now Celestia dear let's be honest with each other. The reason you don't like me in your head has nothing to do with the fact that you're not used to it; It's because you distrust me. You have issues with me, here, where you keep your secret, darkest thoughts.'

"I would Discord, I truly would. But I believe in you."

"And speaking of Nightmare Night, well, thinking technically but never-mind that. While I think it's adorable that you chose to dress the part of a candy-chasing filly. really, this costume suits you not at all. Not that this particular royal kimono isn't rather fetching but let's not mince words..."

He makes a quip about my ceremonial kimono. It's very fetching and I thought it suited me when I chose it. His words are likely a distraction and not a genuine criticism. He continues and I pay attention to him trying not to let my thoughts distract me. 

"...but the suit you currently find yourself in fitting for is most certainly the Empress' New Clothes. And that's on top of your normally quite-naked self."

I smile at him and his baiting observation. Now I know he's making a sleight of hand although I'm not sure if the 'wool' allegedly being pulled over my eyes is that Luna isn't truly restored, that not everypony rejoices at her appearance, or if Discord is hinting at some insinuation about himself and how much I trust him. It would be very much like him to tease me into thinking he's following his own ambitions. 
By now I know enough to stay silent and let him continue to dominate the conversation: he always outs himself in the end.

The heretofore unseen draconequus emerged from her flowing mane, having shrunken himself to the size of a common parasprite, and hopped onto her shoulder. He stooped to whisper, leaning over so much that his miniaturized head was practically scratching the inside of her ear with his mismatched horns.
"We both know everypony keeps those memories the same way you keep stained glass windows to immortalize them - visible, right where they want them. Which is why I'm just a fly on the wall and not out there for this particular shindig bedecked in my sun-day best."

Celestia smiled warmly at him. "You do have a way to make a point, Discord. Mischief makes you clever. Clever enough to make you forget a certain -someone- didn't want to be there."

He snorts derisively. "Ponyfeathers. You wanted me here."

She catches him with her magic as she levitates him out of her ear and just in front of her muzzle.
"Ponyville forgave you and cheered your reformation from the town square. The young might still be confused about the difference between Luna and Nightmare Moon but their love for her is genuine. Everypony moves on."

Discord crossed his arms and sulked like a scolded child. "Yes, yes, the heart of a pony is a place bursting with forgiveness."

Celestia giggled.

One of Discord's eyes grew wider as he perceived he was being mocked.
"Did I say something unintentionally amusing?"

"Not just then but in a way you did."

"Do tell."

"You are the essence of chaos are you not?"

"Of course I am."

"Then you know that chaos is simply randomness with every law of the universe. And if what happens to the universe every time that chaos enters play is that things end up worse than they were before, then in what way is chaos random?"

The draconequus opened his mouth for a rebuttal, hand raised, and his jaw fell open when he realized he couldn't justify hi answer.

"Discord... you are no longer my captive in stone. You are my friend, and the friend of my student and her friends. It's not terribly polite of me to tell you who you are, and I really do recognize that most of life is a carefully constructed structure that one distorted stone will bring toppling down... but every now and then chaos can change a filly's castle in the sand into a palace on the beach. You needed correction Discord because you became obsessed.
You forgot that chaos means surprises... not evil."

"I think I know where you're heading with this. I have to say I don't like it."

"Since we're being so open, I don't either."

A silence fell upon them for a few seconds. Finally Discord broke it. "This is what you meant when you explained to the world at large that being a princess wasn't a privilege. It's a real calling with great responsibilities... and real consequences that can last if you fail."

He doesn't say the obvious: 'You're going to use me now.' I can feel the accusation in his tone all the same.

"She isn't ready you know." He tells me, guessing who my thoughts linger on.

"She isn't. And that is why she will not be alone."

Twilight Sparkle.
We are all her students now, and I am terrified. I who have endured this heartbreaking imprisonment for a thousand years and a battle against the forces of chaos and evil long before that.
And I am worried beyond all belief; not only because of this "new magic" but because of what it could mean... for all my little ponies.

And when I least expect it, the little devil on my shoulder manages to surprise me.

"You'd be mistaken, by the way. I didn't really mean the commonpony folk. You're right, they love her now. I was speaking about your other troublesome little thoughts. It's not that I take incarceration lightly, don't get me wrong: Luna, my most puissant self,.." 

A glint of mischief fills his eyes for just a moment, it's a look I haven't seen unconcern for a long time. 

"...and many, many others, have most certainly done our share of hard time. But for you to call yourself a prisoner? Pshh. Please. Hardly. Love, sorrow, regret... make prisoners of lesser ponies. The ones that can't bear to do what must be done."

Celestia turned her back to the moonlight and headed to the door to re-enter the castle.

He called after her. "It's late Princess. You really should give them their due rest."

She shook her head. "Not tonight. Not for this. They are weary, and it's best they go in the right frame of mind."

Discord tsked "Such a shame. Pinkie Pie will be crushed for sure."
> Chapter One - Afterparty
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

CANTERLOT CASTLE
THE ROYAL DANCE FLOOR


"There's no party like a Canterlot Party when the Canterlot Party won't stop!" Pinkie cheered.

The ballroom hadn't been so lively in a hundred years.
Crashing the Canterlot Garden Party last year, and the disaster at the Grand Galloping Gala before that, had alerted the castle staff -and everypony who was somepony in Canterlot- that the Ponyville gang roughhoused like hoofball fans.
For that reason it was the garden that received the honor of being the area decked out and decored in the finest taste while Canterlot's most esteemed musical quartet provided the ambiance for the appreciation of the genteel.

Inside the warmer and significantly more soundproofed ballroom, DJ Pon3 was "in da house".
Because the coronation of a princess was a national event delegations from every great city had arrived. At that moment Manehattenites rocked to the music while their delegate DJ and his crew prepared for their next slot in the night's musical program. Remembering the dismal evening that she had spent personally greeting everypony at the Gala, Twilight had instead scheduled time for each city to pay their respects as a group presentation, sharing a taste of their culture through food, fashion and song. The evening turned out like nothing else and while Twilight had been gracious to all she couldn't help but display greater warmth to the towns that had earned a place in her heart during her journey, dear friends from  Appleloosa and Cloudsdale that even now mingled with their kin from Ponyville and the Crystal Empire.

But now the formalities had finished and everypony with a taste for metal was getting down as magical lasers pierced the foggy air to impact on walls and the clouds brought in for the party. The doorways had been enchanted to grant cloudwalking the same way a ring produced bubbles and anypony who wanted could join the pegasi for a dance in the air through either cloudy staircases or conveniently placed trampolines.

"Not bad Twilight but when are you gonna cut lose with some real moves?"

Twilight Sparkle laughed. The center of the ballroom had been kept clear and the alicorn of the hour had been the main audience for every individual dance, group dance, and choreographed routine Equestria's elite had planned in her honor.
Now it was her turn on the floor.

"Rainbow." she laughed. "I don't have any real moves."

The former unicorn had come into her own. Where once there was an introverted filly, oblivious to the world around her, stood a confident young mare who was comfortable with the love and adoration the land bestowed upon her.

"You will. I might be a little busy with the academy but no way I'm gonna let Equestria's newest princess look bad in the skies."

The music shifted from the flighty tunes of Cloudsdale, perfectly arranged for individual Pegasi to show off dynamic acrobatics. DJ PON3 took the mic.
"Ladies and gentlecolts a round of applause for this year's Wonderbolt Academy cadets!
And now let me yield this mutha to a pony who knows something about music to set fancy moves, give it up for DJ Alexs- performing on vocals Ashcorp!"

"YEAH I OWN THIS BEAT!"

Cheers went up as a Manehattan beat brought everypony the dance floor. Groups formed quickly and in the blink of an eye Twilight found herself surrounded by her five PFF's.

Halfway through the song all but Dash had subtly inched away and all the floodlights focused on her. Alone, in the center of the ballroom as the music abruptly stopped, Twilight froze.
So much for thinking she was immune to moments of supreme self-consciousness.
She grit her teeth and whispered out without moving her lips.
"Rainbow what did you do?"

"Heh heh, chillax Twilight, your friends got you."
Twilight heard her but all she saw was a rapidly flying pegasus leaving a rainbow trail.
"Now hover and spin."

Twilight obeyed without thinking and began flapping her wings to rise off the floor. As soon as she started spinning the floods began to strobe light. 
Ashcorp blared out the lyrics for the crowd: "BRING OUT THE BACARDI"
"TWILIGHT SPARKLE UP IN THE PARY!" Everypony chorused back amid a roaring crowd. The energy of their adoration was palpable in the air and, in the case of the crystal ponies, literally illuminating the floor.

The rainbow ribbon vanished and a three-dimensional hologram matching the six-pointed star of Twilight's cutie mark materialized, slowly spinning in tune with the princess.

Six sparkling lights formed at the appropriate locations and began to orbit the cutie mark randomly like planetary satellites.

The sparkles blossomed into pony-sized eight-sided diamonds.

The diamonds exploded into swirls of glitter and confetti, reforming into the sparkles again as Twilight snuck away from the center. The hologram continued spinning lazily around, fading into a background by the time the final line echoed "GETTING COOLER BY TWENTY PERCENT!"

The crowd cheered, loud noises and whistling sounds accompanied the multitude of hoofbeats stamping the ground.

"Rainbow! You guys... you should have warned me." Twilight giggled, her head dizzy with such a public show of affection.
Heady wine indeed, but Twilight decided she had had enough for that particular sitting.
It wasn't easy but in the general fog and the darkness of the laser show when the spotlights wandered off of Twilight to roam the dancefloor she and her friends took the opportunity to get out of view.

"I'd say I gave you enough of a heads-up ha ha"

"I bet, And I'd also wager a certain somepony picked out that particular song to honor me with."

"Who me?" Rainbow teased still giggling. "That couldn't be helped. Old Alex remix-master had that tune in mind back when my fan club was still in style. Still, even you have to admit it's a totally awesome groove."

"Very catchy. And I assume the rest of you aren't going to play innocent either?"

"It was FUN!" Pinkie gushed.

"Well absolutely darling. The chance to add some of my personal flair to a piece of performance art: how could I resist?" Rarity added.

"I can't believe it. It's so flattering, and it really is starting to feel like it's too much." Twilight said as she made her way to a window overlooking the gardens. Even the stiffest shirts at the garden party were peeking through the windows at the light show performed in the princess' honor.
"It is too much... but I'm so happy. I really wish this night would never end."

A large shape that blend into the shadows far more easily than the mane six did abruptly joined the conversation.
"As do we, Twilight Sparkle. But I fear it really must."

"Princess Luna."

Luna entered very quickly, exploiting the same dark corners Twilight and her friends had.
"I am sorry to interrupt, especially under the current circumstances, but my reasons are serious. We have need of you and your friends."

Twilight's friends exchanged looks with her, wondering what could possibly have happened.

"Twilight, this must be hurried, but it would not be inappropriate if you wish to interrupt the proceedings to formally appreciate your guests one last time and bid them goodnight."

Twilight thought for a time.
"No. This night... this night has been wonderful, and I know I would be disappointing everypony if I sneak away early, but they're all having a wonderful time and it will all end very quickly if I make an official exit. Let them stay on as long as they want to. It's been a wonderful party and nothing else I can give them tonight could compare."

Luna smiled looking over her shoulder as the bands played on. As the six exited Luna hesitated, watching how Equestria itself adored this night.
She turned and followed them into the hallway, closing the door behind them.


CANTERLOT CASTLE
CANTERLOT TOWER

The girls walked into the stained glass window hallway where a war council had formed. Celestia was a welcome sight along with Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. Prince Blueblood's presence was unexpected but not inexplicable.

"Please, follow me through here."

Celestia opened the magically sealed door between two pony statues, the door to the same room that served as the repository for the Elements of Harmony. They stepped inside and the door sealed shut. The inner chamber was a strange place, alive with the glow of magical lines flowing like water along the etchings on the walls. The real surprise, however, was its current occupant. Perched on his side like a pony reclining on a sofa, a draconequus lay atop the flat of a throne.

"Discord?" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed.

"Yes. I apologize for the haste.
There were other matters I hoped would be the first use we made of Discord's magic but it was not meant to be. 
Twilight, the situation is dire. Something unexpected happened when you created new magic.
You entered a new world and opened it to new possibilities. Unfortunately one of those possibilities is beginning to manifest and its consequences-"

Discord's voice interrupted as his body and the throne vanished. He quickly reappeared in front of Twilight.
"Yes yes, very bad, very big. In a hurry, let me cut through it."
Discord snapped his fingers and in a flash the mane six were transformed.

I don't know what happened... I don't wanna know what happened. I don't wanna remember. Leave me alone!
An inebriated Applejack with bruised eyes sobbed into her lap.

There is something beautiful to be made, beautiful and brief. All your colors... I don't care how long your livespans are, those brief moments are worth more than the whole of your miserable lives.
Rainbow Dash' nostrils flared as she hovered in the air, a deranged workaholic in a labcoat.

You'll do what I say and you'll like it. You'll see what I do and get out of my way. Poor baby; can't stand to hear what I think about you? Because you know it's true? Live with it! Everything big and small knows I'm the alpha bitch and you WILL obey!
Fluttershy showed no changes in her appearance or body language. Her eyes were the windows to a soul of cruelty.

There is still so much to be made... things to eat, things to wear, things to serve as decor. It doesn't matter really, what happens to you once you're no longer you. All that matters is When. Your. Number's. Up.
Pinkie's hair was deflated, her clothes were a suit that appeared strange for no immediate reason. Her eyes glowed with inner intelligence even as the rest of her spoke of expertly hidden secrets...

Rarity's body was disfigured: one eye was discolored black and her body fur barely hid a multitude of scars but even these things failed to keep one's attention when compared to the two halves that formed a branded heart over her chest. One hundred different emotions raced through her but behind them all was the same superego
Mommy's still pretty...

"- - -"
A paralyzed Twilight Sparkle stood in her place. Immobile, she had no wings, her pupils were dilated, hair disheveled and her mind completely devoid of thought.

"DISCORD!"
Celestia screamed.

With a snap of his finger a bright flash of light enveloped the six and restored them to their true selves.
"I am sorry Celestia, truly I am. But a picture is worth a thousand words and one second as these ponysonas will tell them more about what's at stake than anything you could ever say."

"What did you do to us?"
Twilight sobbed. She wasn't alone. Huddled tight Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were vainly trying to console each other. Applejack wrapped her arms around herself tightly, looking as if she were trying to shrink into a corner and Dash kept herself far away from the group, fluttered up in the chamber ceiling's corner, gritting her teeth as her vision jumped to each of her friends.

"That wasn't him." Celestia calmed as Cadance quietly approached Twilight and used her magic to rekindle feelings of warmth and safety inside her. One by one, she restored all her friends.
"There is a pattern in existence, one that has no place in Equestria.
Mortal beings across a hundred different realities speak of it only as 'grimdark'."

Discord picked up where Celestia trailed off as he brought down what looked like a star chart in pink.
"This is the galaxy that is the source. If we are to safeguard our world from the corruption their universe has suffered we have no choice but to enter."
He turned to them with a grim expression.
"Possibilities like that and worse await us if we don't succeed."

Twilight looked around her in fear. Her friends were recovering.
"This is such... I have so many questions, there is so much more I need to study to even begin to understand. I'm not ready for this."

"Twilight Sparkle, you have ever been my most faithful student.
But in the end every student must mature and take their place in the world.
It is the obligation and the peril of a princess to act even when she knows she is not fully prepared. The universe waits for no pony."

Twilight righted herself and stood as tall as could. Her friends surrounded her in a half circle, determined as they faced the Princess Celestia. "Where do we head first?" Twilight asked.

"The Starscape." Celestia answered.

Discord snapped his fingers and at once the case containing the Elements of Harmony appeared before them. They donned their apparel and made a star with Twilight at their center. She began to recite Starswirl the Bearded's masterpiece cypher.
The -entire- verse; she couldn't risk abridging the spell here and now.

"From one to another, another to one
a mark of one's destiny singled out alone fulfilled.
From all of us together, together we are friends
with the marks of our destinies made one there is magic without end."

The Elements of Harmony blasted energy from their gemstones into Twilight.
At the last moment the energy field surrounding her blossomed into a sphere that absorbed her friends just before she vanished from the castle leaving six ashen cutie marks behind.
> Chapter Two - Starscape
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE GREAT EXPANSE

"Golly... is this where you went when you vanished on us Twilight?" Applejack asked as she took in everything around her.

Fluttershy glanced nervously down, where an endless star filled expanse stretched on farther than she could see. She tried to flap her wings in response to the lack of visible flooring but they refused to cooperate. She squeaked in surprise and fright, and continued doing so each time she snuck a look at her surroundings.


"Oh... oh dear. Twilight. How are we standing when there's nothing to stand on?"

"You get used to it." Pinkie Pie cheerfully replied as she pranced along obliviously. "Oh? Look at that, that star's different from all the rest."

Pinkie was right. Alone in the expanse of shining blue-white stars, a single source of violet-pink light burned ominously in the sky.
At that moment Celestia faded in, walking into their present reality, bringing Luna and Cadance with her.
"It is,” She confirmed for Pinkie and the group in general, “and it is new to this sky. Several days ago it was but a speck of light. It has grown since then and I have seen nothing to assure me that it will stop."

Behind them a zipper pushed out from thin air and opened downwards. Blueblood and Shining Armor stepped out with Discord. Celestia turned to him.
"Discord,” She began, “of all the creatures in Equestria you are the one whose magic this resembles the most. We are all here now, it is time you showed us what you can of this menace."

"Well, since you ask so nicely." Discord snarked as he approached the dismal star, playing with their depth perception as he circled it. Instead of beginning a presentation, and to the amazement of all he opened his mouth wide and swallowed the orb whole where it stood with an exaggerated gulp.

Everypony's mouths fell open as they watched, Pinkie joyfully declaring, "Problem solved!"

Unfortunately, it wasn't. Discord's eyes widened. The star refused to let him swallow it, refused to be moved even a smidgen. Instead of casually plucking the jewel from space he found his tugging his body towards it, the muscles in his esophagus dragging him slowly along.
He pushed his hands against the empty sky, formed a surface to lean on and pushed pack, failing to stop the unnatural movement. Hawking the star back out didn’t seem to be working for him either.
Discord, suffering visibly, panicked and blacked out. As he fell forward the bleak star tore out through the back of his neck.

Discord hit the arbitrary ethereal “floor” that served as the ground face-first and upon impact his skull shifted into his tail and vice-versa, leaving his body topsy-turvy.
He lay there and for so long that the girls stared at him incredulously, as if this was some cruel newprank. Only Fluttershy thought to approach him and see whether he was okay or not.

Discord turned on them with a swift, angry leap up that left him on all fours, almost feral looking, tail lazily undulating from one side to the other ready to swing, smash or whip it into something, his elongated neck coiled like a snake prepared to snap.
The red pupils were gone and with them all hint of prior mischief or wit, all he had were yellow eyes that glowed white with excess power.
His body began to grow, the junction between his neck and arms began to distinguish themselves into a proper muscled torso. The wiry arms grew biceps that swelled to the size of his skull. Steely, corded muscles sprouted through the length of his legs until they were thicker than his chest. Both of his wings bulged out and sprouted sharpened pinions at their tips.
His lion paw sprouted enormous retractable claws and his eagle talons sharpened, his lizard leg thickened into a crocodile's leg with a hind claw, and his dragon tail's red scales thickened into dense plates up the length of his spine.



"Celestia's beard..." Twilight uttered.
Discord's jaw unhinged and he shoved his mouth at them.
For all intents Discord looked as if he were roaring but there was no sound and no sensation of air either. Out of the corner of her eye Twilight noticed her mane was waving.
She turned quickly to look at everypony else. Manes and feathers fluttered as if in a strong breeze.

"No!" Twilight saw it then. The Element of Harmony necklaces, the colors of their gemstones faded to black. "The Elements! He's cut us off from the Elements!"

"BACK!"

Nopony recognized the roar as they heard it. Twlight blinked and then realized it was Shining Armor.
The stallion was already away from her and moving quickly.
Unbelievable, I was captain of the royal guard, protector of Canterlot and the princesses. My wife and sister are here and I didn't think to bring an honor guard, a spear or even my armor? What was I thinking?!

It took a supreme effort of will but Shining had formed a large magical barrier behind him surrounding everypony else. 
"Form a long narrow cylinder, make it longer...point it at the tip, come on..." Shining was berating himself even as he sweat buckets. He’d never attempted to shape a magic shield this way before. In sheer desperation he managed to form an energy spear.

"Shining no! Wait, everypony no, wait!" Twilight pushed forward but was repelled by the walls of the magic sphere. He'd made it solid to make it strong; nothing could simply push its way through it.

Shining Armor charged forward even as Discord swiped with his talon.
Canterlot's military tradition had a healthy appreciation for the martial arts developed through the study of animals. Shining was prepared to counteract even as he tried to reassure himself that even though Discord's approach was lateral -and not a typical eagle's overhead swoop- it wouldn't affect his strategy.
Once he saw Discord's body was committed in motion Shining exhaled heavily and sped up to full gallop, leaping before the claw hit him.

He realized at the last second the distance of his leap wasn't going to be enough.

He dropped his spear and refocused his magic. The timing he had to raise a shield was going to be close.

Discord's claw hit the pony in a bubble and sent it spinning, bouncing far into the distance.
The rest of the ponies watched as Shining was sent flying. One moment later they all screamed.

Discord's tail had snapped at the exact moment he had batted Shining away. The dragonscales were tough but the body beneath was very lithe.
When the white tuft on his tail snapped it lanced the magic bubble and created a sonic boom that flattened everypony within it. Shining Armor had never thought to make his magic shields soundproof.
Most of the shield remained intact even as its roof was pierced.

"Discord! Discord stop this! You're not a mindless brute!" Fluttershy screamed. She was stunned into silence by his reply, a supersonic noise that combined a roar, bray, hiss and shriek all in one.

"Princess, I can't reinforce the shield!" Twilight shouted, barely able to be heard over the ruckus. As powerful as her magic was she had never created a force field as strong as Shining's and it took all her skill merely to keep it from collapsing.  She could neither rotate it to present an undamaged face to the threat nor could she repair it.

"Let it break! Do not falter!" Celestia commanded.

Applejack and Big MacIntosh were both bucking at the shield, their wild instinct to break apart the structure that kept them penned in to Discord's wrath. In the heat of the moment AJ didn't even register that something was off when she saw her brother out of the corner of her eye.
With expert precision Twilight allowed the force field to fracture along controlled lines and caught the largest sections with her levitation. Where once there was a cage Twilight now held up a phalanx of magical shields.

Celestia stepped forward from her student's protection and projected a beam from her horn that was neither force nor heat, only bright as the sun itself into Discord's eyes.

Against all odds his eyes burnt back with their own fire as he glared into the light, not for one moment the least bit discomforted. Discord moved again but it's single-mindedness had cost him.
In the bright of the light he failed to notice gathering shadows. Without a word Luna's dark splotches of night formed into anchoring tendrils that fastened hard about the goat and crocodile legs and the dragon's tail. Dragging forward with his free limbs Discord began to tear himself free.

At that moment Applejack stopped having reached the talon first, turned in place and bucked with both hind legs with more power than she would ever apply to her beloved apple trees.
A second later, huffing through his nostrils the entire time, Big MacIntosh barreled into the lion's paw with a shoulder tackle that would have sent a hundred ponies flying.

Their efforts were mighty but to all appearances Discord suffered no injury to either of his limbs. He raised his arms to smash down on both earth ponies when Twilight, deciding there was no greater need for her phalanx than what she saw before her now, drove every last remaining shard of Shining's spell between the two.

Discord hammered at the shield wall. Once, twice and the last fragments of Shining's magic shattered into non-existence. Mac and AJ had both moved back, ready to dodge out of range.

More than enough time had passed. Shining Armor had galloped the full length of the empty space Discord had knocked him across and charged into him, shattering his reformed magic spear as he thrust it into Discord's side.

Shining fell over: he'd hit a brick wall at full speed. Loopy as he was, he nevertheless tried to see if he'd done it, if everypony was now safe.
The fragments of the spear he'd conjured had faded into nothing but no wound pierced Discord's torso.

Applejack rushed in front of Shining's vision, standing between him and Discord even as she bucked the spot of impact to exploit whatever tender spot might be left.
Big Mac dug his head under Shining and hoisted the prince onto his back. The two apples turned tail and ran as fast as they could before they felt a pull as Cadance snatched their hooves with her magic and yanked them all from Discord's range.

Nopony was left near him now.
Nothing was left about him beyond the pony sisters' magic.

The distance was immense, the vastness of space in this realm was incredible.
For a moment she thought that if she went just far enough, she could reach one of those distant stars, pluck it from the firmament, and take it for herself to keep or give away to some special somepony.

A whip wasn't an unusual device in Equestria: Rarity's coachmen had one, Applejack's family likely had several. To lance the shield and create a sonic boom within it meant Discord’s tail had struck at supersonic speed. The force of a blast wave like that was due to Discord's mass as much as his speed.
Given his size, optimistically speaking, Rainbow Dash calculated Discord's tail whip could only just reach Mach One.

She dove.

She’d traveled a great distance and hadn't yet reached her best speed.
At this height everything seemed so tiny, so insignificant. Even the distance Shining Armor had just galloped across seemed small.
She looked beneath her, remembering what she faced, remembering who she faced.
He did this to me before, giving me an impossible choice. After what I saw when he changed me, what I did- No! I didn't do it, it wasn't me! It was me but it wasn't!

She stopped her train of thought, held the tears from her eyes and focused again.

Not me. This is me, this is who I am. And he's making me choose again, between myself and my friends. Between everything I dream and everything I have. Well not this time. He's not going to win this time. This time I know what really matters!

She dove, falling hard, not thinking about the environment but realizing that if she were flying in real air her eyes would be burning with tears. No matter.
Three seconds to impact. He's moved a little, compensate. It's just a hoop to go through, a cloud to land on, even at these speeds. Ready... steady... Two seconds. Don't think about the consequences. Accelerate to full throttle at the last second, you need the boom as much as the impact Dash. Don’t think about the consequences. Lucky here means you'll only never walk again. One second…

In that last moment she couldn’t help but think of her friends.  I love you all so much.

There was a strange whistle in the void, the thing that wasn't air but resembled it so much made a shriek that give away her advance. A shriek that was altered so much no one recognized it for what it was.
Rainbow Dash fell from the sky like lightning, accelerating to full speed at the last second and rolling over to drive both her back hooves into the center of the X she imagined at the center of Discord's head.
The sonic rainboom she produced at the epicenter was created by accelerating to Mach Two.



If there had been any dust it would all have been blown away.

But there wasn't.

There was no ground, no dirt, no dust. Nothing to even hint that a sonic rainboom of that magnitude had been unleashed as an offensive weapon.
There was only a brief flash of rainbow light and a dozen fallen ponies.

The rainbow shockwave should have been harmless. By Twilight's estimation they were well past the minimum safe distance. At most only their teeth should have rattled, maybe an eardrum popped.
Their on the fly plan had been perfectly executed: three different, powerful attack waves, each of which would serve as a focal distraction for the next one if it happened to fail.
They’d thought the alien power had reduced Discord to a mutated beast, they’d gambled that he had forgotten his nature-changing magic and they had lost.

The rainboom that hit them was a wall of force that hit them as powerfully as a cerberus.

At last, Discord found his voice.

"THIS IS THE REALITY OF THIS NEW WORLD. FORGET THE POWER OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; IT WILL BE FORGOTTEN, NEVER TO BE RE-LEARNED. FORGET THE PROMISE OF PROGRESS AND UNDERSTANDING, FOR IN THE GRIM, DARK FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR. THERE IS NO PEACE AMONG THESE STARS, ONLY AN ETERNITY OF CARNAGE AND SLAUGHTER. PUT AWAY YOUR LOVE, FRIENDSHIP AND MAGIC. HERE THERE IS ONLY THE LAUGHTER OF THIRSTING GODS!"

His thunderous voice echoed across all of creation and his laughter promised an eternity of madness and torment.

They had been broken, crushed... and yet, one pony still stood.

"You're wrong you know." Pinkie’s voice called.

She was scared, terrified beyond belief. She didn't think she could reach him. Fluttershy was the one who reached his heart, not her. Everypony else had been defeated, and yet...

"You know. I'm not Applejack, I don't know truth the second I hear it, but I think I'm an expert on this particular subject."

She stepped around a groaning pegasus, avoiding the fallen Ranbow Dash.

"Shh. Easy Dashie, everything's gonna be ok."

Pinkie Pie walked all the way up to Discord, well within the reach of his snacking jaws, and stood. In spite of all the odds her mane was still poofy: she still had hopes that had yet to be deflated.
"In fact, I didn't really want to admit it, but a lot of times looking back I told myself, 'Now Pinkie, don't be so judgmental and be honest with yourself: under any other circumstances, all that Discord does looks like it'd be a hoot!'
So I know what I'm talking about. Waterskiing, ice skating, seeing you grow popcorn and cotton candy clouds and raining chocolate milk. I remember what you used to be like, and it's really really hard to do that looking at you right now. 
But I can, and I do. So I've gotta remind you, this, is how you laugh."

Pinkie closed her eyes, forgetting the fear and trying to push past the despair, thinking of everything she had been so thankful for in her life, and with supreme effort she laughed.
It wasn't a giggle, and it didn't travel very far, but that single note pierced the world, falling into it like a drop of water breaks the stillness of a pond. And it didn't take a single bit of magic from the Element of Harmony on her neck.

The laughter echoed deep within Discord, and he echoed it, mimicking it, changing it as it lowered from a vile, cruel cackle to the heartfelt laughter of mischief and joy.

The pink star's humors began to boil over, steaming out from Discord's body like gas until all the transformed flesh began to shrink and fade leaving only the original shape of a draconequus.

"Discord?" Pinkie asked, wide pupils in her eyes.

"Pinkie?" He asked back, bewildered and completely disoriented.

Their eyes locked.

He grabbed her, bringing her into his arms. "I'm sorry... I'm so, sooo sorry!"

He sobbed and she dropped her chin onto his shoulder and began to sob with him. 
> Chapter Three - Summoned
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Princess Celestia stood resolute. Discord had reverted to normal, the proverbial dust from the fight had settled and almost everypony was back on their hooves.
"This changes nothing. In fact, it proves things are worse than I thought. We have no choice but to act immediately."
Twilight was hesitant. Everypony looked worried, everypony save Cadance who was too busy using her magic on Rainbow Dash's rear legs to express her thoughts.

"Sister, I fear we must engage this threat ourselves." Luna suggested

"We cannot. Discord, are you recovered?"

He looked tired. Defeated. Deflated in a way nopony would've imagined.
"No. But don't let that keep you from saying what you want."

"Luna. Tell her."

Discord sighed.
"It's so troublesome being the only other omniscient..."
He got up on his hind legs.
"What you've just seen is only part of the obstacles waiting for us on the other side. That is the realm of the chaos Gods, they are creatures far and beyond what's in my power to stand against. And they are far from alone: Civilizations beyond number stand to serve them, creatures unlike anything you've ever imagined."
His eyes focused on Celestia.
"Well, most of you."

The voice least expected answered.
"I... I think in light of this development we should return to Canterlot and convene a summit. Summon aid from across the land if need be. Surely the Canterlot's Guard at their head would be up to the challenge."
Blueblood suggested. 

Twilight stared at him where he stood. 
 I totally forgot he was here. 

Prince Blueblood had spent the entire fight huddled behind everypony along with Fluttershy.

"That isn't an option Blueblood. We have no idea what will happen in the days to come and there are dangers in Equestria that will not simply disappear now that we face this common enemy."

"Y-es, of course. You're absolutely correct. A crisis such as this should be handled by superior forces. I shall return home at once and do everything within my power. By tomorrow you will have a brace of the bravest and mightiest stallions in the land."

Shining Armor moved to support him.
"I agree with Prince Blueblood. The timing isn't good but I think I can assemble a dozen volunteers from my friends in the Canterlot guard. If I remember right, last year there were maybe twenty borderline unsatisfactory ponies that could be recalled as temporary replacements to serve at the Castle. If we conscript reserves and make small sacrifices like that in key groups I'm sure we can have an adequate scouting force by morning and, with your permission, I'll lead them myself. Whatever lies beyond that star, I'm sure we can find the source of this magic or something to contain it."

Celestia beamed at the former captain even as Cadance's eyes watered at the sight of her husband. Celestia spoke:
"Your valor is appreciated Shining Armor, but this is not a military affair."

Discord agreed.
"Clearly you aren't listening. You've a lovely standing army, air force and a specialist unicorn corp but this would be the greatest mismatch I've seen since a certain something wagered with me that a certain federation could challenge a certain empire by force of arms. To give you an idea: you could expend the entire pony population of Equestria to rise to the challenge... let's say this little dot at my toe represents them, and the armies against you would still be as vast as, oh, all that!." His paw swept to signal all the stars in the sky.
His face contorted and his lips moved in anatomically impossible ways as Discord thought.


Celestia turned to Discord, giving a thankful Blueblood the opportunity to fade into the background again.
"You were powerless to keep that star from transformed you the first time. Can you do this? We haven't time to waste on impossible feats and if this is beyond your power we have other avenues to pursue."

"Change is the wrong word and again that's not a world, it's the Warp: the mirror of a real universe not that different from our own. It's more than just magic and chaos; it's alive. And it will chew you up and digest you if you go in unprepared."

"Empty space like the sky... can be alive?" Twilight asked even as she checked her tiara. With Discord's renewal the color and power of the Elements had returned to them.

"Like a blade of grass." Discord answered, ignoring her question and emphasizing the digestion.

Celestia looked at him eye to eye, determination overpowering her empathy for Discord's suffering. "Can you prepare them?"

Discord stared into the Warp star.
"No. But now that I know how it does what it does I can take care of it myself. There's a sense of destiny in the Warp, a certain precognition. You ponies will have to go and I've got this feeling that certain graces you all are lacking will be called for."
Discord looked back and forth across the mane six and for a second considered the possibility of letting them go alone.
"No, no. If this is to have any hope of succeeding it will require an eclectic team of adventurers and misfits, ponies who will answer the challenges before them with something other than proper marching and spears. You six are going. And you're going to need help."

Luna hurried him along.
"We are already familiar with thine powers and magic. We would have you dispense with the theatrics and summon the champions you believe must be present."

"Spoilsport. Fine!"
Discords eyes glowed white as he peered into the Warp, a gesture indistinguishable from Twilight's whenever she directed the full power of the Elements of Harmony. He turned back to the group.
With a snap of his fingers multiple flashes of light entered the star-crossed landscape and new ponies yelped as they found themselves in this strange place.

"Greetings chosen heroes. Fate decrees that you are the ones to whom has been entrusted this great burden. Madam Jason," he said with a grandiose gesture to Twilight, "your Argonauts."

Rarity scanned the group.
"Wait, did he just-"

She was interrupted by Applejack's hollering at one pony as soon as she laid eyes on him.
"Big Macintosh?!"

The red stallion looked around uncertainly.
"Uh... eeyup."

Discord put a stop to the simmering surprise and interrogation before it boiled over.
"Ladies and gentlecolts if you please?! Arguments may be held later.
For my first answer to what might be the most obvious question: 'no this is not heaven and no you are not dead'. At least not in the typical permanent fashion so you are welcome to continuing conjecturing at length about the beautiful backdrop and the appropriate cutie mark-shaped scorch marks you left behind when you were transported here.

Second, you are here because manifest destiny (or random chance) have decided that you are the ones who possess the skills, talents or miscellanea we need.

Third, introductions. In the particular order I feel like:
Roseluck, feel free to shorten to Rose. 
Amethyst Star, no she's not 'Sparkler'. 
Her old friend Lyra Heartstrings. 
Her new bosom buddie-" Here Discorded emphasized the 'her' to make it clear she was refering to Lyra. "Bon Bon."

A certain wall-eyed mare pushed through the group to wrap her hooves around Sparkler.
"Speaking of miss Sparkler, we have Derpy or if you want to be 'official' miss Ditzy Doo. 
Her neighbor Golden Harvest alias Carrot Top (strange to have that for a nickname for sure)."

Sweet Celestia please tell me I'm dreaming or wasted just not dead.  Vinyl thought to herself.
"Straight but not fresh from the coronation afterparty we have Vinyl Scratch, the renowned DJ PON3." 
Vinyl looked like a zombie pony. A familiar hoof reached over and lifted Vinyl's hoof onto her shoulder. 
"And her odd-couple counterpart the refined miss Octavia." 

Discord enjoyed the sight of the musicians a little too much before he moved on to the next pony.
"Cheerilee who is responsible for most of your little scamps. Next we have-"

"The Great and Powerful Trixie needs no introductions, and if she did she would gladly produce her own thank you very much."

Discord rolled his eyes. "And everypony was saying that I would be the first reformee to fall back into old habits."

Trixie's manner changed immediately when she saw whose presence she was in. She bent both knees and lowered her head to bow to the Princesses. "Your majesties, if I may be of any service or assistance to you I am ever at your mercy."

Hmmpf. Arrogant little mare. We'll see who... oh now this is priceless! 
The look on the face of pony next to Trixie brought a tear to Discord's eye.
"Well then now this is unexpected. His royal highness, Prince Blueblood. It would appear you do have a role to play here after all. Personally."

Applejack's eye twitched even as everypony else turned to the spot next to Shining Armor.
She found a small circle of ash with an eight-pointed star that was an exact replica of Blueblood's cutie mark. The exact spot from which he had just been teleported. 
Well I'll be. He's not just here because Discord dragged him along from Canterlot. He's actually supposed to be here. Still kind of a waste o' magic to teleport him a couple of inches, though.

"I'm going to enjoy watching you." Discord worded at Blueblood cruelly. 
"Moving along lest my introductions seem biased.
Here we have the charming Berry Punch. 
Next we have one of Rainbow Dash's fellow leadponies, Cloudchaser. And her friend Flitter who I hear does wonders with amateur cloud architecture. 
And last but not least, depending on who you ask, Applejack's big brother, Big Macintosh."

Celestia walked up to the group to gain their attention and offered a brief explanation that failed to convince anypony that they were in any way qualified to be there. After the panic and a tirade of words she failed to understand she spoke over them:
"I know what is happening now must be frightening but despite what Discord said I want to say that I am not ordering anypony into this. I can only ask you to believe in each other and believe in yourselves. Will you help us?"

"You bet I'm going!" Lyra declared loudly before turning to her friend. "Bon Bon I know it sounds crazy but-"

"Say no more. I know why you're going; everypony knows why you're going." 
Bon Bon rolled her eyes. Nopony needed to hear the words 'human' and 'homeworld' together. 
"I'm in."

"Just like that? Really?"

"Lyra, I've been a candymare, a gift wrapper, a delivery pony and a garbage hauler for Pigpen. After all that, 'professional adventurer' sounds like a step up."


Amethyst looked to Derpy. "Momma, I'm going."

The gray mare looked wearily at her daughter's adoptive big sister.
"Sweetie, are you sure? This sounds really really dangerous and we don't even have the-"

Discords face appeared like a flat coin in front of her.
"Don't even think to mention him. If his type of help were something that was called for believe me, he would be here already."

The face vanished and out of the corner of her eye Derpy saw he hadn't moved from Celestia's side.
"Oh dear."

"Momma..." Sparkler started, reassuring Derpy that she had seen the little two-dimensional face as well, "you let that slide for now and listen to me. Everything is gonna be fine. Princess Twilight is the most magical pony I've ever known, Lyra and me've both been around long enough to see that. Believe in us."

"Golden?" Derpy turned to Carrot Top, trying to get support.

The redhead was pensive. "Dinky and Tootsie Flute will go to school, they'll go home and if nopony's there they know what to do." She said, trying to relieve both their worries about the fillies back home. "And Written Script's there if they need him." She added, blushing a little as she mentioned her gentlecolt friend.

"But, but Cheerilee is right over there." Derpy pointed out, finding the obvious flaw in Carrot's 'school plan'.


Cheerilee walked over to Princess Celestia, whispering so nopony else could hear her. "Your majesty, I'm not sure I'm the right pony to go on this mission. All I can think of are the children, and a lot of ponies are worried about those they leave behind. I know you'll have plans for the long run but for tomorrow and the day after-"

"I have instructions prepared for Mayor Mare. A substitute will be found. Cheerilee, I know it is a lot to ask but I have faith all of your paths led you here for a reason." Celestia smiled warmingly at her.



"Hey there little miss top leadpony." Cloudchaser approached Rainbow Dash jovially, even as Cadance finished patching her legs up. "If it's all about high risk and high speed I should'a known you'd be involved. So what hit you this time?"

"Oh nothing much, you know. I only just pulled off a sonic rainboom orbital strike divebomb kick. Total shame you missed it."

"I bet."

Flitter took in Dash's legs. "Sounds painful. You manage ok?"

"Totally. Dis-"

Cadance interrupted: "Rainbow Dash, you shouldn't fuss around so much while I finish this. I'm not really a medical pony. Be careful." She tapped Dash' hooves even as she said it.

"Right..." Dash didn't read inflection very well but managed to keep off the topic of Discord. "Anyway, that landing was a lot softer than I expected so I should be ok, right?"

Cadance wasn't optimistic but answered with some relief: "You should be fine. I'd tell you to take it easy but I know that isn't an option. Just try to rely on hovering for a while."

"You got it. So what are you girls thinking?" Rainbow asked, turning to Flitter and Cloudchaser.

"You can count on us." Cloudchaser decided while Flitter beamed with a huge smile on her face.


Applejack looked serious. Dead serious.
"Macintosh I know what you're thinking but ah'm stopping you right here and right now and telling you 'no'. This is something I have to do and I can't do it with a clear head if Granny and Applebloom don't have anypony back home to take care of them."

Big Macintosh looked stoic as ever.
"Sis, you ain't foolin' anypony. I saw what happened."

Applejack double-blinked when she realized Mac had been there helping her busting shields and bucking Discord from the start.
"Hold up! Wait one pony picking minute here! Twi and my friends came here on our own, Celestia and the princesses followed in after Twilight led the way, and Discord brought Shining Armor and his royal snootyness along for the ride. 
How did you end up here in the first place?!"

In response Big Mac walked back to the spot where they arrived, past the burnt cutie mark matching Blueblood's, to a spot where a shard of Shining Armor's magic shield remained. Big Mac loomed over it and waited.
At first it trembled a little, then the shard flipped over revealing

"Spike?!"

"Eeyup."

"Spike what in the name of Celestia are you doing here?" AJ was livid. "Macintosh you better make good on this."

"Ah was gettin' ready to call it a night when I saw certain someponies sneaking around..."


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FLASHBACK.

The cutie mark crusaders had stayed up way past their bedtime. Nopony had the heart to let them miss a big event like the coronation but they'd been sent to their room as soon as the clock hit nine... well before the grown-ups planned on finishing. The girls obviously saw this as an incredible opportunity so the four of them found themselves sneaking about.

"Why are we doing this anyway? I mean the party's over there."
Babs said as she eyed the dark castle walls and ominous tapestries .

"Come on Babs, it's a great party but when else are we gonna have an opportunity like this?" Scootaloo replied.

"Cutie Mark Crusader Castle Spies!" The three echoed holding their hooves in the air.

Babs clenched her jaw and eyed everywhere while the other girls nervously ducked as they heard their words echoing down the halls.
They looked about them to make sure nopony came out to investigate, then huddled together with raised hooves again. Applebloom gave Babs a look that told the filly to get over there and join them, and this time the four whispered loudly: "cutie mark crusader castle spies!".

They soon found themselves in Canterlot Tower and had managed to start arguing again.
"Yeah Ashcorp played his best songs early but we're bound to have Mic, Tombstone and Toaster coming up." Babs insisted." 
The debate abridged read 'Manehattan DJ's rule, bar none.'

Scoot rolled her eyes. "Ponyville's got Vinyl. Nuff, said."

"Oh no you did not." As far as Bab's was concerned those were fighting words.

Applebloom shut them up: "Shh. I hear something behind that door."

Celestia's sealed chamber opened and a nervous white flank backed out of it. A white flank with a cutie mark that resembled an eight-point compass.
"Yes, as you can see the Element bearers and the princesses have moved on without us and we've no way to follow so I'll just be heading off to-"

"Poppycock." A jeering voice replied.

"Discord?!"
The three veteran Crusaders yelped even as they zipped to hide behind one of the pillars sticking out of the wall. Babs didn't know what she was seeing but that didn't stop her from hiding with them.

"In you go!" The draconequus yelled gleefully just as soon as he poofed a zipper into the air and pulled it open.
Shining Armor stepped inside and Discord yanked Blueblood by the tail and tossed him in after.

"Pulled by the tail and tossed in like a little filly." Babs observed.

"How embarrassing." Sweetie Belle agreed.

"What are we waiting for? Let's head in after them." Applebloom said as her legs kicked into a gallop. Her eyes widened as she found out she wasn't getting anywhere.
Her tail was being pulled back and was then yanked up so high it lifted her off the ground.

"Uh-oh." Sweetie Belle's eyes widened.

"Busted." Babs echoed.

Applebloom was looking back at Big Mac's fetlocks.
He let her down and made eye contact with the four of them.

"Uh, hi big brother. We can totally explain why we're over here."

Babs, being new to the group, thought it might be a good idea to sneak to the side and run out. Scootaloo seemed to be moving to follow her. Mac's disapproving face turned to them and succeeded in freezing them in their tracks.

"Say, why are you up over here anyway?" Applebloom said trying to be clever.
Mac brought his head a little closer, making her sweat.

"Berry Punch an me were hauling over a few more barrels of cider, then ah heard you all."
The four fillies' ears drooped.
"Overlookin' that it's past y'all's bedtime, and that you're sneaking around the castle, and you lying to your sister 'n me, what possessed you to even think about going into that?!"

"Discord opened it and Shining Armor and some other pony went in there." Applebloom answered. The other three nodded in support.

"He's Prince Blueblood." Sweetie Belle added.

"Sweetie Belle said Rarity really hated his guts for a while." Scootaloo continued.

"Don't you and him have some kind'a grudge?" Bab's finished.
Mac arched one eye at her and she smiled wider. "Just a rumor." She added apologetically.

Mac sighed heavily: "Don't you girls mind none o' that, that don't change facts that nopony'd be crazy enough to chase after ponies on royal business or whatever that is like that."

"He is." Sweetie Belle answered pointing at a small shape in black rushing into the portal. It was wearing spy gear.

In a sudden panic and unsure of what was going on or what else to do, Mac galloped after the figure and caught part of its dark outline in his teeth. The black shape tore revealing green scales under the clothing just as it reached the portal. The hole in space began to close but not before sucking in Spike and Big Macintosh entirely.

It vanished without a trace.

The four fillies stared at the empty hallway.
"You know what this means right?" Babs asked.

"Eeyup." Applebloom answered.

"We get to stay up late tonight!" Scootaloo yelled excited.

"And when he gets back we're really gonna get it." Sweetie Belle finished frowning.

The four of them looked at each other a long while.
"Seems legit." Scoot shrugged.

"That's good enough for me. Let's go get some of that cider!" Applebloom ran.

