One day, at random, I woke up as the Overlord from the games. This is the chronicle of what happened after that.
I woke up one day as the Overlord, Tower and all. Now I have to deal with making a new dark domain, politics, and my minions. And that's not including all the random stuff that just happens because why not!? And they wonder why I'm always grouchy.
(rewrite of my first try, NO CLOP, harsh language, some OOC as I don't really watch the show, Criticism is wanted, Thank you for reading.)
Seems to be featured every time I upload a chapter, if only for a short time... Thanks?
Arc's Secret Arc: ???: Ch.1-?? (Something is hiding in darkness) Arc one: Establishing the Domain: Ch.1-13 (Done) Arc two: Meeting the Neighbors: Ch.14-18 (Done) Arc three: The war to the Southeast: Ch. 19-23 (Done) Arc four: Return of the North: Ch. 24-?? (on going) More arc's to come...
It was pitch black, I was very stiff and I couldn't move. I was more than a little uncomfortable, and getting a little claustrophobic. I had been awake for about two or three hours, and I could only move about an inch in any direction. I couldn't really tell, but it felt like my body was a bit larger than I remembered it, and that worried me more than I felt it normally would.
After a few more minutes I began to hear noises coming from outside of wherever I was. It sounded like many small bare feet padding towards me. "Here! Here!" I heard someone yell.
"Was I in some kind of accident? How bad is it if I can't feel any pain?"
"Hurry up then! Get him out of there!! Move it you worthless bags of puss!!!" A different, more gruff and gravelly voice yelled, presumably at the first group of people.
"Well... that was uncalled for..."
Then it sounded like two or more boulders were grinding against each other, and I started to see some light. It was dim, and slightly yellow, but it was there and that was what mattered! I wasn't blind!
I think?
I say that because I could swear that the things that had rescued me were little brown goblins, and those don't exist. Right?
"Rub some acid in his eyes! That will wake him up!" said the second voice, which I was very quickly recognizing, to my dismay. Also, ACID!?! What would that do for me, aside from make me even more blind than I already am!!!
One of the goblins reached down with something in it's hand and pressed it into my eyes, I was too stiff and weak to try to move out of the way, and I felt pain lance through my face as I heard a hissing noise. When it was taken away the pain stopped almost immediately, and for some reason my vision cleared up within seconds. It was like I had just had the fastest and most effective lazer eye surgery ever and I had no idea how it worked. Now I'm afraid to question it, in case questioning it would make the universe realize its mistake and burn out my eyes.
Once my vision had cleared, I got a good look at my rescuers and yep, they were the minions. Little goblin looking things that were as vicious as they were stupid. I could only see Browns and Gnarl, who I considered his own color, all crowded around where I was lying, so I assumed that the other minion hives had somehow been lost. Again. That or the other colors just weren't in this area.
"Ah, good! You're not dead! That would've been very embarrassing on my part, and somewhat unfortunate on yours... Anyway, ahem, What are you louts waiting for!? A written invitation!? Your Overlord needs your help getting up! Hurry it up and do your jobs!!!" Gnarl said, the first part mostly to himself and somewhat to me, I'm not really sure if he even cared that I was ok, just that I was responsive. The second part was practically snarled at the minions, even going as far as kicking one of them down to get the others moving.
And move they did, within moments I was propped up and being fitted out with clothes and armor, the steel armor from the first game to be precise, while this was happening I was trying to talk, make noise, anything really, but couldn't. It was like my throat was closed off or something, while I was struggling with that, Gnarl was talking about "How good it was to have a master again!" and "That spell was just what we needed!", but I wasn't really listening as I was basically a puppet whose strings had been cut, and I have to say I don't care for the feeling! Finally the minions were done putting on my new duds, and my body was feeling a little less stiff which felt nice, but I was feeling more and more upset at my inability to speak.
"Sire, are you listening? Oh, do pay attention lord! It's always very bothersome when I have to repeat myself." Gnarl told me, getting my attention. He ad the other minions were at the far end of the room, looking back at me waiting for me to follow them. I pointed at my throat and made a growling, gurgling noise, when I did that Gnarl's eyes went wide then almost immediately went back to normal, he then pushed a minion at me.
Said minion slowly and carefully climbed up my armor until he was sitting on my shoulders, he then lifted my helmet and reached into my mouth. After he had gotten into my throat, he pulled a large wadded up cloth out. The minion quickly jumped down, trying to get away from me as fast as he could, afraid of me or so I thought.
"Ahem... so,Hm... Let's take this one thing at a time, aright? So, where are we?" I asked, noticing that my voice was much, much lower than normal.
"Well that was what I was trying to tell you my lord. If you would just follow me, I-" Gnarl said before I interrupted him.
"No, I'm not going anywhere until I know what's going on! Now tell me where we are!" I yelled, making him and all of the minions flinch hard.
"Uh, well then, to the best of my knowledge, we are in what looks like a ruined form of the old tower. More specifically we are in the minion pits, where the tower heart used to be." Gnarl said cautiously, like he was trying to keep me from getting angry.
"Alright, now why was there a rag in my throat?" I asked, feeling just a tad violated.
"Umm... well, you were in the coffin of healing, so... maybe it had something to do with that?" He guessed.
"Okay, see now was that so hard? Question three, why am I here, instead of in my nice soft-but-not-too-soft bed?" I asked coolly, trying to hide the frustration and fear I was feeling.
"Well, you see my lord, we, that is the minions, needed an Overlord! To... well lord over us! And, you see, we couldn't find anyone who could fit the bill, at all! We even tried elves! And when they go bad, they really go bad! So after some searching and stealing, we found a spell which would give us what we wanted! An Overlord! All we had to do was sacrifice about half of our number and be taken to a different universe! Small price if you ask me!" He told me, stammering and stumbling over his words at first but gaining confidence when I didn't interrupt him.
"And you didn't think about what I might think about it? Did you even consider that I might be angry about being taken from my home and family? Did you not think about anything?!?!" I yelled at him, watching as Gnarl and the other minions quivered in fear. I was confused when I saw that while he was quivering but also... smiling?
"Heh... well, it seems like the spell worked, huh?" he mumbled to the other Browns who all nodded.
"Let's go. I need to see this place for myself." I said grouchily.
I was still pissed about essentially being ripped from my home and forced into a leadership position against my will. I mean, there were worse things to be angry about, but really!? I can't believe that they thought, even for a moment, that someone would be okay with this happening to them! That being said, I was mostly angry that I had no say in what had happened, If I had the choice? Maybe I would've said yes... you know, after saying goodbye to my family and such.
I may have been angry, but I knew I needed to pay attention to what was being told to me. While Gnarl liked to tell stories about the different things in the tower, or rather the spaces where things went in the tower, I did learn a lot about what powered the tower, which artifacts we needed and why.
I had started just like you do in the game, with only the Brown hive and a large part of the tower in a state that was hazardous even to the minions. Despite what the game would have you believe, there were more than five areas in the tower, but more than a few were worthless to a game player, like the lab, the minion training rooms, and my personal indoor pool/bathroom. All of which were destroyed and looked like they had been alone for about ten years. Other areas were places like the torture room, the life force pools, and my personal favorite, the front entrance. What? Haven't you ever wondered too? Anyway, after taking the grand tour we returned to the ruined throne room.
I looked out at the surrounding landscape, trying to get a sense of where we were. All I could see for miles was an empty badlands, rocky and desolate. There was nothing, not even a cloud in the sky to provide shade. It was a bowl of hot, unpleasant death. All sharp edges and sudden peaks surrounded by mountains that looked like jagged teeth from where I was on the balcony. A bowl of spikes, with the Tower right smack dab in the middle of it.
The Jester, I believe his name was Quaver, came running up to me saying "Greetings, Lord of the Ruined Tower!... Quite a sight, isn't it? The badlands, I mean, not the tower. Thats seen better days, for sure!"
I stared at him for a full minute before he began to get nervous. As soon as he started to back away slowly, I kicked him back a few feet and told him "Don't just say stupid things! I'm apparently the Overlord now," I shot a glare at Gnarl when I said that part, making him flinch, "So no one, not even one of my minions, gets to bad mouth my home! Think before you speak! Got it!?"
Gnarl tried to change the subject as to brighten my/his mood. And to possibly shut the Jester up. "My lord, the Tower Portal has just enough power to send you to the last place that the tower heart was seen by a living being. We need that heart if we are going to get anywhere, but if you wish we can stay for a little while longer while you get used to your new body. Or if there is anything you wish to know before setting out?" he said, trying to kick me out of the nest as fast as possible, not that I blame him.
"I'm going to need some practice controlling the minions, some knowledge about where I'd be going would be nice as well." I said in my new deep voice.
"Unfortunately there is only enough magic for one teleport from the Portal my lord, as such there can be no scouting done. As for practice controlling the minions, it is rather easy. Just point, and they will kill whatever you're pointing at, or break whatever is in the way!" Gnarl said cheerily.
I wasn't in the mood to argue, so I just said "Fine.", picked up Gnarl under my arm and went through the portal.
The first thing I saw after going through the portal was green, it was everywhere! All of the plants at the tower were yellowed and dieing, but here everything was alive and growing! For some reason that upset me, not enough to make me actually angry but enough to make me notice...
I dropped Gnarl, who flopped to the ground with an "Umfp!", and looked closer at my surroundings. It was then that I realized that I was a freaking giant! I was a little under half the height of a full grown pine tree! I thought that the minions were small, but apparently the Overlord's just so big that everything else is small to him! By comparison, minions would come up to the waist/lower chest of the average person! After I came to terms with my Oversized stature, I moved forward and almost immediately stopped, turning to Gnarl and asking "How do I summon the minions that I already have?"
He looked at me funny before saying in an unsure tone "You just funnel your magic into your gauntlet, the enchantments will do the rest..."
I stared at him for a few more seconds before telling him "I don't know how to do that."
Gnarl went stiff for a few seconds before giggling and saying "Oh, lord! That was a good one! Almost got me! It sounded like you said you didn't know how to use magic! HA!"
"I'm serious Gnarl. My home world doesn't have magic, I have no idea what to do." I said in a deadpan.
Gnarl's face locked in a grin, which slowly and twitchily shifted into an incredulous and angry expression.
"WHAT!?! HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO USE MAGIC!?!I TAKE IT ALL BACK!!! I WANT A DO OVER!!!" He yelled the second part into the sky.
"DON'T YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE TO ME, MISTER!!! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO AIMLESSLY PULLED SOMEONE FROM A WORLD YOU KNEW NOTHING ABOUT, SO DON'T GET MAD WHEN THIS IS THE OUTCOME!!!" I yelled back scaring the birds for miles around, and giving a few heart attacks.
Gnarl looked like he was also an the verge of passing on, but quickly snapped out of it saying "Hmm... You're right, lord. This is my fault, and now I have to fix it. Magic lesson one!"
I groaned internally, "Well, at least he's going to teach me something... I hope..."
"Try to focus on your own mind my lord, you should feel a slight pressure..." He said. I sighed, but did as he said.
He lied.
There wasn't a slight pressure, it suddenly felt like my head was trying to rip itself apart!
"Now, force that pressure out of your head, and into your chest so that it has room to expand!" I vaguely heard Gnarl say at me. I tried to do as he said, and it became easier the more I managed to force out. When I was done and the pain stopped, I was suddenly forced off of the ground as arcs of lightning went off me and what looked like blue gas came from all over me. Gnarl was thrown back by the strength of the blast, as he got up he gave me a look that was hard to describe but made me uncomfortable.
Regardless, I could feel the magic flowing through me. It was... nice...? I didn't really know what it felt like as nothing I had ever experienced had been similar...
I 'pushed' the magic into my gauntlet, and then a hole opened in front of me. Five Browns climbed out of the hole, which had a brown light coming out of it.
"Oh, That won't attract any attention! None at all!" I thought sarcastically to myself.
We were in a clearing surrounded by pine trees, there were three open paths leading out of the area we were in. There was some sort of mark on the ground where we had teleported in, like it was burned into the dirt. One of the paths ended in a deep cleft with a river flowing through it, so that was out. I could see some rather large pigs searching for truffles down the other, and the last winded off to the side so I couldn't see anything. Pigs it was then.
I began to head in their direction with all of the minions following when Gnarl decided to speak up, saying "My lord! See those lesser creatures?" he pointed to the pigs, which I suppose were lesser... "They house a very valuable resource for you, Life Force! You must collect it if you wish to create more minions! More minions, equals more power and faster construction of the tower!"
I nodded my understanding to Gnarl, before waving my hand at the pigs sending all of my minions to kill them. They all swarmed forward, armed only with clubs and a loincloth, and proceed to slaughter them. The pigs didn't even know they were under attack before they were dead.
Once the first group of pigs were dead the minions carried the life force which came out of the corpses back to me, before dragging the bodies into the same hole that they came from. When I touched the life force it went through my gauntlet and back to the tower, except for the last one which I held onto in order to look more closely at it. It was like a small sun in my hand... warm, glowing with a brownish yellowish light, but near the center it looked like a crystal... the longer I held it the warmer I felt, almost burning up but there was no pain...
"Sire! Send it away!!" Gnarl shouted at me, startling me out of whatever trance the life force had put me in and sending it to the tower. "I know how... alluring life force can be my lord, but it is dangerous to the unprepared. I only have this bit of life force tied to my back because of my... let's call it advanced age. For a being such as yourself, well, too much life is just as bad as not enough..."
I looked around and saw that the minions that were following me looked like they were afraid, all huddled together and hugging each other. I shook my head and grunted trying to shake it off, continuing to walk down the path we were on. There were more pigs and after killing all of them we came upon a small idyllic cottage.
"Ooh! Sire, let's see if whatever lives here knows where the Tower Heart is! Would you like to knock, or shall your minions? Hmhmhm!" Gnarl said, chuckling evilly at the end.
I walked forward and lightly knocked on the door, almost knocking the door off it's hinges. All of the minions gasped at once, and I groaned internally, when the occupant of the home answered the door. It was a family of sheep people.
It was sheeple.
They wore poorly made woolen hats and chokers with bells, and they all looked like they were afraid of us. Or really everything...
"U-um, y-yes? What d-do you want?" said the biggest and most masculine looking one. I assumed he was the father of the group, and if that was true then in all there were both parents and three kids, two girls and one boy, as soon as they saw me he froze in fear.
"We need to find an object, a large glowing orb, and were hoping that you would point us in the right direction! Or at least provide us with some life force... hehehe!" Gnarl said with no kindness in his voice at all.
Before the sheeple could start panicking at Gnarl's tone, I stomped the ground getting everyone's attention. Once I had said attention I wordlessly shook my head at Gnarl, before turning to the sheeple and saying "We aren't going to hurt you unless you give us a reason to. However we are looking for the glowing orb, if you could lead us to it I would be happy to compensate you."
The father of the family looked at me with wide eyes, his mouth slightly agape, probably scared of my voice. After a few moments of staring, Gnarl coughed into his fist making the father suddenly bleat out an answer, saying "W-we're sorry!!! We d-didn't know it was your's!!! We-we gave it to them s-so they would just leave us alone!!! P-please don't kill us!!!"
Gnarl and the minions growled angrily, but I waved them back turning to the father, getting on one knee and as carefully as I could I asked him "Who did you give it to, and where are they? I won't blame you for something you couldn't have known, I promise. Just tell me what I want to know."
Pretty soon he had almost stopped shaking and sobbing, and tried to answer me when the ground began to shake. At that point he yelped and slammed the door behind himself and his family. The ground shaking reached a peak right before a group of dogs wearing vests and collars burst out of the ground and began to pace around the small area in front of the cabin. They seemed to be talking to themselves, saying things like "Look's like new meat..." and "Hope they put up a good enough fight before we beat them down..."
The biggest of them was as tall as me while I was kneeling, so while still kneeling I asked them "Am I to assume that you are the one's who those sheeple gave the Tower Heart to?"
The second smallest one snarled "No idea what a 'Tower Heart' is, but if they had it, it's ours now!" at me.
Gnarl shouted "Watch your tone, you sniveling worms! That's the Overlord whose allowing you to grace his magnificent presence!Filthy mongrels!" at the dogs. They were less than pleased at this and began to growl at the minions and I.
I slowly got to my feet, rising to my formidable height while saying "I believe what you meant to say was, 'Oh great and powerful Overlord, allow us to lead you to our home so that you may take all that you please, sparing us from your wrath, as we have already angered you with our belligerence and obviously unnecessary cruelty!' correct? Or would you like to say that when there is only one of you left?"
While a few of them were visibly frightened by my size, they didn't take option one, feeling that they had the advantage in numbers as it was ten to six. Even as unsure of the minions as I was, I knew that they did not have the advantage.
"We were going to beat you into submission, now we're going to just kill you and save ourselves the trouble of breaking you like we broke them!" Said the tallest of them, and with that they all rushed us.
I made a sound somewhere between a roar and a growl as I charged forward, swinging my ax at the first dog who reached me. He practically exploded into blood as his head left his neck behind. I saw the minions, sans Gnarl, fighting the other dogs, swarming them one at a time, taking a few hits but nothing lethal.
The biggest dog took a swipe at me with his spiked club, hitting me in the left leg. I felt pain for a moment and then there was nothing, but it was enough for me to split him in half long-ways. Once nine of the ten were dead the last one was trying to run away, but was being pinned by the minions.
"Master! Come here!" Gnarl called to me, when I reached him, looking at my knee the whole way to see how bad the damage was, he said "Do you see the black clouds rising from the bodies of those dogs? That's evil energy. It collects in all evil creatures, and the more you can gather inside yourself... the stronger you will become!"
I looked at the black cloud that was dissipating fast, and asked "And what, pray tell, is the price for this power?"
Gnarl just snorted and said "Ahh, I expected nothing less from you lord! Always thinking, aren't you? The price is how you gain the power. You can only gain evil energy by committing acts of true malice and evil."
"And what if you don't believe in evil?" I asked him, his eyes went wide for a few seconds before he burst into laughter.
"W-well, lord, I-I don't quite know! I suppose we'll have to find out together, won't we? Though I have to quote a little thing I heard once, if you will?" He asked, motioning for my approval. I allowed it and he said, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing others that he didn't exist."
"Well, I heard that the greatest lie ever told, was that anyone other than yourself could judge you." I said in responce.
I walked over to the dog who was trapped by my minions, and knelt next to him asking "Is there anything you wish to say to me? Or would you like to join your... Pack? Group? What do you call yourselves?"
"We call ourselves 'Diamond Dogs', alpha! We go in packs! Umm... I forgot what to say after... I'm sorry alpha!" the medium sized dog said to me. Well okay then, I guess that answers that qusest-
Wait.
Did he just say 'Diamond Dogs'?
"Oh no."
There is only one place that I know of that has those, and they weren't male strippers.
Fuck.
Well I was nothing if not adaptable... I hope. I will just have to deal with this, somehow.
Regardless, I turned back to the DD saying "I believe it was 'Oh great and powerful Overlord, allow us to lead you to our home so that you may take all that you please, sparing me from your wrath, as I have already angered you with my belligerence and obviously unnecessary cruelty toward the sheeple.' Unless you can't say all of that, in which case just say 'I will take you to my home and then serve you.' I know some creatures have a hard time talking."
The dog looked blankly at me for a moment before saying/asking "Umm... Yes?"
I just sighed and motioned my minions off of him, after the dog had gotten up I heard the door to the cottage open. I turned to find the father of the family of sheeple looking at me with hope.
"Please, lord! The Diamond Dogs took a large portion of the people from the nearby town! I just know that if you can return them, the sheeple there would be happy to give you the land! Umm... our last leader ran away after the dogs came the first time... But I know that you won't run away lord! Please help us?" He said in a surprisingly strong voice, all of the earlier shaking gone.
"Bah! Sheeple weak! Good only as plaything! Diamond Dogs strong! Better!" the dog spat from where he was, tied to a minion with some thorny vines.
I turned without responding to any of them. While following the dog to their den, Gnarl came up to me and asked "So, sire, who will you side with? The physically weak, but obviously industrious sheeple, or the brutish and stupid Diamond Dogs? Both have their ups and downs after all..."
"I choose both." I said in responce.
"Both? But... that is, how does your lordship plan to go about this, enslaving both?" Gnarl asked, confused at my statement.
"Easy, I forcibly take over one, and take the other from gratitude for taking the first. They will get along if it kills them, mostly the Diamond Dogs by my predictions." I said in a board tone.
"My lord, is this the first time you've done this? You seem quite a bit smarter than other Overlords we've had in the past!" Gnarl said in an impressed voice.
"I'm actually around average intelligence for my people, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to take control of two warring groups like this." I told him.
"Imagine if Aizen came here instead. Oh, everyone and their mother would be boned. All a part of his plan!"
"Well, I would hate to have to fight your people my lord!" Gnarl said in a last ditch effort to butter me up. It failed.
We had been walking for about ten, fifteen minutes, when the dog who was leading us shouted to us "It's just up ahead! Between those rocks there!" I wanted to beat him for yelling and ruining the element of surprise, but Gnarl beat me to it. (Plus I didn't want to kill him just for being an idiot)
Three dogs ran out of the opening to the den carrying crude polearms. My first thought was "Ooh! Upgrade!" as two minions had picked up poorly made axes from the first fight, but the other three needed new weapons. The minions looked to me for a split second before charging at the dogs as I had already raised my hand in their direction, the dogs for their part were confused, likely because of the small biting angry things that were for some reason attacking them, and then very dead with three minions dancing on their corpses, holding their weapons over their heads.
Once the Browns were done with their happy dance we went into the den to find the Tower Heart and maybe the stolen sheeple, if we had time... Yea...
It was a fairly straight forward place, really only going forward with a turn or a backtrack here and there. There were a ludicrous amount of the dogs stuffed in there, it seemed that they had communal rooms where you slept where you fell down, dogs and sheeple. Luckily the sheeple looked relatively unharmed, as it showed that the dogs were smart enough to not break their own equipment. On the way we fought a surprisingly small amount of dogs, it seemed like they just never thought that anything would follow them home to attack them. At least the minions were getting something out of the encounters, some of the leather vests that the dogs wore would get so shredded by the minions that when the small fights were over they could wear them as a kind of proto-armor. It was better than nothing, as before they had been wearing nothing but a loincloth.
I had almost given up on finding the Tower Heart when we hit pay dirt in the very last room to explore. It was at the very back of the den, the farthest from the entrance, inside was what can only be called a treasure room. There, half buried in a pile of gems as tall as I was, was the Tower Heart. There was also a dog that came up to my shoulders laying on top of it.
"Hmm, it looks like that one has absorbed some of the power from the Tower Heart! It might be just a tad more difficult to beat this one, but we must have the Heart back!" Gnarl all but yelled at me, waking up the sleeping dog.
"Wha? Who the hell are you!? How did you get in here!? where are all the guards I had in this place!?" she, I assume as it sounded like a she, growled in annoyance.
"Oh, they're all dead. Now you work for me, everything you own belongs to me, and you will do what I tell you. Unless you want to join them, that is." I said to her in a monotone walking in front of my minions and motioning them back.
"Heh, if those weaklings are dead then it's their own fault! Just like this will be your fault!" she said, jumping at me while trying to bite my head off.
Using the back of my ax I smacked her out of the air, hitting the back of her head stunning her, while saying "Down! Bad girl!" Once she was flat on the ground, I put my foot on her head with just enough pressure to cause a small amount of pain, but not enough to cause permanent damage. She struggled under my foot for a few seconds before going still, then violently scraping and pulling to get out from under my foot, tearing the skin of her head just enough to have blood begin to leak out and down her face.
"Now that I have your attention, allow me to repeat myself. You work for me, everything you own belongs to me, and you will do what I tell you, when I tell you. Do you understand?" I calmly asked her.
She struggled for a few more minutes before I began to lose patience and began to slowly increase the pressure of my foot. After a few moments of whimpering and whining she relented, and finally said "Yes... Alpha..." in a very reluctant and angry tone.
I took my foot off of her head and kicked her across the room with one stroke, saying "What was that? Would you like to try again?" while she yelped.
She looked at me defiantly in the eye for all of three seconds, before submissively (If somewhat still angrily) saying "Yes, Alpha, I will be obedient."
"Much better. For that you get to keep one thing in this room, aside from the Tower Heart of course. Oh, and all of the sheeple, unless they wish to stay that is."I told her in a pleased but firm tone.
The female alpha, I'm sorry I mean ex-alpha, tried to pull the Tower Heart out of the pile when Gnarl groaned and said "The thing you're pulling on is the Tower Heart... you know, one of the things that the Overlord just said you couldn't have?" with what was almost the most patronizing tone I have ever heard.
The ex-alpha growled at him, but stopped at once when I gave my own light growl, crossed my arms and began to tap my foot. She winced, and quietly took a ruby, before slinking away and curling up in a corner.
By this point several dogs had come to the entrance of the room and were watching us with fear. I wanted to show them that good behavior would be rewarded, and bad behavior would be punished. It was part of why I let the female keep anything after her actions, namely attacking me. I tend to hold grudges on people who try to harm me, so this was a big deal for me.
I turned to the dogs who were huddled in the doorway and told them, "You there. You will carry the Tower Heart, that is the big glowing round thing, to where I tell you. Do you understand?"
They nodded, and six of the biggest of the group came in to lift and carry it out. I turned to one of my Browns and told him to lead the dogs to the place that we came from when we teleported here, he nodded in understanding and began to shout at the dogs, only saying "Follow! Follow!"
I then reached down to pick up a gem, but as soon as I touched it the thing... dissolved in my fist? I tried again, this time focusing magic in my gauntlet to 'see' what was happening. The same thing happened again, and this time I knew what it was. The gems were almost pure life force. My gauntlet was filtering out the imperfections leaving only the life force, which it then sent back to the life force pits in the tower.
I shoved my hand into the pile and watched as every gem that touched my hand disappeared, the pile quickly vanishing with only the tinkling sound of precious stones hitting each other. I left a rather large amount behind, as I knew that the dogs ate them since I had seen some doing so while I had walked around the den. Far be it from me to take all of their food from them just because I'm a bit greedy.
I'm not that bad... I think...
I turned to the female and asked her name, she told me she was called Sadie, which made me feel bad as my father's friend had a very lovely rottweiler by the same name. Nicest dog you ever did see, that one.
"Well, Sadie, this is how it's going to work. I am in charge of you, you are in charge of this den, and this den is in charge of protecting the sheeple village near here. Understand?" I told her, asking to make sure that she knew where her place was.
"Why should we protect those weaklings!?" Sadie yelled indignantly.
"It doesn't matter why! The Overlord gave you your orders! Now you will do them or die trying to do his glorious will!" Gnarl snarled at her, having been slowly getting more and more agitated at sadie's behavior until he reached his breaking point.
"Quiet, runt! Or I'll make you be quiet!" she snarled back.
I stomped the ground, I could already feel the habit forming, getting both of their attention. Sadie wouldn't look me in the eye, but I assumed that it was because it was considered a challenge, and Gnarl's ears went back like a... scolded... dog...
"Oh, man. As of right now all of my forces are glorified/actual war hounds. Gnarl even once said 'release the minions of war!' What am I going to do with all of you?"
"You will protect them, because I told you to. I will not punish you this time, but if you insult others in my domain again, I will." I warned her.
She lowered herself, not to the ground but pretty close, saying "Yes alpha."
I turned and walked out of the room, saying to some of the one's who were still in the doorway, "Gather up all of the sheeple in the den who wish to leave and take them back to their village. If any of them are hurt on the way, the same will be done to you, understand?"
They all nodded and set to work, by the time I had gotten out there were already around fifteen sheeple gathered and waiting at the entrance. They all started to shake... well shake even harder, when they all saw me. I'm pretty sure I heard one whisper "Please don't eat me, I'll just give you indigestion!" but I can't be sure, as at that moment I heard a gonging noise ringing in my head.
"One, UHHH, THAT'S STILL A THING HERE!? and Two, oh good, the Tower Heart made it back alright."
Once all of the sheeple who were coming, that is to say all of them, had been gathered outside the den we all began to head back to the village. A few of them stumbled along the way, and one dog lost his leg for biting at one of the sheeple's legs as I'm a man of my word, but we made it before the sun was below the horizon.
We found the father of the family kneeling outside, gardening I suppose, and at the sight of me and the one's who were following me he jumped up and ran towards us, shouting "I knew you wouldn't abandon us sire! I just knew it! Thank you! Thank you so much for saving them!" Then he started crying while hugging my leg.
I wanted to shake him off, but I was too uncomfortable to do anything at all, so I just waited for him to stop on his own.
Once he had, about three minutes after starting, he said weepily "Is there anything we can do to repay you, sire? Please, just give the word, I'm sure that all of us would be happy to help!" After a few moments the other sheeple quietly (and somewhat reluctantly) agreed, so I thought of what I needed right now...
"I need some heavy duty construction equipment to be taken to the... Gate way. One of my minions will stay here and lead you to it when you have it gathered."
One of the sheeple shouted at me in disgust, saying "You mean you're leaving!? I knew it! You're no better than the cowered over there! Just getting what you need from us, and then leaving us out to dry! Well I say th-"
He could no longer talk, as his head had left his body. Hmm, I'm really getting into the habit of performing decapitations, aren't I?
"I have no intention of abandoning you... However, I will not tolerate dissent such as this, am I clear? You may petition me for a change if you wish, and should I see fit I might grant it, but open revolt will only ever be punished. This goes for you dogs as well you hear?"
The sheeple closest to the now dead revolter looked a little shell shocked, but everyone else nodded their understanding. I turned to the now identified mayor of the village and told him that he was in charge, and the role that the dogs would play in the village. I also told him to report any dogs who broke the rules, or became a problem.
With all of that sorted out, I and my minions began the trek home. On the way I asked Gnarl a question that I had thought of in the dog den regarding evil energy.
"Gnarl, could I gain evil energy by taking it from other evil beings? Essentially draining it from them, into myself?"
Gnarl looked at me for a long moment before answering in an unsure tone, "I'm not sure my lord, it sounds plausible. Though, I have no idea how you would go about it..."
If it was, then that was my ticket. Draining the 'evil' from others into myself, getting stronger from it, and making others like me for it. After all, people don't attack the people they like.
It had been two weeks since I had taken control of what I later learned was called the Dolly-drums. It was a pun form of the doldrums, a term to mean a place where there is no wind at sea, or simply a state of lethargy. I chuckled a little when I heard the name, which was a horrible noise, and I will never do it again. It apparently used to be a territory to the south-east of Equestria, but over time it was like they forgot about them. Then the dogs came, and when Equestria didn't send aid, there was nothing they could do to save themselves.
Things were going about as well as I could have hoped, there had been three more executions but other than that things were going okay. Of the three, there were two sheeple and only one dog so I guess I was wrong about who the problem would be. Other than the executions relations between the dogs and sheeple were shaky, but improving. I had even seen a business form from a dog digging up ores, and the sheep-person smelting them into bars to be used elsewhere.
I was pleased to see my people being so entrepreneurial, it would help a lot in the long run.
My minions were more than happy that the sheeple were a part of the... kingdom? Empire? Domane? I hadn't decided on one yet... Anyway, yeah they were very happy. Mostly because they liked how soft and fluffy the sheeple were. They were basically Lenny from 'Of Mice And Men' minus the 'accidentally snapping your boss's promiscuous wife's neck while she was trying to seduce you' bit. It would have been on purpose, at least when I do get a mistress I won't have to worry about infidelity.
The Tower was completely fixed, if not decorated, and I have to say I'm impressed. I mentioned before that I had my own bathroom/indoor pool, but I hadn't really seen it's value before. Probably because it had two columns collapsed inside of it, there were holes in the walls and the water in the pool/tub was green and had bugs spawning in it. But now, it was very good even without any decorations! The clean water was also a nice touch as minions hate water!
The lab was waiting for me to do any experiments I wanted to. It was somewhat under equipped, but it was nothing that couldn't be remedied. I was curious about the applications of life force, and wanted to do something with it other than make more minions. Don't get me wrong, having a large pool of minions is always a good idea! However, I don't just want numbers, I want powerful soldiers.
You can win a lot of battles with numbers, but one wrong enemy and no powerhouses, your army will disappear faster than you can replace them.
With the minion training room in working order the minions who weren't doing something building related could get better at killing things that wanted to eat them and me faster. That was always a good thing, though I had to put the kibosh on the old practice of using the weakest member of a squad as a training dummy. I wanted to make a strong army, not one that was always on the edge of ripping itself apart. All in all, my military, civic, and foreign relations (That is to say, none) were all going quite well!
What I felt I needed now was an interior decorator, I couldn't have other leaders coming here with it looking so plain! I didn't mind, but what kind of message would that send?
"Hmm... well, the only place that I can get to without causing a fuss is Sheption village... I guess it will have to do... for now."
I got up from my throne, which wasn't all that comfy as it was made of stone, and walked to the water portal. I had learned that the way you use the pool was simply to think of where you wanted to go, the portal would make an opening at the nearest lay line. When I appeared at the other side I found that the sheeple, or dogs, or someone had made a stone pad to arrive on. There was also a path lined with small rocks and freshly dug drainage divots leading to both the village and the dog den. There was still the river to cross and the bend to explore, but that could wait.
I walked to the village, finding a very busy, productive, happy village, I was happy that they had found a way to be useful. Apparently the sheeple had already made contact with the surrounding countries, selling and buying goods now that they were free and had direction again. As I walked around the town looking for something that looked right, I was greeted by happy, if somewhat frightened, sheeple and respectful, calm dogs.
I eventually wound up just going to the mayor, whose name I never bothered to learn, and asked him. He was happy to lead me to a small shop at the far end of town. It was run by Diamond dogs who worked with stone to make somewhat unimpressive statues and furniture. They asked me what I wanted done, and as I have a very hard time deciding on things that are not at this very moment, in front of my eyes, happening, I told them to make a few plans and bring them to show me and I would decide then. It would cost me a small fortune, but as I was the Overlord they were happy to do it for free... well, almost free as I couldn't send them into crippling debt, so I would pay for the supplies.
When I was happy with the plan for decorating my Tower I decided to walk around my town. To try to get a feel for my people, their wants and needs, mostly so I knew what to get them when they got antsy, wanting reforms and such. Just like any good leader!
It was about a half hour later that I found a commotion, and by commotion I meant an angry mob, pitchforks and all. Surprisingly there were dogs protecting the one who the mob was angry at... that was ether very good, or very, very bad. I walked forward into the crowd trying to get a look at whatever poor soul had all this anger directed at them, so I knew who would be the first victim of murder under my rule. It quieted right up when they all noticed my presence among them, parting like the red sea and giving me a straight shot to the dogs, who had formed a protective half circle.
