The Doctor, Princess Cadence, Starlight Glimmer and a team of researchers work together to unravel the dark and violent past of one of their most dangerous enemies yet.
As Ponyville and Canterlot shake with confusion, acts of war and terror occurring by the day, one name is on the mind of those most affected. The name of the great enemy that looms his head after literal centuries of waiting. Cascadius. Now, with their powers over time and space, the Doctor, Starlight Glimmer, Princess Cadence, Daring Doo, Maud Pie and a team of intrepid researchers must uncover the truth behind the foe that, eons past, nearly killed the first Princess of Equestria.
A spin-off/prequel of Lost Reflections (Beware of Spoilers) Warning: Rated Mature for violence and gore. Contains OC's including, but not limited to, author stand-ins.
This is my first Mature-Rated story. I needed to have it looked over by the moderators to determine as such. There's no eroticism...at least I've got none planned...so far... But keep in mind, it's a war fic and the violence isn't that shy.
In the normally quiet halls of the Canterlot library, two individuals bickered among themselves.
One was a young earth pony, broad-shouldered and hardy but not so much that made him seem stocky. He was light green-coated, with a scruffy mane dyed red, blue and orange, the kind one got in celebration after a sporting event. As it happened, the Grand Stirrope Hoofball Championships were this month.
His accent was foreign, crisp and firm whilst sounding quite melodious. It pointed to Farman, long held as an Equestrian ally, once one of the greatest bulwarks of free Stirrope during the onslaught of the Dark Hordes of Tirek and Grogar. His cutie mark was a heavily-armoured beige tank.
Two colourful felt bands around his foreleg added credence to his origin as they signified the role of unofficial diplomat rather than a simple tourist, travelling under a college project most likely.
Upon one was the jet-black alicorn with wings spread and a flowing golden mane on a golden background, bordered red. The flag of Farmany.
The other was a blue sash with a grey stone wall design across it, a white mare and a bay stallion running toward each other atop the walls. The flag of the Excavator’s College of Bitzingen.
The one he was arguing with was a very different individual. A female deer, draped in a swarthy cloak and cowl with various baubles and trinkets sown into it, her coat silver-white and shaggy with a long grey mane that drooped around her head like damp seaweed. Twitter-Patterns across her face were dark green but vibrant, shining through the shadow of her hood. She carried a great wooden staff inscribed with mithril runes that she rested over her forelegs as she brooded, her face dour and her voice monotone as she retorted.
“I know he’s going to fall.”
“Look, I’ve seen him do this plenty of times, he’s not going to fall.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times he’s done it. This time, he’s going to fall. I’m a seer. I can see it happening before it happens and I’ve seen him fall.”
“Okay chaps, would you mind not debating on whether or not I die today?” A voice from above called down “You’re making me feel very uncomfortable.”
The doe shrugged.
“We never said you’d die. Though that is very possible.”
High above on the largest story ladder, the librarian perched precariously, putting back a heavy book in its correct place on the shelf. He was an earth pony with a peculiar patchy coat, purple and white and a long, scruffy mane with much the same colours. Pale freckles around his muzzle denoted a country upbringing but his accent was distinctly that of a Trottingham gent. A pair of spectacles adorned his muzzle and his cloak of office was dark blue with a rising sun.
Placing the book fully between its neighbours, he smiled and called back down.
“There, I’ve done it, problem solved, no...Oh no...OH NO!”
In his haste to replace the books, he hadn’t taken to noticing just how close the ladder had been to the door. As it opened, the ladder toppled and the librarian found himself careening down to earth along with the books he’d been putting back.
The green pony shot to his hooves in shock while the doe remained seated as the librarian, instead of screaming, rapidly yelled out on his way down.
“CATCHMECATCHMECATCHMECATCHMECATCHME-” He was cut off suddenly as a field of shimmering magenta magic caught him a bare few inches from the ground and slowly placed him safely on the floor. Checking himself, he smiled.
“Ah...thank you.”
WHUMP!
No sooner than he’d said that then he was flattened by an enormous tome landing squarely on his cranium, causing him to faceplant the floor and nearly pinning him down.
“Oh, oh you poor thing, I’m so sorry, let me help you up.”
A soothing feminine voice commanded the tone of the room as an alicorn of pink and purple hues picked him up.
The librarian swayed groggily and mumbled, wearing a silly grin.
“Uh...huzzah...Smoke me a kipper, skipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!”
Shaking his head, he groaned and picked up the book that had floored him, scowling at it.
“Oh, it would have to you, wouldn’t it!” he snapped at the tome “It would have to be The Biographical Dictionary of the Second Age of Magic to the Civil War by Dean Heliotrope! It couldn’t be The School-Filly’s Pocket Guide to Quilting that plummets into my skull, oh no, it had to be this big basta-Princess!”
He dropped the book and bowed as he finally noticed Princess Mi Amore Cadenza standing in the room.
“I’m terribly sorry, Patch. I didn’t realise you were all the way up there. I should have knocked.”
“No, no, my own fault. And if you hadn’t opened the door, some other moron would have...That’s not to say you’re a moron, of course you’re not but whoever would have opened the door would have been...apart from you, I mean...I’m just going to shut up now.”
“Good call.” The green earth pony and the doe said at once before turning to each other.
“See, he didn’t fall.”
“Yes, he did. I just didn’t say he’d land.” the doe retorted knowingly.
The green earth pony scowled.
“You’re annoying.”
“So I’m told.”
“Stop bickering, you two.” The librarian sighed as he addressed the Princess.
“Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, these are two of my colleagues who’ve been helping me with my studies. Wagensroll, an accomplished scholar from the Excavator’s College of Bitzingen and the closest living descendent of the House of Armbrust. And Dawnwind, shamaness of the Wolfsong Deer and mentor of White Wolf the Stormrunner. I’ve been charting up information on the Eternal Knights and their roles before and during the Civil War and they’ve proved very helpful. Sir and madam, the Princess of the Crystal Empire and its reaches.”
Wagensroll bowed as his friend had done whilst Dawnwind gave a semi-polite nod.
“And not alone.” The Princess made way for a collection of ponies as her retinue entered “This is Doctor Whooves, Hero of Time and Space; Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle’s budding apprentice; Daring Doo, renowned explorer and archaeologist; and Maud Pie, Rock Farmer and Geologist Graduate.”
The forenamed ponies entered, all gazing round the vast Canterlot Library in wonder, or at least the closest Maud Pie could register as wonder. As the librarian and his fellows set about clearing desks and setting up equipment, the Princess introduced them.
“Purple Patch is an expert in what is known as Pre-Alicorn Studies. It is his job at the Royal Academy to gather and catalogue information that concerns history before the time of Celestia and Laurelore as well as any information that remains hidden from Equestria.”
“That sounds fascinating.” Starlight said brightly “How can he do that?”
“Because nopony else has nothing better to do with their lives than look through and write up all the balls-aching curd that he enjoys so much!” Dawnwind snapped.
“That’s not fair. The things I find would change how you view the world!” Purple Patch declared “Just the other day, I found near-certain evidence that Fleabite the Faithless, pretender to the Throne of Princess Platinum, was indirectly responsible for the Haught Invasions twenty years later. Fleabite met with Prince Dastard Haughtenville at Pittany and pleaded with him to help him retake the throne in exchange for all of the Southern Shore and any pegasus and earth pony lands they conquered. Before Dastard sent his reply, Fleabite had died of the plague and so his son, Fermentine, led the first Peton invasion but his fleet was destroyed by pirates before they landed at Central Equestria. After his death, his two sons fought each other for control over...”
“Patch...” Wagensroll cut off his friend’s blathering “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Talking.” Wagensroll answered.
“And talking.” Dawnwind added.
“And talking!” Both of them barked.
Purple Patch shuffled awkwardly and mumbled.
“...sorry...”
Cadence cleared her throat and begun.
“Faced with the recent threats, we...that is to say I have been conducting investigations into the background of the mercenary leader known as Cascadius.” she sighed “After an...incident seven years ago that pointed to his involvement, I did some research.” she turned to the Doctor.
“He always seems to spring up when you do. I’d like to find out how exactly you’re connected and where this began, exactly.”
“I told you before we got here. Laurelore’s assassination.” the Doctor said, uncomfortable with the memory.
“I know, but if given the chance, I’d like to know who hired him to assassinate Equestria’s reigning monarch. If we can find out what he’s after, we may have leverage over him.”
“Doesn’t sound like an easy task.” Daring Doo said grimly.
“No but if we can manage it, it’ll be worth it.” Cadence said.
Her mind flashed back to the night of Fancy Pant’s attempted assassination. The battle with the mercenaries, the race against time...and the mask hanging on her door.
‘No Interference’
More than anything, she wished to send Cascadius the same message. If she could find the thing he treasured and have it at her mercy, then everypony she knew would be safe.
She just hoped it wouldn’t be another innocent caught in the madness.
“So...how much does anypony know?” Starlight asked “About...alicorns or what came before them. I mean, my history lessons never went back that far.”
“Well, I mean, you’re going back literally dozens of centuries before you reach a time when alicorns weren’t in power or even around.” the Doctor summarised “History never goes back that far or, if it does, is rarely very accurate.”
“Exactly. And there are cultural factors to consider.” Patch added “The first Royal Academy actually vetoed the alicorn monarchy taking direct influence in its works for fear of bias and propaganda. In the early stages of their rule, a lot of the populace were still very apprehensive of the idea of all-powerful rulers.”
“So it was Cascadius’s intention to show they weren’t all powerful.” Starlight realised aloud.