Babs and Scootaloo were right behind her.
"You'll see what I mean about Manehattan beats." Babs challeneged.

"In your dreams!" Scootaloo laughed back.

"Wait for me!" Sweetie Belle called, wanting to but not taking a final backwards glance.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Applejack finished listening to Mac then turned to Spike.
"Well, now it's your turn."

Spike got to his feet and said: "I had to follow. You guys just left the ballroom without saying anything. I thought you might be heading to the little filly's room or out for air but then i saw Princess Luna and your dresses in the hall so I knew something was up."

"So you followed us?"

"Actually I kinda had to get these duds first."

Applejack narrowed her eyes at him.

"Pinkie had a spare."

Her face fell. "Ah shoulda figured."

"AJ, let me handle this, stallion to stallion."
Applejack made a face but the look on Mac convinced her to nod and let him handle it.

"I know what you're gonna tell me but I have to do something." Spike began to counter as soon as AJ was out of earshot.

"Eeyup."

"Huh? You agree?" Spike was surprised.

"Ah do. You're growin' up, that means taking on responsibility: doing what needs done, and taking care of everything and everypony that depends on you."

"Y-yeah. That's it exactly Big Mac."

"And that means you don't always get your way. Ah don't belong here; ah belong on the farm keeping an eye on Applebloom and helping out Granny Smith. But that there magic or whatever says otherwise. See?" 
Big Mac pointed a hoof in front of him and Spike stepped up to look at it. There on the invisible surface lay an ash trail shaped like Big Macintosh's cutie mark.
"That thing says I was chosen, like everypony else who got here. And that means what I want or think about where ah belong doesn't matter none. This is where I'm needed, this is where I'm staying, and this is where ah have to look at you, male to male, and ask you to take care of the things ah can't. 
Now, look me in the eye, take my hoof, an promise me you'll keep an eye on the girls until we get home. For me, and Rarity, and everypony else."

Spike looked past Big Mac, seeing Rarity and imagining her every facial expression as a worried tick, knowing how much of a load off her mind it would be to know she didn't have to worry about Sweetie Belle.
"All right Big Macintosh. I'll do it." The little dragon took the stallion's hoof in his claw and shook.



Behind the group Shining Armor looked worried. Cadance stood at his side.
"Shining, I know you want to see her off safely and I think that's good but we can't stay here."

"I know. Cadance." 
He stood there, with a distant look on his face. At length he made a decision.
"I think you should return without me to the Crystal Empire. I don't know what'll happen and I don't trust that Discord knows what he's doing. I think I should stay here and ready a team in case they need reinforcements."

"Shining, Princess Celestia said-"

"I don't disagree with her but dear you're their Princess. The Crystal Princess. They need you for leadership and guidance. I'm... I'm a soldier. If something goes wrong I should be ready to face it head on."

"Is it because of Twilight?"

"Yes... and no. It's what this can do to everypony, to Equestria itself. Twili is so gifted, and her friends are some of the most amazing fillies I've ever met... and you saw what happened to them without anything they could do about it. 
I hate being here doing nothing but if by staying here and waiting I can step in and make something happen, even if it's the most trivial change, I have to do it."

Cadance wrapped her front legs around his neck and draped his back with her wings.
When she let go she said: "We can afford to stay the night. Find your friends, get the volunteers you talked about, help get them ready. If Princess Celestia needs them they'll be there and even if she decides you must come back with me to the Empire you'll have left something behind in your place."

Shining nodded sadly.



"So, we're all agreed? Everypony is ready?" Discord asked everypony around him. The cheer was loud but it wasn't unanimous.

Twilight stepped forward and nodded. "We're ready to go save Equestria."

With that Discord's body faded into light and shot like sunbeams into the twenty-one chosen ponies. The six Elements of Harmony melted into the bodies of their bearers.

Twilight felt the magic in her and rallied everypony around her. 
"I hear words." her voice cracked nervously.

That would be me. Admittedly it's a little invasive but this is the only way I can keep you all from mutating.

"Mutating?!" She yelped back. Twenty heads turned to look at her. obviously Discord could share some thoughts or all at will.

Yes now don't do that again unless you want to cause a panic.
Twilight nodded and a voice in her mind began to chant a spell. the look on everypony's faces reassured her that they were all hearing the same mantra and ready to repeat it with her.
"All together now!"

"Of our own free will we expose ourselves
to the risks of a world of cruelty and gore,
we steel ourselves in unity and preparation,
for in the grim darkness of their future -there is only war." 
> Chapter Four - Garden
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE WARP
THE GARDEN OF NURGLE


Twilight and her company pushed their way through a distortion, uncertain what kind of universe awaited them on the other side. So far everything was very different from Equestrian magic: Passing through Discord's wormholes was as effortless as stepping through a door, blinking through reality via Twilight's teleportation was as easy as closing your eyes and opening them again in a new room. Pony magic left you feeling like yourself, if perhaps a little queasy for the experience.
Pushing through to the Warp felt like squeezing through gelatin and nopony wanted to think about how they were breathing; more than one pony had to hold Pinkie's mouth shut to keep her from tasting the stuff.

Twilight saw a light and figured they had almost made their way out. 
The world that awaited them could be literally anything so Twilight was understandably surprised and a little disappointed when they came out and found themselves within -what appeared to be- an completely ordinary forest. Cramped, tight, barely enough space to fit two ponies side by side, but a forest all the same.

That impression lasted all of three seconds.

The trees, leaves, mushrooms- the slough on the earth that was supposed to pass as grass- everything was diseased.
Heads turned up and more than one voice quivered at the sights overhead: whatever portion of the air above them wasn't choked with flies was thick with streams of noxious gas that flowed like aery silk. The overhanging canopies of leaves and the overabundance of vegetation made them feel like they were within a living creature.
Pockets of light in different colors broke through the cover at strange angles; nothing resembling a sun shone overhead.
Rainbow Dash hovered up a few ponies' height but stopped herself.
"You guys, does it feel like maybe we might be... I dunno, underground to you? I don't get a vibe like there's a sky at all past these... trees?"

Applejack looked about sharing her friend's concern: "I'm not sure what's wrong with 'em, all I know is these can't be fruit trees."

Carrot Top dragged her hoof on the soil. As the soil broke the earth leaked fluid and began to make sucking noises like mud. All of this despite its solid appearance.

Roseluck got close to a set of dangling vines that were dotted with folded leaves or petals. There were many kinds of rare and strange flora in Equestria, why wouldn't an alien world have its own sense when it came to foliage?
One vine began inching towards her and Rose couldn't help but notice how strong it looked despite its sickly colors. The petals unraveled and expanded into the mouth of a giant flytrap, exposing insides lined with tongue-like tendrils and rows of needle-shaped teeth.

Rose yelped and leapt back, barely escaping the creature as it bit into the air. Any questions were cut short as the rest of the environment began to come alive around them. Roots and stems crept or grew at an accelerated rate and began overtaking the open spaces.
The cloud of flies that flew overhead thickened and began to fall over them like a blanket of fog. Even the mud beneath them began to bubble up, molehills with gaps that began to resemble the shapes of living faces.

The ponies turned about desperately, looking for shelter.

Applejack saw something, brief bars of light like the patterns of windows. They flickered like candlelight. The light caught of glint of rusted metal.
"Over there! That's a door. Rotten or not if somepony lives there it's got to be better than out here," Applejack hollered.
The group stampeded in that direction immediately.

As they closed in they found that what AJ had mistaken for a house was far larger than they thought, if it indeed was a single building that the glow of lights came from. Twilight hesitated at the door, accidentally preventing her friends from getting in first. She tried to take it all in. She saw not a house but a mansion, with walls so large they would be considered battlements. They dwarfed the entirety of Canterlot and even as her friends were pressuring her to move Twilight couldn't help but marvel that trees, especially trees as blighted as these, could grow so tall as to serve as lumber for such a palace.

Something else fed her apprehension more than rotten timbers. The gaps between the trees and earth were plugged by crumbling walls. Stonework had to have had living builders; if a ghost town was the sign of a local calamity then decayed walls with overgrown vegetation were the signs of a civilization that had once existed and since moved on. 
The mansion might indeed have served as a bastion once but there was no reason to believe anypony still lived within - and there was no reason to believe there would be anything within the ruins that would provide them with help.
All the same she led them inside: she had the problem of a ravenous forest trying to devour them to solve.

They entered.
They expected an entry-room for a fortress hidden away in the wild, what they found instead was a vast undecorated expanse of empty space.

Twilight had her doubts: the forest or jungle or whatever it was was dark and deep. She might have misjudged the exterior due to the claustrophobic setting. In the thickness of the jungle it was easy to imagine a space as bigger or smaller than it really was, and that was without bringing magic into the equation.
On the other hoof, standing there where she was with over a dozen ponies beside her, there was no way to confuse the size of the cavern the doorway had opened to. Only the rusted metal floor convinced them that it was a building and not a cave. Even inside the fog of rot was so thick the walls faded out mere paces away.
Everything felt eerie, eerie because it was endless and eerie because it was empty but something beyond that gnawed at their fears.

They walked along, beginning to lose their sense of time until they reached an edge.
There was a roundness to the floor, one that made them believe the mansion itself was just a cover for this chasm. Using her magic Twilight tore off a section and used the jagged metal to scrape the pattern of her cutie mark on the floor.

"That should help. If we keep going and this does turn out to be a circle we'll run into this marker again. Let's move on. We're here for a reason and we're bound to find a clue what to do."

They moved along, cautious to stay away from the edge after hitting a rusted section that broke off under their hooves. "Whoa! Careful guys, unstable floor here. Looks like some kind of pit. I wonder how far it goes..."

 "I don't think that would be quite the best idea at the moment, Rainbow Dash." 
Rarity said, trying to talk her out of it. The fog was thick and the fumes outside had been vile. Nopony knew if she might get turned around once she was out of sight or if the air wasn't merely rotten but also poisonous.

One thing they did know: the sections of floor that broke off under their hooves and fell off the side barely made a sound. 
In her boredom Dash sent a sizable portion flying. Seconds later a weak splashing sound marked its journey's end. Whatever was in the pit it was liquid, and the pit was deep.

They walked along until the path began to change.The ring of metal gave way to more of the muddy earth. 
It was putrid but as far as they could tell it was inert. The fog began to thin and they found the wall again. Rotten wood through and through, small gusts of air pushed in and then rushed back out with the regularity of a pair of lungs.
Soon after the outline of another wall faded in with each step.
The walls closed into a corner and they found themselves staring into a gate. Something within moved in the shadows.

Twilight sparked a light globe on her horn to peer through.
"Oh my..."

It wasn't a gate, it was a cage. Its occupant was a giant, easily as tall as Twilight's library home. Tall, fully wrapped in strange garb that illuminated now that Twilight was watching them. it walked on two legs with a pair of arms dangling at its sides.
There was a swell around the upper half of her torso. It's head was small with pointed ears that rose well above it's crown, flowing with long hair. Twilight thought that perhaps this was a female, of whatever species of animal she might be.
She was lithe, her svelte figure suggested great poise and her legs and arms flowed as she moved.
Alone of all the things surrounding them, she was beautiful to behold. Flawless even.

Hesitantly Twilight asked: "Are you the... mistress of this mansion? My... greetings. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle... can you understand me?" 
 Wow that sounds stupid. Who ever heard of a mistress in a cage? Then again this isn't our world and maybe that's what rooms look like. Yeah, that's totally likely. On the other hand if somepony can stay in a cage to observe sharks why wouldn't they settle for living in a cage if it's the only safe place around? The forest out there certainly isn't any less dangerous!

The prisoner returned to her rest ignoring them entirely. Her posture reminded Fluttershy of a caged Hawk, prim and regal. She occupied her cage with complete disdain for everything outside it.

She was Isha, and she was the last surviving goddess of the Eldar.

She ignored them as they spoke and moved about her like a herd of cattle. A curiosity to be sure, in the timelessness since her imprisonment isha had seen many strange sights but this was different for reasons that had no logical sense even on a daemon world. Ultimately the migration of a herd of equine, even semi-intelligent vocal equine, failed to show enough novelty to pique her interest for longer than it had taken her to give them all a glance.
They asked, they pleaded, making a thousand inane questions. They reminded her terribly of the mon keigh except... 
Isha's heart opened to them. They were like the common curse to the galaxy that called itself 'humanity' in every way except she felt nothing of the all-consuming lusts within them, none of the corrupting passions that had led her children, her brothers, her gestalt being to their fall.

Her ears pricked. Something one of them said had triggered a reaction.
Anger, pride, mirth; she had just been insulted.
One of these equine had actually put to words the question of whether anything they could do would help her.
Her! In this place, at that time, under those circumstances.

The goddess of the Eldar turned upon these quaint quadrupeds and spoke with a voice that reminded them of Celestia's in tone and quality even if it was world's apart in content.

"You, limited mortal creatures, believe you have anything to offer that could aid me?!
Do you know anything? Do you know to whom you speak? Do you know where you are? Do you know who is the master, not of this mansion, but of this entire warp-accursed realm?
I know from your questions: You. Do. Not!"

Twilight looked the goddess eye to eye. She gulped loudly.
Ok, skip formal introductions for now. This isn't her home so she probably isn't here by choice and being in this place for a while would make anybody cranky. Try to be... accomodating.
"You're right, we don't know. We don't have much but we offer what we can and if this place is as horrible to you as it is to us, if that cage keeps you in more than it keeps everything else out, then you've got nothing to lose. Let us help you."

Imperceptibly, Isha sighed. Such naive creatures. She found they reminded her too much of a time before memory when the Warp was a place filled with kind, whimsical creatures.
Perhaps they could break one lock, perhaps they could pass a message or artifact to someone beyond the garden, perhaps...

"You are travelers from beyond this galaxy? Or are you newborn, your race barely shed of its birthing membranes to find itself in a world it has only begun to understand?"

"The former. Our civilization has existed for thousands of years-"

"Young and adrift convinced of your superiority. You have nothing."

"We have each other, and we stand against the dangers of your Warp."

Isha shook her head and in her frustration at the naive creature the goddess began the first words of a lecture she believed would gave them what she considered a valuable lesson.
"it is not my warp, it is the all-pervasive aetherium. it exists everywhere, permeates everything, and no mortal creatures can fight it. You are it, form a part of it. Even the lowest of the low races, even the newest of the new, all are present in it. Your race's emerging consciousness is a child; and it's character is irremediably perverted by the bullying of the Chaos Gods."

"No. It's not."

Isha's tongue was ready to meet the defiance when the equine reacted to her comment in a way she hadn't expected: It had rested its hoof on her body. 
No forcing, no violence. Just touch.
Isha looked into the alien face, judging its expression and found nothing of the arrogance, denial, or anger she would expect from a child that refused to accept a terrible truth. Such guileless sincerity made her hesitate.

The goddess turned her eyes to the sky, searching the Warp even as she felt the... comfort the mortal meant to give her. Searching the multi-dimensional realm she felt it, an unfamiliar tingle and homed in on the equestrian consciousness she knew must be forming. Forming, even now, with every breath they took and every thought they had.
She found it, a tiny essence, tinier than even the smallest spec that had been formed by every other sentient race she had ever known.
The essence was growing but it was alive; except it hadn't been expanded by the soul of a single pony that had lived and died within its lifespan. That fact left Isha confused because, unless their race had been born with an innate knowledge of Soulstones, it was impossible for any civilization even only a few hundred years old to have escaped imprinting the character of its dead into the Warp. Had they been deliberately engineered so that their souls couldn't be absorbed by the Warp? Questions about the strange aliens began to flood her mind.

I AM RETURNED MY PRECIOUS TREASURE
HOW MY EYES HAVE ACHED TO BEHOLD YOU ANEW
SHOW ME YOUR KINDNESS, FOR YOUR LORD AND MASTER IS RETURNED TO HIS HOME
AND IS ANXIOUS IN HIS AMORATION

Twilight and every pony pressed their hooves to their ears, trying in vain to block out a sound that had burst not through the air, but through their minds. 
"What in the name of Equestria was THAT?!"

Isha's face turned pale.
"He is returned, you must flee at once. You are tiny, and I feel nothing of your presence. You are new, but that will not save you for at the mere mention of his name all of creation withers and dies."

"He? What kind of monster's coming?"

"He is not a monster, ignorant mortal. He is a God."

The walls came alive and the fog rushed from the room as the air vented out from a billion cracks by force of a vile wind. Moments later the gaps were plugged just as quickly as the air had cleared and every pony became frightened in the darkness.

A flickering light effect began, all across the ceiling lights danced.
Behind Isha's cage the first rays of light appeared as cracks and burrows and gaps birthed light, intermittently between the passage of monsters.

They were tiny, very tiny. The smallest were perhaps no larger than a tooth and the largest could still fit underhoof. 
Their bodies were strange and cared nothing for the laws of anatomy. Every example they saw was more slime than beast. 
Some walked, some rolled, some dragged themselves along through hands, teeth or claws.
They were every sickly shade of brown, green and yellow and they gibbered as they chanted:
"Papa Nurgleth!"

The nurglings passed by them, ignoring the ponies completely. One with five eyes and a mouth that was nothing more than three gaps in the mucus pooling from what should've been an upper lip waddled along, burping at them without a shred of self-consciousness.

Rarity and Flitter both grit their teeth at the sight of such disgusting creatures.
Blueblood had climbed on top of Big Mac's back.
The red stallion shook hard once and the unicorn feel on his rump.

The uncountable swarm continued its migration from the outer walls to the inner walkway, stopping at the edge. The chanting of 'Papa Nurgle' continued loudly even as a new noise echoed in the chamber. It was the sound of vomiting. 
The nurglings had arrived and deposited their tribute into what the ponies now realized was an immense cauldron.

The daemons continued their parade, moving away from the edge and hopping, singing aloud, dancing and making pyramid stacks of themselves almost a dozen nurglings tall. Under another guise their behavior might be considered cute- but they were far too grotesque, too gross to cause any sense of endearment. Fluttershy remarked:
"They act like parasprites."

Rarity replied:
"Fluttershy dear, I remember the absolutely disgusting appearance of parasprites when they spawn. Believe me, this is infinitely worse."

With the exit of the fog Twilight tried to make sense of the room's dimensions, with nothing to guide except the assumption that each nurgling pyramid could reach roughly the same height. She wished she had had the foresight to prepare a binocular spell before they left.
"I can see the far wall, but this is insane! That cauldron looks big enough to house all of Equestria."

"Your vision serves you well even as your mind struggles to grasp the enormity of what you see, mortal, and I attest to the volume and contents of that vile container firsthand. The god of decay prepares his pestilence within ... and the recipient to test the effectiveness of the resulting foulness is inevitably my person." Isha did not turn, she had seen the sight often enough. "The incidental fumes alone would exterminate all mortal life upon this realm." She added as an afterthought.

She had Twilight's sympathy.
"That's horrible."

"Wait. What'll that do to us?" Rainbow asked.

"Do you really need to ask?" Applejack shot back.

"Is there anything we can do?" Rose asked, turning not to her friends but to the goddess.

"The power of this entire realm keeps me in bondage, there is no way for me to escape... but for you perhaps there is a chance.
When Grandfather Nurgle is eventually satisfied by the new disease he has created he will always leave to spread it among creation. Ordinarily that is the time when I use what remains of my power to guide my children.
You have no power, no sorcery, no presence in the Warp. And yet I sense great magic in you.
It is possible for you and you alone to escape this daemon realm with my assistance.
In return, I place one condition on you and every one of your species."

"Anything."

"Begone and away from my children! There is no good that can come from your interference. Ruin to yourselves and the younger races as you see fit; but bring harm to the least of the Eldar and I will whisper to my children that you will feel the grasp of Kaela Mensha Khaine upon your throats. Your mouths will fill and choke from what flows from the palms of the bloody-handed-God before he sears your very souls in fire and vengeance."

Twilight and the others were taken aback. This goddess, this poor wretched pitiable goddess of infinite beauty, elegance and grace... her words and her being were to them irreconcilable.
They felt the force of the Eldar goddess' curse upon their very souls.

What manner of world had they come to?

Twilight Sparkle regained her senses and replied.
"In my name, by my authority as princess, I swear it will be so."

The Goddess began to whisper in her cage, her voice spread out as if in a dream. Her eyes misted as her words echoed the ache for her dying children and Twilight felt the pattern, the echo she needed to attune her magic.
With a flash of her horn she made herself and her friends disappear from that realm unnoticed, leaving behind the sorrowed mother of the Eldar to her tortures. 
> Chapter Five - Pseudo-Reality
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE EYE OF TERROR
PLANETSIDE, THE DAEMON SATELITE MIASMA

The last teleportation spell the group endured to get through the Warp was a slog through pseudo-solids that nopony enjoyed. It was a relief that their transportation under the Eldar Goddess' touch ended instantly. Their eyes cleared and they looked around. As far as they could tell they were at the edge of the same decaying forest they first arrived at. 
They moved across earth was the same decaying slush towards greater light. The lethal vegetation thinned and for the first time the sense of claustrophobia lifted. After a while the leafy canopy gave way to clear pink skies and the twinkle of distant stars.

Twilight kept herself from surrendering to the naive hope that 'out of the woods' meant out of trouble. Discord said that the Warp was the opposite of the physical world they'd always known. He'd called it Realspace. Indeed, the Warp skies above looked like they held more life than the earth beneath their hooves. Nopony told them this would be easy. It was time to roll up their sleeves and find the way off this blighted rock.

The earth stirred behind them. Shapes began rising from the mud and sloughed off the immaterial to emerge as flesh. They were bipedal cyclopses, some with horns, some with antlers, all covered in boils and sores that exposed sinew and internal organs. Some wounds opened into toothy maws.

"T-twilight-" Fluttershy gulped as she backed away.

"Those are horns. They've got horns. Tell me they don't have magic..." Flitter yelped. 
To answer her question the daemons drew out corroded steel weapons as long as swords. Oily slime dripped from their tips.

Big Mac, Rainbow Dash and Cloudchaser stamped their hooves and flared their nostrils in response.

Twilight looked around her. If the forest really did end here and these creatures were tied to it they could feasibly outrun the menace. Behind her she heard somepony scream but the sound was so high-pitched she couldn't recognize who made it.

Had the monsters surrounded them?
She turned to see Vinyl gesturing towards the horizon and her hoof waving was ridiculously desperate for attention. Unfamiliar noises rose from that direction. Twilight wasn't sure if the Vinyl was searching the distant skies or the small hill ahead of them.

Twilight weighed her choices and made her decision. They had left the forest and these new monsters were like the nurglings they had seen; horrible, but familiar.
Only one new variable had presented itself and she had to know what it was.
"Run!" She yelled.

Heads bounced as they galloped at full speed, leaving the gruesome deformities behind them. They reached the top of the hill, stopping as soon as their eyes rose above the slope. They stared petrified at the sight.

"I knew that couldn't be vocal. It's amped!" Vinyl shouted unrestrained.

Twilight would have shushed her but what she saw would make that pointless. The air was filled with the ear-splitting noise of an army. Machines the size and shape of houses rolled towards them, at their sides marched knights in gaudy lavender armor that shined metallic.

If Twilight wasn't misjudging because of the distance each giant was seven or eight feet tall. Their shoulders were huge, their heads comically tiny in proportion to their massive bodies if she could judge from the few without helmets. 
Helmets decorated with horns, antlers, spines, spikes, plumes, manes in topknots, socketed hoses that snaked into their eyes and strange metal bits that jut from their mouths. There was such a variety that Twilight wondered if the normal heads only appeared smaller by comparison.

The ponies watched as the cohort of boxes and giants made their way to the edge of the forest. 
Twilight identified their noise as the mix of machinery, speech, and damage to the earth. Still, the creative part of her imagination couldn't dismiss other unlikely possibilities. 
Easy, they're not ponies and machines are just noisy. Maybe they're not threatening and that's just singing. Really loud, really obnoxious chanting. Like a march.

Her hopeful positivity died quickly. More daemons, Nurgle's children if she remembered the Eldar goddess correctly, were spawning from the earth and air to stand against the invaders. The giants raised their arms without breaking stride and new noises rose in tune to flashes of light. Beams burst in volleys from both knights and carriages- by now there was no doubt ponies were witnessing the use of weapons unlike any they had ever seen.

Eyes teared, lips flapped and teeth rattled as sound waves ripped through daemon flesh. The squat green deformities plodded along towards the garish knights even as the screaming weapons burst into them. Masses of flesh were liquified on the spot and while nopony thought that spontaneous matter change was outside the nature of the decaying monsters they weren't so naive as to think it wouldn't do the same to pony flesh.

"Twilight." Applejack had to holler just to be heard. "What are those things?!"

Twilight stared and stared and came up with nothing. "I have no idea! They might be machines, carved golems, maybe even magical atronachs. I'd have to see one up close!"

"No way that's happening if we can help it!"

"I agree!"

As the enemy lines closed on each other new signs of life emerged; flashes of light in red and fiery white, explosions that kicked up great globs of mud amidst the noise, always the noise.
The first of the knights reached the daemons and attacked. Twilight guessed that they were strong even at this distance but she hadn't expected them to also be fast.

A blade danced in her eyes for a second before vanishing in a flash of metal, crossing over the daemon body three times. Instead of spilling gore the foe vanished in a puff of glowing smoke. Other groups of the knights were similarly crashing into the daemons, a great melee where the nimble warriors were cutting pieces out of the native spawn.

One of the giants became surrounded, the blade in its hand tore into foes relentlessly but for all its effort they weren't vanishing. One of the cyclopses stumbled behind him and avoiding the giant's unusual backpack punched its dagger home.

The knight dropped to its knees slowly and then fell to the ground. It never moved again.
The scene was being repeated across the skirmish.

Twilight blinked her eyes away at the sight of violence before her. The earth was reddening. She turned from the hill and saw massive reinforcements emerging from the forest behind them, summoned by unseen calls.
"We've seen enough!"

Twilight forced her magic into the shape of a wedge and stabbed into the earth. Her head perspired with the strain of keeping the wedge solid. "Everypony who can, hoof a surface and push it like a plow, we're getting out of here fast!"
She struggled forward making the first tear in the ground.

Everypony nodded as they dropped into the trench in a V formation with the Apple siblings at the point. Rarity fell in line immediately behind them, using her magic to reveal dense rock formations buried in the mud. 
The rest of the unicorns piled in, using their own levitation to push the plow or to cover the group using rocks as shields. Together they tunneled around the edges of the battlefield and managed to stay hidden, escaping from the plaguebearers that continued to materialize in response to the Emperor's Children's incursion.

Behind them the sounds of Noise Marines, tank treads and explosions died away.


REPENTIA POINT

They had been crossing the wastes for hours. The stars in the sky twinkled on but none of them seemed to orbit the planet as a sun. Only their exhaustion served to judge the passing of the day. 
Doubt was an emotion Twilight had been battling with long before her friends pulled out from the trenches to gallop across the sunless wasteland, but she couldn't question the growing fear and hunger ponies had begun to complain about.

They needed pastures and shelter.

Twilight looked about. In the distance she saw a fleshy spawn, one of many dotting the wasteland. Whether they were living bodies or immaterial daemons, she wasn't sure. And she wasn't going to risk her friends vanquishing one to find out. Some were mewling, some were aggressive, all looked tough and if they wandered too close they'd be dealing with a lumbering mass of corrupted flesh. No, left to their own the beasts wandered the wasteland mindlessly and Twlight meant to keep it that way. 

"I think I hear something." Octavia said, stopping the group in its tracks.

"All I hear is wind... and something that I'm trying to tell myself doesn't sound like muffled screaming." Vinyl replied, wishing she hadn't left her mixing headphones behind. They weren't soundproof but any amount of muffling would've been welcome- hours ago.

"Yes, I hear that too but there is something else in the wind. Feel how it ceases, pauses, then picks up again ever so briefly."

"I'm not sure what I'm hearing. It doesn't sound like words."

"No but it drags on, carries, then stops. The voices in the wind die down in tune to something else. I think it might be music."

Twilight overheard them.
"We're in Tartaurus. If there's a point where the anguish lets off... we have to see it."

With a few turns in the low hills she took the lead and subtly shifted course, heading towards the echoing sounds.

It took another hour at a canter but they found a building in the distance, hidden by surrounding hills. It was white and square with a flat roof that wasn't designed for rain. The thought made Twilight worry that there may indeed be no such thing as weather on this planet.
Stay positive. She decided to be comforted that they found shelter and maybe supplies instead of holding out for something better that might not exist.

"There, I hear it now" Octavia said. "Something besides the silence."

"I hear it too" Vinyl nodded, indifferent to the music now that she saw real shelter.

Lyra cocked her head to one side. "It's song, I don't know what it is. It sounds... beautiful."

"I think it's vocals." Rarity answered. "Uplifting, it reminds me of the songs for your coronation Twilight but- grander."

The chanting was indeed musical, a chorus of female voices that lingered on long vowels for words they weren't familiar with.

Applejack looked suspicious as they reached the gate, bringing a hoof to the side of the fortress. It was nothing like the forest mansion but it was also completely different from the wood buildings in Ponyville.
"It's the first house we've seen out here. Everything else was part of the woods."

Cheerilee looked nervous. "Twilight, I think you like the singing, we all do. But if it brought us here isn't there a chance it'll bring others too?"

The princess nodded and made a gesture to Rainbow Dash. Dash flew up to the roof, found the voxcaster and tugged at a loose cord causing the music to cut off . Reaction was immediate: the sludge at the edge of the building came to life, reaching up with tendrils of mud to lash at the side of the building. A crag began to open up, moving as if to swallow it whole.

"Turn it on, turn it on!" Several ponies yelped at once. Caught between a logical thought and her natural instinct when the first tendrils began to snare bodies Dash sped down, splattering mud off by the hoof-full.
Derpy took to the air and sped towards Sparkler. The unicorn was struggling alongside Applejack when the delivery mare splashed down hard, scattering the mud as the force of her hooves rippled across the surface. She tugged her purple pony free and hoisted her up high.

"Momma stop!" Sparkler yelled in a panic.

"Get up there Sparkler." Derpy answered and batted her wings violently to gain altitude now that the mud she had scattered wrapped around her rear hooves. "Go!"

Sparkler let Derpy shove her up the wall. Her hooves grabbed onto the edge of the roof and she pulled herself up. 
Her eyes went wide as she felt something pushing on her rump and glanced past her tail to see Lyra's levitation helping to push her up even as she and Bon Bon struggled with their own tendrils.

Sparkler galloped at full speed to the device Dash had unplugged.
Over her shoulder she saw a flash of purple and peeked as quickly as she could to see Twilight teleport with an exhausted looking Roseluck and Carrot Top in tow.
The princess sparked again, vanishing, and Sparkler knew it was to try and apparate more. She grabbed the wire and pushed it back into the only slot the machine had.

It remained quiet.

"Fix it!" Somepony yelled.

She screamed back angrily: "In trying but I don't know what you did to it! I can't find a switch."

"Fix it!"

Panicking she almost forgot herself. She started with the basics and with a quick repairing spell the vox transmitter blared out its hymn again.
The tendrils retreated back into the mud.

Twilight and the pegasi were ragged, their feathers ruffled as they set the last few ponies down on the roof.
"That settles it." Twilight declared. "We keep the music on. Everypony split into teams, watch each others' backs. There's no telling what else will happen inside."

"Are we really going in?!" Sparkler asked. "We just walked for hours. Miles and miles of land, no mud tendrils. We find this thing, mud tendrils. Anypony else think we might be better off stopping somewhere else?"

"Unless the mud's the same everywhere else where demons and other things come out of it."
Fluttershy suggested.

"We were trotting on that earth for hours. Why didn't it attack us before now?"

"Umm... maybe it was waiting. Maybe... until we were tired... or fell asleep."

Sparkler turned with eyes wide in horror.


They huddled together and waited until the very last pony regained their nerve before dropping to the ground again and investigating. With no further incidents and no desire to venture out further they had no choice but to try the only access door the building had. A mix of levitation and a few good bucks released the lock. The door opened to a reception room loaded with sandbags and barrels pointed at the door.

"Twilight, what is this place?"

"I'm not sure. I want to say it's a house but it doesn't belong here. Dash what do you think?"

Dash exchanged a look with Flutershy. The soft-spoken pony nodded and Dash explained: "Flight school didn't exactly teach a ton about pre-history but some of the military traditions still get passed on. Best I can tell this is a forward base: small, armored and inconspicuous like a desert tortoise." Fluttershy smiled as Dash looked a little embarrassed, realizing her mind had wandered to thinking about her pet back home. "Whoever built it was making an opening for something bigger. It might even be those knights we saw advancing on the forest."

"I think that's the case."

"Huh? how come."

"Because I think we just found more of them."
Twilight said as she identified a weakness in the wall and collapsed it in with her levitation.
The hidden doorway opened into a choke-point revealing dozens of bodies mowed down by gunfire, stains splattered across the walls behind them. Most were the same knights in lavender armor they had seen from the march on the forest. Most but not all.

"Who are they?" Rose asked.

Twilight chose one of the minority bodies, the knights in different colored armor, focusing on heraldry painted onto a shoulderpad.
"Their armors have letters. I think I can read it if I set up a translation spell..." Twilight focused as the letters shifted before her eyes from the original High Gothic to Equestrian script. "Done. The text reads, 'Vorpal Swords'."

"What's a vorpal?" Applejack asked as the two of them crossed inside, wary and scanning each body for signs of life.

"I haven't a clue."

They crossed as certain other ponies looked over the bodies. Up close for the first time, Twilight was surprised. They were giants it seemed but their proportions were smaller than a pony even when fully armored. "I thought they looked bigger in the distance." She lifted an arm and something fleshy fell out from inside the armored gauntlet.
"Sweet Celestia! They're not golems, they're armor. There were people inside of these!"

Carrot Top charged back in from one of the deeper rooms."Twilight. There's more of them inside, smaller ones. There's not that many of 'em but you can see what I mean. They're animals!"

Twilight entered a small alcove, hidden away like a secret closet, while Applejack searched the rest of the room. A headless body, far tinier than any one of the knights, slumped against a wall that had been splattered red with what she realized was blood all along, not magic or machine oils. Its arm lay at its side with a weapon gripped in it.
She added up the facts very quickly:
The gaudy knights had been hit multiple times, their armor pierced along their forward plates. Almost all the dead, gaudy or vorpal, were dotted with similar injuries.
The gaudy knights had been found dead in great numbers at the outermost doorways and the Vorpals were most numerous inside along with the tinier creatures.

"This was a battle. The pink knights attacked these other knights. They were protecting the smaller ones."

"That don't add up. If they lost why was this place left intact?" Applejack motioned to the obviously damaged interiors. 
"I mean if they're enemies why leave the building and its song machine standing? And why are they enemies? This whole place is filled with monsters. Colors aside they look and dress and decorate themselves the same. They've got wings and skulls and scrolls and weird symbols on all a them!"

"I don't think the Vorpals lost, though the victory cost them dearly. I think they fought them off and only the small ones survived"

"Then how come we got in here so easily?"

"The victors, they... chose not to remain."

The thought chilled Applejack to the bone. "What have we walked into, Twi?"

Twilight grasped around and managed to remove the first of the gaudy helmets. Carrot Top looked around and did the same to the helmet of the Vorpal Swords' most ornate knight. 
What they saw made ponies turn to each other on instinct, staring at unicorn horns and pegasus wings.
The lavender knights weren't using stylistic decorations on their helmets; the knight's skull itself was horned. And the Vorpal captain's head had none. Other helmets came off and the same pattern repeated itself without exception.

"They're different, like the different races of ponies." AJ stated with drooping eyes.

Twilight swallowed heavily, keeping the vast physical differences between the two knights in mind. "I don't know how it relates to the Chaos Gods and the monsters on this planet, but we've walked into a civil war." 
> Chapter Six - Sleep
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

He hadn't been part of the night's ceremonies, hadn't partaken of the party. As Canterlot nobility it had been his obligation and privilege to attend the great coronation ceremony. But he had no relationship, no great love for the ponies involved.
So when the ceremony was ended and he had made enough of his presence at the party felt he moved on, excusing himself as soon as it was polite to do so, and made his way to bed. His tower was sufficiently removed from the ballroom and even if it hadn't been the building had been well sound-proofed. 
In short, Prince Blueblood had enjoyed a few hours of restful sleep when Princess Celestia had sent for him.

Compared to everypony else, certainly every pony present at the coronation after-party, he was fresh and well rested.

But even then, still, he was exhausted.

They had escaped a nightmarish dungeon, escaped a monster and its progeny, escaped a legion of crazed... somethings in armor that encased them whole like great scarabs and apparently murdered each other for no more reason than that some were born with distinct differences and some were not.

It was horror stacked upon horror.

But he was tired and nopony so far had needed to talk to him, ask of him or even turn to him for anything. As far as he could tell no one had taken notice of him or missed him. Given the circumstances, he thought it best to excuse himself and stay out of their way.

He found an alcove, another hidden room, one that was mercifully clear of soot stains and burn marks or the stench and entrails of what they now knew were dead bodies. He was tired and nopony had need of him.
Without preamble he bent his legs to bring his belly to the hard metal ground, lowered his head and closed his eyes.

He had fallen asleep by the time the first pony found him. Flitter and Roseluck looked around, the light from their room casting great shadows from the sleeping prince's body. His sides moved ever so slightly with his every breath. 
The two made eye contact. The room looked safe, they were both so tired and everything was cold and unfamiliar to them.
They were scared, and they found the shape of a big stallion in the room very reassuring.

They both looked about and found something like motor oil. Rose dipped a hoof and left her horseshoe imprint repeatedly on the door while Flitter smeared the words 'Sleep', 'Blueblood', 'Flitter' and 'Roseluck' next to it. Both wiped off the excess making check marks next to the names and went inside.

They closed the door behind them and lay close to the stallion and each other, sharing their body warmth.



The hours passed by. With both victors and invaders vanquished and their headquarters abandoned Twilight Sparkle set into motion events that would secure their hold in their neck of the wastelands. Carefully she selected the mares she trusted for missions outside and assigned them a complementary partner.

She sighed and hoped nothing would go wrong even as her inner voice insisted she'd overlooked something vital.
Of all the niggling little things what she regretted most was that she hadn't found common parchment: she needed to keep her head straight and a checklist of tasks she had done, tasks she was in the process of completing, and tasks she had yet to begin would have gone a long way towards setting her mind at ease.

"Princess?" A voice called.

Twilight turned a little startled and found herself staring into Octavia's face.

"I'm sorry. I've been looking at screens and listening to voices for too long. Octavia, yes? What can I do for you?"

Octavia nodded confirmation of her name and replied. "A lot of ponies are tired and a few have collapsed in one of the rooms. I thought to ask for permission for everypony else to sleep as well."

Twlight exhaled heavily and brought a hoof over her eyes. She felt a headache that had to be eyestrain combined with exhaustion. "Has it been that long? Yes, it must have been. There's no night and day and I really should consider making an hourglass. Yes that's fine Octavia."

Octavia bowed her head and turned to leave.

"Wait! No. no."

Octavia turned back.

"It's not safe and there's no way to know what could happen in the next few hours."

Octavia stood waiting while Twilight rubbed her head more.

Twilight sighed heavily, a noise that became a yawn. "Get everypony and... and find out who can still stand. Tell them to keep watch, at least for a few hours. Let anypony who thinks they just need a quick nap take one and they can take over for those that kept watch when they wake."

Octavia bowed her head again. "Thank you Princess."

"Please tell Cheerilee I'll need to see her... sometime tomorrow." Twilight called after her as she left.

Octavia turned out from the room and made a round inside the headquarters, passing on Twilight's orders.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash were obviously the most eager. Their stamina seemed endless. Cloudchaser and Sparkler accepted a respite gladly, choosing to bow their heads right where they stood. She passed on her message to Cheerilee who started to head to the sleeping room with Derpy and Carrot Top.

She found no sign of Berry Punch or Trixie, assuming the two like so many others had wandered off to bunk in places of their own. She spread the word around to keep an eye out for them and everypony else that wasn't accounted for.
That comment earned her a quivering yelp from a Fluttershy that was crouched under a table facing the door.
Rarity stuck her head up so Octavia could count her as well.

Octavia arched a brow at their choice of hiding places and Rarity responding by shutting the door with her levitation. Her magic held it shut and Octavia got the message. She nodded an approval at Rarity serving as gatekeeper and the unicorn opened the door for her again, letting her continue on her way.

The only stallion in the group, Applejack's brother if she remembered correctly, was a statue. A pillar of marble set behind the battlements left over from the last great siege. He looked ominous, standing behind some great machine that had obviously been the reason the knights had held the choke-point for as long as they did. 

There was movement at his hooves and Vinyl poked her head up.
With a glow of her horn a length of wire snapped out from the ground and threaded inside the trigger guard.
"That's the best I can guess. Those guys have fingers, even the little ones. Far as I can tell that's the on switch and that's the dangerous end. I wish we could test it to see if it still worked but, well, it's really late for that and we don't want to panic everypony. If it doesn't work we can fall back to your way."

"Thanks." Mac said stoically. 

Vinyl hugged him tight for a second. "Here's hoping you won't need to, ok?"

He nodded, then clutched the end of the wire in his teeth while his hooves settled on the barrel of the weapon to keep it steady and trained on the door.  
Vinyl joined Octavia.
"'Sup 'Tavi?"

"Is he...?"

"Sentry. We think that thing helped blow up all those other guys in nasty ways so he asked if I could figure it out so he could run it for us if it came to it. Well, even if it doesn't work at least the noise'll give us warning."

"He's... very brave."

"Yeah..." She trailed off. "You were looking for me?"

"Not exactly. The Princess gave orders for ponies to sleep, I'm sorting through who can stand guard, who needs a nap and who can't stand until tomorrow."

"I'll stay up. I'm too wired to sleep right now. or at least that's how i feel. We'll find out in a few hours. You got enough bodies?"

Octavia twinged at the use of the word 'bodies'.

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking. You got enough ponies keeping a lookout?"

"Your staying awake helps. There are... some ponies unaccounted for."

Vinyl helped her go through the list and presently, after vouching for everyone she saw or heard every one of their friends had been accounted for.
"You look bad 'Tavi. Get some sleep. I'll nudge you awake when I come in for a nap in a while. Or do you need me to let you be until tomorrow... whatever 'tomorrow' means here."

Octavia nodded at the sentiment. Rags and papers had been draped to cover light sources in the ceilings and walls to make the place darker but everything was still abnormally bright. Where the walls cracked to the outside beams of pink light flooded in.
"A short nap will do. Thank you Vinyl."

Octavia turned to walk away, then changed her mind, turned on the spot, wrapped her hooves around Vinyl's neck and kissed her cheek.

Vinyl levitated her glasses out of her face, revealing her eyes and causing Octavia to sigh at the mental picture of a brave unicorn with the air of a battle-mechanic off to war. She'd never really seen Vinyl in that light before.
"Everything'll be ok, right 'Tavi? Just get some rest and make a little room for me, ok?. I'll be in there to wake you up with my snoring soon enough."

Octavia couldn't help a small dignified laugh from escaping her. She separated from her roommate and made her way to the sleeping quarters. 

Along the way she stumbled onto the sight of Lyra and Bon Bon. The earth pony was down on the floor like a sphinx while Lyra sat precariously over the edge of a crate. Lyra had scavenged a dark bowl-shaped helmet for her head and it tipped back, almost falling off her skull despite being pushed as forward as it could against her horn.

Bon Bon woke up, a bit groggy and stared at Octavia.
"I'm awake, I'm awake" she said. Her voice had changed again.

"Shhhh." Octavia cooed. "it's all right. Princess Twilight said we should get some rest. I'm just making rounds and seeing who can keep watch a little longer. Go back to sleep."

"No... no. I'm ok." Bon Bon got up and looked about. "I just need... something to drink or splash on my face. And I should probably find the bathroom."

Octavia nodded. Those were goals worth completing.

"Are you staying up much longer?" Bon Bon asked.

"No. I'm off to take a nap. I'll be replacing somepony else soon."

Bon Bon nodded.
"Take Lyra to the bedroom with you? Bad enough she sits on her spine all the time, she shouldn't sleep like that too."

Octavia was going to point out there wasn't any bedding involved but it didn't seem worth saying. She let the L-shaped Lyra tip over and fall off the crate onto her back and said good night to Bon Bon as she carried the pony to the sleep room.
The door had been grease-written with every last one of the twenty-one names and Octavia stopped to get enough grease to smudge a check next to her own name and Lyra's.

She stepped into the sounds of soft snoring and set Lyra down. The unicorn made a bit of a whimpering noise and Octavia figured what happened, setting the fallen helmet back properly onto Lyra's head. Lyra resumed her quiet breathing and Octavia moved around in the semi-dark, finding a large enough patch of ground for her. She lay down then scooted over to the corner as much as she could. That should be enough space for Vinyl, she decided, as she nodded off to sleep.


For the twelfth time that night Twilight sighed, cursing the fact that she needed help. She had never missed Spike so badly. 
Nevertheless, she was making progress even if it was unrecorded: Her introduction to 'mankind' came in the form of a cache of unsecured 'magical' artifacts that self-identified as 'holologs'. They were opened, viewed, and gradually their spoken language was translated.
Disturbingly, the vast majority of holologs were devoted entirely to warnings and threats about anything labelled the inhuman, the corrupted, the lost and the damned. Twilight found it all very unsettling: after all, her vocabulary had never included the word 'propaganda'. Before the day had ended Twilight was sick of the warning 'Beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic.' She tossed this particular device aside to join many others on the archive floor. Because the human documentation boiled down to little more than repetitive paranoia Twilight had started to lose respect for the medium itself.

The translation process was slow because the literature itself was either cryptic or monomaniacal. Twilight began to despair of ever understanding these new creatures when Pinkie Pie trotted in carrying exactly what she needed: Fifteen copies of something she translated as 'The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer', a mass-produced briefing that was stowed in the kit of literally every single human guardsman around them.

Twilight looked relieved and was about to thank her friend when she noticed the pink pony was still poking around the bodies. Her brow rose as she recognized basic first aid.

"Pinkie, what are you doing? These..." she looked over the notes for the proper term. "Men... they're not asleep."

Pinkie smiled a sad knowing smile. "I know Twilight, but they're not gone. They need something. Maybe this. maybe from us."

Twilight closed her eyes, weighing what her friend said and started thinking aloud. Pinkie watched her begin to pace. 
"Everypony that isn't asleep is still out searching and scavenging."   
Behind Pinkie, Twilight saw Fluttershy and Applejack poke their heads in the door. Obviously they knew what Pinkie had been going about and wanted to know how Twilight would decide the problem should be handled.

"Come in girls." She said.

"I'm not sure what to do. I'm a Princess, newly appointed, we came here straight from my coronation- I think that was just last night but oh gosh have we been here long? How much time <i>has</i> passed? I lost track with the dimension traveling, twice, and I know we've been here for hours because it took forever to cross the wasteland just to get here and it's hard to tell because I'm not sure there's day or night on this planet or whatever it is so maybe I haven't even been a princess for a full day, but I'm still Princess and that means making decisions because it's my obligation even though I'm not sure what I should do or how. Royalty. I keep thinking of proclamations and decrees and should I really be holding a funeral for these people I don't know and have no clue about? And really, should I make this my first official action in the human realm? I have an obligation to everypony, an obligation that really should include accurate recording. History will judge me for what I do and how I do it and why I do it and so far all I've managed is to broker grudging relations with a goddess who threatened to kill us or at least I think that's what she said because I have no idea what Kaela Mensha Khaine means in her language, barely managed to escape from a legion of daemons, and now we're looking into research for a new civilization that might technically be several new civilizations, most of which hate and are actively trying to kill each other!"