When I reached them they still didn't step aside, instead just getting closer to whoever they were protecting and folding their ears back. They must have really cared about whoever this was... maybe I would save them as a reward for all the good behavior...
I huffed at them, but with my voice it sounded more like a growl of 'I'm about to kill you' to a dog. They stepped aside, whining, to reveal a small, black and yellow equine shaped bug. A Changeling, not of Chrysalis's Hive by coloration.
"I can never go somewhere outside my Tower without something happening, can I?"
I was just staring at the changeling, it was just cowering there staring back at me. This could be a problem, if the changelings hurt those they feed on. I don't really know what the case was for that... Experiment time I suppose...
"I wonder what it already is feeling from me? Hmm... well, I do love knowing about my own current mental state... could be nice to have one around... as long as there's no mind magic going on..."
I bent over and picked up the changeling, it flinched slightly at the contact. The dogs looked worried for the changelings safety, and while the crowd was quiet about it they also looked uncomfortable about me taking it. I noticed that there was a small amount of green blood on the ground where it had been cowering, it seemed that one of the sheeple had already gotten to the changeling before the dogs had been able to protect it. That explained why it looked like just being in contact with me was a pain, it was hurt. That, or my emotions were somehow bad for it to eat.
I carried it away without a word, the crowd dispersing when they realized there would be no bloodbath today. The changeling was still looking at me with fear and pain, but it was also not even trying to resist, basically becoming a ragdoll in my arms. Well arm, as it, and pretty much everything else, was so small that I could lay it on my arm like most evil guys did with their cat.
"Yes, Mr. Bigglesworth, There is no way anyone could exploit my one, obvious weakness to defeat me! The world is mine! Muhahah!"
Now there was confusion mixed in with everything else on the changeling's face.
"What? A guy can't have a sense of humor?" I asked snarkily at it, trying to get it to open up.
"But... no one has told a joke..." It tried weakly, looking like it was afraid I was going to hurt it for talking.
"Oh, so I can't think of funny things? Is that it?" I asked in a false reproachful tone. It's eyes went wide and it went stiff for a second, before I began laughing at it when it relaxed and started to pout.
A few minutes later it was still pouting, but we had reached the portal area. The changeling looked confused at the slab in the ground with the strange marks on it, but we had teleported before it could really focus on them. It gasped as the slab disappeared only to find a grand, if under furnished, throne room. Gnarl was waiting for me nearby, trying to find a target of me and the minions to attack and conquer, and was about to start talking about this place he had 'found' or something but stopped when he saw the bug in my arms.
"Sire, While I have no qualms with you getting a pet, I do have to ask why it would be a bug, they are filthy creatures after all..." Gnarl said, eyeing the changeling that I still hadn't dropped yet.
"Hey! I'm NOT a pet! Or filthy! I keep myself very clean, thank you very much!" it shouted back at Gnarl, who just raised an eyebrow at it and then turned to me with the same expression.
"I found it being almost killed in the village. I would rather not have an entire hive try to kill us if it's important." I told him, he nodded at my reasoning.
I then took the changeling to the infirmary, to treat its wounds and answer some questions. Aside from the obvious, what it was doing in the village, as it was most likely gathering love and was caught, hence the damage in general. The changeling was getting more and more antsy, like it was afraid that something would happen to it... not that anything would, as it hadn't done anything to upset me.
"So, what is your name?" I asked as I set it on a bed, minions with comical white hats with red crosses running up to heal it.
"Umm... It's Chitter." it said without looking me in the eye watching the minions closely as they tried to bandage her up.
"What is the name of your queen, if I may ask, Chitter?" I asked, trying to get a bit more of an understanding of its hive.
"Her name is... Uhh... I'm not sure I should tell you..." Chitter said looking suddenly suspicious of me.
"Fair enough. Now for an awkward question, You see I can't really tell what your gender is, and I don't like thinking about you as an 'it' so..." I asked with no hint of discomfort in my voice.
Chitter blushed at my question and said "I don't blame you, to outsiders we do all look alike, so, ahem... I'm a girl."
Ah, so she was a she, good. "Now, I'm going to leave you here until you're healed. Don't worry, I have no bias against your kind, you will be safe here as long as you don't hurt any of my minions." With that I left the small, hurt changeling behind and returned to the throne room.
"Sire, There is something I think you need to see, if you wouldn't mind...?" Gnarl asked me as soon as I entered the throne room. I was somewhat interested in what he wanted me to look at, normally he would just ask for me to invade somewhere nearby.
"After clearing out some more debris from the basement of the tower we found a door. It wasn't there in the old tower, and we don't know where it goes." Gnarl told me as he led me into the minion pits, down in the chasm that was behind the coffin that I was in before. At the bottom of the pit was a big black door, which was somewhat ajar, leading to a staircase that wound down into the darkness.
"Shall I get a group of minions to accompany you in the exploration of this? Or would you like to go by yourself?" Gnarl asked me with a straight face, being completely serious.
I stared at him for several seconds, the both of us just staring each other in the eye without blinking. I was waiting for Gnarl to show literally any sign of joking. He wasn't.
"Gnarl, I will not be going down there until I know what's there. Send a team of minions and then maybe I'll go, but until then there is zero chance of getting me to go." I told him, like I would explain something to a small child.
"Yes Sire, my apologies for suggesting such a stupid thing!" Gnarl said with not even an ounce of sincerity.
I would attack a smaller country when I found one, but for now my knowledge of the surrounding area wasn't up to snuff. Though... recent events did give me some ideas... hmm...
It had been a few days since our new guest had come to stay at the Tower, and while she had healed fairly quickly she was put under 'house arrest' very soon after. She was still being taken care of, of course. It turned out that her feeding didn't cause any pain or weakness, just apathy which I felt at most times anyway. It was why she was so uncomfortable around me in the beginning, to her it felt like I had been heavily fed on already which was something that was frowned upon by most of the hives.
Speaking of hives, I was able to get the number of hives out of her. There were eight hives in total, and there were three alliances between them. Chrysalis's hive was at the edge of the badlands closest to Equestria, and was the only 'independent' hive. The only reason I had gotten that out of her was in exchange for sparing her hive, as I had told her that I planned to attack the hives on mass. What I didn't tell her was that while I would spare her Queen, it was only to have a changeling who could control all the hives population.
Regarding the mysterious door in the basement, a team of ten minions had been sent into the passage leading down, but had yet to reach the bottom. We knew that they hadn't been killed yet, as there was a way to track life force around the Tower. We would just have to wait for them to get to the bottom and then get back up.
I had sent for the Diamond Dog den alpha and the sheeple village mayor to come to the Tower to 'hear my will', basically so I could tell them what I wanted them to do. I also told them that it was about the changelings, as I wanted to see what their reactions would be. Depending on what they thought of changelings, I could ether have them live openly among the sheeple or live with the dogs away from the sheeple, or maybe some mix of both.
When they both arrived they both had upset expressions, though at this point it meant nothing. Both of them kneeled at my throne as I sat on the somewhat uncomfortable seat, it was stone after all, and said nothing as they waited for me to speak.
"What are your people's opinions of the changelings? How would they react to the changelings living among them?" I asked them, watching their expressions.
The dog alpha looked like she was more concerned about the changelings than anything, but the mayor just looked confused at the suggestion of changelings living in the open.
"Our den would happily welcome them. They're very good workers and don't ask for much, just a few cuddles and that's usually it." said the alpha, Sadie I had just remembered, with a cautious yet optimistic tone.
"Wha- no, nevermind! We would prefer that those... creatures... were kept away. They are dangerous, after all... they are dangerous, aren't they?" the mayor asked, starting out being very anti-changeling but getting more nervous as he talked.
"And what if they weren't? What if they caused no pain or damage?" I asked keeping a close eye on the mayor, meanwhile Sadie looked uncomfortable at the tone that the mayor had taken.
"Umm... w-well... I suppose that c-changes things... I-I, uh, don't really know... forgive me Sire." He said with a scared and worried look to Sadie. He found no comfort there.
"Well, you will think on it, and speak to your people about it. I'm going to... shall we say, 'visit' the changeling hives, one by one. Both of you will have a few new... 'towns people' when I'm done. Understood?" I said, stating it like a fact. The truth was however, that if the sheeple ha a strong enough negative reaction to the idea of changelings living with them then I wouldn't let them live openly there. If a few sheep don't go missing then who cares?
After getting nods from both of them, I sent them away so I could plan out how I was going to ensla- Ahem, I mean, umm... forcibly immigrate them. Yes, that.
After a few moments of silence, Gnarl broke it by asking me a question.
"Master? Why do you care what the people think about your conquests? Shouldn't they just accept whatever you decide for them? You are the Overlord, after all!" he said.
"You assume that position automatically grants power. That idea is wrong, as there is always a chance that someone could defeat me. Even if I were to crush their spirits and destroy their dreams, it would only embolden others to attack me, if only to spare their loved ones my wrath. In my opinion, the best kind of citizen is one who is happy with their position. They will not try to rebel from the government, nor will they shy away from civic duty. Even if they are slaves, how could they tell if they got everything that they wanted?" I told him, watching as his eyes widened.
He started to laugh, holding his sides and bending over, finally saying "Oh, Sire! And you said you didn't believe in evil!"
"To me, it isn't. It's just good population management." I said with no merth. Gnarl was still smiling, but just nodded and went back to whatever he was doing before.
"Time to go say hello to the bugs then. I hope I find a new hive..."
The magic of the portal dropped the minions and I at the bottom of a ravine. Everything was a shade of brown, even the sky, and there were hardly any plants and the few that were there were dead or dieing.
We began to move forward through the ravine, looking for a way up or into a hive. The path was somewhat winding and had multiple dead ends, it was lucky that I could sense the portal site otherwise we would have been hopelessly lost. There were some signs of life in the area, footprints, or rather hoofprints, and several 'camouflaged landmarks' which made a clear path after I noticed.
After two hours of exploring I was about ready to just give up, then I began to notice the smell. A smell of rotting fish heads and other dead things. The only things that I knew of that made that smell were the undead, and the Greens! I was hopeful that I was about to find a new hive, but I was ready to be disappointed if it turned out to be undead. I would still kill the undead, as I couldn't have mindless killers wandering my domain unless they were bound to me, and the undead really weren't in any state of mind to make such a decision for themselves.
I turned a corner to find a group of fifteen Greens all back to back, surrounded by a group of about twenty changelings. I could see the Green hive behind them on a small ledge with one path which the Greens were protecting. Two changelings tried to fly up and damage the hive, but before they even knew what hit them I had taken control of the Greens and sent my Browns as reinforcements. I for one did not want to know what would happen if a hive was damaged, as it would probably be somewhat similar to what happened when the Tower Heart was broken, ie: a big ass explosion which would poison the surrounding area with concentrated magic goop.
I charged in as well, as I was never one to sit back as others did all the work unless I knew I would just get in the way. Of the twenty, I chopped about three in half, Greens leaped to the ones who were flying to stab them, Browns taking the ones who were on the ground from behind. The minions as one slaughtered them all, except for one who would be of use to me. That last one was pinned to the ground by a Green and a Brown, the Green was holding the back legs of the changeling while the Brown was on it's back holding its weapon to the changeling's throat.
As I gave the mental command to the Greens to take their hive back to the portal, I began to talk with the changeling who was captured by the minions.
"What is your hive's name? Answer me honestly, I already know all of the names anyway..." I asked it as the minions gathered behind me. That was true, I did know the names of all of the hives as I had made Chitter tell me. She thought it was so that I knew which hive to spare, but it was mostly so I knew who I was dealing with.
"I-I'm from... Hive Septa!" He (I knew it was a he from the voice) tried to lie to me. I snapped my fingers, and the Green behind him started to sharpen its hand knives on his carapace.
"Would you like to try again? Or are you content with losing your leg? I would be happy to take all of your limbs, if you wish to be uncooperative." I warned him.
At that moment I felt pain lance through my arms and shoulders, when I looked at them I saw the beginnings of small... horns? Spines? Something like those... So that was 'corruption'... I would have to keep a close eye on my mental health after this...
I turned my attention back to the changeling who was struggling on the ground, I could worry about the corruption later. For now I would need to find out which hive this changeling was from, so that he could lead me to it and his Queen. The names of the hives were Beetle, Tick, Arachnid, Moth, Chryssalid, Scarab, Bee, and Pond Strider. I'll give you two guesses as to which one was Chrysalis's hive, and the first one doesn't count.
It was also fairly unsurprising as to who belonged to which alliance. The hives Beetle, Moth, Bee and Pond Strider were all in one group and preferred to be more gentle with those they fed upon, even trying to go out of their way to help others. They were in no way weak or helpless, as they were almost constantly fighting with the other group, made of Tick, Arachnid and Scarab, who regularly hurt and/or killed those whom they prayed on, some even enjoying the act of destroying the mind's of others. Chrysalis's hive was the one who kept to the shadows the most, never even letting those they kidnapped wake up to see them.
"I'm from B-Bee! Bee! Please d-don't hurt me!" The changeling yelled, visibly panicking at the thought of losing his limbs.
"Now was that so hard? Right, now you're going to take me to your hive without complaint. Do you understand?" I ordered him as the minions let him go while staying close to him, letting him know that the only reason he was still alive was me and my good will.
"Y-yes, I understand!" he all but sobbed at me.
I waved my hand to get the minions attention, they all gathered behind me as we waited for the changeling to get up and lead us to his hive, whether he wanted to or not. He shakily got to his feet... hooves... whatever, and began to walk down one of the paths that we hadn't explored yet. The path was barely visible, which was honestly more conspicuous than if there had been a path, as most of the bottom of the ravine was criss crossing paths.
We were going down a slope into a deeper area, getting so deep into the ravine that I could only tell it was day because of the blue sky above us. There were less and less plants, dead or alive, as we went, leaving the place looking decidedly dead and unlivable. All in all it was an excellent way to hide the entrance to your hidden underground city, make it so no one would think you could live there. Though, the glowing resin cladding on the wall around the opening of the cave was kind of a dead giveaway.
As we went down into the hive there were several changelings who looked like they wanted to fight me at first, but became confused when they saw the changeling leading us down into the hive. The inside of the hive reminded me of the hive's of the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, all slightly luminescent resin and small amounts of slime on the walls and floor. There was only one tunnel for the longest time but it quickly became a, pardon the pun, honeycomb of tunnels and rooms, some even doubling back on themselves.
The changeling who was leading us took us straight down to the Queen's chamber, located at the bottom and center of the hive for protection. The Queen was already in her throne waiting for me when we arrived, and she did not look all to happy.
"And who are you, to harm my people, threaten them, and then force them to betray me?" She asked in a haughty and buzzing voice, looking down her nose at me. Boy was she about to be surprised at the trick up my sleeve!
I immediately sent my magic at her, seeking out her own power. I found it, and as I had hoped it was weaker than my own, if only by a little. Her eyes widened at my actions, and she began to put up a defence against me, but it was too late to stop me from beginning the battle. It was essentially a tug of war, with the winner getting a majority if not all of the opponent's magic. I was basically pulling a Tirek, before he had even gotten out... unless I had been dropped in after that... It could be that way as we never knew where Chrissalis ended up...
She put up a very good fight, almost got me a few times and I have a feeling that without that corruption I would have lost, but I won.
While our magical battle was on the minions had formed a defencive circle around me, the changelings who were guarding the Queen all died honorably in service of their Queen, is what I would say if I believed in honour. They killed four Browns and six Greens leaving me with half my starting force, and also royally pissing me off in the process.
The Queen shakily slumped to the floor mumbling "Why? What do you even want?" in a small, weak voice.
Then I did something that I would normally never do... I opened up my heart and just let my emotions flow. I concentrated on memories of my family, the few friends I had, even all the family pets. (Excluding the one who tried to maul me and gave me permanent scars.)
At first the Queen looked somewhat confused, then her eyes became as wide as dinner plates and her horn lit up. I could feel a slight pull on my chest, but there was no pain or even discomfort, it literally just felt like there was something inside my chest that was gently pushing on my ribcage. A few moments after her horn had lit up, several other drones also lit their horns and began to make some kind of bright yellow jelly which they began to store in large pots made of, you guessed it, resin.
"I just don't understand. What would you gain from all of this! You come into my hive, kill my guards, drain me of my magic and then feed me love? One of these events just doesn't belong here, and I'm sure it's obvious which one it is!"She said, looking just as flabbergasted as she did when she began feeding.
"Easy," I said, hearing my voice for the first time causing the Queen to flinch "You, and your entire hive, belong to me now, and I don't like it when my belongings break."
The Queen and the surrounding changelings just stared at me with open mouths and wide eyes. If anything, the Queens eyes became smaller so that they could get bigger again as they were about as big as they could get. It was like the hive had stopped at my declaration, they were all just waiting for the Queen's next move and she looked like she was waiting for me to say 'Sike! It was just a prank bro! You just got pranked, bro!' which I would never, ever do. Even if I was held at gunpoint. Just no.
Finally she seemed to realize that this was no prank and exclaimed "I am nobody's belonging!"
"Well, I do need a good name other than my title, and it would be nice to have it be situationally funny, so I guess my name will henceforth be Nobody. As such, yes, you are Nobody's belonging." I said as I chuckled at my joke. The minions chuckled as well, except for one who just looked confused until another minion hit it in the head. Then it chuckled and fell over almost biting it's own tongue off, making the minions laugh at it's misfortune.
"Wha? No! That's not what I meant at all!" She yelled at me, the minions growled at her in response making her back up because of caution/fear.
"Listen, I don't really care what you meant or want. You can either accept your new position or I can kill you and try the next one, either way there will only be one Queen of the changelings when I'm done, and she will serve under me whether she wants to or not." I told her, raising my ax threateningly to drive home the point that I was being completely serious about my intentions.
"... Fine... as long as you spare my people. If you harm any more of them however, then even if it kills me, I will kill you." She said in a 'I'm trying to be scary, but I'm practically crapping my pants' kind of tone.
"Good, because if you betray me I'll kill your whole species, and I would rather not commit genocide if I don't have to. This way I know we won't do anything to harm the other as we both don't want to die." I said getting ready to leave when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.
"Oh, so that's where that went. Minions! Go grab the Denurium Smelter and haul it back to the portal!" I ordered them.
"Hey, you can't just take that! It's ours!" The Queen yelled at me as I walked away.
I stopped and turned part way around to tell her "One. It was ours first, we're just taking it back. Two. I own you, and all of your belongings. So even if it wasn't ours in the first place, it would be now."
With that I followed the minions who were carrying the smelter which was about five times their height and four times their width out of the hive and back to the portal. Now that the only Queen I needed was pacified the conquest of the changeling lands could begin... after an upgrade or two.
I was back at the Tower watching as the new smelter was installed next to the old smelter, which had appeared with the Tower Heart, along with a book of magic and a small amount of money. If this was just a game then I wouldn't even bother with the denurium smelter and just save my resources for the arcanium smelter. However this wasn't a game, and it wouldn't take gold to make the armor and weapons... well it would cost money to get the proper ore's and other things that are needed in smelting.
I knew that it wasn't necessary for me to be here, and that by being away it would only give the Queen of the Bee hive time to betray me to the other Queens... which was something I wanted her to do. I needed to make sure that my minions could hold their own against a prepared, coordinated and well established force. If they couldn't, then there was no way that I could keep this going for long. The illusion of power can only go so far until it needs to be reinforced with actual power, and I only have so much of that myself.
While I would prefer to not actually be there when the test happened, I would need to if I wanted to take the dark energy from the other Queens as I had with the one I had forcibly emigrated. Speaking of, I checked the horns growing out of my body and reassessed my mental standing... Needless killing, nope... Torture, only on those who deserve it... Stealing, not for unimportant things... I didn't think that any part of my psyche was altered, and I didn't feel any incentive to hurt others... maybe I should just ask Gnarl about it.
I knew that he couldn't be fully trusted, but so far he seemed to only be an average minion. As such I would trust him until he proved me wrong.
I left the minions who were setting up the smelter to go look for Gnarl. I say look for him, but in reality he almost never left the throne room, for reasons I will never care to know. I found him right where I expected to, talking with another Brown. When he saw me he waved, or rather shoved/kicked the minion away.
"Yes sire? What is it?" He asked.
"I have a question about the corruption. I know that it will make me stronger in the short term, but I need to know if it will alter my mind. If I can't trust myself while using it, then I won't, however it would be very useful if I could." I asked him.
He looked somewhat surprised at my question, but quickly had a look of understanding and said "Sire, I understand what you're worried about, and I can assure you that there is nothing to fear! As we are dark creatures, the corruption has no effect on us other than strengthening us. Now, if you were to be anything other than a creature of darkness, then you would have something to worry about! If anything, I would worry about using too much light magic, trust me it would only hurt you, in the short and long term."
"So it won't incentives me to do more messed up things? I won't suddenly start trying to end the world or some other stupid thing that dumb evil things try to do?" I asked.
"No, sire. Not unless you actually decide to do that yourself. The corruption is only a name for the intense build up of evil energy, it will not actually corrupt you, it will only... 'reward' you." He said as he laughed with his mouth closed.
"Hmm... Thank you Gnarl. I will think about this some more on my own however." I said as I began to walk away.
"My lord! Actually, there was someone here who wished to speak with you, if you have the time that is! They could always be sent back to their home if you don't have time for their nonsense." Gnarl informed me, with emphasis on the sending them home part.
I sighed and went to sit on my throne, waving the person in for whatever it was they wanted to talk to me about. Gnarl turned to a nearby guard and pointed down the stairs surprising me, as I expected the visitor to arrive through the water portal.
The mayor of the sheeple village walked up the stairs, looking nervous and somewhat deep in thought as he walked up to the throne.
"S-Sire... I've been thinking about what you said... about ch-changelings... and... I agree. If there is any chance of them being anything other than a monster, then we need to give them a chance! So, my answer to your question of them being accepted into the village, the answer is yes sire. We will happily accept them with open hooves." said the mayor his voice, as always, weak at the beginning, yet it seemed that he was getting used to talking with me as his voice quickly gained confidence.
I hummed in satisfaction. "I am very pleased to hear this. It is good to know that my people are accepting of others, no matter the background. I can only hope that you keep this viewpoint, it will serve you well in my domain."
The mayor stood there for a few more seconds, as though waiting for something else, before bowing and heading back down the stairs. Once he was gone I slumped into my throne, I felt unduly tired for reasons that I didn't know, but I suspected that it was related to the pressure of ruling. That being said, I very rarely felt any stress or worry... about things I can control.
Honestly, so far all that had changed for me since coming here is the sudden increase of violence and magic. Managing resources and people? It was almost any game I played for fun, just make sure that you never go into a deficit and keep your people happy. That being said I knew that it would be harder in real life, but not by much... It was unfortunate, but people were easy to understand once you knew what they wanted.
Take Gnarl for example, what he want's is a master who deserves the title, i.e. someone who is 'evil' and as long as I am that he will be loyal. Thus, conquering the surrounding area to show him how 'EVIL' I am, pleasing him just enough to keep him loyal and productive... plus it would make a good safety bubble in case anyone wanted to attack me.
Or the changeling Queen, all she wanted was to keep her hive safe and well fed. The reason she would betray me was because it would draw her even closer to the other Queens and make them indebted to her, all of which would just feed into what she wanted. It was why I wasn't upset about it, why I was counting on it!
All of this was one reason why I was so quiet, so I could hide what I wanted. As long as nobody knew what I wanted then nobody could influence me in any meaningful way. I also just had little to actually say.
Case and point, I had spent about three hours just silently sitting on my throne, saying and doing nothing while waiting for the forge to be installed and new armor and a mace to be made from denurium for me. I wanted a mace for some variety in my killing implements, I was tired of hearing 'thunk' whenever I hit something. Why not try for 'crunch' instead? Plus it would be faster than cutting them in half... so, kind of more 'humane'?
It didn't really matter to me, dead was dead, but appearances are important and people like merciful rulers. I sure am glad mom and pop taught me what everyone thinks is right and wrong, otherwise I would have a much harder time of pretending to have the same views.
Giblet, the forge master, came up my throne and pulled on my arm, he talked even less than I did but I assumed that he meant that my armor was ready. I followed him down to the forge, which was on the lower levels, and found a full suit of denurium armor and a mace of the same material. Over all it looked much better than my current dressings and appeared to be better as armor, having a kind of chain mail coating over the exposed parts of my body.
Gnarl had followed us down to see how the armor looked. "Oh, very intimidating sire! I think I can feel the, uh, 'Changelings' quaking with fear already! How does it feel my lord? Any complaints? Any pinching?" He asked with all the awe of someone who had met their hero five years ago and now really were just trying to be nice to the poor guy... Poor Shia Lebouf.
"It fits perfectly, and it's not even all that heavy to be honest. I think I haven't given the Queens enough time yet though... and it is rather late... Yes, this will be all for today. Tomorrow, we go to kill some changelings." I said as I began to walk up to my room, Gnarl heading back to the throne room, and Giblet going back to... what ever it is he does when no one is in the forge.
"Tomorrow I am going to get hurt, there's no way around that. I wonder what my pain tolerance will be in this body, and what the queens will do if/when they learn there is no hope..."
I arrived back at the badlands after a full nights rest with a full squad of minions, around thirty. Half were Greens who would leap onto the opponents back, and the Browns would charge in and tank the brunt of the damage. Since I hated not having fully outfitted minions, for the last few days I had been having the forge make iron equipment for them. They even installed a second forge to speed up the process! As such, the minions were a sea of pikes and pole arms followed by iron claws, a very good set of equipment for this stage if I do say so myself.
We exited the portal to find a large amount of changelings in full armor, with medium to large weapons and horns lit up. At a glance, it looked like there were around sixty to seventy of them. They all attacked at once, either swinging their weapons or shooting their magic at us. I didn't even have time to give the minions their orders before they all jumped into action, pun somewhat intended. Within moments, due to the coordination of the Browns attacking the same changelings that the Greens had leaped onto, quickly killing them by acting as a team.
I myself killed more than I did before, taking down three with an... almost... thick (?) crunch... like when you split a watermelon. I had caught them in the air as they were leaping at me, crushing their heads with one swing. One of their weapons, a curved blade like you would see from an ancient Egyptian statue or something only bright green with a black hilt, still nicked me as they fell. I wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't seen it happen, which worried me as I was a bit of a klutz. I got it from my mother, we always seemed to have a bruise somewhere.
I managed to drain a few more changelings of their evil energy, like I had with the changeling Queen yesterday, only this was harder as they were not surprised that I could even do magic. I had no doubt that the Queen had warned the others about my technique for weakening them, and that the queens would warn their troops about it as well.
I had come up with the idea for it a few days after taking over the Dolly-drums, it worked by essentially 'throwing' your magic at the other guy and attaching it to their magic. After that it was tug of war, you either won all the magic, or you lost all the magic. An added bonus was you could choose which kind of magic you were taking by sending that kind of magic at your opponent, so you had the choice of evil energy, regular good old magic, or as it's usually called, arcane magic, and light magic to round it off.
The fight had lasted around ten minutes, and I had lost ten of my thirty which were immediately replaced. There were no survivors on the changeling side, none had retreated or surrendered to me. I had no doubt that it was at the order of their Queens, that they would throw their own lives away. Oh well, time to move on, places to be, Queens to kill, all that jazz.
We set off on the same path that we had gone the day before, though it wasn't all that hard to follow the path back to the hive as the correct path was swarming with changelings every few feet. In the usual idiot bad guy fashion, the changeling troopers got progressively harder as we went towards the hive, as opposed to the smart idea of sending the regular troops and if they fail immediately sending the elite troops. Add to that how narrow the pass we were in was, it was basically a meat grinder.
One changeling had managed to stick me with a spear, by which I mean he tried to stab me but instead broke his spear on my armor. It had still managed to get the tip stuck in the crack it had made, but it was minor damage compared to what it could have been if I was still wearing my iron armor.
We had killed around... maybe a little over a hundred? More? Less? I didn't know or care, they were trying to attack me and my minions. Yes, I was trying to take over their lands, and I was in the wrong here, but... um... what was I talking about?
Anyway, we had reached the entrance to the bee hive, which was connected to all the other hives underground, as all hives were. There was another group of changelings gathered at the entrance, all of which were better equipped than the ones who had tried to ambush us when we first appeared. They also looked more than a little starved, and their battle performance and moral suffered for it. I knew that they were in such a state because of the Queen draining them in order to fight me, because what other answer could it realistically be in this world? Sure, they could be having a sudden food shortage, but that wouldn't explain why they all looked so healthy yesterday.
The battle went much the same as the last one, Greens leaping at the backs of the defenders, Browns keeping them from being able to focus on the Greens and me, smashing my way through any 'lings that got in my way. The only difference was that this time some of the changelings surrendered and/or ran away, I spared the ones who dropped their weapons but many were still killed. By the time the last changeling fell or stopped fighting, the tunnel was coated in changeling blood and viscera, a mostly green color with a little blue in patches.
There were not many military Changelings in the hive proper, the non-combatants all either ran at the sight of us or cowered in a corner. I had my minions ignore any and all civilians just like the soldiers in the entrance, after all you can't really have a domain without people to live in it. Otherwise it would just be an empty place that you live in. I even spared the military changelings in the hive who ran away, though whether it was to warn others or just to get away I didn't know.
Nothing of much note happened as we made our way to the Queens chamber until we were just outside, when a small changeling, "a changeling kid?" I realized with some surprise, charged at me despite his mothers screams for him to stay put. My minions were about to impale him like any other enemy, but I sent a pulse through the link which connected us causing them to stand down. The child flew up to my breastplate and began to punch and kick at it, to the horrified gaze of the nearby onlookers.
"Go away you big meanie! I won't let you hurt the Queen!" The kid yelled at me as he hurt himself more than the breastplate, "You can't just come here and hurt changelings for no reason!"
"From where I'm standing, your Queen is the mean one." I said to the kid but also loud enough for the onlookers to hear.
"Huh? What are you talking about, your the one who started this!" he yelled, confused and angry but still listening.
"Well you see, I came here in the first place because I had heard that you were hungry. I wanted to offer you food and shelter in my lands, free and open with no reason or need to hide. I took back a smelter that was mine and had to hurt some changelings who were hurting some of my people, but other than that I've been very reasonable. And now, only the second time I've been here and after your Queen promised that she would accept my terms because I can't just give things away for free, I find a group of soldiers waiting to hurt me and my people when I arrive." I said watching the crowd more than the kid, they all seemed more than a little surprised, some still looked suspicious of me but others looked like they were doubting their Queen's judgment.
"But-but, what about all the guards you hurt on the way here! We could hear them yelling!" He said, not really yelling at this point but still having a raised voice.
"I only hurt the people who break deals, or try to hurt me and mine. They were doing the second one, as were you just now..." as I said this his eyes went wide, as did the eyes of those around us, but they all sighed when I lightly flicked the kid in the forehead, "And I only hurt others proportionate to the amount they hurt me."
"Perpor-wha?" He said with adorable confusion on his face as he rubbed the spot I had flicked.
"It means equal to the amount of whatever your comparing it to." I told him.
With that I grabbed him out of the air and returned him to his mother, who just stared at me with tears still flowing down her face as she quietly sobbed, without saying any more.
Once the crowed that had formed dispersed I gathered my minions, who had for some reason began cuddling and hugging some of the changelings and headed toward the Queens chamber. The guards at the front just asked me to "Please spare our Queen, that's all we ask of you." and stood aside. I didn't even respond to them, sometimes it was good to keep people in suspense.
When I got to the main chamber I found not one, not two, but four Queens waiting for me.
"Good," I thought "I won't have to waste time hunting for them."
The four Queens were all different colors, from my left to right they were brown, yellow, gray and blue. I had seen a few troops of other colors mixed into the mostly yellow guards, I supposed that the other Queens wanted to keep a majority of their troops at their own hives. That or they didn't have more troops to spare, what with the Bee hive being the farthest from the other group of hives which they were at war with and thus spared from most of the bloodshed.
The Queens looked to be in good health, the holes spread across their bodies being rather small and their shells quite smooth, almost polished looking. That basically confirmed my suspicion of what had happened to the other changelings in the hive, the Queens had all but drained them dry of love... This could get interesting...
"So you weren't overreacting after all. For it to have gotten this deep into your hive it must be very strong... or your just very weak." the brown Queen said to the yellow Queen, with an extra helping of 'I'm better than you' in her voice.
"Ahem! We are-" The gray Queen began before I cut her off.
"I don't care. You are nothing to me, because in a few minutes either you'll be dead, or I will and I'm betting on myself being the last one standing." I said as I stepped forward, menacingly. As opposed to just standing there, menacingly.
Ten guards per Queen sprang into formation in front of them, only the yellow ones seeming to have any idea of how bad their position was. The other royal guards either had no expression, or were smiling like the idiots they were. But the yellow guards had only a frown, and not the 'I'm upset at this circumstance' frown, it was the 'I'm about to die and I know it' frown. Yet they stood in defiance anyway, it was almost enough for me to simply incapacitate them... but they were standing against me... you know what? I'll just incapacitate them, it would be a waste to lose the experience they had.
"You can't really expect to win against forty royal guards, can you?" asked the blue one, looking both worried and thoughtful.
In response I waved my hand at the guards, sending the message that the yellow one's weren't to be killed. The minions used the tried and true method on the guards, but shortly were either knocked down or killed as they realized they needed to focus on the Greens on their backs which freed them up to attack the Browns without distraction. In all the first wave had killed five and wounded three. Of the yellows, half were unconscious and were sleeping at my feet. I had called them back as they had begun to die, and the changelings seemed to be reluctant to go on the offensive.
After my minions had a moment to catch their breaths, I sent them in again to try something different. Namely, they all focused on one changeling at a time, completely ignoring the others even as they fought to stop them. It was a fight of numbers and equipment, and while the changelings were on the winning side of one of those things, there was one thing they didn't have. Me.
I charged in and began to drain the guards that were going to die, smashing them as I went. I felt some irritation around my shoulders and joints as I did this, but it wasn't enough to slow me down. One changeling was smiling as he tried to circle around the main force, trying to get to me in order to wound me when I wasn't looking. He was smiling right up until he realized that he couldn't feel his legs, and found them several feet from him after I had severed his upper and lower half's by striking him in the back so hard.
With my aid the minions were able to make a severe dent in their numbers, though we had also taken heavy losses. These changelings were the real deal, and I would make sure to reward any minions who survived this strike against the hives. I was very pleased at how they were learning so fast, going from mass attacks meant to overwhelm to using focused attacks to take out heavily fortified solders such as the royal guards.