“That does seem to be the case. The question is why?” Cadence asked “What reason did anypony have to stir up that amount of trouble? To disrupt what could have been a nationwide peace and order restored to a war-torn land? Who would want that?”
“An enemy.” Eyes turned to Maud Pie who had spoken, as she often did, moderately and monotonously but her words carrying subtle wisdom “I’m aware of why I was brought here, Princess. The old traditions point to the darker times they evolved from.”
“Traditions?” Starlight glanced at Cadence who waved a hoof at Maud, inviting her to explain.
“I’m not sure if anypony was aware but my family are rather...old-fashioned.” she began “The Pie family descends from a line of high priests that heralded the arrival of the Imaginator, Rememberly the Bonnycorn, and after her the Firsticorn, Laurelore the Rejuvenator. Surprise, the first high priestess of the Hycarion Imaginatorium, was our oldest known ancestor. And during Laurelore’s reign came Jumping Jack, the founder of the Rejuvenatorium, whose nephew, Zipadee, became the Bearer of Laughter. While the practice of worshipping the alicorns as deities was never particularly...widespread, our family has always taken part in it, to this day, thanking and praising the alicorns for bringing harmony, colour, light and friendship into our world.”
She paused, looking round her listeners.
“So...okay...but what’s that got to do with Cascadius?” Starlight asked.
Maud paused again.
“I was just about to say.” she said at last as if she had simply been talking all along.
The lilac unicorn glanced awkwardly.
“Oh...sorry”
“It’s alright. Anyway, our creeds and tenants not only detail the things to love but the things to fear. Embodiments of evil, enemies of the alicorns. There is the Corruption, the living nightmares that corrupted Princess Luna and all those whose hearts become constricted by fear, despair and rage. There is Discord, who bends reality to his will but will, one day, use such powers for good. There is Tirek the Invader and Grogar the Treacherous. There are the Gloom Enchantresses and the Fate-Weaver, Queen of the Sphinxes. But there is one that has always remained...obscure.”
It was uncertain whether she’d paused for effect or if it was simply in her nature. Retrieving a rather large and heavy bag, she retrieved a rather large and heavy book, found a page and placed it upon the desk.
Upon it was the engraving of a strange, dark stallion standing on his hind legs, held by chains upon his forehooves. Staring straight at the viewer, his furious white eyes bore through a pony’s chest, sending icy daggers into the heart.
Something about him was simply unsettling.
“The Warmonger.” Maud said darkly “The first pony ever to be sent to Tartarus and which the scriptures state, will one day break free of his chains and plunge the world into eternal bloodshed.”
The Doctor piped up.
“Technically speaking, he wasn’t exactly sent to Tartarus, he just sort of...fell.”
“Well, whichever the case, according to the scriptures his crime was unspeakable, it would have to be.”
“Attempted regicide, mass murder, terrorism, most things that can get you sent to Tartarus.” Cadence pointed out “Murder in general is fiercely punished. Even in the case of open regret...”
At this, Starlight privately winced.
There were often times when she was astounded how light her punishment had seemed. Certainly, it had taken a great deal to earn the trust and friendship of those she’d previously wronged but had she really been that close to Tartarus?
If a single life had been lost in her vengeful spree, would she now be rotting in the bowels of the underworld?
“Thus the reason he remains obscure. Because, frankly, we don’t care to acknowledge him. It is considered unlucky to do so” Maud continued “Evil embodiments taking the form of monsters and magical entities are fine evidently...but never has a pony fallen so far into darkness. Not even Sombra was capable of such atrocity, at least while he was alive.”
“According to what we know, he predates Sombra by centuries. He may even be the first real threat the alicorns ever faced, at least in their own kingdom.” Daring Doo began “Recently, I and a team of friends began an excavation into what we believe to be the oldest standing non-Alicorn landmark in pony history. These ponies seemed to reject the alicorn and worship some form of alternate pantheon, twelve gods, none of them possessing any form of benign motive or role.” She slammed a heavy bag on the floor, filled with great stone tablets with obscure inscriptions “I didn’t think it was all that relevant to this particular investigation...until I found this on my desk.”
She then reached in her jacket pocket and retrieved a scrap of paper.
A picture of her with Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo, engaged in a great hug last Darincon.
There was a slice through it and bold red writing on the other side.
No Interference
“Somehow...in some way...this involves Cascadius. I looked about. Ardentine Casterly and all the stallions who went with him into Deeprisen have been found dead. Not a one of them had gone out peacefully. Some of my friends suffered near-fatal experiences as well. Professor Meinnight is in hospital after someone tried to poison him and Dr Eton Mess was nearly pushed off the academy balconies. I got to him just in time.” she shuddered “And now it looks like I’m next. If I’m going out, I’m making sure they go with me.”
The photo crumpled in her angrily shaking hoof.
“Nopony threatens my biggest fans!”
The notion made Cadence wince but she resolved to keep her composure. This whole matter was starting to make her paranoid.
She wanted this done as soon as possible.
“Anyway, this is why I’ve bought you all here.” Cadence began “Using the information collected from the traditional fables,”
She pointed to Maud.
“New-found discoveries at archaeological sites that are the oldest in the known world,”
She pointed to Daring Doo.
“And enough magical energy and focus to look into time and space,”
She pointed to Starlight and the Doctor.
“Then we can find out just where he began and why he felt the need to plunge Equestria into ruin.”
Patch motioned to the desk on which he’d placed several pieces of bizarre crystal and alchemical apparatus, magical devices used before the Age of Magic. Wagensroll flipped and twisted a number of nodes and pedals while the runes on Dawnwind’s staff glowed a dazzling silver. Upon the desk, Daring Doo placed the slabs she’d collected from the fateful Deeprisen expedition while Maud placed down the tome open on the Warmonger’s page.
Then finally Starlight, Cadence and the Doctor looked hooves, bowed heads and closed their eyes.
The room filled with a thick, dark mist as the past unravelled before them.
***
The prisoner walked on, staring at the floor, heavy chains linking all four hooves together in lockstep and one great manacle wrapped around his neck.
His eye was still half-closed where it had been struck furiously by a guard’s baton and his muscles ached from the interrogation earlier.
But he was well enough to walk.
Well enough to survive.
The guards wouldn’t stop prodding him in the shoulders with their spears. Spears they held a significant length away from them.
They weren’t the same guards who’d caught him on the street.
Those ones wouldn’t be guarding again for quite some time.
At last, he reached the heavy wooden doors that were opened for him.
“Hear ye all! Hear ye all here!” A preening herald beckoned in the doorway of the ‘throne room’, if it could be called that.
How a lit-up cave constituted as a throne room was a mystery. The walls of the cave were carved with runes and engravings which, admittedly, weren’t all that bad.
But the way the court sauntered in so primly, one would think it were a sumptuous palace in the capital.
It didn’t suit the scene or those within. After nearly half-a-century of living underground, the Hycarionites had become somewhat stunted. Their shoulders had hunched and their eyes had dimmed. Their colours had dulled and their coats had grown course, a strain of mange widespread among their number, leaving many bare in patches across their bodies. Those with horns were gnarled and crumpled, barely capable of most forms of magic. Those with wings kept them hidden under heavy cloaks.
“The court will stand and pay reverence unto our ruler, the Potentate Magnificence, Trueborn Child of the First Heavenly Ruler Of All Living Things, the Exalted King of the Thoroughbred Race, Unquestionable Sovereign of the Known World and All Worlds Beyond, He Who Shall Lead The Pure of Blood and Pure of Mind into the Fabled Land, Master and Commander of the Brave and Perfected Cosmos Legion, Our Noble Emperor Dvinius The Forty-Ninth, Long May He Reign.”
“Long May He Reign.” the court echoed robotically as they all knelt in unison.
The prisoner found himself dragged to his hooves, the chains on his neck and hooves tugged below him as the court abased themselves for their ruler.
The prisoner glanced up to have a look at him.
He was a pale, pasty, queasy-looking young stallion lounging in the throne carved out of the wall. To tell what sort of pony he was would be difficult as he wore two pairs of gigantic prosthetic wings, stretching out to the side of his shoulders nearly a mile wide, and no less than five fake horns across his forehead, each a foot-long and painted gold with pyrite gel.
He wasn’t alone on the throne. Beside him was a young mare, also wearing a long prosthetic horn and fake wings, along with a great crimson wig and a coat painted pearl-white. She had a blank, dead-eyed expression as the stallion on the throne stroked her neck obscenely with a smug smirk.
The prisoner didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so ridiculous, so pathetic, in his entire life.
The Potentate Magnificence Dvinius raised his head and eyes the scene.
“Who disturbs our royal repose?” he asked, his voice possessed of a whiny, self-important tone.
The guards stepped forward, pausing at every step to bow.
The prisoner rolled his eyes.
“O Potentate Magnificence, King Of All That Does And Does Not Exist.” one of them declared “We have apprehended a dangerous criminal, like no other before. We brought him here to receive your righteous judgement, O Monarch of Unending Might.”
“Like no other before?” Dvinius rose one eyebrow “Explain.”
The guards looked to each other and answered, her voices possessed of a frightened stammer.
“What?!” Dvinius staggered back in his throne “Bring him forward! As Potentate Magnificence, I command it!”
The court stared as the prisoner was brought forth, his heavy chains clinking with each step.
He wore no armour.
He bore no mark of evil.
He looked so...calm.
He looked into Dvinius’s eyes, his own eyes shrewd and measuring.
“Hello.” he said.
“This...creature has the look of a commoner!” Dvinius snapped, turning furiously to the guards “You suggest a mere common-born could take the noble life of a Thoroughbred High Hoof?! You dare lie to the face of your Potentate Magnificence?!”