Pinkie was still looking at her and without blinking bubbly answered: "Yup, that's about it."

Twilight collapsed to the floor post-rant. Her eyes stared up at Pinkie 
"Am I right to?"

Applejack and Fluttershy joined in and the three of them reached around and pulled Twilight up on all fours, holding her close.
Applejack said "Sugarcube, history's an impartial judge but what Princess Celestia needed was a wise leader. And she picked you."

Fluttershy joined in. "We have the time and everything's relatively safe." 

Twilight let them hold her up and weakly answered "I don't know what a funeral would do to everypony. I don't want them to start worrying that one of us might be next and I don't see anything good coming from it. I mean, it might keep everypony distracted and I'm sure we'd learn something... but there's so much to do already."

AJ made eye contact. "We know you got about a hundred different pros and cons fighting in your head right now so I'm just asking: What does yer heart tell you is the right thing to do?"

Twilight looked around and nodded at her friends. 
She made eye contact with Fluttershy who said "It's an act of compassion." 

"Alright Pinkie, let's do it." She said as Fluttershy and Applejack fell in following her.
Applejack had the good sense to gather clean cloth for all of them. They got into pairs and tied a covering over their partner's muzzle. 
"This room will do. Bring in the bodies and let's get to work."

At Pinkie's request they prepared to remove the knights' armor. Twilight felt a little guilty because she thought this would be easy, especially when compared to the jobs she had written up for her other friends. How quickly they realized she'd underestimated human ingenuity.
They had singled out a Vorpal Swords knight, reasoning that when they were done they'd have the expertise to remove ornate armor. The lavender armor was a mess of etched faces and monster body parts and in an ideal world Twilight would be able to remove it without damaging horns, antlers or other such on the lavender knights' heads -and possibly other places on their bodies Twilight didn't want to think about.

Instead fifteen minutes worth of tugging and panting had only rewarded them with the removal of a helmet. The armor turned out to be less clothes than machine.
Applejack frowned and left her friends' frustrated examination to search for a toolkit.
When she came back she was lugging a toolbox while holding a screwdriver in her mouth.

Fluttershy noticed the tiny flathead and made a series of embarrassed noises and apologies.

Applejack's face dropped. "Lemme guess, those fancypants suits ain't held together with screws, are they?"

Fluttershy gave an apologetic smile.

Applejack spat the screwdriver into the toolbox, leaned over, then pulled out a crowbar.

Fluttershy's eyes went wild as she made an 'eep' noise, her imagination wild with visions of the violence AJ was about to use to break the armor apart.

Twilight put herself between her two friends and nervously, calmingly tried to talk Applejack down before she started swinging. "Let's not go to those extremes just yet."

They tried tugging and twisting again and again until, finally, they managed to pry off the armor pieces. First the gloves and vambraces, then the arms followed by the oversized greaves, the pants, and finally they slipped the body from the chestplate. They didn't even bother trying to detach the enormous shoulder pads or the backpack. 

Another hour had passed by the time they got the entire suit off. 
For all her intentions to keep the affair a solemn event respecting the deceased, however, Twilight Sparkle couldn't help but take advantage of circumstances to perform an impromptu autopsy. No, not autopsy- an anatomical study.

Fourteen giant human males were laid out on the surfaces in front of her, and their bodies were objects of curiosity even without consideration for their fatal injuries. Their bodies and the foreign objects lodged within.

She identified optical devices so complicated she suspected they worked as well as real eyes and metal studs implanted in the skin of their foreheads.  While she was analyzing the first body her eyes found markings on his skin, the outline of a castle on the bottom left quarter of a buckler. At first Twilight thought she might be looking at a cutie mark but when she saw the way it had faded she knew it was a tattoo. She looked over at the shoulder pad and identified the same icon painted on his armor. 

The last of the bodies they had struggled a particularly long time with; the gauntlet they had attempted to remove was impossible and when they succeeded in removing everything else around it they realized it wasn't armor- the arm itself was a grafted machine replacing the original limb. Something didn't feel right.

"Applejack," Twilight turned to her, " strip down one of those small humans for me. Quickly please. Something about this is off." 

Applejack grumbled about leaving the poor man his dignity; not so much because he was being stripped naked -after all, Applejack was seeing everything from a pony's perspective and felt no great injury was being caused since ponies ordinarily didn't wear clothes- but because Twilight was beginning to treat the poor man's body like one of her study books.
The guardsman's flak armor at least was mercifully easy to remove, she just had to find and undo a few leather and Velcro straps and they were done. Once they exposed his chest however even Applejack was caught staring at the differences between giant and ordinary humans. Their muscle and bones were larger, their blood was brighter, and their chests revealed a vast integrated breastplate embedded under their skin that joined them to their armor. Ordinary humans, even the ones with minor prosthetics, tattoos and scars, didn't have anything even remotely similar.

"Sweet Celestia... are you sure they're the same species after all Twilight?"

"Not anymore. I wish I had a spell to ... look deeper. Or medical equipment that could do it for me. Look at these things. The real differences can't possibly be just skin-deep."

They looked around at all of them, seeing the obvious differences between the Vorpal Swords, knights the Imperium's holologs defined as 'loyalist', and the lavender 'heretic' knights. 
"Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I think we should separate the bodies. Not because they'd be furious at being buried together, at least not just. If the records are accurate then they're dangerous, maybe toxic."

"Y'all think they might be poisonous Twi?"

Fluttershy nodded sagely "Well, they are a different species. There are over twenty different species of  toads, scorpions, spiders, snakes and jellyfish whose skin, oil, glands, or body fluids are poisonous to the taste, smell, or even touch. And that's without counting magically induced maladies like cockatrices and gorgons that can petrify a person upon optical contact."

"Or the effect of incredibly powerful artifacts like the Mantle of Tartaurus or the Alicorn Amulet." Twilight finished. "We don't know what their bodies are like or what their armor and fetishes can do. Be careful and try not to handle anything directly."

Early on Twilight noted that the clean group, regardless of whether or not they had machines and metal in their bodies, stood apart in two ways: their tattoos were neat with patterns suggesting numbers. 
The chaos worshipers simply didn't belong and It wasn't too hard to see why the groups were so divided. Laid bare they were as large and impossibly strong as the other knights except that these humans had eyes that popped out from places other than their heads, stalks that sprouted from their backs, gills, multicolored shells, withered vestigial appendages, and other things that made them all queasy. Their decorations were not limited to inking: scars, implants, brands from red-hot irons- their bodies were just another means to declare their devotion and they valued its integrity no more than the armor, trophies and fetishes they carried. Indeed, the line between armor, fetish and man blurred: many could not be disrobed, not because of wiring and cables but because the flesh and metals had become one. 

They found that only the lowliest of the small humans wore robes; the giants, the soldiers, everyone wore heavy armor. Even the women; there were a few males in robes but not a single woman outside of armor and not just body plates: every single one of the females was armored in the full-body powered suits the giants wore. Their heraldry markings and mottoes in script echoed the iconography of the Vorpal Swords. 

And so the ponies left the partially armored giants, cyborgs and other inert mechanical beings together. Unwittingly they entombed loyalist servitors and techpriests in the same room as <i> traitoris extremis </i> . The ponies had no way to distinguish their 'pious' transformations, enhancements and mutilations from their viler counterparts.

Water supplies were found and loving hooves did their best to wash away the superficial marks of war from broken bodies. Trying almost in vain to match up damaged pieces to incomplete wholes, severed limbs were splint together with broken sections of plasteel and unstained cloth was torn into long bandages to cover what was unsightly and make them appear whole. They had a hard time of it: many sections were nothing more than hollow sleeves, wraps stuffed to replace body parts that had been vaporized. Twilight's magic did most of the delicate labor.

They considered burial but Applejack refused to allow it, even for the Traitor Knights. Even if the Infantryman's Primer was accurate and it had been their choice in life to serve whatever the planet was she couldn't bring herself to feed these cultists and heretics to the blighted earth. 


The ponies who returned from scouting the facility and foraging, as well as those who woke from naps to relieve the guards that had kept vigil all night, entered to find themselves in the middle of a mass funeral. 
Twilight was proud that everypony acted with solemn dignity.
Twilight found she had no words, no insight to share. Instead they all bowed their heads in respectful silence. She nodded and the bedsheets were drawn over the faces one last time.
In the tense silence of the proceedings, Pinkie sang.

"Close your eyes and look up at the twilight
it's time to see all you never could before
moving away
far from home
away from all you once knew.
It's the new
and it's calling out to you.

It's your dreamer's day
and every song has gone away.

And believe me
there still...   will be...       a dawn"


The rooms they chose to serve mausoleums had already been searched and their useful contents scavenged.
Fluttershy nodded to the ponies that had been prepped for the door commands. The security bulwarks sealed and AJ replaced her hat on her head. Good, and bad, they'd been honored and laid to rest. Now there was work to do.

"What do you think AJ?" Twilight asked.

"It's an evil world and all them folks, good and bad, act like they're trying to steal it. I think this here house belongs to the good folk, like the ones we buried together with the smaller ones. We've barely passed any debris in the mud like this, whatever was out there must've sunk in like this one would have. Call me crazy but the only thing different here is that there singing in the air and color me embarrassed if all of it ain't related."

"I agree. If it isn't the music itself then something about it or the fortress is holding the world's evil off.
I don't know if we should find a way to replace it or just leave it be. Right now it's protecting us from getting swallowed up but it also makes us stand out: if we found it there's no telling what else will react to it. And judging from these bodies even if it does ward off the planet and its monsters it won't keep the corrupted humans out."

"You gonna make a decision now sugarcube or you want us to find something to help you, maybe buy some time?"

"I don't think we have a choice. Keep everypony working, we need to know what we're dealing with."

Twilight walked away from AJ and headed towards a strange lit room. The walls were dotted with alcoves filled with scrolls and devices like the holologs but so much of the material was indecipherable to them.

Thorough research was now possible, but as much as alien literature called to Twilight everypony needed her attention and she didn't have the time to delve into it herself. Fortunately she had the perfect pony to pass it to:
"Cheerilee. Have you found anything?"

Octavia had passed her word. While everypony else had been on guard on paying their respects Cheerilee had been reading.
"This is... so strange Twilight. Even with your translation cypher everything I read feels like it was written in a foreign language. Every book I find makes references to listed addendums or treatises and each one has a security clearance requirement. Everything is so... paranoid."

"Is there anything on these knights? Something quick?"

"There are a few illustrations I saw as I leafed through. These sections are simpler than the others. I get the feeling this primer is a compilation rather than the work of a single... hand. Some parts of it are complex and others," Cheerilee winced, "others read like they were intended for the illiterate."

Twilight nodded, adding that the the growing list of things she'd need to look into later.
"Go on please."

Cheerilee began to read, the slow pace of the cypher translation made her words sound dramatic. "They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay I shall mold them and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. 
They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear."

Twilight frowned as she echoed the words. "Space Marines". 
> Chapter Seven - Research
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The funeral had ended hours ago. The Princess Twlight Sparkle had constructed her hourglass and declared the hour to be 'dawn'. Twilight then flipped the glass over and declared it was time for the new shift. Ponies left their posts to return to their bunk and wake their replacements.

The lights had been dimmed to help everypony adjust to the transition.

A small shape crept along the floor, scrapping by, doing its best to remain unseen by anyone.
It reached the sealed bulkhead of the loyalist mausoleum and poked around, probing for a weak spot that it could use as an entrance. It poked at walls and grates, pulled at the reinforced door and made a futile attempt at stacking materials to push up a ceiling panel. The room was sealed and, since security was a priority and each room was designed with its own supply of air scrubbers built into its walls; completely impenetrable.

With no other choice the shape pressed the release on the door lock.
The wheels began to move with a terrible grinding noise and two seconds later the intruder found itself bathed in the light of a unicorn sentry's horn.

"Lyra?!"

"Aw nuts..."


Twilight had come out from her office, her eyes wide in terror and was left looking at an awkward glancing Lyra.
"My office. Now!"

Twilight said, using her levitation to grab Lyra's ear and tug along behind her, Lyra 'oh'ing and 'ah'ing the entire way.

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A second pair of eyes opened opened in the darkness, breaking the cloaking camouflaging effect that hid them against the wall, and now that the bait had been caught and the main obstacle's attention was diverted entered the loyalist's mausoleum.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Do you have any idea how dumb that was?!"

Lyra was looking at her lower hooves. Sitting on a human chair, staring at her hooves, trying hard not to move so much that it swiveled across the room.

They were inside the room Twilight had chosen as her office, and from the looks of it the military fortress' previous commander had used it as his office as well. Papers, files, machines, trophies and general items of intimidation lined the walls and filled the bookcases. Everything conspired to make Lyra feel uneasy, especially the giant letter 'I' etched on the wall behind Twilight.

Despite the fact that Twilight was sitting lower than Lyra (she had pushed the command chair into a corner and was sitting on a simple cushion) the geometry of the room and the weight of that 'I' were determined to undermine Lyra's bravery.

That Twilight was very reasonably dressing her down only made her feel smaller.

"Lyra, are you listening?"

and instead of paying attention I'm wandering. Come on girl, get it together. Just explain rationally and reasonably how you... completely and for no reason wanted to see something everypony had been warned not to. Oh Celestia, I'm going to sound so stupid.
All Lyra could do was wrinkle her muzzle and whimper a lame explanation that was completely incoherent.
Why couldn't I talk Bon Bon into coming along with me this time? She always did it before. I'm just no good explaining these things to normal ponies.

Twilight sighed heavily and decided to try a soft approach.
"Lyra, tell me what happened."

"I didn't mean any harm. Ok I'm sorry if I surprised or scared anypony but I just wanted to get a look at them. Bon Bon told me that everyone was in shock that those things we saw getting killed were suits with humans inside them. And you know me, everpony knows me. She had to get what she was feeling off her chest and she knew that if it was about humans I'd listen to her for hours - and now that I think about it I really should be insulted or at least a little annoyed because I'd listen to Bon Bon anytime if something was bothering her, humans or no humans."

Twilight arched a brow in confusion.

"Anyway. So she told me about that and I just lit up with questions. 'They were suits?' 'Humans?' 'Did somepony see them?' 'Do you think we'lll get a chance to run into them again?'
And she let it slip that we found humans right here and that they were dead the poor things and that you performed an autopsy and a funeral and that I slept through the whole thing! Me! Slept right through it!"

Twilight thankfully stepped off from her cushion and went over to Lyra. She put a hoof over the unicorn's shoulder. "It's all right Lyra. You didn't mean any harm and I appreciate that you weren't doing anything you thought was dangerous. But the truth is it might be, so I need you to promise me you won't try to do anything like that again."

"But-"

"Lyra promise me. You won't disturb the mausoleums."

"Allright Twilight. I promise."

"Now go get ready. You've got guard duty and we need everypony that's staying alert because we've got ponies outside tonight."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Out in the wasteland the first scavenging team picked through the wreckage of what had once been an Imperium Drop Pod: a roughly pear-shaped structure with five walls that deployed from orbital vessels. Space Marines had exclusive use of them, primarily to deliver squads into battle. 
The deployed ceramite walls had long since been swallowed by the earth; only the tips of the support beams jutted out.

The Drop Pod was the one exception in an area that appeared to follow natural laws.
A network of trenches had been dug around the pod, the strongest point had been reinforced with one of the pod's doors. A trio of imperial Guardsmen's bodies lay demolished in the dirt along with a half dozen Emperor's Children.

It didn't escape the team's notice that over a dozen weapons littered the floor, some dangling from slings around Guardsmen's torsoes, the rest discarded at random the fate of their owners unknown.

They busied themselves with the chaos marines.

"Flawless... I believe this script translates as flawless," Rarity observed even as she tried not to step in something. The maddened cries of the noise marines hadn't been silenced, even in death, and the absurd claims written into their armor struck her.
"Look at these things. The adornments , the colors, the ...subject matter. Who could possibly wear such a thing and see it as an improvement, let alone perfection?"

Vinyl and Berry Punch were with her.

"Exactly what  is  the subject matter anyway?" Berry asked with a curiosity that was mild at best.

Rarity blinked, then strained her eyes looking at the imagery sketched in parchments and painted onto armor. "I'm not quite sure. I think they're living things... maybe?"

What Rarity wasn't able to identify were different generations of Daemonettes, humans in various stages of possession and greater Daemons frolicking, occasionally with their victims.

Behind her Vinyl's loud voice was giving a play-by-play of an argument to the one pony who found it physically painful to listen to her. "So Tavi and I were discussing it last night."

Which would be code for 'Vinyl was talking about it while Octavia listened politely'. Berry thought ruefully.

"And I'm positive. None of the small stains and holes on the walls we found over at our new haunt match. Those - what did Princess Twilight call them? Space Marines?"

"Space Marines." Rarity confirmed.

"They fired stuff at the oogy-boogies and they just splattered like somepony stamping on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So I figure, if it hits you like a wave and totally smushes you, and it makes a wicked loud sound, it's gotta be some totally nasty magic making the noise and invisible waves.
And then I thought: Vinyl,  sound   is already wicked loud and full of energy and totally invisible moving waves. It's crazy but it works. Sound magic. And we totally know it's real because that's the only thing keeping the haunt from sinking into the desert."

"Hmm, well that's true." Rarity said, assuming that Vinyl was talking about the fortress.

"I know! So there are dudes out there and they were shooting wubs at us. That's totally killer!" Vinyl shouted, thinking back on the noise marines that marched on the forest. 
"At first I'm like, 'seriously?' But seeing it in action 'cuz let's be honest it ain't safe hearing it in action and I've flipped 'cuz hey, I get it. I've got my dishwasher back home and don't get me started on the bass cannon but this stuff, they can actually do demolition with this stuff. All the bass I've dropped over the years and the worse I ever felt was a little motion sickness - and you totally need to add that gnarly grunge carnival air or a laser show induced epilepsy attack to hurt anypony at one of my gigs. To think that somepony, I mean somebody, could actually make a weapon outta <i> sound </i> - Like I said, it's killer!"

"Literally." Berry deadpanned. She could appreciate the marvel of it, really she could, but Vinyl had easily spent the enthusiasm for three of them.

Rarity appeared to agree.
"Vinyl dear I appreciate your enthusiasm for these... Chaos Marines and their achievements, really I do. For instance, the colors and randomness and sheer... overdoing with the paint scheme and the decorations on this armor are appalling and ghastly to look at. Really they're an eyesore even without expressing admiration for violence and depravity. And yet, once I get past that superficial layer I can't help but think there's some deeper idea behind it putting it all together."

Berry approached a dismembered noise marine champion.

"Careful" Rarity warned. "Twilight warned us not to touch anything, even with our magic. She said their corruption is like a vile disease."

Berry looked around, trying to find something on the ground she could prod the body with but found nothing. A dead guardsman was nearby and she went over to it, pointing at its lasgun.

"Did Twilight say anything about these guys?"

"The 'men' they were fighting? No I don't believe so. If they're enemies it stands to reason they aren't corrupted like them."

Berry picked up the lasgun, ignored the bayonet on the end and used it to flip over the dead chaos marine. A lot of details about him were curious but nothing drew her attention as much as the transparent vials filled with fluid encrusted about it's back, neck and on its shoulderguards.
She clumsily pried one of the vials loose with the bayonet and found its feeding tube. After a few more curious tugs the tube snapped off and a dribble of dark black blood leaked out along with the vial's green elixir. Her face contorted.

"Rarity? These ponies, er, people eat through their mouths like us right?"

"Yes dear as far as I can guess."

"Any idea why they would feed stuff directly through their skin into their blood then?"

"That's beyond me but it's obvious they're insane. You can see it in their colors, their weapons, and if that is what you think it is then yes, even in the 'food' they put into their bodies." Rarity judged as she turned to examine another dead Marine.

 Of course that's food, it would have to be, right?. Why it's the only thing I can think of, there's no way it could be a dangerously poisonous, unstable, volatile substance. A pony wouldn't really know about that, would they Berry? Nopony in Equestria is addicted to anything harmful, are they?  A voice taunted within Berry's mind, making her eyes widen and her temples sweat.

Neither of her companions appeared to hear the voice or notice her nervousness.

Vinyl nodded at Berry's idea, produced a set of bayonets of her own from the lasguns littering the trench and slid them into a length of chain and began dragging a noise marine out of the trench and back to the base. 

"Vinyl, what ever are you doing?"

"This stuff makes sound and I see at least three different instruments making it. I can leave them here and that'd be giving up, or I can drag em back and see if I can disassemble them to see what makes em tick."

Quickly pushing in front of Rarity Berry huffed past, dragging the noise champion.
"Second verse same as the first. I don't think this is food." Berry added through teeth clenched about a chain. "Twilight said recon some evidence, well here it is and we're hauling it back."

"Well... yess... very well then. I'll just... get a little bit of this and take back a sample-"
Rarity pulled at a piece of cloth covering a shoulderguard with the barrel of the lasgun Berry discarded. The fabric tore off and fell heavily to the ground. As she fidgeted with her grip on the barrel she noticed the way gaps in the cloth flapped as it settled. 

Then she shrieked. 

Now that it was longer stretched out crudely over a large curved surface the fabric resumed it's natural state, leaving the poor pony staring into a human face.

"I've changed my mind, your samples will be fine!!" She screamed as she ran to catch up with them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Big Mac had gone to sleep. The stallion had endured a double shift before Applejack convinced him to get some shut-eye.
With so many other ponies out scouting and the rest on guard duty or sleeping it was no surprise the unfamiliar and unsettling weapon was left un-maned.

It should also have been no surprise that the way was wide open for Lyra to examine it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"How's it going Cheerilee?"

"I've finished translating your room's basic stationary and notes. Apparently your predecessor was a man with the title of 'Inquisitor' and he held authority over and outside the Imperial Guard, Mechanics and Space Marines garrisoned here. There's also a group called the so... so-ro-ri-tas. I'm still trying to find out what that means WHAT THE HAY?!!!"

Everypony's teeth rattled as machine noises competed with explosions to be the cause of deafness.

Twilight hoped onto Cheerilee and pony-piled her onto the floor. They made eye contact and Twilight signed at her to stay on the floor. Cheerilee nodded and Twilight scooted out of the Inquisitor's office and out into the hallway. The noise had stopped and at every corner she called out and a few ponies responded they were unhurt. Always the statement carried the follow-up question 'What happened?'

The only relief Twilight had was to order the ponies from the sleeping room to collect their supplies and be ready to evacuate.

She turned a corner and felt something pushing against her flank. When she looked behind her she saw Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie pushing against her flank trying to look over her shoulder (Pinkie Pie technically wasn't since she was hoisting up an angled mirror on an artificial extending arm).

"Girls, what are you-?" Twilight whispered loudly.

"Do you really need to ask Twilight?!" Rainbow Dash shot back.

"Fine. Dash get ready to go high after the rest of us. Applejack, I'll run in with a shield, stay behind me until we're in the thick of it. Pinkie Pie... I don't know what to tell you."

"The hallway's clear Twilight. Ten steps to the corner where the main door is."

"All right. Just let me call out in case somepony is still there."

"Twilight no. If you do that we lose the element of surprise." Dash hissed back.

"Hello? Anypony? it's all right. I'm ok."

The four ponies turned to each other and blinked. The voice was Lyra's.



"Let me see if I got this straight, sugarcube." Applejack started. "You shot up the front gate?"

"Yes but that wasn't what I was going for. Big MacIntosh was on this thing but he didn't really know how it worked or if it worked. So I was fidgeting around, trying to find out what made it tick and it did... well that."

Twilight was trembling. The wall directly behind the chokepoint had already been a pockmarked mess before her arrival. Lyra's incident had changed the landscape of the arches, the ceiling and some of the walls in addition to adding to the chokepoint's structural decay. The first words out of Twilight's muzzle, thankfully, were "Lyra, are you sure you're ok?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. I was behind the device the whole time, I mean, I knew enough to figure out the end with all the hollow pipes is the end the stuff comes out from, that's just common sense. The hard part is, well, what exactly is the stuff that comes out.
I thought it might be tiny like a cannonball or a firework, who can tell? So I was trying to open it or disassemble it and something caught and it rattled off into the doorway. But it's not a problem I think I can get it off again I'll just need to grab a few tools and maybe I can get a hand or two from sonepony who's better with machines than I am or at least somepony with size and weight to hold it down like Big Mac-"

Twilight's relief and general adrenaline were leveling out.

"Of course it'd be just easier to find someone else who could do that for us. A whole planet full of people, well maybe not full of people it's a monster world but still a lot of people, we're bound to find one willing to help us out it's just a matter of luck or time..."

"Lyra."

"And once we have them it's just a question of adapting everything they have to pony use. Of course! Why stop there? It's one thing to get their weapons but there's bound to be uses for all the other stuff like these buildings, their carts, oh! even their armor!"

"Lyra..."

"This is going to be incredible. Ok, That means building and smithing and magic forging and getting to the bottom of all we have available to us. No problem. All we need to do first is re-purpose the library-"

Twilight was gritting her teeth. Her eye twitched.
"Lyra!!" She yelled at the top of her lungs.

Lyra blinked as she was yelled into silence.

"I asked you to not fool around with this stuff. it's dangerous. We used this cannon and I appreciate that you thought you were doing the right thing trying to fix it but this is where I draw the line. We are through playing around with the humans' technology and we are most definitely not going to try to engage them!"

"But there's so much to learn, so much to try and gain and we'll never get an opportunity like this again and... you're... you're not mad are you?"

"So help me Lyra this is going to stop and I will stop it. I will get mad, I will yell and as Celestia is my witness if that's what it takes I will banish you if that's the only way you'll listen!"

"B-Banish me?" Lyra spoke up. "Banish me to what?! There's no moon here, Princess, and even if there was you can't just up and banish me to it. There's... laws... and stuff... and I've got rights!"

If Twilight's mane could catch fire, this would be the moment it happened again.
"That does it!"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trixie opened her eyes and rustled in her chair.
So far she was the sole pony with an unblemished name on the sleeping room door, she had been spending her days and nights here. Twilight Sparkle had been smart; she went through the primary rooms of the military base and taken up residence in the most imposing and document-rich niche available.

So far she had overheard enough to know that Twilight was in the Inquisitor Lord's office.
By rights that meant Twilight occupied the brain; Trixie therefore decided to co-opt the heart.

She pulled off her hat and produced her key, a small device of silvered steel carved in the shape of an 'I'.
The exact same ornate 'I' that sat behind Twilight's desk. It was the Inquisitor Lord's rosette, and it's circuitry over-rode every single piece of technology into compliance.

When Lyra had gotten caught breaking the quarantine on the Imperium crypt nopony had stuck around to see Trixie sneak into the room, identify the Inquisitor's clothes, and obtain the rosette.

Trixie sat up on the command chair, smacked her lips as a result of seriously needing a drink of water, and made her first command. "Status."

"Yes Inquisitor. Holo-log initiated."

"No not that again."

Trixie sighed even as she massaged her temple with her hoof.
As the 'Inquisitor Lord' she had complete access to all technologies, but that didn't mean that they would work properly. For the third time she found herself the captive audience to a hololog she couldn't skip or speed through, only rewind.

Idly she wondered if she could make the log serve as her wake up call. She could easily snooze through the first twenty minutes, now thirty, until she got through the new information.

That particular section of the log was currently playing.

A holographic Trixie (herself several hours ago) forced up a floor panel and found herself in the army commander's war deck. She didn't know what the room was but she instinctively understood its importance. Machines and seated workstations galore lined the room but the center was not the strange hexagonal table that dominated so much of the floorspace; it was the chair, the central chair that was permanently bolted to the ground, fixed solid in place, the throne that rotated to face every station. 
This was the stage, this was where the maestro commanded the floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall orchestra pit. 
This was where she needed to be.

She looked about her at machines no different from the sound and light boxes Twilight had already found, their information consumed. Propaganda, Twilight had declared. Trixie knew there was more.
"The great and powerful Trixie demands answers" she declared to the empty room as a formality, not actually expecting anything to reply to her demand.

"Vox print not recognized. Authority declined. Input command key.."

Trixie yelped and looked about her, trying to find the source of the command. 
"Show yourself, the great and powerful Trixie demands you reveal your presence at once!"

"Command not recognized. Input command key."

"You are an... odd thing. <hmph> The great and powerful Trixie is bored with you. You will answer the questions now."

"Vox print not recognized. Authority declined. input command key."

"Stop saying that. the great and powerful Trixie is the only authority present, you have no choice but to answer to her."

"Command declined. Authority transfer requires formal transfer. Input command key." 

"The great and powerful Trixie does not lower herself to satisfy the standards of machines."
Trixie continued arguing that way with the disembodied voice for several minutes until she realized there was no point arguing with a lock; the only argument it would accept is the intrusion of a proper key.

But what could that key be? The walls and doors were plastered with dozens of symbols. Two-headed eagles, Space Marines, the Vorpal Swords' crest, the cog with a half organic/ half metallic skull...

And it hit her. The symbol behind Twilight's back. the 'I'. Every icon was repeated indefinitely in several parts of the fortress except the 'I'.

So she entered the room, searched through clothes and found the rosette. The 'key' was recognized immediately by the hologram scanners of the command throne and underpowered command consoles transferred authority from the dead Lord to her and began answering her commands.

Trixie sighed as she watched upload feeds that showed ponies sleeping, Lyra shooting a device a holographic display labeled 'heavy stubber'.
"One new thing. Please show me something I haven't already seen a hundred times before."

"Improper command, please restate."

"Older images. Show."

"Improper command, please restate."

"Human images. Show me."

"Improper command, please restate."

"Oh for the love of Celestia this is absurd. I have to say everything verbatim?!"

"Command acknowledges all commands exclusively in High Gothic."

"Or a unicorn's magical translation into High Gothic." Trixie muttered.

"Please restate."

"That is so... infuriating! This is going badly. At this rate I'll have to bring in Twilight Sparkle herself to figure it out. 
And I hate having to admit to somepony else I need their help, no matter how clever. <sigh> She'll probably know too. What I would give to have had the kind of tutoring she had."

"Command accepted. Initiating console tutorial basic."

Trixie blinked.
"Oh... yesss."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lyra was sitting on the roof. 
Bon Bon and Octavia stared up at her from their spot at ground level. The teal colored unicorn hadn't moved in a while, deep in thought. She was sitting, on her spine, helmet on her head, with her eyelids half closed in an expression that said 'yeah, I totally walked into that one'.

"Explain to me why Lyra is up there Bon Bon?"
Octavia asked.

"Lyra messed up, in a pretty bad way. So Princess Twilight Sparkle banished her. To the roof. For five hours. 
Roseluck promised she'd come out and tell Lyra the minute her sentence came to an end."

The two earth ponies noticed the approaching shapes of Vinyl Scratch and Berry Punch. Rarity wasn't too far behind them.

They also noticed what their friends were dragging behind them.

"You found more of them?" Bon Bon asked worried.

Berry nodded. "These and a few guardsmen in a trench. Ambushed them before they got to the headquarters."

"The marines did?" Octavia asked.

"No, the guardsmen. They were pretty well hidden and that's probably the only reason they managed to take these two out before they got killed. The bodies are still out there."

Octavia nodded. "I'll inform Fluttershy. They'll be prepared and interred with the other Chaos Marines."

Up top Lyra came to life. "Bon Bon, could you handle that? I need Octavia and Vinyl together for a second."

Vinyl gave Berry a look and Berry replied: "Don't worry. I'll keep the Princess and everypony else off the gear until you get in."

Octavia thanked Berry, who vanished indoors with Rarity and with the help of levitation from Vinyl and Lyra found herself on the roof. "So what can we do for you?"

With a twist of an exposed dial the vox-hailer's choir became louder, so much louder that it began to echo in the distant hills. Lyra lowered the volume and explained.
"Music's up and we're alive, music's dead and the ground's alive. What do you think about their singing Octavia?"

"Hmm... heavy alto and sopranos. Very high. There might not be any boys in this choir."

"You remember that Twilight wanted to keep the music even if it meant we might risk something finding us? I think we can get both. All we need is a magic shield attuned to high pitched noises."

"But that'd be even more visible."

"It doesn't need to be a strong shield, just something for everything in a very narrow range."

"We are almost all mares here Lyra." Octavia observed. "You do realize that if you put that shield up the only ponies who will be able to yell out warnings from in here are Blueblood and MacIntosh."

"Maybe less." Vinyl added, joking at Blueblood's expense. 

Octavia gave Vinyl a look, then cocked her head in a gesture that said 'hmm, you're probably right'.

"We could see if we can do it first and then propose it. No harm done if we know it works right?" Lyra asked hopefully.

Vinyl and Octavia exchanged glances.
"I admit, I would sleep easier at night." Octavia added.

Vinyl put aside her burning desire to mess with Noise Marines and said "Ok Heartstrings. Let's get harmonizing."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIX HOURS LATER

"Lyra!"

The unicorn in question bolted up from her space on a workbench and turned to face Twilight meekly. She'd spaced out again, not listening to anything and anypony else around her. She turned to see Twilight with her five friends and Cheerilee in tow.

"Please don't hide what you're tinkering with behind you."

busted Lyra thought.
She presented what she had been working on, a Vorpal Swords helmet she had been altering with her magic.
Lyra had succeeded in reshaping most of the frame but the optics were delicate and shattered into glass and metal fragments when she tried to expand them to suit a pony's eyes. The mass of plasteel had also been stretched thin to accommodate a muzzle. So thin it broke into two pieces: skullcap and muzzle guard.
Nothing Lyra did would make the two halves connect permanently and that didn't even begin to address the idea of making the internal devices work.

"It's been a long day Lyra, and you're tired from setting up the vox-shield. Get some sleep, you can get back to that in the morning."

Lyra nodded and went onto the sleep room, leaving the helmet on the workbench. Then she realized what Twilight had said and her mood brightened. She thanked Twilight and rushed to bed.
Nopony had any reason to believe Twilight would do anything so petty as confiscate or destroy it.

Applejack was the first to talk once they were in the Inquisitor's office.
"She keeps fiddling with that stuff, and she's not the only one. That first pony-sized bucket helmet she was wearing wasn't something she made herself and she wasn't lying when she said she just found it. She hadn't even seen a human before. Somepony else got that helmet from one of them Guardsmen and widened it to fit on a pony head."

 "Why would anypony go to all that bother making it just to get rid of it?" Fluttershy asked. 

 "Let's point out the obvious, ok. We don't have tools and we'd have heard if somepony tried to blacksmith here. the walls echo everything. That helmet's the result of unicorn magic." Rainbow Dash chimed in.

Twilight nodded.
"Agreed. I didn't do it and I assume you didn't either Rarity?"

"I did not."

Twilight went on.
"Lyra didn't make it. That leaves Vinyl, Amethist Star, and of course Trixie."

"Don't forget that Blueblood feller." AJ pointed out, trying to remind everypony of that one pony they kept overlooking.

"Right."

They exchanged glances. Despite Applejack's point everypony agreed to rule out Blueblood as a suspect.

"When ruling out the unlikely, only the obvious remains." Twilight pointed out.

"But why would Trixie fool around with human armor and then just leave it be?" 
Dash tossed out, punching her hooves into the Inquisitor's lumpy chair before resting her head on it.

"I think the real question is if we should be meddling with such dangerous material in the first place... but that's just what I'm wondering." Rarity said, pulling down a drape and setting down on it on the floor.

Twilight sighed.
"Girls. there's no way around it. We have to get off-world and so far nothing I've thought about will take care of that. We're going to need to do whatever it is the humans do and we're going to need to understand their technology, science and magic to do that. We're stuck for time. We can't stand in the way of curiosity and we're going to need everypony's help.
That's... why they're here.
Get the stuff that's clean from the mausoleum. Tell Berry, Vinyl and Octavia they can start tinkering." 

"And Lyra?" Fluttershy asked.

"Lyra too, Celestia help us. Lyra too."

They turned to the suspiciously quiet Pinkie Pie.
When Pinkie turned around she was wearing a triple monocle version of her night vision goggles.
Lyra's Space Marine helmet was in her hooves.
"I'm way ahead of you."  


> Chapter Eight - Forging
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fluttershy was holed up in one of the smallest rooms in the fortress, talking to herself. She was busy building a defense for herself in response to a challenge that hadn't yet been put in words. Thought of by everypony in the room, but never thought aloud.

"I don't know that I should be here. I mean, I don't think I know... No, I just don't know."
Except she wasn't talking to herself. Unlike everypony else who had fought off the niggling voice Fluttershy knew exactly whose voice was in her head.

"Really my dear, is it safe to say this is any time for you to lose your nerve?"

"Oh but I haven't lost it. I never had any to begin with and really I'm fine with it."

Discord exhaled and pulled himself from the back of Fluttershy's subconscious into the space inside her pupils, literally looking at her from inside her own eyeballs.
"You don't want to be here but your friends need you and you're frightened because this isn't a situation you can just stare down with authority."

"Oh yes, I'm very aware of that."

"You're worried about how they want you to help."

She replied with meek nodding.

A faint, translucent image of Discord stepped out from her head into the real world and walked up to a set of white power armor stacked on top of a gurney. Sighing he pointed at it.
"Fluttershy, this poor deluded demihuman is what they call an apothecary."

"Um, that armor is empty."

"That doesn't mean doctor. He did the best he could with mostly the computer -that's the little flashing window on his arm there- telling him what to do every step of the way. 
He spent ten years becoming a Space Marine; his masters weren't going to wait another ten sending him to medical school.Aim, read and do what it says. Add a little compassion and you'll do better than its last owner."

"Oh but... isn't it a human encyclopedia?" Fluttershy asked using the word that best matched what she thought 'computer' meant: a magical pageless book. "That won't help with ponies at all."

Discord's eyes went big when he realized she had a point. He then shrugged it off: "Details." 
A snap of his fingers and the device flashed- but didn't look different at all.

"Um." She asked while fidgeting on the screen.

"Software my dear. That should now tell you what you need, 'Brain Surgery for Fillies' as it were even you-"

"OH DEAR!!"

"Oh come on I wasn't that mean..."
Looking around Discord noticed Fluttershy had rocketed away. The apothecary's bracer and every device he'd shown her was gone as well. Fluttershy had bolted into a hidden side room. The medical scanner had revealed the remains of an avian servitor and Fluttershy had torn the wall apart finding the release to get in and take care of it..
"Please Mr. eagle, please get up. Speak to me." 

Discord sighed. "Fluttershy it's a robot. See how its head and breast are metal?"

"Oh that's not a problem. The sapphire moths of the Crystal Empire are living gemstone, and the Everfree cragadiles and stone tortoises of the San Palomino Desert are real rock."
She aimed the medical auspex at the shelved servitor-beast and the readout detected brain activity and a weak heartbeat. Fluttershy made sad eyes at Discord.

"Ugh, fine." He snapped his fingers again and the cogitator's memory banks were expanded with the data necessary for psyber-animals.

Discord blinked as he noticed his physical body began to fade away. Too busy with the device's instructions to retrieve devices listed Fluttershy didn't look for him until after she'd finished scavenging through part crates and restored the psyber-eagle.
"Curious," he said after his outline had completely vanished. "I think that's why she had to be here after all."



Twilight was making the rounds. First item on her list, the armory.
She crossed the door into a long bunk-room and saw her first team.
"Let's see what we have to work with girls."

The barricade was cleared out, broken footlockers and bed rails were tossed.Twilight wondered what their erectors had hoped to achieve. Desperate hope, that was probably it. A last futile hope that stacking some garbage in a doorway was somehow better than standing by and doing nothing.
When the barricade was breached it was penetrated by something that left craters in the far wall: Shrapnel and scorch marks marred every single surface. Twilight met Cheerilee and her annotated copy of the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. The book was quickly becoming worn and dog-eared.

"This is the furthest room on the south wall?"
There wasn't really any north or south, Twilight just chose the main doorway and declared it north.

"Second furthest Twilight. There's a dormitory like this one on the other side but I thought you wouldn't want to risk accidentally opening a hole to the outside."

"Agreed. It sounds like we're ready. Bring 'em out."

Cheerilee went over to the empty crate where they stored the stack of weapons and pulled out several rifles.
"Every one of the humans carried one of these. The big ones smell a bit like fireworks and the small ones smell like the air after a thunderstorm. Guessing from the size and the damage to the walls some are more lethal than others."

"Discard all the chaos weapons. If it looks corrupted I want it gone."

"Agreed but I'd feel bad if I didn't point out that there isn't a big difference between their big guns and the clean ones. Both have skulls stamped on the sides."

"I want to give humans the benefit of the doubt and hope it's a general warning that these things are dangerous. Pictographs are common to all primitive cultures and we can't assume they're all literate. Let's start."

Roseluck and Derpy hauled in the armor sets they pried from Chaos Marines. They stacked them but without internal props all they could manage was a group of sitting marines with their arms resting on the floor at their sides with the helmets sitting unevenly on the necks.

"These are the 'lasguns'. Normal humans carried them. The barrel has a lens and a prism that slips out. It's heavy and solid. The other guns have prisms loaded with small metal cylinders like rockets. Besides the barrel the only thing these have in common are these handgrips."

"So how do they work?"

Cheerilee looked embarrassed. "There's a guide to dismantling and cleaning but not one for firing. I think it's common sense to them."

Twilight sighed wishing she had someone like Spike whose anatomy was closer to a humans when Lyra walked past the doorway.  Of course Lyra's here listening in. Oh well, her curiosity's a plus here.
"Lyra, what do you think?"

Heartstrings came out from a side panel she was examining. She was keeping busy nosing around any hidden caches she could find since she'd finished the final touches on the vox-caster on the roof, not that anyone was asking her about it. Her hoof was wrapped around a canteen: She'd been drinking its contents while rummaging.

"Well these are food packets but I don't know if it's safe for us to eat. The water is alright. I popped one these containers open and it's orange juice. It's fresh enough to drink even if it tastes a little funny" She shrugged. "Maybe they just have weird oranges."

Twilight nodded doing her best to avoid looking annoyed, imagining Cadance's breathing exercises. In this new world every bit of information helped.

"That's good news but I meant these. Lyra you're the... anthropologist, or the closest we've got. Help me out."

Lyra took the lasgun from Twilight's magic field and brought it to her hooves, standing upright on her hind legs and holding it like a human would. She looked down the length of the barrel.
"Hmm, if they're like us most humans are right-hooved, I mean hand-ed... I think. Right-handed? Does that sound right to you?"

Everypony shrugged.

"Right. I don't feel anything moving on the left so I think the key is this thing inside the ring. It'll probably activate it."

"Aim at the armor just in case."

Lyra nodded and used her horn to squeeze the trigger while her hooves held the barrel straight. The lasgun fired and a beam of red light crossed the air and burnt into the far wall. She missed the chaos suits entirely. A smell lingered.

Twilight nodded at Lyra and brought up the bolter in her hooves just like Lyra had and used her magic to squeeze the trigger. The bolter roared and everypony's ears ring.
Twilight wasn't ready for the recoil and when she dropped the firearm she was thankful that her squeamishness pulling the trigger made her release it after one shot. Her shoulder hurt but at least she hadn't filled the room with stray fire.

"Lyra, you should have warned me that thing bucked like that!"

"Buck? What buck? This thing didn't move at all. It definitely didn't roar like yours did!"

"Everypony all right in here?!" Applejack poked her head in the doorway, Pinkie Pie's head was just beneath hers. 
"We heard a noise echo terribly."

Twilight waved them off.
"Fine, we're fine. Just trying get a grip on these... things. You'd better warn everypony there's going to be a lot more noise for a while."

"Gotcha sugarcube."

Twilight exhaled as her friends took off then levitated the lasgun from Lyra. The pastel green pony let it go without resistance.
Twilight held the lasgun, looked down the barrel, and repeated her action more cautiously than before. This time her magic field secured the entire weapon.
Lyra was right: the weapon fired its beam of light with barely a noise and absolutely none of the hideous recoil of the bolter. She got a better sense of aim and her next few shots glanced off the power armor at the far end of the room.

"Makes sense if you ask me. Bigger guns for the bigger, heavier guys" Lyra said as she drank.

Twilight agreed before picking up the bolter again. Everypony else stepped out of the room, cautiously looking in from the doorway. The princess wanted to take no chances. 
Holding the weapon firmly Twilight fired off the first round, grit her teeth trying to overcome the noise and fired again. Her third shot hit the power armor and made a loud impact noise as it deflected off like the las shot had.
Her fourth shot ripped through it and sparked inside. The impact seemed to blow the armor outwards, like a chest inhaling, and knocked the horned helmet off from the neck. 

Twilight set the gun down and her party rejoined her as they went over to the armor.
"Definitely a heavier weapon."

They examined its insides: More scorch marks and that burning smell.
The gun had blown up to fire the missile and then blown up again.

Twilight chided herself for repeating some childish nonsense Spike had once said but there was no arguing with the facts: the gun was loaded with tiny rockets, the rockets shot out the barrel ejecting a shell out the side of the gun, and the rocket blew up after it tore into whatever it was it hit. She admired the cleverness of the idea even as she was appalled that someone would use it on another living being.

She pulled out the magazine and managed to pry loose the bolts.
"I think we can draw the obvious conclusions. This one seems to hold" she pried the last round from the feed and counted twenty "maybe thirty of these. Lyra, can you test a theory please?"

Lyra intuited what she meant and raised the lasgun to the opposite wall. She fired a round, used to the dull noise by now, and then ejected the magazine. She squeezed the trigger again and was met with silence.
"It's not full of rockets but something in that metal prism holds the light the gun shoots. Bigger here means bigger there."

"Yes, and it's also pretty obvious what it means for those weapons too."
Twilight said as her brow narrowed. The other ponies followed her gaze.

Their princess was staring at the inventory of weapons they had stockpiled, including the storm bolters with their twin-fed high capacity ammo drums, the heavy bolters loading the largest-sized bolts yet, and at the bottom of a heap of its smaller lasgun cousins sat the lascannon.



Applejack and Pinkie Pie trotted along back to the storage room where Rarity, Octavia and Sparkler went through supplies.

"Is everything alright? We heard the most dreadful noise." Rarity asked.

Sparkler came out from a massive box, pulling out a pair of shields. "We were pulling out stuff to block the doors with."

Applejack nodded but replied disheartened. "I reckoned as much but you aren't the first to try it. A couple of the rooms here look like someone chose 'em to board up to weather a storm. It didn't go well for them."

"Does that mean we're moving out?"

"Not quite, at least not yet. Twilight's going through everything they got here. It's looking like it'll take a while. The thought of spending the night on this here planet gives me the heebie-jeebies something awful but since we've gotta choose I'd rather stick around here than try my luck for something better."

The five of them had sorted the entire crate when Twilight and Cheerilee joined them. "What have you girls found?"

"Nothing too special; swords, axes, a couple of maces and some spears." Sparkler answered.