After the second attack was done we had lost one third of what was left, though they were doing worse as there were only five guards left. I stomped forward to finish this fight, under the watchful eyes of the Queens. I would make it look like I was tired, make them think I was on my last legs, and then I would take them by surprise and drain their evil energy... And I knew just the way to take them out before they could fight back.
I had killed the guards fairly quickly, taking out their heads with firm swings, stumbling slightly on the second and last swings in order to make it seem like I was trying to look like I wasn't tired when I actually wasn't. Didn't want to overplay it after all, and going from standing tall and showing no weakness to falling down every few steps would raise some flags. I was basically trying to force a shiver, clenching and unclenching my muscles rapidly whenever I did something that would appear strenuous.
One of the changelings seemed to decide that even if he was weak from his Queen draining him, he had magic and needed to use it, so he cast a stun spell at me. It hit me in the leg, and while it was weak it still worked, however, unfortunately for him, I didn't need to feel my limbs in order to move them. My body had fallen asleep while I was doing something so often that I knew how to work a jelly body, it was just like riding a bike... well, I mean, I never learned how to ride a bike because of the accident, but you understand.
I was still draining the changelings that I was fighting, not all the way as that would probably kill them in a noticeable and I didn't want the Queens to realize what I was doing. But I felt it was getting easier as I went, at this point it was getting harder not to drain them completely than to drain them at all, the way it had been at the start of this little scuffle. It seemed that this draining technique had a snowball effect, I couldn't wait to see what would happen after I drained a Queen... I also was worried about the fact that I wanted to see what would happen... It was mostly ambition, but I never really had any of that before...
I had my minions wait behind me, and by that I mean I sent a few Greens to sneak behind the Queens to attack them if I couldn't overpower them by myself. The Queens looked like they were going to attack one at a time, though the yellow Queen looked more than a little apprehensive about the whole thing. I walked toward them slowly, getting closer to the blue and gray Queens who both tensed and began to charge up spells. Most likely they were energy beams meant to kill me quickly, if they could charge them fast enough then it was game over.
They weren't fast enough.
I suddenly put on a burst of speed and was in between the two of them before they could blink, it looked like the corruption increased my speed as well as my strength. I dropped my mace for a moment, leaving it handle up next to me and shoved my arms into the chest's of the two Queens who were next to me. As I was gripping their heart's, I connected my magic to theirs and began to pull on both of them at once. There was almost no resistance, as though the magic knew their vessels were broken and was trying to move to an unbroken one. I felt a lancing pain as the horns across my body grew around a few centimeters, new spines forming and old ones growing larger.
The Queens I had drained just... crumpled. They... I don't really know how to describe it... it was as though the holes in their bodies grew until, poof, there were only scraps of what once was a changeling Queen... there wasn't even any blood or residue on my arms. It was somewhat disturbing, how easy it was to just... erase them. Though shriveled, there were obvious plates that once were their heads, what with the protruding crooked horn and muzzle. It actually looked somewhat... cool... hmm...
The brown Queen looked horrified for a moment, before coming back to her senses and trying to flee. She was too slow, and she joined the other two Queens in death shortly there after. She had put up a good fight at the end, kicking and biting, even her magic was putting up a fight, but it was no use. I had lifted her into the air by her heart, my arm firmly lodged in her chest, and was squeezing the life out of her even as she fought to get away. She had died before I had drained her completely, and while I was able to get a majority of the evil energy there was still a portion that escaped me, dissipating before I could draw it into myself.
The yellow Queen was cowering in the corner behind her throne, sobbing quietly while trying to hide or something. Maybe hoping I would just forget about her and go away.
"I should be angry at you. I let you go and made you one of my people, that isn't something that happens to just anybody, and how do you repay me? You betray me to your friends and try to kill me." I said at her, I wasn't sure if she was even listening at this point but it seemed likely as she started to sob even louder when I stopped talking for a moment to let what I said sink in.
"P-Plea-ase, don't k-kill my ch-change-lings..." She managed to choke out in between her sobs and hiccups. My respect for her had just skyrocketed with only one sentence.
"I'm not going to. That was never my intention, it would just be wasteful. But as I was saying, you betrayed me... and I need to thank you for it." I said, making her look up at me in shock and confusion, pausing her tears for a moment at how unexpected this was.
"Wh-what? Wha..." she said, trailing off in her uncertainty.
"You did just as I expected you to, as I wanted you to. You gathered the other Queens in one place and made a very good test run for my minions in a combat situation. Well that is, what minions I have, as their are other types which I have yet to collect. Now that this business is done I can stop with the 'I'm oh so evil, look at me!' stick. That, and I can give you a choice. You see, I've decided that the changelings will live in the open, with my blessing, and not fear anything from it. However, I can only trust one Queen to rule them, to many and I would have the problem you're having right now with infighting. I have chosen you to lead your people, but if you cannot find a way to do so beneath me, then I will find another. Can you? I really don't want to chose second best." I said, she had stopped crying around half way through my little speech. Good, I hated to see girls cry.
She looked at me for a moment, as though looking for any sign of deception, and then she gave me her answer.
It had been about two weeks since the assault on the yellow hive, and I was nearing total victory. There was only one hive left, Arachnid, aside from Chrysalis's hive... when we had found where her hive was there was nothing but some scraps of resin on the walls, otherwise there was nothing to even suggest that there had been a hive.
The changelings who had belonged to the Queens i had killed were more than a little angry, some were just confused and others were afraid that I would just kill all of them. Of course I would not, that would be stupid for multiple reasons. One, I was conquering them in order to rule them, not kill them. Two, even if I had come to kill them all, they were just to useful, they had too much potential for me to kill them instead of use them. Third and finally,... they were actually pretty adorable, like, just in how they went about their day and the tasks they did. It could damn near give you diabetes, but what would you expect from a species that eats love? That they would be cruel to each other?
Anyway, after the main hive had settled down I went home to rest. One of the first things I had done after getting back to the Tower after the fight was to inspect myself. I wasn't Death the Kid levels of OCD, but I would have needed to snap off a few of the spines if they weren't symmetrical been very upset if they were asymmetrical. Luckily the universe was fine with giving me one nice thing for free, and all of my spines and other protrusions were were nice and symmetrical. I had gone down to the arena to test my body, I found that my speed had around tripled and my strength had almost quadrupled. On the mental front, aside from a new sense of ability and the knowledge of how to increase said ability, there was no real change... at this point I was thinking Gnarl was right about the corruption.
After a bit more looking at myself, I realized that I looked... well, evil for lack of a better descriptor. It was like my being was turning everything... darker. My armor had started out being a nice, almost white gray, like a brighter steel color. Now it was dark gray, almost on the edge of being a lighter shade of black. If any of the equestrians saw me then they would most likely assume I was a bad guy... you know, if the whole 'three fourths of my domain are made of dark creatures' didn't make them think that first. Luckily I had figured out a way to hide the signs of corruption, made the spines and horns go away, everything got a lot lighter around me, the whole shebang.
Unfortunately, it also suppressed the benefits that the corruption gave, when it was hidden I was slower and weaker. I was still better than normal, that is if I didn't have any corruption, but I could very much feel the difference. While the hiding spell was active it was like someone replaced the air with molasses... I hope that Discord can't read minds while he's in stone and that he's not paying too much attention to me. It also had the unhappy effect of making it painful to undo the spell, as in when the spell was undone all of the spines would push out of wherever they came from all at once... explosively. There was a small burst of magic to boot. It hurt so bad that the first time I did it I almost blacked out... and the second time... and the third... by the thirtieth it just made me a little unsteady and by now it barely hurt at all. Had to practice it if I wanted to have any chance of not being turned to stone on sight once the equestrians found me, even if it hurt like hell.
There had been some unrest in the Dolly-Drums at the mention of changelings living in the area freely and with my blessing. There were even several factions who formed in opposition of the idea, I had to gather the leaders of the groups together to talk them into letting it happen. They were all to happy to change their ideas when I offered them compensation for any harm they would cause, especially so after one leader demanded that I send them away, so I smashed his head like a ripe melon. Of course, this was only after I gave him six offers of compensation in increasing value, which was one more than I usually give as I hated causing my people harm. Coincidentally, that was why I destroyed his head, he was dead before he even knew I had swung.
Other than that, there were a few more towns in the surrounding area had decided that they wanted my protection as well and had joined my domain willingly, it included around ten dog dens and twenty seven sheeple townships, meaning there were on average two people per changeling, counting the ones who hadn't become a part of the domain yet. There were some problems with the new dog dens, specifically, they had slaves of many different species... and I don't tolerate any slavery. Those who wanted to leave were given supplies and put on the right track to get home, otherwise they were given a small amount of money to start over and several new buildings had been built in most towns to shelter the homeless by my order.
In the meantime, my tower had been decorated as the Diamond Dog masons had promised, they had brought over several plans a few days before getting to work. By now I had some very nice decorations, both in stonework and and cloth, as I had gone to several small stores in order to furnish my Tower properly. In the throne room I had basically gone with the same design as the game when you choose Rose as your mistress, nice red carpet, statues of nondescript humanoids holding swords pointed down lining the room, the 'Imperial Throne' as I had always liked that form better, but I had kept the hell hounds at the base of the throne instead of the 'chimeras', which were just lions with wings. In my personal wing it was basically the complete opposite of the throne room, mostly being the Velvet rout, nice long curtains lining the walls and draped in between pillars, the main difference was that instead of a torture room I had gone with the garden, gathering plants from around the Dolly-Drums and the Badlands and even what few plants grew around the Tower and turning the room into a nice little place to calmly think.
However, now wasn't the time for gardening, as the assault on the last changeling hive, aside from Chrysalis's who, again, was missing, was still going on. I had been having my minions 'farm' life force by using the arena in the dungeon, as it could infinitely spawn any creatures that I, or any other Overlord, had fought before. as such I had been having them fight beetles to increase the amount of minions we had since they were almost contently dying. And for getting seventy five life force per battle? It was a steal.
The last three Queens had basically 'sensed' that the others had died, and began to pull their forces back to protect themselves. Apparently most changelings could 'feel' where other changelings were regardless of which hive they belonged to, and the last Queen had all but made children into solders to defend herself after feeling the second to last Queen bite the dust. I had decided to sit out the long, arduous... well siege, for lack of a better term for it and had decided to do some administrative work while the minions did their job and got me closer to the enemy leaders. Once the minions had beaten back the defenders to the point I could directly attack a Queen I appeared to do so, using the same method I had used on the previous Queens to quickly end them while still increasing my power.
When I arrived at the last hive to conquer I found that most of the defenses were shattered and solders from both sides were strewn about, the changelings who weren't dead were hurt in such a way that they couldn't resist, and minions were only that still if they were asleep or dead, and minions only slept in the minion pits.
I walked forward, past the signs of battle and deeper into the hive, looking for the Queens chamber. On the way I saw many dead or hurt changelings, some were only lightly scuffed while others only had their head, torso and maybe a limb or two... and those were just the ones who had passed.
The screams made me... upset. The idea of a leader forcing inexperienced civilians to fight an armed and trained fighting force was just wrong. For one thing, it was terribly inconsiderate. So many would die, how was anyone supposed to pick up the pieces after the war was done and actually make use of the area if everyone was dead or so mentally broken that they couldn't do anything? For a second thing, if you couldn't protect your people with your military, with diplomacy, or by any other means, then you didn't deserve the right to call yourself a leader.
I found a large group of minions gathered outside a rather impressive free standing structure. It appeared that a Green was the one who was in charge of this group, with how much minions tended to look alike he stood out as his tail was a stump and he was missing a finger on his left hand.
"Master! Queen in there! We found! Haha!" He said, it might have been broken english, but it was still much better than most minions. I would have to keep an eye on this one.
"What is your name, minion?" I asked him while getting ready to end this war.
"Me Scratch! Me serve Overlord!" he said with a light giggle of happiness at the attention and as good a salute as I have ever seen a minion give.
"Definitely have to keep an eye on this one, he shows great promise even if only as a spy." I thought as i turned to enter the final Queen's chamber.
The first thing I noticed was the smell, it was every good thing I had ever smelled and some I hadn't rolled up in one. Next was the temperature, which was warm but not oppressively so, just enough to make you drowsy without putting you to sleep. The light level was perfect as well, my eyes were somewhat photosensitive even now and even a somewhat cloudy day made it feel like two ice picks were being stabbed into my eyes. It wasn't dark, but it also had little actual light and was just the right amount of gray... and it was quiet. not 'someone just died' quiet, more like 'there is someone here, but it's fine just enjoy you time' quiet. Comforting silence, I suppose would be the best way to put it.
I was the first one to break the silence by saying "Come out, I can sense that you're still here." In the quiet of the room, my voice was almost deafening with how loud it was, even though I had only talked at an indoor volume.
"Very well... my lord." said a very seductive female voice.
The Queen all but sauntered over to me, looking like she was trying to get as close to me as possible before talking to me. I have to say, for a quadruped she was actually fairly attractive and I had no doubt that she had altered herself to look even more attractive. She got on her back hooves and wrapped her fore hooves around my shoulders, when I didn't hug her back she made the second most adorable pouty face I had ever seen.
"Please, Lord, won't you hug me back?" She asked me, batting her eyes and snuggling closer to me.
I wrapped my arms around her causing her to sigh in contentedness. I enjoyed the warmth of the Queen for a moment before saying "I saw your horns light before you walked around the corner. It takes much stronger mind magic than that to fool me."
Once my words had registered in her head the Queen began to struggle, biting and kicking, trying any way to escape from the death trap she had put herself in. At this point I was strong enough that it was like holding an upset toddler, all squirming and no real force or chance to escape. After a few moments she had stopped struggling and was just sobbing at me.
"Please, let me live! I'll serve you! Anything! I'll do anything you ask! Please! Please!" and other variations of this were all that she could choke out.
"I might've been persuaded to spare you before, but, unfortunately, I've already decided who will live and who will die. And your on the die list." I said with some sympathy in my voice, as no one likes telling someone else that they were going to die, especially when it's a crying girl.
A few moments later the sobbing stopped, as did everything else. The room we had been in was an illusion, it was little more than a trashed hotel room without much light, and it smelled twice as bad. I placed her body on her bed for her people to do with what they would.
"I must say, I'm impressed. There are few males who could resist her charms, much less her crying voice. Most would offer anything to make her stop, all part of her magic though. Good thing you don't have any real preference when it comes to mates or you might've turned on me." said an increasingly normal voice behind me.
"And with this no more changelings will die from us, they will have good lives from here on out as long as I have a say in it." I said, turning and motioning for the yellow Queen, Sarra, to follow me.
"Time to go home?" She asked.
"For now, they will need time to rebuild and settle into things. Once that is done I will begin to introduce them into the rest of the domain." I told her walking back to the portal to the Tower, just happy to stop killing my people. It was bad to break your possessions.
The integration of the changelings into the domain was going very smoothly, almost none of them had been assaulted in the streets in the past three days! Another good thing about this was that once everyone got used to each other, we could begin to try and remake the badlands. For now it was basically a large empty expanse of land that was just unlivable unless you didn't need normal food, and while that was fine for changelings it did make getting said meal a tad more difficult.
How nice would it look once everything was green and alive? Hmm... how confusing would it be when others got here? I mean most of the time when an 'evil' guy is in charge the land looks all dead and gross, but here I was, evil by most of this worlds standards, and I was trying to make the land green and lush! I can just imagine the confused look Rainbow would give at finding me, all spiny and dark, sitting in the middle of a garden watering flowers! Ha!
On a related note, my garden was growing very well! The plants were all playing nice and not strangling the life out of each other, like normal plants would when planted so close together. It was the second greenest place in the Tower, after where the Green nest was placed. It was rather odd that a being with so much corruption inside them self could care for any living thing so well, but I suppose weirder things have happened.
The gardening was mostly to relieve boredom, as I had little to do outside of the duty's I had given myself. The minions that had gone down the door in the basement had returned yesterday with news of what was down there, absolutely nothing. It was an empty spiral staircase with multiple places for openings, but where a door would go was just a solid rock wall. Many people would be disappointed at the lack of any dragons or undead, but I saw this as a good thing. One, I wouldn't have to fight something way beyond me just to get something that was already under my tower, and two, now I could design the room and what it would be used for! And I knew just what to make...
This all related to the garden because when I was bored I would normally read, but there were little to no books in the Tower as a vast majority of the minions couldn't read. I had already burned through all of the books in the Tower and a large portion of books in the surrounding townships, and thus the gardening. So, in an effort to end my boredom as well as score some brownie points with Twilight when she eventually shows up, I was having the library dug out immediately. I would also need to order some books to stock it... Maybe I should look into making a music library? I'm sure it was bound to make someone happy, at least me.
While the library was being built I had decided to learn more about magic, Gnarl (who had been getting rather distant lately) had gotten me started but I wouldn't get very far by just throwing my magic at whatever was in the way. I needed to know how magic worked and how to manipulate it, luckily I had just subjugated a race that was around seventy percent magic. What? How else would eating emotions and altering their physical forms so drastically make any sense?
When I asked Sarra to teach me magic she gave me a blank stare for several minutes before face palming. I think she was embarrassed to find out that her whole species was defeated by someone who didn't really know how to use their own magic, by overpowering them using magic. Anyway, after getting her to agree, which didn't take much as all she wanted was some love, we began our lessons. It started with little things like fire balls, ice spears and lightning bolts, but quickly grew into things like short range teleportation or 'blinking', magical shields and, one that I found very useful, a spying spell.
It worked like that one quest in World of Warcraft, when your a death knight and you have to spy on the scarlet crusade, by making a big ol' eye in the sky. I could control it from my throne, basically launching a giant blue eye from the top of my Tower, going invisible at will and moving where I wished. There was no limit on where I could go, or the speed which I went to get there, as such I obviously made it invisible and sent it to Ponyville to see what the mane six were up to. I was certain that if the spell were affected by movement the same way anything else was, it would have just done a sonic rainboom at least twice due to course correction.
The gist of the area was known to me by studying maps and I was able to find it fairly quickly, but one thing I couldn't find, or rather six things I couldn't find, were the girls. I could find just about everyone else in the town, there were the flower sisters selling their namesakes, over there was Time Turner, or Dr. Hooves whatever, who was talking with Derpy, the CMC talking with a Red, Big Mac tending the fields.
Wait.
Let's go back one.
The CMC. Talking with a Red. In their wooden tree house. Without adult supervision.
Oh god, they were going to burn down all of Ponyville! Where was the popcorn when you needed it!?
But seriously, how did this even happen? Where were the other Reds? Or their hive? Why was there a large pinkish shield over Canterlot with lots of small black dots on it?... Oh, so that's were Chrysalis went... Oh no.
"I have a very bad feeling about this..."
I was in the main hall of the castle in the blink of an eye, and yup, there was chrysalis, just being reviled to be a changeling. Her monologue was relatively unchanged, however when she said "And as Queen of the changelings, it is my duty to find food for them" she added in "Food and protection for them" and at the whole "Equestria has more love than any place I've ever seen!" part, she said "We'll become more powerful than ever, and then we'll defeat that monster, securing our rightful place at the top of the food chain!" after that was a lot of laughing and things went as they would normally from there. But the damage was done for me, the first impression that the Equestrians had of me was a monster that displaced another monster.
I would need a plan to give myself a chance, otherwise I would most likely become a lawn ornament... and I think I have one that might work, at the least it would give them pause when it came to petrifying me.
The Everfree was burning, already the inferno had consumed almost the same amount of acreage as the whole of Sweet Apple Acres. By this point the fire had even begun to spread into areas outside the Everfree. Due to the closeness of the forest to Ponyville, as well as the worries of several prominent citizens, the ponies of Ponyville generally kept forest fires down to safe, healthy levels, of which this was not. The fire was so out of control that several ponies had already needed to be hospitalized for burns and/or heat exhaustion, including Vinyl Scratch, Octavia (while trying to get to Vinyl) and the one's who first stumbled upon the fire (and were the most hurt by the flames), the flower trio.
The fire wouldn't have been such a large problem for the residents of Ponyville, if only they would stay put out. Many unicorns were doing their best to smother the flames as the others did what they could as well, but the many small new creatures that seemed to be made of the fire relighted the flames almost faster than they could put them out. Several ponies, upon seeing the new creatures, froze and simply stared as they ran around almost frantically, wearing grins that could give Pinky a run for her bits.
The only ponies who weren't confused by the appearance of the new creatures were three little filly's who were trying to convince them to stop burning things down, with little to no effect on any of them as the most any did was slow down to listen to them for a moment. The creatures were borderline ignoring the ponies that had come into the forest to stop their rampage, but something in their heads made them try to stay away from a purple unicorn and her friends, even with their random movements it was noticeable that they were giving the mane six a wide birth.
Three of the mane six broke off with a shout to collect their respective family member, and while there were some protests at the sudden loss of position, the filly's accepted their fate, though not without still trying to help where they could.
As such when Twilight asked "What are these things? I've never seen anything like them!" One of the crusaders was happy to tell her.
"They're called Reds! They said that they were waiting for their Overlord to find them so that they could serve him, or at least that's what I think Sparky said." said Sweety Bell after getting all of the girls attention.
"What! You talked with one!? Sweety, do you realize how dangerous that could have been!?" said Rarity, as she hugged her little sister closer to herself.
"Hey, their not mean or anything! I mean, yes they do set stuff on fire, but it's not like they want to hurt anypony!" said Scootaloo, not complaining as she pressed into the hug that Rainbow Dash had her in, but still standing up for her new friend.
Twilight was about to say something, but was promptly left speechless when there was a small explosion of pure magic. Or, more accurately, she was left speechless by the being who stepped out of the proverbial eye of the storm, a giant, clad head to toe in plait mail and welding a mace that was larger than her head.
At his arrival there was a sudden increase in the energy of the Reds, as they began to shout and scream in happiness, saying phrases like "The Master! He here! He here!" and "We burn for the Master!" before they were all silenced and stopped by a single stomp by the Overlord.
It was like someone had flipped a switch, there was movement everywhere and then they were as still as statues, all looking to their Overlord for directions. With a wave of his hand they got those directions, immediately putting out all of the fires and carrying a large, oddly shaped structure over to where the Overlord had come from.
None of the ponies could believe their eyes, aside from three filly's who had already seen this trick. One second they were in the middle of a raging inferno, the next they were standing in the burnt out remains of a good portion of the Everfree and some of Sweet Apple Acres.
As the Reds placed the strange structure on the spot the Overlord had come from, he was busy looking at the damage the Reds had caused. Once the Red hive had been sent back, a massive bag appeared, filled to the brim with gold and being carried by twelve Browns. It was taken over to the SAA side of the fence and dropped, then, having not said a word the whole time, the Overlord left back through the way he had arrived, taking all of the minions with him.
"Aww, I didn't get to throw him a 'Thank-you-for-helping-us-not-burn-down-the-Everfree' party!" said Pinky Pie, the only one who had been unfazed by the sudden arrival and departure of the Overlord.
"Whelp, that's all I can do. They either think that I'm still evil and need to die, or think that I just have a bad public image. Either way, they know what I look like now... let's see what happen's next."
This was turning out to be more and more of a horrible week. First the Changelings invade Canterlot, then the biggest forest fire on record happens in Ponyville, home of the Elements of Harmony and the biggest producer of apple products within a reasonable distance from Canterlot and now it turns out that some new country has been expanding on the southern border of Equestria. If Prince Blueblood didn't know any better, he'd say that they were just a few disasters from the end of the world!
Luckily he knew that if there was a real problem his aunty would let him know, after all his company provided a majority of the funds and equipment needed for the military. She would need to let him know so that he could allocate the funds properly. Although...
"She didn't let me know about the Changelings attacking, did they surprise her? It would be very bad if they did, not to mention what that Queen said about some 'monster'... and then there's this new country, where they apparently let changelings just walk around and have even domesticated Diamond Dogs... Who or what could do that? What's next, Dragons submitting to whoever is in charge of that place? And will they set their eyes on us next?" The prince thought.
It was more than a little frustrating to have such little information about something, the most he had at the moment was that some... thing had recently gone around and made multiple groups bow to him and that the fire in Ponyville was somehow connected to him. He wanted to dismiss the reports of multi-color bipedal creatures roughly the size of the average ten year old colt or filly, but with how things were going it seemed to be more and more plausible.
"No, I won't worry about it. I'll keep an eye on it, and if she asks then I'll tell aunty about it, but until she tells me otherwise she still has everything planned out and there is nothing to worry about." The prince thought to himself to keep calm, much like many other's in the room though with much less assuredness, just faith.
"Ahem, Prince Blueblood?" asked a guard who had walked quietly to him, so as to not disturb the others.
"Yes, what is it guard? Has my attendant gotten lost somewhere?" The Prince joked, as his attendant was known to lose track of his surroundings quite often.
"No your majesty, Princess Celestia has requested your presence in her personal quarters." the guard informed him.
The Prince felt his blood freeze.
"Oh no." was all he thought as he walked as slowly as he dared to his aunt's quarters.
"Apple Bloom! You open that door and get out of that tree house right now!! I'll give you five seconds and then I'm breaking that door down!!" Applejack yelled up to the tree house in her orchard.
All of the girls were there with her, half of them were very worried for the fillys in the tree house as there was one 'Red' in there with them. The other half were still worried for the fillys, but they weren't panicking as hard as Applejack... though nopony was really panicking like Applejack. Rarity and Rainbow were both upset and feared for their sisters, but the longer that the tree house didn't burst into flame the more calm yet confused they became.
"We aren't letting you take Sparky away! He ain't done nothing wrong!" I yelled down at my sister. I could almost hear her teeth grinding from here.
"We aren't going to take him away if he hasn't done anything, but we need to make sure that he isn't going to do anything dangerous!" called up Twilight. Apparently I wasn't the only one who wasn't expecting that, as I could hear Rainbow, Rarity and most loudly Applejack all whispering something to Twilight.
"What do you think girls? Should we trust them?" I asked Sweety and Scootaloo.
Sweety looked back at Sparky who was standing in the corner before turning back to me and shaking her head no. Scootaloo bit her lower lip before glancing at Sweety and nodding her head yes. So I was going to be the tie breaker...
"Girls? Please come down, we are just worried about you!" Twilight said up at us.
I opened the door and climbed down with the other girls and Sparky. Applejack was huffing and puffing, it was obvious that I was going to be grounded for a long time. Rarity and Rainbow both looked upset yet they still looked somewhat fine, if somewhat uncomfortable with Sparky, but Applejack was practically growling at him.
"Alright, now we're just going to ask... uh, Sparky here some questions, okay?" asked Twilight while constantly glancing at him.
Before any of us could say anything Rainbow flew in close to Sparky and gave him the stink eye while asking "Why did you stay behind when all of the others left? Are you a spy or something?"
Sparky just looked at her funny and said "Master not call sparky back, so Sparky stay. Master not need Sparky to see what ponies doing."
That last part seemed to worry all of them more than the idea that he was a spy and Rainbow just quietly went back to stand with the others. Fluttershy was the next one to ask something in her usual whispery way.
"Umm, if you don't mind, could you tell us what you are? A-and how you make the fires happen, then go away? If that's okay..." she asked while trying to not hide in her mane as much as she normally would.
"Sparky is minion! Minions serve Overlord! Aaahhh... Reds.... burn...? Spit out fire... breath in fire, make go away... ehh??" he turned to us for help and apparently Scootaloo knew what he was trying to say, I barely understood that he was speaking what with his accent.
"I think what he's trying to say is that Reds, his species, are all like dragons, like, they have fire inside them! And when they need to, they can just breath the fire in to get rid of it, or move it or something... Maybe..." She said looking confidant at first and then getting more and more nervous as everypony stared at her.
"Yeah! Yeah! What pony said! Yeah!" Sparky said while clapping and hopping from one foot to the other.
"Oh my, and, um, how many kinds of, um, 'minion' are there? If you don't mind me asking?" Fluttershy asked looking a little more cautious of Sparky. She was afraid of dragons after all, and Sparky was basically a small flightless dragon... a lot like Spike actually, I wonder if they are related in any way...
"Reds burn, Blues magic, Greens smell and Browns fight! Overlord tell minions what to do, we do it! All for Overlord!" Sparky said, getting a little brighter when he talked about his 'Overlord'.
"Sparky," Twilight cut in "What does your Overlord want? Was that him, out in the forest? Are there more than one Overlord? Please, we need to know."
Sparky glanced at Fluttershy and us before turning back to Twilight to answer her.
As we all got back to the library I could tell that the girls were worried, heck I was worried, but right now we needed to focus. We needed to let the Princesses know what we had found out and we needed to find out more about this 'Overlord', whether he would be a friend or an enemy to Equestria...
"So... do you believe that stuff he said? Like about how his master didn't need anypony there to spy on ponies?" asked Rainbow Dash.
"Dash, there are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of ways to spy on ponies, some of which aren't even traceable... at least not to the average unicorn. If there was anything trying to peep on me in here, nine times out of ten I'd catch it. And even then, the only reason I wouldn't catch it would be because whatever was doing the spying wouldn't be malicious. So, yes, I do believe 'Sparky' when he said that his master didn't need him to spy on us." I explained to her.
"Oh, okay. That doesn't make me feel any better, but... Hey, do you think he was spying on us during the wedding? I mean, I was doing very well, until we all got beaten and stuff, but even then maybe he saw how hard Chrysalis got her flank kicked and now he's to scared to do anything!" Rainbow said, uncomfortable and fidgety at first but relaxing at her idea...
"Aww! I don't want to scare away a new friend! Maybe we should give him a gift basket or something? Would he like cheese? Hmm..." Pinkie said, at first to us and then drifting off to just herself, mumbling something about 'exotic cheeses vs exotic butters' before rejoining the conversation and staring at me like she expected me to say something.
"What? What are you looking at me like that for?" I asked, confused by her strange silence as she waited for me to say... whatever it was she thought I would say.
"Oh, umm, I just thought that you'd say something like 'He's not a friend' or 'He could be dangerous and we shouldn't be trying to just instantly make friends with him without knowing what he wants' or something like that..." She said with a sheepish grin.
I blinked at her and said "While the second point has some merit, as we don't know what he wants and should be careful that we're not walking into a trap, the first one doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't we at least try to be friends with him first? We know next to nothing about him, just that changelings don't like him, which enough for me to like him just by osmosis and we shouldn't just assume that he's going to be violent when we meet him."
"Umm, Sweetie?" Rarity cut in, "You must have misspoke, you said 'When' we meet him, surly you meant 'If', right?" She was wearing a hopeful yet strained grin when she finished her question, and it made me feel a little bad to answer her with the truth.
"Sorry Rarity, but as the Elements of Harmony we need to go when the Princesses go to greet him, in case he is violent and needs the Elements to beat him." I said making Rarity's ears fold back. Everypony else looked... not quite scared, but still worried. "Alright," I said with a sigh, "there is a lot we need to think about so... let's all go home and make preparations, I'll send a letter to the Princess letting her know what we've learned and tomorrow we'll all meet at the train station."
"Just another day of savin' the world, eh?" Applejack said, trying to lighten the mood with her lame joke... I'm glad it worked and that everypony left with a smile, even if only a small one.
"Spike!" I called, getting ready to either make a new friend, or face another threat to the safety of Equestria.
My sister was still awake which, while not uncommon, was worrying. It wasn't the thought that she might be to tired to raise the sun when day broke, nor was it that she might be pushing herself to hard for no reason. It was that some... thing had arrived, out of nowhere and with no warning, and had somehow formed a small country to the south of us with creatures we had never seen before and nopony knew how.
Not even Tia could figure out how this... 'Overlord' had come to be. It would be frightening to most mortals, but to an immortal like Tia and I? For something to happen without even the hint of it reaching us was unheard of, for some ponies it seemed like Tia had the ability to see the future. The truth was that after a long enough time, you start to get good at guessing what will happen and why. Tia may have looked the same as she always did when she called in Prince Blueblood, but the truth is that she is almost ready to start pulling on her hair if something doesn't fit into place soon.
At both my and her students suggestion, tomorrow we were going to take a train ride down to this 'Domain' and attempt to learn something about it's leader before we go to meet him personally. Hopefully we will be able to determine his true nature, and whether or not Tia's worries are founded...
Truth be told, I think we are both rather excited by this, something new! Unexpected! Anything could happen! We just need to see.
I was sitting on my throne, using the monitoring spell to watch the town as the train came in from Equestria. With how underdeveloped the town had looked when I first found it, I was very surprised to find out that the sheeple had fixed the old, dilapidated train station in order to encourage trade and ease transportation. Now it was being used for the second one, as it was bringing some uninvited dignitaries to the town, mostly to see what kind of land I'm running and to see if they needed to kill/imprison me.
While it wasn't outright stated by the sheeple that they hated ponies, it was abundantly clear that they did not appreciate their presence. Everywhere they looked the ponies saw angry glares or upturned noses, and those were from the polite ones. When the mane six and the Princesses tried to get a table at the nearby restaurant, the waiters first sat them at the worst table in the building aside from the restrooms and then got their orders wrong five times, on purpose, and charged them one third more than was normal due to wasting so much food.
In fact the only ones who didn't treat them with outright contempt were the Diamond Dogs and the Changelings, who either ignored them or apologized for the behavior of the residents of the town. One Changeling even offered to carry Rarity's luggage free of charge, to excuse the rudeness of his sheep buddy, who had dropped what he was holding in order to make a large cloud of dust and getting her dirty.
While I didn't like this behavior, as it would make me being a not-so-bad guy less believable, I could understand. After all, the ponies had basically promised to protect them, and when they needed their help the most they weren't there. I would still need to have the mayors of all the townships talk to their people, as driving away the ponies would only make things harder in the long run.
It would take them the better part of a day to get to the tower, even counting Rainbow getting impatient and speeding ahead to get here first. As such, I was going to need to make sure we all put on a good face, starting with Gnarl as he was the one I was most worried about doing something rash while two physical goddesses and all seven parts of a super weapon were under my roof.
If I had one thing to complain about in regards to this observation spell, it would be that while it doesn't take long to send it somewhere you can't just end the spell and be sent back to your body. It actually won't let you end the spell while the orb was more than ten feet away from your body, as a fail safe to avoid very inconvenient out of body experience.
After entering the requisite distance to end the spell I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck. Sitting on the throne for hours on end was not the best thing in the world for my back... or my legs, arms, neck, and other body parts. I just don't understand how Arthas did it for five to six years with no breaks, I mean I don't like to move around at the best of times but this was just silly. Maybe I needed a cushion for my throne? I knew that Celestia had one, and if it worked for her it should work for me... just needed to make sure it match's with the rest of the room... I'll get someone else to do it, I have a horrible fashion sense.