“Sire...y-your Unparalleled Nobleness, I swear on my life! I saw it with my own eyes!” the guard pleaded, eyes wide with horror “We were on patrol in the Mongrel Sector. Commander Rubric stepped forward to prevent him approaching the Thoroughbred District and he...” He pointed with a shaking hoof “He broke his neck! With one hoof!”
The court gasped in unison as the prisoner gave a smirk.
Dvinius drew himself up.
“For your crimes you will die in pain” he declared “But first, you will tell me who sent you?! Was it those filthy, inferior Equestrian mongrels?! They dare take the lives of our noble warriors?!”
The prisoner chuckled.
“The Equestrians...Heh...Not likely” He gave the monarch a smile, his eyes glinting “Rubric, was that his name? It was nothing personal. I just needed your attention...I’m one of a kind...and I bring you salvation”
There was silence in the Royal Court of what was laughably called New Hycarion.
“...what?” Dvinius asked at last “Salvation? From whom?”
The prisoner tilted his head.
“Your greatest threat. Your sworn enemy. Laurelore the Firsticorn”
The court laughed at this.
“Laurelore? Ha!” Dvinius gave a derisive snort, giving the dressed-up mare at his side a shove forwards “Laurelore, as you see, is my royal concubine, by right of conquest!”
The prisoner gave a bored look as his front hoof shot out, somehow free of the chain that held it in place.
The red wing was thrown from the mare’s head and a wing was broken loose, revealing the concubine to be quite unlike the reigning princess of Equestria.
“No, she isn’t” the prisoner said flatly.
“Wha...you...how” the monarch blathered as the guard made to replace the chain but found themselves less than willing the closer they approached this mysterious assassin.
“Disgusting” he sneered.
The nearest guard fumbled with his spear and made to prod the prisoner into submission. He was met by nothing more than his cold, biting glare, freezing him in his shaking hooves.
“Put that down, boy, before you hurt yourself.”
The guard he glanced at obligingly dropped the spear and was followed by his fellows.
“Wh-what are you doing, you useless scum?!” Dvinius screeched “Apprehend him, I say! I order you to hold him back! I am your...”
“Shut up and listen...” the prisoner snapped, barely louder than a stern word yet it quieted Dvinius almost immediately as the king sat in stunned silence as he spoke.
“Your war with Equestria grows ever bleaker for you. I’m here to even the scales, if you’ll take me on”
“Ha! The Equestrians! How could we possibly falter against those...mongrel dregs of the equine race?!” Dvinius blustered, joined by the fervent nodding of his courtiers “Snivelling, cowardly creatures! With soft hearts and soft heads! I hate them!” His eyes began twitching “I hate them and their pathetic ideals of friendship and harmony! They seek to mock me! They all deserve to die for their blasphemy!”
“It occurs to me, your magnificence, how weak and worthless these Equestrians are and how they would never be able to match our glorious warrior’s strength” one courtier simpered.
“And even if they could, they lack the leadership to pose us a threat” another snivelled.
“My court speaks truly!” Dvinius preened “They are inferior beings! Nothing like our majestic thoroughbred race of Hycarionites!”
“Inferior, you say?” the prisoner said slowly “Then explain, if you will, how these...inferior beings...have outsmarted you at every turn”
The court gasped again in unison as Dvinius opened and closed his mouth in alarm. The prisoner continued.
“Their kind are able to band together with sheer teamwork, sheer friendship...to thwart foes far greater than they. They have crushed cosmic monstrosities and masterminds, the like of which one cannot comprehend. You? You are nothing to them” He took a step closer, staring the Potentate Magnificence in the eyes “Inferior? They are far too dangerous to be called inferior...that is why I am offering you a chance to tip the sides in your favour. Let me join your legion, let me and my warriors take to the field...and I will kill the Firsticorn”
“You...you imagine yourself equal to my esteemed warriors?!” Dvinius spluttered.
“I do. And I'll gladly prove it.” The prisoner’s eyes gleamed as he addressed the court “I challenge your best. Send him here and I’ll prove my worth and how badly you require it”
“And so I shall! You shall find my mighty Cosmos Legion far stronger and wiser than you!” the Potentate Magnificence stamped a hoof on the arm of his throne and beckoned “Prince Luximus Fulman! You are my champion! Show him the might of New Hycarion and its Cosmos Legion!”
A milk-white stallion with a black mane cropped short, a similar prosthetic horn and wings and a distinctly haughty look to him strode forward, dressed in gaudy ivory-white armour that made him appear a whole lot buffer than he really was. Swinging his hooves high in the air, he put on a show.
“O Potentate Magnificence, I stand, your champion, Luximus Fulman, at your command! Wherever your enemies stand, I shall destroy them utterly and any who stand beside them!”
The prisoner gave an unimpressed smirk.
“This is your best?” he asked “This explains a lot.”
Luximus sniffed loudly, puffing out his chest.
“Any equine who dares hate and mock the Hycarionite Perfected is surely a weakling!” he bellowed.
At this, the prisoner reached at one of his manacles and retrieved a small knife, little more than a sharpened slice of metal one might find in a chain gang of sorts.
The guards looked at each other, puzzled as to where and how he’d hidden such a weapon.
Its wielder raised it before him, pointing it straight at his foe and spoke in his calm, quiet tone.
“This weakling is going to bleed you dry. That, my good sir, is a promise.”
Luximus snorted loudly as a serf shuffled forward and presented his weapon.
It was a short staff, more like a wand than anything else. Studded with coloured glass and topped with a great sphere encased in a thick coat of pyrite gel. One could have expected it was a mace but it seemed far too garish and ungainly to be anything more than another tool for grabbing attention.
“Behold the Magnifex!” Luximus announced, raising it high in the air “O Mighty Sceptre Of New Hycarionite Power Unchallenged! Through the worship of our Potentate Magnificence, he who-”
He stopped suddenly.
For a moment there was silence.
Luximus swayed silently as the Magnifex clattered to the ground. The hoof that had held it shakily crept up to his right eye within which the small, sharp blade was protruding, waggling about in the eyeball it had impaled.
The prisoner still had one hoof in the air where he’d thrown his shard of metal like a dart, his eyebrow raised.
“You done?” he asked nonchalantly.
As if to answer, Luximus screamed, long and loud, staggering back as he desperately pawed at the husk of iron embedded in his eye, lost of all balance and focus.
The court stared, the Potentate Magnificence pale with horror at the sight, as the prisoner paced forward.
“What are you whining about?” his foe asked dismissively “You’ve still got one. Use it. Aren’t you going to fight me, O Unchallenged Champion of New Hycarion?” He held out one hoof “Am I not the weakling that you will destroy utterly? Or is your power and perfection just as much a thing of fantasy as your golden horns and extra wings?!”
Grabbing the New Hycarionite by the chin, the prisoner’s hoof closed around the knife.
“Please...” Luximus managed to squeak before another scream, his eye completely removed.
“Please what?” The prisoner asked as he removed the eyeball from his blade with a whisking movement, sending it bouncing and rolling across the hall, the court edging away to avoid its path.
Luximus babbled and spluttered unintelligibly before finding his tongue at last, his face a mess as his missing eye socket wept blood all down his neck.
“Please...No more...Spare me...I yield...I beg you...Have mercy!”
“Well, I would, really, but you see...” The victorious stallion smiled, wider and more dementedly, leaning forward until their muzzles were nearly touching.
“I promised to bleed you dry...”
The blade raised in the air as the crowd gasped in terrified unison, Luximus Fullman shaking and wailing like a squalling infant as he heard the last words he would ever hear spoken to him.
“And I never make promises that I don't intend to keep.”
For the next half-hour, the prisoner set about keeping his promise.
By the end, when Luximus Fullman’s screams finally subsided, he was a deep crimson from head to hoof, a vast quantity of his blood pooling around the centre of the court like an indoor pond.
With the body of the court champion still quivering in its death throes, the prisoner made one last deep slash across the throat and pulled the head back, further and further until it at last came off the neck, a morbid trophy in his soaking, red hooves.
Letting the silence and shock wash over him like a cleansing shower, he paced over to the steps of the throne, bloody hoofprints leaving his mark, as he placed the head of the blank-eyed, open mouthed Luximus Fullman before his master.
Dvinius had shrunk in his throne, his milky eyes wide with abject fear, his teeth chattering audibly, his shivering hooves rattling against the arms of his throne.
At the sight of his captor’s terror, the blood-soaked stallion grinned and asked almost innocently.
There was the sound of several ponies vomiting behind him and a mare breaking down crying as the ruler of New Hycarion trembled feebly.
Giving a sniff, the prisoner wrinkled his nose and stepped back, a rank odour about Dvinius who shuffled shamefully.
“It would seem the position of your chosen champion is now open.”
“Wh-wh-who...” Dvinius whimpered “Who are you?”
The prisoner gave his neck and shoulders a stretch, an act which made him appear giant in the wake of such a victory.
“I go by...more than several names.” he answered “My unofficial title however, gifted to me by both friend and foe...is The Warmonger.”
And with that, he turned to the stunned court. The Cosmos Legion, once standing proud and haughty at their ruler’s side, now cowered in the corner, staring up at their new leader. A silver-coated mare with a purple wig and heavy makeup wept over the headless body of Luximus and a yellow stallion retched on his knees, his goggle-eyes watering.
“Mares and stallions of New Hycarion!” the Warmonger announced, his voice commanding absolute authority “For too long, you have slunk in the shadows or suffered the mocking laughter and jeers of your enemies. Now, under my command, you shall have the opportunity to rise, stronger, harder and wiser. True warriors. True killers. Under the banner of the Warmonger, Hycarion shall rise again! We shall raise our heads to the skies and herald the welcome age of old with our battle-cries, our faces painted with alicorn blood!”