Twilight levitated a heavy, blocky device with metal teeth. 
"Is this supposed to be a saw? It's so heavy and... complicated."

"It looks like farm machinery alright, Twi. But it's not exactly a saw."

"May I?"

Twilight and Applejack blinked and looked behind them. In the rush of everything it had been so easy to forget everypony that was with them.
In what was perhaps an exaggerated gesture, Blueblood held out his hoof.

Applejack handed him the machine while Twilight looked out the corner of her eye at Rarity; so far she wasn't visibly reacting.

"Hmm..." He had taken the saw and was testing it, holding it out at various angles. "The design is unusual but the hilt is unmistakable and the balance to the weapon is exact. This is not a common tool or farm implement. It is a sword."

"But that doesn't make any sense. They have perfectly good swords over here. And other not-so-perfectly normal swords also. That thing's a clumsy club if ever I saw one."

"Yes, it is unusual."

"Why would someone make something as simple as a sword so complicated?"

Twilight had an epiphany.
"Blueblood, is there a trigger to remove a prism on that thing?"

After pressing a series of buttons he managed to release a smaller piece of the device

They found a crate full of pieces exactly like it. "They're filled with something that smells like oil." Sparkler said as she handed one over. Blueblood removed the empty canister and loaded the replacement before he toyed with the device again and it roared to life. The chainsword buzzed loudly.
He glanced at Twilight as if asking permission and she tipped her head.
He raked the whirring weapon against the side of the wall, producing a horrible screech and filling the area with sparks. He let the blade die down before examining the device's teeth: they had barely left a scratch on the surface. By the same token the weapon itself looked undamaged.

"This is... brutish. I don't know what technique they use, I simply know I won't be the one to attempt to recreate it."

He turned to the other modified swords, the ones with wiring, conduits and piping welded to the strangest locations. Octavia quietly fiddled with one of them, making sure to keep the blade away from her: the chainsaw would made a nasty accident, no telling what the others could do.. 

"That sword." He said. 
Sparkler realized he was talking to her and levitated it to him.

He examined the edge, feeling a proper sharpness to it and tested its elaborate crossguard. "This is far more ornate, very refined. I think, yes this is the same chamber for a power source." Blueblood pressed the activation rune and the power sword flickered to life as the blade's surface crossed with flashes of lightning.

The girls watched as he raised the sword and went through a warm-up routine culminating in his striking the wall again. The blade scarred the masonry, a long vertical nick that cut deeper than the chainsword had.
"Yes... yes this is most excellent. The lightning field allows one to wield a rod as powerful as a greatsword with the ease and speed of a rapier. Energy fields like this would redefine fencing in Equestria."

Twilight nodded but said nothing. She gestured to Cheerilee and the two of them moved on.

"Princess Twilight, what do you think?"
Cheerilee asked as they entered the Inquisitor's office.

"We have weapons. A lot of them." Twilight looked wistfully at a mirror, seeing her reflection as she held a copy of the Primer. She blinked and saw her reflection as a little filly, a unicorn with her big brother's copy of the Oubliettes and Ogres rulebook.

"What?"

Cheerilee looked up from her notes. "I'm sorry, did you ask me something?"

Twilight blushed. Her reflection was just her alicorn self. "No, sorry. I... just thinking out loud."

"Um, is there a chance you were asking about me?"

Twilight and Cheerilee turned to the doorway. Standing there, trying to make herself smaller, Fluttershy was blushing embarrassed.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, it's just that I met someone and I think he needs to speak with you."

Twilght and Cheerilee's muzzles fell open as the golden mechanical eagle on Fluttershy's back turned its head to them and demanded in a mechanical tone.
"Unit damaged, uplink to Lord severed. Requesting current ranked officer for re-uplink."

> Chapter Nine - Intelligence
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well this afternoon has taken an unexpected turn." Cheerilee told Fluttershy as she watched Twilight. 

"I hope he'll be fine." Fluttershy replied, nervous about the creature she discovered that had abandoned her in favor of the princess.

All Twilight had done was ask how the psyber-eagle was damaged. Its response wasn't what she expected.

"Internal analysis indicates secondary cranium has been severed. Repairs required."

"Fluttershy?"

"I'm sorry Twilight, I only saw him. I didn't see anything like a second head."

"Will you be alright without it? I mean, I know that's horrible but-"

The servitor answered her immediately, ignoring all softening statements and attempts at sympathy.
"Secondary cranium contains primary cogitator and secondary data storage. Security protocols are compromised."

Twilight hesitated. "Why are you asking me for help?"

"Identification protocols incomplete. Unit functionality remains compromised until restoration."

"Will you help us?"

"Insufficient data."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"This isn't what I expected."

"Twilight, the primer says a servitor is a mindless tool. If we fix it it'll go back to doing whatever it was before it was damaged." 
Cheerilee said without turning her eyes from the page. Twilight didn't stand on formalities like eye-contact when research was involved.

"You mean it isn't alive?"

"I don't know if you can call this alive, Fluttershy. The book says it has a machine in its head that... ok you won't want to hear this. Please trust me when I tell you that poor little guy isn't doing what he wants. His mind's controlled by the machine and it does whatever the human who owns him says. He got lucky; he lost the completely mechanical head. If that gets repaired he'll lose even more of himself."

"We can't repair him then. It wouldn't be right."

"And it's dangerous. Cheerilee, if it's 'protocols' are repaired it'll do whatever the Space Marines that own it say.
Bits to hay say it'll call us 'Xenos' and go crazy."

"Then what do we do with it?"


Sometimes things just work out. The servitor had mentioned something about it's Psycher augmentation abilities being dependent on its secondary head, a phrase nopony understood.
Twilight said it couldn't be done and suggested it be refitted for something else.

"You know, I think this may just be the best blessing-in-disguise yet." Twilight beamed.

"I'll say." Cheerilee agreed while rubbing her sore hooves.

The psyber-eagle had presented a few options for retrofitting it's remaining systems into something its new Inquisitor, a title Twilight found suspicious but not completely unwelcome, would find useful. 

It didn't get further down its list after defining what a 'lexmechanic' was. 

With Fluttershy's instructions (courtesy of the modified Narthecium) the servitor's talons were replaced with the pnemo-quill apparatus and the empty space within its breast was filled with paper feeding mechanisms.
For safety's sake Twilight ordered the servitor to only follow orders from a pony, a situation that quickly became complicated.

"Define 'pony'?"

"Well... it's... you know I'm uncomfortable talking to you like you're an object and I'm going to have to get your attention when I want you to write something; I don't know what humans value but I won't be wasting paper needlessly. So what's your name?"

"Designation Psyber-eagle-" 
The rest of it's response was noise that rose and shrieked in a way even Pinkie's worst piper flute couldn't match.

"Ow, are you broken?"

"Negative, that is machine code designation. In binary it reads one, zero, zero-"

"That's... not going to work for me. I know. I'll call you Goldwing, do you like it?"

"Designation accepted, this unit will respond to it. Your orders?"

"Excellent. Take a message."
A gear noise filled the small room as the writing machines sputtered to life and the quill pressed to parchment.
"Dictate. 'Dear Spike, I hope this message will find it's way to you. Assuming this works please send back three journal quality logbooks, blank, highest quality paper you can find because they're gonna go through a lot. And be prepared, as soon as I receive them I'm going to need you to send me copies of spells from the library. 
Your good friend Twilight Sparkle.' Print and copy in triplicate."

Goldwing tore the paper at the end and held it to Twilight. A second pair of quills began to print the duplicates. Goldwing quickly learned to release the paper once her magic grabbed the page and rolled it into a scroll. At every step its new owner was creating a pattern in its AI, programming the psyber-eagle with it's habits and expected responses.

Twilight held the rolled scroll and tried to remember how Princess Celestia delivered messages. Her mind wandered to how she would receive any answers. Still... a one-way messaging service was better than nothing.

"So, Goldwing, now that you've been repurposed what do I need to do to lock your functions?"

"Voice-imprint is complete for personal orders. Request to follow orders exclusively from designation: 'ponies'. Incomplete. Definition required."

"Very well. Begin log, ponies."

"Logging; personel file and itemization list."

"Excellent. Let's start with... well I don't want to disturb anypony else while they're hard at work, I guess we should start with me."

"Query: identify?"

"Twilight Sparkle." Twilight thought about something for a second, then added. "Princess Twilight Sparkle."

"Planetary royalty status confirmed, your highness. Species?"

"Uni... I mean alicorn."

"Definition?"

 "Earth Pony body, Pegasus wings, Unicorn horn. The aspects of all three tribes in one."

"Imperium compliance status?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Sentient race alicorn scanned as non-human. Profile and biological functions do not confirm to any known xenos. Superficial biological scans suggest a 28% compatability with Terra origin genus equine. Identify your sub-species' status in Imperial circles."

Uh-oh. That sounds suspiciously like 'is your species labelled exterminate on sight?'.
"Benevolent... but secret."
I don't like lying to it, I mean him, but I can't just tell him his people might hate us

"Species' propensity to genetic abnormalities?"

"Geno-what now?"

"Species stability and resistance to mutation."

"Um... we don't mutate. Some ponies can be a little strange but we're stable... scientifically..."

"Answer is acceptable. Genetic testing nonetheless recommended. Creating sub-index accepted Imperial species; Equus Sapiens. Pyscher status?"

"Excuse me?"

"All inquisitorial familiars are engineered with compatibility to human psychers in mind."

"Define psychers."

"Sentients; genetically mutated, stable. Threat level: extreme. Congenital mutation allows development of psychic faculties manifest in myriad ways. Common sanctioned manifestations include mental powers, levitation, prophecy. Byproduct; all psychers have an increased presence in the Warp requiring additional defenses. Owner displays telekinetics, Psycher probability 86%. Unit designated Goldwing was manufactured to amplify owner's existing abilities.
Unit refitting and surgical procedure for owner required to restore this functionality."

There is no way I'm letting him operate on me! Twilight thought immediately.
"Oh, well this is magic."

"Magic. Cross-reference sorcery."

"No, magic! Ok, you said psychics, so their abilities are mental. Ponies aren't like that: Unicorns magic comes from our horns not our brains. Everypony has levitation, it's basic and very convenient not to have to grab everything with your hooves. Anything more complicated than that requires the study of spells."

"Spells. Cross-reference sorcery."

"No! Well maybe. It depends on what you define as sorcery."

"Term is a catch-all for all non-sanctioned psychic powers."

Twilight's hoof hit her face.
"This is going to be a looooong conversation."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a different room Lyra was bored, twiddling with a lasgun, looking absolutely bored when Bon Bon trotted in.
She wore a sewn burlap sack like a saddle and carried papers in her muzzle.
"Knock, knock. How are you handling?"

"Hey Bon"

"You're looking blue, I'm guessing it's from the last few days. So... what happened?"

"Vinyl and me had to set up a soundproofing bubble. The chanting is full blast now, but get out to ten paces and the music's muted and the bubble's completely invisible. A pretty good job but now I've got nothing to do."

"Sounds like I got here just in time. Princess Twilight had this text prepared for us, I guess she thinks we're the best suited to work on this stuff."
Bon Bon said as she passed a set of papers translated into Equestrian and rummaged around the workroom, pulling a tool set and dangling a tool belt on her back.

Lyra took the scrappy folder with her magic and her eye shot up as she read the first page.
"Toll the Great Bell Once! 
Pull the Lever forward to engage the Piston and Pump... 
Toll the Great Bell Twice! 
With push of Button fire the Engine And spark Turbine into life... 
Toll the Great Bell Thrice! 
Sing Praise to the God of All Machines"

Lyra looked dumbfounded. "What does this mean and why would I waste my time deciphering-"
Lyra went through the dozen of papers that hadn't been translated from the absurdly technical language of the Tech-priests of Mars. Schematics for armor, weapons and odd devices spilled to the floor. "-all of this nonsense?"

Bon Bon gave a gentle smile and put the burlap sack down. She grabbed a wheeled cart and unloaded the sack's contents onto it. When she pushed the cart to Lyra it was heavy with mechanical devices galore on it.

Lyra's eyes grew wide as saucers.

Intentionally picked out, with great care to not blacken it or hide it with the other bits of machinery sat a single intact servo-arm, freshly removed from a tech-priest who was transferred from the Chaos mausoleum to the loyalist side.
Twilight had deliberately chosen the servo with a power fist instead of the one with a clamp, the one with a claw, the one with a lasgun or the one with mechadendrites (the fancy name for a cluster of mechanical tendrils). 

"Fingers..."

"Princess Twilight figured you'd leap at the job if you had the proper motivation, and she thought that once you caught sight of these you'd-"

"Let's get started!!"
Lyra said a little too loud and she shoved into the documents on top of the arm and pushed the cart towards the Imperium mausoleum to examine the rest of the deceased priest's body. 
She was overjoyed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lyra made a lot of noise as she pushed her cart towards the Imperium mausoleum as quickly as she could. 
Bon Bon trotted behind her at a much more reasonable pace, keeping her eyes open for anypony that might have gotten run over. As she passed the sleeping room Bon Bon saw that Blueblood's name as the only one with a smudge mark next to it. Bon Bon noticed, but didn't think much of it until she walked across the next room and did a double-take: Four ponies were staring through the wall adjacent to the sleeping room courtesy of Sparkler's magic. 
From the way Blueblood was focused exclusively on either the wall or one of the large storage containers and paid them no mind it was obvious Sparkler was making only one side of the wall transparent.

"Sparkler, I don't think Derpy would approve." Carrot Top told her nervously.

Flitter, Cloudchaser and Roseluck merely tilted their heads to the side as they watched Blueblood struggle.
He had a hoof-full of swords tossed over somepony's blanket along with the shards of a snapped blade.
Blueblood turned to the scoured wall and began to repeat a lunge three times before chiding himself, taking up his stance and trying again.

"Look at him go..." Rose said as she admired him.

Sparkler merely turned with an annoyed look to Roseluck.
"We're not doing this for fun. Strike that. I'm not doing this for fun. I shouldn't have let you talk me into this at all!"

"And what are we supposed to do? Prince Blueblood's the only one of us with anything close to martial training. 
He knows how to handle a sword and he's practicing now. How else are we supposed to learn?"

"Couldn't you ask him?" Bon Bon asked confused.

At that moment the prince looked very frustrated with himself and slashed three diagonal gashes in the wall, his efforts were clumsy but effective as he slashed twice with his fore-hoof but on the third swing he lost control of the sword and dropped it.
Angry, he gripped the hilt in his teeth and swung a powerful uppercut that sparked against the wall and made a terrible screeching noise.

Everypony winced.

"I think he might not have the temperament to teach anypony at the moment..."
Carrot Top thought aloud to collective noises of agreement.

Sparkler rolled her eyes and dropped the spell.
"I'm gonna find something else to do. Excuse me Bon Bon."

Bon Bon stepped aside and let her go.

The room next door got quiet but Roseluck didn't look at all phased:
"All right, it looks like his grace is taking a break. Probably trying to remember more of his form. 
Get your grip ladies and start practicing."

Bon Bon watched as the three ponies produced what they could find: an empty scabbard, a length of pipe and a mop swung from the heavy end. Carrot Top excused herself from practicing even though she stayed to watch.
The earth pony and two pegasi began their imitation of Blueblood's angry strikes with their hooves before switching it up and adding muzzlework as well. 

"Good luck girls." Bon Bon said mostly to Carrot Top, who waved her off on her way.

Bon Bon turned the corner listening to the sound of a power sword starting up again, trotting over to the Imperium room.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the Chaos tomb and hurried on.

A body bumped into her.

"Oh. I'm terribly sorry Bon Bon. Do you need a hoof?"

Bon Bon looked up and saw Octavia standing over her.
"I'm fine, Octavia. Thanks."

Bon Bon looked past Octavia and saw Lyra inside the room, already dragging the deceased tech-priest over and playing with his body like a marionette. 
"Oh dear, Lyra, put him down!" back to Octavia: "So sorry, we aren't kicking you out moving in to work here are we?"

"Oh, by no means no. I was just making some observations of my own. We've all been so active and a lot of things tend to be overlooked."

"Oh dear, there's nothing wrong is there?" Bon Bon asked, worried about having to clear a room Lyra was already gleefully altering.

"Nothing dangerous. I just thought to make a proper headcount of the... unfortunate victims."

"Anything strange?"

Octavia hesitated then answered. "There's only two tech-priests, five guardsmen, two females in power armor and, of course, the dozen marines."

Bon Bon nodded but the demographics failed to set off any warning flags. Also, she was interested in wrapping up the conversation as soon as possible. 
"Well, it looks like Lyra needs me. Good luck with, whatever you're doing that for Octavia."

Octavia was genial.
"And you."

The nodded at each other and parted ways.
Octavia hesitated at the blast door to the Chaos tomb. 
Her hoof tucked a small gemmed brooch under her bow-tie.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 


Octavia entered the Chaos mausoleum and found Vinyl hard at work on the sonics.

"Oh hey there 'Tavi. You here to check up on me?" Vinyl Scratch called out joyfully. 

Octavia walked over to her, taking a quick glance at what her flatmate was up to.

Machine pieces were littered all about them. Vinyl had clearly teamed up with Lyra and Bon Bon to identify all the vox units inside the HQ and scavenge whatever undamaged parts she could find.
For all the mess Vinyl had been efficient at one thing: the mechanical pieces of the Blastmaster were kept away from the rest.

"What are you up to in here?" Octavia asked.

"Oh, it's no big mystery. The dude I brought in was a Chaos so he belongs in here and since Twilight got paranoid once she read all that mumbo-jumbo about the Chaos 'Tes it's taking me a lot longer to go through the machine."

Octavia shook her head slightly at Vinyl 's abbreviation of the term 'Astartes'.

"Between you and me I'd have been happy to just use the Blastmaster raw but she's convinced it's cursed or poisoned or something. Anyway, there's a lot of stuff I can't duplicate yet but check this out!"

Octavia feebly got the word "Blastmaster?" out before she was guided to an alcove in the corner.
There a loyalist backpack was in the middle of a major refurbishment while its Chaos counterpart leaned against the wall, it's exhausts already covered by a pair of heavy speakers.
"The Blastmaster's being difficult but the Doom Siren is as good as done."

"Who named these things?" Octavia asked.

"Pinkie Pie." Vynil replied matter-of-fact.

Octavia rolled her eyes
"Of course. Say, didn't Berry Punch come in with you?"

"Yeah but she's already done with the body she brought in."
Vinyl pointed at the Noise Champion on a far table.
"Haven't seen her in a while, she was here while I took everything apart but then she just took off before I finished rewiring the speakers, left the body she dragged here without really touching the stuff feeding into his veins."

Octavia nodded, looking suspicious.
"I see. I'll go ahead and get out of your mane then."

"Not so fast, I got you something." Vinyl put her hoof around Octavia's shoulder and led her to Vinyl's saddlebags. 
Vinyl pulled out a long case sticking out through the open flap of the messy sack and gave it to Octavia.
Octavia opened it and found herself staring at a device that superficially resembled a cello's bow. 

Octavia beamed.
"Lyra and me were messing around with the weapons we found and were gonna toss out all the power swords Blueblood's broken when I got this great idea: It's a bow. I know you probably have like zero experience with a real sword or whatever and I thought you could use something, I dunno, familiar.
If nothing else, it's a quiet reminder of home, right?"

Octavia fidgeted lightly, pressing her hoof against the hair.

Vinyl panicked and pulled it from her hoof with her magic.
"Whoa, careful when you turn it on. The entire wire will light up. Ok. See?"

The bow sang as it hummed to life and the hair danced with electric fire.

Octavia understood now what Vinyl had done. The bow's screw was the activation switch. The over-sized 'frog' contained the power source. The 'pad' served as a hoofguard and the entire hair lit up with the energy field boasting more cutting power than even the sharpest steel blade. The stick served not only as a visual medium to keep an eye on where the hair swung but also as a secondary hoofguard in case something pushed the bow back towards her.

Octavia grasped the bow carefully while it was still within Vinyl's magical grip and twisting the screw counterclockwise deactivated the energy field. 
Subtle, discrete, easily concealed and convincingly disguised. she thought.
And whether or not she's aware of it, Vinyl naturally designed it as a limb-severing or decapitating garrote...

Octavia replaced the bow in its case and hugged Vinyl.
"It's perfect, thank you."

"Aw, it's nothing. Well, back to work. Fair warning, it's gonna get pretty loud in here."

"Be as loud as you need to."

"Drop by anytime!" Vinyl called behind her as she reset her headphones.

Vinyl magically sparked the machine on the Noise Marine backpack, tapping into what remained in the Doom Siren's power cells and blasting the wall with noise. Seconds later the loyalist backpack shrieked to life with feedback.

Unable to hear her and looking away, Vinyl didn't notice as Octavia pulled out the brooch, aimed its mirror surface at the dead Chaos Marine nearest to her and pressed a concealed activation stud, discharging the disguised digital lasgun into its head.

The laser noise was surprisingly loud. Vinyl turned off the backpacks and turned to Octavia, uncovering only one of her ears.
"Did you hear something?"

"No, I can't say that I did."

Vinyl believed her but looked confused. She snorted slightly.
"Weird. Hey, do things smell a little funny in here."

"They do. I assumed it was normal, you both brought bodies with you when you arrived."

"Yeah... I guess I just didn't notice before."
Vinyl levitated her glasses from her face, took in everything around her and failed to notice the dead Marine with the significant hole in his head as anything new.

"Speaking of the two of you." Octavia pressed to change the subject. "Where did Berry Punch go?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some trends are universal. Berry thought.
The spires of Canterlot grow high. The higher you get, the more likely somepony important lives within them.
It looks like humans are no different.

Berry looked about her. The spiral staircase she entered through was... unusual to say the least.
The room she was in was labelled "Officer's Mess". As far as Berry was concerned, it was a VIP restaurant.

Nopony was really describing their current home as anything other than 'the building', but Berry had read the labels here and there. A standard constructed 'Field Command Bunker'. Standard except for the fact that it had a flat single-level roof. Under normal circumstances the Officer's Mess was supposed to have an overview of the grounds. This made sense, officers should be able to see what they're in control of.
Berry Punch knew this because the walls of the mess were lined with holovids displaying I-kid-you-not identical representations of the surrounding hills and plains the Field Command was hidden amongst, but instead of something useful like live security feeds from surviving cameras the holovids showed formations of humans marching.

As for the source of all this information....

"Shut up already. I don't care about the Mess Hall, I don't care about how nopony's noticed that thanks to you they can read 'High Gothic', and I especially don't care about the humans!"

Discord's voice was oily and unpleasant in her mind.
Don't be so mad. We both know what you're looking for is here.

"Go bother Lyra!"

Berry Punch was obsessed with the champion's armor and all its extra feeds. Once removed she confirmed all her suspicions: the tubes were intravenous feeds for medication. 
She wouldn't dare taste them and yet there was something about them, something familiar she was overlooking. If there were any native critters on planet Berry would have fed diluted solutions of the chemicals to them, force fed if necessary - Fluttershy's disapproval be damned.

But there weren't any native critters to use as test subjects...

You're so cute when you're acting tough and ruthless.

"Shut up! I'm not gonna drink it myself and I'm not gonna ask anyone else to taste it either."

We wake up all the sleepy-heads, so quietly and nice.

"They're not Equestria critters!"

Why so testy, worried about what everypony else might think about you, killing defenseless little animals?
Scared what might cross the mind of poor litte-

"I told you to never talk about Pinch you... wretch!"

Berry Punch began to sob. Ever since she'd pulled the Noise Marine back to the compound Discord had been harassing her mercilessly. The jabs at her love of punch were nothing new, at first Berry thought it was just her conscience nagging her, repeating other ponies' half-remembered words .

Then her thoughts turned to Berry Pinch and the voices became hostile, nasty. Saying things she'd never heard, proposing scenarios Berry had never imagined. She knew it was someone else's voice in her head.

Tormented she'd tried to run away, hide in some secluded corner. She hadn't found any, of course. The compound was full of ponies moving and working. Nopony paid her mind but Berry didn't just want to be left alone, she wanted no possibility of anyone coming across her.

She ended up lifting a floor grate and climbing down, hiding in the darkness. 
Huddled inside a narrow access tunnel Berry felt the voice lower, becoming distant. 
Not yet silenced but hopeful, Berry made her way down the tunnel and found another ladder. 
She climbed up and found herself here, in the hidden Officer's Mess, a panic room posing as a lounge.

Now the voices were back and Berry realized she'd been herded there no different than an unruly herd of cattle. 
Now she realized it was Discord in her mind.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him, hiding in a nook.

With nothing to throw at him she charged.

He was gone and just as she'd expected he'd led her to find what she was looking for. 
The humans were imperialist, classist, elitist. 
A thousand times worse than the worst Canterlot snob. 
Snobs couldn't dream of existing without their pet comforts, they'd never dream of it. 
Berry had crashed the Inquisitor's room, the communications array Vinyl had cannibalized, the medbay... 
Finally, here, she found what she was looking for. The officers' rations safe. She failed to manipulate the device with her hooves so she simply gave up and bucked in the surface of the elegant wood.

She smiled.

Even in the far future of some dismal warped universe Berry Punch knew a wine cellar when she saw it. She began pulling out bottles, unscrewing a few caps, uncorking others. Soon bottles were arranged by scent and matching bottle style and labels.

Berry wanted nothing more than to dive into this bounty, drown in it and let everything else fade away...

Instead she began tasting, testing. Sorting bottles by estimated proof.
I know what you want. Berry Punch thought bitterly. And you're not driving me to it!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inside her room, Twilight was being mental. Again.
Fortunately Applejack and the ever-present Cheerilee were at her side. They'd convinced her to quit the claustrophobic office and stroll with them through the corridors.
"Cheerilee? Applejack? I'm hesitating aren't I? Everypony else has done their part. Cheerilee what are we up to?"

I've been reading back notes for days. Why didn't Princess Celestia send Raven with Twilight instead of me? At least Goldwing has taken over the writing... Cheerilee grumbled internally before pulling out one of a dozen lists.
"In accordance with your edict and common decency all chain weapons have been discarded. Power swords are common with power lances being preferred but scarce. Bolter technology is not going well. We're having trouble adapting the triggers for ponies. Lasguns for similar reasons are right out. On the other hoof your duplication spell has been successfully repeated and we are at no loss for ammunition. No such luck on fuel for the fire-breathers but at least 'prometheum' oil is commonplace. 
Work continues on the 'vox' loudspeakers-"

 "It's safe to say you've got every project under wraps sugarcube." Applejack interrupted lest the list go on forever.

 "Every one except for the obvious. Space Marines, the Sisters and for all we know the Inquisitor himself wherever he is because we have no reason to think he isn't alive; all humans survived with armor."
Twilihgt sighed. This was going to be the most complicated feat by far.
"Cheerilee. Read me the warnings again."

"The 'rituals' for their machinery, if you can call them that, are vague and misleading but now I'm sure that everything has a magical power source that makes its parts move on their own. Lyra's trying to kick-start the spark in the backpacks."

"Which won't mean anything if we don't have any ready suits."  Twilight eye-rolled.
"What did Lyra say?"

Cheerilee rummaged and got another note.
" -I don't think the problem's physical. There's magic working on each piece of armor and its resisting me trying to reignite the sparks. I think that magic wards the chaos corruption but I feel uneasy. 
I'm not saying we should give up but I don't want to pick sides in this struggle. Not with the perverts, definitely, but I'm starting to think we can't side with these people either. Their magic isn't right."

"Cheerilee?"

"I agree with Lyra. This book isn't a science textbook and it isn't a repair manual. It's a devotional text. It speaks of a god, sometimes two, who does everything and is everything and brings nothing but punishment to anything that exists outside him."

"Punishment for what?"

"As far as I can tell, for simply existing."

Twilight stopped their walk when they reached the scorched remains of a devotional mural. 
It was representative of the Cult Mechanicus, the tech-priests and their 'machine-god'.
She couldn't help staring into the strange machine effigy's eyes.

"Twilight, this is very confusing for me." Cheerilee continued. "Whoever this god is, and he's vengeful and powerful in equal measure beyond understanding if the text is accurate, he is described in loving detail. The livery on these poor men matches the scripts and imagery in this book, in all of them. They swear their lives to him believing he protects them. 
And... I don't know if it'll upset you to hear me say it... looking around at this place, at this patch of earth, when you compare it to the rest of this world I can't say it's a lie. If what this book says is the truth, if this god does protect them as they live and even after death... in the face of all these horrors isn't what he asks for ... reasonable?"

"Cheerilee... you're a wonderful teacher. Summarize this book for me, put it all together. What would you phrase as its central lesson?"

Cheerilee took the book and tore a hoof-full of blank text paper and a quill from the Goldwing's inert talons and began thumbing through the texts.

Twilight gave her time, there was much to do, everypony was hard at work with the machinery and supplies around them. There was time to be spared. Her expression turned to determination.

"Twi, you know Big MacIntosh is practically insisting that, if you go along with what I think you're planning to, he should be the one to wear it first." Applejack warned.

Twilight smirked. "AJ, Are you saying Big MacIntosh is being greedy?"

Applejack hmph'ed at the question. "He's just worried about you is all. Probably doesn't feel right let somepony else take the risk."

Twilight giggled and Applejack looked a little silly, then laughed along with her. She didn't realize Twilight had been teasing: the days had drawn on.

The trio entered a storage room and Sparkler turned, surprised to see them. Every full set of Vorpal Swords power armor lay in storage.

"Princess?" Sparkler asked nervously.

She didn't get an answer.

Twilight Sparkle levitated the first complete suit in front of her, made it shine and in a bright flash of light began to distort its shape from human to pony.


> Chapter Ten - Ready
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

REPENTIA POINT
DAY 5

Cheerilee sat naked on the floor of the Inquisitor's office with a blizzard of paper for her blanket and pillows.

Words echoed in from the hallway and the door opened letting in a column of light.
"Twilight, ah ain't happy about this."
Applejack complained as she entered the room a step behind Twilight.

"Applejack... where'd I leave those notes?" 
Twilight interrupted herself, looking for a parchment she couldn't find, levitating things from all around her.

"Subject?" Goldwing asked as he hummed to life from his perch beside the Inquisitor Lord's hat rack, responding to his mistress' call.

"The notes Lyra and I made about the nervous system adaptation spells."

"Specification not found."

"She means the spell to replace that black thing under the skin." 
Cheerilee said in a muffled voice from the floor, not really asleep but not willing to open her eyes either.

Goldwing began.
"Subject, Black Carapace. A sub dermal layer necessary for Space Marines to fully interface with a suit of Power Armor-"

"Top shelf, by the door, next to the stack with the three candles." Cheerilee interrupted grumpily. 
"It's your magic 'to do' list for all the hypotheticals we don't have time to research."

"Thanks Cheerilee. We'll..." 
Twilight let her thoughts drag as she saw Cheerilee turn over and stuff some papers in her ears.
"We'll go ahead and let you sleep. Come on Goldwing."

The psyber-eagle flew off its perch and settles on Twilight's back.

When they left turning the lights off after them Cheerilee huffed "Finally."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"As ah I was saying," Applejack spat back in an angry voice.

Twilight narrowed eyes at her, then gestured her head towards the door they just left.

"As ah I was saying." Applejack continued in an angry whisper.
"Y'all should'a listened to me. If anypony should be starting up test runs on that crazy contraption it ought'a be me!"

"Applejack, I respect your position, I really do. But you're saying the exact same things he did."

"But-"

"Verbatim." She emphasized.

Applejack didn't look like she was going to let it go so Twilight pressed on.
"Furthermore, he said that it was reckless, dangerous, and if anypony was going to put themselves at risk like that-"

"Twilight, as Celestia is my witness-"

"He said that too. Only he finished 'the only way I'm letting Applejack near this is if it's safe and the only way I'm gonna believe it's safe is if I go first.' And there was nothing I could do about it."

"Name one reason you listened to him over me and don't say it was because he told you so first."

"The same reason he said it shouldn't be Rainbow Dash; we can't risk the Elements."

Applejack hung her head in defeat.
"T'aint right, Twi."

"You told him, I told him. He told me 'he knew what he was doing, Princess and thank you' and that was the last word. Twilight got a look at AJ's eyes. She saw a lot of worry there.
"What did he tell you?"

Applejack hesitated. "He pulled me close, hugged me tight and told me he loved me and that everything was gonna be all right because he believed in you. Then he told me to git and go get you."

"He always did have a way with words."

"Always full o' hot air and stubborn as a mule, you mean... Where's he get it from?"

Twilight smiled without a hint of malice or sarcasm. "Where indeed?"

They opened a dark room and stayed out in the hallway. Lyra and Bon Bon were off to the side, watching.
"Do you want me to give you a few more seconds, AJ?" Twilight asked concerned, one last time.

" 's better if you treat it like a band-aid. Just rip the darn thing off." Applejack said, trying to be strong.

Twilight nodded, aimed her horn into the darkness and cast her spell.
Everything glowed a bright pink.

From inside the room the glow died down until there was only the light from the corridor.
Lyra and Bon Bon's heads both peeked in from the side.
Applejack approached and squinted, trying to look in.

Twilight called out.
"Big MacIntosh? You ok?"

A massive body sprung to life; heavy footsteps clanged, echoing across the metal floor.
A huge equine body stepped out into the light garbed in armor of pure raw metal.
The lights of the eyes of its helmet came to life with an electric red glow.

The glow flickered then died out completely. The helmet cracked.
The armored figure shook its head, then brought up its hoof and banged on the side of the helmet until most of it broke off, tearing the pieces off the skull that didn't fall off on their own.

Big MacIntosh' stoic face and gentle eyes were revealed behind the broken pony mask.
"Eeyup."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Well now, that didn't go as well as I hoped but I must say to have only suffered a set-back with the helmet is a great success. With a little hard work and a complete redesign I think we can get everything back on track."
Rarity was beaming. Her work reinforcing Twilight's metalwork pushed the boundaries of her art. 
The experience was exhilarating.

"Lyra, dear, could you get started on this boot for me?"

"Sorry Rarity." Lyra apologized, looking over her shoulder at Bon Bon for only a second so she'd 'hand' her a specialized tool.
Bon Bon didn't so much as flinch at the mechanical hand that grew out from Lyra's power plant as it reached out to her and grasped perfectly at the device in her hoof.

At the last moment Bon Bon's eyes went wide and she pulled the gizmo from Lyra's reach, offering a common screwdriver in its place.

The wisdom of the maneuver was apparent when an absent-minded Lyra crunched the screwdriver into a tiny ball of metal with her power fist.

"What the hay was that?" 
Lyra shouted. Then, seeing Bon Bon's expression and the crushed metal, she apologized profusely.
"Please tell me that wasn't the part I needed."

"I pulled it back just in time." 
Bon Bon said in a voice that sounded like whining. Her voice was really high pitched again.

Lyra thanked her and took the device with her levitation field instead.
"I'll get the hang of that. Sorry, what did you say Rarity?"

Rarity nodded a 'no problem' to the apology.
"I was asking if you could perhaps give me a leg up on my next suit and transform this boot for me."

Lyra's face fell for the second time in a row.
"Sorry. It's beyond me. It takes a delicate combination of technical know-how and unicorn magic to change power armor's shape without damaging the internal circuitry. It'll take me a while to figure out how Princess Twilight does it."

"Oh dear. Well, if there's no way then I guess I'll just make do with something else to keep myself busy until the next suit of armor is ready."  Rarity said disappointed. 

Discolored but not defeated, Rarity stretched out and worked the kinks out of her back. As she did she took in Lyra's progress and the suit of power armor she was in. Once Big MacIntosh' suit was deemed safe Twilight had gone on a spree, modifying Astartes suits. Unfortunately they had hit a snag. They were twenty-one ponies and only twelve suits of power armor recovered from the Vorpal Swords. Since Twilight insisted nopony use Chaos Space Marine parts it meant that teams would have to go out scavenging.

Twilight and Lyra might have been able to duplicate small things like Bolter rounds but creating a second suit of power armor ex nihilo was out of the question.

Unless by some chance they stumbled upon a Space Marine graveyard their prospects looked grim.

Nonetheless Rarity tried to stay cheerful as she smithed ceramite panels into plates to protect ponies' exposed necks.
"Such a shame Twilight couldn't do anything about this flaw but it does give one opportunities to shine."

Lyra cocked her head in agreement as she inserted the device Bon Bon gave her into a mechadendrite.
"I still wish I'd made progress on the helmets. It's my fault your talent's wasted making neckguards, Rarity."

"Oh tosh dear. For starters neck-guards is such a poor description. These armored collars are called 'gorgets'. 
That said I am tempted to give them at least a partial jaw, that would be a 'bevor'. 
Traditionally one wore a bevor with a 'sallet' or 'basinet' style helmet to protect the entire head."

Lyra made a note, focusing on her power fist to grip a pen delicately and write the words down.
"If you can call this 'wearing' something. If it weren't for all the wiring and mobility I could see Discord's spell summoning Iron Bit or Smith Wesson to do this work for us. No offense Rarity."

"None taken dear."

"But I mean, this is a lot less altering a suit than it is building a pony shaped house."

"Cage would be the word I'd use. Granted this material is a lot lighter than I expected but I still can't believe anypony can move in it."

"We're working on that." Lyra agreed.
Idly she felt an itch on her ear and before Bon Bon could shriek and protest Lyra's power fist extended a finger and scratched her.

Bon Bon exhaled in relief and looked helplessly at Rarity for comfort.

Rarity shrugged, then took the opportunity to ask Lyra further about the complete suit of power armor she was wearing.
"Tell me dear what is it like? I recognize it's like clothing but with all the machinery inside it I imagine it would be like riding a carriage."

Lyra thought about it.
"Maybe a little, for a carriage nestled under your hooves and tummy. It does take some getting used to, once Twilight used that spell on Big Mac she fixed the problem so that the armor moved itself. I dunno. After three days it's like a second coat on me now."

"You know, I just realized something. We haven't made any tests on the suits of armor we retrieved from the women. It seems unwise to overlook that if their population is anything like ours."

Bon Bon considered that.
"I'll add that to the list. Right now we still have so much to work on with the suits we already have."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coincidences are a rare occurrence.
The reality of things was that when Twilight Sparkle crafted the first set of armor to suit a pony she had no idea what she was doing and given the choice between overdoing or under-compensating Twilight chose to go big. 
Meaning she made the interior space slightly larger than she or any of her friends needed.

This was convenient for Big MacIntosh because he was larger than the mares so by default he had a suit of power armor suited to his needs. Twilight would need to practice more to make the dimensions appropriate for her friends.
Of course, that sort of practice was risky, unacceptably risky when one considered how few suits they had available.

Twilight therefore chose to err on the side of caution when she transformed a second suit, making it practically identical to the first.

For that reason it was no coincidence that that particular suit found its way to its current owner.

Prince Blueblood woke from his rest inside his private room and looked about.
He hadn't earned this corner of luxury through any personal merits; Princess Twilight simply decreed that for safety's sake every pony with a suit of power armor should be spread out. Because of the spacial needs and the amount of time it took to suit up, in the event of an attack it was best if everypony wasn't bunched up in one room.

Blueblood ached and tried to shake but failed completely.
He was wearing the chest of the suit thinking to spare himself the time it took to put that most cumbersome of pieces on but all he had managed to do was strain his legs carrying the weight of it and the power plant backpack.

Huffing he made his way to the four 'legs' and slipped his hooves in one by one. 
Unfortunately, because the exoskeleton wasn't properly fastened the weight of the armor was still completely on his back and with his legs now stuck within the boots he didn't have the range of motion to simply lie down again.

"Hello? Is anypony out there? I am in need of some assistance!"

look at you, left to your lonesome

exiled

no one can really stand you can they?

Blueblood panicked. Desperately turning around himself, looking for the source of the hissing voices.

All he saw was a metal surface, polished smooth and as reflective as a mirror.
He saw himself in his power armor, pristine white; He hadn't wanted to appear like a commoner in plain metal and, justifying to himself and Amethyst Star that he didn't want to expose the surface to corrosion, he found supplies and painted it himself.

He breathed hard, trying to get his breath back to normal.

There was a knock on the door.

"Who is it?"

"It's Sparkler, prince. I thought I heard you yell. Is everything alright?"

Blueblood wanted to say everything was fine but he was still stuck in place.
Sparkler opened the door and poked her head in. She saw him frozen in place and looked confused.

"I can't move." He said, trying to keep his dignity.

Sparkler nodded and went over to his side, examining his suit's connections.

Blueblood tried to be serene. This was just like a grooming or another session with his tailor. Nothing out of the ordinary.

"These connections didn't seal automatically. It's a hiccup. Try it now."

Blueblood moved his hooves and relaxed as he aligned his body so the armor carried its own weight.
"I... will be out later." He said.

Sparkler bristled at being acknowledged rather than thanked but felt it her duty to finish.
"If it happens again just connect the entire surface of the 'sleeves' with their ports in the groin guard and shoulders.
It's a two-pony job for a pegasus or earth pony but nothing stops a unicorn from doing it himself."

She turned her tail to him and walked out, not noticing how pensive her words left him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Wait, wait. No, no, no!"
Rarity cried out at the top of her lungs.

On the other side of the room Lyra just stared at her.
The hammer on her riveting tool snapped and she was done; a pair of bolts were screwed into the rear of Big MacIntosh' groin guard, fastening the swinging panel of ceramite that covered the base of his tail.

"Lyra, how could you. The design was perfect."

"We've been over this Rarity." Twilight said as she chose that moment to walk in.
"People are going to be shooting at us. It's bad enough they have a clean shot to our heads, I'd rather they didn't also have a target on our flanks. That said, we'd still be better off with short tails for a few weeks."

"Speak for yourself Twi. I think I'm getting the hang of this."
Applejack countered as she swung her tail and cracked a power whip against the training wall.

"You're looking good." Twilight agreed.

"Well, it ain't easy. I've never thought to enter a whip-cracking competition wearing a suit of armor before but I'm a quick study."

"I'm sure you'll win the blue ribbon next year for sure." Twilight beamed. 

Applejack nodded and sheathed her back-up weapon; a large machete-shaped combat blade.

"How'd you get that anyway?" Twilight asked.

From its perch on her back Goldwing answered. 
"The weapon is an Adepta Sororitas neural whip. It's previous owner was Sister Mistress Penance Lucilia, currently interred within the Imperial mausoleum."

"Mistress?" "Mistress?"
Applejack and Twilight both asked.

"The Adepta Sororitas, in the lower tongue the Sisters of Battle. This site is the location of a traitor siege prior to the planetoid's absorption by the Warp."

Twilight's eyes went wide. 
"This was a planet that was stolen?"

"Correct. At that time this location was the site of a monastery. 
Despite the planet's corruption the Sisters refused to allow this holy ground to fall. 
Despite their failure and the monastery's razing the crusade to reclaim the planet persists. The most recent incursion was led by your predecessor, Inquisitor Lord Arcmillus Hadrian. His army, a combined force of Inquisitorial retainers, Guardsmen, Sisters of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, and a representative force from the Vorpal Swords Space Marine Chapter fought their way to the site and established this beachhead. In recognition to the piety of the Sisters of Battle forces, which were decimated in the fighting, and in memory of the monastery that once stood the site was renamed Repentia Point - after the penitent warriors of the Sororitas who cast off their armor and hurl themselves into battle seeking the Emperor's forgiveness.
At the time of Lord Hadrian's death, thirty of the thirty-five survivors of the Order of Our Martyred Lady had cast off their armor and fought as Repentia. They did so despite not having access to the ceremonial Eviscerator chainswords in the number they required.
They fought with naught but knives and their faith in the Emperor."

"I'm not sure if I want to know whether that got in their way or if it actually helped them here."


Next to Applejack Big Mac was looking busy.
Vinyl presented him with a large storm shield shaped like an eagle's wing.
"Too small. That's what I think I need."
He said, raising a hoof to the massive tower shields the size of small doors.

Rairty tsk'ed and went over to him.
"Big Macintosh, I don't think that's such a good idea. You're not a unicorn so we can't just modify this gear so it can be activated through magic. You won't be able to switch between this monster and a weapon quickly."

Vinyl Scratch chose that moment to fasten one shield to each of his front hooves. Half of his body was completely hidden behind the pair of crusader suppression shields that rose from his shoulders to the top of his head. 
As he stepped forward his hind legs sparked to life. The stallion had chosen to accept Lyra's most recent experiment: power hooves, a pair of power fists converted to pony use. 

Twilight looked deflated.
"Big MacIntosh, I... respect your choice and appreciate your wanting to focus on physical power but don't you think you could use something for range?"

"I understand, Princess. But carrying ammo and fiddling with reloading for a weapon ah ain't ever used before and I'm likely to miss with every time don't add up."

"This isn't about that gun Lyra shot up the place with is it?"
Twilight asked looking over her shoulder. Lyra just whistled.

Vinyl interjected.
"You know B.M. Princess. He's a pony wall. Those two shields are the biggest and heaviest there are and once we got them turned on we found out they have energy fields that can take hits from the big lasers. As for the power hooves..."

"Y'all sure?" He hesitated.

"Sure, We don't need that wall."

"Vinyl!!"

"Ok, we do need that wall. Do we need that crate?"

Lyra glanced over. "Empty. We scrapped pieces of it for paneling."

Big Mac looked at Twilight and she nodded, giving him permission to do it.

Big MacIntosh walked over to the metal container, turned around and kicked with both legs. His buck activated the power field on both hooves at the moment of impact. The container was knocked over and its head smashed through the wall. 

Everypony was left staring. Twilight blinked.

Vinyl was the first to talk.
"Make a note Goldwing: power hooves amplify Big Mac's strength to ungodly proportions."

The psyber-eagle addressed Twilght. "Confirm?"

"What she said."
Twilight sighed looking at the hole in the other wall.

"I can fix that." Lyra said looking over its dimensions.
"We might not be able to re-use every piece of debris but if we use the container's roof itself as a base and weld it all together it should be as strong as it was... -ish."

Twilight chose to ignore the renovations and went back to Big Mac.
"Goldwing doesn't have all the information we need and the documents we found don't have any thorough information about Space Marine equipment aside from 'litanies' and basic maintenance. The only thing I understand for sure is that each suit interfaces with the user and every one of these Space Marines has a lot of wiring grafted into their skin, nerves and muscles. 
You've been suited up the longest; I need to know if anything about this power armor is causing you pain or problems Big Mac."

"Everything's perfectly fine."

"Then I guess that's all there is to it. Everypony drop smithing work and take your positions, we're sending ponies out to scavenge."

"Princess Twilight!"

The yell entered the room before its source did.
Amethyst Star galloped into the room, white with fear.

"Sparkler, what is it?"

"It's the Prince. He's gone!"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's brighter than I thought. Blueblood thought to himself as he stepped outside.

That was the only rational thought his brain had. He was haunted by voices, hounded by fears that threatened him with isolation and looming betrayal. It wasn't about minor things like his comfort zone; here he was universally despised and at any moment the group would sacrifice somepony to preserve the rest.

your name is first on the list

He felt the heat of scented breath on his neck, in his ear.
He jumped in his place, turning to the noise paranoid of everything including his own reflection.
Desperately he searched everywhere, instinctively looking for something that would give him a sense of safety.

Blueblood

He heard it, something that called out to him but didn't trigger the insane fear inside him.