Gnarl wasn't in the throne room like he normally was, which while odd wasn't unimaginable, as he often went down to the minion pits to, as he called it, 'Evaluate the Troops' which basically just meant tormenting the other minions until his evil urges were satisfied. While I had made it a point to drain most of the creatures in my tower of their evil energy, he was one of the few I had not, at his own request. He had said something along the lines of being worried that it might affect his mind in some way, and that while it was fine if the minions were a little brain damaged from the procedure that was fine, it wasn't like they were using it all that much anyway, but he actually needed his head in order to do his job.
I was tempted to put his theory to the test, but he was right and while I may not agree with him on everything he was still a very good administrator.
As I was headed down to the minion pits I ran into Sarra who had taken up residence in the mid level of the tower, it looked like she was headed up to the throne room. My hunch was confirmed when she stopped me to inform me of the ponies in the town, her changelings had let her know and were waiting for any orders, such as to ignore them or capture them. She was looking for me as she had wanted to know what I had planed in regards to them.
I told her that they were to be treated with respect, but not to overdo it. We really didn't want to make them enemy's until we had some way of either overpowering or negating the Elements of Harmony, not to mention that their leaders were living goddesses. It would be foolish to even try being hostile with them right now, not to mention that we were the new guy so no one would support us even if we tried at this point.
What I didn't tell her was that I hoped that we never had to find a reason to fight them, as one: they still looked cute and squishy even now that they looked real, and two: the ponies as a set of races were ridiculously overpowered. If they all worked together then even once I found the Blues, there was little chance of anything good happening for me at any acceptable speed, at most I could see it becoming a stalemate.
After she nodded and walked away I continued down to the Pits, noting how upset and scared the minions patrolling the halls looked. I supposed that Gnarl had been going a bit overboard lately... I would need to stop him before he did anything that would permanently damage the moral of the minions, the last thing I needed was them to decide that because I let Gnarl do horrible things to them they wanted to follow someone else. Of course I could just crush down their free will using the connection, but I would never do that. Choice was very important, after all if someone is told to do something they'll usually just do the minimum amount necessary, but if they choose to 'help you' then they will usually put a little more effort into it.
I found Gnarl in the Browns area of the minion pits holding a wooden staff with several unconscious/near-dead Browns. Gnarl himself looked relatively unhurt, though he was leaning on his staff... but that might've just been because he was old and was exerting himself in his exercise.
"Gnarl, I need to talk with you. Now. I'll expect you in the throne room, where we'll have some privacy." I told him, causing him to perk up at my commanding tone as he, for some reason, responded the best to orders as opposed to requests.
"Yes, Sire! I'll just finish up here and get right up to the throne room, uh, shall I get the Changeling Queen as well?" Gnarl asked, picking himself up and readying for one last bout.
"No, Gnarl. Not after one more, now. And as for Sarra, she already knows what I have to tell you, now get moving." I told him, taking a step toward him for emphasis.
He flinched, but he still bowed and began to walk back to the stairway. By the time he had begun to walk away I had already used my short to mid range teleport to get back the throne room. It was much faster, but hey you miss things if you just teleport everywhere.
"So, what does everypony think so far?" Twilight asked her friends.
They were all gathered in a circle in their room at the hotel they were staying at. Why were they at a hotel, I hear you ask? Well, It's because while Shepton village is the closest to my tower in the macintosh hills and was basically my capital city, it was still a full day of travel to get to and from my tower mostly because I didn't like the idea of an express way into my home that anybody could use. You needed to use dark magic to use the tower portals, so the chances of that happening were slim to none, and even if someone was dumb/desperate enough to do it they would be taken directly in front of me and I could kill them before they could try anything.
"Well, aside from the horrible behavior of the sheep, I'd say that just about everypony here is quite pleasant. Who knew that changelings could be such gentle ponies?" Rarity replied to Twilight.
"I agree, the changelings here are much nicer that the ones who attacked the wedding... They look much healthier to..." Fluttershy said with a small smile.
"Hey, what's with that? I mean, I thought that changelings eat love, right? So shouldn't everypony here be drained dry by now?" Rainbow said from her perch on the dresser.
"I was wondering about that to! It just don't make any sense to me... I didn't think that changeling Queen was lying when she said that overfeeding could turn ponies into changelings..." Applejack took a breath and gave a deep sigh "But then she had already fooled me once so what do I know."
"Hmm... So she blames herself for not noticing the 'lie' that was Chrysalis's disguise... I have options with that, but what way to go..."
"Applejack, just stop. None of us blame you and holding onto this unreasonable guilt is not necessary, or healthy. We all already apologised to each other, it's over now and at this point you're just being stubborn about it." Twilight said in a tone that told me that they had been going over this for multiple days now and she was losing patience.
"Or not... But it seems like there could be some tension there for Applejack... must just be a side effect of being a stubborn person."
"Moving on, I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation as to why everypony looks fine here, the thing that I noticed was something I didn't expect. Nopony here has any kind of mind magic on them at all." Twilight said sounding both surprised and somewhat... frustrated? ...This was, of course, after a group hug focused on Applejack ended.
"Why did you think that somepony would be using mind magic on the ponies here? I mean, I could maybe see it with the changelings, but there's no way anypony would let them live in their town if they were... right?" Rainbow asked looking confused and then suspicious, eyeing the room around her like she thought a changeling would jump out of nowhere and mind control her.
"Well, if the Overlord of this place was some new bad guy that we needed to take down then it would make sense for him to pacify the populace with mind control of some kind, the fact that he hasn't means that everypony here if following him of their own free will. That could mean one of two things, either one: the Overlord is actually not that bad of a guy and he's just very intimidating, or two: The Overlord is a bad guy and has somehow convinced all of the ponies here and throughout his 'Domain' to follow him by giving them actual good reasons to do so, and if it's the second one then it makes him possibly one of the most dangerous things we've ever fought, seeing as even Crissalis could only keep her position because of fear and the fact that she had to find food for her people." Twilight said while looking in between her friends and staring out into space.
"Well, I'm going to say that it's number one, and when we see him I'll throw him a big ol' party! Nopony can resist being a friend after a Pinky Pie PartyTM!" Pinky said brightly, pulling her party cannon out of hammerspace and firing confetti out of it in an attempt to get more cheer back into the room. It worked a little, as all of the girls laughed a bit... but it was quiet and strained.
"They really are worried about meeting me... I mean, I can understand why but... This really isn't giving me a nice feeling, It makes me feel like I really am the bad guy... ... ...Ah well. If I am the bad guy then I'll just have to make it for a good reason, wouldn't want them to learn the wrong lesson from beating me. Not that I want that or anything, hell I'll probably stack the deck in my favor long before even trying anything."
"Well, once the Princesses get back from their meeting with the mayor of the town we'll get some rest and then tomorrow the mayor will take us out to the Overlord's home." Twilight said, looking like she was more saying it to herself than to the others, but they listened anyway.
"Why does he live so far away from his capital anyway? I mean, I didn't even see any roads leading out of the town when I was flying over it. It's like he came here, took over and left!" Rainbow half yelled.
"It's probably so that nosey ponies can't find him as easily. I noticed that there is a string of alert wards around the town, they probably tell him if the town is under attack and then he comes to the rescue. I doubt that this 'Overlord' would abandon ponies that he took the time to save." Rarity said in a board tone while looking at her hoof as though she was inspecting it.
"Wow, I thought I was the only one to see that!" Said Twilight with an excited smile.
"You're not the only one to do any magical studying! I do like to learn some new spells every now and then." Rarity said with a smug grin and before Twilight could apologize she cut her off, saying "Don't worry darling, I was just teasing you a little! This may be a very important mission, but if all we focus on is how big and important it is we'll be to wound up to do anything right."
"Ugh, you're right. It's barely three and I feel like I could sleep for a full day!" Twilight said with a yawn.
The rest of the girls agreed with varying amounts of fatigue as a spell I had cast took effect. It was proven that being tired made you more irritable, so if they were all well rested the chances of them freaking out over something in my home would go down. That and I couldn't spend all day watching them walk around the town and cause their usual brand of chaos for my citizens, even with how fun that would be, yet I didn't trust them not to get into something they shouldn't while I wasn't watching.
With that they all fell asleep in an adorable little pile of possible death for me, and I went back to my body to set up the welcome wagon. I had a feeling that everything was going to be okay, but my feelings have lied to me before so I was going to make sure that everything would be fine.
My shoulders and neck cracked when I got up. I really needed that cushion.
The ponies were making their way to the tower at a fast yet not unreasonable pace, they were basically small horses after all, and we basically had an hour until they got here. I had made sure that there would be as few problems as possible, which is to say I had told everyone in the tower that if they attacked any of the ponies I would be very disappointed in them. Hey, it worked much better that threatening to strangle them, they looked to me as a parent of sorts and the only thing that hurt me more than physical punishment as a child was the line "I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed in you."
Really, I prefered it when they were yelling and smacking me.
Anyway, other than that I had told Sarra to wait in the meeting room for us, seeing as a queen had just attacked them, most queens looked almost the same with the only difference being color, and my needing to explain the situation to them so that we could avoid the 'Oh it's queen Chrysalis! Get her!' moment. Seeing as she would like to not be hit in the face, as would most likely happen otherwise, she agreed and was patiently waiting for us while feeding on a minion holding an illusionary sheep.
I had made a nice all vegetarian meal for them as well as set up some nice rooms near the base of the tower in case they wanted to stay the night. I had made sure that certain parts of the tower were open to the ponies, like the library, the laboratory, the kitchen and the training ground, but I had also made sure that the guards knew not to let them into certain other areas like my quarters, the spawning pits, the arena and the dungeon. After all, wouldn't want them to find yet another reason to hate/distrust me would we?
The only two minions I was worried about were the Jester and Gnarl, though it was for different reasons. With the Jester it was because I just knew that he was going to do everything and anything he could to get a rise out of pretty much everyone in the room, and seeing as he never left the throne room to my knowledge that meant that he would do whatever he could to ruin our first meeting... That being said it could backfire and end up making me look good to them so... Eh, live and let live, right?
While Quaver was just annoying, and therefore fairly harmless or at least easy to clean up after, Gnarl was much more dangerous to me right now, even if he didn't mean to be. He may not be very defencive about remarks made about himself but he tended to fly off the handle whenever anyone made a less than positive remark about any Overlord. It was to the point that one of the sheeple who... shall we say, was less than ecstatic about the plan to have the changelings integrate into society, was hospitalized and still has a bit of a limp. The sheeple who was injured was of course compensated for his injuries and Gnarl was reprimanded, but his temper and touchiness was still a work in progress. As such I had made it very clear to him that he was only allowed to listen and offer suggestions, he would not be making any decisions.
The ponies were only ten minutes away now, strange how time seems to fly so fast when you were thinking. I wondered what the ponies were thinking about my tower, they could see it from anywhere in the basin surrounding it and I knew it looked imposing... but not outright evil as there were no sharp spikes and/or skull designs anywhere on it. It wasn't even made of a black stone, it was more of a dark gray that appeared darker from the path they were coming from as it put the sun behind it... I just hope they don't attack me on sight, I would defend myself and that would lead to all kinds of problems...
I was sort of started out of my head by the Jester as he yelled at the top of his lungs "Introducing, The Ladies of the Sun and Moon, The Princesses Celestia and Luna! ...and the six others who followed them in." At the almost dismissive intro the girls, who were just rounding the curved stairway at the time just behind the two Princesses, as one gave Quaver the strongest glare small adorable multi colored ponies could. He just gave them a slightly malicious laugh, not even trying to hide the fact that they gave the exact reaction that he wanted them to.
"And, to the ponies of Equestria, Ahem, Introducing, The Duke of Denurium, The Master of Mutts, Bearer of the stone throne, Lamb-lover, Dimensional drifter, and Dark Demander of Dreadful Domicile Designs! The One! The Only! The Overlord Nobody!" As Quaver finished spewing up of those titles, which he probably came up with on the spot, all of the minions in the throne room started to cheer and pound their weapons into the ground, generally just making as much of a racket as they could to show their appreciation for me.
Once the cheering had died down enough for them to be heard Celestia opened her mouth to speak, but was beaten to the punch by Rainbow Dash who, with an eyebrow raised high enough to make Applejack proud if she could see her face, asked me simply (though thoroughly laced with sarcasm) "Really? Nobody? That's your name?"
You could hear a pin drop. Almost every minion in the room was tensed, though not to go after the ponies which they couldn't know. All eyes except for mine, the ponies and the minion in question, were on Gnarl, who was closer to the ponies than me. If he went berserk I wouldn't be able to reach him before he could harm them, but I knew that he would follow my orders and besides, he knew I didn't want a war with them (Yet, if I could help it) and was smart enough to know that attacking the Ponies would almost absolutely end in a war between us.
"Yes. I got to choose my name, and I decided that it would make a good pun. All to often people say things like 'Nobody will discover this' Or 'Nobody rules these lands' or some such. With my name the way it is, if anyone ever says anything like that to me, I can turn to them and say 'Yes, I do' or 'Yes, I will' or some other thing." I said with a stony face and monotone, if deep as all hell, voice.
Pinkie started to laugh at the joke but rather quickly stopped when nobody else joined in, giving everyone else a confused look once she noticed their silence.
"Perhaps we should speak in private? So as to avoid unnecessary interruptions..." Luna said with a questioning look at Celestia, who was just standing there looking at me with a neutral face, as though she was trying to size me up without looking aggressive or overbearing.
When she didn't respond to her sister I decided to give her an answer, "Actually, I already prepared a small chamber for us to have whatever little meeting in, the last of my... let's call them advisors, is waiting for us there. I should warn you, she's a changeling."
"So? We saw a lot of changelings on the way here, it was actually really hard to not see one." Rainbow said, again keeping someone from talking, though this time it was Twilight. That would probably become annoying very fast, considering I was already getting upset on behalf of the ones being kept from talking.
"She's a Queen and as such she is almost identical to Chrysalis, aside from coloring and the fact that she's just a tad bigger than her. I'm telling you this so that when you see her you won't mistake her or overreact." I said while getting ready to get up.
"As a side note, I happen to know that you have a very comfortable throne in Canterlot, would you mind telling me where to get something like that Princess?" I asked causing them all gave me a weird look, until I got up and the look changed to one of surprise and revulsion.
I'm not sure what I expected to happen when the Overlord got up, but it almost certainly wasn't for his entire back to sound like it was realigning itself as he moved. That was the sort of sound you heard in horror films when dead ponies started to move around and, consequently, when I would turn them off.
"How uncomfortable is that throne!? No wonder he was asking where the Princess got her cushion! What kind of pony would even make something like that?" I thought as he began to walk to one of the four stairways leading out of the room.
The Princesses gave each other a look as they moved to follow the Overlord, the rest of us just a few steps behind. While nopony had even given her any looks, Rainbow looked like she knew she had messed up. We had all agreed before arriving that the Princesses would be the one's to do most of the talking, after all they were much more experienced with diplomacy than us what with having been on the throne of Equestria for a collective thousand years.
I was more surprised at how well the Overlord handled her outburst, it was almost as though he expected it... or just didn't really care how others perceived him.
"Boy, I wish I could have that kind of confidence in myself. Then maybe I could get mom off my back about getting a coltfriend." I thought to myself with, I can admit it, a touch of resentment... and crushing insecurity...
Anyway! After a veritable maze of twists and turns, we stopped in front of a set of large wood doors with what looked like snarling dragon faces in iron as the knockers/handles. The Overlord opened up the room to reveal a long table of polished dark mahogany wood with more than enough chairs for everypony. Tall stained glass windows lined the room, depicting scenes that I could only assume related to previous Overlords (Were there even previous Overlords? Sure they looked different, but I'm getting the sense that they all wear that mask so it must be difficult to tell them apart...) including one that almost looked like an Overlord popping an ugly and almost comically obese creature like a balloon, simultaneously providing a good deal of light and making the room look just a tad longer than it probably actually was.
I froze for a moment at the sight of the changeling Queen at the other end of the table, I'm actually glad that the Overlord warned us about how much the Queens looked like each other to the point that it was almost like looking at a yellow version of chrysalis. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if Rainbow Dash or Applejack had overreacted and attacked her had they not been warned, I even had to restrain myself from reacting... let's just say that Luna has been having some trouble with giving me "peaceful" rest ever since the wedding...
"You're in my chair Sarra, take the other one." I heard the Overlord tell the Queen, whose name was apparently Sarra. Now, the general vibe that all of us got from the Overlord was one of no nonsense, do your job, if you have time to lean then you have time to clean, type of pony. As that was the case, even the Princesses showed a reaction when the Queen rolled her eyes, blew him a raspberry and instead of actually getting up just rolled the chairs to switch their places, taking almost a full minute to do so, with the only reaction from the Overlord being a light chuckle and a small push to help her switch the chairs faster. It almost felt like we all took a moment to look each other in surprise, but in reality we probably only looked at one or two of the others.
Once the Overlord had sat down at the head of the table, with what I could only assume was his advisor to his left and the Queen Sarra to his right, he rested his head on his hand and motioned with the other for the Princess to begin.
After helping the childish "Queen" to switch the two chairs, both of which were exactly the same, I sat down to see the ponies glancing at each other for a moment before focusing on me. Once I had gotten comfortable and let my... advisors, I suppose, (though it still felt weird to have advisors) get ready to hear anything and everything the ponies had to say, I waved my hand to let Celestia begin... Mostly because I actually didn't know how to start a meeting like this...
"Well, since we know nothing of you, why don't we begin with who you are, your people and so on..." Celestia began before slowly trailing off.
"Not much to tell from my end. I was an average person, and then I was pulled into a new world and body by him." I said while shoving a thumb in Gnarls direction, causing him to flinch and pull his ears back in shame. "Been dealing with all that's happened since."
"Wait, are you trying to tell us your from a different universe!? That's not possible! You have to be lying!" Twilight shouted out in what I could only describe as outrage at the idea of one of her established laws of the universe being broken.
"How dare you call our Overlord a liar! We will not stand this outrage! We declare war!" Gnarl yelled back at Twilight, causing everyone at the table aside from me, Sarra and of course Gnarl to get a wide eyed, 'Oh Shit' look.
I then thumped Gnarl on the head without even turning to look at him, only seeing him out of the corner of my eye, causing him to comically shake his head and look at me like 'What did I do?'
"We Don't declare war, you aren't allowed to declare war on anyone Gnarl, we talked about this." I said in a tired voice while the Equestrians got their shit back together.
Gnarl yelled out, "But my lord! They insulted you! We can't just let this stand!" he then leaned in to whisper to me, "We can't just let them get away with every little thing my lord, they might begin to think they can walk all over us!"
I sighed, and with one hand over my face I said, "One, I'm not insulted by what she said. Two, even if I was insulted, it does Not fall to you to take any action." At this point I turned to look at him, making sure that Gnarl was paying attention, "And three, If I tell you that you are not allowed to make any big decisions in regard to any other countries, it means that you aren't allowed to make any big decisions in regard to other countries. Am I clear, Gnarl?"
He gave me a petulant look for a few seconds before relenting, muttering a "Yes, sire." before turning away to sulk.
I turned back to the ponies to find them all practically on the edge of their seats. So much so that both Pinkie and Rainbow almost fell over when shooting back to look like they weren't eavesdropping. This of course made Sarra giggle and then immediately wince when she felt the emotions directed at her by the ponies.
"Ahem, yes, well perhaps we should both agree to a non-aggression pact? Just to give each of us... well, okay mostly us, some peace of mind?" Celestia said, visibly trying to not take Gnarl apart with her eyes.
"No." I told her.
It took a moment for it to register with everyone present, including my advisors, with me getting confused looks (And one hopeful one, guess who) from everyone at the table. I saw more than one concerned look being passed around between the elements and the Princesses shared a glance with each other, though had I not been looking I would've missed it.
"May we ask why?" Luna asked, finally speaking after being silent this whole time.
"I don't like making promises I can't keep and If I'm honest, which I usually am, I can see several scenarios where us being at war would be the only proper course of action." I said while trying to not incite anyone at the table, (Mostly Gnarl) "I wouldn't, however, be against a declaration of friendship, or whatever the equivalent is."
"I suppose that will have to do... If you don't mind, could you tell us a bit about your... servants?" Celestia asked while summoning a scroll and writing a few things down onto it, she then passed it to me so I could read and then sign it as well.
While reading what was on the paper I said "Yes... the minions, as they call themselves... They're, uh, subterranean by nature but will go anywhere I tell them to... ... Uh, we share a kind of psychic link or some such and if I wanted to I could... uh, restrict their free will... I don't, of course, but... yea..."
Gnarl picked up when I trailed off, saying "All minions live to serve the Overlord, we really don't have a purpose without one! In all there are four tribes of minions, but then you already know that from that Red that sire allowed to stay behind. Though, we are still looking for our lost Blues, so if you happen to find any of them do let us know!"
"But, what about before there was an Overlord?" I heard Applejack say while going over the bottom of the page again.
"There was no 'before', the first Overlord made the minions what they are, we wouldn't exist without his intervention. It's part of why we are so grateful!" Gnarl responded.
I handed the paper back to Celestia saying "Done, nice to have a friend."
Of course Gnarl had to get his two cents in, saying "I agree, You can never have enough good cannon fodder!" which caused me to face palm.
At this point I almost thought he wanted to make... wait, no yeah, he probably wanted to make the Princesses angry or upset in some other way. Damnit Gnarl! This is why nobody loves you!
"Anyway... what about trade? Is there-" Celestia began before I cut her off.
"I have a five percent tax on everything, and I don't care if it's imported or exported. As to immigration, you don't want to live here? Then good, get out, we didn't want you anyway. You want to get in? That's fine to, just do it through official channels so we don't have to throw you out. Anything else?" I said just trying to rush past the boring stuff.
The princesses looked at each other before Luna said "Um, well, no? To be honest, this visit was mostly to see if you would be a threat to our country as there seem to be a lot of those recently."
"I could guess that, seeing as you brought your super weapon with you." The elements looked shocked at being referred to as a weapon and the Princesses looked like they had just gone into panic mode. Before they could say or do anything I told them, "Calm down, It's fine! I would have done the same thing in your position. No harm done, now I'm sure you're all tired, I know I am, it's been a long day and we all need to unwind. You are welcome to stay in the rooms I've provided for you."
I had a feeling the day wasn't over yet... but damm I needed a nap.
The sun was setting and in the waning light of the day the canyons were splashed in light in just the right way, the light purples and oranges of the sky smashing into the deep browns and blacks of the ground in a way that was just beautiful to see. It had been a few hours since the 'talks' with the ponies had come to a close, as such I was sat in my throne, just watching the rest of the world, trying to entertain myself with the antics of the ponies that were all over.
Daring Do had found a large-ish temple and was exploring it quite thoroughly in an effort to find something to write about. Unfortunately she would be disappointed as the only thing in the temple was some dust and cobwebs, not even any buried remains to mark what the temple was for. I snickered when I saw that her 'arch enemy' was finishing up eating several cans of tuna and getting ready to curl up and take a nap on a plush rug in front of a fireplace.
Big Mac was trying, and failing, to keep control of the crusaders, spike, and Sparky. The crusaders had somehow gotten it into their heads that there was an 'Overlord cutie mark' and had spent most of the night trying to make ponified versions of my armor in an effort to try and take control of Sparky. Spike was trying to help by heating the metal and shaping it to the specifications that Sweetie gave him, and I have to say that so far, not a bad job in the slightest. Very convincing, though a tad too adorable considering who it would go on and such.
Blue Blood was going over several forms and papers, or at least trying to as he was almost constantly being... 'distracted' by one of the maids. Not that she minded, she was the one teasing him after all and from what I had seen, this was a long form thing... they might've even been in a quiet relationship.
Things in Shepton were quiet as it almost always was, aside from the 'secret society' who were trying to plot against me. Idiots gathered in the newly made sewer system with, one, no magical protection (not that it would keep me out anyway), and two, one of the loyal sheep acting as a 'spy' in their group. So far they had no real plans and the spy was trying to defuse the situation, but I was ready to deal with them if they tried anything.
Then there was-
I felt something trying to... look at me? Scan me? Whatever it was I did not like the feeling of it and needed it to stop.
I quickly went back to my body to find that Twilight was sitting in front of me with her horn glowing and her eyes closed. After entering my body I bent down and, before she even realized that I had moved, flicked her still glowing horn.
"Ouch! What was that for?!" She yelled as she rubbed her horn with a side glare at me.
"I will only tell you one time, whatever you were just doing? Never do it to me again. Ever." I told her, making my displeasure known through my tone.
Twilight's eyes shrinked as her ears went flat against her head. "I-It was just a scanning spell. I didn't mean to-" She said with fear in her voice before I cut her off.
"I am aware that you didn't mean to upset me, if you had I would have done a bit more than just flick your horn. Just make sure that you don't do it again and we won't have any problems." I said to her as I stood up. Thankfully I hadn't been sitting for all that long so I didn't pop at all, I could tell that Twilight also appreciated the fact that I didn't sound like a roll of bubble wrap made from the spines of the damned.
I walked around her to the balcony at the far end of the room to enjoy the sunset. I could hear Twilight follow me, most likely wanting to talk... That was fine, I could use someone to talk with. Well, someone who didn't want to one, get in my pants (Which I knew Sarra did) or two, try to get me to attack anything and everything around me (Which was all Gnarl seemed to want to talk about these days). It almost made me miss the old days when the Sheeple mayor and the Diamond Dog alpha would come to me for every little thing, of course I quickly got annoyed with that and basically told them to use their best judgement when it came to any decisions they made.
I was pulled from my thoughts by the sound of a few sets of hoof steps behind me, when I turned to see who it was I was greeted by both Princesses and one slightly excited Rarity. I suppose she either wanted to ask me if she could redesign my tower, or it had somehow given her inspiration for a new outfit or two.
"If you wouldn't mind, we do have a few... more personal questions, and we would very much appreciate some answers if you could provide them." Princess Celestia asked me with a neutral bordering on friendly look.
I nodded and waved them on to ask whatever they wanted to, it would be silly to think they wouldn't want to learn a bit more about me. It would help them in a lot of ways diplomatically and with just dealing with me, I knew I could be... let's call it abrasive.
Before the Princesses or Twilight could even get a syllable out Rarity had practically leaped at me, leaning against me with her fore hooves and excitedly asking "Who did your interior decorating?! It fits so fabulously, the drapes being dark enough to appear to be drawing in the light while the windows and magical lights manage to minimize the shadows! The sharp angles of the halls, offset by the multiple softly rounded rooms! How rugged and haphazard it is at the bottom, yet slowly becomes more smooth and orderly the closer you get to the top! I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it!"
"The tower itself was built by the minions, however in regards to the interior I was the one who decided on the overall scheme, while it was several small businesses in Shepton which did the work. The minion who was in charge of the interior decorating project was Giblet, so if you wish to know more I'd speak with him down in the forge, as I'm not really design oriented." I told her, partially to feed her enjoyment of my home and partially to get her to go away... she wasn't worst pony, but she was in the running. After giving a little squee and clapping her hooves she ran off to find the forge... I may or may not have felt bad for doing that to Giblet.
Once Rarity was gone Twilight went next, after getting a nod from her mentor. Having seen the small exchange, I turned my attention fully on her which apparently made her a bit uncomfortable... which made sense as I was basically a giant in spiked battle armor with glowing red/yellow eyes, which was starring at her wordlessly while waiting for her to speak. I could probably only be more intimidating if I was holding two pony sized fireballs and softly growling.
"Umm," Twilight started before nervously shaking her head a bit and trying again. "So, you said you were from a different world? How? And... well, if you don't mind, could you tell us about it? Your world, ahem,that is..."
"I must admit, I am curious as well." Celestia said with an accompanying nod from her sister.
I sighed and walked over to one of the six pillars around the tower portal, folding my arms as I leaned against it. It was more comfortable than sitting in my throne anyway, plus it was good to stand up from time to time.
"The events that lead up to my being here were largely out of my hands. The minions needed an Overlord and, as they are want to do, didn't think everything through before casting a spell to send them and whatever fit the criteria of an Overlord to another world. Hence our presence here, as well as my treatment towards all under my rule. Any other Overlord would almost certainly not be as nice as I have been." I said while looking out of the balcony.
I could hear some shuffling and could imagine the three of them giving each other looks, before I heard Luna ask "Would you tell us of your homeland? We would like to learn of it, though if you do not wish to speak of it we understand."
"There's not much to tell... there was no magic in my world, only my own species managed to make it to sapience yet there was no shortage of war, and while we had created many different kinds of technological wonders, at the point we were at we would either make it to the capacity to spread across the stars or we would end up killing each other, there were few other options as far as I was aware."
"It sounds so... dark... Wait, if your world had no magic then how are you so good at it now? How did you even start to learn it?" Twilight said, sounding a little sad at first then curious.
"Your world is almost constantly under attack from monsters who wish to destroy, if not your nation, then your entire reality, and you have no reliable way to stop them other than five necklaces and a tiara who are temperamental at best. As to how I've learned what magic I have, Gnarl may not be a Blue, but he is an... adequate beginning instructor. Also, Sarra has been very helpful and informative which has helped me progress much faster than normal. That and the fact that I rather enjoyed learning about magic." I said in response. "I'm sorry for sounding so... ah... well, for being such a downer about my world, but it's a natural part of the human mind to focus on the bad stuff. Mostly to fix whatever's wrong." I added the last part to bypass a possible next question.
"What were, Are you like? Having already formed such a large and well run country in so short a time, you must be quite unique." Celestia asked, while I assumed trying to butter me up, though I couldn't be sure as pony faces were a bit harder to read in person.
"If I've learned anything in my time, it's that no one is truly 'unique'... But I see no harm in telling you about myself." I cleared my throat and broke eye contact, which was rare as I almost never looked away from someone who was talking, respect and such. "I was a little shit up until I turned, what was it? Fourteen? Fifteen? Sometime around then, when my mother met my dad, well step-father but I consider him my dad. Anyway, he wasn't one to put up with my shit so he disciplined the 'little shit' right out of me. I had a small group of friends after that, seeing as before I was so abrasive and cruel that I could never make or keep friends, though I never really saw them after I graduated school. After that I spent most of my time alone playing games similar to, what do you call it? A joyboy? I've seen a colt in ponyville playing it, only mine was far more advanced."
"Really? What types of games did you enjoy?" asked Luna with a bit more of attention that I anticipated.
Whether she noticed my surprise or not, Celestia put in her two 'bit's' and commented "My sister has been very fascinated by the concept of these games since her return."
Luna nodded before explaining "As the foals of this age become more entranced by them it enters their dreams more often, and as a result I see more of them. You could say I wish to understand the appeal of them."
"Well, if things go the same way here as they did in my world, then your looking at the start of a multi-million... uh, 'bit' industry." I said, trying to use their word for money simply to help get the point across. It must've worked, as their eyes went wide for a moment at how big it got back home. "But to answer your question, I mostly enjoyed strategy games where you had to, somewhat ironically, build and maintain a country. Though I would play just about anything."
"Really? And just how-" Celestia began before being interrupted by Gnarl who came scurrying up to me before motioning for me to bend down.
Once I did he whispered to me, "M'lord, we're not quite sure how but two of the ponies have somehow made it past the guards and into the Arena, how do you wish to deal with this?"
"Which one's?" I whispered to him.
"The blue and pink ones sire." He whispered back.
"It would be them, wouldn't it?" I thought, "After all it is Pinkie, Rainbow probably wanted to know what was behind the restricted area and she helped her get there. Well, nothing to do now but see what happens."
When I straightened up Celestia asked me if anything was wrong with a concerned look. I simply told her "It appears that two of your ponies have decided to ignore the guards where I have designated restricted areas and have somehow gotten into the arena." as I began to walk down to said arena.
The Princesses, Twilight, and Gnarl all followed me down, Gnarl being respectfully quiet while the ponies were just uncomfortably giving each other glances when they thought I wasn't able to see them. That was, at least, until we could hear the cheering from the spectators in the Arena, at which point they began to whisper with each other.
It was something about 'It might just be part of their culture' and 'seems so barbaric', but for the most part I just ignored it. After all, we had already signed the friendship agreement, and I was the least likely one to break it. Whenever I was playing a strategy game it almost always went the same way, once I made an ally I would help build them up rather than take them over until they thought they could take me over. Then I would be justified in taking everything... this might've been different in scale, but I would probably do the same thing anyway, as betraying someone for no reason just wasn't in me.
I had made the minions alter the arena somewhat, as before only minions could get to the seats to watch the fighting. It was altered so that even a dragon, though only at a reasonable size, could sit comfortably to watch a fight. Who knew what I could end up having over for whatever reasons, and it was always better to be ready. Other than that there were six nice statues spaced out evenly around the pit of the arena, basically less fancy copies of the ones in the throne room.
I immediately saw Pinkie and Rainbow sitting in some of the nosebleed seats, clapping and cheering on the group of ten Browns who had just fought off a group of fifteen Battler Beetles. Surprisingly Sarra was also watching the fight, though it was from the 'royal' box. It was odd to see her down here as she normally avoided the arena, saying it gave her indigestion. Once my presence was noticed by the minions currently watching the fight a fresh bout of cheering was released as the minions who had just won all bowed to me.
"The Overlord has graced us with his presence down here in the arena! Shall we give him and his guests a show!?" Quaver yelled, further riling up the crowed.
I knew that at this point the minions would either throw their lives away trying to kill something that they obviously could not defeat, or I would have to get involved and spend a few rounds in the arena myself. It was a special treat for them, as I didn't really get much enjoyment from killing creatures made from the magic of the tower, so I didn't really go down here that often aside from combat training to keep from getting rusty.
"As much as I would like it to be otherwise, unless you wish to see quite a few dead minions I'm going to need to step into the arena for a few rounds. If you don't wish to see any violence then I suggest you take your friends and head up to the library or dining room or somewhere, though I wouldn't mind you staying to watch either." I told the princesses and twilight.
After a few look's and silent nods, they began the climb up to the arena seats. I cracked my neck and readjusted my grip on my mace.
"Better get to it, man if I wasn't so lazy I would love these fights."
I was more than a little surprised when those two ponies snuck into the arena, and even more surprised when they decided to stay and actually enjoyed the show. I was less surprised to see the Overlord walk in once the round was over, from what little I could feel from him it seemed like he was annoyed at the ponies for ignoring his orders and was more of a resigned kind of annoyed at having to fight in the arena. But then again he could have just stayed away if he didn't really want to fight, regardless of how much he was afraid of/didn't care about the ponies reaction to the different goings on in the tower.