“Yes!”
A screech came from the corner of the room as a mare rushed forward, a pale, gangly creature with a dull puce mane and sunken eyes. She was the serf who had bared Luximus’s weapon, her head now raised high where once it had always bowed in the presence of the champion. Gazing up at the Warmonger, she stood before the court, her hooves splashing excitedly in the blood of her old master.
“I am with you, Lord Warmonger! To death or glory!” she yelled “Luximus was weak! And the weak deserve their fate! I wish to become strong, under your command! Let me charge beside you into glorious battle! Let me bathe beside you in Equestrian blood! I am your sword, till my end, master!”
She raised a forehoof out of the red pool and marked her face with a thick stripe of blood across both cheeks.
The court stared at her, looks of horror, disgust and hatred rife upon their faces.
Then the Warmonger smiled and chuckled, seemingly impressed.
“What is your name, girl?” he asked.
The mare answered.
“Servilia, my lord.”
“Well, Servilia...I would happy for you to fight beside me if you’re able. And the rest of you. All able hooves are welcome. Prepare yourselves to fight. Prepare yourselves to kill. Serve us well...and your legend will live forever!”
Serf and slave raised their hooves high, roaring like mad beasts, the courtiers and Cosmos Legion shrinking ever further into the shadows of the hall, Dvinius sitting stock-still and silent, struggling to even comprehend what had just taken place.
In a single stroke, this nopony had taken everything he had.
And now seemed intent on using it to take everything else.
Hidden in the wild throng, a dark grey stallion with a piercing gaze slipped into the shadows, unseen.
*
“C’mon, Lulu, let’s race!”
A small but striking young filly with a shimmering coat, a flowing primrose mane, a pair of excitedly flapping wings and a twinkling horn beneath a tiny gilded tiara bounced excitedly down the palace halls, calling out to her sister who trailed behind.
An even smaller filly, little bigger than a foal, toddled over, her coat a deep blue and her mane a gleaming navy. Her expression was one of gloom and slight peevishness.
“C’mon, Tia, you know you always win.” she mumbled.
“Pleeeeaaaase?! I’ll go easy on you this time! Promise!” the elder sister, Tia, flew around the dark filly’s head with puppy-dog eyes.
“But you always fly.” Lulu moaned, giving her wings a rapid flutter with no response “You know I can’t do that yet.”
“Maybe this’ll be the time you learn how!” Tia jumped around, giggling “Remember when you flapped your wings so hard you tooted!”
Lulu pouted.
“It wasn’t that funny.”
“Please, Lulu, racing Gusty just isn’t the same.”
She motioned to their guardian, making her way breathlessly up the stairs. A tall and handsome ivory-white unicorn mare with bright emerald eyes and a long, wild pine-green mane streaked with a lock of scarlet. She wore the immaculate plate-mail armour of a Guard Captain coloured white with rose accents. The uniform of Crown Princess Celestia’s personal bodyguard.
“My lady...” she said, pausing for breath “Please don’t run off like that, you know how inconvenient it can be for me.”
“Sorry, Gusty.” Tia interjected before continuing to beg her little sister “And we don’t know how long it’s gonna’ be before...”
“I’m back.”
There came a holler from behind them as a rugged, dark-grey earth pony stallion with a short coal-black mane and piercing deep blue eyes strode out the shadows, dressed in similar armour to Gusty but ebony-black with navy accents.
“Tell me I’m not too late for a race.” he chuckled as Lulu’s face lit up with wonder.
“Midnight!” she exclaimed before bouncing over and hugging him by the muzzle tenderly.
“Hello, little Lulu.” he cooed “Was big, mean, old Tia gonna’ cheat in the race again?”
“No!” It was Tia’s turn to pout as Lulu clambered onto the back of her royal bodyguard.
“Okay, Tia, we’re ready to race.” Lulu giggled as the grey stallion arched back in a ready stance. Gusty sighed as her princess jumped up atop her back and prepped her.
“Ready! Set! Go!” Tia yelled as they took off, speeding down the halls of the Royal Palace, both bodyguards rushing neck-and-neck. Gusty bore a look of tired resignation while Midnight seemed to be having about as much fun as his rider.
“I’m gonna beat you this time, Tia!”
“No, you’re not, Lulu, just you wait!”
“Keep going, Midnight! We can beat ‘em!”
“Can not!”
“Can too!”
“Can not!”
Thud!
The sound brought both mounts to their senses as an old stallion, walking down the corridors and glancing sight of the folly, raised his staff in the air and slammed the butt of it loudly upon the floor.
Gusty and Midnight skidded and slipped frantically, finally crashing to the ground inches in front of the newcomer, winding up in a tangled heap with their respective royal wards giggling and cheering before looking up and recognising the pony before them.
He was a grey unicorn stallion in a flowing cape and pointed hat, both a hue of blues and decorated with bells, stars and crescent moons. His grim, calculating citrine-yellow eyes bore into the two bodyguards, both students of his.
Gusty found her voice, she and Midnight both shrinking under the old stallion’s gaze.
“H-h-hello...Archmage...”
“Gusty...Midnight Blade...” Star-Swirl the Bearded sighed humourlessly “What, I shudder to ask, do you two fools think you’re doing?”
“Just carrying out our humble duties, sir.” Midnight answered bashfully before gulping as his old master raised a bushy, disparaging eyebrow over him.
“Clearly far more important than the duty I gave you a week ago, young steed. A duty which, I remind, was indeed very important. Or do you presume foolish games and caterwauling in the corridors of the royal palace a more crucial endeavour than the safety of the realm?”
“No, sir, absolutely not, sir.” Midnight got to his hooves, dusted himself off and bowed “I have just returned from said duty, sir, and I was on my way to bring the news when...”
“You felt the need to play...whatever this was?” Star-Swirl butted in sarcastically.
“Please, Mr Star-Swirl...” Little Princess Luna tottered in front of her bodyguard and stared up at her teacher with wide, pleading eyes “He’s been gone a week. We really missed him...”
The Archmage looked into those eyes a moment, rolled his own and sighed.
“Alright. Let him make his report before the Princess...And then you may continue with these games of yours.”
The Princesses cheered in unison as Midnight followed his old teacher to the throne room.
“What news from the court of Dvinius? Is there another fresh new military folly in motion?”
“I...believe not, sir.”
Star-Swirl glanced at Midnight who wore an expression of bleakness, his eyes taking him back to something that could not have been pleasant to watch.
“I’ve seen so much blood today, I might as well go back to hunting vamponies.”
“Explain yourself, Midnight, you’re making less and less sense.”
Midnight Blade thought a moment and answered.
“If you’ll pardon my Elkish, sir, I believe curd is about to go down.”
Star-Swirl blinked before massaging his temples with one hoof.
“Midnight, you and Gusty have an unusual skill for collectively trying my patience. Do you intend to say those exact words to her majesty, Princess Laurelore, or are you going to tell me in words what the blazes is going on?”
The dark-grey stallion sighed and remade his point.
Purple Patch’s short, flat summary was typical for him. The gaggle of investigators paused as the smoke around them formed and malformed itself, looking for the next point in the time they sought.
“I do not feel that well, I’ll be honest.” Wagensroll mumbled “Why...did that stallion have to make whatshisname’s death so long? It would be hard to describe that.”
“Meh...If you know what he was like before seeing that, you won’t feel sorry for him...And what he did with the testicles was pretty entertaining.” Dawnwind chuckled, her dark sense of humour quite famous in her circle.
“Dawnwind, that’s sick!” Wagensroll snapped “I don’t think I can ever eat dumplings again!”
“Hey, ladies, can we focus?!” Daring Doo barked as the five visitors massaged their temples.
“Sorry chaps. A pause is needed between these visions. You spend too long in one, you start thinking you’re always there. It’s not pretty.”
“Thank you Mr Patch. How long do these pauses last?”
“Not long. Just to remember you’re all still here. Everypony alright? Anything we need to go over?”
The ponies looked from one to the other.
“So that was Dvinius?” Starlight Glimmer asked “I remember reading about him. His belief in his own supremacy, this sick ideal of his own worship and the slavery of his own ponies. It’s one of the things that got me into my old obsession with equality...Guess I messed that up big-time.” she sighed despondently.
Maud Pie patted her gently on the back.
“What we, with unrelenting zeal, seek to oppose, we often, through mocking fate, become.” she said, flatly. “Laurelore said that. It happens to all of us.”
“Look, Glim, whatever anypony thinks about you, I met Dvinius face-to-face.” the Doctor added “What you fell into was nothing compared to his level of insanity.”
“...thanks...” Starlight mumbled.
“Okay...okay...I think we’re ready.” Cadence looked as she was recovering from some of hangover or, from experience, had been taking care of Flurry all night “Patch, would you...do your thing again.”
“Thing?” Purple Patch raised an eyebrow as if affronted “Your highness, this is a trans-temporal realiform station. First invented by Earth Pony Alchemists working in conjunction with Pegasi Engineers and Unicorn Scryers near the beginning of the Third Age of Magic though it was adapted from layout documents found in the Ancient Armoury of Empress Minerva, the Witch-Queen of Hippomorphia, who Archmage Mimic herself...”
“GET ON WITH IT!” the occupants of the room yelled, their headaches being actively made worse.
“Alright, alright, sorry. Mouth ran away with me.” The talkative librarian set about adjusting the nodes on his contraption.