Blueblood, I can't find you. I can't hear you. Blueblood where are you?

"P-princess??"

He trotted hesitatingly towards the source of the sound, his hooves crossed the limits of Lyra's sound shield.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PON-3! PON-3! PON-3!

Vinyl Scratch smiled, looked up from her metal workstation and raised a hoof to wave at the cheering crowd.
"Thanks everypony, you've been an awesome crowd-"

"Vinyl? Who are you talking to?"

Vinyl Scratch blinked, shook her head and took off her shades.
Lyra was looking at her, she was the one who spoke obviously. Bon Bon blinked at her once, then went back to her hammering.

Rarity and Princess Twilight Sparkle were gone.

"Oops."
Vinyl said, sticking her tongue out.
"Sorry everypony. I think I just got into it too much. 
You know, working at the table too long, producing something awesome.
I must've imagined the cheering crowd."

Lyra gave her a big grin.
"Oh yeah. I guess it might start to feel like working a turntable.
Wait, we can do better than that, we both miss that touch of home too. Hey Bon Bon, let's hear it for DJ PON-3!"

Bon Bon lit up and started cheering. "Woooooooooooo!" 
She changed her voice twice and did it again.
"We love you Vinyl!"

"Aww, you guys. Thanks."

Lyra and Bon Bon shared the moment with her and bent down to their work again, a little happier than when they started.

Vinyl shook her head at herself.
Just me missing the stage. I'll be back there soon. She thought.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as changes were made to the sleeping arrangements Rainbow Dash and the other Pegasi called dibs on the former 'sleeping room'. It wasn't the longest room but it was the tallest and Cloudchaser had made the argument that they should prioritize maneuverability and control over quickly flying in a straight line.

Dash agreed and together they started planning a flight regimen to break in their power armor.

At the moment, however, Rainbow seemed to prioritize numbers over individual wingpower.
In other words, she was trying to convince Fluttershy to join them. 

"I really don't think this is a good idea Rainbow, I mean, I'm nowhere near your league and I can't help but think I'll be holding you all back."

"Pssh, no chance Fluttershy. I mean look at us, easy as cake right guys?"

"Umm..."

At that moment Twilight charged into the loading bay, sliding the doors open with her magic.

"Rainbow, Prince Blueblood's gone missing. Sparkler said he was in his room and now he's gone. Between him and the scavenging crews I need pegasus support out there right now!"

Twilight stopped in her tracks and blinked while Dash had no choice but to give a nervous smile.
"Guys?" Dash asked to the crowd behind her.

She didn't get an answer.
Rainbow Dash sighed deflated and turned to her crew.

Cloudchaser was huffing heavily, her wings flapping like a hummingbird as she tried to keep a meter off the ground. 
Flitter was struggling simply walking, lifting one hoof in front of the other. Without thinking she tried to lift her hoof to wipe the sweat off her forehead and began to tip forward, eyes wide in panic when she realized she'd literally pulled her legs out from under her.

Twilight soon joined them in their worry.
"Any problems girls?"

Rainbow Dash looked over her team. 
Derpy smiled awkwardly at her and sat on her flank heavily before Dash got one word out, 
I'll sit here and do nothing instead of making things worse. her expression read.

Rainbow Dash sighed.
"I want to say we're good but Fluttershy's right. This is a lot heavier than guard armor and my ponies can't even move right.
Flying's out. Sorry Twilight but for a pegasus these armors aren't worth the wingslits you guys altered in for us."

Twilight focused on Flitter and the way she couldn't even move her legs.
"Hmm, I noticed this problem before, try this."
Twilight's horn glowed as she performed a spell on the pegasi's armor.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy both smiled as they began to move freely. 
Flitter saw them and her eyes lit up when she got up on all fours. 

Then Flitter's hooves reached up to undo her hairbow and she toppled over. 
Cloudchaser gave up on her weighted flying and also dropped to the ground although she managed to stay upright. 
Derpy looked about, saw that while everypony moved easier there still was no progress flying and sunk her head a little into her neck armor,  trying to make herself invisible so she wouldn't be called on to try.

"I don't understand." Fluttershy worded as she went over to help Flitter up again.

"Maybe it's just the two of us?"
Dash dropped to her fours in a push-up position. She did a quick ten with her forehooves. No problem. 
She then swapped the weight to her wings, went down once and crashed face-first into the pavement as her wings gave in.

"Ok, it's a start but there's still some bugs."

"I don't understand, everypony should be moving normally now.
The spell worked perfectly for Applejack, Pinkie Pie and... oh there's the problem. I thought I was fixing the backpacks' magic cores but all I really did was empower them with the Elements."

"Big Macintosh didn't seem to have any problems." Fluttershy added quietly.

"I think that says less about the spell and more about Big Macintosh. Lyra's armor works perfectly but I think that's because she has a lot of secondary power sources fueling it and all the devices she's fixing.
If we're going to power this armor we need more magic than just the Elements of Harmony. What to do?"

Derpy stopped sinking her head into her armor and asked: "Aren't we all magical now?"

Twilight arced her brow at Derpy.
"Chaos magic? Discord! You're right, he's in all of us now. If I can fine tune the armor to his magic field, yes, that can work."

"That's great for you guys but what about us? We're still grounded here." Cloudchaser ached out.

"Leave that to the great and powerful Trixie!"

"Trixie? Are you eavesdropping on us?"
Twilight asked suspiciously.

"Of course not. Trixie was simply strolling by when she heard much crashing. Naturally Trixie's curiosity and good nature made her look in to see what was happening and she overheard the rest."

Twilight didn't believe her but held her tongue.
"What did you have in mind?"

"The Great and Powerful Trixie!" she paused for effect to a few rounds of eye-rolling. "...may not be as powerful as she used to be but that doesn't mean she doesn't know the spells she's tried."
Trixie concentrated on Rainbow Dash as her horn glowed to life. Dash yelped with a sense of deja vu and tried to fly away when she realized she was still too heavy.
Trixie's beam hit her. Both of Dash's wings spread and enlarged until they were the same size as an alicorn's. Her feathers' shape and density changed and her wingspan increased.

"Whoa!"
Dash picked up with awkward flaps but found herself airborne.

Cloudchaser ran over to her. "Are you alright Rainbow?"

"Alright? I'm amazing! Wow! I never felt like I was a shortwing before."
Rainbow declared proudly as she lifted off the ground and flew zig-zags all around them.

Trixie smiled and since the test worked perfectly she repeated the spell on the other pegasi.
She leaned over to Twilight. 
"Trixie understands you know gravity spells, Twilight Sparkle. A spell to permanently lighten power armor would be most helpful."

Twilight beamed and subtly accepted the suggestion. Soon Flitter, Cloudchaser, Derpy and even Fluttershy were up in the air (despite the fact that Fluttershy wasn't actually in armor).
"I'd better make a note. Goldwing." The psyber-eagle fired up it's pmenoquils.
"Equestria power armor: Wing enchantment required for pegasus use. If we work together we might be able to enchant the armor to do it automatically, don't you think Trixie?"

"It would save us the trouble but there will be time to work on that later."

"Agreed. Rainbow I need your team out there. Rarity's on the roof with her scope. I need you all to assist her and find him."

Rainbow and Cloudchaser saluted while still hovering in mid-air and the four power armored mares sped out of the room.
Twilight followed them out.

they do not trust you

"Trixie does not deserve to be trusted... yet. But she will get this. Nothing is beyond Trixie."
Trixie answered matter-of-fact.
Then she walked out as well.

"Um... ok."
Fluttershy answered to the empty room, not sure why Trixie said what she did out loud.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sparkler turned another corner, looking into yet another room she'd checked twice before.

we're waiting for you

Something in the back of her mind pressured her, forced her to go forward. 
Hoping, praying that big sissy was just cowering in another corner like he always did.

"Wait a second."
She said aloud.
"Sissy? Praying? That doesn't sound like me and what the hay is prayer?! Something's not right."

the little sissy is next
we hate him
we should leave him to his fate

They were thought but not her thoughts. They were whispers but she didn't hear them.

we're coming

"Twilight!" She yelled just as she turned a corner and found a cowering figure under a blanket.

Sparkler didn't see her but she heard Rose's voice from under the blanket. 
She pulled it off revealing a pony that was fast asleep.
"Celestia, please help me..." Rose sleeptalked.

Sparkler galloped out looking for the princess.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deep in the guts of Trixie's control room the security footage continued.

The Command Throne hummed to life and the images on the screen switched revealing a series of recordings.
The Inquisitorial Rosette glowed in its space, plugged into the console.

But Trixie was still with Twilight.

"Computer. Search, all records marked 'Assassination'." A female voice said.

{Access restricted. Enter codes. Entering codes. Codes accepted, apologies Inquisitor.
Three folders match criteria.}

"Display. Highlight view screen numericals." Each viewscreen flashed a numeral on is surface in electric light.
"Display folders to screens seven, twelve and eighteen. Read table of contents for the shortest entry."

{Screen eighteen, reading: 'Assassination aspects present on objective.}

"Define objective."

{Target: Code-named 'Miasma'. Warp-space celestial solid body presumed fixed in space. Standard one hundred percent Terran gravity standard. Estimated standard Warp travel twelve days to Imperium Space. Coordinates on X Y Z axis relative within the Eye of Terror. Celestial Body presumed to be Daemonic in origin. Possibility of former Eldar maiden world less than thirteen percent. Celestial Body in conflict. Twelve Fallen Chapters observed referenced Eight Hundred Fifty Six Millennium Forty to present date.}

"List current date."

{Nine Hundred Ninety Nine, Millennium Forty-One.}

"Continue."

{Celestial Body presumed to be under direct Daemonic dominion. Specifically Chaos God of Decay.}

"Confirm name."

{Negative. Safety override. Names of all designated higher Daemons are not recorded.}

"Reason."

{All explicit representations of Daemonic entities possess inherent power. Desecration of equipment inherent to recording process.}

"Continue."

{Definition complete.}

"Folder contents."

{One entry: No evidence of Officio Assassinorum personnel on-planet. Signed Inquisitor Lord Arcmillus Hadrian. Countersigned Major Alastor, acting Commanding Officer Cadian 345th, Imperial Guard.}

words have power
say my name 

The pony shook her head and brought a hoof to her eyes, rubbing them free as if the words she imagined and the headache she felt were nothing more than a side-effect of eyestrain.

The screen glowed brightly, reflected in Octavia's eyes.
"Define Officio Assassinorum..."


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Blueblood wasn't far, his armor hadn't been lightened by a gravity spell and his armor would be slow and sluggish until Twilight connected its inert power plant to Discord's magical essence.

He hadn't noticed that the compound was still visible behind him; His ears were full of words he hadn't expected.

It's time you learned where you were born. Up boy, we have six hours of fields to tour and five hours to dusk. 

The voice was commanding and powerful. It's tone was impatient and threatening.
Blueblood knew it well. 
Despite the passage of the years and its owner's passing he could still imagine he heard the old ... stallion as he said the words almost a decade ago.
He winced. He'd intended to say 'the old goat' but he couldn't, found he couldn't think it. 
The stallion he'd grown up 'affectionately' referring to only as 'Sir' still inspired primal reactions.

This is your dominion, these are the lands that will one day bow in your presence and acknowledge you as 'Prince'. This will be your title and it will be your only title. For thousands of years the land has been ruled by the Royal Alicorn sisters and the only title they have ever chosen is 'Princess'. Foals playing childhood games entertain stupid dreams that they are special, that they may one day surpass them and have given themselves other titles, higher titles: Crown Prince, Czar, Dictator, Tyrant, even King. You need only open your eyes to read the stories to see what fate befell them all.

Keep that in mind boy. You are the scion of Unicorn royalty, a bloodline that can be traced back to Princess Platinum herself. Submit, and serve the Princesses. That is the source of your power and authority and do not dare forget it, for the day you do you will find nopony who will submit to and serve you. 

Blueblood looked about him, taking in the desolate surroundings and finding something off in the distance. Something that glowed with a light that dimmed into a different color than all the Warp pink.
"Why must I tour the realm?" He asked aloud as if he were still a colt. 
He trotted ahead towards the light, unaware that he had echoed his childhood question as he revisited the conversation in his head.

Because you are just a Unicorn. You cannot raise the sun and moon, you're not even aware of them. Nor are you aware of the lands they cover and the ponies that live within them. If your power is so limited how can you expect other ponies to know you and serve you? If your vision is so limited then how do you expect to find them? If you neither hold power over them nor exert influence over them then how can you possibly expect to command them?
You must know they exist, you must know where they are and you must venture to their homes. When they know your crown, your title, your name, your visage, your authority - then you can make them understand that their home is actually your fief, their representatives are actually your adjutants and that their lives are in the hooves of ponies that were born to carry their burden. 

"It's my special talent?" 

No boy. This isn't your cutie mark, it's your destiny. And it will remain your destiny so long as you do what you're supposed to. Now rise! 

"Rise and go discover what it is you're supposed to rule over." Blueblood echoed with a tone of finality completely devoid of mocking or defiance. He wasn't parroting his father's words, he believed them. And it was with that resignation that he rose above the hill, looked over his tail to see he was still within sight of the human compound, and made to explore the patch of earth that had rearranged itself into a grotto.

"I shouldn't be here. I've no wife, no son, no successor. No heir to the royal title. I shouldn't be taking this risk..."

"Blueblood..."

A melodic voice called to him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carrot Top bustled nervously. Sparkler ran into her and didn't even notice.

"Oww..."

"Oh. Carrot Top, I'm so sorry."

Carrot Top smiled and dusted herself off.
"It's ok. I'm used to getting run over while I'm at the fridge."

Carrot Top got over to Sparkler and tussled her mane.
"When Dinky was still learning to speak, surprise surprise, some of her first words were muffin."

Despite herself Sparkler smiled.

"And then your momma heard it and she'd come racing into the room and when she didn't see anything on the table there she went to the fridge. And there goes your auntie Carrot Top: over her shoulder, off to a side or just plain trampled underhoof."
Carrot Top stuck her tongue out at Sparkler in a teasing way and despite herself Sparkler laughed.

"Thanks auntie Harvest, I needed that. But now I need to find the Princess."
Sparkler trotted on looking for Twilight more carefully.
She noticed she didn't hear the whispers anymore.

Carrot Top turned back to the larder with a worried expression on her face. 
The storage container looked like her cabinets after Derpy came home.

"I do too, precious." Carrot Top said under her breath.
"We're fine for running water, I don't know why. Regardless, the food supplies aren't going to last..."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Blueblood heard something in the distance, the world was a poor artist's landscape of horrors but this sound he heard, this one thing. it beckoned to him.

His heart skipped a beat when he recognized the voice. It was Princess Celestia.

As he galloped towards her light he heard her voice more clearly. She saw him clearly from within a grotto.

-such a long long way...  from that very first day...
-might grow... might do... been through... 
-me proud of you... 

"Wait, Princess what are you-?"

Celestia's horn glowed and a beam struck him. At once Blueblood was back in the Starscape.
His heart leapt for joy, he was free, they had succeeded, they could get away.

His emotions were shattered when he saw Celestia enter and pass him by with no thought to his presence.
Behind him was Twilight Sparkle, still a unicorn.

"What? What's going on?"

He stood, paralyzed, frozen in place, as Celestia sung a complete ballad to her favorite student and he witnessed Twilight Sparkle's ascension to alicorn. After that, proclaiming her 'princess' was just a formality.

The starscape shattered around him, dissolving into billions of pieces, and when he could see again Blueblood found he was still in the grotto.

Celestia did not look at him with anything like the warmth and affection she had shown Twilight Sparkle.

"You call yourself prince, you insist on it. You believe yourself to be part of Canterlot's elite. The food of the poor. 
What wealth you must have, to sail through the skies on a yacht.
But you're not really a prince are you? I'm your beloved aunt, despite the fact that neither Luna nor I have ever borne any children and have no other siblings? You're really more of a duke but even that sounds empty doesn't it? 
Other princes and princesses have come before. 
You let yourself forget, Blueblood. An Equestrian Prince is not who he was born from or what he owns but what he has done. 
You. Are. Lacking."

With another beam the same taunting ballad echoed in his ears, replaced by a lifetime of images that represented no lofty accomplishments, no great journey. 
And the worst part of it was that the still images of the life they showed were his.

"No, stop it, stop!
I can't take it, I just can't!
Every word is a wound that cuts deep into everything I ever thought and ever hoped to be.
You think I'm not aware, that I didn't notice?
That her journey is one I never started
That I never felt your eyes waiting, watching for something that never happened.
That I've grown in years but not substance, that my actions have been repetitions of the previous pointless minutia, that everything I've lived has been beneath whatever lofty goals you might have set for me. That the only pride in my life is what I feel for myself?"

He was begging for mercy.
Celestia showed him none.

her next beam transported him to a memory where again he was just a colt.

 but dad I-

what did you say!?

"I apologize, Sir. What I meant to say was the local children are engaging in sport. I would like your permission to join them."

"Play with common ragamuffins?"

"Not... play per say. Sport. a chance to..." He thought about the word to use "measure," no that wasn't good, he needed something his father would approve of in context. "hone my skills against them. Some of the ponies are rather good."

young colt there is no point in 'testing' yourself against the common folk for one day you will be a prince. Your superiority is not a matter of question, in years time it will be a fact.

The illusion shattered again and again Blueblood stood, weeping and humiliated.

"Is it a 'fact' now, Blueblood?" Celestia's stern voice demanded.

"You're saying I shouldn't be. 
Well I am. I am proud. I'm a Prince. I will always be a Prince and nothing anypony can say or do will change that. 
I am rich and I'll never be stupid enough to lose it all over anything. I am prestigious, I am desirable, I am privileged, 
I  am  important. I can trace my heritage back fifty generations to the days before when you and Princess Luna bound that brute. My pedigree is unquestionable, proven, and on record to the slightest detail and I am more than capable and talented enough to keep it there. My cutie mark is a compass for good reason. 'Stay the course.' Father always said, and I have. 
Nothing I do will ever match up to the legacy I've inherited, anything I try will be overlooked in the face of what better stallions than I have brought to my name. My burden is not to add, it is to preserve, and I've done so. That is my destiny!"

"A proud defect." She said.

It killed him to hear it.

"A proud little unicorn, with a dead weight on his forehead."

Her magic enveloped him and crushed him to the ground. He didn't even try to resist. 
"This has been your central conflict, you secret shame. Insisting others serve you, work for you, coddle you. 
Because you can't do anything for yourself.
You're a pegasus with defective wings."

"I... I am." He admitted. he was exposed, lay bare for all to see. Nothing was left.

"You've been going at this wrong. All this time you've kept away."
You are beautiful. 

Celestia began to radiate warmth, love and beauty again. Several mare mistresses emerged from the air and surrounded him.
Their every scent and appearance was perfect.

Perfection itself awaits you if you let me help you. 
"Let me help you."

 WORSHIP ME! 

"N-no!"

He pushed away from the mirage before him and saw. His eyes burnt with magic as he pushed away at everything surrounding him. The beautiful ponies that he felt surrounding him were revealed, not as thoughts at the edge of his imagination but as real physical beings, equine only superficially. Their beauty, along with their front legs, vanished into the mist along with the rest of their glamour. In each one's place was left a strange bipedal beast of scaly skin, leathery muscular tails, and long reptilian necks pointed by slim flat heads. Long tongues pointed like daggers flicked out of their jawless, flute-shaped mouths.

The monster that had appeared as Celestia changed as well revealing a gruesome monster Blueblood couldn't believe had once managed to disguise itself as beautiful.
It was a centaur mostly: its hind legs ended in claws like dragons' twisted backwards, its front legs were insect-scale covered legs that ended in hooves with very hairy fetlocks.
A tail rose high into the air like a scorpion's. Hidden inside the brush hair tip Blueblood saw the flash of a stinger as it quivered. The pony shoulders gave birth to a human torso layered with pairs of breasts atop one another. Its fleshy arms ended in scaly claws like a crab's. Atop its human shoulders sat the same elongated, flat head the other disgusting beasts had. Its mane was chitinous plates of armor and a pair of antlers swept back from its head. 
It's oral cavity opened to the same flicking, stabbing tongue.

Blueblood backed away, out of the grotto, his eyes darting back and forth from the Steeds of Slaanesh and their apparent leader, the Fiend.

He looked over his shoulder and jumped aside just in time: The steeds had surrounded him and one had darted its head forward to lick him.

Ironically Blueblood's disgust at their appearance saved him. 
In overreacting to their closeness he avoided the muscle's paralyzing touch.
He got to his feet and drew his weapon from the scabbard on his flank. He pressed the activation stud and the power sword glowed to life.

He swung about him in broad two-hooved strokes but while he discouraged anything from getting too close he knew he wasn't getting anywhere. The beasts were quick and their reflexes were faster than anything he had seen before. His only advantage was the fact that their attacks seemed limited to their tongues. For all that it was clear they were toying with him, prolonging the game to test his reactions. He tried hard not to show fear, not to give these nightmarish beasts that were insinuated their way into his thoughts any satisfaction.
He was beginning to sweat.

The Fiend at last grew tired and bounded forward. It moved slower than the darting steeds but Blueblood recognized that he was hopelessly outmatched against a monster with so many limbs created to kill.
He was at the top of the hill.
Blueblood saw his chance and played his only move: he disengaged the power sword's energy field and shoved with the flat of his blade against the Fiend, catching its claws against its torso and pushed it back with all his might. He grit his teeth: the beast was too heavy for Blueblood to lift off the ground. Instead he engaged in a battle of strength while all four of the Fiend's legs trod into the ground and pushed its way forward. 
It was stronger than him, stronger than any stallion he had ever known and at any moment the two steeds would flank him.

He prepared to release and attempt a sidestep. If he was fast and his timing perfect his riposte might eliminate one of the steeds as it pursued him. He had no chance against the larger daemon, it's reach exceeded his own.

A crimson ray of energy pierced the sky and burnt through the Fiend instantly. 
The laser burnt right through the Fiend's chest and the unsuspecting daemon vanished in an explosion of glowing smoke just as the plaguebearers had.

"We got you!"

Blueblood turned his head in time to see a rainbow-colored flash barrel into the two steeds. 
Dash crossed at full speed, the pair of lightning claws over her front hooves sizzled with a streak like lightning.
She covered ground faster than anything Blueblood had ever seen in Equestria, delivering a clawed right cross at spectacular speed.

He blinked.

The steed of Slaanesh twisted it's body, dropping to the ground even as it angled its head to dart the tongue into Dash's open underbelly. Blueblood realized that even if Dash had the speed these things had the reflexes.

The tongue lapped Dash's armor.

And before she finished her flyby, just as she reckoned the body was beneath her, Dash rolled with her punch in the air and spun sideways into a roundhouse kick that drove her hind leg's close combat hoof into daemon skull. A loud crack filled the air as it vanished into smoke and light.

Her wings flared as she arrested her flight to land in front of the last steed, not even noticing how her power armor had saved her from the Slaaneshi tongue's lethal caress.

Blueblood swung his two-handed blade from behind and the power sword cleaved several inches into the steed's neck until the entire body was vanquished into the Warp.

He panted heavily, unable to hide his exhaustion for the sake of decorum.

"You alright?" Rainbow impulsively asked.

He didn't respond. instead he turned to the distance, to where he believed the first crimson ray of energy had come from. 
On top of the compound lay that mare he had first met so long ago at the Grand Galloping Gala; Rarity was looking through laser viewfinder on the side of the massive Lascannon she was levitating. She seemed to dip her head demurely at him. 
He half expected her to vanish back into Control but instead she turned her scope about, rotating her body slowly in place as her head turned. Surveying for anything for everypony most likely, for other groups that might be out there the same as he had.

"I'm fine. ...thank you."

"Don't mention it." Dash said.
Then she slugged him on the shoulderpads.
"What the hay did you even come out here for?!"

"It was... it was Princess Celestia. I heard her, saw her. They made me see and hear things that weren't real.
It was her..."

Dash looked scared at his answer.
"Let's get you back. Twilight's gonna want to know about these... whatever they were and me and the other flyers have gotta cover ground before we can say we're clear."

"Yes."

He took a step then turned to her before she flew away. 
"You're fast, very fast I mean. I've seen the Wonderbolts race, there's nopony swifter."

He focused on what he noticed, reading the motions, comparing them to his memories dueling Pierce. 
Even the fencer had never reacted to his feints or motions like that.

"But those ...things... are faster in other ways."

Dash's shoulders slumped. She recognized the tone, the fear in Blueblood. She answered as softly as she could: 
"I know. Those things had some amazing reflexes. Tell Twilight but... tell Twilight. She'll know what to do."

He nodded and began galloping back to Control as Dash took to the sky to get a view of the rest of the land.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Sugarcube, are you alright? I mean, I know he's not your favorite pony in the world after everything we've been through but..."

"What? oh... OH!" Rarity blushed trying to understand the context of what Applejack said.

"He was out there all on his lonesome. If we hadn't spotted him... right in the nick of time."

"Yes. believe me yes, I don't want to think about it."
Rarity realized she'd kept secrets from her friends, secrets she hadn't meant to. She'd done so much in Canterlot that particular week before Twilight's birthday and she hadn't come clean about the social events she had stayed to attend, not completely. 

None of her friends knew that she had more than made up for the hurt feelings and bad behaviors of the Gala. She was Princess Celestia's guest, Fancy Pants had all but invested her with his endorsement and patronage. 
The two stallions were, if not close friends then at least amicable. Fancy Pants captained the maiden voyage of Blueblood's yacht after all. She was the new darling of high society and an Equestrian heroine. She and the prince had left the past behind them and as far as she was concerned they got along comfortably with each other now.

But she hadn't told her friends about it and it worried her to think her friends might act as if the friction was still there.
"Applejack, please. Everything is quite well. He and I, it's in the past. We're comfortable where we stand. Please don't worry."

"Alright sugarcube. Let's just put it behind us as well then and get to it with that fancy contraption yer playing with."

"Oh my yes."

Rarity detached the targetter while Applejack sat down to tinker with the lascannon and the bucket load of spare parts they'd brought up to the roof with them. Most of AJ's time was spent trying to figure out the gauges on the lascannon's power cell and fixing the ones that didn't so much as move.

Out of the corner of her eye she spied Rarity. 
It wasn't as if she was suspicious of her friend, far from it. It was just the fact that, of all of Rarity's friends, Applejack had been the only one to experience a taste of Blueblood's loutish behavior at the Gala. 
The only other thing she knew about the stallion were his words to Celestia before they were all dragged into this mess:
a brace of the bravest and mightiest stallions in the land 

His first instinct was to throw other ponies at the problem. Applejack was trying to be fair but found herself worried. She and her friends had managed so much together before, what was so different now?

She realized what it was. She trusted her friends unquestioningly. They'd earned it.
The Princess was asking her and her friends to put their faith in and work together with another, larger group of ponies, ponies she knew but had never relied on.
Her Element was Truth; how could she determine the truth when she was so ignorant of everything around them?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Blueblood entered Control and went to Cheerilee. The Princess Twilight Sparkle 'was busy' at the moment. 
He felt a pang at his chest and a twitch in his eye but he did not question it.
He wasn't  that  kind of Prince. The alicorns held true power, true obligation in Equestria. 
His obvious question of 'with what?' would be met with the equally obvious answer 'with everything'. Every weapon, every armor, every science, every technology, every foodstuff, every resource, every body, every symbol, every risk, every possibility...
Every course of action was on her shoulders now.

He found he did not envy her burden. Hers was the true leadership. 
There was precedent for the situation he found himself in: In the face of harsh realities it was his royal duty to present a unified front and agree with her entirely. Blindly if need be.

He related to Cheerilee the details about the daemons and how they had attempted to seduce him. 
He left out no detail, describing how they had appeared to him and attempted to goad him then tempt him with his heart's desire.

Cheerilee blinked and her mouth gaped a little at his speech. She licked her dry lips and hustled to write everything down. 
Between the two of them they composed a sketch of the daemon types to add to Twilight's growing beastiary even as Cheerilee looked into his eyes, trying to peer into the heart of the stallion that had confided that his heart's greatest wish was the earn the apparently withheld admiration of his Aunt.

His obligations to Cheerilee finished, Blueblood entered the armory where Lyra and Bon Bon were hard at work.

"Heya Prince, anything we can do for you? How's the gear handling?" Lyra asked.

He dropped the bolter at their hooves and made a show of relinquishing his ammunition as well. 
In the heat of the moment he hadn't even remembered to grab it.
"These... do not suit me. I have wasted too much of their reserves needlessly. It is time I admitted this is not within my reach and find another way. Is there anything else you can offer me?"

The two mares blinked at each other before turning back to him.
"Was there anything wrong with the sword?" Bon Bon asked.

"No. It was quite satisfactory."

He explained his fight as well as Rarity and Rainbow Dash's intervention. 

Bon Bon looked thoughtful. 
"Honestly it sounds perfect. You can fence with it and wield it at range with your magic." 
Nopony noticed when Blueblood grimaced, 
"I'd rather you not give up on the thought of gunfighting but if you're sure there's not much more we can offer you."

Lyra crooked her head then added "I think I know what you're missing."

She went to a pile and brought out a modified piece she'd packed as 'replacement' weapons for the group in case their first ones were damaged.
"A holdout weapon. You don't have close combat hooves and to be fair I don't think they'd be what you're looking for. But if your sword is up in the air, caught or busy it's good to have an alternative."

Her power fist and a mechadendrite fiddled around with his front right hoof and slid the device over it. Cabling snaked out from the  device to the ports on his power armor. Lyra rotated it around his hoof armor a few more times before engaging the devices clamps and soldering it. Blueblood set his hoof down.
"That should do it. You heard me when I was explaining how these work right?"

"Yes. This will serve most satisfactorily. Um, thank you, uh..."

"Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings."

"Miss Heartstrings. My thanks."

He left the room.

"Are you sure you don't want the matched set?" Lyra called after him to no response.

"Lyra-" Bon Bon whined to her, a little annoyed.

Lyra blushed. "I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Every day at Canterlot there was some new filly that heard rumors or read the news stories and dreamed of meeting  the  Prince Blueblood. I never thought I'd ever talk to him like an equal."

Bon Bon's eyes narrowed, looking for the tell-tale signs of a crush but no, all Lyra had was the smile and embarrassed blush of a filly who got to meet a real-life celebrity.
"Oh Lyra." Bon Bon rolled her eyes, smiling.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, hello." Blueblood said as he entered the armor storage room. 
Derpy and Sparkler were busy but apparently finished. Sparkler looked, strange. Something about her expression looked off. 
She turned to look at him.

"That's the last of this one. I'm gonna go bring in another one of those crates, see if we can find more of the stuff we need here." Derpy said.

"Momma let me help you." Sparkler replied, eying the stallion as she did.

Either Derpy was oblivious or she pretended not to notice. 
"Don't you worry muffin, this old mare's managed her fair share of shipping crates and this'll be no harder than any old piano." 
She hovered over to the doorway, brushing a little too close to Blueblood who hadn't realized he was in the way.

Derpy giggled softly. 
"Excuse me" she said and squeezed her way through, still flapping with her new wings to get reacquainted with indoor flight and confined spaces.

She left the two there awkwardly, alone but with the promise that she'd be back in there very soon. 

Unusually, Blueblood was the one to attempt to break the silence. "So... anything interesting you found out... about the armor?"

Sparkler looked about her, clearing up the mess, putting packing and storage materials back into containers and crates while sorting out working and damaged spare pieces as she could. "A bit yeah."

He looked around, noticing the particularly damaged sections of what had been registered as the armor belonging to the captain of the Space Marine humans. "It's quite ornate. Beautiful, in its own way."

"Yeah." Sparkler agreed, trying not to look at him directly. 
"The... intricate armors, the really ornate ones. All the extra layers and such do more than make them look pretty. Thicker armor, a lot of extra plating, the broader coverage. Some of them of them end up being a lot tougher for it."

He nodded, thinking she wasn't really looking at him. "Would... welding just any scrap of this material do it? In bulk I mean."

"It should. I think the suits can carry a bit more weight before they're overburdened."

He finally decided to comment on the room's other main feature: a panel on the wall had been removed, exposing the magic conduits within it. There was energy, humming and flowing just behind and underneath the surface of every deck and wall around them. Cables had been jury-rigged to a half dozen power plants. Tools and torches and other junk piled up around the area. 
Most of it was a glowing sparking mess but a few of the devices showed promise of charging or starting without permanent loss.

Blueblood looked at the panel, seeing his reflection staring at him in the shiny metallic surface.
"This is the same kind of metal... 'plasteel' as the armors use, I think. Do you... need this?"

Sparkler looked at him unsure of what he meant but decided whatever his task or business was it wasn't damaging to her. 
"No, not really. We're using this room's power not the metal. Go ahead if you think somepony could use it for scrap or practice or... barricades or whatever. You can take those tools if you want. I've got others, enough I mean."

He nodded and opened the doorway, throwing the tool belt over his back, fitting the torch into one of the pockets and pushing the panel of metal out with both hooves.

Derpy came back pushing a huge crate that only slid across the floor because of how clean it was. 
"Sing out sweetie, I can't see from this side."

"That's good momma. We can tear it open and see if there's more we can do now."

"Was the Prince ok, Star?"

"He's fine momma... he's just fine."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In empty room Blueblood finally sat and sulked. It had taken him several tries but he'd finally found a space he could use as his own. He lay the panel at an angle against the wall and produced the largest set of cutters he had with him. Gradually, through cutting, clipping and the occasional softening of an area through the application of superheated prometheum he had transformed a section of wall into several bucket's worth of scrap metal plates.

He took the panel he had been working on, applying the torch liberally to the edges as he melted and cooled the metal. The sharpness of the edges dulled and rounded, at last he set it down to cool and focused his hoof on the bits he had left. 
The time passed quickly, he was too motivated, too enraptured in his work to notice. 
He took the last material, a length of elastic cord he had retrieved from some articles of clothing, and looped it through the proper locations.

Blueblood stared his reflection in the eyes, forcing himself not to blink.
He set down the metal plate, molded and reshaped into a mask, and set it down over his face securing the straps. 
The plasteel shined in the reflected light.
His mane fell over the metal in sections, camouflaging the differences between the mask and the armor, hiding the gap that his horn protruded from.
He raised his right hoof and his magic pressed the activation stud. Four blades shot out from the lightning claw attachment Lyra added to his hoof.

Blueblood stood there for a while, looking at himself, breathing heavily, trying to recover his nerve. He focused on his reflection, not on himself but on the pony in front of him, the armed and armored stallion. His mind turned to the rest of the scrap plasteel. He would be working it, melting it, fusing it. Carefully so as not to damage or block any of the important sockets or device panels he needed to leave access to. Amethyst Star's research into the Marine's power armor suggested the most powerful grade they had was the aegis, or failing that artificer armor. The scriptures suggested that it was only through loving experimentation, repair and aggregate to an existing suit that an armor was elevated to the status of such a relic, so Blueblood decided he should begin the task. He had the time. And he had the need for some great task to keep him from his thoughts.

He spoke at his reflection and his reflection echoed back to him behind a covered face with eyes that seemed very alive, far more alive than he had seen in years.
"You are mighty... I am mighty. I will not serve. I will not serve and I am not afraid."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That night Twilight had a hard time of it.
Everypony was in attendance. She was going to speak.

Ponies had heard the voices, Sparkler in particular had voiced worries.
Everypony was scared.

When they saw Prince Blueblood come out and stand behind Princess Twilight's side like a bodyguard, when they saw his beautiful face hidden completely beneath a silver metal mask with only the narrowest slits for his eyes, everypony trembled.

"Thank you for coming everypony. I think I should get this over with. by now you've all heard rumors. It's best I tell you, they're true.
Something has been whispering at us in the dark."

Twilight waited a few moments for her words to sink in and everypony to calm down again.

"From what I can tell our shield worked. These voices aren't real, or at least not physical. They're mental. Something out there is looking for us, and now it appears they've found us. We're safe for the moment but I can't say for how long. For that reason we're abandoning this planet as soon as possible. Fortunately, not everything is against us."

Pinkie Pie entered the room and shared her haul; a sketch of locations she'd scouted with Imperium casualties.
By her counts they'd have four more Space Marine suits and a dozen Sororitas armors. 
Rainbow Dash's team would retrieve them at first light. Between the two Twilight was confident they could outfit the rest of her friends.

"Our only hope for escape involves mastering teleportation spells for interstellar distances, the creation of warp portals, or the remote chance that we can find an Imperial vessel making planetfall. I don't need to tell you all the risks involved with each plan. There is, however, one discussion I think we've been avoiding and we feel alright because we've kept away from the issue. And it's a hard one because despite my brother's protests none of us present are Royal Guard.
We aren't like these Marines. We aren't tyrants, maniacs or monsters. But we're also not soldiers or warriors. We aren't fanatics who defend what we believe in whether it's right or wrong. We aren't even carnivores; it's never been in any  pony's nature and I hope it never will be. We should never have to kill anypony else just to survive."

"But there's no denying it. We're not home anymore. We're in a universe where the laws aren't like our own, where people aren't like ours, and where defending everypony else doesn't mean building armor or having spears or even creating a magic shield around everything. It means going out and finding those enemies, and killing them."

Twilight swallowed hard. What was it the others did? That's right, they made euphemisms. 'Frag', 'neutralize'. They focused on the places, positions. 'The area's been secured'. 
She could see how the words would be used even as she failed to realize why they would be necessary. Men were meat-eaters: they regularly killed things without a thought in order to ensure their own survival. It was their nature. 
Why, then, the need for the oxymorons? Why the need to deny their nature even as great necessity forced them act according to it? 
So many things to learn, so much confusion. The princess thought maybe now she was able to emphasize with why so many of these poor humans turned to such extreme selfishness and madness.

"I... I've never killed anything. And I don't want to now. We've always been able to work out a solution, agree to disagree and move our separate ways, and in the worst cases reform, expel or banish the worst of the creatures we've had to face. That isn't going to be an option. Our magic isn't supreme here. Our power isn't enough. And there isn't a single leader we can stop to make it all better. We're going to have to go through a lot of people and some of them are going to be as bad as anything we've ever feared. And we're going to have to shoot. They won't retreat, they won't give up, and we can't intimidate them with an overpowering show of force. We don't have it."

"I never imagined I'd be here asking you to do this. But I am, because I have to. I have only a slight idea about where we're supposed to go and what we'll have to do when we get there, but I know we'll have to do what we never wanted each step of the way. With the pull of every trigger and the push of every hilt. So I'm asking, not as your princess but as a fellow pony: are you with me?"

"Stop saying that!"

The outcry had been so loud, the silence in the room had been as deep as the respect they all bore the princess, that for a moment nopony believed that they had heard it.
Not even Amethist Star believed it.
But she had screamed.

Her heart beat so loudly it filled her ears.

Derpy looked scared and worried at the same time. "Sparkler-".

Hearing Derpy's voice was all the strength she needed to finish speaking her mind.
"Stop saying we have a choice, that you're asking us. 

You're not; you're telling us because we're stuck with this. We didn't choose to come here, Discord snapped his fingers and we were here. Heroes of destiny, chosen by fate to fight alongside the legendary Elements of Harmony. 

There isn't a choice. We have to be the ones to save Equestria and to do it we have to fight through a lot of people, most of whom are evil there's no arguing that. And we aren't just going to have to fight them, we have to make sure for our safety's sake that we kill them. We have to come with you to the end because we don't know when we're supposed to do whatever it is we're supposed to do. Whatever stupid thing 'destiny' has in mind for us.

And you stand there and tell us we have a choice when there's no way we can go back home, no way we can stay here, and no way to go with you without doing this."

"No Amethyst, you may all be here for a reason but you do have a choice. Fluttershy-"

The yellow pegasus retreated in her place as everypony stared at her. Twilight used her magic to strap a pistol to her belt, plasma by the looks of it, before loading her with the kit of the late medics and apothecaries.

As she finished Goldwing perched on Fluttershy's shoulderplate and started drawing a diagram. 
The first picture showed the Narthecium on her right forehoof. All of its 'specialist' functions had been removed; the Reductor was pointless as ponies had no progenoid glands to extract. The Carnifex was torn out: Twilight made it clear that under no circumstances was a pony to ever be euthanized. 
In its place the eagle installed a compact lascutter that would serve in a pinch as a hold out weapon.

Twilight continued. "Fluttershy like many of you would rather not be here. And I know she can't bring herself to harm anyone even under the worst circumstances. I don't know that she can kill someone. I don't think so, but I don't know. 
And that goes for all of you. I don't know if you can do it and that's why this is so hard."

"It's easy for me to ask, even order Fluttershy to carry medical supplies, for Rarity to fashion armor, for Vinyl to craft sonics and Big Mac to lug shields so heavy they can cave a pony's head in. And you've done it all without asking a word or making one complaint. But I can't order you, I can't even ask you, to use them."

"You are all the bravest, kindest, most loyal ponies I've ever known. You've shown such courage. I know you'd give your lives for your friends. And that's why it's so hard in this world that's so backwards. I'm not asking you to die for your friends, I'm asking you to kill for them. To look another intelligent creature in the eye and do something not for their own good but for ours. Because we can't help them. Because we have to do this. Because we have to save our home because if we don't it'll turn into a world no different than this one. Not 'might', 'will'."

Amethyst grit her teeth, trying to find her words. 
"No! It doesn't work like that. It's wrong! This is wrong! You're not some ravenous dragon or monster, you're an alicorn princess! Princesses are about love, kindness, goodness, responsibility... anything  but this! You're crossing into another world we don't belong to and have nothing to do with and you're telling us we're not here to help them or save them but to... to... to kill them by the hundreds."

Raindow took issue. "Wait one minute. Are you saying she wants  to be here? Or us? Well we don't, none of us do. You didn't see what we did, Sparkler, didn't live it. There's a hundred tough guys put to rest behind those two doors and half of 'em are nightmare versions of the other half. It can happen to ponies. I'm not gonna sit around and let it happen again!"

Amethyst put her muzzle right up to Dash's. "Princess Celestia summons anypony she wants, pulls them away in secret, gives them weapons and armor and ask them to do things nopony would consider even in their worst nightmares, all because some horrible magic will possess them to do exactly that? News flash, you aren't stopping it, from where I stand it's already happening."

Everypony looked aghast at the thought. Twilight turned to her friends.

Cheerilee looked deflated. 
"This book... the infantry's primer: it lists prohibitions and punishments for a huge number of 'crimes'. 
I didn't understand most of them at first. But the more we see and hear, the more we're forced to consider. 
Sparkler thinks this isn't self-defense, what she's describing the humans call 'murder'."

They heard the alien word for the first time in their lives and for reasons they didn't understand it felt familiar, as if pieces to the puzzle that represented life had been missing and they found themselves looking at the full image. 
There were things hidden between the everyday actions they took, actions, ideas that required only a tiny leap of understanding. One small jump and they were in a world they never knew, where living things died and the peace or tragedy of it was lost because it was so commonplace it robbed all sense of depth to it. A world where one pony killing another for no reason at all was no different from ripping a dandelion from the earth to eat.

Carrot Top broke the silence. "We... Applejack grows apple trees and the fruit ripens and drops and we eat it. It doesn't hurt the apples, or the tree, it's just how they grow."

"No Golden. They're not fruit, they're not plants, and they're not critters either. 
If things were different they wouldn't be our pets, they'd be our equals. 
I'm not asking you to pull the trigger yourself if you can't. Cheerilee has done an amazing job translating these tomes; there'll be a lot more we need to read on the fly, I'm sure of it. There's ammo to reload, and armor to fix, and medicines to administer, and maps to read and shields to wield and if nothing else stuff to carry. I'm not implying guilt Amethist. I'm asking you to help however you can; this isn't your responsibility, it's mine. And I'm so, so grateful to all of you for helping me carry this burden any way you can."

The speech ended quickly and everypony dispersed. They spread out into their little groups and tried to decide what to do with each other. Not every pony agreed with Twilight but every pony felt they didn't have an idea what else they could do.

Derpy went over to Sparkler, huddled in a corner.
"Muffin..."

Sparkler exploded into tears and hugged her tight.
"We're stuck here Momma, we're stuck here with monsters. And that's bad enough. 
I don't want to become one too."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Twilight Sparkle."

"Trixie, I'm sorry but I really do need some sleep. Even an hour..."

In response Trixie put on a brief light show that frankly dazed Twilight for it's detail.
And it's content.

Big Macintosh held up his shields gallantly as he was hammered by a dozen shots that ricocheted off in bright sparks. The stallion held up for a long time before a series of shots impacted with his skull, splitting his head into sections and dropping him. His body stayed upright for a few moments to absorb several more shots but soon enough his body and armor became disfigured by what appeared to be micro-explosions. His corpse fell over exposing the ponies behind him and then these too were mowed down mercilessly by the anonymous fire.

The hologram shifted and this time a helpless Fluttershy was about to be attacked by a hulking figure when Rainbow Dash dove between them and parried its blows, punching it aside like a boxer before turning to deliver a powerful kick with her rear legs that knocked it away. Not far enough apparently, the shape stood up and what was clearly a Chaos Space Marine dove forward and punched a set of lightning claws straight into Rainbow Dash's chest cavity.
She gurgled blood from her mouth before being thrown aside, out of the way. A pair of servo-creatures open fire with miniature lasguns as a trembling, teary Fluttershy reached for her pistol when the Marine swatted the animals aside and stabbed Fluttershy as well.

Twilight turned away even before Trixie allowed the image to dissolve.
"We know evil, you and I. You have studied it, I have lived it. The great and powerful Trixie does not claim the corruption of the  Alicorn Amulet to be equal to the depravity that now assails us... but we know this will be the result. If we charge defensively, if we haven't the heart, soul or stomach to make the killing blow... we will be lost. They deserved to know that truth, Twilight Sparkle. 
And more than that, they need it."

"I can't do that Trixie. Amethyst is right. If I tell them how horrible everything is and then ask them to fight it to the death I leave them with no choice. I can't leave them open to such hopelessness, despair. This evil isn't a person Trixie, it's a state of mind, a disease. if I let them... if I make them believe they have no choice in this, that this is a part of their destinies, then I yield them to the same despair that created this world, this reality in the first place." 

"I can't force them to do this. if they can't be at peace with themselves and what they do here then it's their right to choose not to do it."

"Twilight?"

The two unicorns turned. They hadn't expected an audience but Trixie's light show caught attention anyway.
Cheerilee and Rainbow Dash both stood in the doorway. They had seen it all.

"Trixie, please tell Rainbow what you told me earlier when you prepared that presentation," Cheerilee said.

Rainbow Dash was snorting heavily, not yet angry, but what she had seen got to her.
She barely listened when Trixie spoke.

But she did listen.

"The images I conjured are a slight retooling of a history device on this vessel. The humans in the imagery did not refuse to fight back, they simply were unable to. Most of their... 'ammunition' I think you called it, Cheerilee, had been exhausted. Their weapons are not the same as the ones we have modified to our use. What we have comes from the larger, armored, adapted humans we found here that came after.  Those  humans fought relentlessly, fearlessly, and they were still slaughtered though they seemed to have taken down their foe with them. I don't mean to be cruel, but Twilight asked me for my opinion on what would happen. This is it."