The Overlord's emotional range was still causing me some amount of confusion. It wasn't like he didn't feel, or that it was tainted in some way, they were just strangely weaker and slightly different. Not bad, just odd, almost like they were bleeding together and yet were still separate while being as shallow as though he had been heavily fed on already. Yet somehow if you took the time to draw on him long enough, the amount of emotional energy he could produce was roughly three times that of a pony. One thing was for certain, it made feeding on him a very unique experience.
I was pulled out of my thoughts about my monarch by the ponies, who had all grouped up and made their way to my box presumably to talk and watch the fight. I did feel some unease at being undisguised around them, especially the princesses, but I was able to keep my calm by reminding myself that the Overlord wouldn't let anything bad happen to me. I was his property after all, and he would get genuinely angry whenever I or one of my changelings, or really any of his subjects, would get hurt.
"So, have you two been enjoying the show so far?" I asked the two who had snuck into the arena with a bit of genuine mirth in my voice.
"Umm, kinda? I mean, I know it's not really something that would be okay back in Equestria, but it is really exciting!" The blue one, Rainbow Dash if memory serves, said with a bit of a grin. Said grin quickly vanished when her friends, aside from the pink one, gave her a 'are you serious?' look.
"Well I'm glad that you could find something here that you enjoyed, and I'm also sure that the Overlord would be happy as well." I said with a bit of a nod and a smile at her.
"Wait, if you can feel emotion then why did you even need to ask if Dashie enjoyed herself?" Pinkie asked with a very dog-like head tilt.
I snickered a bit at both the pose she took as well as her observation skills. "Yes, I could tell that she was happy to be here, but-" I was interrupted by the Jester's booming voice, likely amplified by magic to reach everyone in the arena, which was itself at a constant murmur as everyone talked about fight related topics.
"It's dreary, dark and dank here in the dungeon! Just how we minions like it! Now, clap your claws and shake your ears, fooorrrr ttthhheee Ovvverlooord!!! YEAH!" With that the Overlord stepped into the ring with somewhere around thirty five beetles and a group of twenty minions.
Once the cheering had died down to the point we could hear each other I started again, "As I was saying, I could tell she was enjoying herself but it is polite to ask. It tends to make ponies feel better to talk about themselves." I told Pinkie finishing my thought.
"Was that normal?" Twilight asked, unfolding her ears, which had been standing straight up and forward when the cheer exploded out.
"Only when the Overlord comes down here for a fight. Otherwise it's a fairly normal amount of noise for any kind of sporting event."
"How long does the arena stay open? Fights can only go on as long as you have something to fight against, and they must have to stop to find more creatures to capture." Princess Luna asked without taking her eyes off the fight.
"Oh, there is no hunting for combatants. The tower itself provides the opponents and the minions, or really anyone who is in the arena, fight and kill them. It's actually quite impressive, as the tower draws in the magic from it's surroundings to form whatever is being fought, the only limit to what it can make is what the Overlord has encountered while outside the tower." I informed them, taking a small amount of pride in the place I called my home.
"So there is no time for rest? The fights never stop?" Luna asked me, surprising me with her... Nostalgia? Well, she was from a different time, so I had no right to judge.
"Yes, the minions need some form of entertainment after all and this keeps them from getting too... rowdy. At least I assume that it never really stops, I don't spend much time down here." I said, recalling what it had been like before the Overlord had instated this quick fix.
"I don't think I've ever been more happy to be a changeling, or more happy to not be on the receiving end of the Overlord's rage." And boy was it rage! Once the Overlord got wind that his minions were attacking and mauling each other due to boredom, well... while his actions didn't really show more than annoyance, I had more than a few restless nights due to what I felt from him emotionally.
"Really? I would imagine that such an emotionally charged place would be a veritable feast for a changeling, why would you normally stay away?" Celestia asked me with genuine curiosity.
I sighed before explaining "While this area is very full of emotion, any gathered from minions is... tainted in some way, it would be hard for me to explain to you in detail but... it's almost like if you tried to eat spoilt food. You could still eat it, and if it was love, for me, it would be more like it was only slightly over it expiration date, but it would give you horrible indigestion or even more likely make you sick."
"Really? But then, where are you getting your food?" Twilight asked, some concern actually leaking through making me feel a little more comfortable around her. So far she had only felt distrust and slight disgust regarding me, so the fact that I was making progress so quickly was very reassuring.
"Oh, I get more than enough from the Overlord. I'm not going hungry by any means." I said, forcing down a healthy chortle at the sudden changes in emotion from the mares present. The Princesses and Twilight felt embarrassment, Rainbow felt both embarrassment and amusement and Pinkie Pie felt some amount confusion, but not in a negative form of it.
"Wait, are you two special someponies? I didn't take the Overlord for the lovie dovie type, but I've been wrong before! Whoo, that was an awkward two weeks, I never knew you could use a roll of wax paper that way!" Pinkie said in her usual rapid fire way, either it was rapid fire or it took the others a second to actually understand what she had said while I thought of an... appropriate response.
"UHG! I WISH! I would give my wings for a good romp with that hot mass of pure masculine dominance! It's not even like he doesn't find me attractive, I know, I can feel his emotions, but for some reason he just won't do anything with me!" Okay, maybe I was laying it on a tad thick, but it was perplexing me, but for different reasons.
The few times I had tried to 'approach' the Overlord I had felt all of the normal things that males feel coming from him, in the 'blended together' way that all of his emotions were, but there was also very small amounts of self doubt, fear and a slight weakening in the almost all encompassing indifference to everything that the Overlord used almost like a shield. Behind that indifference I had felt more rage than I had ever felt from something living before, it would scare me out of trying again for a few weeks at a time before I could pluck up the courage to make a pass again... and each time I could feel more from behind that shield.
"What would cause such a person such anger? And how is he still functional?! I could get less anger from a dragon by eating their entire horde right in front of them!"
I was pulled from my thoughts by Celestia saying "Well... Good luck in your endeavor?"
"Oh, thank you, but I don't need luck. I need to understand him, which right now I don't. But I will." I finished with a smirk as I turned to watch the Overlord near the end of his second match.
Twilight decided to speak up, asking me "Why is the Overlord so... so..."
"Apathetic?" I finished for her, expecting that to be the word she was trying to find.
"It just seem's like he doesn't care, like about anything. How can we trust him if we don't know what he wants? Everypony wants something, even if it's just to have a friend." she ended with a sad sigh.
"I suppose that's one of the many things that changelings have over ponies," I said with a silly smirk and tone to let them know I was joking, "I can sense his emotions, so I can tell what he does and doesn't care about... most of the time, anyway. And I'll tell you a little secret," I stopped and looked side to side cartoonishly, "He really doesn't want to fight any of you. So, while I try to figure him out, you can feel safe in the knowledge that he won't just randomly turn on you."
"Well when you do figure him out please let us know as well, at present he makes less sense to us then the old, wrinkly minion." Luna said while also watching the fight.
"I'm right here, you know." Gnarl said with a wet growl.
Even I gave a bit of a start at his words. He had been standing in the dark corner nearest to the stairs without so much making a peep for so long that none of us had even remembered he was there until he spoke up. I couldn't even feel anything coming from him.
It was dark. Not the 'oh it must be night time' dark, or even the 'it's so dark I can't tell if my eyes are open or closed' kind of dark. Oh no, it was the 'you are in a place you are not supposed to be in, for your own safety, and something else knows your in there with it' kind of dark.
Two beings met in this darkness. One said to the other "The plan has been complicated, hasn't it?"
The other replied "It normally doesn't take this long, does it? Regardless, it will proceed as it always does."
"Shouldn't we think about changing the plan? Things are different now, and-" The first said dispassionately.
"What would you suggest?" When the question was met with silence the other simply stated "Then we will continue as planned."
"Is it even necessary at this point?"
"I would rather not find out, if I can."
"Perhaps we could try a test or two first?" The first asked with an audible smile, and not the kind type.
"Hmmm..." The other hummed thoughtfully, "I am curious of their potential... Very well, but we will start slow. No need to reveal ourselves to soon."
The two beings shared a cruel chuckle at their agreement before slinking off in their own directions.
Once the conversation had ended, and we had apologized to Gnarl for forgetting him, we had spent the rest of the night watching the Overlord fight increasingly dangerous enemies, starting with the beetles which were found around the tower and ending with two of what looked like massive mounds of flesh and muscle called trolls.
They made the Greens smell good in comparison and they actually smelt better after the Overlord killed them.
Once the ponies had all gone to their rooms to sleep for the night, aside from Pinkie who had decided to help the three Red chefs cook pastries for the rest of the minions, I followed the Overlord back to his throne room.
I found it odd that while he had his own rooms, yes plural and rather well furnished at that, the Overlord tended to only spend time in them to care for his garden or to check on his personal treasury, instead deciding to sleep in his unreasonably uncomfortable throne. I wasn't even really sure how he could rest at all on that thing, I tried to sit in it for five minutes as a part of one of my attempts to woo Nobody and had a sore back and rump for the next two days!
"Well? What did you get from them?" The Overlord asked me as he sat in his throne, Gnarl taking his place to the side of the foot of the platform the throne was on.
I stopped, sitting in the middle of the walkway, right before the bottom of the platform. "They don't trust you, especially the Princesses, but they seem to be hopeful of your intentions. I suspect that as long as you do nothing to harm them directly they would be happy to ignore us for the most part." I said with a respectful bow.
"Orrrr..." Gnarl said while turning to face the Overlord, "It means that they would be totally unprepared for a sneak attack! We shouldn't let an opportunity like this slip us by, Strike while the iron is hot and all that!" He finished saying with an insane chortle.
"No Gnarl, we aren't going to attack them, and for multiple reasons." The Overlord told the wrinkly dustball, I could feel the annoyed fatigue rolling off of him. However, I could also feel the frustration and bloodlust coming from Gnarl... I think he would be the only bing in this tower aside from Nobody that I might have been afraid of.
"You are an Overlord! I do not mean to sound disrespectful but-" Gnarl started before the Overlord interrupted him.
"Then don't be disrespectful! Don't lie to me Gnarl, even when you're trying to convince me to do something! Especially when you're trying to convince me to do something!"
His voice was only slightly raised, barely being louder than his normal speaking voice, but I and every other creature in the throne room were shaking slightly. Well, every other creature aside from Gnarl who just glared at the floor at the foot of the throne, showing a stupid amount of defiance. I knew that the minions were connected to Nobody in a similar way to my hive, which explained why they were afraid. I could feel the concern coming from the changelings of my hive at my own distress which I dismissed with thanks for the care, it was simply that the seeming 'Shield of Indifference' had cracked slightly, showing me another sliver of the rage that seemed to just be a part of him.
We were luckily interrupted before they could escalate the situation to the point of bloodshed by a Sheep practically falling over itself to try and run up the stairs of the tower. After several moments of wheezing and coughing, she was finally able to speak and proceeded to frightenedly plead with the Overlord to save her village near the southeastern edge of The Domain. By the end she was practically sobbing and trying to offer all kinds of random things for the Overlord to do something.
To my surprise Nobody actually got annoyed when she started to offer things to him, just asking for the actual location of the village and descriptions of what had attacked them. Once he had gotten what he asked for he had a guard escort the sheep to a free room, promising to set out in the morning after seeing to some duties, at which the poor girl began openly weeping in relief and gratitude.
"Gnarl, get the minions ready. We're going to war in the morning." He said, his emotions almost disappearing at the statement.
"With what, if I may ask, sire?" Gnarl asked, looking both hopeful and confused.
"The Arimaspi. You should like them, you have a lot in common, including doing and saying stupid things when it would be better not to." the Overlord said with a good amount of annoyance bleeding into his tone.
Once Gnarl had scampered off to wherever he was going I stood up to seductively strut over to Nobody's throne.
"You know, you're going to need to start naming these wars. Unless you want a lot of 'Unnamed conquests' in the history books." I said, getting up on my hind legs to give Nobody a hug and a little nussle, which he didn't pull away from. "Yes! One step closer!"
"What do you suggest then?" He asked, easing into his throne... somehow... but with me ending up sitting on his lap.
"W-well," I started with a bit of a blush, " how about... 'The conflict of...' What was the name of the Village that was attacked again?"
"The conflict of Sunny Pastures? Hmm... What about 'The conflict of Skull Mountain' as that is where most of the fighting will be?" He asked, I could feel that he really did value my input, which was very touching. You'd be surprised how many leaders don't really care what their advisors say.
"Sure! Plus that just sounds good for a first actual war, seeing as you just crushed the changeling lands while we were weak."
"I hope there are no hard feelings about it..." He said, feeling a bit of apprehension. And, perhaps, just a tad of lust as he realized the position we were in.
"Of course not! The changelings are stronger than ever, we have more love than ever, and I'm in a veritable palace where all of my needs are met. If anything, we should be thanking you for absolutely dominating us." I said, giving him a peck on each cheek after every ever before batting my eyes at him while grinning as I overemphasised the dominating part.
The Overlord actually slept in his bed that night.
The Ponies had decided to stay one extra day and I wouldn't kick them out just yet. I was able to have several more conversations with Celestia and Luna, and even got to speak with some of the mane six, which was somewhat fun... aside from Fluttershy, who could barely get three words out at a time, and stuttered hard with each word. I stutter myself occasionally if I have too many things on my mind, but I was nowhere near as bad as her. Regardless, I just grit my teeth and waited for her to get out her side of the conversation, which went well once she could actually speak properly.
I did have to break up several near fights between Gnarl and different ponies, mostly being Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and, surprisingly, Twilight herself, though only twice with her. I suppose even Gnarl can only be hurled through a wall so many times before he stops trying to antagonize the thing that is throwing him through multiple walls. The only pony he didn't manage to antagonize was Fluttershy, who somehow managed to make him even more angry than Twilight by simply agreeing with him and/or putting a positive spin on anything he called/said to her. After I found him hopping up and down, frothing at the mouth, and using curse words that even I didn't know at her, I decided that enough was enough and put him under 'house arrest' for the remainder of the ponies stay.
And by 'house arrest', I mean that I had grabbed him by the neck, threw him into a dungeon cell, and told him that if I saw him again before the ponies left, Giblet would be the oldest living minion. I didn't even hear a peep from him after. But back to my guest's...
Luna, and later Rarity, had been interested in the forging process for the arms and armor of the tower. Luna wasn't aware of any forging method that made metal of such high quality, at such low weight, without any enchantments, Rarity was interested because of the coloration, texture and the odd way the metal would catch the light making waves of light and dark, even on a perfectly flat sheet. I had decided to refrain from telling them that part of the forging process involved using live minions. As in, live minions willingly jumping into the smelter as it melts the ore, thus evenly mixing the then dead minion into the metal which would then be beaten into the proper shape by Giblet or his assistants.
When she wasn't being harassed by Gnarl, Twilight had been either in my library or with Sarra down in her hive, asking her every question that she could think of about changelings, which Sarra mostly answered. Her excuse for not answering several questions was, "You can't just give away all of your secrets, you need some mystery to keep them interested!". The hive was down in the basement, behind the door that we had found a few months back. I had given it to her as an excuse to have her live in the tower as opposed to the badlands, where a majority of the changeling's still lived.
What? It would have been annoying to have to go out to the badlands just to get her opinion every time I wanted it.
Anyway, all in all my guests were having a good time. Aside from Celestia, who seemed to be a tad more jittery than yesterday, jumping at sudden movements and glaring at shadows as she walked past. I tried to ask her what was wrong but all I got was her apologizing, saying that she just had a bad dream last night. She seemed to be better after that, but I knew it was a lie and she was just as worried as before. But I let her have this one, if she didn't want to tell me then I wouldn't pry.
Just before they left, around three hours before sundown, I informed them that I would be headed down to the south west to deal with some amount of trouble in the villages in that area.
"Oh... But, wait, Isn't that near Arimaspi territory? Will you be alright?" Celestia asked with a concerned expression, turning back to face me while the others finished packing up the various small things they would be taking back with them.
"Arimaspi? Hmm... I don't think I've ever heard of anything with that name. What are they like Princess?" Fluttershy asked from where she was hovering, helping Rarity organize the sketches she had made for clothing after being hit by inspiration by my towers decoration.
"From the description I've been given, they seem to be large semi-bipedal cycloptic goats, with a love for gold and meat. Do you have anything to add to that assessment, Celestia?" I asked hoping to get a bit more information about the things I would be fighting soon. After all, like G.I. Joe said, knowing is half the battle.
"They are vile creatures, and in more ways than one." Luna said, beating Celestia to the punch. "They rarely bathe, endlessly war among themselves, will taunt and harass anything near their territory by flinging any number of disgusting items, and may mercy find you if you enter their territory. Only once have we have sent military forces into their territory, as an effort to help our griffin neighbors, and we shall never do so again." Luna said, getting a sad nod from Celestia
"What happened to the forces you sent?" I asked, forcing closed an annoying suitcase that Pinkie couldn't, eliciting a sheepish smile and slight blush of embarrassment from her.
"Around one week later we received reports of the Arimaspi... torturing them. In ways I don't feel comfortable speaking of... we couldn't save them from their torment, the most we could do was to put them out of their misery from a safe distance. And even then we lost several soldiers from stones and small bones hitting them at such speeds that they were gone before they hit the ground." Luna said, the discomfort clear on her face as the ponies around her gasped in horror.
"Oh, my! They sound, why they sound absolutely evil!" Rarity whisper-screamed as she fought fainting. The rest of the girls were either green in the face, angry, horrified, or some mix of the three. "You will be careful, won't you? I'd hate for anything bad to happen to you after you've been such a good friend and host."
I didn't say anything in return, simply walking away to let them finish packing before seeing them off. I made my way back to my throne thinking about what Luna had told me. I wasn't afraid, or particularly upset at what I had heard, If anything it made me a bit excited. This was something I was familiar with! Diplomacy was not really my forte, but killing violent creatures while getting some other things done was right up my alley!
"What has you so peppy?" Sarra asked me with a smile. She really did seem happier now, not to mention that her silly attempts to 'woo' me would finally stop, which would make her more focused on the task at hand in the long run. Sure, she would still be herself, silly, flirty, overblown, and just a touch full of herself, but that was what made her work and work well.
"In order of importance to me, or in sequence of events?" I asked, sitting in my throne as she got into my lap. I was still slightly uneasy with her being so close, as I don't like being touched, but I knew I would need to get used to it... "and it isn't so bad..."
"Yes." She simply responded, nuzzling my neck and causing my arm to almost automatically wrap around her. "She is officially my mistress now after all, it wouldn't do to let her slip and fall off of me..."
"Reverse order of importance then. Well first off, the ponies are leaving. While I don't dislike them, having them around is quite stressful." I said as I sighed into Sarra's long, soft hair. My throne might not let me actually relax, but this was still the most unwound I had been since they showed up. "For these past three days I've been afraid that something would happen, and it would put us back dramatically, or worse destroy us."
"The ponies? Destroy us? Ha! I doubt they could even get to the tower with the forces they have!" She snorted, bouncing in my lap slightly.
"I have no doubts that they would take losses, but as to us winning... well I have my doubts on that one." I told her, earning another giggling snort. "We would almost certainly lose, at least unless I can find/make a counter for the Elements of Harmony. One hit and the minions will abandon me, that will be that and they will go looking for a different Overlord, like Gorger the Overgoat, or heaven forbid, Tireck."
"Well then, I suppose we will just have to take them more seriously. What else?"
"I'm finally going to be getting off of my ass and doing something." I said getting several looks from around the room. I was notoriously lazy after all, not getting up even to sleep in a comfortable bed.
"Really? Now I've heard everything, what's next, you want to become king of Tartarus?" She said with a heaping helping of sarcasm.
"I will be the first to say that I'm one lazy bastard, but eventually doing nothing becomes boring, even to someone who doesn't really want to do anything. Plus, who knows? We might find the Blues around that area."
And that would be a rather welcome development, I was actually beginning to get a little worried about the little guys. Blues were notorious for being the most frail type of minion there was, one or two good swipes from anything bigger than they were and you would have a small blue corpse.
"Well, I'm glad to see that you have some active bones in your body, a good leader is an active one, and all that." She said as she began to slip off my lap... which I was only slightly disappointed by. "Oh, before I forget, I need you to come and see me down in the hive before you go stomping off to the mountain of doom. Take your time, I need to get it set up anyway." And with a little wiggle, she disappeared down the stairs.
I stayed in my throne for a few more minutes as minions brought me some of the more official, important documents that needed my signature. Of course, I made sure to read them all very thoroughly as I didn't want to risk Gnarl tricking me into signing anything that would end up biting me in the ass, like the one time he tried to make it perfectly legal for any random minion to walk into any random home, and destroy the place.
I did however, in an attempt to please him/shut him up, let Gnarl 'talk me into' instating a few new laws concerning the dead, such as making it not only legal but mandatory for all dead in the domain to be used in some fashion. The Sheeple would be used as food for the Diamond Dogs, and they for the minions, and the minions... were the dark souls kind of immortal, where you could be killed but otherwise can't die. Kind of made the point moot for them as they didn't leave corpses behind.
Once I was tired of signing things, like adjusting the price of wheat and wheat byproducts, I got up and went down to my lab. The lab that Twilight had been expressly forbidden from entering, yet I knew she had gone down there as everything was perfectly ordered when I was next there. The lab that I had been using to try and figure out cross-dimensional/trans-universal travel in. And after that, the lab that I was trying to make a new breed of minion in.
I had figured out how cross-dimensional/trans-universal travel might work, in theory, and it wasn't even that difficult given what little I know about physics. The problem was the amount of energy it would take to send me back.
The universe I was currently in.
That's how much energy it would take to send me back. I would need to transmute all of the matter in this universe, including the matter of my own current body, into raw magical energy just to send me back to my home universe. Not even earth, there was no way for anything other than a computer to pinpoint where I would end up, and any computer would be consumed by the spell. So not only would I have no guarantee that I would even be on my own planet, or a planet in general, but I would have around three seconds to find and jump into my body, assuming it's even still there, before I would fade away into nothingness.
In short, there was no way for me to get back... but... I might be able to at least say goodbye. The reason it took so very much energy to send me anywhere was two fold, one reason worse than the other. Reason one was that the universe I was trying to get to had no natural magic in it, which meant that a portion of the energy would need to be used to stabilize reality in the area of the return. We wouldn't want to go ripping any holes in reality, letting all kinds of nasty things in now would we? Reason two, the much more troublesome one, was that I was alive and had memories. Transporting mass was as easy as moving air by comparison, as memories and life were several magnitudes harder to move without... 'bleaching' them, for lack of a better term. If done carelessly, you could end up an empty husk, or an undead monstrosity.
But a letter... a letter was small, dead, and had no memories in it. By my estimates it would take about forty tons of iron worth of matter to send a letter, and hopefully with just enough accuracy as well. It had taken me... several dozen tries to get it just right, and even now... How are you supposed to tell your family that your trapped in a different universe, that you're okay, but that there is no way for you to ever get back to them? That you had been able to make a home for yourself, even make a (sort of) family? I suppose that in the end, there is no right way, just a few less terrible ways.
I looked around the Lab at the different lifeforce's scattered around the room, each in a different state of being. My early attempts at altering lifeforce consisted of binding two or more colors together, and, sadly, while they were stable it wasn't possible to form any minions out of it. Then I tried strengthening the lifeforce by binding more of one color together and found that while it could produce more powerful minions, the cost/benefit ratio was a tad to high in my opinion as it made one minion with the strength of five (the limit of the bonding process before a rather large explosion happened), but not much else. Possibly useful for projectile type minions like the Reds or Blues, but in the case of melee combat, more was better. So in the long run, there was little I could do to alter the minions unless I discovered something.
Like the fact that the reason the minions were dumb in the first place was tied to either bad grammar or purposeful negligence in the spell lattice that crafted the minions from lifeforce. Which I was in the process of slowly altering.
Anyway, I grabbed the final draft of my goodbye letter and headed down to the forge to send it. This was one of the only times I had outright taken the materials needed for something that I wanted to do, but with how important it was to me... I honestly didn't care, family was what mattered to me right now.
Everything was almost ready down in the hive's main chamber, all I needed now was Nobody and then I would finally be able to do it! Ohh, this was so exciting!
He was up in the forge, feeling more than a little melancholy, and from what I could sense he was trying some weird type of teleport, but I couldn't tell where it was supposed to go... it also seemed like it was using a stupid amount of energy. What was he even doing? Well, I would know soon anyway, and I trusted him to not destroy the tower/world through carelessness. Besides, he tried/practiced all kinds of odd spells, often building off of what I had teached him during our last session... speaking of, I realized that not only was I running out of things to teach him, but lately I was the one who was doing most of the learning!
I made my way up to the forge, finding Nobody standing alone in an extremely large empty room. There was a large (yet smaller than I first sensed) amount of energy currently being crushed down to smaller than a pin head, for a moment I was afraid that it would suddenly destabilize and end up leaving a very large crater, before it mysteriously vanished without a trace.
Nobody turned to me, and for a few moments I forgot why I had come up to find him. My mate was feeling pain, pain from the acceptance of loss, loneliness, and general grief. I simply held him while he breathed heavily, trying to calm himself.
The grief and pain subsided very quickly yet he still held onto me, making me happy to know that he found comfort in my presence. "Thank you." was all he said as he let me go. I grabbed his hand with one of my hooves and began to lead him down to my- no our hive, explaining what was going on as we went.
"I want to make our union official, by changeling standards, and that will need us to preform an old ritual." I explained as we went down the stairs.
"Ritual? Is it dangerous? Are ther any side effects?" He asked in a curious and not at all afraid tone.
"Good, I really want this to happen, and him being suspicious would only make it harder." I thought, very thankful of his trust. "It's nothing dangerous, in fact it only has benefits as far as anyone has been able to tell in the last three thousand years. It is a very important part of changeling culture, passed down from one queen to her daughter since it's first use, and It means so much to me for you to do this!"
"Big deal, huh? Is this the changeling equivalent of marriage or something?" He asked without sarcasm.
"Would you say no if it was?" I asked as we stopped on a landing, feeling slightly nervous for all of a second.
"No."
We kept walking, though now I had a grin that split my face like Nobody split heads and a bit more pip in my step.
As we entered the main chamber of the hive I told him " Just stand in that circle there, I'll be able to take care of the rest!" As he did so I powered up the runes scattered about the room, filling them to bursting with the very energy that he had given me, taking my spot opposite him. "Now, try not to resist, just let it happen, and it will be over before you know it!"
The energy suddenly peaked before he could say anything, sparking between the two of us. My physical eyes stopped working as we were linked, mind, body, and soul, once more for me and for the first time for him, with the hive. There was some resistance from Nobody, but that was to be expected from a mind that was unused to the feeling of a hive mind, if anything he was actively trying to help the process of the joining and it was his instinctual animal brain that was resisting.
My ethereal body within the hive mind practically galloped to the new connection in progress, the winding tunnels of the ethereal hive minds representation seeming to lead up, until I found a small opening, one that was just forming, and waited there until it was large enough for me to fit through.
Every room, every tunnel, every aspect of the hive minds landscape was formed from the minds and emotional ranges of those within it, most being small, cozy bedrooms full of pictures of loved ones, rivals, friends, and a few (such as myself) being large multi room structures with fine furniture and stain glass windows. What I found was... incredible.
Sky, a field, mountains. I could tell that this wasn't all Nobody, and as I looked around I realized what had happened. The minions had been dragged into the hive mind as well! Though some were smarter than others, as shown by the small, poorly fashioned and run down shacks that dotted the landscape, for the most part the 'above ground' was constantly in a chaotic state, shifting as the minions attention shifted. One spot would be choked with overgrowth and filth before burning away as fiery volcanoes erupted from beneath them, only to cool rapidly and be used as a battleground of some sort. And over all of it, a hurricane circled flashing lightning and rain down everywhere, only adding to the chaos.
And standing right in the eye of the storm, tall and proud, was Nobody, quietly watching his surroundings. The ground he was standing on seemed to be constantly shifting between small yet beautiful flowers and the same chaotic ground that the minions walked on. He saw me standing at the crest of the hill the 'entrance' to the hive mind was at, and it was as though something had kicked the storm into overdrive. Then, as our minds became more in sync, I understood everything about his... 'odd' emotions. It wasn't that he didn't feel, or even that his emotions were just fundamentally different, it was that he felt so strongly that his mind couldn't actually handle it on it's own.
In an effort to protect itself, his brain had basically locked a part of itself away.
I moved to him and just embraced him in the eye of the storm of his emotions. "Well, at least we'll never go hungry again with a sours of emotion like this." I whispered to him with a bit of a giggle.
"I'm just going to let you know right now, there are some things in my head that you would probably be happier not knowing, but I won't stop you from trying to look if you really want to." He rumbled to me. I nodded my head, there would be time to look through his memories and tease him mercilessly about his past experiences later, for now...
We came back to our physical selves, embracing in the main chamber of our hive. Nobody's legs buckled slightly as he came back to his senses along with a few new ones. "It's okay, just take your time. It dose take some getting used to." I whispered to him while helping to let him sink down to the ground, as I knew he was basically having the equivalent of a slight hangover without the thirst.
We spent the next hour cuddling on the floor of the main chamber.
After my head stopped pounding and my eyes had stopped trying to jump out of my skull (and I knew I needed to stop cuddling with Sarra to see the ponies off), we both got up and began moving up to the front gate, Sarra practically glued to my side.
The ponies were waiting for us at the ground entrance to the tower, fully packed and ready to go. They all looked happy to see us coming to say goodbye, though a few of their smiles were just a tad bit to sly to just be 'happy to see you' smiles.
After a few more goodbye's, as well as a promise to visit Suger Cube Corner if I was ever in Ponyville and an invitation to the next Grand Galloping Galla, they began their journey home. My tower and I had actually survived first contact with the little trouble mak- uh, I mean, the 'accident prone equines'. Yes, let's go with that one.
"Finally they're gone! I don't mind a good dungeon cell, but it does get stuffy every now and then!" Gnarl said from beside us.
And just like that, all of the good feelings we had been having shriveled up and died.
"Prepare the minions Gnarl," I growled at him "We march south tomorrow."
"Of course, sire! Right away!" he said with a bow before scampering off.
"Welp, first a small rest, then it will be time to go to work." were my last thoughts before Sarra and I went back down to our hive.
The minions, Sarra and I arrived at the most southeastern village of my domain just as the sun broke the horizon. Or rather, what was left of the village, a whole three buildings out of what was once a ponyville sized town, the rest were either burnt out husks or crumbling ruins. Colorful shops and market stalls were blackened and the quaint homes of the village, all of which were in multiple sizes, were half collapsed, their entrails exposed to the elements. I could see nothing of any real value in the wreckage, most likely either being picked over by the remaining inhabitants or the Arimaspi. One thing, however, was left behind... at least some were...
Bodies, left to fester and waste away in the glare of the sun. Several were already halfway to being nothing but sun-bleached skeletons. The sight of so many of my citizens dead filled me with anger... they were mine! And I HATE it when my things break! The arimaspi would pay dearly for this.
At Gnarls 'request' we were traveling by sedan-chair, essentially a large room carried by minions with smaller, more comfortable thrones inside surrounded by curtains. Curtains which I was currently peering out of in order to watch the extra Greens I had brought follow the orders I gave them to spread out and secure the village, finding and safeguarding any survivors and also to direct the Browns who were carting us along to said survivors.
"Ohh, now that's what I call sacking a village! You should try to do more of that m'lord, I can say from experience that it is a great stress reliever!" Gnarl said from where he was leering out at the devastation.
"Gnarl, if I were you I would just stop talking right now. Nobody is in no mood to listen to you right now, trust me. Unless, that is, you want to become a small dark grey stain on the inside of the sedan-chair?" Sarra said, shutting up the annoying little walnut, who only gave an angry pout at her.
"Master, you really should have let me know beforehand about any rituals you had planned, I could have looked it over and made sure it was safe! It could have been a trap, or worse a way of controlling you! And then what would we have done? Hmm?"
"How Dare You! You sniveling litt-" Sarra began, practically snarling at him before I cut her off in a quiet, but deadly cold voice.
"Are you suggesting that Sarra, my mistress, would betray me?"
For a full ten seconds the silence was deafening.
Chokingly, sensing the danger he was in, Gnarl began,"Well, s-sire, I-"
"Because, if I cannot trust my mistress then I most defiantly cannot trust my adviser, as her safety and prosperity depend on mine while the advisers does not, and if I don't trust someone close to me, even a little, then the only option is to get rid of them. Permanently." At this point Gnarl was shaking ever so slightly, however he seemed to have taken my inaction as weakness or unwillingness to follow through with threats, as he had a more than defiant gleam in his eye. "Well, that won't do."
I leaned forward and, faster than he could dodge, grabbed Gnarl by his scrawny neck. I brought him close to my face, squeezing tightly enough to cause pain, and said, "So I'll ask again, Are you suggesting that Sarra, my mistress, my family, would betray me, my, Loyal, Adviser?"
Gnarl managed to gasp out a strangled "No, Sire!" before I could crush his windpipe so I released him, dropping him to the floor where he began coughing and doing his damnedest to not vomit.
"Your attitude lately has been unacceptable, Gnarl. If it continues you will find yourself replaced and quite possibly the punching bag you seem to think everything else is." I could vaguely hear a "Yes master..." but I had already stopped paying attention to the petulant adviser, looking instead to the surrounding village.
The Greens were rummaging through the ruins of the town, pulling up half-burnt pictures, smashed pottery and furniture, and more bodies, likely killed by the collapsing buildings they were in thankfully. With the condition of the bodies in the streets, it was apparent that the arimaspi had not let them pass easily, instead deciding to... 'play' with them.
"That is just... inefficient. Unless they wanted to inspire fear, but they failed in effort that with me. This doesn't make me afraid, just make's me angry, and not in the 'life was lost and that's bad' way, more of the 'I'm like a five year old, you broke my toy in front of me and are now lighting the pieces on fire' kind of way... I should get myself checked by a professional next chance I get, the corruption may be getting to me."
"Oh, don't worry, you're fine. I would know if there was anything affecting your mind, and while I would draw your morality into question, there is no 'evil energy' altering your thought process." I heard Sarra whisper in my mind, filling me with a sense of calm and love.
It was still somewhat... odd... having more than one someone in my head, and while I had some concerns about privacy at first, I quickly found it to be a nonissue. If anything, it had actually helped bring me and Sarra closer together, as we could show each other our memories at will while preventing anything or anyone from seeing what we didn't want them to. Which was very useful for keeping Sarra, and the rest of the changelings for that matter, from having an existential meltdown at the knowledge that their universe was, for the most part, a child's entertainment program.