“Patch, I swear to Singingwolf, your Cutie Mark should have been one of those clockwork false teeth with the way you yammer on.” Dawnwind snapped.
“Okay, harsh...but fair.” Patch sighed, flipping the switch as the smoke began swirling around them “Hold onto your sanity everypony. We’re going in!”
*
Midnight Blade had approached the Royal Throne of Equestria more times yet the sight of the majestic Princess Laurelore the Firsticorn, the Great Rejuvenator, never ceased to amaze him.
She was seated as regally as one could be yet always seemed to wear that level gaze that made her seem so approachable, complete with her smile which would be capable of taming storms and whirlpools if cast before the sea and sky.
She wore a trailing silk gown of sandy gold with a crown fashioned from gilded laurels and a necklace of consecutive ivory and ebony pearls.
On either side of her were the Lord Steward and the Captain-General, seated primly and attentively.
Knickerbocker, a trim and stately politician in a lustrous indigo gown of office, his cyan mane grown long and his magnificent mustachios lining his upper-lip, a monocle adorning his right eye.
And Bold, a rugged, dapple-coated steed of war in burnished golden armour, lounging in the seat. Practically his equal in rank and title, Bold and Midnight hadn’t always been friends. In their early years at Canterlot, they’d been at each other’s throats for one reason or another but, as they grew, Bold had grown to accept and respect Midnight and the dun pony had done likewise.
Midnight Blade and Star-Swirl approached, bowing respectfully.
“Lord Minister Archmage Star-Swirl, Knight Commander Midnight Blade, I am pleased to see you in good health. How may I be of help?”
Her voice had a curious ability to make everypony around her relax, collect themselves and speak to her with utter sincerity.
Star-Swirl began, tapping his staff on the ground for the court’s attention.
“Your Royal Highness,” he began “With your kind permission we, to our regret, bring foreboding news. New Hycarion is rising once more.”
There was a quiet but noticeable chuckle from the court.
“Archmage, without meaning any offence, I hardly consider that foreboding.” Bold said.
“Captain-General, please exercise courtesy.” Laurelore said, in a manner that was bordering on stern “Star-Swirl rarely if ever brings us misinformation.”
“I understand, your highness, and I mean no offence, but let’s recollect here. This is nothing new and has rarely ever been cause for great concern. Since Dvinius took control, New Hycarion has never once posed us a threat.”
“Dvinius is no longer in control.” It was Midnight Blade who spoke up in a grave tone.
The court was quickly silenced.
Knickerbocker found his voice.
“Somepony finally did him in then?”
“No, but they certainly put him in his place.”
Midnight explained what he’d seen and what this would lead to. The stranger calling himself ‘The Warmonger’ could only mean bad news for Equestria.
“So this...Warmonger...simply stepped in and took charge?” Laurelore asked, her expression curdling with disgust “The methods by which he murdered Luximus Fulman...evidently this is one who enjoys death.”
“Certainly.” Midnight replied “I wasn’t exactly readily able to get a glimpse of his skill, one hardly needs much of it to deal with the Cosmos Legion, but he handled himself with almost utter surety. Like some sort of actor, his part scripted and rehearsed. It was very clear he was prepared to kill anypony who stood in his way and allowing him to take command may, quite possibly, have been the single smartest thing Dvinius has ever done.”
“And this...Warmonger claimed that he would bring down Equestria?”
“That did seem to be his primary agenda, your highness.” Midnight cleared his throat “In mere moments, he’d disassembled the structure of New Hycarionite society and is now on his way to do the same to ours. While he’s unlikely to have an easier time of it, it is my firm belief that he should not be taken lightly.”
“How soon do you believe he may raise an army?” Bold asked.
“Hard to determine. If he was planning on training New Hycarion’s slave population into soldiers, he’s going to have a difficult time. It’ll take him years to amass an army ready to march upon Equestria...but...”
“But?” Laurelore pressured the Knight Commander.
Midnight sighed and spoke his mind.
“There was nothing in him that suggested he hadn’t thought of that. Your highness, if he’s intending on raising an army against us, going by what I saw, taking into account his level of planning and calculation and huge sense of confidence...I have a nasty feeling he may already have his own army ready to march.”
“But then, why go to Dvinius in the first place?”
“Why indeed” Midnight replied with uncertainty “He has a plan, I’m sure of it. And when he puts it into action, all of Equestria will need to be ready.”
In a stately but weary manner, Laurelore breathed deep and made her decree.
“Captain-General Bold” At the mention of his name, the stallion left his seat, stood before the throne and placed a hoof over his chest in a salute “You shall give orders to all the eastern garrisons to muster on the border and prepare for invasion.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Lord Knickerbocker. You shall inform all lords and officials across the realm that defensive preparations must be made. The crafting of weapons and the storage of provisions is tantamount.”
“Wisely said, your majesty. It shall be done.”
“Lord Minister Archmage Star-Swirl, you shall give orders to all senior wizards, mages and magical adepts loyal to the crown to observe New Hycarion by any means necessary and find out all we can about this ‘Warmonger’.”
“I shall, your majesty.”
Laurelore looked out across the court, her face still possessed of an unwavering aura of compassion and grace, as she made her decree.
“I shall send word to the Bearers of the Elements and to all those we trust with our lives. Ponies of Equestria. Guard yourselves and all those you love and prepare for the worst. As of now...we are at war.”
*
Servilia was no stranger to cold and dampness. The slave pens of New Hycarion were famous for it.
But this place paled in comparison. The wet stone floors chilled her hooves and every time a drop of moisture landed on her coat, she’d instinctively turn to check they weren’t being followed. The place resonated with an ancient terror.
Yet still she followed her new master.
“Keep calm, my dear, the worst is over.” She forgot how long it had been since he’d spoken. Upon asking her whether or not she wished to be part of the new order that would claim Canterlot, Hycarion and all within Equestria, she was sent into a strange sleep. Though she was certain the Warmonger had not been the one to send her into it.
Someone else had been with him. Someone very good at hiding.
Yet now they were alone, venturing into a deep and lightless cavern. The Warmonger bore a solitary torch yet even then, the light barely touched them.
Servilia shivered and finally found her voice.
“Will we...come to any harm, down here?”
“Not unless my friends wish us to.”
“F-friends?”
The Warmonger tilted his head and gave her a cocky smile.
“Don’t look so surprised dear. For all my faults, I’m told I can be quite charming.”
“O-o-of course, master, but...down here?” she took a nervous intake of breath and spoke her mind “Master, I really must ask. Where are we?”
The Warmonger paused, the nonchalant expression fixed on his face, and gazed up at the ceiling.
A drop of moisture splashed on his muzzle. Licking it off his lips, he spoke.
“Taste the water. It won’t hurt you.”
With equal curiosity and dread, Servilia caught a droplet of water on her fetlock and lapped at it, suddenly realising how thirsty she’d been.
“It tastes...salty.”
“Because it is” her master said, flatly “We are, at present, several feet under the sea.”
Before Servilia could startle, the Warmonger chuckled.
“Not to worry, this place has guarded us from the depths for centuries and shall guard us for millennia more. Down here, we are protected. Down here, we survive.”
“We?”
The Warmonger simply smiled and gestured to the darkness further down the cavern.
Walking onwards, Servilia’s ears pricked.
She was certain she was hearing a third pair of hoof-steps.
Then teeth appeared inches from the torch-head.
Giving a slight cry of alarm, the Warmonger raised his hoof for pause and slowly waved his torch around.
A great statue was standing in front of them. A great effigy of a pony with its head bowed offering up a small foal in its hooves.
“Bow.” The Warmonger said flatly.
Bowing came naturally to Servilia, having spent so long in servitude, but it did nothing to impede her confusion.
“To the statue, master?”
“A sign of respect. One must bow at the figure...or she’ll get you.”
“Th-the statue?”
“No.”
Servilia waited on who exactly ‘she’ was but the answer never came. For reasons she didn’t quite understand, she didn’t feel any wish to press for it.
The Warmonger rose and tilted his head toward the ongoing cavern.
“Come along.”
More ghastly figures met their torchlight as they ventured ever deeper. Each one bearing expressions of pure rage and disgust before the visitors, their teeth filed to fangs, their eyes sickly, glowing, yellow pearls, boring into them.
Servilia wondered who would willingly carve figures with such expressions. Their gaze seemed to sap the confidence from any observer.
“Master...these statues...” she mumbled “Are they...monsters?”
“Of a sort.” The Warmonger said.
Every answer only prompted more questions that Servilia didn’t particularly feel like answering.
With a grunt of pain, she stumbled into a rocky outcrop. The Warmonger stopped, turning towards her.
“You alright?” he asked, no clear expression in his tone.
“Yes...” Servilia rubbed her hoof as she glanced at the outcrop.
It appeared to have carved to form the figure of a pony...no...Many ponies. Crouched, huddled, clustered, what remained of their faces locked in screams of fear and despair. Some of the stone had corroded but the intention was unmistakable.
“And...what sort of statues are these meant to be?”
She heard the Warmonger chuckle.
“Those aren’t statues, my dear.” he said, a sardonic mirth in his voice before turning back towards the shadows “We should make pace. We don’t have vast amounts of time.”
As the cavern finally reached its peak, Cascadius held up his torch. The wall at the end of the tunnel glistened in the light and showed itself to be made up of a strange, thick, dark-green glass.
The Warmonger dropped the torch, letting the flames dissipate on the wet floor as he placed a hoof right in the centre of the glass.
With an almighty grinding snarl, the glass door shifted, rolling away to the side as a great but colourless light hit them like an ice storm. Servilia shielded her blinking eyes a moment as she and the Warmonger entered.