For a long time Dash was ominously silent. "Bring it up again." Was her only reply.

Trixie replayed the image but this time Rainbow Dash overlapped with her holographic self and countered the Marine personally. This time the real Dash shot out her retractable lightning claws before she attacked. 
The other ponies backed away to give the pegasus space but Trixie kept her illusion up. 
With incredible speed Dash hopped into the air and drove her claws down onto each of the elbow joints of the Marine. 
Trixie estimated on the fly and the limbs fell away to the perfect deep strikes. With a flap of her wings Dash shifted her momentum and performed a backflip that sent her rear hooves up into the Marine's helmet. 
The Marine fell to the ground and Dash pounced onto its stomach, keeping her claws unsheathed.

"Is that it?" She asked.

Trixie replied with a stern look in her eye. 
"No. I saw several videos and they survived amputations of this type. Some were still able to fight."

Dash put her claw to the chest.

"They've survived those as well. The abdominal armor is very strong and their bodies are resilient. You must go for the head."

With a snort Dash executed the phantasm with a clawed jab to the head.

"Rainbow-" Twilight began.

"I don't know if that's the truth, Twilight, if it's what going to happen. I don't know if that's what everypony needs to see. 
I only know it's all  I  needed to see. If you're not tired and can make more of those I'd appreciate it Trixie. 
We need to see how these guys fight."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dash and Trixie left the room together, leaving Cheerilee and Twilight to their thoughts.
"Twilight?"

"Yes Cheerilee. Do you have an answer for me?"

"The Emperor protects, but we must protect the Emperor. -Book of the Sororitas.
Every day countless millions are sacrificed so that he may never truly die. -Book of the Astropaths.
He is the ruler of humanity by right of birth and the master of the galaxy by the might of his armies. -Guardsmen.
Without him nothing is possible, the Imperium ceases to be and will be consumed by that which threatens it. -Guardsmen.
Put your faith in the Emperor; beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic, the traitor. -Ecclessiarchy preachings.
Humanity's great reward in this struggle is its continued existence. -Ecclesiarchy preachings.
Men die so that mankind endures. -The Lord Inquisitor's personal journal."

"The Emperor protects." Twilight answered, following the natural progression of Cheerilee's speech to anticipate the next line.

"I could have gone on without repeating that verse."

"But it would follow eventually."

"Yes, I think it would."

"The lesson eventually circles back to the same points."

"If we take what it preaches as truth, yes."

"And at the center of every circle is the Emperor. In the greater scheme of things nothing else matters and everyone who obeys him may or may not receive their reward or feel his protection pursuant to forces completely outside their power to affect or know."

"I think it must follow."

"And is there any way in which this is significantly different from what the chaos gods do and demand?"

Cheerilee looked over her notes, re-read the passages, and giving up and tossing them aside reviewed some parts of the text she had left book markers in. There had been a sense of love, of faith, of trust, of the anticipation and expectation of some sort of reward or peace to be found in adherence to this doctrine. But she found nothing. No words existed to give reassurance even though the text itself was filled with the wording of a story that implied some form of salvation. 
Going through the passages she didn't find them. 
All she found was a feeling that if she could go back to the right area, find the right page she had obviously misplaced, she would find the promise that would justify such selfless devotion.

As she looked and felt Twilight waiting for her, watching her, Cheerilee stopped herself and wondered: had she really read such words, or was it something she had inserted into the text herself? She had spent hours, she had written the texts as they jumped at her. Nothing she had read suggested what she was looking for, so why was she looking for it?

She put down the tome, looked up at Twilight and answered:
"I don't know."

Twilight gave Cheeriee a warm smile, meaning her best to reassure the schoolteacher not that she had done her best, but that she had done what she asked.
"I know this is hard for you accept Cheerilee, this book is very well written. The words, the imagery, are very powerful. I see a lot of dedication in it, and power, and fear. But there's no love in it, no warmth, no tolerance, and no friendship. And I see no difference between this god or these gods and what happens to those who love them."

She turned to her.
"Do it. Remove the effigies; carve them off or smoothe them into the plate if you have to. Burn off the scrolls, the wax seals and the scented oils. Leave nothing that isn't the machine. Sometimes an armor must be just an armor and we can't march under any banner but our own."

> Chapter Eleven - From the Depths arose a Mighty Beast
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

MIASMA
FIVE HUNDRED KILOMETERS SPINWARD FROM REPENTIA POINT

The conflict was open. 
Miasma was a gateworld to the deeper sanctum's of the Warp, one of the few known points through which one could enter the Garden of Nurgle. This was a long-standing conflict and the Chaos Gods were content to leave the unending struggle in the hands of lesser Daemons, those limited shards of their essence that had been severed and sent forth to fight their battles mostly in the physical universe. Typically enthralled to or supported by Traitor Space Marines or sizable groups of human cultists.

It was a day for exceptions. The first was Nurgle's choice for champions.
Plaguebearers are not pieces of the God of Decay's limitless essence, they are mortal souls consumed and corrupted by Nurgle's Rot.
Deceased, ascended to Daemonhood, such semantics were irrelevant to them. 
Two dozen of them stood their ground against the incoming Slaaneshi army.

The second exception was in the invading army. Not in its composition, but in its size.
The center of the Plaguebearer formation was mowed down under grinding axles.
The device was known as a Hellflayer of Slaanesh and it wasn't so much a chariot as a steed-pulled thresher with a platform for a rider placed as an afterthought.

A phalanx of Seekers trampled the field in the Hellflayer's wake, Daemonettes mounted atop daemonic steeds identical to the ones Rainbow Dash and Blueblood had managed to vanquish. As their serpentine bodies thundered through them the steeds' snouts darted forward, their tongues flicking at the Plaguebearers. The mixture of ecstatic toxins on a steed's tongue would be enough to leave a mortal in a coma, deathlike in every way.

The Plaguebearers were immune to such things. Not-so-much the weapons of the Seeker riders who tore at them with their elongated claws as they passed. The foot troops soon joined in, legions of Daemonettes. Their claws and talons tore through the lumbering horned cyclopses dropping limbs and heads along with miles of intestines. 

Something had provoked she who thirsts. Something had drawn Slaanesh's attention. Something had vanquished three of its beasts and sent them back to the deeper recesses of the his sacred pastures.

One of the beast's essence had a taste on its tongue, the taste of power armor. Commonplace enough but under the surface was an aftertaste, a flavor the likes of which nothing within the Empyrean could match.
It tasted of power, magic. And love. Love that resembled but could not match anything the Prince of Excess had experienced in millennia. 

He took the essence of the vanquished steed into itself even as he allowed the other steed and the Fiend to rematerialize as their original selves. Her orders to them and every contingent of Noise Marines and Emperor's Children within the system were clear:

"BRING ME THIS NEW EXPERIENCE."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight sighed. The mental and emotional stress of the last few days had weighed heavily on her.
While the voices had been silent she knew full well that the source was still present.

She saw it every time they tried to plant a morsel of food and found it did nothing.
Perhaps the food was without spore or seed, perhaps the soil was inert.
Even worse, perhaps the soil was full of things that shouldn't be allowed into their food supplies and the Sororitas' song alone kept that clump of dirt inert.

Everything they did reflected that.

Currently Sparkler, Lyra and Roseluck accompanied her. 
Lyra had given herself a small break from hard labor: her current creation was a simple metal cart with jagged plasteel wheels.
She avoided whistling but she definitely trotted along happily. Her servo-arms had done most of the labor building the cart, fixing its design, greasing its axles and loading its current cargo.

That cargo was the reason for their current outing; that, and the need to test their armor and familiarize themselves with their surroundings. 

Lyra stopped and the cart stopped with her.
"This a good spot Princess Twilight?"

Twilight looked around. The space was out in the open, perfectly visible from all corners.

"No. We're too exposed here. We're going to be out here digging for a while, I don't want to leave any openings."

Lyra nodded and put the cart up again. Rose followed close behind, trailing her eyes to the ground for any unusual movement.

Twilight sighed.
She's been nervous on the ground ever since the Garden.

Twilight's eyes crossed to Sparkler.
There were issues to mend there as well.

"Amethyst Star, do you think you could test the equipment?"

"You don't need to be formal, Princess. Everypony calls me 'Sparkler', I'm used to it. And it's faster to say 'Sparkler' too.
I don't mind because out here we need to be quick."

Twilight nodded.

Sparkler felt the silence uncomfortably.
"What message would you like me to deliver?"

"Confirm our location, we're going to cross a few hills so we're hidden while we dig."

Sparkler adjusted the dials on her power plant without hesitation. Lyra's research had revealed that suits of Space Marine armor were far superior to ordinary power armor, including the armor of the Sisters, because of the type and number of integrated systems within it. 
Much of the information she had unearthed had disturbed her (for starters Lyra regretted that she could answer Carrot Top's question of why they seemed to never lack for water), but other bits had proven useful.
Each suit contained a personal vox set. Twilight's magic, for all its benefits reducing weight, supplementing power plants and integrated motion awareness that allowed them to move int heir suits as gracefully as an Astartes did, could never replicate every benefit provided by the black carapice and the helmets they couldn't transform..
For that reason Twilight turned to Lyra and Vinyl and together the two of them tackled the problem through technology:
The vox speakers were sensitive only to noises of a certain volume. A single ear bud provided them with access to their communications channel. 

Twilight had understood immediately that such a system if limited to the devices within each suit, while powerful, would be potentially very limited. For this reason Twilight was quick to connect their suits' devices to the Repentia Point network
and because that would not be available to them forever she assigned her research crew to produce a portable version.
She was surprised when Goldwing quickly found one.

The vox system was Guard issue and not particularly powerful. It was, however, a step up. The power source was jury-rigged and hardwired into a Space Marine backpack. The device itself was a small block with a gyroscopic radar dish on top of it.
Both were carried on opposite sides of Sparkler's power armor like saddlebags.
"Understood Princess. R.P. this is Sparkler, do you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, kshhh, Over."

"Pinkie, please put Applejack on the line."
Sparkler said in a tired voice.

"Okie-dokie!"

"AJ here. What you got?"

"Squad is advancing, hills. Confirm."

"Gotcha. Y'all headed to the ruins of that Dropped Pod out there?"

"Maybe. Will call in again once we begin working. Confirm coverage?"

"Sit a spell..."

Sparkler waited. In a few seconds Applejack got back to her.

"Negative. Rarity says she doesn't have line of sight. I've got Cloudchaser and Trixie as quick response on stand-by in case y'all hit trouble."

"Rainbow Dash isn't available?"

"She's... aw heck, I'll tell y'all later. Anything more I can do fer ya Sparkler?"

"Negative. Sparkler out."
Sparkler adjusted the knobs again and turned to Twilight.
"Test complete, your highness."

Twilight nodded, even as she winced internally.
"I heard every word. It looks good."

"Princess, why is Trixie on rapid-response duty?"
Sparkler couldn't keep herself from asking.

"Trixie's been working on teleportation. I don't know that she can get here immediately but it's an alternative to a pegasus if the skies turn hostile."

That was the sort of redundancy and paranoia Sparkler could appreciate.
"I know what you mean. I feel that way about using this 'vox' stuff. It's not ours, we're not experts on it and our enemies are Space Marines who've used it for years. I don't know that we can avoid everything but could we at least agree not to say everything we don't need to if we can help it?"

Twilight considered that.
"You're right. This is exactly the sort of situation where someone could ambush us because they know we're headed towards the Drop Pod and we'll be crossing the hills soon.
Everypony stop."

Lyra and Rose stopped in their tracks

"Turn 180. We're going that way. Sparkler, get me R.P."

"You're on."

"AJ? We're almost there. We're going there the same way Pinkie Pie controls herself in a candy shop."

"Pinkie? Are you saying-"

"No, I'm not saying it. But you still know what I mean. About sixty hooves in the direction of Blueblood's corner." 

"Gotcha sugarcube. Holler if you need anything. AJ going quiet."

Sparkler nodded and Twilight was no longer broadcasting.
"If we're being spied on that'll give us a breather as they head to the wrong target.
Rose, keep an eye out in the direction of the wreckage.
Lyra, sorry but you'll be doing all the digging while the rest of us keep guard."

"I was planning on doing that anyway." Lyra beamed.

"Do you think it'll be enough?" Rose asked.

"We've been pretty naive up til now. If this is the one time then I think we can get away with it once."

Lyra stopped and looked to Twilight.
She nodded and Lyra got busy setting her power fist and a pair of mechadendrites to work, snapping off two sections of the cart's plating to dig in the soft sand.
A deep trench was dug and Lyra began the real work, burying the bodies of the traitor Marines from the compound.
In light of the whispers and the dark power of the Chaos gods Twilight had seen no choice but to bury them all far away from their presence.

Throughout the work Rose kept to one side and Twilight to the other. 
Sparkler didn't have much option than the stand near the princess.

Twilight appreciated that Sparkler's chosen path meant she carried no weapons and would be completely dependent on others to protect her when things got dangerous.
No, that's not completely right. Twilight thought.
All Sparkler asked was that she not have to kill anyone. There's other ways to protect yourself.

"You know Sparkler, when I met Trixie I don't think she had the first idea about teleportation. It's not an easy spell, mind you, but there's other things ponies do that serve as a basis for future spells."

Sparkler was going to make an angry retort but stopped herself. Twilight was only being nice, maybe making conversation.
She could engage her civilly. 
"Yes, I remember the same lessons from magic kindergarten. What did you have in mind?"

"I was curious if you'd ever taken the time to practice force field spells."

"Oh."
Sparkler was caught off guard. She hadn't considered the idea.
"I... I can't say that I have really."

"I know it's maybe a bit presumptuous to say, and you might not want to hear it from me of all ponies, but I was thinking about you and I thought, if you weren't opposed, I'd be happy to help you train the spell. I know you don't want to hurt anypony but I can't tell you the number of times knowing I could conjure a good shield made me feel safer even if there was nothing I could do about everything around me."


They continued talking that way for the half hour it took Lyra to dig and set down the rest of the bodies.
Twilight gave Rose her orders and Rose turned her weapon on the corpses, a full-sized flamer.
When they were charred Lyra scooped the pile of sand onto them and covered the trench completely.

Rose bathed every surface of Lyra's cart with fire as Twilight said a few final words.
"We commend you to the earth and wish you peace. We hope some way, somehow, you all might redeem yourselves and get away from the mistakes you made in life and end up... well, better than what this nightmare place has to offer. Goodbye."

Twilight and the others finished paying their respects and made their way up the hill and into a curving trail within the dunes.

They turned a corner and froze.
Twilight and her retinue found themselves staring eye to eye at a squad of Chaos Marines from the Emperor's Children.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To their great credit Twilight's friends froze but they didn't freeze.
The ponies' un-helmeted eyes narrowed as they regarded the Chaos Marines. 
Astonishingly the traitors had yet to do anything: Their bolters were held in hand and ready to be lifted at any moment.
The squad's faces were covered by helmets and cybernetic modifications that made reading their expression impossible.

Twilight couldn't read their minds but she was positive they were hesitating: They were a half-dozen ponies in featureless power armor wandering the surface of a daemon world, holed up in an Imperial bastion for Celestia's sake. They couldn't possibly have a pre-made plan for this situation.

Anything too hostile would cause a fight to break out immediately... and yet according to the Inquisitor's notes Chaos Marines were not the type to leave anybody alone. One wrong word and they would either be killed, captured for study -because Twilight was certain they were looking at them as if they were the strangest creatures they had laid eyes on, and on this planet that was saying something- or perhaps they might see themselves forcibly inducted to their warband as slave Marines.

Time was slipping. The longer she hesitated the more likely the squad leader would take the initiative. 
Trying not to swallow and in doing so suggest a tick that implied fear Twilight barked the order 
"Identify yourselves!"

Inwardly Twilight was very satisfied with how that came out. her voice was confident but not so full of bravado it would be dismissed immediately as bravado. The order itself was simple enough and brief; if their squad was low-ranking enough they might respond without thinking. She had considered perhaps letting one of the other ponies take the lead but telepathy was a spell she had yet to mastered, hadn't even researched enough to know for sure that it existed, and if the traitor Marines had been watching them without her friends realizing it then a ruse to disguise who they were and who was in charge would anger them.
Nevermind that she was the only alicorn and while the squad was staring at all of them the little detail of her obviously healthy wings would stand out as much as the greater detail to embellishment and the greater number of trophies and other status markers on the Chaos champion's armor.
And so-

"Are you female?!" His dead voice echoed back.

Twilight blinked. Of all the things they'd focus on she didn't expect it to be the timbre of her voice.  
Stupid, stupid. All Space Marines are male. Just because we saw women in power armor doesn't mean they're the same. She thought.

Caught wrong-hoofed Twilight was stumbling to recover. The seconds ticked and the delayed confrontation loomed when the space between the two squads burst with a cloud of smoke and words echoed with the bold proclamation:
"Who dares detain the minions of the Great and Powerful Trixie?!"

Her entrance was flawless, adequately balanced between commanding and challenging and Twilight let the fact that Trixie had their attention give her the chance to both take in the little details she hadn't been able to with the one,two,three, five- Five Chaos Space Marines - and to thank Celestia that Trixie's entrance was shocking or familiar enough that nopony got shot.

Sparkler must have turned the vox on the second we stumbled into them.

Trixie's appearance was astonishing. Her power armor was immaculately painted with images, designs and patterns that brought to mind magical runes. She had found a way to incorporate her flowing cape under the power armor's backpack. 
Around her neck wasa perfect replica of the Alicorn amulet, it glowed with swirlinginner light. 
The only thing spoiling the effect of Trixie's appearance was her head: The simple cloth wizard hat clashed terribly with the effect created by her power armor.

For the second time the aspiring champion replied in a dull, bored voice: "Tricksie?"

He was off-balance again. 
Twilight turned up the pressure. "That's Trixie Lulamoon to you!"

Trixie fed off Twilight's support and boomed "Who dares admit to not know the name of the Great and powerful Trixie? Who claims not to know the most powerful unicorn in... whatever this little backwoods is called. Master of beasts, bearer of the mythical Alicorn Amulet, conqueror of the only Imperial Stronghold this puny planet has."

Twilight was so happy with Trixie she could hug her. Her boasting and bravado was so perfect and the effect she had attributing masculine titles to herself was just icing on the cake.

"Psycher-" One of the Marines stammered.

"Psycher? HA! What a mean, diminutive title. Trixie is the greatest magician on planet by far!"

Acting the adviser Twilight added: "I believe these... lesser minions use the term sorcerer." 
Twilight was far bolder than she would otherwise have been. With Trixie's arrival they were no longer outnumbered by the squad- and with their perceived threat from Trixie's magic they also outclassed them.

"Yes, Trixie is pleased to allow ordinary beings to refer to Trixie as Sorceress."

Twilight decided to intimidate. They had the upper hand and they needed answers.
"Or do you call Sorcerers? Answer me, Space Marine. Sorcerer... or Librarian?!"

That got the response she wanted. Only Space Marine Legions loyal to the Emperor used the title Librarian.
Twilight had hoped to goad the Chaos marines into talking. Unfortunately her first insult had gone too far.

"Mutated emasculated fools! You dare call Emperor's Children loyalist?! TEAR THEM APART!"

Without a thought Twilight, Sparkler and Lyra bowed their heads and their horns flared with magic. Rays of light smashed into the Emperor's Children.
Three beams hit their targets squarely in the chest and brought them to the ground. Twilight sweat at the effort; her blasts were powerful enough to send a full-sized pony flying. It was a credit to their strength, or perhaps their mass, that all her power did was knock the Marine down.

A scream made her team turn their heads, not towards the marines but towards Rose.
In the heat of the moment she'd raised her arms in self-defense. After days of practice she'd just lifted the weapon, screwed her eyes shut, and pressed the lever.

When they had first examined the weapons nopony had known what to make of it. 
Derpy took over: she'd had experience testing dangerous equipment before. 
In the end they'd called them 'firebreathers'. Roseluck took it: the Infantryman's Primer suggested their use for clearing land of ambushers, traps and (she noted with a twinge of memory) man-eating xenos flora.

As soon as the Emperor's Children nearest to her bellowed and charged Rose fired. 
The jet of prometheum engulfed two of the bodies whole. They screamed as they fell and - to Rose's horror- their cries mangled agony with irrepressible bliss.

Not just dying, they were dead. Their first real casualties of war.
Rose turned away sick.

Keeping her focus on the three Marines remaining Twilight encased each within a personal shield bubble. 
Her heart went out to Rose but she couldn't turn her back on them. At that point Trixie joined in, using her illusionary powers to create several dozen pairs of flying swords. They gleamed as their colors fluctuated in the light, favoring dark orange to subdued purple to bright blue.

Twilight eyed behind her nervously but managed to place her body strategically with Sparkler's and Lyra's to cover the quivering Roseluck from view.
Twilight was conflicted to the point where her judgement was beginning to slip. She'd never intended for anyone to get killed and now Rose-

"Twilight, tell me, is there a reason you desired this lot unharmed?"

Twilight blinked, struggling to answer Trixie, to first come up with an answer. 
"If they're not a threat..." she trailed off.

"I see. So, if the great and powerful Trixie has been enlightened alongside you to the fact that your continued existence depends on your being rendered harmless WHY HAVE YOU YET TO YIELD YOUR WEAPONS?!" 
She yelled at the Chaos marines, her voice amplified and echoing within their force bubbles. 

Twilight narrowed her eyes as she magically pulled for her Storm Bolter. 
She wasn't expecting Trixie's newest ploy to work: Space Marines were described as universally resilient, indomitable, fearless. She might have gleamed information out of them through guile. She had no illusions of succeeding through intimidation.

It was a surprise, then, when each of them tossed their bolters aside. 
The champion threw his chainsword down as well. 
She eyed the holsters that dangled from the hip by chains and boot strapped sheaths.

She was a whirlwind of emotions. later on she would feel remorse and guilt in that moment she chose to focus on her anger. 
"I don't repeat myself."

The group hesitated and one of the surviving minions spoke. 
"We follow Gelig the Unblemished. Emperor's Children."

The name sounded off, even to Twilight. Without thinking she asked "Where are we?"

"Miasma." 
She gave him a look. 
"Miasma, the Purge moon. The Purge were rewarded with it as a portal to Nurgle after the beginning of the 13th Crusade." 

"Where?!"

"In the Eye! I can't say more, I'm not a warp-cursed sorcerer!"

A world within a world where relative space was meaningless to someone without magic.  
She thought, hating the very idea of it. Their escape wasn't going to be anything as simple as leaving the world to reach something distant like a moon, even accounting for greater distance. The universe itself was a pocket of labyrinths that would require magic to travel through. She didn't want to think about what she would need to learn to be able to start. Buying herself time Twilight asked what she hoped would be a pointless question, something that would get the Marines talking. 
"When are we?"

"I don't know the date, nobody bothers with them." 
He said as if sharing some unfamiliar joke. 
"When we exited realspace it was Year 003, Millenium 42."

She hadn't expected to need to think about his response, it was just supposed to drone on and if something he said stood out she'd go from there. She didn't expect something so important, so essential, to be the first thing she heard so casually. 
Forty millenia of recorded history? 
Princess Celestia was old, her personal history dated back almost to the founding of Equestria as a nation, but even so Twilight suspected a lifetime of maybe five thousand years at the most. 
Compared to that was an empire with a recorded history of over forty thousand... 

"You have been in the Warp a long time, brother-sister." The champion added.
"I would presume. The Warp showed whimsy, to mutate you and your brothers into equus."

"You are all uncommonly blessed," the same minion as before spoke, "your mutation is stable, your weapons and armor accommodated you, and you have all been blessed with psychic power. Truly you must be Chosen."

"Over my voice already?" 
Twilight asked, curious that her gender had been addressed and dropped with such ease.

The two Astartes answered overlapping each other for fear of giving her the change to dismiss their words.
"The coloring of your... fur and manes are rather typical of mutation. We express only our surprise that you have gone so far from Astartes and yet retain your being."

"Spawn dot the wastelands, echoes of those who might once have been worthy. Miasma turns many, the vile plagues and blessing of Nurgle must be responsible, many great champions of renown... powerful... reduced to mewling flesh impossible to recognize. 
You are the most changed, the mightiest conscious Marines we have encountered by far."

Twilight's earlier suspicions were proven right. Spawns weren't daemons, just horribly mutated flesh.

The champion continued.
"We meant no offense in your equined... femininity. 
The Emperor's Children know better than all what it is to see one's maleness... enhanced-"

"Altered." The chatty minion added.

"Supplemented." The quiet one spoke for the first time.

"-by she who thirsts." The chatty one finished.

For emphasis, the Champion added: "Firsthand."

Twilight's eye twitched and she crossed her hind legs. Off planet. They had to get off planet NOW.

"Trixie grows impatient with you and this interrogation. Answer Trixie. Who leads you, how many are they, and are they fool enough to dare inconvenience Trixie further."

The Chaos Marines exchanged glances. 
"Gelig leads his warband into the heart of the forest. He seeks to force passage into the Garden. Rumors abound that the Eldar Goddess Isha lives and is imprisoned within the mansion. The sorcerer Immundus has foreseen his crusade's failure. We are the remnant of the squads that refused to be sacrificed in vain, solely for his ascension."

Twilight cringed at the tragic memory of the event.
"The rumors are true. We have seen her ourselves."

The three survivors turned to each other. The talkative minion turned to Twilight.
"Join us and-"

The aspiring champion's voice overpowered his minion:
"Your personal power overshadows that of the rank and file, your favor crosses the bounds of the warring ruinous powers. 
Grant us the Equus curse and together we shall gather the other survivors, rule over the warband's remnants, and sally forth into a crusade that shall see all our ambitions sated."

A sound like thunder snapped in the air. A hole opened in space and the two minions convulsed as gore poured from their knee, hip, elbow and neck joints.

Out stepped the subject of the traitor's previous conversation: the sorceror Immundus, his armor writhing with sigils that changed as one stared into them. 
The mouthpiece of his helmet was a circular maw of jagged metal teeth. An impossibly loud whisper escaped from inside it.
"Iebin, I finally find you. You, and what's left of the last of your fellow sacrifices. So bored of life and yet so unprepared to leave its tiresome trappings behind. Worry not, I shall make it easy." 

With a jolt the aspiring champion Iebin rose, crushed against Twilight's energy shield until it shattered and he rose completely into the air, his arms flailing helplessly.

"Accept my offering, squirming and unwilling, mighty Slaanesh."
Immundus spoke.

Every molecule of Iebin scattered across existence from that point in space, particles so tiny, moving so fast, they passed between the atomic space of every solid surface for light years in every direction. 
Only the dark power that was the active cause of the explosion left a mark upon the living creatures it passed. 
The power struck Twilight's magic field like a lance. She wasn't harmed but she felt violated by the residual energy flowing through her.

Twilight, and every one of the Emperor's Children still alive on planet.

Immundus turned towards Twilight and her friends as if noticing them for the first time.
"Now, what might you be?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the distance, closing on the Repentia Point compound, a similar squad reacted.
Their leader, an aspiring champion in his own right, turned to vent his rage on whatever living creature within sight.
Following his auspex to the nearest life signs he noticed a pink horse with an engorged head wearing power armor. 
Confused, he noticed it seemed to be staring back at him.


The Noise Marines had come.

Curious. Why do they call even them that if they aren't carrying sonics?
Berry Punch stared them down, depressing a plunger feed on her hoof. The tubing from the inside of her shoulderguards and armored collar began a slow progression to her mouth. 
The Marines noticed the way the ruby liquid made its path: a similar feed rose from the backpack of their own champion.

"Kindred."
The champion spoke, removing his helmet and revealing a skull that opened into four maws of razor sharp teeth.
"Is that you, Iebin? Is this the reward you have stumbled upon? What fate your fellow cowards?
Or is your reward the result of slaying your own kin? You are to be commended!"

Berry pulled out her twin blades and activated the power fields, brandishing them at the Noise Marine.

He looked thrilled.
"Yesssssssssss. Yes I respect that. You led a squad of broken reprobates; you sacrificed them all and you have been transformed.
You are worthier, my fearless minions would be right to follow you now. Come, claim me.
Your exalted head is just the sacrifice I need to prove myself before mighty Slaanesh!"

Berry Punch spat out. The wine in her mouth had spoiled into something infinitely worse than vinegar.
The mere mention of the name had been enough to spoil the food within her vial.

The champion produced his own weapon, a power maul adorned with the blood and entrails of vanquished foes.
Berry swayed ever so slightly as she stood. The booze she had already drunk was doing its thing. 
Her eyes glazed over. 
The enemy Marines understood she was in the sway of whatever substance she was intoxicated with. 
The champion activated his own feeding mechanism and uttered a prayer.
"See me, great Slaanesh. Grant me your blessing, I feed you the blood of this champion as sacrifice. For perfection!"

Time seemed to stand still, unfocused, Berry's eyes took in everything in her field of vision. She saw the swinging mace approaching. It wasn't a particularly clumsy swing. 
My, it's fast though.  She thought.

She swooned backwards, letting herself fall as the Marine's body got close to her. 
Unfamiliarity with her anatomy had likely made the human overcompensate. Or was it overconfidence that he would defeat this unworthy alien with a single stroke?
Berry put her hoof down and planted one power sword into the ground to keep her from falling onto her back.
As she did she brought her free sword hoof up to trace the power field across his gradually moving thigh. 
The leg stepped forward, its weight shifted and then the body weight fell onto a limb that was cleanly severed. 
The champion fell on his face.

Berry pushed off her weight bearing blade and righted herself onto two hooves before diving forward, landing flat on her belly and rapidly crawling forward like a centipede.
Behind her the Slaanesh champion had unholstered his bolt pistol and emptied the magazine into the strange creature in power armor that had killed him. He was certain, bleeding out from a severed leg, that he would be dead or lose consciousness in a few seconds.
His rounds tore into his squad indiscriminately. Several bolts ricocheted off as they failed to pierce power armor, but a few telling rounds detonated inside Marines.
As he died, it never occurred to the Champion that the strange beast with combat drugs would drop to the ground and shimmy rather than charge into the fray on its feet like any Space Marine would, loyalist or fallen.

Berry sprang to her hooves upon hearing the click of the empty bolt pistol she was waiting for. 
The Marines were in awe that so bulky a creature was moving as she did. By all rights their blows should have glanced its enormous head. Instead their weapons either failed to make contact or were deflected aside by the pair of power swords, succeeding only in severing portions of her flowing mane.
Their last thoughts before death were of Dark Eldar wyches dancing as they dodged between enemy thrusts until they delivered the death blow. 

The last Marine was left standing, to his credit he did not retreat. 
He smashed downwards intending to crush the beast with his power fist.

Berry laid down on the ground, flattening her back completely, her head almost directly underneath the Marine's groin. She raised the twin blades. 
The first crossed the knuckles of the permanently clenched power fist. Held flat, she pushed the blade lightly. Berry thought if she pushed back too forcefully the power fist would smash the blade into fragments. Pushed back softly it would yield, pushing it down but still slowing.
The tip of the second blade pointed to the space just above the Marine's elbow joint, into the bulk of the power fist's base.
It dug in perfectly. The power fist came to a stop before it touched Berry's body, its owner's attack perfectly parried. 
Berry twisted the buried blade sideways and the power field on the fist died. 

Seconds later the entire arm fell like a heavy weight onto Berry's chest.

She rolled to the side and got to her feet. The drunken master still swooned, her balance stable yet inelegant. 
She heard the grind of metal on metal as what she was sure was a secondary blade was unsheathed. 
Footsteps sloshed in the daemon mud behind her.
Without turning completely she fanned her blade sideways.
The body collapsed and a helmeted head crashed to the ground.
Her last attacker was dead.

Berry then collapsed backwards, falling into the mud, her body making a pattern like a snow angel. 
She stared up into the sickly colored sky.
She would have a hangover, and it was going to be a bad one. 
This stuff the humans drank, vile, unsavory, terrible stuff: No flavor, no aroma, no bouquet... only inebriation.
It was vile... but it was clean, not tainted. She didn't want to imagine the things the fallen ingested. 

For now, all she wanted to do was be on her back and stare at the sky, any sky, and wait... 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Closing in on Repentia Point, the army of Daemons came to a halt.
Their tongues salivated as they spotted their prize, a human settlement just as their God had commanded them.

It was possible to make changes, their force in the Warp was in the ascendant.
It would be easy to summon forth additional minions and siege beasts like Soul Grinders.

But the Herald thirsted for the glory of her God's favor.

They would storm the building, breach the flimsy walls with their claws and feast on whatever they found within.
And if the victims were powerless, they would deliver the morsels to the Prince of Excess themselves.
The subtle flavor he had demanded promised to be exquisite; to share such a mortal delight with him - there could be nothing higher.

The Warp tore open behind them anyway.
The Herald turned, expecting to lay her eyes on Daemons of Nurgle or other scavengers, pretenders who would dare to steal the prize she had personally hunted.

Instead a single figure in Terminator Armor emerged from the Warp.
In his right hand a massive power sword glowed within his Storm Bolter-armed gauntlet.
His left was covered by a massive tower shield, its relief adorned with sigils, skulls, a winged sword and an open book.
A terminator cross dangled from the chain across his waist.
On his back was mounted a great banner.

One word read in large script:

DRAIGO

> Chapter Twelve - Rejoicing upon the Square of the Evernight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Guys? Are you all seeing what I'm seeing?"

"We are. It looks bad."

"Oh. You want me to get closer?"

"No! I didn't mean it looked bad, I meant it looked ugly. The camera's fine Derpy."

"Oh. Ok!"

"Are you sure you're safe up there?"

"No, but they're not shooting at anybody yet. If I stay put I should be fine."

Derpy backed further into the cloud. There wasn't much cover in the sky but at least the clouds behaved enough like clouds for the pegasi to move them over Repentia Point without attracting attention. 
Derpy thought for a second and removed the camera screen from over her eye. She held it out in her hoof and pointed it in the general area of the melee. She hoped she was being smart...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Draigo was a monster.

Unrecorded and thus unrecognized even by higher members of the Inquisition, the Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights registered only as a Space Marine in Terminator armor to Goldwing's data banks. 
Through his combat they soon realized they were dealing with something more.

Draigo materialized in the middle of the Daemonette ranks. The daemons were quick, slashing at him with their claws, moving to surround him. To the control room's amazement the Grey Knight matched them, blow for blow.
First he blocked their bodies with his shield. Then he smashed against them with it.
As the crowd of the female demons were smashed and slammed away he swung his blade wide and low.
The Daemonette's claws were quick but like every physical being they had to keep at least one leg on the ground so their footing was balanced and their blows had the power to tear into his armor.

That footing was being hacked apart.

Everything he hit he cleaved in two. It was a change but not every piece of every daemon vanished as they were vanquished into the Warp. Lifeless heads and limbs were strewn on the floor.

He was in the thick of battle when the twin steeds wheeled about and charged past on either side of him.

Draigo turned on the spot and raised his shield against the Hellflayer's threshing blades.
The screech of metal on metal was so loud even Derpy could hear it, and her open vox channel meant it was relayed to the command center in static detail.

The grinding chariot stumbled, one wheel rising high above the ground and while it might be said the daemonic vehicle ran him over the fact was he was unharmed by its passage.
This in contrast to the Daemonette squad: of them and their fallen sisters remains naught was left beyond a fine red mist.

Once the thresher was past him Draigo raised his sword arm and appeared to point the tip at the the rider atop the chariot.
The storm bolter on his wrist roared to life, the projectiles impacted into the back of the Alluress charioteer's head and destroyed it utterly.
With a primal shout the entire Hellflayer burst into flames and disintegrated as surely as the bodies that had been ground to mist beneath it.

No one was left but the Herald. The rest of the army had been ground under his boot or fled at the sight of him.
Ponderous as he was he had as little chance of catching up to the Seekers as they did of overpowering him in a fight.

The Herald charged him. Before the misshapen female with glowing horns and one breast reached him a tongue of energy burst from her mouth and shattered itself against his shield. Impossibly fast she was in close with him, at his side, behind him. Tearing each time with her talons. She gouged great lengths from his armor and sparks flew with each strip of ceramite she tore from him  but her foul claws failed to pierce through his protection to his flesh.

He stepped back into her and crushed her cloven hoof under his heel.
He turned on his heel and his sword cut through her arm, her torso, her other arm and her raised claw in that order in one stroke.

Kaldor Draigo looked about him and caught his breath. A daemon world. Hurled back through the Warp into another Daemon world.
Roaming bands of Slaaneshi daemons, he would not have a good time of it.
He focused his will power and telekinetically lifted bolter fragments from the Daemonette remains and spent casings from the ground. Through a gesture of supreme will he drew the explosive materials from the aether, formed them into spheres and sealed them within the fragmenteds. His eyes glowed with fire and the bolts were molten hot, fused whole again.
The silver tip was molded and he inscribed runes upon surface even as he drew back propellant and sealed it within the casing and replaced the miniature warhead. 

His spent psybolts restored and reloaded into his Storm Bolter, Draigo turned from the field of battle and advanced towards that which caught his eye: an Imperial bastion inside this hell...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inside the central command station the footage from Derpy's eye-cam combined with the general noise that rang through the air just a hill away to create a mood of tension and fear. Where before it had been the exclusive domain of the great and powerful Trixie it was now occupied by no less than six ponies.

Applejack removed her hat from her head, wiped the sweat from her brow, and replaced it.
She needed a few seconds before turning to everypony else in her crew.
"All right, give me your thoughts."
She turned to her technology experts. With Lyra out with Twilight that meant Bon Bon.

"Well..." Bon Bon started in a voice that was too high pitched. 
She coughed, cleared her throat and started again.
"Sorry. His armor looks bigger than ours. Different. That shield is easily as strong as the one we found for Big MacIntosh."

Applejack turned to Cheerilee, who was looking after Goldwing for Twilight.
"Anything that machine can tell us?"

The mechanical eagle began:
{Subject is an Astartes equipped with Tactical Dreadnought armor, shorthand Terminator armor, and wields a greatsword and a storm shield. Sensors indicate a 93% probability of psycher potential. Under such circumstances the greatsword is likely to be a force weapon.}

"What in tarnation's the difference?"

{Terminator armor is thicker and denser as a result of the suit's armor incorporation of heavy-duty plasteel. Such suits are less maneuverable than standard Astartes power armor and far more durable. The knowledge to recreate these suits is lost and each suit is an irreplaceable relic.
As your adept has discerned, a power weapon's effectiveness is derived by the energy field. The field allows the weapon to sever mass at a molecular level.
A force weapon allows the bearer to channel the power of the Warp into its victim. The effect on the victim as his body is joined to the warp is debated. For all practical purposes, however, it is destroyed.
Finally, the Astartes demonstrates psychic potential beyond the scope of any previously observed targets. Suspected level is Alpha Plus.}

"And what does that mean?" Applejack asked irritated.

{Omnicron level psychers have mild subconscious potential. One may perhaps light a candle unintentionally or bend an object.
An alpha level psycher can potentially destroy a battle tank or a suit of Terminator armor.
Alpha plus is sufficient power to destroy this facility and a significant piece of this planetoid at once.}

Applejack's eye twitched.

She turned to everypony else in the room. Bon Bon and Cheerilee had nothing to offer while Vinyl was busy going from console to console double-checking failing connections. In a corner, kept in shadows, Octavia loomed.

Standing at attention behind the command throne Blueblood waited. 
Applejack had chosen not to sit and his standing there felt like an invitation she was continuously declining.
His presence might have been an attempt to be reassuring or guarding, like a loyal guard or a devoted brother. 
AJ was used to Big Mac's presence, however, and found Blueblood's presence as uncomfortable and slightly usurping.

Paranoid that she might be letting herself be influenced by thoughts not her own, Applejack realized she was being unfair. 
Blueblood was filling the part of a royal guard the way he did for Twilight since his incident. For Twilight, Trixie, even Cheerilee on occasion depending on who was acting in a leadership role that day. 

Today it seemed it was her turn.

Applejack swallowed her feelings and turned to the Prince. 
His pristine white armor had undergone changes: he painted the shoulder trim in gold and he had decorated the recesses of the shoulder pads and all four of his hooves with ceramite clippings he'd shaped into ponies. They'd been soldered on perfectly.
His forehooves were conspicuous with a combat shield on his left and the sheathed power claw on the right.
The blue of his eyes peered back at her from the narrowest slits in his metal mask.

"One more thing then. Those monsters, Blueblood?"

"They are the same. The steeds pulling the thresher are exactly like the ones Rainbow Dash and I put down.
I saw nothing like the centaur-abomination Rarity destroyed with her cannon and the... humanoids are new to me as well.
Their claws seem as sharp and their reflexes are just as impressive. Nothing about these demons' appearance suggests they are any weaker that the ones we've already seen. This human is strong, fast and fleet and his weapons and armor are superior to ours."

Applejack read too much into his analysis. 
 "Are you saying you want to turn tail and run?"

"I say he is death and violence. I see he is coming here. I ask if anything here is of irreplaceable value to us?"

The view screens actively followed Draigo. Applejack turned to Octavia, seeing the way she was measuring his abilities.
"We're outmatched. We can try to ambush him or we cut and run." Octavia said calmly.

Applejack turned back to Bon Bon.
"Bon Bon, anything else from Trixie, Sparkler or Twilight since they engaged whatever it was they found?"

"Nothing. I can't raise Princess Twilight or Amethyst Star at all."

With no other options and nopony else to defer to Applejack made the call. 
"Then we go out and look for them on the way. Bon Bon, gimme an open channel to everypony else we've got out there."

Bon Bon nodded at Applejack. "Ready."

"All right y'all, we've got incoming bad news. Derpy, I want you to stay put, switch off the camera but keep telling us where he's headed. As soon as he's lost track of the sky I want you to get out of there."

"Okay Applejack! He's maybe a hundred steps from the west wall. He's not going the long way."

"Darn. We head east then. Most likely he'll just bust on in, lookin' for more to fight. 
Golden Harvest I want all our food stocks saddled and on everypony's back. We've got two minutes tops."

"Already on it Applejack. I've got six saddles loaded and Flitter and Cloudchaser are already out."

"Good. Cloudchaser, fly close to the ground and don't do anything that'll get you noticed. I want you out there scouting for a place we can lay low. A tall ridge or a cluster o' hills. Not a cave. I don't want us to gallop into something's maw."

"Count on us!"


"Computer." Octavia began. "Erase all video and vox footage over the last month."

The mainframe's vox responded:
{time frame not recognized}

"All footage from the last five hundred hours. Erase all video footage, vox records, command and archive records, all record of activity within the last five hundred hours and suspend all recording immediately. Once completed depower and go to standby."

{authority acknowledged, awaiting command Inquisitor.}

Octavia turned to Applejack. Applejack nodded back.

"Execute." Octavia said.

{Deletion in progress. Order source unregistered. Memory purged. Shutting down.}


Applejack's vox came to life.
"Applejack? Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear Rarity."

"I have the shot."

Applejack swallowed hard. She looked to Octavia and Blueblood.

"He destroys the demons. Their focus will be on him." The Prince said.

"He arrived through a rift through the Warp. Others may follow just as easily. 
They will notice his body and suspect just as surely as he would if we fire on him and fail.
We have no reason to believe he suspects we exist. Just vanish."

Cheerilee didn't say anything, she was too busy collecting all of Twilight's books and papers and every scroll she ever penned with the aid of Goldwing, going so far as to grab even the rubbish she kept reusing for bedding.

"No can do Rarity. Head east and find cover. If things go bad I want you covering us when we run your way."

"I understand."

Applejack turned from her vox to the team.
"It's settled then. Let's go."

Blueblood took point

Bon Bon and Vinyl were the last to leave, piling tools and doodads into each others' saddlebags as they moved.

The lights went dead and Vinyl's horn provided the last of the light they needed as they made their way out and sealed the bulwarks shut.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight and Trixie stood their ground against the Chaos Space Marine sorcerer before them.
Immundus had done more than parade before them; his power or the powers he tapped into had created a bubble of shadowy bodies surrounding the earth pony, alicorn, and three unicorns.

"Let me see if I have this straight... You five, sentients and I find that idea in and of itself absurd, aren't horses. You're ponies. 
And you did not through a process of circumstance, spite, randomness or reason find yourself altered, part by part or all at once, until you became ponies; You were as you are now since the day you were begotten through whatever means the universe decided to sire creatures such as yourselves.
That is a bit of information I find most curious.
Most, a poor choice of words - it implies the superlative when in reality I find that that question is not the one I find myself most obsessed with.
What I find the maelstrom of my mind turning over again and again is the question 'why you lot would dare to profane Astartes Power Armor, how it is you came by our weapons, and what makes you think one such as I would stomach such an outrage." 

Immundus raised his force staff to the air and orbs materialized around its head. 

The orbs burst into lightning bolts that struck out at Twilight and all four of her companions.
Lyra, Sparkler and Rose all dove for cover over the dunes, Twilight blinked out from sight and Trixie threw up a force field that took the brunt of the lightning.
The bubble was perfectly insulated and real lightning should have traveled across the outer surface and into the ground.

But Chaos lightning ignored the laws of nature.

"Come little braggart, show me the means through which you 'conquered this pathetic little mudball'."

Immundus was knocked off his feet by a beam of purple energy.
He turned to the source, surprised to see Twilight Sparkle glaring back at him.

"Stay away from her!"

Trixie levitated a chunk of earth she tore from the ground and flung it at him as soon as Immundus turned hi sback on her.
Without shifting his attention Immundus raised his stave and a force blast pulverized the projectile as soon as it left her magic levitation.
"Do that again." he ordered her.

With no other options Twilight levitated her bolter and opened fire.

A strange dance ensured: each time Twilight opened fire with her bolter the Sorceror moved to one location then stood still
Trixie, for all her efforts, couldn't match Twilight's intensity; There was something in her, something besides the horn and the wings that was obvious even to a tainted soul like Immundus. He saw through the ruse.
"You are the leader, you are the one I desire. Your death will grant me great favor in the eyes of the Chaos Gods."

Twilight had heard enough of that particular thought.
"Is that the only thing you people care about?!"

He laughed, a hideous bark that matched a jackal's. 
"Whatever the source of your power armor it is clear you were never Astartes, never even human. Consider, xenos: when you have power, infamy, when you're ascended beyond the limitations of ordinary survival and petty wealth what is there beyond savoring it for eternity... and getting more?"

"There's having others to share that eternity."

"The young would do better than to lecture those who are versed in the ancient ways.
You think that I am alone? Countless voices within my head keep me constant company."

"Seeing you and what you did to those men tells me more than you ever could.
You're worse than alone; there isn't a single one of your kind who wouldn't betray you the instant he thought he could get something out of it. You're eternally on your guard with no-one you can talk to and no-one you can trust. You're completely isolated, even when you're surrounded by all these people. How can you believe they follow you when all that binds you together is fear?!
 For all your nonsense you're still social animals just like everybody else: How can you worship monsters that would devour you for no more reason than that you exist? You'd all have to be insane!"

"Sanity is for the weak!"

He thrust at her and again Twilight raised a shield. The staff's head punctured through and at the last moment she blinked out of his way.

Immundus looked around him, looking for her with his actual eyes all the while astonished that he couldn't foresee where she was moving. Where or how. Was it an illusion? A personal portal? He recognized her backpack's power plant, it couldn't possibly have an integrated teleportation unit.