Outside three Greens ran up to the lead Brown before gibbering to him, the Brown nodded before smacking the three of them to shut them up and directing the sedan-chair to a new area of town. The Greens ran off to search other parts of the destroyed town, whooping and making other rowdy noises as they did so at their success.
The Browns quickly found a smooth, safe path to a small half collapsed house which looked more like a hut compared to the homes around it. The two sheeple faces in the window proved that at least a few of my citizens, aside from the girl who told me of this, had survived, though with the size of the home I had my doubts as to how many managed it.
If there were too few then it would be better to just abandon the town until a large enough group was willing to try to reclaim it, but at the same time the longer it took to set the town back up, the harder it would be as nature slowly, or quickly depending on the environment, worked it's way back into control of the area.
My fears of abandoning a settlement so soon into my rule were banished by the many other sheeple, dogs, and even a few ponies who practically streamed out of a small half-burnt building with a collapsed roof, some with happy faces, others with tears of sadness, and one or two looks of anger. Though, I couldn't tell yet if the anger was at the arimaspi or me.
As I exited the sedan-chair the group of rushing happy faces stopped in their tracks, turning to shock and awe... and perhaps just a tad too much fear for my liking. What people seem to forget from 'tis better to be feared than loved', is that 'loved' is still an option. And the preferred one at that.
"It's okay, given time they will either stop fearing you and love, if not at least respect, you... unless you give them a reason not to, but I doubt you will." Sarra sent to me, full of confidence. She was certain, beyond a doubt that what she said was true, and who was I to disagree?
One of the sheeple pushed a medium sized dog at me, wither because he was the leader, or he was expendable should I be violent I couldn't tell. Maybe both.
"Ulp..." he gulped as he stared up at me, "They said you were big, but... ahem, right, uh... you are the Overlord, right?" the dog asked in a small, squeaky voice, leaning away from me as though afraid I would hit him.
"No, he's the milk man, and I'm part of a traveling circus who just happened to pick him up. Wanna see me juggle?" Sarra asked with her normal amount of snark. So, a lot.
Before the dog could say anything stupid I said, "Yes, I'm the Overlord. This is my Mistress Sarra and my adviser/meat-shield-should-something-go-wrong, Gnarl. We came to deal with the Arimaspi that attacked your home and to provide aid."
"Well, he is. We're more... moral support." Gnarl said with a slight grin. Through the hive mind I told one of the Browns to smack Gnarl upside the head. It was so much more fun to pick on Gnarl then the Jester.
Ignoring the shouts and whimpers behind me as Gnarl retaliated, I stepped forward to look over the survivors that didn't flee back into the hut at the sight of my advance. Those who either were brave enough to stay outside or too wounded to hobble inside in time were all in very great need of medical supplies, some just managing to not bleed-out from lost limbs due to hastily made bandages made from the cloths that they were able to scavenge from around the ruins.
"Um, while we are very grateful for your arrival sire, we were hoping for a rescue team. You know, to get us all out of here? No disrespect is meant, but very few of us actually want to stay in this broken-down hole. Not to mention that a few of us can't even move anymore, and I won't be able to smell anything ever again..." The dog said while bowing to me and just generally schmoozing in my direction.
"Aid will be sent here, but none of you are leaving. This town will be rebuilt after we teach the arimaspi a lesson. Specifically, no one and nothing can attack one of my towns without retribution, and we will not abandon land once we have gained it." I practically yelled so that even those in the building could hear me.
Several towns members, most prominently being the dog talking to me, looked more than a little depressed at my words. However, it seemed like more of the survivors were happy/impressed by my conviction.
I turned and walked over to one of the mid sized wrecks and with a thought commanded my Browns to clear the debris in order to set up a small camp, we would need a place to rest after all and I was not spending another night with Gnarl sleeping in the same room as me.
Little bastard snored. Loudly. While he was still awake.
As the imps swarmed the ruined building, practically mulching it in seconds before using what was left to build flimsy walls and a rickety roof, both of which were full of holes. It was no dark tower, but it would do for now.
"Besides there was only so much to build with, and there wasn't much need to make an elaborate building that Gnarl would call 'worthy of an Overlord', It's not like I would be coming back to this town in the foreseeable future... Though it might look a bit better once it's been cleaned up and the dead bodies have been moved. Might smell better too." I thought as I watched the minions go about setting up our camp.
"I'm soo glad that your nose is less sharp than mine, as long as I focus on what you smell I can ignore what I smell. Almost make's this place bearable." Sarra thought at me.
To be honest, I wasn't sure if I should be insulted or not.
"Not." She answered my half-thought question/remark.
"Rotting corpses are quite... let's say distracting, aren't they? Let's try to fix that." I thought back to her, while simultaneously ordering the Greens to move and bury the bodies.
"Thank you dear. Now let's focus on why we came here, shall we?"
And with that little exchange we began working. First we had to actually evaluate the extent of the damage the town had suffered, not only to be able to calculate how much it would cost to repair/rebuild it but also to get an idea of just how strong, at base minimum, the arimaspi were on average. The answers to both, after a few hours of walking around with Sarra and Gnarl and looking at... everything, were around fourteen thousand bits to rebuild the town (well within my price range as I rarely spent any of my own money) and that the arimaspi were at least strong enough to break solid stone, and smart enough to use said broken stone as projectile weapons if the state of some of the corpse's were any indication.
By that point most of the town, at Sarra's direction, had been cleared. Wood, stone, bodies and other objects had all been moved into several piles each which were easy to navigate around. The fact that we didn't need to watch where we were walking so as to avoid stepping in something/one really sped up the process. It also made it easier to deal with the bodies, I even let one of the towns people light the pyre.
It seemed to make them all somewhat happy.
By that point night was falling, the surviving towns' people returning to the remains of what I had been told was the equivalent of a doomsday preppers home, complete with underground bunker and five months worth of non-perishable foodstuffs and water, and the minions making a few minion holes. Sarra and I were snuggling on a hacked together bed, made from the remains of several other beds (one of which I was told came from the former mayor), finally able to relax now that Gnarl wasn't hovering over us twenty-four-seven. We weren't talking or even thinking to each other, just enjoying each other's company. I could definitely get used to this.
Sarra broke the silence in our minds, "Promise me you'll be careful tomorrow? The arimaspi aren't like the changelings, they are used to fighting to kill, not to capture... I don't want you to get hurt..."
"I can't promise that I won't get hurt, but I can promise that if it comes to it, I will definitely be a giant cowered and run away as fast as I can back to you. How does that sound?" I thought back to her, making fun of her doubts. With as many minions as I have because of their constant fighting in the arena, I could win through sheer numbers alone.
She giggled aloud, pushing my shoulder with a hoof "You had better not! I did not join with a weakling who can't finish what they start! If you did then you could never claim to order me around again!" she thought with an obviously fake serious voice. Then, with a slightly sultry tone, she added, "Then we'd just be back at square one... Though you were rather dashing as you dominated the other Queens..."
"Oh, so you like to be dominated eh?" I thought at her, making her face redden as she squirmed closer.
"Maybe..." she answered in a playful tone.
I may not have slept that much that night, but what sleep I got was very restful.
Side Chapter One: Cutie Mark Crusader's, Pyromaniacs! YAY!
It had started off well enough, a nice breakfast, some pleasant conversation with some of the ponies that came buy to borrow books, then a little bit of magic research/cross referencing some of the notes she found in the Overlord's laboratory. She still felt a little guilty for copying them when the Overlord asked her not to, but she just couldn't pass up an opportunity to see how an alien being would go about researching... whatever it was he was researching... she still wasn't sure about what exactly she had copied down, hence the research/cross referencing.
It had all gone down hill from there.
First several ponies from various news organisations had found their way into her library trying to find out everything they could about the Overlord, disposition, troops, and whether or not he was a threat to Equestria. After getting them to leave without letting anything slip before the Princesses public speech, Twilight had thought she might be able to get some peace and quiet, maybe find something concerning teleportation in the notes (as she had a fairly strong suspicion, as well as having detected a noticeable similarity to teleportation matrices, that it was connected, though incredibly complex) when a random towns pony came running into the library.
"Twilight! Quick, we need your help!" The stallion practically begged.
Sighing inside a little, Twilight shot up and asked what was wrong, expecting it to be a monster attack or some such.
"Part of the town is on fire!"
Although Ponyville was a small rural town, it still had a fire department, so the fact that somepony was asking her for help with the fire meant that it was quickly getting out of hand, possibly even to the point of threatening the town itself. Or that the stallion in front of her had an irrational fear of fire.
Regardless, Twilight teleported outside at once, very glad that she did so as she saw a billowing cloud of black smoke on the other side of town. Luckily it wasn't near any homes or places of business, just some old warehouses that nopony used anymore. That being said, it was close enough that it could pose a real threat if it got out of control.
This situation was why she told Spike to be extra careful with his fire breath.
Twilight teleported to an area near where the smoke was coming from and hit the ground galloping, those who were just watching the spectacle quickly moving out of the way of the lavender unicorn. When she got close enough to the fire to actually see what was going on however, she skidded to a halt with an unamused expression.
"Girls?" Twilight called, getting both the cutie mark crusaders and the stallions attention, "What is going on here?" she asked in a tired voice.
"Well," Apple bloom started, "we were looking for a new way to get our cutie marks when we realized that we haven't done anything with fire yet, and since we have Sparky we would probably be safest if we got all of that out now."
"Plus Sparky has been getting a little... rambunctious lately," Sweetie Belle said with a slight twirl of her arm, "so this is a good way of calming him down."
"Doesn't hurt that this guy is giving us money for this." Scootaloo finished, gesturing at the stallion sitting nearby.
Twilight then turned to said stallion with a raised eyebrow, "Really? You payed three fillies and some unknown creature to burn down a building?" she asked before another thought popped into her head, "Do you even own this building?"
"No! No I don't!" the stallion said with a small smile. "But it has been abandoned ever since the company that owned it shut down. Since then, I've been going town to town, burning down every last remnant of that horrible place."
"Was it really bad enough to warrant this?" Twilight asked, unsure if she should call for a guard.
"They pilled all of the actual work on me, kept moving my office around the building until they finally stuck me in the basement, and they kept taking my possessions without my consent. That piled on top of the endless workdays, long hours and uncaring coworkers for thirteen years, and I feel more than justified."
"Oh. Well, um..." Twilight started, still unsure if she should be concerned before Sweetie interrupted her.
"Come on, Twilight! It's not like anypony lives in there, we checked before starting the fire and we told Sparky to make sure that it didn't spread beyond this one building. Nopony's going to get hurt unless their just stupid, and even then we'll take them to the hospital."
After mulling it over for a few seconds and hearing some of the comments from the gathered crowd, including a very pyrophobic stallion who wanted to know why the fire hadn't been put out yet, Twilight finally shrugged and sighed.
"Fine, but if Mayor Mare says anything, you and your sisters are responsible." With that she turned and began to walk away, but was stopped by the odd sight of what appeared to be Sparky being smacked around by another kind of minion.
During her time at the Overlord's tower Twilight had learned of the four types of minion, but she had only really seen the Red and Brown types. Because of this she was somewhat confused by the appearance of the Green one. While Reds looked like a mix of Browns and dragons, Greens almost looked like a mix of Browns and some kind of thorny plant. Then the smell hit her, and she needed to take a moment to suppress her gag reflex.
"Oh my Celestia! What could he have rolled around in to smell like that!?" She thought as she wiped away tears that hadn't yet fallen.
Best minion had arrived.
Scratch had been sent by the Overlord to 'keep an eye on' AKA 'spy on' the Elements of Harmony, only to arrive to a building burning in front of a large crowd.
Scratch didn't know what the situation was, nor did he care. This was supposed to be a quiet, secluded area, with nopony around to notice him so he could do his job. Now his cover was blown, he would be unlikely to get it back, and it was all that stupid Reds fault!
Needless to say, the Green used his impressive leg muscles to leap onto the Red and begin to beat the surprised minion to a pulp.
He didn't even yelp when he was lifted off of the Red, held aloft in a soft purple field of magic. He had learned about the ponies before going to their lands, one must know their enemy and all that, and he knew that they disliked violence... for some reason... However, seeing as his cover was blown and he still had a job to do, Scratch did the only thing he could.
He resorted to plan B.
"Who are you? Did the Overlord send you?" Twilight asked while trying to breath through her mouth and still finding it unpleasant.
"Scratch help pony!" said minion exclaimed with a silly smile.
It had been around a week since we first arrived at the burned town and in that time my minions had been able to rebuild several homes, as well as some sturdy walls for defenses. The surviving members of the town were very thankful for the increased living space, though I did take one of the homes for myself until we leave the town.
Our efforts in hunting down the Arimaspi responsible for the damage to the town were going less spectacularly, several different sets of foot prints wandered off in different directions, seemingly for miles, before doubling back on themselves. That in and of itself told me that the Arimaspi were more than just beasts, they were hiding their tracks to avoid being followed by a pursuing force. Animals wouldn’t have the foresight to do something like that, and this fact only lowered my view of them, I could practically feel myself giving them less and less of a chance to avoid being destroyed.
Not only that, but several groups of minions sent to follow the tracks had been ‘disappearing’, I could tell that they weren’t dead through the hive mind and my, as I’ve come to call it, “Overlord sense”. The problem was that for some reason I couldn’t actually tell where they were, or even narrow down the search area. It was... disturbing, I could still feel the two minions in ponyvill, and even the three I had sent into the frozen north to search for the crystal empire, yet I couldn’t feel around thirty minions within four to five miles to the south west.
Luckily, I wasn’t the only one whose frustration was mounting. Gnarl had recently started to look like more of an angry potato than normal, lashing out at just about everything that he could get away with. I allowed this behavior as it wasn’t just Sarra and I who found it funny, several children and teens following him around to watch his antics. This of course just made him even more frustrated and violent, as he knew he was being laughed at.
At one point he snapped at me while we enjoyed a... let’s call it a meal, grumbling something along the lines of “We already have a Jester and it’s not me! Maybe if you want a stupid little chuckle you should go get him!”
The already quiet dining room had gone silent at that, though it took him a moment for Gnarl to realize that he had been heard.
"Are you sure, Gnarl?" I had asked in a mild tone. Apparently it didn't fool him though, as he took a few seconds to finally answer, giving an unsure "Yes?" with a very apprehensive face.
Not saying anything, I had stood up and walked over to a minion hole. I summoned the Jester, but before anyone could say anything I magically ripped the clothes from him and put them onto Gnarl. Needless to say, he was more than a little displeased by that, sputtering and gibbering indignantly.
"Gnarl, I don't care if you don't like something. I don't care if you find something displeasing. I don't even care if you keep your 'adviser' position, it just genuinely doesn't matter to me. So if I or anyone else wants to laugh at you, then at that moment you are the jester. Now shut up and eat your food, before I order you to be bait or something."
I had magically put everyone's clothes back the way they were supposed to be before returning to my meal. Gnarl didn't speak for the rest of the night, though I suspect it was to prevent him from digging a deeper hole for himself.
That was just one of the incidents that had occurred over the last few days, not including all of the minor injuries that everyone and their mother kept getting for various reasons, so needless to say something was going to happen soon. Stuff like that didn't happen in this kind of world without building up to something, but if it went on for another week, two tops, I was going to abandon the town. That kind of build up is not worth the outcome if Sarra's here with me.
"What is the matter? Your tense enough to make granite jealous! If this is about those minions then I'm sure-" Sarra began before I cut her off.
"It's not that, it's... I feel like something is coming... and I don't want you around when it hits is all."
"Aww, how sweet... well that's too bad, 'cause I'm not going anywhere without you." She thought at me, her 'voice' going from playful to serious and back again, "After all, if you're not there, who will protect poor, defenseless, little old me?"
Before I could respond, (with the prepared line of 'you're a big girl, you don't need me to hold your hoof for everything') I felt a sudden difference in my Overlord sense for only a moment, but that was still long enough for me to pinpoint where it was and what it was.
My captured minions had found the Blues, and managed to kill one long enough to disrupt their 'cloaking signal'. Said signal basically just hid an area from a contesting Overlord, or so the 'Book on Blues' (actual title) had said. The only part that was worse then the fact that this meant I had a rival was the fact that the signal came from the large pointy mountain with what looked like a skull on top of it. One of the few places I didn't want to go to right away, places like that were always a bitch to get through.
Not because they were particularly difficult, they just took forever to walk through.
"I've found them." was all I said, both out loud and in the hive mind. It was time for some payback.
Several hours and half a dozen requests for my Mistress to go back to the town later found myself, Sarra, a small platoon of changelings that had arrived earlier that day and around fifty minions a few miles from the base of the mountain. I had left Gnarl behind so as to not end up strangling him, though he did have some words of wisdom before I left.
"Be careful lord, so far everything we've fought has either been a weakling among weaklings or wholly unprepared to face you. But, if something in that mountain is strong enough that it has somehow earned an Overlord title, it will be more than a match for you if you aren't paying attention!"
Quite possibly the first useful thing he has said for several weeks, though I already knew that. I was just in an Overlords body after all, I didn't earn the power I had thrust upon me.
The Arimaspi who was challenging me for my title had probably spent years working to get stronger and eventually take control of his or her destiny, and here I was, about to take all of that and more from them just because they picked the wrong fight. They would probably be doing the same thing if our roles were reversed, though they might not be having the same musings as I am.
Funny how that works, huh?
"Lord, Lady, only an hour more of travel and we'll have gotten farther than any previous expedition into Arimaspi territory!" One of the larger changelings said with a beaming smile.
"Yes, but we won't be stopping there, so do try to reign in your enthusiasm until we have satisfied our Overlord, hmm?" Sarra said with a small smile back at the changeling who nodded and turned back to continue scanning the area.
That is, until his head exploded into a fountain of blood.
I flinched at the feeling of his mind suddenly disappearing from the hive mind while Sarra cried out. Suddenly several minions jumped in front of changelings, including Sarra, all of them exploding into corresponding plumes of colored light and evil essence.
"Well, at least you know how to use your minions correctly," said a very raspy, yet feminine voice from behind a cluster of trees, "Now, let's see if you can use your other solders as well!"
Several large cycloptic bipedal goats stepped out into plain view, leading them was a much larger, yet slimmer in build, example wearing a poorly adapted form of my own armor.
"I'll only give you one chance. Submit. Now." I growled at her, after everything she had caused my patience was almost completely drained.
"To you? Hah! You don't even have any horns! And to think, I was actually worr-" She began to go onto a monologue.
I put a stop to it by explosively reviling the corruption within my body, the sky suddenly darkening and my armor rattling as my spines and spikes scraped against it.
As she just stood there, realizing her mistake no doubt, I simply said "Very well. Kill them all!"
Once the Overlord had rumbled "Kill them All!" it was as though the world had exploded, minions, changelings and arimaspi charging at each other with intent to kill. Though admittedly the minions were more excited and happy than full of blood lust, and the changelings were more outraged by the attacks against their queen. Regardless, the end result was the same no matter what they had been feeling, what their motivation was.
They were going to massacre them, as their Overlord had commanded them to.
Though Nobody had seen a few arimaspi when they had just revealed themselves, more had been hiding in the trees near by in case it proved to be necessary. They all ran towards the quickly approaching army after feeling the slight panic of their Overlady. This would normally be a sign of weakness, though seeing the horde of foaming, screaming violence sprinting directly at them, they didn't think so right now.
The two groups smashed together with bone breaking force, minions jumping from changeling backs onto the arimaspi as the changelings erected shields to stop the first wave of pounding fists. The minions stabbed into the soft parts of the arimaspi's neck which was less naturally armored than the rest of their bodies, attempting to kill them quickly by jabbing upwards into the head. Within moments of the battle starting around half of the arimaspi had fallen and many more were dying, but the good fortune of Nobody's army was quickly turning around due to one thing.
The Blues.
Swarming out of the ground and latching onto the battling arimaspi, they began to heal and/or resurrect the fallen leaving the battlefield in a stalemate that was quickly turning against the Overlord's army. At least until the Blues figured out who they were fighting.
Once they realized they were fighting another Overlord there were a few moments of confusion and non-conformity as almost a full third of their number broke away and joined with Nobody's army, causing the opposing Overlady to restrict her minions free will, clamping down on their ability to decide which Overlord to follow. This also made it harder to focus on what she was doing as well as making sure her minions were doing what they were supposed to, and the moment she needed all of her concentration.
When the battle had begun, as the two army's had crashed into one another, the Overlord Nobody, in all his terrible glory, had steadily marched toward the unnamed Overlady. Several arimaspi had tried to at least harm him as he marched upon their leader, some being smart enough to double or triple up in their attempts. Nobody had batted them away with his mace as though they were overly annoying flies, sending them flying with large chunks of flesh missing, the sight of which was heavily demoralizing the Overlady's army.
Not to mention their leader, who was considering running like her life depended on it, because it did. However she didn't for several reasons, one being that if she ran then she could kiss being the leader of the arimaspi goodbye. Another was because she couldn't feel her legs due to fear, which the Overlord seemed to exude like some kind of forgotten horror.
He had quickly passed a majority of the opposing army and fell upon the Overlady like a storm on a coast line, the only reason that their battle didn't end in one attack was because she had instinctively blocked the blow, sending her flying, dazed and confused, but relatively unharmed. She barely had time to stand and get her bearings before he was on her again, raining blow after blow down on her, beating her back.
"This isn't right, I'm an Overlord! I should be the one to push this pretender back!" She thought with rising fury.
She saw an opening as the Overlord raised his mace for an especially hard swing and tried to stab at him with her claws, hoping to do more damage to him than her subjects had. The Overlord had seen this coming and, with a snort of amusement, grabbed her hand as she swung it at him, smashing her arm with his mace practically turning the bone to dust and rupturing several blood vessels. The Overlady could only look at her arm in confusion for a moment afterwards as it flopped down, hanging unnaturally limp with the pull of gravity.
Then she screamed.
"Pathetic." The Overlord's voice rang through out the battle field drowning out the Overlady's screams of pain, both in the ears and in the minds of both army's, "Such a weak blow, and this is how you react? Honestly, you were talking all that good shit a second ago, where did all that disappear to? ... What? No answer? Just going to keep screaming your lungs out? Good."
All were looking at the two of them now, some in horror, others in despair, but most were either expectant or felt only shock. The Overlord silenced the screams of the pretender by gripping her by the throat and lifting her into the air.
"You should have submitted to me. I still wouldn't have spared you, but you would have at least saved your people. At this point I don't care about how useful you could be, you're too much trouble to acquire and keep under control, plus you've royally pissed me off. Not just because you attacked my town, not just because you attacked my mistress, but because you are a failure as an Overlord. As a very wise old woman once said to someone similar to you, 'To have fallen so far, and learned nothing, that is your failing.' You aren't even a threat worth letting the ponies deal with, you little piece of garbage." he told her, sounding as though he was at border line disgust.
Throughout his speech the pretender had been trying to free herself, scratching and kicking at the Overlord, gasping and sputtering while still trying uncontrollably to scream until her lungs burst. At this point she was less than an animal, there were no thoughts in her head, just the unending desire to flee to runto be anywhere but here, trapped by what looked to her like an avatar of death. She looked into his eyes...
And found no pity.
The Overlord turned and threw her at another of her soldiers, the impact sending both of them sprawling. Within moments, faster than any of the arimaspi thought was possible, he had charged a different group and eviscerated them, at one point burying his mace in the bloody stump of ones neck to turn and rip apart another with his (mostly) bare hands.
Just outside of the battlefield Sarra watched as her mate, her husband, (Need to remember that that's what his kind calls it) destroyed the arimaspi. If he wasn't a part of the hive mind, she would have been more likely to believe that this was all some illusion by Nobody, for whatever reason he might have for doing so, but as it was she could practically feel the crunch of an arimaspi skull under his fist and his satisfaction at removing what he saw as another nuisance from his realm.
It was moments like these that really made her wonder what made him so apprehensive about fighting the ponies.
"Wow... You know, after so long with him on our side, it's actually really... disturbing... to see the Overlord like this. He's normally so calm, you would never think he could be capable of this, this brutality." One of Sarra's guards said with awe and fear in his voice as they all watched their leader massacre the small army of arimaspi.
"And that is why he is such a good leader, my little changeling. He can be kind to encourage you to follow him, and he can be terrifyingly brutal to remind you why it's a bad idea to betray him." Sarra said as she watched, ready to fire a spell or two if she felt her husband was getting overwhelmed.
Though if anything it was the arimaspi who were getting overwhelmed by her husband.
"Maybe that's why the ponies love their Princesses so much?" one drone mumbled through the hive mind.
"Maybe..." Sarra mused to herself.
At this point she knew the battle, and the rest of the 'war' were decided, with the Overlord as the victor. The pretender who had been thrown hadn't stood up yet, though it was clear that she was still awake, maybe hoping she could play dead to escape being killed. A few moments later Nobody had shifted over to her area in his battle, and as he was fighting around her he stomped her head in with one kick, ending the pretender and gaining complete control of the blues.
The army would move on to the mountain that the arimaspi used as a home and they would butcher everything inside, there would be none left. Nobody hated slaves, and it would be too difficult to train all that was left of their race while trying to breed them up to a stable number again. They would be remembered though, after all once their pelts were washed and combed they were actually quite soft and plush. Plus their bones were very sturdy and fracture proof for the most part, so they made great ornaments and decorations! Yes, they would be remembered... for the failures they were.
Side Chapter Two: In which Celestia worries about things...
The day had been going fairly well so far. Though there was little time to think about the Overlord himself lately, there was more than enough time to see the results of his presence on the world stage.
Due to his abnormally low taxes regarding things entering and leaving his country, trade was booming to the south and inadvertently spreading wealth to all the surrounding countries. Where as before there were only small frontier outposts, there were now booming trade towns, places where rare and exotic items were being traded from places like Zebraka in the south, to the Griffon kingdoms in the east and even some items from the dragon lands to the west. As we were the first to start trade with them we had some of the best deals, making Equestria all the more prosperous.
It sure seemed that everyone was happy to take advantage of the new trade routes, especially those of... ill repute. From what she had heard, there were essentially no bans on what could and could not be sold or bought by anyone leading to more than a few... shall we say... unhealthy products being put into circulation. In fact, the only thing that came to mind as an example of something banned from sale and ownership were the strict laws against slavery, which I approved of. Oh, and gems, for some reason, the Overlord was very interested in buying as many gems as he could...
One of the most surprising, and slightly worrying, allowances that the Domain gave to its citizens was the ability to safely study and practice necromancy, and many other dark arts that were forbidden in most of the civilized world. Though it was somewhat reassuring that in order to do so one needed a licence and they were watched near constantly, "for the safety of the other citizens, of course," or so the Overlord had said.
In fact there were surprisingly few laws overall, with only basic things being illegal like murder, theft and rape. Other than that there were almost no rules other than what each community decided for themselves. From what I had heard there were some rather odd ones too, like one village that had made it mandatory for all citizens to eat pie on Thursdays. Not the weirdest thing I've ever heard of, but still pretty far up there.
The effect that all of this had on Equestria itself was becoming plainer by the day, in more ways than one would expect. The prices on certain goods that had previously been difficult to find had dropped to almost nothing, ruining several high fairing businesses and spawning several dozen new ones.
Technological, magical and medical progress was on the rise as experiments that would be illegal here were done with only a consent form and some small government observation over there, cures for painful diseases thought incurable were already being made, new theories on magic that challenged everything we thought we knew and newer, cleaner ways of powering various mechanical items, such as trains, that were used daily.
"This is possibly the best thing to happen to Equestria since the Griffon Kingdoms decided to declare peace and ally with us."
I sighed heavily as I reached my quarters, one of my guards asking me, "Another hard day, your Majesty?"
"Sometimes I wonder if the nobles are trying to kill me by annoying me to death, I mean how am I supposed to keep a defunct company from going under, force ponies to buy their goods?"
"Perhaps you could let Princ-" the other guard started before I cut him off.
"While I love the fact that my guards care about me so much, again, I must state that I will not be taking a vacation. I would just spend the whole time worrying about whether or not the nobles had burned everything to the ground while I was gone."
The guards just smiled, nodded and uttered a "Yes, Princess." before returning to their statue-like guard stance.
I entered my rooms, a rather impressive if overly ornate set of royal amenities. So many memories in these rooms... some good and some... less so. I shook my head to clear my head and went over to my desk to hopefully finish some paperwork before I had to sleep. It always amused me how, even though my sister and I were by all accounts immortal, we still got cranky if we didn't sleep every day.
"Uhh... I hate paperwork..."
After about two, three hours of drifting in between attentively reading the nobles requests, (and rejecting a majority of them, I mean really, That? With... With a rubber chicken?) and skimming requests from common ponies, farmers, craftsponies and the like, (Making more protected natural parks did sound nice!) when I felt some of my wards light up. The fact that they didn't stop whoever had set them off meant that it could only be one of two ponies, and I was more than happy to greet either of them.
Twilight teleported into the center of the room, seemingly in a bit of a mood if the state of her mane and coat were any indication. It wasn't the first time I had seen her like this and it almost certainly wouldn't be the last, and yet every time she always had the same reaction of shame. Like she thought she had somehow disappointed me by having a mini brake-down in front of me, as though she could ever really disappoint me... she had already done so much for me and besides, it wasn't like I hadn't watched her grow up and already knew all of her quirks.
"Princess, I need to talk to you, it's very important! It's about Nobody! Uh, I mean, the Overlord Nobody, not just nobody nobody, see-" Twilight all but yelled while trying to do her best Pinkie Pie impression.
"Twilight! Deep breaths, calm down, then tell me what you need to talk to me about, okay?" I interrupted her. While seeing how far she could have gotten on one breath would have been funny, this actually did sound somewhat serious.
Twilight looked a little sheepish before sitting down and doing as I had asked, calming down and even taking the time to smooth her mane down a little.
"Now, begin." I said when she looked up at me to confirm she was calm enough to speak.
"Okay, so, you know how the Overlord didn't want me to go in his lab when we were visiting?" she began, tapping her hooves together.
"Oh, Twilight, you didn't..." I thought with some sadness.
"Well, I may have... kinda... gone in anyway?" she said as she cringed away before saying in a rush, "But see, the thing is I found something!"
"Let's hope the Overlord is forgiving of 'accidental' theft of research."
"While I am upset at your actions, we were guests in his home, he asked you for one thing, privacy, and you violated that, I will ask; what did you find, Twilight?"
"At first I couldn't make heads or tails of it, but I recently made a breakthrough! It was the formula for a teleportation spell, one strong enough to send you to a different universe! It was actually quite brilliant, you see it contained a two interconnected 'no maintenance' spells that would convert matter into energy, and then convert the energy into it's magical counterpart. That would then fuel both of the previous spells as well as the teleportation spell."
"While that does sound impressive Twilight, I fail to see why you needed to tell me about it in person." I told her, genuinely impressed with the level of complexity the Overlord's spell contained... and perhaps a little unnerved by it, he was, by his own admission, a novice when it came to magic. If he was capable of figuring this out now...
"It's the power requirements of the spell, teleporting to the other side of the planet would cost about the same amount of energy as one of your feathers, but getting to another universe? Like his home universe?! It would literally cost everything, as in all of our universe, all at once!"
At once I felt the heavy weight of existential terror grip me. My ponies, my kingdom, my sister, all could disappear without even a flash to warn me. All so one being could find a way back to...
To family. And comfort. And friends.
I suppose, from that viewpoint, I could somewhat understand.
"We need to stop him before it's too late! I can have the girls here in less than ten minutes, if we get the Elements of Harmony we might be able to seal him away!" Twilight yelled charging up her horn.
"Twilight, stop!" I told, bordering on commanded, her. "I will handle this myself. I want you to not tell anypony about this, not even the other elements, do you understand?"
"B-But-" she stammered.
"Do you understand, Twilight?" I asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.
"Yes." She all but whimpered. Great, and now I feel like I just kicked a small, purple, bookish puppy.
She teleported away before I could say anything else, so I walked over to my balcony. While I couldn't see his tower over the Macintosh hills, I knew I would be there soon. I needed answers, and if necessary...
I needed to protect my ponies once again.
Chapter 23: Cleaning up. (Both bodies, and diplomatic incidents!)
It had taken three more days to completely sweep the caverns below the mountain home of the arimaspi, but with the addition of the blues casualty's on my side were all but wiped out. In original Overlord style, swarm tactics worked best now, simply overwhelming the enimy with seemingly endless numbers that didn't stay dead.
There were no more arimaspi... which was sad to a degree, as seeing a whole race disappear was never really a fun thing. Then again, I'm pretty sure no one would grumble about mosquitoes vanishing from the world, and the arimaspi were basically large furry mosquitoes to me. Plus I got a lot of gold, iron, meat, fur and I even found the Arcanium Smelter! Seems worth it to me, is all I'm saying.
Plus with this little conquest, my Domain now reaches almost across the whole southern end of Equestria! The only areas that I haven't secured are the Hayseed Swamps and the Forbidden Jungle, once both of those are mine the only way to really expand will be actual war. That is, fighting with actual governments with army's, not near rabid tribesmen with sticks and basic metallurgy.
Or, you know, there was that whole diplomacy thing. I could try doing that for a change... Nah, I'd probably just lose patience and accidentally start a war anyway, I'd rather just mean to start a war then get roped into one.
Anyway, back to the spoils of war, while the arimaspi pelts were rather coarse and smelly at first, one of the changelings found that if you washed it in a pool for about six, seven hours, eventually it became soft and fluffy, almost like some weird mix between silk and wool. Plus, to the surprise of any who had seen a living arimaspi, it was all pure, snow white in color, which meant that dyeing it would be a breeze.
Not to mention with the amount of meat we had gotten, we had needed to get right on curing it or it would have spoiled before we could distribute it to the other towns and dens across the Domain. At least for a few months, no one would be going hungry, I'd make sure of that!
With all the gold, iron and other metals we had found not only was the treasury sure to be overflowing, but production of items by the minions of the tower would skyrocket. With all the gems to use as lifeforce for new minions, in conjunction with the lifeforce gathered from the arena, I had already started to set up the mountain to be a new minion stronghold since more minions were on the way then ever before.
And then there was the Arcanium smelter! As Gnarl once said, the smelter of smelters! Once I got that up and running, made me a full suit of armor and a bad-ass sword I'd be near unstoppable! Not that I was all that beatable now, but I mean that I'd be able to take on fully grown dragons without breaking a sweat, and that was something I was very interested in.
Yes, things were looking up for us... Now I was waiting for the twist, the hook, the thing that would slightly knock us down a peg or even destroy us if it went badly enough.