Greeting them was an immense amphitheatre and overpowering stench of blood and decay. In the centre of the room was a great red pool where over a hundred corpses lay rotting in piles around the edges of the circle. On the steps, inches from the pool, a huddled figure knelt, giving off a demented, gnawing sound.
Before Servilia could say anything, dumbfounded as she was at the sight before her, the Warmonger barked at the creature.
“Ratbag!”
The figure jerked round fearfully, nearly falling in the pool as he scampered up the steps to address the visitors, throwing away a bone he’d been chewing scraps of meat off.
He was a goat, a gelding, shaved of fur and removed of horns, his eyes a dark puce, sunken in their sockets, his voice high-pitched and wheezy. Swathed in a heavy maroon cloak, he stared up at the stallion, his bizarre appearance reminding Servilia of some unsightly foetus-like creature.
He spoke.
“Oh...m-m-master, your presence warms old Ratbag, great lord of battle. The elder has awaited your coming, oh anointed...”
“Yes, yes, spare me the pleasantries, Ratbag.” the Warmonger sighed “Just inform the elder that I’ve returned.”
“Y-y-yes, master...” the goat tilted his head and smiled a grin with many missing teeth and many more rotting ones, eying Servilia with more than simple curiosity.
“And...Who is this?”
“My friend. Her name’s Servilia.” The Warmonger turned to her “This is Ratbag, our acolyte. He tends to the place.”
“Ah...welcome, dear beauty...” Ratbag licked his lips “Any friend of the Warmonger is a friend of Ratbag’s”
“I rather think not.” the stallion said flatly, a threatening tone hidden behind his usual calmness. Ratbag cleared his throat, eyed the Warmonger fearfully and turned away, scuttling into one of the tunnels.
The goat disturbed Servilia.
It would be uncommon for a slave to not have seen a master gaze at her with lust in New Hycarion but she had rarely ever been subjected to it. In the slave pits, the masters knew her for her plainness and back when she was serving Luximus Fulman, he was thrash her ‘ugly, bent, old features’ whenever he was in a bad mood and noticed his serf looking him in the eye. The pleasure slaves had been kept in larger, cleaner wards and always given adequate food and warmth but their position was no less enviable than the serfs, labourers and fools. Luximus, though he had a wife in the Cosmos Legion, enjoyed paying the pleasure house visits and felt the most pleasure when striking the girls in the face or burning them with hot water or metal. When his wife, Astraluca, found out, she would find the slaves who bore his mark and inflict her own, with abject fury.
And the Potentate Magnificence himself would often order one of the most beautiful slaves and two of the youngest to his chambers.
Yet nopony ever saw them leave.
New Hycarion was a kingdom of horror and decay yet it paled to this death-strewn sanctum and its inhabitants.
“Rest easy, my dear,” the Warmonger assured “He’s quite harmless...at least while I’m around.”
“Master, please answer me in clarity, I must know...” Clear dread was on her voice “Where is this place and why have you brought me here?”
The Warmonger gave her a look, sighed and paced towards the centre of the amphitheatre.
“You will have your answers. But not from me. I am not the master of this place. It was not so long ago that I was but a humble novice. Alone, afraid, uncertain of my place in this world...just like you.”
There came an eerie moan from the tunnel Ratbag had disappeared to and a flash of shadow and flickering flame.
In the time Servilia had taken to blink, a stallion stood at the top of the amphitheatre.
He must have been the oldest pony Servilia had ever seen. Gaunt, grey-coated with a shockingly-white mane and trailing whiskers at the side of his sunken cheeks that nearly reached the ground.
He was dressed in unkempt but ornate robes, mahogany and maroon with a half-mask of what looked like obsidian. In his hoof was a staff, also obsidian, twisting and winding up and up and topped with a great yellow pearl held in place with four spiky talons at each corner.
He raised his head, observing the scene and met his gaze upon Servilia.
The imposing steed caused her to quake in her hooves, bending her legs ready to kneel on his wish. Whatever dread and awe the Warmonger had cast about the court of New Hycarion it would not have been a fraction of what this pony could have done. Looking at him, staring at his cold, unimpressed expression and harsh, lightless eyes, Servilia knew this stallion was one to be feared.
“You have returned, Cascadius.” he said, his voice like a deep commanding echo from the plane of death “And, I see, not alone.”
“Yes, Master.” The Warmonger turned and knelt respectfully “I have completed my task. New Hycarion will bow to our command and our army is assembled, ready to march.”
“And the final Lodestone?”
In his eyes, Servilia could have sworn the Warmonger betrayed a hint of fear, perhaps even shame.
“It was not in their champion’s hooves. I believe Dvinius keeps it where it’s safe. We will need time before we can seize it.”
There came a low growl from the elder’s throat but he neither moved nor spoke.
Ratbag made his way out of the tunnels and secluded himself in a dark corner, scavenging.
“Who is the mare?” the elder asked.
“Master, her name is Servilia. She is a serf from New Hycarion that was the first to support me once I had claimed the life of their champion. I believe...she will make a fine initiate.”
Servilia felt herself blink, almost against her wish.
Opening her eyes, the elder was standing bare inches in front of her face.
Squeaking in alarm, Servilia struggled to remain steady on her hooves as she caught sight of the stallion’s eyes.
They were without white. Sheer pools of ink-black with a pair of tiny rust-orange specks fixed upon her intently.
He tilted his head slowly from left and right and hummed deeply.
“She is a frail thing, sickly, bruised, marks of the whip and chattel rake her flesh...” he nodded “But behind it there is...a certain inner strength...perhaps a calling...She will serve.”
“M-m-master...” Servilia stammered.
“I am not the master, Servilia, not here.” The Warmonger rose and turned to the elder “May I introduce you, master, or will you let the Ratbag do the honours?” Ratbag jumped, startled, at the mention of his name, scattering pebbles and bone fragments he’d been collecting.
The elder tutted with distaste.
“You may do so, Cascadius. I prefer my name spoken from your tongue to one who lets it waggle like a fool.”
“A wise choice, m-m-master...” Ratbag stammered.
“Thank you, Master.” The Warmonger nodded and spoke “Servilia, this is the Keeper of the Deeprisen Sanctuary and the acting-Grand Master of the Mundane Order, Master Vovin.”
“I-I-I-I see...” Servilia whispered “A-a-and wh-what’s the M-M-Mundane Order?”
“Do not quake, child, the Order has no place for whelps.” Vovin tilted his head “And in answer to your query...The Mundane Order is the hope and heirship of all Equestria once was, will become and always must be.”
“This, Miss Servilia, is where I grew up.” The Warmonger added “Where I became the stallion I am. I hope you realise few, if any ponies are privy to this knowledge. We won’t tell you to guard it, only to treasure it.”
“Of course, master.” Servilia bowed her head and listened intently as Vovin spoke, pacing about the amphitheatre as he explained.
“Neither Equestria nor Hycarion ever admitted this but not all ponies wanted kings...or queens...or princesses...or magic. Eons ago, the tribes found their own individual magic or power or knowledge or whatever word they had for it. Unicorns mastered spells and enchantments, pegasi spread wings and twisted the clouds and earth ponies crafted the land they trod to serve and support them. Yet there were those who did not wish to make the world they stood malformed, however it would suit them. The delving of the three tribes would lead to consequences they would be unable to control. Their home had become cursed with a force not of this world that would do no living thing good. Your ruler, Dvinius, seems to have the same mindset, though he may not know it, denouncing the magic of many in favour of belief in his own power, instilled in all his subordinates.” he snorted derisively.
“But while ponies were still young and unfamiliar with the world, there were tribes that sought power in what they knew and those who sought power in what they did not know. I and many others belonged to the former. We were a simple race, dwelling in the faraway canyons and hills, keeping to ourselves. But this way...it did not do us well. When the tribes gained power, they sought more, as it is with every force that has its first taste of potency. We fought. We fought tooth and hoof with all we had. But against a foe with power we could not comprehend...we were defenceless. Our way had failed us. Too many masters, not enough servants, all knowledge forbidden, unable to change, unable to adapt. You and I have both seen what it is to live in a land where the laws you created cannot protect you.”
Servilia nodded slowly, watching with fascination as, out the corner of her eye, the calm, confident face of the Warmonger clouded with a haze, the smoke and flames of a war his kind could not have won.
Vovin continued regardless.
“And they called us savages. ‘The Wild Horses’, they called us. We were nothing to them. Just...insignificant.” The elder closed his eyes and tilted his head in something that could have resembled a twitch.
“But not to all. There were some who saw promise in the old ways...and sought them new again, sought to raise us and make us strong.” he gave the closest thing he could to a smile “You’ve seen them.”
Servilia turned to the cavern they’d walked through, now covered up by the great glass door. It dawned on her.
“The statues...they’re...”
“Gods. The real gods. The ones we saw, the ones who spoke to us. Not blinding amalgamations, nor monarchs drunk with power, nor figments of a weakling’s fearful mind to give them false hope and promise for an empty future. True gods in a form one could not place on parchment yet unforgettable to the eye, as the statues prove. They appeared to our kind and they offered power. True power.” he sighed “But true power, as all wise creatures know, demands sacrifice.”
His hoof rose to the ceiling. Carved into it and engraved with an oily black stone was a great pattern of circles, triangles, diamonds and wildly criss-crossing lines and arrows, forming an immense dodecagon with a gigantic yellow pearl in the centre, bathing the room in eerie luminescence like a lighthouse beam. The yellow pearl was darker in the centre and appeared to spin lazily in its socket.