"Impressive, most impressive xenos. A psycher of the third level of mastery. You assail, you create telekine domes, you even open gates of infinity with the poise of a lord taking a stroll. Rarely do I find a telekine as skilled as you are."

His reverie was interrupted by a swarm of power swords rising from the earth around him.  
He waved the force staff again, knocking some of Trixie's glowing phantasm's out of the way and phasing through the rest.
"Illusions?"
Immundus turned in time to see Trixie sending another wave of swords at him again. His Warp vision opened and he foresaw himself being run through by the second of five swords flowing through the air. 
He brought his staff up and knocked the only real blade aside.
"You... a telekine and a telepath." 

Inwardly Immundus became afraid. His expertise in Divination gave him no protection against powers of the mind.
He was forced to play regicide against this pony. He foresaw their actions before they happened but if the blue unicorn in the ridiculous hat read his thoughts before he could act on them and fed that information to her champion then they were on equal footing.

The possibility of being trapped in a fair fight was something he had found terrifying.

"Off me fool. I will have your champion's blood first!"

"The Great and Powerful Trixie will not be ignored."

"Back! I'll not suffer you interference in my personal challenge!"

"Challenge? Ha! The Great and Powerful Trixie cares nothing for your silly little show of bravado!"

"Quiet!"

"The Great and Powerful-"

"Stop saying 'great and powerful', annoying gnat!"
Immundus charged Trixie and in fear she thrust her power blade at him with her levitation.

Immundus raised his Force Staff at the last moment and countered the attack.

"Interesting. Everything else... they're just illusions. None of your powers are real. Nothing you can do can hurt me!"

At that second Twilight teleported between them, right in front of him.
"Guess again buster!"

Immundus second guessed himself; unable to do anything he was swept away by a solid wall of levitation energy.

"This is unthinkable. I who have never been struck in a dozen provocations, brought low by a stupid fluorescent-hued sentient equine!"

Immundus gathered his power again.. gathered and then shrieked.
Hands tore at his mind, ghostly tendrils tore at his soul and lapped the energy from his armor.

He'd been in battle too long, used his power too much. The things in the Warp took notice of him and stole an opportunity to feed. As he rebuilt his mental defenses he noticed the two ponies had thus far used far more spells, expended far more psychic power than he.
They were weak and inexperienced, their leader's last attack proved that. An attack that should have been used to crush him merely battered him away. He noticed the way they used their psychic abilities for everything, even the most commonplace minutia like telekinetically aiming and firing their bolters at him and making every swing of their power swords. Such absurd, puerile mistakes...

...and yet they had yet to pay the inevitable price for such lapse in judgement repeatedly.

For all their power and all their unrestrained use of it they yet to suffer as any psycher would.
The were apparently immune to the perils of the Warp.
The only conclusion he could draw-

"You are not psychers..."

"And you're not a man."
Immundus was caught completely off guard when a third voice shouted him down.
Before he could so much as turn a mechadendrite coiled around his neck and pulled him back.
Brusquely turned around the first and last thing he saw was the speeding form of a power fist.

Lyra's harness gave her many advantages over a common Space Marine, even if they weren't a pony. When combined with her levitation it meant Immundus was left to struggle against a multi-limbed beast whose strength rivaled his own.
Lyra was pummeling his helmet's faceplate with her power fist but in her emotional outburst she hadn't toggled the weapon to turn its power field on.

If she had the sorcerer would have a ruin where his skull used to be.

"Get.. me... away." He managed to blurt out through broken jaw and shattered teeth.

Warp fire consumed Immundus and Lyra let his body go. He vanished from the spot before her through some occult means into the Warp. His shadow field vanished instantly: the five were left alone.

Two things assaulted Twilight's senses as soon as the shadow creature dome dispersed.
First was the sight of bands of pink colored demons, rolling in the distance. Here and there their shapes mingled with other strange hues Twilight knew as spawn or other bands of sickly green green Plaguebringers. The pink demons seemed to be fighting both groups equally.
The second thing was a transmission from Repentia Point.

"-ash, take Big MacIntosh and Pinkie and head on to the hills east of the base. We got something nasty starting. Drop to half rations if you still have 'em. We're taking all our food supplies with us, we'll get sorted once we're together.
Ah already sent Flitter and Cloudchaser on ahead. If you run into 'em stick together. Ah'm still trying to raise Twi."

Twilight made eye contact with everypony else, Sparkler in particular.
All at once the five abandoned the cart and every other leftover from their corpse disposal and galloped back to the headquarters.
Sparkler opened the channel on the fly.
"Applejack, this is Twilight. What's going on?!"

"Twi?! Oh thank Celestia. We've been trying to raise you I dunno how long!"

"Twilight what's going on over there!" 
Rainbow Dash' brash tone interrupted.
"I've got more of these wierdo pink frilly... wierdoes!"

"Hey!" They all heard Pinkie interrupt.

"No offense! They're not just weird because they're pink, they also... they smell funny! Anyway, they're all over the place!"

"Ah know! They're all headed towards the building and they aren't alone. Something else worse 'n them popped outta nowhere and we're almost ready to high-tail it outta here."

"Applejack that's fine. Great. Just perfect. We'll be there in a second, get everything we can carry."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moments later, when Twilight and her group were in sight of the compound they were met by a procession escaping as quietly as they could. Carrot Top, Blueblood and especially Applejack looked overburdened with saddles loaded with supplies.

"Applejack. is everypony ok? Did you get everything? Did you hide our tracks?

"Everypony's alright Twi. Only groups out there were yours and Rainbow's. Everypony else is here. Cheerilee's got all your notes."

Twilight looked relieved but Lyra's ears pricked up. She shot like a bullet toward the compound gates.
Applejack reacted a second too late, biting at Lyra's tail but not fast enough to catch it.
"Doggone it Rainbow... ah mean Lyra!"

"Wait!" Twilight shouted. She tried to make her voice carry but saw her muzzle trapped within a tiny blue sound bubble. She could only yell mutely as Lyra vanished through the door.

Vinyl Scratch sweat nervously as she held the shield over Twilight's muzzle. Next to her Octavia shook her head 'no' while tapping her hoof towards her neck, indicating the vox.

Twilight nodded and Vinyl removed the bubble. Twilight activated her vox and hissed into it.
"Lyra are you cr-azy?!"

Applejack chimed in. 
"Lyra, we've got a human Space Marine more powerful 'n any we've seen. He killed a band of monsters like the ones roaming out there single-handed. The facility's shut down."

Lyra wasn't daunted.
"I'm sorry. I have to get in there. The blueprints for the armor, weapons and technology we've made is hidden in my workspace. Goldwing doesn't have these files and nopony else got print outs from the central computer. That and the tune-ups we made for Fluttershy's designs. Without those and the follow-up designs that approximate what we've already done we can't fix anything!"

"Fluttershy?!"

"Easy. She's over with Flitter and Cloudchaser."

Twilight paced her breathing, trying to relax.
Then she turned to Applejack. They exchanged glances that told everything between 'they needed those plans' and 'they couldn't keep Lyra from them now that she was so far.' 

 "Hurry then."
Twilight turned to Blueblood and Cheerilee and accepted a pair of saddlebags.

"Rarity's over that way Twilight. She's got us covered with her cannon. Something in those hills should be-"

Applejack was interrupted by the sound of a great explosion. Something had torn into the compound's western wall.
"Lyra..."

Applejack caught Twilight by the tail.
"We already told 'er" She grit while keeping the tail in her teeth. "We gotta trust 'er."

Twilight relented then gave in. Applejack let go. At that moment a cloud high above them popped apart and Derpy dove from the sky to land near them.

"Hey Applejack. He's in there. He took his time at the wall, I don't know really what he was doing. Then he stopped like he was thinking real hard and smashed the wall. He went in and that was all I saw of him. You guys were still here so I came down."

Applejack nodded and gave Derpy one of her half-dozen saddlebags.
"Thanks. And the monsters?"

"All over but they're pretty small clumps. Nothing over by Rarity, or Cloudchaser's group or Rainbow Dash's group."

"Ok then. Let's git. Pick up Rarity then-"

"um..." Derpy hesitated.

Twilight noticed and prodded her to speak.

"Rarity's fine but we're exposed if we go straight to her. If we follow a path along the dunes we can catch up to where the pegasi went."

Twilight noded at her. "Lead the way."

A few gestures were made but soon enough everypony was galloping behind her.

As they went Twilight got next to Roseluck. The mare hadn't pointed the nozzle of her fire-breather down yet.
"Rose..."

Roseluck blushed heavily, shut her eyes a bit and turned her head away.
"D-Don't look at me. Please don't look at me right now."

Rose hurried her pace and ended up right next to Derpy.

Twilight let her go. She found herself in step alongside Sparkler. For Rose and more she felt the need to say something.
"Sparkler I-"

"No. I mean, no, Princess. There's no need to apologize. When we used our magic on those charging Marines we didn't hit the others. If Rose hadn't panicked when she did I don't know what would have happened. I don't like it but-"

"And you shouldn't. I want you to never like it. Avoid it as much as you can and push it from your mind as soon as you can. It's not about them; it's about your friends."

Sparkler nodded.
"This isn't easy for me. To me it's no different carrying ammo that somepony else will shoot. I don't have to pull the trigger to be responsible for killing somebody. And if I carry food, or medicine or bandages I'm still enabling you all because each one of those things I carry is one you all don't have to and you all end up carriyng more guns and swords and in the end nothing's changed. Maybe there is a difference but I don't see it. I- I wish I could make what I feel make more sense."

"I understand Sparkler. You just worry about your rations and keeping that Vox going. Everything will be fine."

Sparkler gave Twilight a weak smile. Things weren't well yet, but they'd be getting better.

They had to.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he entered a range of fifteen paces from the wall Draigo has hesitated. He took a step back, then another one forward.
A laud-hailer, clearly scavenged from some Adepta Sororitas vehicle, had been broadcasting devotional chanting in loop.
It had been years, perhaps decades, since Kaldor Draigo had last heard the song of female voices elevated in praise to the Emperor. The melody warmed his heart and would bring a tear to his eye if indeed anything in this world or any other was still capable of drawing such reaction from him.

Abruptly the sound ended as he stepped beyond the arbitrary bounds and resumed.
There was an interruption. The music was not psychic, the sound simply did not carry past the boundaries.

Draigo could wonder if there was something unusual about the nature of the hailer, the Imperial bastion or even something about the nature of the daemon world itself that affected sound so.

Each possibility was as likely as the last so he put it from his mind, made his way to a wall he tested for structural weakness, called upon his memory for the ideal breaching point for a fortification of this type and caved in the wall with the power of his mind.

Inside the facility there was nothing.

This surprised Draigo because everything about the world led him to believe he should be prepared to encounter corruption and death. Instead he encountered rooms so organized, so carefully looted, so clean he could only conclude that everybody else had escaped.

At length he found something, a room which had its doors smeared in oil. The pattern suggested script that had been covered over. He readied his weapons and over-rode the control panel. Slowly he peered in as the doors opened.
He found palettes and arrangements consisted with makeshift bedding. Again, nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary.

He head noise, heavy, like footsteps. The heavy clang of ceramite over the ferrocrete floor.
Astartes possibly.

He stood where he was and waited for the shape to walk into his line of fire.

It did.

Draigo had found Lyra.

He aimed his Storm Bolter at the pony laced with cybernetics. 
The moment before he pulled the trigger Lyra looked into his eyes and said
"This way."

Kaldor Draigo waited.
He kept the weapon aimed at the pony but it walked away slowly, leading him to a hatch.
As a psycher Draigo felt no touch, no taint upon the creature - yet it's strange coloring and obvious powers of speech made him uncertain.
Lyra's mechadendrites punched in a lock code on the recently repaired door systems and the hatch unlocked. 

The doors slid open.

It was the Imperium mausoleum. Draigo looked about him and saw the preserved bodies of almost two dozen battle brothers, several sisters, a few guardsmen and a techpriest. The little cyborg had many of his systems cannibalized for parts but such practices were common on battlefields. Draigo examined the bodies: the Space Marines looked preserved and intact, untainted.
Purity testing would be necessary but if it was clear close to fifty Progenoid Glands could be harvested for gene-seed.

For their original chapters, or for the Grey Knights.
The gene-seed of warriors that had been tried within this atmosphere and remained untainted was precious indeed.

As a Chapter Master Draigo could not overlook the importance of the resources that had been preserved.

"Servitor."

Lyra paused.
Draigo had decided she was a machine, build on a biological base like all servitors, and modified extensively to operate within the facility. He suspected the hand of the orangutan-like Jokaero weaponsmiths in its creation: no ordinary servant of the machine-God would consider altering Power Armor for a servitor frame. Draigo knew he was looking for survivors, in particular an Inquisitor, one with ties to the Ordo Malleus. Only that could explain a mission so deep within the Eye and the resources he had found.

"You have done your task well in restoring and honoring the Emperor's loyal servants. Resume your tasks, when my battle brothers arrive your memory core will be processed for relevant information and purged and you will be reassigned to service to the Grey Knights. Inquisitorial override code Omega Delta 4 5 6 9 0 3 2 1 Theta."

Lyra hesitated.

Draigo looked annoyed and spoke again.
"Inquisitorial override code Calix Epsilon 7 4 5 9 0 3 2 1 Omega."

Oh damn. What to do. What did Goldwing always say?
"Code accepted. Gratitude my Lord."

Draigo nodded and approached the pony. He chose an icon, removed a purity seal from his armor and fixed it upon Lyra's armored chest. The word DRAIGO was large on the icon that magnetically fastened the tiny scroll to her armor. 
Draigo then turned from Lyra and paid her existence no further mind.
He entered the mausoleum and dropped to his knees.

Lyra made her way from the compound, running out as fast as she could once she was out range of his vision and hopefully his hearing.She was terrified that that human... whatever he was, might see through her ruse.
She was panicked, but she collected herself, breathing calmly.
He was a man. A Space Marine, truly a powerful one, but just a man.

"BEHOLD, MIGHTY EMPEROR, THE VALOR OF YOUR CHILDREN!
GAZE UPON THE SACRIFICE OF THE WORTHY, YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT IMPLORES YOU
GRANT UNTO THESE YOUR MERCY THAT THEIR SACRIFICE BE NOT IN VAIN
YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT RAISES HIS VOICE TO THE HEAVENS
EXALTING IN YOUR GLORY
GRANT UNTO THEM AND ALL WHO SERVE LOYALLY YOUR PEACE!"

"What... the... hay!?"
Lyra could only yell over the roar.

The entire grounds of Repentia Point became alive with fire; a ray of light that rose from the earth itself shattered Lyra's sound field within a microsecond.

Draigo's prayer had turned the site into a psychic beacon of intense luminosity, the souls and bodies of the martyred burnt with the echoes of their life.

"Not a man, he's a bucking god!"
Lyra screamed and turned tail, running for the hills.

Calm yourself Heartstrings!
Discord's voice echoed in her mind.

"You calm yourself! Take one look at that energy pillar and tell me you'd survive that thing!"

It wasn't like the rainbow beam of the Elements of Harmony but as far as sheer power was concerned it might as well be.
No. No I won't. Your friends are over that hill. Turn to the left and hurry!

Lyra crashed to a stop when a shape blinked into existence next to her.

Princess Twilight Sparkle said nothing, looked nowhere and did nothing.
Her horn glowed to life and Lyra was levitated, power armor, harness and all into direct physical contact with her.

Twilight then teleported the two of them away.

They landed in the center of the camp, pegasi, earth ponies and unicorns all looking expectantly at the two of them.

"Explain. Now." Twilight said.

Lyra's mechadendrite reached into her saddlebag.
"Pull up a seat, what I saw will take a while. For everything else..."

The mechadendrite pulled out a full textbook. Every note, hypothesis, speculation and design they had worked over was contained within.
"Got it."

Twilight pulled her into a crushing hug. Everything was right for now.

> Chapter Thirteen - His Thanks for Those Bountiful in their Gifts
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

MIASMA, REPENTIA POINT 

For three days the beacon burned.

Nopony knew what effect the pillar of light had on the planetoid, or on the Warp. The only thing Twilight knew was that a fire that burnt high into the sky with nothing to fuel it scared her. It was something she didn't want to be anywhere near.

Unfortunately for Twilight and every pony on Miasma everything conspired to keep them from getting further away from it.

For three days the beacon burned and in all that time Twilight and her friends could do nothing more than hold what they considered the best piece of land. Not the best land for a tactical assault or to get a view of the area: Daemons and Emperor's Children both claimed those positions as strong points from which to lay siege to the ruins of Repentia Point. The Space Marine with the DRAIGO banner had been surrounded from the moment he took over the headquarters.

New reinforcements, massive daemons that carried their girth and massive cannons on mechanical legs rained doom upon the wreckage. Every wall, every section of roof, the entire building was shattered. Wave after wave of Daemonettes charged into the dark pits.

No daemon ever emerged from the dark: the earth around the ruins remained silent and the beacon's light continued to flow into space.

For their part the Noise Marines and their supporting squads were happy to let the daemons do the fighting; Draigo's reputation echoed far within the Warp and the Chaos legions knew more about his exploits than anyone living. They were unwilling to engage him beyond volleys of concentrated heavy fire from a safe distance... at least until they had proof that the Daemonettes had managed to wound him.

Three days, an incredible cacophony of noise, and they were no closer to their goal.

Twilight sighed as Applejack passed her a 'tea' - It was little more than boiled water in a container of juice - and after a quick gulp she reassured herself.

They'd managed to claim the other ideal ground; the jagged cliffs to the east. They weren't always cliffs, like everything else the land was just small hills on the plains at first. Of course Draigo changed everything: The mud was either suppressed or cleansed and reverted to its original topography. The same earth it was when city-razing weapons reshaped it into a war zone during the first Chaos invasion.

Roseluck, Carrot Top and even Applejack had been hopeful; if the planet returned to its original state there was a chance grass might sprout and reservoirs of water might spring. Twilight appreciated their enthusiasm but her calculations predicted dehydration within two weeks at the most. She couldn't hold out hope that the planet would regress that quickly, or that even someone as powerful as Draigo could hold out against the army that he had gone to ground against indefinitely. 


A noise filled the air, a long loud screeching like the sound of bombs. Derpy and Rarity galloped in, desperate for Twilight's attention.

"Is it bombing? Did something with even bigger guns arrive?" Twilight asked.

Two two exchanged glances and then Rarity answered: "Yes... and maybe. We're not sure."

Twilight followed them out. Derpy held out her magnifiers and Twilight brought them to her face with her magic: through the lenses Twilight saw huge dust clouds - it was nice that there was dust again even if it was a nuisance - and waited for it to settle. When it did she saw large silver five-walled pear-shaped containers. Each of the walls dropped open like a flower opening its petals... 

The boxiest, loudest, most inelegant flowers in Equestria. Twilight thought to herself.

As soon as the silver onions opened up they revealed a mechanism mounted on the ceiling inside each one; heavy bolter turrets opened fire on the nearest deamon targets, their rounds exploding Daemonettes from within. The vessels' contents tehn stalked out: calm, quiet, cool. 

Twilight looked back at Rarity and Derpy, forgetting the name 'Space Marine' briefly. "They're knights... and they're gray."

And as if to make her point for her, the air filled with the sound of storm bolters firing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What are we looking at?" Twilight asked.

Rainbow Dash was scanning through a pair of Imperial magnoculars. "Whoever these guys are they mean business."

"They're some really tough hombres." Pinkie Pie added, looking through a pair of stripey candy-swirled binoculars.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes then agreed. "They've established a perimeter and so far they've kept everything out."

Twilight looked grim. The Grey Knights weren't alone; in addition to the Drop Pods and their heavy bolters a Space Marine with a harness like Lyra's landed with an army of cyborgs. The servitors towed armored emplacements and then installed automated turrets. Missile launchers and lascannons tore the teeth out of the daemon Soul Grinders' artillery strikes.

Despite the frequent exchange of Chaos Havoks and Noise Marines Twilight knew the balance was in the loyalist's favor: a missile or lascannon would pick off a turret, a group of servitors would go out and replace it and then double up with a second turret. At the rate at which things were going unless the daemons attacked with much greater force Repentia Point's defenses would be fully automated.

And then the Grey Knights would be free to roam on foot.

"Tell me there's good news." Twilight asked.

Lyra joined them. "Actually, I think there is." She pointed to a cluster of defenses freshly erected. "The Draigo praised me for preserving the bodies of their dead. If you're right then Draigo didn't just build a tunnel network to survive the bombardment, he did it to stash everything he preserved. Which means..."

Twilight picked up immediately. "Which means those aren't just bits and computer pieces he's salvaging, they're coffins. Those Space Marines might be here for the long haul but they can't just wait and hope those bodies don't decay. They'll have to move them out to a facility where... um..."

Goldwing chimed in: {Where the Astartes will perform the surgeries appropriate to test the purity of the surviving genetic samples, extract the progenoids, and process the bodies for burial.}

Twilight turned to Fluttershy who pressed some buttons on her narthecium gauntlet and confirmed the information. "It's been too long to simply field harvest their gene-seed. The organs must be thoroughly scanned."

Twilight went on. "Which means a transport will have to land to retrieve the cargo and that will be our way out of here. So, who's ready to start working out how we do it?"

Pinkie Pie's hoof shot up. "Oooooh, oooooh, I've got an idea!"

Pinkie's words had barely left her muzzle when a trio of portals opened within the ponies' cave. Three squads of Daemonettes emerged, their faces shifting between beautiful elven maidens and ghoulish nightmares with dangling salivating tongues.

Following close behind was Immundus, dented helmet, bruised pride and all.

"Or not?" Pinkie added, her ears drooping.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Are you surprised to see me again, misshapen blots?"

Immundus' greeting was received with a hail of bolter fire into all three of his surrounding companies. The Daemonettes hadn't even gotten their first glance of the room when bodies began to flicker and vanish back into the Warp from bolter explosions. Unicorn beams tore into them in pairs and trios and Roseluck's flamer washed over the clustered group. Still, nopony did as much damage as Vinyl: between the multi-directional Doom Siren speakers on both sides of her head and the Blastmaster she was levitating DJ PON3's sonic energytore through half a squad on her own. 

"Actually, no." Twilight answered. "I've been expecting you for a while now. You and your monsters pop in from nowhere instantly, you've been attacking Repentia Point over and over again with the same tactics. I also anticipated the same trickle of banshees, they're the only thing you have that can move in these narrow caves and tunnels."

"Overconfident xenos! You think your rabble can withstand the might of the faithful just because you observed and decided to imitate a handful of Grey Knights?!" Immundus sounded confident in his outrage but his Warp sight darted across the room even as he dodged a lascannon shot from Rarity. His squads were almost dead but they were closing in. Daemons were expendable and Daemonette claws had been the death of many a squad of Space Marines. A mere handful of survivors were enough to rend their foe before they had a chance to respond. All they had to do was get close and once the unicorns and common ponies were dead he would handle the hovering pegasi menace himself. He charged in the Daemonette's wake; he would be the second wave exploiting the daemon's sacrifice.

Twilight Sparkle smirked at him. "I also figured out that, since you can't foresee anything we do directly, as soon as we put in action a plan that would get us to the Space Marine's transport you'd foresee their reaction to our escape and follow back their investigation to this cave. I wasn't really sure, I mean somebody else might see the future or follow our tracks and that would have thrown off my plan. But, I was willing to bet that if anybody was going to be singularly obsessed with tracking us down the one person we humiliated would be first. So, thank you." 

And then, just to rub it in, Twilight created a force field bubble around herself and quickly expanded it. The purple outline flowed around every pony and smashed into each and every Daemonette, tossing them back. The second the daemons were down they were gunned down mercilessly. The daemons under Vinyl and Rose's squads vanished entirely while the third and final team got up to their talons and hooves and charged into the squad under Big Mac's protection. 

Another daemon fell to fire before the survivors crashed into Bag MacIntosh's shield. Applejack snared a claw with her tail-mounted power whip as she struggled with the Daemonette that parried her machete strikes. Berry Punch and Octavia, through speed and stealth respectively, snuck up behind their charging foes. Octavia drew a line across her target's neck while Berry Punch ran her twin power blades through the back of the daemon Applejack dueled.

The last, snared Daemonette was struggling against Mac's shield when her squad was overrun. The end of Applejack's whip dropped to the ground as the daemon simply faded away.


For all this Immundus managed to push his way around the ponies towards Twilight. Only Trixie and Blueblood stood in his path. "Stand aside, I will have your leader's blood."

Blueblood made no reaction while Trixie snarled. "The Great and powerful Trixie wouldn't give you the pleasure."

"Silence charlatan. I mean the pegasus / unicorn hybrid and you know it!"

Twilight was pissed off. She'd endured enough abuse to her proud species and rushed to accept his challenge. She didn't give him a chance to speak. She raised a pair of bolters with her levitation and unloaded both their magazines as she charged. 

Everypony backed against the walls out of her way, constantly moving to avoid stray projectivles while keeping their eyes open for a third wave. Both sprays of ammo went wide, missing Immundus completely. He was running to meet her as well, his force staff held back. The way he carried it suggested he would trust it like a spear.

Twilight vanished just as he thrust.

Immediately after Twilight teleported Immundus found himself on all fours, struggling to lift himself off of the ground after Twilight bucked him in the spine. Unfortunately Twilight wasn't wearing power hooves or even close combat hooves. If she had been the battle might have been over then and there.

Immundus rose to his feet but hadn't finished moving when a dozen live power swords rained at his right. He rolled out of the way using his foresight to find the exact place he would be safe.

Unfortunately for him it was a gap Twilight left intentionally. As he turned to face her he was hit by a beam that to his surprise didn't knock him down like the others. He thought his armor had simply absorbed the effect.

Seconds later Immundus' helmet filled with the static of muffled yelling. The Chaos Sorceror gripped his dented helmet and when he tore it off his head was a ball of tangled curly hair. It wasn't just hair from his scalp, beard and mustache: His neck, his brow, even the fine body hair that covered every inch of his skin had grown, clogging his mouth and nostrils and blocking his view.

His helmet removed, he was tearing off clumps of hair by the fist full his free hand while aiming his force staff behind him, trying to fry Twilight with warpfire.

Browless and enraged Immundus pulled for his bolt pistol; It wasn't even out of its holster when Applejack's power whip snapped tight around wrist and handle. Four different unicorn levitation fields grasped at his armor, helping to keep him still. Immundus tugged to aim at them with his staff when he felt his hand get caught. A servo-harness' power fist clamped over his staff and knuckles.

Lyra hesitated.

"Do it!" Twilight yelled.

Immundus scarcely managed to tear his arm from his power armor's gauntlet when Lyra crushed both gauntlet and force staff.

The sorcerer was panicking: He'd underestimated his foes number and their capacity to deal with his reinforcements and as a result he'd been kept off-balance the entire fight, dealing personally with wave upon wave of non-psychic sorcery. He had to take up the offensive if he was to have any hope against this group. He wasn't aiming for victory anymore, he just wanted one casualty he could present to his god as a morsel...

Twilight trapped him inside a force bubble and immediately reinforced it with three more exterior fields, layered like an onion.

The innermost layer began to shrink, bending his knees and neck. Immundus tried to remain erect and overpower the force field through sheer mass.

The first field cracked and shattered so Twilight began compressing the second field and creating new exterior barriers to replace them. On she went and faster the fields compressed until she achieved her goal: The joints of his knees gave away first, then his unarmored arm. Moments later his armored gauntlet cracked as well. As Twilight shifted the energy shields' shapes from circles to oblong spheres she crushed his backpack as well.

Twilight dropped the magic compacter and teleported the shattered backpack off his power armor; it blinked into the air and fell behind him.The lights in his power armor flickered then died, 

Unwilling to yield Immundus raised his broken arm and spheres of lightning shot from his fingertips.

Twilight levitated his body high above their heads and faced him to the ceiling, rapidly spinning him in place like a leaf caught in a whirlwind. When the sorcerer refused to stop creating warp lightning Twilight saw no choice but to slam his body against the cave walls.

"Twilight, stop it, he's had enough!" Fluttershy yelled at the sight of the bloody Space Marine.

"Fluttershy he' ain't normal. You can't tell Twi to just let him go, If anyone's gotta say 'uncle' it has to be him, not us." Applejack called out from behind cover.

"We can't trust him even if he does surrender." Rainbow Dash added, hiding behind stalactites just like the other pegasi now that there weren't any more daemons to shoot. "His armor and weapons might be smashed but he's still got his freaky dark magic!"

"He won't surrender." Octavia said.

"Then do the humane thing already!" Sparkler yelled.

Everypony looked expectantly at Twilight. Twilight was going to ask why. 

Then she realized they weren't looking at Twilight, they were looking at Princess Twilight Sparkle. They had a prisoner, he was a monster, and he was dangerous. "You're right. All of you."

Twilight cleared her throat and spoke in a more regal tone. "Immundus, you're dangerous and from what I've seen nothing we do or say will prevent you from doing more-"

He roared and a tongue of unfocused psychic power burst from his body.

Twilight yelped after being knocked down but got up to her hooves quickly; She'd been covered by Sparkler's force field. Twilight turned to Sparkler: the other pony had cast her magic to protect her on instinct.

Twilight spoke and she was no longer regal, she was just tired. "There's nothing more to say. It's you or us."

Twilight's gaze went skyward and her magic sparked.

Immundus vanished then reappeared miles above their heads. His projected fall would drop him half a mile north of their location.

Twilight forced herself to watch. It was an ugly business, a state execution, but it had to be done and she had to bear witness if for no more reason to be sure he didn't sprout wings and escape.

He'd already fallen half the height and was picking up speed with every second. When he reached the final third of his fall a hole in the fabric of space opened up beneath him and he vanished into it. He didn't re-emerge at the other end.

The tear sealed itself and the sorcerer vanished.

Twilight sighed. "He'll be back. I don't know how badly we hurt him so assume he'll be back and be ready for it." Despite the fact that they hadn't killed him, despite the fact that her friends were unharmed and only daemons had been vanquished the ordeal left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Twilight wanted it done with as soon as possible. "Pinkie, what was your plan?"

In response Pinkie Pie pulled out an Imperium tool: it folded out from its square shape into a digging shovel with a pick. "We're digging our way out."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hours passed silently and quickly. Nopony would have believed it.

Rarity did the bulk of their specialized work. Her earth vision spell allowed her to find dense masses before they hit them. A bucket brigade kept shoving mounds of dirt, actual dirt, out behind them. Blueblood and the squeezing-to-fit Big MacIntosh guarded the rear, the latter because he was a giant shield, the former because despite his personal growth he still wasn't about to shovel earth.

The digging crew had soon bypassed Repentia Point, its automated turrets and the Grey Knights that defended them.

"Just a bit more, maybe a mile and we'll be past their defenses." Rarity said enthusiastically as she made the earth transparent above her. She kept adjusting their path relative to the surface landmarks Twilight mapped. She kept hoping the bodies she assumed from the bottom were the same formations they had seen on top.

In between passing a scoop of dirt Flitter thought to ask. "Did that... guy say who those gray knights were?"

Cloudchaser mumbled with a scoop in her mouth then repeated. "Yeah. He called them the Gray Knights."

Flitter blinked. "Clever." she deadpanned.

"Speaking of clever..." Cheerilee spoke up. "How exactly are we going to get access to the transport?"

Twilight exchanged looks with Lyra who in turn chuckled to Goldwing. "Leave that to me." Lyra said.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lyra crossed the distance from Repentia Point to the transport vessel with Goldwing perched on her back, a crate hoisted on her power fist and mechadendrils and a pair of lobotomized servitors smoking and leaking oil in a tunnel in explanation to the how and why.

The team had waited until a supply convoy got close, smashed the servitors and Lyra took their place. She wore the signet Draigo pinned to her chest and Goldwing had the means to reprogram lesser servo-brains: codes had already been spliced from the scraped servitors' cogitators. If worse came to worse Lyra hoped she could whip out the Inquisitorial Rosette instead of falling back to Rainbow's 'smash them all' plan. Inside the metal crate Rarity and Trixie's levitation helped Lyra with the container's weight while Rainbow and Cloudchaser hovered in place.

Minutes later Draigo's seal and Goldwing's communications were accepted without incident from the guardian sentries and defense servitors keeping a perimeter around the unusual vessel.

The covert work was finished once Lyra, with Goldwings help, reprogrammed the servitor's cogitators to accept that one pony-shaped servitor with power armor was actually twenty-one. Rainbow Dash took a tentative first step out from the container and everything ignored her.

Everypony sighed in relief: they were clear. Rainbow took flight to retrieve everypony else and soon Twilight Sparkle and everyone else joined them. Twenty-one ponies, two dozen servitors, five defense turrets and a growing mountain of scavenged supplies.

The group's leadership got to work: a servitor's tasks were interrupted to answer a request for replacement food and water supplies, emergency replacements for bolter ammunition and flamer prometheum had to be scavenged. The brains and logistics ponies then met: they needed to find a way to get everypony up and out, ASAP.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Derpy was acting strange, stopping at odd times, waiting for things nopony else was waiting for. Something had happened as soon as they reached the orbital craft but nopony could guess what. She said she couldn't tell them what it was.

She had lied.

Nopony saw her talking to herself; nopony saw her sadness.

The voice in her mind said his peace. He was a body invisible to everything but her. "Let's be clear about this, 'Ditzy Doo'. Your coltfriend 'Time Turner' has a bit of experience in this area. He knows when something can't be changed."

"Fixed events in time." She said nodding.

"That's right. Some are a little more... flexible than others. As lousy as his word choice was Discord was trying to sound sympathetic. I'll put it like this: that transport is going to make it off this planet and make it out of the Warp, and it's going to do so with twenty ponies stowing away on board. Not twenty-one, twenty."

Derpy's heart sank. She looked at everypony watching the expressions of relief on their faces.

"Was it always meant to be me?"

"No, I have to say it wasn't. There's a few of you it could hit depending on circumstance. We could delay it a few hours, a few days, but it will have to happen."

Derpy looked thoughtfully at Sparkler, at Carrot Top, at the distant Princess Twilight.

With no other thought she went to Sparkler and Carrot Top and wrapped a hoof around each of their necks.

Sparkler looked back at Derpy with relief. Carrot Top said: "Aww, don't do that Derpy, you'll make me nervous."

"We made it, everything is gonna be just fine." Derpy said confidently.

She got closer to Sparkler and said: "You've always made me so proud. I don't think I'll ever get used to how strong you really are. 
It makes me feel a little old but that's ok; it's been worth it to see you grow up to be who you are now."

"M-momma... stop. You'll make me cry."

Derpy held her tight then let her go. "It's ok, Momma's just being silly. Sorry for being such a hoof-full Golden."

"It's ok Derpy. What's the occasional fridge between friends?" Carrot Top answered, meaning every word.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Derpy walked out a few paces, looking over the cases and crates like everypony else had. She opened a fresh arrival and rummaged, eventually finding a strange foodstuff. It looked and smelled like bread but when she bit into it all she tasted was raw paste. "Ugh... some things are just not worth thinking about."

"It's time."

"Now?" Derpy asked startled. Her crossed eyes looked worried as she looked around, trying to identify the source of danger.

"You need to move a bit but yes. If you don't somepony else could be the one. Or you could warn them, make everypony duck.

Derpy stared at the ground.

You could delay until the Grey Knights return and discover you, or until the Emperor's Children come in force and take more than just one."

"They're going to use the panic as an excuse to get the ship into orbit and leave the system."

Discord whistled, sounding thoroughly impressed. "And some people say you're not that bright."

Derpy closed her eyes, gave a small smile and shrugged.

"Just take five steps forward and hold still for a count of two."

Something else bothered him, something he had to ask. "Don't you even want to know who you're taking a bullet for?"

"I don't really need to: I'd do it for any of them."

Discord smiled at her. She was just so endearing.

"Will it hurt?" She asked.

"I promise you won't feel a thing."

"Shouldn't I put down my saddlebags and power sword?"

"No dear. You'll need them where you're going."

"What?"

you're going to light the way

Something about the way Discord thought that made her feel completely reassured. 
Derpy took a step forward, took a deep breath and stopped.

The crack filled the air a fraction of a second after the round crossed the sky.
A hidden Emperor's Children Chaos Marine scanned through the scope of his Daemon Eye long range bolter.

The shot went straight to Derpy's head.

There!

Derpy snapped back, suspended in mid-air for the briefest second before her body was encased within a perfectly cut yellow gemstone.

"MOMMA!" Sparkler screamed and everypony reacted to her.

Applejack and every pony with a bolter turned towards the outer perimeter and unloaded their weapons' ammunition.

A war cry rang out from the hills and an army of Chaos Marines rushed from their cover, charging into the Gray Knight lines.

"Twilight, Help!" Rarity screamed.

Twilight turned from the sight of Bon Bon manually directing a servitor's autocannon shots and Vinyl raising Tartarus with her blastmaster to find Rarity levitating Derpy's crystal chrysalis with her magic.

"Rarity what ware you doing?!"

"I can't hold onto it. It's getting away!"

Twilight didn't understand but the second Rarity's magic slipped she saw that Rarity wasn't levitating the stone, it was hovering on its own. Hovering and rising into the sky with no sign of stopping.

Twilight caught the gem with her magic, looking for some sign that the pony within was conscious.

Derpy wasn't moving.

Twilight held on but the gem continued to rise and rise until at last it broke free from Twilight's levitation field.

Sparkler blinked into existence on top of the gem, anchored herself onto it with her levitation and wasn't letting go. Focused to the last she hadn't even thought to put up a force field around herself. Bolter fire ricocheted off the stone's smooth yellow surface. The Chaos weapons didn't leave so much as a scratch.

"Momma, Momma help me! Momma get up! You have to get out of there! Don't leave me!"

There was no answer.

The gem rose higher and higher, gaining speed with each passing second until Sparkler was no longer riding atop but simply holding on for dear life to its side. Tears filled her eyes as the gem hit escape velocity. Her power-armored hoof slipped.

She fell.

For achingly eternal moments she fell and all she could see was that yellow gemstone vanishing in the distance.

Two pairs of hooves caught her. Flitter and Cloudchaser had her, hoisting her up with their hooves under each one of her 'armpits'. They spread their wings and slowed their dive, controlling their descent so they wouldn't impact like a meteor. Once they were in control they shifted their flight and buzzed into the open hangar door to the planetary craft.

Bon Bon dragged in the damaged autocannon servitor while Lyra and Goldwing combined their talents to get moving. "The servitor crew's accepted our emergency orders. Hold them off until the hatch's closed!"

Twilight and Trixie combined their magic to create a force bubble while Big Mac and Blueblood stood in front with their shields raised high.

Applejack shoved a large heavy crate towards the ramp. A team of ponies copied her and shoved another crate forward to create cover.

The last bursts of bolter fire impacted and exploded when the ramp finally sealed and the environment changed to cold air as the cargo hold was pressurized.

Lyra called out to Twilight. "Goldwing says we're headed into orbit. This thing's called a Thunderhawk Transport. Well, the ship is in any case. We're just cargo loaded into a transport pod. The servitor pilot has instructions to take us into orbit and load us specifically on a transport that's headed for the Sol system."

"Anything special about the Sol system?" Twilight asked.

{Holy Terra. The Center of the Imperium. This vessel is headed to the heart of the Galaxy.} Goldwing replied.

"Twilight...?" Applejack asked nervously.

"How long will it take us to arrive?" Twilight asked anticipating Applejack's question.

{Warp travel estimations are notoriously inaccurate. Furthermore we are assigned to a funerary convoy vessel, Mundus Vecturae class. The Vecturae is an ubiquitous commonplace civilian mass transport. Our assignment to one suggests we are to pass anonymously through the bulk of Imperium traffic. Given the reported nature of our cargo: deceased Space Marines and Imperium servants to be processed for re-harvesting and burial, and the quality of our vessel it is unlikely we will arrive to the Sol system with any haste.}

Twilight turned the AJ. Applejack nodded in a manner that said Twilight had guessed her question right and that she could live with the answer. Twilight looked tired. She settled down on her belly and closed her eyes. "We'll worry about that once we're underway. The alternative's taking over a ship we can't control by force."

Lyra looked worried, then said. "Goldwing'll take care of it so we aren't scanned, and he'll transmit a note that we've got multiple servitors monitoring and preserving the remains so we'll need extra supplies of food and drinking water."

Twlight nodded but her heart wasn't into it.

Lyra moved on while Twilight could do nothing more than stare at Sparkler, looking up to the ceiling of their container as she huddled in the corner.



 

> Chapter Fourteen - Unto Death I Shall Serve. Unto Life.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE STARSCAPE

Alone in the Starscape Luna's body was at rest. Her spirit coursed freely, trotting along the stars.  

Exploring the alien galaxy had been an exhausting endeavor, for even the brightest of Celestia's academics. Luna had a thousand years' experience charting stars and her unique abilities made her especially suited for crossing safely. Her astral self traveled light years with no fear of the creatures of the Warp.

Twilight Sparkle and the other twenty ponies had disappeared from the moment they stepped into Discord's portal. Finding them was the Princess' first priority but long days had past and they had no clue where to look. She had no choice but to chart and keep an eye on the entire galaxy waiting for a sign.

Her gaze couldn't catch every detail. Princess Luna did not notice the ripple caused the exact moment the first Discord Topaz pierced the barriers between realspace and the Eye of Terror. She didn't see the way Derpy's gem sank into the deeper regions of the Warp.

All she saw was the moment something within the Warp reacted to the Topaz's presence and created a beam of energy that pierced the universe like a spear, across all reality and into the Starscape.

Luna gasped at the sight of the cosmic event and her astral form dispersed, returning her consciousness to her physical body.

Whole again, she quickly stood to track where the beam headed only to find it hadn't crossed into the Starscape.

The beam led directly into Equestria.


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EQUESTRIA, CANTERLOT ROYAL CASTLE
CANTERLOT TOWER
EMERGENCY WAR ROOM

The hallway to the sealed vault of the Elements was crowded. 

The carpets, potted plants and stained glass windows were still where they'd always been, they were just covered by a mountain of new stuff: the plants had been 'eaten' by nightstands with tall shelves because their air space was needed for stacking bookcases. The stained glass windows were draped with curtains marked with the Halo Stars. The carpet was buried under dozens of desks with ponies rushing back and forth. 
The bulk of the room was dominated by a great table horseshoe-shaped table.

At that table's center Celestia sat on a great cushion. There she played her role as the central pillar on which everything leaned for support, the font to which all information was fed and from which all decisions and orders flowed.

Above her head a trillion specks of light, each no larger than the head of a pin, sparkled in the air. Between the sparkling lights and the limit of the Halo Star curtains the Imperium's Galaxy was faithfully recreated. Everything piece of the puzzle was gradually being mapped and replicated down to the two great wounds in Imperium space: the Maelstrom, and the Eye of Terror.

Behind her, the only body in the room not working grumbled.
"This blows. How long am I supposed to wait here doing nothing?"

Princess Celestia gave herself a moment's interruption from a report hypothesizing the effect that a particular cluster of dense bodies might have on determining the shape of the Maelstrom to give Spike a moment of her attention.

"Don't worry, Spike. We've no reason to be afraid."

Spike shook his head. Ever since he'd gotten back to Canterlot he'd had only one thing on his mind: getting the Cutie Mark Crusaders squared away as soon as possible.

To his credit and the girls' it took three days: Sweetie Bell left the Carousel Boutique and went back to her parents, Scootaloo went home and Applebloom took Babs back to Sweet Apple Acres. Granny Smith might be able to manage for a few days without Big Mac and Applejack but with the two fillies around at least the farm wouldn't feel so alone.

No sooner had Spike hugged the third and last filly goodbye when he realized he'd need their help with the mane six' animal friends: Winona was fine on the farm;  Sweetie Belle took an indignant Opalescence with her; the Cakes only needed the word to keep Gummy fed and watered; Angel Bunny was already ruling Fluttershy's cottage with an iron paw; Spike and Scootaloo looked up at the sky, then back at each other, then back to the sky at Rainbow Dash's house and concluded neither one had a way to actually get up to the rainbow-pooled three-storied tower in the clouds and giving up they both went back to Ponyville proper.

Scootalo waved Spike goodbye a second and final time and told him not to worry, she'd find somepony she could trust to go and make sure Tank was fed and taken care: "There's no way I'd let Rainbow Dash down!"

So Spike went back to the library tree-house, told Owlowiscious he'd be in charge for a while, and packed up the three crates containing Twilight's emergency study supplies, her emergency emergency research supplies, and her all-purpose emergency of emergencies cache and guide to the unpredicted laboratory, archaeology, astronomy and history archive.

The little dragon marched down the street to the train station and he was a sight the likes of which hadn't been seen since Big MacIntosh dragged Berry Punch's house to its new location in front of the Carousel Boutique. 

The station hadn't felt as crowded, and as lonely, as it had that day.

The conductor was busy with stallions getting sorted for travel. Shining Armor's campaign for emergency recruitment en masse was in full swing. Volunteers crowded the platform saying goodbye to their loved ones.

Spike pushed between Thunderlane and Bulk Biceps to get a quick interview.
The conductor dismissed him out of hoof saying he was busy.
Spike then shoved a signed order from Princess Celestia, complete with the royal seal and hopped onto the train. As far as he was concerned somepony else could load the mountain of stuff, the only thing on his mind was that he should have been burping out Twilight's letters by the book-full days ago.

That day in the train yard was over a week ago and Spike, for all his bellyaching, wasn't really feeling useless; the little guy was terrified.

He looked up to Celestia with tears in his eyes like only a child could and asked:
"What am I supposed to do?"

Celestia tried to comfort him: "What you have always done. Go take a nap, we'll still be here." Leaning closer to his ear she whispered. "And don't tell anypony, but I think you'll be able to deliver a letter just as well in your sleep."

Spike nodded and got up from behind her, waddled on under the large table and vanished behind bodies as he left the long hallway.

Celestia nodded to a royal unicorn guard.
"Keep him company and if there is word bring it to me immediately."

A royal voice broke from the vault behind Celestia, freezing everypony in their tracks.
"Sister, something happened, we have need that thou bear witness to it thyself, thine opinion is needed for it is most informed."


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SEGMENTUM ULTIMA, GALACTIC EAST OF HOLY TERRA
ONE HUNDRED LIGHT YEARS GALACTIC SOUTH OF THE GRENDEL STARS

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna faded into the universe. Their bodies glowed with golden and indigo light respectively. Their magic fields provided them with air and the power to communicate verbally.

"Luna." Celestia began. "Luna where are we? I see nothing but stars and empty space all around us."

Luna looked surprised. "This is not right, sister. We meant that we should arrive at the source of the magic beam, a place of magenta light and unstable reality. We are very far from where we should be. Someone has prevented us from entering this world closer to Twilight Sparkle's location."

Celestia became serious:
"You are certain it is a person and not a natural phenomenon?"

Luna was unshakeable. "We are most certain. We feel whispers, they tell us we are not wanted here."

"May I?" Celestia gestured towards Luna's head.

Luna smiled mischievously. "Please do."