"You're such a pessimist..." I heard Sarra pout from down in her hive through the Hive Mind. She had been complaining of fatigue lately, so she had taken to staying solely in the hive beneath the Tower. Most of the hives in the badlands were just underground cities at this point, with the Tower being the capital of both the above ground and below ground parts of the Domain.
Aaaand there it is. As I entered the Tower from the base I saw Celestia sitting to the side of the grand staircase leading into the rest of the tower waiting for me. She looked... less than happy at the moment... Might've had something to do with the light glare and aggressive body language.
"Nobody, we need to talk. Now." She said in a tone that all but screamed 'no nonsense'.
"Or not I guess, since you seem to be correct..." I Sarra nervously joked/whimpered.
"Of course, follow me Celestia." I said as calmly to her as I could while silently agreeing with Sarra and simultaneously trying to figure out what Celestia could be angry about...
It couldn't be the arimaspi, they were a threat and nuisance to everyone, she might've had some misgivings about the end of a race but again, mosquitoes.
It might be about my expansion, maybe she thought that I would be giving her the land I took from the arimaspi. If that was the case then I would have to disappoint her, as I had no plans on giving up any land, period.
Had Gnarl sent an... inappropriate letter? I wouldn't put it past him to try sending a threatening letter to a neighboring countries leader in an attempt to force a war between the two of us... That could get ugly, real quick.
Or maybe... some other reason?
"She might want to profess her undying love for you?" Sarra provided.
"Is she giving off any love?" I asked.
"No... But maybe it's just hidden? It is possible to do that you know..."
"Unless pony courtship is incredibly odd, I don't think that Celestia has any romantic feelings for me."
After a few minutes of awkward silence broken only by the sound of heavy foot falls and light hoof falls, we reached a decent sized dinning room that I had decided to use as an emergency diplomatic meeting hall. It was much the same as the rest of my Tower, high ceilings, light stone work, dark velvet curtains and long stain glass windows to let in some natural light. Though it did sport a nice polished ceder wood table surrounded with equally polished matching chairs, nothing to impressive, but considering this room used to be a pile of shit, (literally, the minions latrine had a busted pipe in the roof of this room making it leak everywhere) I thought it was very nice, very well cleaned up. There wasn't even a smell!
Celestia and I sat across from each other at the far end of the room, I had ordered a minion to close the door and keep it closed until I told it otherwise, not even Sarra was allowed in. Now, that couldn't stop her from listening in, but there was no reason to let others know that.
"So Celestia, what was so important that you felt the need to demand to speak to me?" I asked her, still trying to keep my voice calm and not let the small panic attack I was having show.
"Hmm... " She sighed, looking like she was collecting her thoughts. "First, I have to apologize for the actions of my student, she is still learning the meaning of boundaries. It is partially my fault, I never explained the seriousness of boundaries in regard to diplomatic meetings."
I was somewhat confused for a moment, then I remembered when they had visited and Twilight had gone into my lab after I had told her not to. I could use this to my advantage, feign outrage and demand compensation... No, that wouldn't be a good idea, a reputation is more important that what I could borderline steal from others. If I were to seem like I would flip out at any given moment the no one would want to deal with me unless they had no other choice... It would be better to seem forgiving, everyone loved dealing with a nice guy, even if that person wasn't actually a nice guy.
Before I could let Celestia know that I really didn't care about what Twilight did she started speaking again.
"The problem is what she found. While I am upset at her methods, the spell she found is cause for serious concern and for the safety of not only my ponies, but the rest of the world, I have to ask if you plan on using it."
"... What spell?" Celestia's glare intensified, causing me to sigh, sag and lean my hand against my head. "I am not trying to antagonize you Celestia, I really don't know what spell you're referring to."
"The one that could destroy our universe!? The one you came up with!? The one you left in your laboratory witch let Twilight find it in the first place!?!" She all but 'royal canterlot voice'ed at me.
"Look, I've come up with at least seven world ending spells since I got here, all of which are doodles in my lab, so unless you want to tell me specifically which one it is, I think we can move on don't you?" I said while letting the fatigue and annoyance leak through into my voice. Celestia for her part looked like she had just been bitch slapped and called a slut, it was almost the 'deer in the headlights' look, but it had just a bit too much 'What the fuck did he just say?' to match up.
"First, you can't tell me that the idea of magic ending the world has never crossed your mind, making up spells is just how I handle that. If I can understand how a spell works uninterrupted, then I can make a counter-spell. Second, I must tell you that I don't really care about what you all did while you were guests here, short of burning the place down or harming/killing anyone important. Finally, I am both shocked and insulted that you would think I would ever use a spell that could end this world! Such a loss of life would be wholly unethical, unfeasible and non-conducive." I took a breath while noticing that Celestia at least had the good grace to look slightly ashamed "Now, before I ask you to leave, is there anything else you wanted to speak about?"
"Yes..." She started uneasily, slightly fidgeting. "I need your help with something..."
"Oh boy, here we go... Will I get to rest any time soon?"
"Probably not~" Sarra sang to me.
Chapter 24: Convincing, or 'Ignoring a rather good story'.
I was slightly stunned, enough to just silently stare at Celestia for a moment while trying to reboot my mind. I suppose that she took my silence as anger, as she had a very shameful expression, ears down, tears in the eyes while looking down, even her hair had gone straight.
"I'm sorry about the start of this conversation, I didn't really think that you could do such a thing, but I needed to make sure for the safety of my ponies and the other races of this world." I nodded a bit at her words, "I hope that you can forgive me for the accusation, but can you really blame me for this?"
"What?" I asked, still slightly flabbergasted. My slight empathetic ability due to the hive mind kicked up at that moment, I could feel how stressed Celestia was, it was like a dam trying to hold back a torrential flood of negative emotions... and I felt the dam crumble.
"What do you mean what? You mean the fact that I've been able to accurately predict how the world stage will go for over a thousand years, then suddenly, out of the blue, some armored giant with a legion of violent imps shows up and conquers at least three quarters of the southern part of my continent, something that the nobles are getting extremely antsy about by the way, and the only other time something this big happened and I didn't see it coming was when my sister tried to overthrow me?! Or what about the fact that most of the other world leaders surrounding us are damn near panicking?! The only thing keeping them from declaring war is the fact that your trade practices are some of the most lax, with the lowest taxes, in the world! And none of us know anything about you! You've been here for almost a full year, plenty of time to talk with other leaders, or even invite others to come talk with you! As far as we know, whenever something gets in your way or annoys you just crush it and move on!"
At this point she had run out of breath and collapsed into a heap of quietly gasping and sobbing mare. Over the course of her rant her voice had risen in pitch and volume until she was basically screeching her frustrations at me, and to completely honest I did feel somewhat bad about how much pain I had put her under without meaning to.
If I'm going to hurt someone, I'd like to want to hurt them first if possible.
I remained sitting at my end of the table, waiting for her to calm down. I really don't like it when girls cry, (like any sane male does?) but at the same time Celestia and I weren't close enough for me to feel comfortable actually trying to comfort her, so instead I spent that time thinking about what she had said.
I couldn't really argue against anything she had said, she was right. I hadn't talked with anyone other than her, and even then it was only for a brief time, not enough to really learn anything about me. Perhaps enough time for me to convince them that I wouldn't attack them outright, which was my goal at the time, but all that meant was that I wasn't an enemy at the moment and that would worry any leader, especially considering my recent land grab. I couldn't even blame the other leaders for keeping their distance, they hadn't even gotten an assurance that I wouldn't attack them at any moment. For all they knew, they were next on my hit list...
Perhaps now was the time to consolidate what I had gained, give the others some time to calm down and forget before trying to expand some more... I had been getting some disturbing reports while destroying the arimaspi...
Celestia had cried herself out and was simply leaning against the table with her eyes closed, quietly hiccuping every few moments. Her eyes and most of her face was red and puffy, snot was dribbling out of one of her nostrils and her hair was a mix of straight and knotted clumps. In short, she looked like hell.
"Celestia..." I said with forced calmness, waiting for her to lift her head and look at me. "What, exactly, do you need my help with?"
She just stared at me for a moment, like she was surprised that I would try to put the conversation back on track, before sitting up straight, cleaning herself up and clearing her throat.
"Yes, well you see almost eleven hundred years ago, in the far north of our kingdom was a fiefdom known as the Crystal Empire. It was named so due to the incredible amount of rare magical crystal formations from which most of the buildings in the capital of the province were carved, the effects of which were an offshoot of the main pony races."
"Oh, so that's whats going on..." I thought to myself.
"What? What do you mean by that?" I heard Sarra ask me.
"Nothing, don't worry about it. It's nothing I won't be able to handle."
"Is this one of those things you're afraid of me learning? I wish you would at least give me a hint, I'm a big girl, I can take whatever it is!"
"Oh, so you think you're ready for deep existential knowledge of how your universe works, the effects of destiny and my possibly destructive impact upon it?"
"... Maybe, I don't know! But the only way to find out is to tell me!"
Now, this wasn't the first time Sarra and I had had this conversation, in fact I had lost count of the times she had asked to see what was in the areas of my head that I wouldn't let anyone in. In hindsight I realize that she was being very clever, bringing this up again when I was already unbalanced by Celestia breaking down in front of me, reigniting the pent up frustration of having the same argument over and over. Finally I just said to myself, 'fuck it, if she want's to know so badly then I just won't stop her.'
"Fine! You want to know?! You're a made up story! A story that I know the most of, it was never important enough to me to learn all of it, but I know enough to know that I wasn't supposed to end up here! The ponies are the protagonists, that's why I don't want to fight them, if I do, then I'll lose!"
"Oh, please, like the ponies could- Wait, WHAT? I'm a fairy tale? Am I the bad guy? Girl? Whatever, do I die soon? Later? Do I want to know? Is everything a lie? Am I nothing but a puppet dancing on the strings of some all powerful writer? What do you mean the ponies are the protagonists? Is there anything we can do to change something? Do you think people know about that thing we do with the banana and tub of choco-" she asked, mostly to herself, becoming quickly more and more panicky with time until she was screaming in both our heads.
"SARRA!" I screamed for the third time during her tirade, finally getting her attention. "The only answers that matter are, we are real from our perspective and don't think about it. And as for the last one, I hope they don't as the story was mostly told to children."
"Oh... so we're a children's story... I think if anything that makes me feel worse about all this..."
"Sarra, real from our perspective, and don't think about it. If you really need more of an explanation I'll talk to you about it later, but right now I need to listen to Celesta so I can know what to prepare for."
"Wait, wouldn't you already know what to expect since you know the story?"
"I know most of the story, but there are things I don't know. I didn't know about the multiple changeling hives or you, though I'm glad it was a surprise."
"Hrmp... Charmer..." She thought with some grump in her voice.
"I love you too, now please let me concentrate." I thought with not so grump.
"Do you think she's prettier then me?"
"Roughly the same in attractiveness, but I doubt she's as kinky as you."
I could feel the happiness and satisfaction coming from her.
I focused back on the conversation in time to hear Celestia saying "- and now, via the vision, I became aware that the empire will be returning in three days time, bringing the shadow of Sombra's black magic back with it. While I have the utmost confidence in my student, I feel that you would be particularly skilled at defeating him as your own magic is very similar, though a bit more... present then his."
"Giblet!" I yelled out, practically making Celestia jump out of her skin, "When is the earliest that my new armor can be ready?"
Celestia looked confused for a moment before we heard the padding of tiny feet quickly followed by Giblet entering the room. I liked Giblet, he didn't talk much and he enjoyed his job, he was a very simple yet pleasant minion.
"Two days if thin, three and a half if right." He grunted at me.
"Will your student be able to hold him off for half a day?" I asked, turning back to face Celestia.
"I planned on sending Princess Cadence and her husband, the captain of the royal guard, first to secure the empire as a staging ground anyway, arriving one day late is perfect to aid Twilight."
"Do you not care about what happens to Cadence? Or are you just that confident in her ability to force out Sombra?"
Celestia looked aghast, "Of course I care about what happens to her!"
"Yes, sorry... It just slipped out." I stood, stretching towards the ceiling as Celestia did her own stretch.
"So sire, are we going to help them only to betray them and take the land after they do all the heavy lifting?" Gnarl quietly asked Nobody as we waved to Celestia as she made her way back to her kingdom.
"No Gnarl, isolated plots of land are too difficult to defend properly. Not to mention that doing that would probably start a war with the ponies, which in turn would start an all out brawl with everyone else. Possibly in the world, but even just the few surrounding countries would be bad enough."
"Not to mention the plot armor the ponies have... No wonder they've always done so well... ... But what if we could make ourselves the main characters?"
Side Chapter three: No more Shame, No more fear, No more dread
The sun was rising on yet another glorious day in the town of Shepton, unofficial capital city of the Domain of the Overlord.
A day that would normally see a certain pony, one Night Cap, inside of a deep cave, practicing his craft on whatever poor soul had happened across him the night before.
Night Cap was a necromancer, which boiled down to making dead things do the things he didn't want to. He had been at it for nearly forty years now, but thanks to the necromantic magic in him he didn't look a day over twenty, making sure the gray stayed out of his rusty red mane and keeping his yellow coat sleek and smooth. He was especially proud of the black silk cloak he had taken from his late teacher, it covered him completely and if he channeled magic into it while he ran it would turn him slightly invisible for a time. It had saved his neck more than once, and made it easier to get information from the ponies of the town he used to live near.
Such as the information of a new kingdom nearby that apparently saw his work for the art it was, not only allowing its practice within its borders but encouraging necromancers to emigrate so as to save the lives of guards, civilians and the necromancers themselves.
The idea had intrigued him, so after a few days of deliberation and packing he had made the move. All was going well, much better than he had anticipated in fact, until a guard had asked for his permit. After expressing his confusion, as no one had told him anything about a permit, the guard had been kind enough to explain that without a state permit any form of necromancy was highly illegal, punishable by death and subsequent experimentation by licenced necromancers. He had then pointed Night Cap to the proper office to acquire a state permit and told him he had one week to get one.
That was five days ago.
Though that wasn't to say that Night Cap was being lazy, he had entered the office as soon as his conversation with the guard was over. The problem was that due to the bureaucracy involved in getting licenced he had spent literally every day since he first entered the office filling out paperwork and forms and providing obscure personal information from sunrise to sunset. At this point tearing his hair out would be more enjoyable, he may have centuries left to live before deciding on lichdom or not but that didn't mean he wanted to spend it on paperwork!
The only thing that gave him any comfort in this situation was that the pretty receptionist seemed to understand his frustration and didn't mind helping him fill everything out correctly. That or she was just fed up with necromancers improperly filling out long forms that boil down to "I won't kill anybody unless the government says I can", forcing her to make them fill it out again.
"Hey Night! Here to fill out the last of the forms?" The secretary asked from behind her desk as Night Cap entered the pleasantly cool office.
"Yes, Finally! I can't wait to be done with this!" He cheered, pumping a hoof in celebration.
"Aww, but then we won't see each other as much! What, do you not like me or something?" She said while putting a hoof to her chest in mock-hurt.
"Please, it won't be the last time we'll see each other! I have to come in next year to renew this anyway?" Night Cap gulped and then nervously asked while shuffling, "Besides- Uh- Wh- well, uh, we could always hang out sometime? Right?"
"Oh, u-um, I'd like that, really, I would... It's just, umm..." She started
Night felt his stomach drop."You already have somepony. That's okay, I mean who wouldn't want you as their special somepony. I understand."
"No! No no no! Thats not it at all! I'm uh, single... It's just, well," she fidgeted with her hooves "I'm not actually a pony. I'm a Changeling. I guess I'm just more comfortable in my disguise than in my own skin. Chitin. Whatever."
"Aaaand?" Night asked after a few seconds of silence.
"And? And what?"
"Well I don't see a problem here, but apparently you do... so what's the problem?" Night answered.
"W-Well, It's just that, in the past when a pony found out that their loved one was a changeling they would leave them, so..."
"So you assumed that I would do the same?" Night asked, receiving a meek nod " Unless the last few days have been lost on you, and I doubt that they were, I'm a necromancer. We kind of have a bad reputation everywhere, worse than changelings at least. So you being one means literally nothing to me, If- If anything, it makes you more exotic and that's only ever a plus."
She blushed at his words, and agreed to a date later that day. Night also got his licence, which was good for wholly different reasons.
He and his brother, Flam, had come to the Domain of the Overlord Nobody in order to have a better chance of con- ahem, selling perfectly legitimate contraptions of dubious quality. Mostly because they had been to most of the towns and cities of Equestria and due to their run in with a certain element of honesty, even the places they haddn't been too knew something of them.
Angry guards were not something that the duo were fond of, so what if they had provided faulty appliances and attempted to borderline coerce a land deed or two? None of it was, strictly speaking, illegal! Morally questionable? Yes. Scummy? Absolutely! But illegal? Absolutely Not! ...Well, mostly not.
They were supposed to have a clean start here! A place where they could start over (or not) at their leisure! If he was being completely honest with himself, Flim kinda wanted to settle down. Road life was fun, sure, but it also wore on you after a while and being known nationally as a slime ball wasn't exactly a goal most ponies had growing up. The only reason he didn't bring it up with his brother was because he seemed so enthralled by the life they had been living, claiming that while there were some downsides, the upsides more than made up for it.
"Brother, please tell me you have a plan to get us out of this!?" Flim asked his brother with no small amount of fear in his voice.
"I- Well- " Flam was silent for a moment before giving a deep sigh, "No, brother. No I do not."
Flim watched as a tear rolled down his brother's' face without so much as a sob.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this..." Flim said, more to himself than to anyone else.
"No... No it wasn't." Flam agreed.
It had started much the same as all of their other cons had, roll into town, show off some 'amazing' creation, get ponies to buy it and then scram before they realized that it was junk. It was at step two that they had run into problems, those problems being called licenses.
What they couldn't have known before this whole fiasco was of the inventor's guild, the registration required, the laws surrounding what was under their purview and the punishment for breaking those laws. By making and then attempting to sell their little doodad they had accidentally broken several high ranking and low ranking laws. The part that made Flim the most bitter about this was that the law allowed those outside of the guild to invent things, they just needed a proof of approval from the guild to sell it.
And so, now he and his brother were in a cell awaiting their execution.
It was due three days after their imprisonment, (in order to file all of the paperwork, inform the appropriate persons, ect.) and they had gotten no sleep at all last night, mostly from screaming their heads off about how they were innocent. The guards responded by telling them that if they had just said that they didn't know about the guild or the laws they would have been let go. Instead Flam had assured the officer that 'they indeed had their licence, and would you please just wait a moment for him to go and get it' then proceed to make a half assed fake that looked nothing like a real licence and hoof it to the officer with a shit eating grin.
It was the dawn of the final day, their execution was scheduled to happen at sundown. At this point they had given up hope of getting out of this, instead they spent their time reflecting on their lives. They had both found quite a few regrets... they had talked about a great many things together, many private, some known to both. They still weren't happy, but they were ready for tonight...
Until there was a clang and suddenly there was a diamond dog standing on the other side of the bars. He was holding their last 'invention', it was supposed to be something to chop things extremely quickly, which it did, it just also made an absolutely horrible mess.
"You two made this?" He asked while raising the device up a little to put focus on it.
Flim and Flam looked at each other in surprise, both thinking 'Could this be our chance?!' before vigorously nodding to the diamond dog.
"Hmm... well, I happen to be a member of the inventors guild, maybe you've heard of us?" he sarcastically asked with a cruel smile, "Anyway, as a member it is within my rights to offer others a position within the guild, and while I'm sure that you must have a rather busy schedule, I could be persuaded to induct you into the guild, clear up your little spat with the guards?"
"Yes!" Flam yelled, throwing himself at the bars of the cell.
"Anything we could give you, aside from our souls (we actually still need to pay off those iou's), but literally anything else!"
The dog's eyes flashed for a split second, before simply hissing out a "Yeeesssss..."
It was a normal day in ponyville, which of course meant that the town was under siege from some horrible, magic fueled monster from the everfree.
This time it was a magically animated ball of slimy green vines and flowers. No, not like that! Get your mind out of the gutter, the slime was a numbing agent and the flowers spewed acidic pollen. Honestly, poor Flitter had the same thought and now she needed to spend three weeks in the hospital, she was lucky anyone was able to save her at all!
Anyway, after the old song and dance the girls all went to the library to go over what had happened and see if there was a friendship lesson anywhere in there.
"Well, I mean now my head feels kinda funny, mostly 'cus I can't feel it anymore. And not funny haha, but funny weird, that kind of funny. My mane is still there right? It wasn't hit with one of those pollen clouds?"
"No, Pinks, your mane is fine. A little slimy, but all around okay." Rainbow said to the breaker of rules, both physical and metaphysical, that was also known as Pinkie Pie.
"Oh, good! I was afraid that my hammer would slip out and then we'd all be in trouble because I don't think there is enough space in here."
"What does a hammer have to do with there not being enough space in my library?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.
"You need a hammer to have hammerspace silly! How else would I carry all my stuff?"
The rest of the girls looked at each other before AJ said, "To save all our sanity's, I'm just gonna change the subject. So Twi! How'd that Overlord and Celestia thing go!"
"Oooh, good choice!" Rarity murmured as she and Fluttershy sat down to watch what they assumed would be an entertaining, if long winded, conversation.
Instead all they got was a visibly upset Twilight who said "I don't know. The Princess went without me and I haven't heard back from her since."
"I'm sure everythings totally fine, it's Celestia for ponies sakes! She's probably just making sure those changelings know not to mess with Equestria anymore!" Rainbow said while showing off a few kung fu moves.
While AJ and Fluttershy chortled and giggled respectively Rarity chastised Rainbow, telling her "Now, now, darling! There is no reason to assume that the Princess or the Overlord resorted to violence! They very well could have just talked it out like the reasonable adults they are."
"Yea... But my idea is a lot cooler... So I win." Rainbow visibly thought out, crossing her front hooves from her perpetually hovering position above the others.
"This isn't a game Rainbow!" Twilight suddenly snapped, "The Overlord could be plotting the end of our world right now, the Princess could be in danger, or worse, and the worst part of all this is I can't even be fully angry at either of them, because the Princess just want's to protect us and the Overlord just want's to go home! Or not!! An even worse option is that I panicked and sent the Princess to cause a diplomatic incident for no reason!!!"
The inside of the library was silent... well, more so then it was supposed to be. The others had formed a half circle facing Twilight, all showing some amount of distress at their friends outburst.
"I-I... I'm sorry..." Twilight just managed to choke out before breaking down. Her friends were at her side before she could hit the ground, hugging, murmuring calming words and otherwise caring for their crying group leader.
"Sooo... Is this a bad time...?" They heard an unknown masculine voice ask.
The girls looked up as one, three of them gasped, two were confused and one had their pure white face scrunch up like they had just took a big bite out of a lemon.
"Prince Blueblood?" five of them asked with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Rarity just huffed an "Oh, it's you." and called it a day.
No more... Okay so some dread. What? Two out of three isn't that bad!
While I had been hoping that Miss Rarity would have either forgotten or forgiven what happened at the gala by now, (it had been months after all!) it seemed she was still holding a grudge. I am not a petty man, regardless of what others may say, but I am a prince! Even national heroes should respect that my lifestyle wasn't all fancy parties and fine wine, I had responsibilities! I couldn't just allow mares to throw themselves at me for fun! ...Though based on past experience, Miss Rarity seemed to be somewhat shallow, so maybe she did think that it was meant as an insult to her specifically...
Anyway, the only way to respond without looking like an ass, (no offence meant to our proud, hard working friends and neighbors) was to simply reply "Yes, it is me." to Miss Rarity before turning to Miss Sparkle "Do you mind if I come in? There is something important to discuss with you." I noticed Miss Rarity trying to leave up some stairs, so before she could move out of range I added "All of you, even you Miss Rarity."
Miss Rarity gave a very undignified huff (with a bit of tossed mane for flavor) but did come back down to talk. The others all started moving around all at once, Miss Sparkle trying to walk beside me while speaking to me (something about asking where Auntie Celestia was and if she was okay), Miss Pie bouncing into the kitchen saying something about sweets, Miss Applejack moving over a chair (that he assumed she wanted him to sit on, since she was pushing it towards him) and Miss Dash was pushing a chair for one of her friends seeing as she was pushing into the corner currently occupied by a slightly quivering Miss Fluttershy. That or she was building a wall around her, though whether it was to protect her or me I didn't know.
Once everypony was seated, calmly or otherwise, there was a moment of silence before Miss Sparkle decided to speak up.
"So, I really am glad to see you again Blueblood," Miss Rarity supplied a well timed snort to which Miss Pie giggled, both hooves covering her snout, "but I need to know, the Princess is okay right? The Overlord didn't try anything, did he?"
While I had nothing against Miss Sparkle, she and I were actually quite good friends especially now that she could rip her muzzle out of whatever book she had at the moment, her devotion to Auntie was somewhat aggravating. I mean really, if she wasn't then would I be here talking to her instead of heading to the Domain to get Auntie back?
"Yes, Auntie is fine. Actually she asked me to come tell all of you something, she would tell you herself but Auntie is rather busy right now with matters of state."
Celestia huffed from behind the muzzle, she had given up struggling against her bonds half an hour ago. Enchanted Steel was, while very rare due to being hard to make, just strong enough to hold an allicorn, if only for a short while. Just because she had said 'not now' didn't mean she would put it off forever, Luna could have waited until she could write a letter to her favorite student.
"I don't need one that badly..."
Her masseuse had resorted to using a sledgehammer on the muscles between her wings and around her shoulders as his hooves were neither hard enough to withstand the force needed, or able to provide said force in the first place.
"So what is it? Some new bad guy? The Overlord gonna try a sneak attack? We gonna have to go help him do something or is it something else?" Miss Dash casually asked while leaning back mid air.
"Something like that," I said with a light smirk, "She was somewhat vague and I'm afraid the conversation happened so quickly that I won't be able to repeat it verbatim, but it was something about something or someone, or both, having 'come back' up north. Apparently she has already sent both prince Shining Armor and Princess Cadenza ahead, alone, to 'secure the area' for some reason."
"Wait, my brother and Cadence are already there?" Miss Sparkle asked, surprised. "Then we need to go and help them, right now!"
I waved Miss Sparkle down as she was trying to stand, telling her "Now now, I understand the urge to rush to the aid of one's family members, believe me I do, but the Princess was insistent that you wait for your plus one."
"Plus One?"
"Yes. You see, as an attempt to bring our two countries closer together, Princess Celestia has asked The Overlord To assist you in this matter."
"What!? We don't need his help! We can handle this just fine by ourselves!" Miss Dash angrily protested.
"I'm sure that you can, your record speaks for itself after all, but that is neither here nor there at this point. Whether or not you accept it, he is going to be going with you this time."
"Okay," Miss Sparkle began, trying (and succeeding) to distract her blue friend, "How badly does Equestria need this?"
So, She isn't completely inept at politics. Well, that's good to know. "The truth is we don't know. So far the Overlord has kept to his word regarding matters of military and border expansion, but due to how cold he is to us we just don't know how we really stand with him."
"So, to be clear, this is to both get in his good graces and to evaluate his combat ability in case he proves to be a threat to Equestria?"
"Publicly? No. Privately? Yes. This is a state secret, so Miss Applejack will just have to avoid talking about it and the rest of you will have to keep quiet or we will deny the whole thing, obviously."
"Obviously." Miss Twilight said with a semi vacant stare. I couldn't help but wonder what exactly she was thinking about, but it was basically irrelevant as she quickly refocused on me.
"Then of course we will happily work with our neighbor to the south, in the hopes of maintaining and strengthening the bonds of friendship between our two peoples."
"I must say Miss Sparkle, I'm glad to see that you were able to remember your diplomacy lessons even after being sent off to live out in the middle of nowhere." I said with a sarcastic smile.
"I like it out here, not as much noise as Canterlot. Great for reading." She sniped back.
"I do wish you would visit more often, the castle is so much more boring without the odd explosion here or there."
Miss Sparkle gave a bark of laughter "Two times! Two times and nopony ever let's you forget!"
Her friends all seemed surprised at how we joked around, though they all seemed quite pleased as well if both Miss Pie and Apple's grins were anything to go by.
"Well, that seems to be all for now, until the next crisis Miss Sparkle?"
"Of course Prince Blueblood, don't be a stranger!"
At the dismissal all of her friends started to get up and go about their business, Miss Dash, Apple, and Rarity all giving mild complaints about being forced to work with the Overlord while Miss Pie and Fluttershy made comments about how they looked forward to the experience. I waited until they were all gone before turning back to Miss Sparkle.
I dropped my usual upper class tone and asked "I hope I don't need to tell you to be careful on this one?"
"Thank you for the concern, but I'll be fine. I promise." She had that look in her eye, like she already had everything figured out.
"I mean it. Celestia said that whatever has come back up north was filled with so much dark magic that it might as well have been evil incarnate. She said it was torturing others for amusement when she and Luna finally arrived to kill it, and the most they could do was keep it contained and asleep. You've been lucky up until now, for whatever reason none of the monsters you've fought have actually tried to kill you, but this one will and we don't know if we can really trust the Overlord not to turn on you."
"So I'll have an enemy on two fronts, nothing I wasn't taught how to handle... I'll be careful Blueblood, I mean it."
"Good, I don't need to stand at the grave of another personal student while Celestia cries on my shoulder." I said as I walked off to head back to Canterlot.
My friends and I were waiting at the train station for the Overlord and his transportation. Using both Sparky (with the CMC's permission) and Scratch to send and receive letters from the Domain we had been able to work out that the Overlord would be arriving by train around ten minutes from now, which was great since it meant that I could get out my pent up anxiety and make sure the girls and Spike knew what we needed to do.
"I don't get why we don't just ditch him the moment we get to the Empire."
Especially Rainbow.
"For the third time Rainbow, it's because we will be representing all of Equestria and giving him the cold shoulder would at the least be rude and at worst cause a war. We really don't know what he's like when he's not playing host and ancient Empires don't pop back into existence every day, so this is really our only chance to see what he's like when there is new, unclaimed territory, an enemy and ally's nearby."
Rainbow just pouted in the air, mumbling something that probably went along the lines of "We could take him."
What I couldn't understand was why Rainbow thought that there was any evidence that a fight between us would end in our favor. If anything there was more evidence that the Overlord would trounce us in military might, seeing as he took out all of the arimaspi, (something that was still boggling the minds of Equestria's finest military minds, my brother included) and considering how he made a spell to literally end the universe...
Well, let's just say I hoped the Overlord wasn't a sore loser.
"Oh, it'll be fine girls. We'll go to the Empire, fight and/or befriend whatever ancient evil is/was attacking it, the Overlord will help, we'll all go home as friends and maybe never talk to one another again. Great adventure, very fun, right?" Pinke said nonchalantly while inspecting her hoof.
"Well, at least you're not concerned about all this." Spike called from where he was reading a comic book on a bench, next to Rarity's luggage.
"Umm, we'll never talk to each other, or, uh, the Overlord and us won't talk to each other?" Fluttershy asked from behind her mane, already nervous about the Overlords visit.
"The Overlord and us. I mean, we all live in the same town so it would be kinda hard to never talk to any of you, especially when I would need to throw you a party! How would I update what your favorite flavor of cake was if I couldn't ask you?"
Before anypony could respond, Scratch and Sparky came running up to the station and began hoping in place while holding a large banner that read "We <3 Overlord!" with crude representations of the different minion types all dancing around the main message. That was our cue that the Overlords train was getting close to the station, meaning that it was zero hour and the time for panic was over. Or at least it was for me, for the others it just meant that the Overlord was right about to be here.
We all saw the train as it belched black smoke and started to slow down in order to slide into station. To call it different then the normal 'Friendship Express' would be an understatement, the whole thing was almost a solid black, only broken by the dark browns of the cars and the bright green cloth that was daisy chained across the whole top of the train. It almost looked like whoever had designed it wanted the only smooth surface to be the grill on the front of it, everything else was either covered in spikes or was just at such a severe angle that it looked sharp enough to cut yourself on.
"Wow, I didn't know the Overlord let edgy teenagers design things for him, maybe I could get a part time job?" Spike snarked from under the large pile of luggage that he was about to unload in said train.
I facehoofed, now certain that this would not end well.
Well, so far things have gone... not horrible? The Overlord and his group of minions are staying in a different cabin, in order to "give us some space". I'm still not sure if this is a good or bad thing, since he might genuinely not want to crowd us, but it might also be that he distrusts us or worse is holding some sort of grudge against us for something we (I) may have done in the past. (Like sneaking into his lab and accusing him of trying to destroy the world)
I thought that things might have gotten a bit dicey when Rainbow, seemingly just to spite me, the princesses, and the idea of political stability, almost immediately went to his cabin and tried to... not bully, but, uh, warn the Overlord against turning on Equestria. Admittedly as she was being escorted back to our cabin she finished her 'warning' by saying that the only reason she was saying any of it was because "You're less lame then most of the big wigs I've met, so it would be a shame if we had to kick your butt because you got too big a head."
I think the Overlord took it as a joke since he couldn't stop laughing for almost a full two and a half minutes.
Then there was Pinkie, Scorch and Scratch. I wasn't sure if the minions were just excited or if they were always this active when I wasn't around, as they were close to giving Pinkie a run for her money. It would actually explain some of the things that Scorch and the CMC had gotten up to recently if they were. Hopefully the Overlord didn't mind the three balls of energy whizzing around between the cabins, checking on everypony to make sure that they were okay in Pinkies' case and chasing after Pinkie in the minions'. At least he didn't seem outwardly upset by it so it might've been okay, heck he might be used to this if the minions were always like this.
Other then that not much happened aside from a conversation that Rarity and the Overlord had that I wasn't paying much attention to, though I feel I should have seeing as at one point I heard Rarity yelling about some compound or something since all I heard was "It's made from WHAT?!" before she made her way back to our cabin. When I asked he what the conversation was about she flinched a little and said "N-nothing, nothing at all. Don't worry about it darling."
To be honest, the further north we went the more nervous I got. I mean, this was a big deal! I not only needed to discover what was wrong in the newly returned empire, that I just learned about last night by the way, while balancing a diplomatic mission to keep the Domain from attacking us. Add on to that I have no idea just what the Overlord really thinks of us, how willing he is to fight us, or what I could possibly do to placate him should he actually want to attack.
And on top of all of this, it was Princess Celestia who need me to get it done. Failure was not an option, so you know... just all of the pressure.
[Overlord's POV]
I've always loved the way snow looked. The way it piles up on the ground and just sits there looking fluffy. Growing up in a desert made it very rare to see any, but I remember it snowed on my fifth birthday. I got sick because I wouldn't go back inside after the sun went down.
"I have a bad feeling."