“Thus was founded the Mundane Order, those who seek power and strength from that which was always there. These gods were as old as the land that would become Equestria itself or very nearly. They did not create the land but they conquered it as the beasts under their chattel would do, with blood and fury. No other civilisation on this earth could stand against them and with their favour we wracked vengeance upon the weak and faithless...until an otherworldly force called magic plunged our established order into unfathomable chaos. From magic was created the Draconequui, who thrive on the chaos and warp reality for their own amusement; the Changelings, shape-shifters, mood-readers and love-eaters; the Sphinxes, gatekeepers to the Underworld who know all and see all, existing between the worlds of life, death and undeath; the Smooze, the all-devouring mass of primordial force; the Spirit Kings of Storm, Fire, Water, Earth and the Life Cycle, who crafted Tartarus and opened the Gates of Paradise to mortal creatures; and most relevantly, the Alicorns with their Elements of Harmony and Marks for their servitors. At the turn of this age, these abominable forces toppled our gods and left us powerless, swarming the continents and inflicting their lies and blasphemies upon all living things, duping the weak and murdering the strong, their chief weapons treachery, deceit, greed, cruelty, misery and their unholy magic.”
Ratbag spat loudly, ignored by his masters.
Vovin stared Servilia in the eye.
“You have fought as a slave, I trust? In the shapeless hordes of Dvinius’s armies, sent against the full force of Equestria?”
Servilia nodded, the fires of a war her masters could never win still burned into her mind.
“Then you know what it is to face them and feel the sting of their hatreds and hypocrisies.” the elder declared “The Mundane Order seek to oppose the Alicorn Magic and its ambitions to dominate the world through force.” He tutted “Oh, they claim it’s all for the greater good. They call it ‘Harmony’, ‘Peace’, ‘Love’ and ‘Friendship’. They instil such sweetness and comfort upon the weak who submit...But when faced with the strong, with one who would not stray from their path, what other decision do they take but force of raw power? The powers of a demi-goddess wiping out whole civilizations and overseeing all life under their gaze, twisting the world they were brought into by powers not even they comprehend?” he hissed with venom, his lips twisting into a snarl “The sins they propagate shall burn them to the core, thus it is decreed.”
“So...this was...a faith...the oldest faith?”
“Exactly.” The Warmonger stood up and spoke “The Mundane Order teaches ponies to endure, to become strong enough to brave the hardships of the world we came into, neither to destroy it nor to repurpose it. We take the world as it is, hard, wild and unforgiving. Just like us.” he smiled.
“Just so” Vovin nodded “With so many petty kings and chieftains running about chasing crowns and fighting over thrones, the Order needed to take control. So here, in Deeprisen Rock, where the gods were first beheld by the First Ponies, we began our work. Our acolytes spread the word of the pantheon among the hill tribes. We had a great deal of success among the foals. Young, learning, determined, longing to be strong. Perfect.” The rusty glint in his eyes flickered “But some of their parents, among them so-called kings of our kind, opposed our teachings. This would not do. The words of the gods were very clear. To deny them or defy them...is to unleash their wrath upon the world. And the Mundane Order is the instrument of that wrath. We gathered those with faith and seized those without. And here...for all to see...our sacrifice...in the name of true power.”
He waved his thin, unshorn hoof over the pool of corpses.
“The parents...” the Servilia slowly realised “And the foals...”
“All brought here, all to partake in the sacrifice.”
“...you killed them...”
“No.” The Warmonger spoke again. It was impossible to tell whether he’d been listening the whole time or only then “The masters of the Mundane Order shed no blood that day. They had the power already...We did not.”
“W-w-we?”
“The faithful...Longing to be strong...The perfect students...The perfect warriors...This was our sacrifice.” The Warmonger spread out one hoof, smiling with such an eerie serenity.
Servilia felt her throat constricting with shock, threatening to choke her.
“You...you killed your parents?”
“To strip away the taint of faithlessness upon their line.” Vovin answered “It was their duty, their sacrifice...and through this, they became powerful. To endure the pain of others and of themselves.”
There was a pause. Ratbag could be heard trying to suck the eyeball out of a pony’s skull.
Servilia slowly turned to the Warmonger, uncertain of what exactly she saw.
“How...how did it feel?”
The stallion paused, tilting his gaze upwards slightly in thought.
“I don’t quite remember.” he said flatly “We all felt differently about it. Many cried their eyes out. Others felt nothing. Some even found they enjoyed it. There’s mine, right over there.” He pointed to a pair of ponies, made unrecognisable in the pool of gore, removed of everything that made them whole.
“I had to cut their hooves off...They wouldn’t let go of each other. One must approach the underworld alone.”
“Thus it is decreed.” Vovin spoke again “The sacrifice also served as a message. That our ascension would not be an easy road and that only the strong would endure. Those who had joined our Order for their own sakes lost their nerve and turned to cowardice, fleeing the Sanctuary or seeking to interrupt us. And they were dealt with. The sacrifice awakened the gods. As it is decreed, their favour fell upon those with faith and their wrath fell on those without. You have seen their work.”
Servilia looked back at the caverns and even in the amphitheatre, the stone ponies were massed in corners or dotted about the room, horror upon their motionless faces.
“And there they shall remain for all time. Such is the wrath of the gods upon those without faith.” Vovin craned his neck “And afterward, there came the final test. If you will follow me.”
Into the tunnel he had departed from, Vovin led Servilia into the darkness once more, the Warmonger and Ratbag following behind. The yellow pearl upon his staff glowed.
Servilia needed to remind herself not to blink down in Deeprisen.
One moment, they’d been pacing down what seemed like miles and miles of pitch-black darkness. Yet in a moment, a door had materialised out of the shadow, standing before them as if staring them in the face.
The mare glanced at the pearl.
“Master Vovin.” she mumbled “What is that? I saw them on the statues...and in the mosaic on the ceiling...”
“Yes.” Vovin said, not turning to face her “These are Lodestone, jewels of the gods. Within them is their power, their favour and the oldest and truest magic. That which was born in this world, not crafted from another plain and used to subjugate it.”
“Th-that was why you were in New Hycarion!” Servilia exclaimed.
“Very good. This one possesses a certain insight.” Vovin muttered to the Warmonger. Servilia was unsure if he was being sarcastic.
“Dvinius has, in his possession, an orb of power, does he not?” the Warmonger asked “He claims it shares the power with the Magnifex you carted around for Luximus.”
“Y-yes...I saw it now and again. But it doesn’t look like this. It’s sheer black with blue lights that blink in and out.”
“We believe it’s contained in some way, not by Dvinius’s hoof. He found it that way and we believe he used it to take control. The final Lodestone. It’s...pretty important.”
Before Servilia could ask how or why, Vovin had opened the door without moving a muscle.
Every action of his made Servilia feel ever more unnerved.
A tomb greeted them, a tomb with a vast number of beds, all arranged row by row and each resting upon them a small, shrouded corpse. Each one wore a mask resembling the statues in the caverns.
There was no scent of death here. It didn’t smell of anything describable.
If it was possible for coldness to have a smell...
“All dead.” the Warmonger said slowly “The ultimate sacrifice.”
“H-h-how?” Servilia stammered “Wh-why?”
“Because power demands sacrifice.” Vovin said flatly “Each initiate was given a bed and sealed in the room. The final test. Endure.”
“All we had to do was remain alive by whatever means necessary. And it was not only our strength that was tested. Our patience, our resolve, our sense of strategy. Only one of us could live. Once the masters knew who that was, it would be opened. So do we sit on our bed and wait it out, working to minimalise our air intake as others slowly fell asleep around us? Or would we take the risk ensuring those around us died by our own means, wasting valuable breath and energy scrambling around in the dark. It was all up to us. But one by one, we all died...Until only I was left.”
He stared at the room of his departed brothers and sisters, his eyes cloudy with half-forgotten memories.
“At last I emerged, a master of the Mundane Order, the pinnacle of pony endurance. I forget the name I went in with but when I came out, I had a new one...”
He turned to her and slowly smiled.
“Cascadius. Taken from the old tongue and one of the Mundane Order’s decrees ‘Kasokari Dteusii’...The Fall Of Gods.”
“The false gods.” Vovin added “For his ascension, his rebirth, was to bring about the rise of the true. Here in Deeprisen, a new god was born and wielded in his grasp...” he turned to the Warmonger, Cascadius “...his blade.”
“To be wielded against all heathens and bring about the awakening of the thirteenth deity.” Ratbag hollered.
The lodestone on Vovin’s staff glowed again and they found themselves in the amphitheatre again. There had been no magical field, no shimmer, no noise. They had simply appeared here as if they had never left.
Servilia was dumbfounded.
Was this truly the magic of this world?
“Our path was set. We were ready to bring about the god’s wrath on Equestria...” Vovin continued “Alas...Our enemy knew. The wretched Firsticorn appeared to us. She called out to us and demanded our final surrender. We refused, of course...And so she showed us no mercy.”
“She flooded the valley.” Servilia realised aloud.
“The masters emerged and took to battle with the false god...None of them returned. The seas rose up and swallowed our home. Only I, the eldest and last-remaining acolyte, was left to oversee the Sanctuary.” In that moment, as he gazed upon the cold, empty room, he almost looked sad.
“And I have done so ever since.”
Servilia was quiet a moment. It was difficult to process and near impossible to imagine all that had transpired here.
“The new god?” she murmured “Where is he?”
“Quite close by.” Cascadius, that was his name, Servilia had to remember “In fact, just a few foot above you.”
All eyes rose up to the great lodestone in the ceiling mosaic. Now, it seemed, it wasn’t simply darker in the centre but...filled.
Something was inside it. Something large. And alive.