Celestia closed her eyes and Luna dove into her sister's mind, expanding her consciousness and opening herself so that they both stood on equal footing. With their consciousness shared Luna let her sister experience all that she did. Celestia soon heard the voices: tiny, niggling things. Celestia approached and in the back-and-forth struggle to define the mental landscape between her consciousness and Luna's they were revealed.

Celestia aimed her horn and her light shined on them. As her magic isolated each individual whisper they cried out, only one constant whisper echoing: "ponies".

Luna entered the mental landscape and trapped the voices within spell orbs. Each took on a human shape, the shapes of Chaos Space Marines.

Celestia's eyes narrowed: "Tell us who you are."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I am Charibdis." The first voice declared. He looked stronger than the rest, his essence was darker and his spectral body retained the mutations he had accumulated in life.

Luna spoke: "Be calm and answer our inquiries. Why hast thou dared to lay a hoof upon our person?"

Charibdis, unfortunately, refused to answer.

The second spirit spoke up: "He... wasn't... Charibdis. His name was Iebin. The gods left us whole because we saw your kind: ponies.  He  ordered we find you."

A third voice echoed "Iebin."

Luna nodded to Celestia and they each took up places before one prisoner allowing the others to fade into the back of their collective mind. They didn't understand who ghosts could be 'whole' but that was the least of their concenrs.

Celestia approached the stronger one, her radiance bathed him in light: "Who are you?"

The human shape solidified, its body resembled a Space Marine again free of mutations: "I... I was James Herne."

Luna focused on the weaker outline, projecting a part of herself into his mind making parts of his soul whole.

"I was varSteppenvulf Fourth."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James spoke. "I ... I was born on Caliope Seven"

Fourth spoke: "I was son to varSteppenvulf on Marsis."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Tell us." Celestia lead.

"Show us." Luna insisted.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna opened her eyes and the landscape was a dark forest. "What are we looking at?"

Fourth spoke: "This, this was my home."
They looked around. The environment became solid but it was still just a tent outside a large burrow. "This is a village. It has no name, settlements on Marsis are temporary camps at the best."

Luna noticed a cluster of humans, crowded and mud-splattered and indistinguishable from apes. "The villagers wear no clothes."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celestia opened her eyes and found herself in a tiny room."This looks like a closet."

James looked strangely proud: "It's a hab block room. Looking back it is small. It wasn't so bad as a child."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourth looked at his fellow humans and laughed at Luna. "Aye, they never needed to. Or they never had them even if they did. Clothes, pshaw."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James looked confused as he answered Celestia's next question: "A hab block is just a layer, or a storey for a house silly horse. It's just a word for a spire. You know? A hive."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourth continued describing his homeworld: "Some people died from the cold, I remember that. All the people hibernate during the winter. They build tunnels into the warmest parts of the earth and lay low, waiting for spring, hoping the food would last. Always in small groups, families. You couldn't share with anyone else. Someone would always sneak around, steal food, give more to their own people, their children, or themselves."

Luna arched a brow and Fourth shrugged.

"Oh you'd confront them but they'd cry and whine 'they're desperate, they're hungry' and we'd all yell back 'so are we!' And there would be a fight and by the end only one family would be left alive."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James was sighing, completely oblivious to the memory that he wasn't an ordinary human anymore, not even an Astartes. All he knew was that he was alive and he was answering this strange winged unicorn's questions: "This is a hive. Hive planets are special, they're all built this way. Billions of people all in one massive city."

Celestia changed their perspective, moving them to the outside of the hive so she could get a look. it was massive. Over five hundred stories tall by her estimate. It defied belief that anything artificial could be built so tall.

"It does not look stable." She said.

James agreed. "It isn't, but that's part of life. Some day the earth will quake and parts of it will snap. Millions of people dead in seconds. Then the dust will clear, a new level will be built up higher and life will go on."

Celestia moved them inside again and they toured halls.

"Some parts get cut off and they'll evolve into their own societies. Fringe elements. It may be a few city levels, it may be an entire wing. It won't matter. Life will circulate, flow around them. That section will be cut off like a cancer. Left to fester on its own. Until it becomes necessary to do something about it. When they become a plague or an army and they threaten another hab block, another level, another section of the city that is  integrated to the whole  and  vital,  then  the House families or the Hive administratum will intervene. Then they'll send in a real army; house guard, PDF, garrisoned Imperial Guard it doesn't matter."

"PDF?" Celestia asked.

"Planetary Defense Forces. They guard against the sky. The laxest part of every planet's army. They can go decades or even centuries without being needed."

Celestia didn't understand. "And what do they do?"

James didn't really have a straight answer. "Whoever they decide. They go down in force and look around. And they purge anything that stands up to them. Two or three sweeps and their job is done. Order is restored. Really they just killed everyone in power, directly or indirectly. Scrounger-nobility without an army suddenly get overthrown and a new generation of scavengers try to make a living of it again. Maybe someone from the upper levels or lower tries to muscle in, integrate the space and manpower to his own schemes. Produce more, gain a higher standing, hopefully one day elevate himself to the higher spire levels. And the cycle starts over."

Celestia had led them back to the first room. "And this room was your home."

"I... we lived here." 

Celestia gestured to a dark corner in the stifling space. "There is a door here. Open it."

"I don't think I should."

"Do not be afraid." She said, trying her best to be reassuring.

"I am a Space Marine. I know no fear."

"James..." Celestia gently coerced him.

The door began to open on its own and James couldn't avoid speaking: "I... I'm not a Space Marine. I... I turned my back on the Chapter. I sold my soul to Marilius. No, Immundus. He renamed himself Immundus."

Celestia tried to give him courage. "Everything you have seen and lived, does what lie behind that door truly make you hesitate?"

"I... no. it cannot. Why would it? I... I remember now. This was my home. That, that machine. I remember I could fit my head twice in it if I could try. But I've seen such devices since. They are so tiny." 

The room, previously wide enough to accommodate them easily, shrank to its true scale now that now that Brother Herne had a frame of reference - the scale of a boy to the scale of a simple convection oven. He towered over the hab room, his shoulderpads scraping against the walls. Celestia was now against the far wall, sitting on the cot. 

James continued: "My father always made a point to drill it into my head that this wasn't our home. It was a room, someone else's room, and one day we'd have to leave it. I understand now why. It was a slum section, completely impoverished. Unofficial, unsanctioned, unmonitored. Nobody owned the rooms they were housed in, everything was just occupied. We were squatters. Everybody were squatters. There was nobody to purchase from and no point in buying anything anyway: the section had been owned by a banking firm that had probably been absorbed a century ago. The deeds were likely written off when the hab was cut off from the rest of the hive decades earlier. It was lawless, a no-man's land. Any day gangers could smash in the door and clear us out declaring it was theirs. Nobody would stop them."

"I was one of them. One day I grew up. I left my father and never returned, joined a hab gang and took over. We'd mark a shopkeeper, trace him to his home, raid his supplies and take over his room. Often we found nothing. One time we got lucky and hit a stash: two cases of engine-degreaser being distilled into licor. We stayed there a year I think, drinking and trading excess and living it up until the ethyl ran out. The gang turned on each other. I made it out alive."

James' eyes took on a glassy state. His voice was mechanical. Calm.
"Then the Angels came. They took me. I became one. I became an Angel. 
I became a Space Marine.
And I forgot everything."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Within Fourth's mind Luna was making similar progress.

"I was the last one of my family, dug into the earth. They killed my parents, they killed my sister. They didn't need a weak girl, they said."

"I killed him."

"I caught his arm and crushed his eye with a rock. I took the knife from his hand and I killed him."

"Him and his family. Everything had been ruined. They'd spilt the water barrels in the tunnels during the brawl. Everything was mud, I drank it trying to save the water. I was so hungry. I killed them, and I survived the winter."

"I ate them."

"I survived the next three years, alone, because I killed people, and I ate them."

"And then one day the Angels came. They took me. I became one. I became an Angel.
I became a Space Marine.
And I forgot everything."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A dozen minds and a dozen souls across the galaxy echoed the same sentiment. Luna and Celestia had managed to tap into a maelstrom of thoughts and psychic echoes, shadows of people who no longer lived.

Everywhere the same pattern repeated itself.

"I learned to read and write."
"I learned to fight, use a bolter."
"They taught me everything."
"I forgot about my parents. I didn't realize. I never noticed, never cared. I had brothers now."
"I discovered I was meant to serve alongside the Mechanicus. I had been blessed by the Omnissiah. I worked flesh and machines."

But at the end, always:
"One day the Angels came.
I became a Space Marine.
And I forgot everything."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every cluster of stars eventually becomes charted, every section becomes drawn on a map. Distances and routes are discovered, tested, preserved.

Eventually one planet, one system, becomes a capital. 

"Governor, We expect an explanation." Luna had searched the dreams of leaders looking for a trail, following breadcrumbs until she could find the person at the top.

Her search had led her to this world, to this man.

Her power put him within his dreams despite the fortress of protective technology, much of it anti-psycher, with which he surrounded himself.

"I must be dreaming... what fantasy is this that a pegasus-winged unicorn would demand I explain myself... You are beautiful. Like an imaginary friend from childhood. I don't remember you... but then I am one hundred and twenty."

Luna explained herself very briefly. She wanted to understand Space Marines.

The governor answered. "The worlds you describe aren't unusual. I've never heard of Caliope Seven or Marsis; I can tell you now I never needed to. The first is a common Hive World and the second's a Feral planet if I'd ever heard of one. There are billions of inhabitants on a Hive World. Billions. Do you really think there's room for all of them? Perish the thought, never. But they are and they're there. There people breed like rats and survive just the same. If they were all useful, oh that would be something. I'd conscript an entire Hive if I could, send them all into Guard Regiments or penal legions if need be. I'd happily send them all into the gaping maw of an Ork 'Waaaagh!' if it meant an end to two of our problems."

"But it wouldn't. So we leave them be. The best invariably rise to the top and get picked out, either as Imperium or Astartes agents. Some might even be of use to the Inquisition. It matters naught. The planetary tithes are met, my advisers predict stability in the region baring any outside circumstances and the organizations that take their pick from our human livestock are well satisfied. And even if thy weren't who cares? The Astartes would pick off members from another world, as would the Inquisition. 
The Schola Progenium continues to satisfactorily induct new applicants for the Ecclesiarchy, the Departmento Munitorum, the Sororitas, the Commissariat AND the stormtrooper regiments and as far as I'm concerned that settles the matter."

Luna heard a string of terms that meant nothing to her and while she was tempted to pursue these new threads she felt it was important to get closure on the subject of varSteppenvulf's homeworld. "And the feral world?"

The governor waved off the question with his hand. "Trivial. Like I said we have millions of men to spare on planet. Marsis or whatever it's called is just another mudball. If it isn't already settled then it must not be worth settling. Hardly worth the terraforming effort just to make the lives of a few savages comfortable."

Luna persisted, pleading their case. "Is that the only benefit you could see? You speak as if inhabitable worlds were easily procured."

The governor granted the point. "Indeed they are not. " He was pensive. "Hmm... perhaps there is a hidden benefit. That is why I am speaking to you isn't it? This is just my subconscious. Some planet caught my eye and a little dream pony with wings, a horn and an enlarged head is my mind's way of reminding me about it. I must say this is very livid: I should ask my chief cook what he did, perhaps the pech was of better quality this time... one can never tell."

Luna ignored the word 'pech' and focused on the governor's anxieties."What do you think of these other organizations that trouble you?"

"Well let me see. The Schola produces its own adepts and none counts towards the planetary tithe but there are some advantages. The reconstruction and dedication of a hive section to a Sororitas Minor Order would improve turnaround and provide a tertiary planetary defense. It might even help to ward off the evil eye."

Luna dismissed the last term. She'd heard the term 'evil eye' in enough human minds to understand it was a baseless superstition. 

He continued: "The same could be said for a stormtrooper garrison and training facility, less prestigious but also less interference from the Ecclesiarchy. Piety notwithstanding I would not be doing my progeny any favors by converting this planet into a shrineworld. But it's all just speculation, isn't it? It all comes down to the quality of the masses' brats. My father, in his day, never saw the value investing in them. Why should I?"

A disturbing thought began to form within Luna's heart. Even as she fought against it she had to give it words. "What is the age of maturity?"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

varSteppenvulf didn't hesitate. "At puberty. The first signs. When a lad grows his first beard and a lass bleeds."

Herne was apprehensive but answered anyway. "The official records vary, typically the prefects and arbites enforced the age of sixteen."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The governor's standards were completely different.

"My boy finished his elementary education at the age of twenty-five. I suspect he'll be ready and I'll begin delegating authorities to him in his forties. Ideally I'll retire to private life no sooner than two-hundred and ten. I hope I'll be in health to maneuver him even then. I didn't inherit full control of House Claad until I was one-hundred and thirteen and I'll not see everything brought down by passing all on to a boy."

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"How old were you when the Angels came?" Celestia asked.

James had trouble remembering then answered: "I was eleven."

Fourth was quick. "Thirteen Marsis winters. Ten years standard."

"Why?" Celestia asked, astonished at their answers.

James spoke clearly: "I trained initiates in the scout company. They must be young. The transformative properties of gene-seed are rejected more frequently in adulthood, even adolescence. The entire process is best completed before puberty sets in and their body growth ends."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna was outraged. She blocked out everything else and talked directly to Celestia.

"It is worse than we suspected Sister, worse than we could have imagined. They are chosen deliberately. Orphans. Taken from the most savage of societies. They must be strong and capable killers and they must have accomplished this before they mature, halfway into their childhood. If they were ponies they wouldn't be old enough to have a cutie-mark. They wouldn't have an idea who they really are."

"Combine their youth with the hypnotherapy required to enhance their transformation and every Space Marine has no memory of their life as an ordinary human. The formulas for their transformation and the organizations that encourage them have been refined over millennia."

"Human lifespans can exceed two-hundred years. The Chapter is all they know."

Celestia was quiet.

At that moment Iebin spoke, forcing himself back from the clouded recesses of their mind collective:
"Indeed it is. Curious how these humans react, isn't it?"

Celestia and Luna looked on in shock as Iebin's yellow eye fell from his head and the rest of his body faded back to where Celestia kept him. The eye hovered in the air and sprouted a complete body.

Discord's body.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I am surprised to see you here and well." Celestia said. "I remember what happened to you."

Discord was taunting. "I had no doubt you did, you have a tendency to stand back and watch everything unfold. You know I had my doubts but apparently one thousand years of routine can make a pony change. Or perhaps I'm mistaken, perhaps it isn't time that made everything change for that take-charge princess I used to know. Perhaps it came from something... deeper."

Celestia didn't care for Discord's insinuation. He was being nasty and she needed answers but more likely than not if she just up and asked what she wanted to know that would be the information he withheld.

Discord continued: "Such a curious position you were in, lording over all of creation unchallenged, free to impose your own brand of "order" across the realm - and really why shouldn't you? After all the defeated aren't around to press their own version of events upon everypony not in the know. Tell me Celestia, were a thousand years enough? Your first choice plan to rule Equestria as a shared monarchy didn't have such a long shelf life, did it? You soon found yourself playing with more orbital bodies, and more than just orbital bodies, very quickly."

Discord went on, indifferent to Luna's teeth-gritting. "I wonder if in contrast  those  thousand years succeeded were the others didn't. If they were enough to make you see the distance, enough to measure the degrees, enough to make you understand what it is like to be someone... like me."

Celestia didn't know why Discord was obsessing over the past, especially over this speculation of a tyrant Celestia. Something about him was off.

"You've immortalized me as a puppeteer but it wasn't too long afterwards that the strain of your new-found 'freedom' caught up with you. Tell me, what virtue innate to you determined that your reign should be judged as righteous by that lovely little storybook you continue to write?"

Celestia had heard enough. "I do appreciate your point, your fears. I have never felt alone but power is isolating. Watching from afar, intervening in small ways, trying so hard not to interfere with everypony's lives. It is difficult and humbling and it is still worlds away from the fear of becoming emotionally involved with anyone; Treating everything in the fleeting moment as something outside you. It is not for you to judge my rule, Discord. For all my limitations and imperfections I have done my best to not only guide my subjects but to share in their lives."

Unsatisfied with this response Discord grumbled.

Celestia moved to attack. "I heard you cry."

"That was just for Pinkie's sake."

"I don't believe that. You've lent my little ponies more than just your magic; there's a piece of you inside all of them right now. You were doing this because I asked, and I am thankful but you remained here because of what you went through."

Discord looked furious. She went on: "It's why you cried."

Celestia brought her face within inches of his, their muzzles almost touching. "You were afraid."

Discord huffed. "I'm not having this discussion. Let's just move on to whatever it is you want from me."

"I know you're not complete, Discord. Your being is split among twenty-one other individuals. You're just a small fragment, the part of you that resents me. It's pretty clever. This part of you would naturally be the one that crossed the universe to find me."

With a nod Celestia and Luna opened their hearts and the Discord fragment vanished, dissolving into their minds. All at once they experienced everything, the studies, the research, the fear, the combat, Derpy...

Luna reeled. "Sister, we must hurry!"

Celestia stopped her.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Back in the physical realm Celestia stopped. Something in the universe at large felt wrong. Her eyes turned to a planet on the eastern fringe. Their cries were deafening.

The planet's Imperial population rend their garments and cried to the heavens screaming about the end of the world. The apocalypse had come to their solar system: Solar Flared, earthquakes, tidal waves, distortion of their planet's ozone shield and increased background radiation had devastated the population, crippled its industry and drove its superfluous nobility to flee to neighboring systems.

Celestia turned to a distant star and saw the devastation for what it was: a celestial body suffering from a gravity distortion on a galactic scale. She drew a spyglass from her saddlebag, enchanted it with her horn and pointed it in the direction of the gravity spike.

"There's something else coming. Something on the opposite end of the galaxy." Celestia closed the spyglass. "Sister, can you see what lies in the distance?"

"Not with our eyes.

Celestia nodded at Luna and Luna broke off, splitting her astral self and hurling it across the galaxy. Her mental construct flowed, using the pull of the gravity spike as a guiding road. 

She soon found the source. A massive fleet of biological constructs, kilometer-long living organisms escorted by organic fighter-vessels as numerous as the stars.

Luna's focus returned to her body and shared the vision with Celestia. "By the heavens, what are these creatures?"

In response Celestia turned around, scanning the planetary system for the world where they had found the planetary governor.

"Mmm... hello again. A new pony. Are you here to play with me too?"

Celestia was elegant but brief. "I apologize, no. I have only one question for you."

"Have you now? Very well then, please tell. What is it?"

Luna phased into the governor's mind as well, picking up the conversation where Celestia left off. "This image, tell us, what is it?" Luna projected a still, a mere microsecond of the size and composition of the fleet.

The planetary governor, the lord protector and master of House Claad, experienced a total mental breakdown as several thousand hours of briefings, holologs, personal accounts, Mechanicus biologists' studies and indoctrinated defense strategy flooded his mind. 

His memory overlapped written words with aural discussions and visual logs of what every last one of these known horrors were conjectured to look like along with the horrifying aftermath of their invasions.

Luna and Celestia were forcibly ejected from his dreamscape, their ears ringing with his desperate screams.
"THEY ARE COME! THE GREAT DEVOURER!"

"Tyranids." Luna said. "The Imperium calls them Tyranids and the humans view their galaxy as a map of bright stars that are gradually replaced by barren rock as this mindless swarm devours everything in its path, consuming its biomass for the sole intention of calfing more organisms to spread out across the stars."

Celestia balked. "Weaponized parasprites."

"We can think of no better analogy."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celestia turned to the tendril of the approaching Tyranid hive fleet and pulled out a scroll and tools. A compass, quill, ink pot, an abacus. Floating weightlessly she built a sphere of mathematics, geometry and algebra around herself.

Luna arched her brow: "Sister, what art thou calculating?"

Celestia answered her as she turned to the distressed planet with a pair of forceps and an hourglass on its side. Celestia created a small gravity well and waited. The planet shook violently and Celestia simultaneously set the timer and measured the severity of the displacement. When the planet came to a rest she duplicated the contents onto a scale, measured the mass and logged the duration of the quake and its magnitude.

The hourglass continued to spill its sand; Celestia needed to know the frequency of the tremors as well. "I am calculating the strength and magnitude of the gravitational distortion."

"Curious. Why?"

"I need to know that information if I am to stop them effectively. Have I overlooked something?"

Luna shook her head. "Sister, we do not question thine methods but rather thy motivation. That fleet, however monstrous, is part of their natural order. I suspect they face threats of this magnitude on a regular basis. Thine efforts in the grand scheme of things, while commendable, are unlikely to make a difference."

"I believe that isn't true."

Luna went into Celestia's sphere of documents, lists and calculations looking over the numbers. "By thine estimates this 'Hive Fleet' will not reach this system for several solar decades. All information the governor possessed implied that these creatures travel through realspace by altering the laws of physics. They cannot enter the Warp and thus are not a threat to us or to Twilight Sparkle's mission."

Luna tapped into the research Twilight had made through the essence of Discord's shared consciousness. Theories and histories about the nature of the Warp were plentiful within the Inquisitor Lord's personal files. " Indeed, the nature of the Warp makes it likely that if every living thing in this universe were to die the consciousness of the Chaos Gods would begin to fade and the threat to Equestria would be over. Why stand in the way of this infestation?"

Celestia had only one response: morality. "Because they're people."

Luna dipped her head, considered, then accepted her sister's answer. With violent force she expelled Iebin, Fourth, James and the other phantasms from their collective mind and erected a force field that kept them away. Defeated they retreated to the Warp.

"We are with you." She said, referring only to herself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twinkling in the distance this Hive Fleet, a late tendril of the Hive Fleet Imperium scholars had designated 'Behemoth', floated forward caught within a compressed space-time corridor. It was a capsule the size of a planet, crossing the galaxy faster than the speed of light.

Relatively tiny, the fleet itself posed a threat not because of its size but because of what it reinforced and the scale of the force it acted as the vanguard for.

In its path psycher communications and navigators' vision turned black or static, a phenomenon they described as a 'shadow in the Warp'.

Their psychic interference did nothing to affect simple magic.

Princess Luna's astral self entered the corridor and traveled alongside the fleet, galloping across space as she scouted the massive bio-ships.

At last she found the one she wanted. It was a comparatively small vessel, soft, lacking the chitinous shell of the warship creatures and covered with flailing spines. Like a spider pulling at a web this vessel, this 'Narvhal', pulled at the gravitational force of the star system dragging its fleet along.

Luna used her magic to create a series of gravity shields around the vessel. The Narvhal shrieked as its delicate senses were assaulted by the fluctuating gravity fields.

Seconds later an asteroid the size of a continent tore through the fleet, collecting a cover of smashed Drone Escorts until it smashed into the tiny vessel, leaving a trail of pulped entrails floating through space, ejecting the Narvhal from the time-space corridor and knocking the crippled vessel off course.

Luna's astral projection remained with the fleet, so far her gravity wells preserved the fleet's velocity and course.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Excellent, a direct hit sister!" Luna cheered.

Celestia smiled with satisfaction even as her brow became covered with the sweat of her efforts.

She and Luna had relocated several hundred light years from the Imperium system and its now-committed planetary governor. Celestia felt bad for the raving, terrified human but at least he would receive better care than anyone else in his system would receive under the same circumstances. She hoped his wife, son or even his adjutants would be qualified to rule in his place... if not, things at least could not get much worse than they already were.

As it was they were single-hoofedly adding centuries to their solar system's lifespan.

"Luna, current decay?"

Luna checked her hourglass and graph. "Twenty seconds, their current speed should have dropped to 90% of initial velocity."

"Confirm please."

Luna nodded and sent a mental signal that reached her astral body almost instantly. "We estimate... 94%. Their deceleration is more gradual than expected. It would appear the Narvhal had complete control over the fleet's light-speed propulsion. Our gravity well will dissipate on its own before the fleet dispels its effect. The fleet might still eject from the corridor, however."

Celestia spoke as she made a note. "Individual creatures evolved to react to highly specialized roles. Would you say they are so specialized it makes them inflexible?" She tried to sound casual but still grunted heavily on certain vowels.

Luna brought a new body with her levitation, a particularly dense asteroid she spotted in a field. She yielded it to Celestia's control and began plotting a projected path. "We are not certain."

"We will have to take good notes then." Celestia led the asteroid to the gravity loop. Her magic had created a grid to facilitate aiming. The loop itself was the result of a spell creating fields that would accelerate mass forward. The matter would then go through a series of other loops light years away. In simple terms it was a rail gun powered by gravity and not magnetism.

Dropping celestial bodies at faster than light speeds towards a fleet that was itself approaching them at faster than light speeds would result in impacts that would be cosmic in scale.

Luna began spotting for Celestia "Target acquired, X-axis +300, Y-axis -43. Shape: arrowhead dragging seven tendrils."

"The largest ship?"

"Verily. Suspected 'Hive Ship'. It has a dense cover of Cruisers... move +0.02 X-axis to compensate."

"Done."

"Fire!"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The asteroid accelerated through seven gravity rings until it found itself smashing into the dense shell of a joined Cruiser. The asteroid blew through the Cruiser with a spectacular impact that created a massive cloud of biological pyro-acid.

The asteroid was partially deflected and the corrosion instantly robbed it of mass but it was still large and dense enough to impact against the Hive Ship and pierce through its hull, venting entire battalions of Tyranid organisms contained within it to the void of space.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Success?" Celestia wheezed. Her exhaustion was obvious.

"Somewhat. The Hive Ship has been damaged, sister, but not fatally so. The shielding Cruiser blunted the missile attack. Of some consolation, the Cruiser released a cloud of acid that some of the escorted craft were not immune to. Collateral damage from the corrosive agents to the lesser ships is high."

Celestia gave Luna a smile but it was weak.

Luna noticed. "Sister, you are not well!"

Celestia nodded. "Quickly then." She said.

Abandoning all attempts at sniping Luna levitated every rock from the asteroid field she could lift and launched them en masse through the gravity rings. Many deviated off course so badly they would miss the fleet completely and impact with distant bodies and stars.

Luna did not let this concern her: as far as the Imperials knew, everything that lay behind an approaching Tyranid fleet was already dead.

The summoned meteor shower was robbed of some of its effectiveness. After the loss of its Narvhal, one Cruiser and damage to its Hive Ship the Hive Mind had begun to break from its gravity acceleration and disperse its bio-ships. The rain destroyed escort and vanguard drone ships by the thousands and caused further damage to Cruisers and the Hive Ship but failed to cripple one as thoroughly as the last two.

The ponderous fleet spread out, still peppered by a cloud of space rock but no longer threatened. It would take time, regroup once the Hive Mind calculated its risk and the likeliness of future attacks. If necessary it would backtrack the many light years it had overshot and retrieve the wounded Narvhal. Its wounds, perhaps, might turn out to be insignificant but the value of the time Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had bought the Imperium was incalculable.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna could only ask: "Why?"

Celestia was a dead weight on her back. "Discord... we cannot find them, they are within the Warp. We cannot enter it. We must wait until they emerge. We need time. And just because I cannot do anything for them... doesn't mean I can't do anything for... anyone..."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The royal sisters emerged from the vault room of the Elements and returned to the war room.

Celestia's guards and staff gasped at the state their princess was in.

"I'm... so sorry Luna." Celestia gasped, barely conscious. "I was supposed to move that barren system's star, put it in the fleet's way. I just didn't have the strength."

"Hush sister, you have done most impressively. Everypony would be inspired if they had seen what you just accomplished."

Celestia agreed weakly and moved to the cushion inside the horseshoe-shaped great table. "Next... issues."

"No!" Luna yelled. Looking around to find everypony quivering at her she softened her voice. "Thou needs sleep, dear sister. We will help you to your room-"

"Bed is no different." Celestia refused.

"Very well, thou may rest here but thou are  NOT  to be disturbed. At least five hours!"

Celestia nodded and dozed off.

Luna imagined a vision from the governor's memory seeing Celestia, tired, unconscious, yet sitting up upon that cushion surrounded by the table, guards, scribes, scrolls and the star charts the hallway had been filled with. A human, a great human, sat upon a throne in much the same way.

For reasons Luna could not explain she was horrified.

"Nopony wakes her. Six hours, do you hear me? If you haven't enough work on your own thou may make use of these!" Luna said as she levitated their notes on the star systems, their use of astral magic and the Tyranid species. 

Celestia's bespectacled unicorn secretary, Raven, accepted the scroll and nodded. Everypony was nodding obediently at Luna.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna looked back at Celestia's sleeping body as her astral body faded out of Equestria and into the Starscape.

All their work and they hadn't come closer to finding out where Twilight and the others were, and Celestia's order not to send other ponies in after them still held. Furthermore they had been sidetracked from investigating the beam of light that came from the Warp. Discord's voice in her mind assured her that everything was proceeding exactly as it was supposed to.

Luna didn't like what her sister ordered but she wasn't willing to go behind her back and undermine Celestia's decision... at least not all the way.

A thought entered her mind, a memory: A nightmare she had encountered before and had forgotten since.

Leaving her astral self in the Starscape she focused on her physical body and exited the castle. She knew where she needed to go, now she just needed to find the physical location that matched the dream she had spied upon. She turned to a messenger before she took flight "Take a message to Adamant, I want the Night Guard assembled and ready. I will be with them hopefully by nightfall, there is something I must do."





> Chapter Fifteen - The Heretic Priests of Eidoline
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE EYE OF TERROR.
THE SILVER TOWER OF THE CULT STYGIAN 

Immundus awoke. Waking up was a strange sensation for a Space Marine, their heightened senses and improved physiology meant they need never experience the altered states of unconsciousness or true sleep.

He couldn't move. Either force field technology, psycher restraint or powerful sorcery bound him floating in space.
The room was an irregular shape, a shifting icosahedron from the looks of it, crossed with pillars of black marble joining mismatched corners.

Eldritch flames of bright blue hung from braziers along different faces of each pillar.
No two flames burnt 'up' in the same direction.

The rest of the reality phased in and Immundus found he was suspended over a dais of sorcerous energy.
Suits of power armor painted in deep blue followed, each Chaos Marine holding bolters in a ready position.

Immundus noticed their ornate right shoulder pads first. Two wore carved crocodile heads, a third wore a jackal. In the distance a fourth had an eagle.
The second thing he noticed were the simple linen loincloths they wore.

A voice called out to him.
"Immundus, prophet of the fourth eye, seer of the third way, slayer of the Nurgle Lord Bloatbile."

Inside his helmet Immundus' eyes narrowed.

"The great Immundus."

Immundus growled loudly.

"Irritated so easily? This is other than expected. I was led to believe I could exhaust enough force to render a planet inhospitable and still be no closer to finding a trace of you. Tell me, what happened?"

Immundus wasn't so easily goaded but his humiliation was fresh, his energies spent and after five minutes with Trixie if he never again heard the words 'great' or 'powerful' it would be too soon.
His thoughts were palpable and everything in the room devoured them.

"Not many wield divination; you've used it well. We've desired your presence here for quite some time. 
Again. Tell me, what happened to make you fall so low that you were brought here so easily?"

Immundus remained silent as a sorcerer entered his field of vision and his' doubts were settled: he was face to face with a Chaos Space Marine clad in the colors and heraldry of the Thousand Sons. His helmet was a short-beaked eagle's head.
Immundus' eyes went to the Space Marine with the matching shoulder pad in the distance.
Sigils and runes flowed into being on his armor until the Mark of Tzeentch appeared.

Rubric Marines. Sealed power armor haunted by the disembodied soul of it's previous owner.

"Reveal yourself." Immundus challenged.

"I am Horus."

"Absurd." He replied.

"Yes, not that Horus, the Primarch we all know so. I am named for the same deity who gave him his namesake."

"Prehistoric superstition." Immundus said as his eyes darted about, finding other avatar-faced sorcerers and their minions.

"There is power in such ancient superstition."
The Horus' voice answered. His tone suggested he was grinning.

Immundus turned his head up and for the first time he saw what he was under.

A creature hovered above him, one he recognized as a Screamer, one of Tzeentch's magical beasts.
A sorcerer of great power must be at the head of this alliance of psychers.
Immundus considered his prospects bleak even as he suppressed his gifts: if he was fortunate he might merely be faced with a sorcerer lord and a handful of follower-acolytes, If not then he was in the hands of a Warcoven and he would be bound to their service until whatever ambitions they had were satisfied. His head sank in resignation.

there is a fate worse

A whisper in his mind put a chill through his spine. If the warband was enthralled to a Daemonic Herald anything was possible. Against the silenced voice of his judgement Immundus opened his mind to the Warp and saw into its currents to see what he faced.

Atop the ray-like daemon beast he foresaw not a warrior but furnishings; a stack of tomes as large as a man and rolls of parchment stacked and cluttered against a writing desk.
Gibbering upon the stacks a pair of Horrors - whining blue daemons, little more than round sacks for a body filled with mouths and eyes that randomly sprouted limbs, horns and tendrils - carried on with an suspicious task. 

One kept pulling tomes and reading through them. Frequently this Horror did nothing more than finish the book and toss it aside but every now and then he would read something that caught his attention. He would gibber unintelligibly before passing the book on to his partner who would then transcribe writing onto the massive tome he was hunched over. The Horror's tome would then be passed on to the reader as the writer chucked the original book. 

Satisfied, the reader would read the transcription aloud and as he did the room would come alive with obscure sorceries thought lost to the millennia. The pair gibbered on in frustration, unleashing storms while a long line of Rubicae robotically continued their procession bringing and returning the entire contents of the Warcoven's library for their appraisal.

Immundus' psychic sight sucked back into his head and he exhaled bloody clumps.

The Horus spoke to him.
"Curious, are they not. The gibbering four-eyed reader is Xirat'p and the clumsy four-armed writer is P'tarix. 
The Blue Scribes.
For reasons unknown to me they scour existence in search of magic. Curiously, nothing is beneath their notice. I've witnessed psychers who cast as simple a spell as warpfire and the Scribes studied them extensively looking for the most menial differences; one cast it through his left palm, one through his right, one used his fingers, another only the index. One belched fire from his mouth, another did so equally but the source of the fire was born in his lungs and not his stomach.
One adept shot them as lasers from his eyes, another as electricity channeled through a pair of mutated tendrils.
One breathed it from his nose as a breath from his nostrils and another I make no attempt to deceive you shot it from the tip of his nose as if it were a finger."

Immundus waited patiently, guessing the direction his captor was building towards.

"Do you know why Xirat'p is so frustrated? It's not because he remembers he's doing the exact same spell over and over again; despite his repetition he can't actually understand a single word of his brother's handwriting.
He is angry because since the age before time he and his brother have borne this task and they have yet to find this 'new' source of sorcery I suspect they have been hunting for. And for now they spend their hours nitpicking through arcane casting minutia in the hopes of finding it!"

The Horus retreated from Immundus and the dais.
"Yours is the first corrupted human brain capable of determining prophecy I've come across in generations.
I think I will allow the Scribes a respite from tedious academia, to indulge in the pleasure of direct research."

"No!" Immundus screamed.

His words came too late.

A lioness-headed sorcerer crossed into his vision and lay hands upon his skull. Immundus' vision swam with the events of his lifetime. Desperately he tried to fight off the violation.

"It is too late for that."
A third voice broke into the chamber. A jackal-headed sorcerer reached behind him. Lightning coursed through Immundus' body and his resistance shattered.
"You opened your mind to the Warp when you engaged in your gifts for divination. Your secrets are ours to scrutinize."

"You... lie!" Immundus choked.

"I do." The Horus continued. "When we cast our portal we expected to capture, not rescue you. When we turned our eyes upon Noxious we expected to see a Plague world being subverted, not a vigorous invasion by the Prince of Excess.
And when we focused on that invasion we expected to see you and your kind press the gates to the Garden, another run at retaking the Goddess Isha. Instead we surveyed Daemonettes and Emperor's Children alike, pushing aside Nurgle's minions and scouring the wastelands as if you were searching for something.
I'm ashamed to admit, your behavior caught our attention. 
We have since tired of imagination and speculation, we want the answer to the query 'what do you seek?' and we expect it to be answered immediately."

The Horus head raised towards the Anubis and that sorcerer applied another surge of Chaos lightning into Immundus' body.

Feeling Immundus' strength buckle the Jackal nodded and the Lioness used his telepath powers to tear his mind open.

Immundus' head fell back, a thread of bloody drool fell out the corner of his mouth as his brain was plundered.
His eyes focused. On either side of the floating Screamer three pairs of eyes, one pair P'tarix's two pairs Xirat'p's, looked down on him.

All at once every surface of the icosahedron became alive with the images of Lyra Heartstrings, Trixie Lulamoon and Twilight Sparkle. The sorcerers observed as the ponies levitated objects, cast illusions, erected force barriers and teleported to and fro.

The Horus spoke.
"Fascinating. Utterly fascinating. Defeated by a band of heavily mutated chosen or a race of sentient power-armored xenos."

The image of Lyra pummeling Immundus through a combination of cybernetic limbs and telekinetic fury competed with the vision of Twilight Sparkle's final assault upon Immundus, battering him with boulders before teleporting him into the sky to fall to his death.

The imagery had drawn a crowd. Sorcerers with the heads of a crocodile, a serpent, a scarab, a Necron and a bull all entered to study the discovery.

A last breath of defiance was all Immundus could manage.
"I count... eight of you. Where is the one missing?"

The Necron-relief sorcerer turned to Immundus and faced him with the lifeless aspect of a machine.
the Sorcerer-Lord's ways are not for you to divine
His thoughts projected into him with the force of a thunder hammer.

Immundus reeled before his skull whiplashed.

"I fail to see what's so unique about these creatures." The Horus resumed.
"This is not telepathy, Immundus himself came to that conclusion. These illusions exist independent of his mind. 
Here the xenos themselves moved to avoid them instinctively. There is no benefit to causing illusions like this within the minds of your allies. Is there?"

The Horus turned to the lioness-headed sorcerer, the Bastet. He shook his head in answer, confirming the Horus' suspicions.
The eagle-headed sorcerer turned to Immundus and asked him directly:
"If they weren't in your mind as you first suspected how was it you were overpowered by such a small group?" 

The broken mind answered.
"I couldn't read them. I could foresee every round their bolters fired, every projected trajectory of their weapons whether they were thrown rock or their stolen power swords. Only so long as they were already committed.
While their weapons were in their hands, every attack they made including their cursed telekine force was outside by sight. 
They are not psychers. They leave no psychic echo and their minds are closed entirely to the perils of the Warp. 
Their sorcery is completely independent of it, unbound by the laws of sorcery of our dimension. They call it simply 'magic'."

The Warcoven turned their attention to him and then to the floating Screamer. Upon their living disc Xirat'p and P'tarix bickered and howled furiously at each other.
magic without sorcery
witchcraft without psychers
power without a price
it must be mine
Their voices rang out. The pony images faded to nothing and reality tore open as they created a dozen portals to the Warp.

A legion of pink and blue Horrors burst into the Silver Tower, another dozen Screamers floated in to do their bidding.
Atop the largest of the floating discs rode a Herald, an empowered pink Horror whose body sprout not a giant maw but a goat-like head crowned with warpfire. His appearance fit in perfectly among the Warcoven.

"I am summoned here for a great task. What business have I that the Sorcerer Lord Faro would risk The Architect's  displeasure."

The scarab-helmed sorcerer spoke:
"Not our master but yours. He calls you to task and the Thousand Sons offer their services in your aid."
He bowed in reverential diplomacy.

The Herald exchanged glances in inhuman body language with the Scribes.

"Your rewards will be incalculable." He lied.

The scarab sorcerer knew it, and accepted regardless.

The icosahedron temple emptied of Horrors and one by one the sorcerers chose a Warp gate and led the way through it, their personal retinue of Rubric Marines following after them.

Upon the dais Immundus was left, his mind desperately trying to knit itself together 
Only the jackal-headed sorcerer remained, his Rubicae taking up the guard stations previously held by lioness, eagle and crocodile.

The Anubis cast a spell and one of the icosahedron walls resumed playing the scenes from Immundus' defeats.
"Look at them, even the darkest heart amongst them is still insufferably bright. Whereto the hatred, the desire and passion, the lust for power? There must be more to them than this. All creatures die, all sentients fear death. Their afterthoughts will give me the answers I seek."

The Anubis looked at his Slaaneshi rival. With a gesture chains of fire and molten rock lashed through his armor to grasp Immundus' soul.

Immundus choked, helplessly raging.

"Accept this sacrifice, great Tzeentch, grant me your favor, that I may add my own pawn in your grand scheme."

IT IS DONE  
An omnipotent choir of a thousand voices echoed.

Groaning, Immundus cried his last as his essence was sundered to a thousand pieces.

"Never send the psychers of a lesser god, you who would pluck at the realms touched by true sorcery."
The Anubis declared in lieu of an epithet.

Immundus' spirit lingered in the air, the Anubis turned to the imaging screen as the mist settled over the inert armor. 
The jackal-headed sorcerer's ritual had ripped all of Immundus' runes of power and defensive wards right off.
The armor then fell to dust and joined with the vapor that had once been Immundus.

The Anubis watched his screen, waiting for an answer that would not come.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Away, far away, deep within the core of the Warp at the heart of the Eye of Terror a primal force moved.

But it was not the Chaos God Tzeentch.

The power turned its face towards the Anubis, tapped into a primal source within itself and without opening its eyes bestowed its gaze upon the ritual it was intruding upon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Behind the Anubis a red horn pierced the air and a beast began to appear, his body congealing from the fog.
He was cruelty, hatred and myth made pony; King Sombra emerged from the shadows, his crown intact, his royal cape flowing, and the armor he wore when he had ruled over the Crystal Empire replaced by the transmutated pieces of Immundus' power armor.
He was every inch the dark mirror of Twilight Sparkle's band.

The Anubis turned as he felt the presence in the room. Despite his surprise he was pleased.
"Is this the result of your efforts, Architect of Fate, or is the history of these sickeningly innocent creatures filled with such shadows? Come, you, tell me more."

Sombra examined his hooves, astonished to come from nothingness into being. He snorted heavily.

The Anubis dismissed the gesture as being the limits of the creature he had resurrected.
"No matter. Come my little pony, we shall go-"

The Anubis got no further. With a guttural roar Sombra lashed out at the sorcerer and a blizzard of black crystal shards blew into being; dense, saturated, the shards showered him like rain, as unavoidable in the confined space as a tidal wave.

"Mindless. Incoherent. BEAST!" 
The Anubis muttered through the violence that assaulted his body and his ears, his words completely drowned out by Sombra's primal roar 'GRAAAH!'.

He raised his hand and paused in a panic. His psychic powers weren't working. 
His power armor had resisted the brunt of Sombra's attack but crystal shards had lodged in the ceramite and pierced the exposed joints, digging into his skin and runes. 
His sorcery faded, the Warp energies that flowed through his body fizzled as they interacted with the crystal fragments. 
Shorted out and entirely reliant on the power of the Warp to fuel his every weapon all the way down to his bolt pistol's ammunition.  At range the Anubis was entirely powerless.

Sombra bared his fangs, making ready to attack head on just as he always did.
Something stopped him. His jaw closed, his eyes narrowed as he beheld the helpless sorcerer.
The Anubis got to his feet raising his force staff high. Without his psychic powers his blows would be robbed of the power that could fell the most monstrous lifeforms the galaxy had produced. Even so the staff was a formidable power weapon he gambled would slay the xenos.

The magic flowing from Sombra's eyes flared and a hundred jagged spikes burst from the Anubis' armor as the embedded crystals expanded instantly.

The Anubis gurgled his words, a disembodied voice heavy with regret and anger at the one obviously correct course of action left untaken, and commanded: "Kill him." 
And he died.

A dozen Thousand Sons Rubric Marines turned their bolters on Sombra and fired. 
A hail of inferno bolts tore through the body but Sombra laughed as he transformed to mist. 
As the magical munitions passed through him Sombra noted the power of the magic within each bolt. That and the way the power of his new armor reacted to it.
With a gesture Sombra decided he had had enough. The entire summoning room exploded with dark crystals.

Sombra stood victorious then slumped. Not a single face of the icosahedron, not one obsidian pillar remained unshattered. 

He was tired. Resurrection, the magical munitions that passed through him and the aftereffects of whatever ritual it was that bound him to this strange new realm had taken their toll.
That and the possibility that he was mortal now. Sombra grimaced.

Looking about him he saw that a number of Thousand Sons remained struggling even while impaled in crystal. 
With a start Sombra realized that even the Marines completely entombed within the great crystal pillars were not dead; their bodies were simply rendered immobile.

Peering through the transparent crystal Sombra began to examine them more clearly. He was surprised by what he discovered. Within the armor there was no flesh to be pierced. Indeed, the defining aspect of a Rubric Marine was its origin as an ordinary Space Marine whose body had been reduced to dust by sorcery, his spirit reduced to the simplest intelligence and bound to animate his suit of power armor for all eternity.

Sombra realized he coveted such an ability. 
He attempted to match the feat through sheer power and impose his command over the Rubric Marines. 
While his mental powers were formidable the automatons' wills were objects far removed from the operation of living minds. They refused to obey.

With no other subjects to experiment on Sombra turned on the Anubis' corpse. The body withered away to dust and his power armor tore and morphed until it was in the shape of a pony, mimicking Sombra's own. Unable to bind the sorcerer's soul to the suit Sombra fashioned a crystal horn that echoed the most elemental parts of his personality and telekinetically thrust it into the pony suit's head.

The optic shields glowed to life.

JUST AS PLANNED
the thousand voiced cacophony echoed.

Sombra turned about him, his eyes searching for the source. His mind echoed with another growl but his mouth opened instead with the word: "TZEENTCH." 

I AM

"How do I know all this? Your name, your world, your weapons and armor." 
Sombra's eyes fell to a libram chained to the flank of his armor. He realized a familiarity with it he shouldn't possess, a feeling he knew every eldricht secret contained within it. 
"This spellbook."

YOUR BEING HAS BEEN RESTORED THROUGH THE FLESH OF IMMUNDUS TO RESTORE YOU TO CORPOREAL LIFE
YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS BLESSING AT A PRICE 
YOU SERVE ME

"No."
Sombra glared at the ceiling defiant.
"I know enough about you to know you only speak in lies."

YOU WILL DO AS I COMMAND AND BRING YOUR CRYSTAL CURSE TO THE LEGIONS

"No. You brought me here, a unicorn, to a world without unicorns. You did so because... " 
Something gnawed at Sombra's mind, something in the back of his consciousness. He paused as he tried to remember and the electric afterimage of a thought within the gooey mass that was originally Immundus' brain asserted itself and made his emotions jolt. 
"Ponies are here. My enemies are here  
She is here! 
You have brought me here for revenge."

He formed a crystal ball and found them, away from the Eye of Terror, growing ever more distant.

"Twilight Sparkle."

Away and en route to-
"Terra. 
You offer me vengeance and you desire chaos in my wake. 
Your machinations would see me forced to overpower a dozen worlds to get past the blockade on your part of the galaxy."

Sombra considered his position, weighing his options with no voice in his head but his own.

"Stay out of my way and you will have what you desire."

The fabric of space tore apart and a portal opened. Sombra did not know whence it would lead and he did not care.
He had a path to follow, to remain there was to stand still.

With no further thought to the Thousand Sons he stepped forward, the first of the Rubicae Ponies following in his hoofsteps.