"I'm sure that everything will be fine, after all you promised you would come home and then we could do that thing with the chains and the-"
"I know your trying to make me feel better Sarra, but please... it's not helping."
I could feel the concern coming from the other side of the link before Sarra retreated from actively being in my mind, after all we all need some alone time, even if we can share head space. I was glad that she knew this was one of those times for me.
I tried to put up a confident face whenever one of the main six came by, laughing at Rainbows frankly pathetic attempt at a threat and Raritys reaction to how the metal used at the tower is made, but I don't think Pinkie bought it since she wouldn't stop coming up to me and asking if I was okay.
I wasn't okay. I told her I was, so as not to worry or distract her, but to honest I don't think there was anything she could do to make me feel any better. I was consumed with a sense of dread ever since getting on this train, which was fine since a healthy amount of dread at facing something that literally almost killed a country just meant I was still sane, but it was getting worse the closer we got to the Crystal Empire.
I was worried at first that it was one of Sombra's tricks, but as the feeling began to increase I noticed that none of the girls were affected the same way. That meant that either-
-One, whatever it was, it didn't affect ponies.
-Two, It was something that only I could detect, using my inherent dark magic.
-Or three, whatever was doing this was targeting me directly.
I didn't like any of the options, but I couldn't do anything about it until we got to the empire. I wonder what Shining Armor will think of the big bad Overlord helping out? Should I stop him from being hit by Sombra's black magic, saving his horn? I honestly wasn't sure... there was a case to be made for both options.
If I let him get hit it would mean that he wouldn't be able to use magic, which was both good and bad for me. He wouldn't be able to stop me should he disagree with something I need to do, (other than physically, but even with his military training I was confident I could take him) but he wouldn't be able to assist in the battle against Sombra either. It would also allow me the time to analyse Sombra's magic while avoiding fighting him right away.
If I don't... I will gain the trust of at least Cadence and Twilight, maybe even smooth things out with Celestia a bit too. Shining would be able to participate in the fight against Sombra, though he will most likely just be using shield spells. But that isn't really a bad thing, as I could then focus on offence...
"I suppose I will just have to go with my gut when the time comes." I whispered to myself as the empire came into view.
As I stepped off the train into the raging blizzard outside I stopped to look up at the empire. While I couldn't see much of it between the black fog, light blue shield, wall and the fact that we were at ground level, what I could see was somewhat stunning. It seemed the girls agreed as they all oooed and awed at the crystal towers that made up the skyline, completely ignoring Spike who was slowly being crushed by the luggage he was carrying, instead talking among each other about something or other, I wasn't listening.
I sent a few minions to help Spike carry his friends shit into the city as we all saw a figure approaching us through the snow. While the girls and minions braced, in case it was an enemy, I knew it was just Shining and instead continued to watch the surroundings. I noticed the fog bunching up near the barrier and since I could guess that this was Sombra preparing an attack I got my minions moving, practically dragging Spike along with them.
Shining had just broke a hug with his sister, saying "While I am glad to see you again so soon sis, we need-" before I interrupted him, finishing his sentence with "We need to move. Now."
I smacked the train, letting the conductor know that we were all off and situated, so that it could roll out of station. Once the train started moving the fog started moving much faster, striking toward us like an arrow. Luckily the girls took notice of this and started sprinting to the gate along side me, all of us covered by Shining's shield. It looked like the time to choose whether or not to save Shining was upon me.
Or at least it would have been a choice, if one butter yellow pegasus hadn't frozen at the sudden danger. The shield was quickly leaving Fluttershy behind, at the mercy of Sombra's magic, and while I wasn't sure what would happen to her I knew it wouldn't be good... So I turned around.
I suppose it would have been better if I could have picked her up in a cradle position, but I needed to run and didn't have time to crouch and scoop her up, I needed to get a good grip and I needed it fast. Sadly this meant that I basically had to grab her by the mane and yank her up so I could catch her in one arm and start running. Her yelp of shock, fear and pain was heartrending.
While I was running, holding Fluttershy in front of myself, I could hear her sobbing but I was too focused on getting back to the group. I could see Twilight and the others at the gate, all looking in horror at Fluttershy and I, and I could feel the shadows behind me. I was worried that I would be taking Shining's place this time until I suddenly felt weightless, seeing that Twilight had grabbed me in her magic and was reeling me in like an oversized metal clad fish I took a moment to check that everyone had made it inside the gates.
It seemed that at some point Shining had tried to run out after Fluttershy and I, as his horn was covered in black crystal, but Twilight had dragged him in as well. Otherwise the others were fine, even Spike and the minions, though they were all obviously shaken by what had almost happened to their friend.
Once we were inside the gate I gently put Fluttershy down, noticing a few of the black crystals in my armor, and stepped back so her friends could swarm her, asking if she was alright, hurt, if she needed a moment to get composed, ect. I was preoccupied with the crystals lodged in my shoulders. While they were dark magic, (obviously) there was something different about them that I wasn't expecting. I thought it would be nothing but pure dark magic meant to harm, but there was something else mixed in that I couldn't identify...
"Oh, thank you for saving Fluttershy, Overlord. I don't know what we would have done..." Rarity tearfully said, hugging Fluttershy who had calmed down somewhat and was now just looking around with wet cheeks, seemingly shell shocked.
"Yea... Uh, Sure, whatever." I said while turning, trying to get a better look at my back, and looking a little like a dog chasing it's tail in the process, hearing a gasp from the girls as they saw mine and Shining's state. "One of you wouldn't happen to know how to get these out, would you?"
"Oh no! Are you okay? Hold on, I think I can get them out!" Twilight, slightly panicking, said while lighting up her horn.
I could see the glow of her magic on one of the crystals in my shoulder and I immediately knew two things.
One, that this was not going to work.
Two, It was going to hurt a lot.
I should get a crystal ball, 'cuz I'm god dammed sicic up in here. Yes, I know that's not how it's said. And?
The moment she pulled, I could feel the crystals breaking my skin and burrowing deeper into me. Let's just say it doesn't tickle and leave it at that. I may or may not have yelped in surprise.
"Twilight, stop!" Shining, to my surprise, yelled out to his sister.
Twilight jumped at his voice, cutting off her magic and no longer driving the crystals deeper into my back.
"We have already had a few cases of this, trying to use magic to pull them out seem's to just make them burrow deeper. We actually haven't found a way to remove them yet, but the most they seem to do is prevent the use of magic and cause a large amount of pain and I'm sure our large friend here can handle that?" Shining explained to the girls before turning to me with the question at the end and a quirked eyebrow.
"I'll be fine. We need to secure the barrier and search for something to harm that cloud outside." I told them all, looking around at what we had to work with.
A fairly low wall, aside from the barrier there was no air defense, and a straight shot from the gate to the palace. Whoever built this place either didn't expect it to ever be under siege or thought that the blizzard would take care of any enemies that showed up.
"That isn't a cloud outside. It's the old king, Sombra." Shining said, getting a gasp from the mares.
Since I already knew that, all I said was "All the more reason to hurry then."
My ears folded down as the Overlord all but stormed away from us, and it was all my fault! I should have known that dark magic like that wouldn't be so easy to remove, I should have been paying more attention to the Overlord when I stupidly tried to yank the shards out of him and I should have stopped when-
"Twi, stop."
Shining's voice cut through my internal monologue. My anxiety made me wish he hadn't, but I had already learned not to listen to that part of myself by then. For the most part.
"But it's my fault! I was supposed to make sure that the Overlord was more open to us and I've already messed it all up! How am I supposed to help the crystal empire if I can't even keep from hurting people that I'm supposed to be making friends with!?"
Now that I was out of breath from yelling it gave the others a chance to speak, starting with Rainbow sarcastically saying "Uh, Twilight, I don't know if you got the memo? But, all of us are supposed to make friends with the Overlord."
Rarity followed with "And there was no way you could have known that those awful shards wouldn't come out with a good tug. Why, if you hadn't I most likely would've tried the same thing!"
Fluttershy, still recovering from her close encounter, gave a shaky "You aren't alone in this, we've got your back! That's what friends do, after all."
I could feel a warmth build in my chest that had nothing to do with the magic barrier keeping out the blizzard. "Thanks girls, I... you're right. We can do this!"
"I'm still so glad that you made some good friends Twily. But, you should probably head to the crystal palace to check on Cadence. I'm going to chase after the Overlord, see if I can't help him shore up our defenses. Give Cadence a nuzzle for me when you see her." Shining said as he stood up, stretched and started to trot away.
"Ooo! I'll go with you!" Pinkie almost squealed while vibrating back to full poofyness.
"Uhh, That's not really-" Shining tried to say as Pinkie dragged him down the street by one of his fore hooves.
The rest of us (myself included) chuckled at Pinkie's antics.
At least until I realized that this meant that Pinkie would be alone with Shining and the Overlord. Then I stopped chuckling.
[Overlord's POV]
I was tired. Bone tired. I wanted to sleep, and in the back of my head that sounded like a good idea, but I knew that it must've been some part of the magic in the crystals lodged in my back and shoulders. Well, that or blood loss due to internal bleeding, I didn't really know which.
The thing that worried me the most about these shards was that they didn't hurt. As much as you may not like pain, if something is obviously wrong with you, like if say your hand was split in between your middle and ring fingers and it didn't hurt... well, yeah, that cringe was exactly correct. And I was stuck in a position where the spear from hellboy 2 was all over my back and a slightly panicking mare had just tried to yank them out. And I wasn't even itchy.
I couldn't dwell on that, there were more important things to do then drive myself crazy with worries about my own mortality. Case in point, there were ponies mindlessly wandering around the streets and alleys, often bumping into one another. If Sombra broke into the city early they wouldn't stand a chance, Sombra would take them back in an instant. I needed a way to extend that to at least thirty seconds.
"Heeeeeyyyyyy! Wait up! Wait for uuuusssss!"
Was that...?
Oh, Pinkie was following me... with shining. Was she dragging him by the tail?
"Well, at least we know that Cadence isn't wanting for physical companionship!" I heard Sarra giggle in my head.
"So, what are we doing?" Pinkie asked excitedly, letting Shining get his footing and cover what dignity he had left.
"Pinkie, while I admire your enthusiasm, please never do that again." Shining told her with as much sternness as he could.
"Okey doki!" Pinkie responded with the same level of enthusiasm she always had, leaving both of us to wonder if she even really understood what he was mad about.
"Ahem, anyway... we are trying to shore up our defenses." I said, unsure of what to do about the two ponies that were tagging along.
"Well I know that! You said it at the gate to the city, remember? Right before you walked off, and I grabbed Shining, and we had to run to catch up with you since you're so big, and then this conversation happened!"
"I think," Shining interrupted "What Pinkie is asking, is what are we doing to strengthen our defenses, and how can we help?"
"Well... for one, we need to clear the streets. The ponies that are wandering around would both be in danger if Sombra broke in and be in the way of the defenders trying to protect them, and that is the best case. Worst case is they panic, run around blocking escape routes and trampling the weak and young to death, preventing defenders from doing their job at all, all leading to Sombra having control of the empire again."
"Yes, that should be a priority... but that is obvious, what else can we help you with?" Shining asked.
"That is about all you can help me with, unless you want to be my tour guide? I might know a little something to reinforce the barrier your wife has made..."
"Pinkie, go get two of your friends and help them get everypony to a safe location, I'll show the Overlord where he needs to go."
Pinkie gave a salute, yelling "Sir, yes sir!" before zipping off in the direction of main street. I turned and started walking toward the closest part of the barrier, Shining right behind me.
"So, what is your idea to strengthen the walls?"
Once we were close enough I looked at him and said, "This."
I bent over and griped a minion by the neck, a brown, possibly a newborn as he had little to no armor. I then stood and began to shake the minion violently, though he only began to laugh insanely as some minions do. Once he began to glow, I cocked my arm, and with a good heave, sent the minion flying into the barrier.
The minion died on impact, all but merging into the glowing dome of light surrounding the city. The light changed for a moment, becoming more of a sickly yellow then a light blue, but it soon faded back to its original color.
The thing that did not fade was the newly added strength to the barrier.
Once Shining had stopped worrying about things like my minions or how this might affect his wife, (Which I explained was unlikely as, though the minions were made of corrupt lifeforce and thus adding them to something had the same corruptive effect as taking evil energy into oneself, the way I had done it took the corruption out of them, making it no different than adding your own magic to a spell) he led me around the wall, stopping occasionally to throw more minions into the barrer.
Shining seemed to be very uncomfortable with my minions willingness to die for me, I understood that he viewed all life as precious but... I suppose I just view the minions as more... animate golems than anything really alive. I wonder if that makes me a bad person? Does that even matter? Probably not to the minions, they only care that I wear the big horned helm.
The girls were succeeding at getting the ponies off the streets, though not to a 'safe' place. Just like in the show they had decided to throw the crystal heart celebration and, of course, herd everyone in the city to the square.
"Maybe I should've been more specific with Pinkie..." I grumbled as Shining and I made our way through the crowd.
"Yeah, this might end up being a problem if Sombra breaks in..." Shining quietly responded "How much time did you give us with your, ah, spell?"
"A few hours at most. Minions are mostly corruption, draining them of it to reinforce the barrier left them almost worthless. Not quite, but almost."
"Well it's a few more hours then we would have had, let's not let them go to waste." He said as he started to move to the nearest staircase into the castle.
I'm almost glad the tower has as many stairs as it does, if I had needed to climb this when I first came here I wouldn't have made it. Almost glad.
(Twilight's POV)
It wasn't working. Why wasn't it working? It should be working!
Cadence, some of the girls and I were all standing on a podium overlooking our "crystal heart fair", and while many of the ponies looked slightly calmer the tension in the air could be cut with a knife. I didn't understand, the book said that the empire was protected by the feelings of the crystal ponies, right? So why wasn't it working!?
Okay, calm down and think rationally Sparkle!
-What if Sombra took away their ability to feel the right emotion?
-Possible but unlikely, Sombra was a known sadist and wouldn't remove anything that would reasonably hamper his slaves ability to suffer.
-What if they were missing some important piece of the puzzle?
-Likely, there might have been some magical component that we overlooked thinking it fake or hearsay.
-What if that was a fantasy book, not meant to be taken literally and this was all a big waste of time?
-I take offence to that thought, me.
-What if there was no magical protection and it was all just a superstition held by ponies thinking they were safe this far north?
-Unlikely, there are many creatures that can survive these temperatures and still be a threat, yet there are no records of any attacks before Sombra.
-What if the Overlord is somehow stopping the protection from activating on accident?
-Possible, his dark magic could be clashing with the intended effect and canceling it out without his knowledge.
-What if the Overlord is somehow stopping the protection from activating on purpose?
-Also possible, he might want to allow Sombra access to wound or kill us, taking out one of the three biggest threats to him, the other two being the princesses.
Now, assuming that the Overlord isn't somehow stopping us that means that we have probably missed something. If the Overlord is stopping us we will just have to deal with that when the time comes.
I came to that conclusion when Rainbow came flying up to me, saying "Twilight, we may have a problem!"
"What? What problem? Sombra?!" I said, slightly panicked.
"No, it's about the fair! Apparently there is some kind of 'Crystal Heart' that is supposed to be the centerpiece of the fair, without it the fair doesn't do anything!"
It took a second for me to process what she had said, and the moment I did I teleported all of us up to the royal library, right where we had left the book detailing the crystal fair. I was hoping that Rainbow was wrong or had somehow misheard something, not that I distrusted her (Though she could sometimes blow things out of proportion), but I needed to double check that this was indeed the situation.
"Curse my habit of speed reading! I always miss something important and end up having to read it over again! This is Daring Doo and the curse of the sapphire all over again!" I thought as I found that, yes the book did mention a 'Crystal Heart' as a centerpiece. "Stupid! Anypony with a cursory knowledge of the history of this region and magic rituals would know you would need some kind of catalyst to hold up a weather protective shield!" I was brought back to reality by the sound of footsteps before both the Overlord and Shining walked into the library.
"Damn, that's five bits from me, and I had faith in you too Twilie!" Shining said, raising his voice and walking over to us as the Overlord leaned on a bookshelf, crossing his arms.
"Don't worry about it, I knew I was gonna win anyway. It's not fair if I basically rigged the game, so it doesn't count."
"And just how did you know where my sister would be?" Shining asked while raising an eyebrow.
"When she was at my tower she spent most of her time in the public library, and now there is actually a reason to be here reading up on the old defence system."
"Which," I haltingly cut in, "I have just found out, may, kinda, be a bit more important than I thought... Since, you know, without the shield there not only is no protection from things like Sombra, but also the weather, random magic spikes in the air, and disease... And we may be lacking the most important part of the system."
Suddenly, from outside there was a breaking sound. We all rushed to a window to look, finding large patches of the shield cracking and falling apart.
Shining turned to the Overlord and accusingly yelled "I thought you said that you were strengthening the barrier!"
The Overlord turned and started walking away while saying "I did, but I can't keep up a shield without it's caster. You should go to your wife. Twilight, I need you to go get whatever it is you need, I will hold off Sombra for as long as I can."
This was it, my first real fight where I wouldn't just be able to swarm my minions at the enemy until it died. So far nothing has stood in my way, not even the fake Overlord of the arimaspi, and only chrysalis has gotten away from me. Sombra, a dark mage driven mad by his own power, functionally immortal, would be the only fight I couldn't win on my own. I really did need Twilight to find the Crystal Heart to stop him, I doubt that my corruption drain would even work on him and even if it did, he was mostly fog and would be able to pull away before I could drain him significantly.
I stepped out into the plaza, ponies scrambling left and right, to see said cloud of black fog moving toward me. Well, probably the castle, but I was in front of it so that counts. Sombra's glowing eyes locked onto me, the only one not running in fear. (Also the tallest thing in the square, but that doesn't really matter does it?)
I could feel the fear rolling off of him as he materialized a few feet in front of me, the magic he was made of affecting most living things and inspiring them to fear the being facing them. From what I could feel only creatures like older dragons could shrug off the effect, what with their magic resistance. Other creatures were at an even worse disadvantage, I could feel a feedback effect in the magic such that the stronger the opponent the more intense the effect, and without any magic resistance you would have to take the full brunt of the fear.
Considering most ponies didn't use magic resistant effects in combat, (Their bodies could absorb most magic, as opposed to rejecting the magic outright like dragons could) I could only think about how much resolve the princesses had to go head to head with him.
Luckily the corruption in my body acted as a kind of magical shield for both my mind and flesh... when I used it and got all spikey. Until then it just protected my head, and considering the look he was giving me I should pull out the spikes soon.
"And who might you be? Standing so bravely against me?" Sombra asked softly, the sound echoing from everywhere at once, even in my head.
"The Overlord, Nobody." I responded with a stronger voice than I expected, "And it's less bravery, and more that I was asked to stop you from taking your throne. I said yes, and I keep my word."
"Hmmm... You say you keep your word, but everyone has a breaking point..." He mused to himself, putting a hoof to his chin and glancing up, mockingly. "I wonder, when will you break? What could give pause to... heh... the Mighty Overlord?"
The last part was dripping with sarcasm and malice. I wanted to bring out the spikes right then and there, but I knew it would be better to hold back until it was clear I needed it. I mean, ponies freaked out at a zebra, imagine them seeing me with full spines and dark plate!
Not to mention that it would basically be me admitting that I was scared of Mr. Sombrero, and that would hurt my public image. Can't have that now can we?
Sombra gave me no more time to think as he shot a beam of dark magic at me, fading into a cloud of shadows again. I was able to dodge to the left but the beam was fast enough that it still clipped me, causing me to grunt in pain as part of my side was burned... and somehow frozen at the same time? It was different then a normal freezer burn, it was actually like I was both burned and frozen at the same time... Ouch.
In a moment my minions lept into action, blues rushing in to attack Sombra in his shadow form while browns charged in with them to act as flesh shields to any retaliation. Meanwhile the reds and greens pulled back, the reds to get to a place to pelt Sombra with fireballs and the greens to hide in wait for him to reform in order to jump onto and backstab him.
I hefted the Mace I had brought with me while stumbling back into a balanced stance, a blue darting up to try and heal me as I watched several minions be ripped apart from the inside out as dark crystals formed inside them. Sombra seemed to quickly realize the danger the blues presented to him as his attacks grew in force to destroy them, their only saving grace being the massive amount of browns constantly being called to replace the ones that died to protect them.
"Magic would be better to fight with at this point... Unfortunately thanks to the crystals buried in my shoulders it isn't an option." I thought as the blue on my side grunted in effort to undo the damage done to me. "That may also be a problem," I thought as I watched what looked like purple fog puffed out of my very much not healing wound, "If his attacks can't be healed by normal means then I'm going to have to change my tactics quite a bit, seeing as I can't tank his attacks so cleenl-"
"Novice."
I instinctively dodged to the right, startling and slightly hurting the blue working on me, just in time to avoid the massive black spike of crystal that shot out of the ground almost squering me.
"One must be aware of the whole battlefield to be effective against a superior opponent. It is clear that you either are a greenhorn in terms of combat, or have simply spent your time playing with worms in the dirt. In either case, it will spell your doom." Sombra commented, his eyes glaring at me from within the cloud of smoke.
"Any other sage advice for me? Or are you going to live up to the saturday morning villain stereotype and try to talk me to death?" I quipped back, much less confident than before.
"Yes, actually. You appear to be stuck in your head more than is healthy for current circumstance, and you get easily distracted." I rolled backward as crystal lances pierced the ground I was just standing on from above. "Though your instincts are quite sharp, so I suppose that counts for something. Not much, but something." He all but gleefully condescended to me.
Suddenly several large claw-like blades formed from the shadows and scythed through the browns and blues attacking them, either outright killing them or wounding them such that they couldn't continue to fight. Tall sharpened pikes of crystal burst from the ground, instantly slaughtering all of my reds and almost all my greens almost putting their bodies on display, the few who had managed to move away fast enough to avoid the death strike finding themselves out of position and unable to aid their Overlord. Large Purple and black plates of crystal closed over the pits minions had been spawning from, as well as covering a large area of the ground to prevent more pits from forming.
All of this happened at once, leaving me totally without backup, wounded, and off balance. "This looks like the time for it."
(Sombra's POV)
I coalesced into my physical form, grinning with cruelty swerling in my mind at my broken opponent, lost with no army, no magic and no hope of victory. The already overcast and dark sky grew darker still, and the structures and roads had already darkened a full two shades! Truly, crushing the hope of an enemy was such a satisfying-
Strangely, the world around me exploded.
The crystals I had cultivated to stop the annoying little pests the 'Overlord' had sent to (Pffft) 'harm' me were almost all cracked or crumbling in some way, almost like something was...
"Ah, I get it now."
The 'Overlord' stood from the centerpoint of the explosion, his form... changed. Before he had possessed dark power, but it was of such small substance... I had thought him only a dabbler of the dark arts. I was almost afraid needed to reevaluate his strength compared to mine, as it was now clear that this 'Nobody' was as much a master of darkness as I.
I took in his new form, much unchanged from before, although his plate had darkened to an almost purple-black, tall, sharp spines stood from most of the joints of his armor and across his shoulders, and I realized to my shock a magic radiated from him, almost as heatwaves... a damnable magic that only the darkest and cruelest of beings even knew of.
I steadied myself glared at my enemy as he rolled his now crystal free shoulders. "I was wondering why your magic felt so strange to me, I thought it was some kind of paralel to my own or something, but no... it was just a more 'pure' form of magic! How... simple to remove it." he mirthfully commented to himself, his voice darker and booming, more graiting and gravley.
The kind of voice a master of demons would have.
I decided against giving him an opportunity listening to him prattle on and flashed forward to strike at him directly. Forming a blade from my arm to cut his ugly head from his miserable body I swung true... and grunted in quiet terror frustration as he didn't even catch the blade, simply allowing his armor and corrupt magic to guard his stupid neck.
I was just able to dart away as a clawed gauntlet grasped at me, changing my arm into a club like appendage and dashing in to strike at the back of his knee, and then with a spin to build momentum, I jumped to deliver a blow that would cripple a crystal pony, using the force of the attack to propel myself a safe distance away.
"Ahhh, now this is more like it. None of that pesky fear arua messing with me, my full defences, my magic flowing through me again. You never really get to appreciate something like that until it's gone, do you?" The Overlord said, completely unphased by attacks that could have killed trained knights several times over.
"What kind of monster are you?" I accidentally let slip softly questioned.
"Heh, when I know the answer to that, I'll let you know. So far, I just know that I keep my promises."
I felt fear, needed to flee, desperately tried not to fall to panic considered my options. I could flee for a time to come up with a greater strategy, continue to beat at my demonic opponent and hope to wear down his defences from afar, perhaps if I took a hostage-
"Oh no."
The room containing the crystal heart had been opened! One of my few weaknesses was now in the... hooves... of...
"He planned this!" I thought as true and firey panic raced through my veins, "He never meant to defeat me in open combat, only to stall me as his comrades searched for the one object that could really destroy me!!!"
I shifted into my shade form and attempted to fly up, only turning enough to see a baby dragon holding the crystal heart practically diving to the lower balconies, where that perlessent unicorn and that simpering alicorn were waiting, ready to use the heart!
Before I could move more than a foot, I felt a presence grip me, holding me in place. Twisting I saw it was The Overlord, "FOOL! YOU WILL BE HARMED BY THIS JUST AS MUCH AS I!!" I roared at him, panic, fear and rage marring my once ominus and intimidating voice.
"Yes. But the thing is, I have a feeling it won't kill me. Pain sucks, but is temporary, death, as you'll soon find, is quite permanent." The Overlord condescendingly told me.
My only solace as the baby dragon placed the heart into its pedestal and the light burned me away, was that mine was not the only voice crying out in pain as I slipped away, into whatever fate awaited me.
(Fluttershy's POV)
I was so scared.
Nothing really new there, I am aware of my cowardly nature, but what was new was the source of the fear. When Spike placed the crystal heart on its pedestal a beautiful light filled the whole Empire, all the shadows were chased away and a sense of love and warmth filled me and, I assume, everypony else.
I was so glad now that Sombra was gone, having watched in mute horror with the others as he slaughtered minions by the hundreds, though it didn't help my feelings on the Overlord to see him 'transform' as Dash put it. He just looked so... violently evil... I was still willing to give him a chance and all! But still...
I had been so relieved when the light had filled me, but then I heard the screaming.
It had sounded like... like... like it was a worse pain than the worst pain I could think of, like the light was ripping and tearing at whatever was screamings' soul. Twilight had teleported down to us, and hearing the scream teleported all of us down to the Overlord.
It looked like he was on fire. What remained of Sombra was crumbling to ash in a pile at his feet, but his armor was cherry red, veins of white criss-crossing each plate, where the armor was thinner it had fallen away as slag revealing charred skin that much like his armor was criss-crossed with lines of red heat.
"We need to get him out of that armor!" I heard Cadence yell commandingly. The smell of burnt flesh that hung in the air grew worse as Cadence, Twilight and Shining teleported the armor off of the unmoving Overlord... I couldn't move, couldn't breath, we were supposed to take care ofhimandnowhemightbedieingand- "somepony get a medic, a doctor, anything!" Cadence barked again.
Suddenly, I felt a chill.
"Muhuhuheh. Felling a little under the weather are we?"
It had seemed like time had stopped, like even the snow had stopped falling at the sound of that voice. It was a voice that dripped with such condescension, such arrogance that even the most spoilt of nobles would do nothing but lift an eyebrow at it, while also filled with more malice and self confidence then even Sombra's voice had. It was the voice of one who had seen and done everything, conquered every threat ever made, even cast down gods! And had just rolled into a little nowhere town and been told by a five year old that he knew nothing about anything...
It was a voice of humorously explaining to an upstart youth why you could kill them, in any way you wanted, and nobody would be able to stop you.
"Oh my Master, but you do look oh so weak... and pathetic..." The voice came again, from behind the group of ponies. "It might almost bring me to tears... tears of joy that is." The ponies all slowly, fearfully turned while the Overlord desperately fought to turn his head in order to see who was speaking and they were all shocked at who was there. Hunched over, glaring with hateful eyes at the world, was the minion master. Gnarl.
"What is the mea-" Cadence tried to question.
"Silence!" Gnarl snapped, his voice echoing and his body pulsing with black energy for a moment. Cadence found her jaw snapped shut against her will, and began to panic when she couldn't open it. "You pathetic little wretches! I will make... heh, time... for you in a moment, but for now my focus is... Him." Gnarl said, turning back to the Overlord, beginning to stride to him.
"You got further than the others, I admit. Even made a stable country with an economy! But did you really think you could get away with this? This farce of being an evil overlord? Did you think I would stand by and do nothing?" By this time Gnarl had reached the Overlords still smoking, red hot body. Shocking all, he reached out and, bare handed, grabbed the Overlord by the neck, bringing them face to face.
"The funny thing is, had you just been honest from the start about your lack of evil I would have done nothing. I would have thought 'well, twenty years tops of this guy, not to bad, I'll just do the usual back-room trickery and then find some new sap, no harm no foul.'... But now, I'm a bit upset."
In a moment Gnarl and the Overlord disappeared from view. The Ponies looked around in confusion for a moment before a loud cracking sound drew attention to the castle. More specifically the nearby support strut at the bottom of the castle. Gnarl was standing on the now fully crumpled Overlords chest, but otherwise their positions hadn't changed. what had changed was the spiderweb of gouges in the wall of the crystal palace.
"You see you got my hopes up that I would be entertained, what with conquering everything around you, beating submission out of more than a few packs of dogs and then murdering all those poor crying changelings."
In a burst of motion the Overlord shot an arm out to strike (and hopefully kill) the rouge minion. To the horror of the onlookers, Gnarl almost lazily grabbed the blow mid-strike and pulled the arm from the Overlord's shoulder. The Overlord only gave a quiet groan at the pain while Gnarl continued as though nothing had happened.
"It was when you outlawed slavery that I began to suspect you were a disappointment. It was when you didn't persecute any of your people that my suspicion grew to dread. And it was when you refused to go to war with the undersized pit-ponies that I was certain."
Shining Armor, the knight that he was, shot a blast of magic at the diminutive monster, a blast strong enough to stagger Celestia, an attack of last resort which used all the magic in the unicorn. Gnarl didn't even take his evil eyes away from the Overlord, simply snapping with one hand... completely shattering the unicorn's horn, down to the root. Gnarl continued as the unicorn collapsed in agony.
"As difficult and entertaining as going behind your back was, leaving one or two of your world ending spells out in your lab and leaving the door unlocked was child's play. when that didn't work right away I tried something new, it was easy to bait that false Overlord into attacking you with promises of wealth and power beyond her wildest dreams. It was almost worth it to watch you exterminate them."
Nopony was moving. Few dared to breathe too loudly for fear of further enraging the elderly minion and suffering the consequences. But this was shown to be unnecessary as, seemingly for the simple sadistic pleasure of doing so, with a small smile Gnarl clicked his talons again. That was when the screaming began as several crystal ponies were lifted into the air and contorted in ways that made those around them feel sick.
"Of the four of you, only the second came close to meeting my expectations... if only he didn't lack imagination. I mean honestly, how was that little plan of his supposed to stop the third? Bleah! Just mentioning that overbearing villain wannabe leaves a bad taste in my mouth! The fourth had potential but his damnible mother left him in a nordling village for his formative years and while prejudice is a good start, nothing beats a proper evil upbringing."
By this point Sarra had teleported nearby, hiding from the deranged minion, alerted to the danger by the connection to the hive mind that she and her Overlord shared. From the alleyway that she was crouched in she could see the Main Six and Spike trying to quietly inch away from the Overlord and minion master while the princess simply cradled her beloved on the ground where he lay since his horn was annihilated.
Sarra had already begun the process of evacuating the Domain before leaving, hoping that as many lives would be saved as possible in the worst case scenario... which was quickly looking more and more likely. She used special changeling magic to teleport as many ponies as she could out of the city without alerting Gnarl, doing the same to bring the main ponies involved with her husbands current state to her... to hide them, she would deal with the rest of this once they were all safe.
The Ponies and dragon almost gave themselves away with gasps of fear or shock before being silenced by sarra, who motioned for them to be quiet. She then pointed to her horn and made the hoof-language sign for 'where?' with a pointed look at Twilight. Twilight in turn mouthed 'Canterlot" and both nodded. As a group they turned to look as they heard something new.
"And just wh-what... *huff* gives you... of all people the... right to judge th-the Overlords? Age? Posi-ition? Tradition...? You a-are just a... a minion!" The Overlord stammered and gasped out, in pain from... well a few things really but mainly...
Betrayal.
"The right?" Gnarl questioned as an audible snap of bone rang out over the still screaming ponies hanging in the sky. "Heheh, Why, is it not the right of a father to judge his children? Of a god to judge his creations? Of a demon to judge others sins?" Clouds of black corruption began to roll off of Gnarls form as it contorted worse than those in the air, bloating and shrinking and twisting arbitrarily across his body while the obscured minion simply laughed at the sensation.
"What Right?" the tall, elderly, thinly muscled form of what used to be a minion, hunched over to keep eye level with his prey, asked in a much softer, yet more menacing tone. "By my right as the First Overlord, Crafter of the Tower Heart, Maker and Master of Minions, Defiler of the Light and Holy Places, Dragon Slayer, Fear of Man, Elf and Dwarf, The Great Patient One. By my right as your better."
The First Overlord straightened up, sighing as his back popped after so long spent bent over hobbling around, dragging the Fifth Overlord up with him. The dessicated carcass of a brown minion flopped to the ground from the First's knee, quickly forgotten.
"I tolerated you as long as I could. I have tolerated this whole damn world, all it's idiotic 'kindness' and 'mercy', for as long as I care to. Do not worry, you have impressed me in one respect, that being how quickly you have managed to gain power. Inspiring really. In honor of that, I will make your death quick and painless. And if that doesn't comfort you then think about this! By the time I'm ready to go back into hiding, you will either be remembered as a saint compared to me or not remembered at all!" The First Overlord smiled fondly before clenching the fist holding the Fifth up.
Sarra could do nothing but cry silently as she watched her husband collapse into dust, his still dark red armor bouncing and clanging as it fell apart, some pieces splitting upon touching the ground. She watched as his helmet thudded to the ground, empty.
The First examined the ashes and slag for a long moment, as though the idea that he had failed to completely end his replacement lingered in his mind. He then nodded in satisfaction before turning to the crystal ponies who had gone silent, not due to the pain dulling or expiring, but simply because there was a time for screams and that was not one. One by one they transfigured into small figurines, all still conscious and very much still in pain, and pocketed.
Sarra managed to grab the Fifth's helm before teleporting away with the others, The First barely sparing them a glance, there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. He would find them, when he wanted to.