“The Lodestone Cradle” Vovin said “There within slumbers the thirteenth deity, he who shall bring about the Old World as the New. Mu’Und. The Nemesis.”
“Ruler, Judge and Conqueror.” Ratbag added “Unrelenting, Unwavering, Undying.”
“To be awakened by the Great War that will spell Equestria’s doom.” Cascadius finished “When he awakens, the advantages Equestria used to subjugate us will be overturned and the alicorns will be destroyed by the very powers they believed would protect them as they are cast out of this world.”
Servilia paused.
Meeting the Equestrians in battle, seeing her force, the minimum of their power demolishing the New Hycarionite hordes, one could scarce imagine their downfall.
Yet it was inviting to say the least. The playing field even once more. Kingdoms like Hycarion would no longer squabble about in the pits, placing chains on the weak and kissing the hooves of the strong.
There would be so much opportunity.
“And...what of Hycarion?”
Cascadius chuckled.
“Once we have the Final Lodestone, it will have served its purpose. I reckon the land will need better rulers than Dvinius...or none at all.”
“As it was for the oldest kings, their throne shall be the battlefield and their crowns the heads of conquered foes.”
“Eternal war where the strong may never lack for glory.” Ratbag piped up.
“We are close, Servilia. For decades, we have consolidated our power and gathered allies and resources. We are ready to march. We shall take our place in the new world as it was in the old...Will you?”
Servilia, for the first time in many hours, took her eyes off them and slowly looked to her forehooves.
The rashes of chains and the scarring of whips marred her like a clumsy etching.
Days before, the best she could have dreamed of was for her master to stay in a good mood long enough for the worst of her bruises to heal.
Now there was opportunity.
Now there was hope.
She wanted more.
She deserved more.
“Yes...” she said at last, louder, stronger and surer than ever “I want this. I want this future. I want to be part of this order...of this world.”
Vovin breathed deeply and did the closest thing he could to smiling. Ratbag whooped and hopped about frantically.
Cascadius meanwhile, offered out his hoof and spoke softly, craning forward to whisper in his ear, his forehoof gently raising and brushing her neck.
His breath felt warm.
“Come take a bath with me.”
*
The smoke dissipated suddenly as the three historians and their visitors jumped back.
For a moment there was pause.
The Doctor finally broke the silence, his face a picture of revulsion.
“I feel...so unclean.”
“Tell me they don’t bath in the...in the...” Starlight blanched, face turning white then green.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.” Dawnwind muttered “Equine mating habits are disgusting!”
Wagensroll took a few deep breaths and checked on his friend.
Patch glanced back at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Patch...You look disappointed.”
The patchy pony gave an indignant look.
“Well...don’t you want to continue?”
All eyes snapped towards him.
“Mr Patch...you are aware of what was about to happen, correct?” Dawnwind said, clear disgust in her tone and expression.
“Well, yes, but the stuff they were talking about, this Mundane Order, this faith that predates the First Age of Magic, this hidden kingdom beneath-”
“THEY WERE GOING TO BUCK...IN THE POOL OF CORPSES!” the doe bellowed.
“Well, we don’t know if they went that far and obviously that would be unpleasant to watch but hey, ‘He Who Increaseth Knowledge Increaseth Sorrow’- Cedrus the Gatherer.”
“You mean to tell me this thing lets you see ponies bucking?!”
“It’s not a ‘thing’ and it’ll show anything that’s relevant to the research, despite some...”
“Words fail me!” Dawnwind shrieked “You’ve been using this thing as a star-damned porn search?! I knew that stuff you wrote on Melusine and her filly-friends was way too detailed! You must have enjoyed that part, didn’t you, you bucking creep!”
“No, it’s not like that, okay!” Patch yelled “It’s not like the device can censor stuff! It traces lives and how they played out and that happens to be a part of their life!”
“Look, Dawn, it’s okay, trust me, this thing has you see it whether you want to or not.” Wagensroll interjected “I remember when Fletcher was here, we were getting down the Armbrust family’s history and ended up with a front-row seat for the time, place and manner he was...conceived.” he shuddered “It was pretty embarrassing. Fletch didn’t speak for days.”
“At least I learned what ‘Härter, Härter, Mein Schön Deckhengst!’ meant.” Patch added flatly.
“Sexless idiots.” the doe muttered.
“Look, um...Let’s just avoid that part...What really matters is finding out about these ‘Lodestones’ and if and how he got the final one.” Cadence piped up.
“I have a nasty feeling he did.” Daring Doo said grimly “I don’t remember seeing that giant yellow pearl in the ceiling. Looking back, I think there was a generously-sized gap."
“The traditional texts speak of gods before the alicorns but they have nothing good to say about them.” Maud Pie said, her face and voice betraying very little, as usual “Tyrants who saw living creatures as playthings. The Elements revealed their cruelty to the world as well as their weaknesses. Almost all their worshippers denounced them and adopted the way of Harmony.”
“Yet some survived. Perhaps yet to this day.” Starlight supposed “Okay, Patch, Wagen, Dawnwind, do whatever you need to do but we need to see how this played out. Where did he get his army from? Where did he attack? And, if Equestria still stands, how was he beaten?”
Out of the blood came a horn, a head, a mane...a mare born anew.
Servilia’s mouth opened wide as she took a gasp of air. Blinking wildly, she gazed around.
She seemed to be taller than she remembered. Everything felt so different in a way she found impossible to describe.
But then how could she, having never been anything else before?
Ratbag’s mouth dropped open at the sight. Vovin stamped for his attention and the fearful goat scrambled into the shadows.
Servilia raised a hoof, brushing something out of her face.
Her eyes clearing, she saw it was her mane.
It had never flowed this way, even when wet.
And she wasn’t wet.
The blood or water or whatever she had bathed in was gone. She was completely clean.
Her lungs felt incredible. Used to wheezing and panting after days of hard labour in furnaces or smelters without end, her breath came easy and full.
Her eyes too, once rheumy and sunken, opened wide, the full clarity of life before her.
Every sense, every movement felt so much easier.
“How...” her stammer was gone “How is this possible?”
“Stunning...” Cascadius gave an awed smile “Simply stunning.”
“Bring forth the glass, Ratbag.” Vovin commanded, saying nothing to the new initiate.
The goat remerged from the shadows with a large oval cut of the bottle-green glass from the doors, polished and gleaming.
He held it up before Servilia as she took in the sight of her new visage.
Where once had stood a gloomy, stunted slave with dull hues and a frail build, there now stood a wonder.
Where her coat had been a pale, sickly grey, barely distinguishable from the dust she was always sweeping, now her colour was a misty ochre, smooth and warm.
Her mane too, once an unkempt, puce mess, was now a rich, silky crimson torrent, flowing perfectly straight right down to the ground. And her tail was much the same.
Her eyes now gleamed a pure ebony. Her legs were long and sleek, allowing her to stare any pony dead in the face.
Her horn had grown. It had been crumpled once and cut and seared and shocked to prevent her magic giving her the means to escape slavery.
Now it had grown longer than any normal unicorn and curled slightly like a sabre.
She almost laughed.
Dvinius had prattled endlessly of his own perfection and those of his inner circle, mocking the impurities of others as often as he could.
Now, she stood before the mirror, no truer definition of perfection.
And she had once been a slave.
She stared up at Cascadius, her new eyes near to tears.
“Thank you...thank you...”
“Your strength, Servilia...” Cascadius said warmly “...is a beauty to behold.”
“The initiation purges all weakness.” Vovin said “The cracked shell is discarded as the core itself is made strong. Gleaming gold to all who are blessed and biting steel to all who are cursed.” He held up his staff “You, Servilia, shall bear our word as Cascadius bears our blade. The Mundane Order is blessed with a new Herald.”
Ordinarily, Servilia would have been shaking in her hooves, unsure of what was happening or why.
Yet now she felt no fear, no uncertainty, no pain.
Slowly, she knelt and took the staff in her hoof.
“Masters...I am yours.”
“There are no masters here, child.” Cascadius chuckled “There is only Mu’und and his chosen.”
“As it is decreed.” Vovin bowed his head, Ratbag doing the same, and turned to the Mundane Order’s blade.
“Warmonger...There is work to be done.”
*
The steel-clad hooves of Captain-General Bold sounded on the marble tiles of the palace grounds as the Royal Guard assembled. Gusty and Midnight Blade stood side by side before the formation as the thrum of forehooves announced the complete assembly, the Royal Guard standing ready. The Captain-General took a stand on the podium above, observed by all, resplendent in his gilded armour, wings of gold crafted intricately into his shoulder-pads, his white cloak bearing the crimson laurels of the Princess and the glowing Equis Blade, fastened to his chestplate by laurel-shaped carnelian inlays.
“Soldiers of her majesty, swords and shields of Equestria and its princess, listen well!” Bold bellowed.
Gusty cast a knowing eye to Midnight. Even as students, Bold had been known for his powerful voice, his commanding atmosphere and his love for being the centre of attention.
Yet, all things considered, he was an able commander and soldier. Few things harmed the Princess with him around.
“Concerning news has reached the garrison and the Princess. Bare hours after Commander Midnight Blade’s return, a message came from the village of Summersweet.” he turned to a senior scryer, a middle-aged lilac-coated unicorn mare with a shaved head, wearing light armour under a silver cape of office fastened with a collar of malachite.
“Miss Geranium, if you please.”
Geranium nodded, her horn flashing silver as a projected magic transmission showed itself to the guard.
The eyes and ears of all those present were invaded by a cacophonous warp of jolts and blurs.
Gusty turned to Bold.
“Is this genuine? I’ve never seen a transmission come out so poorly.”
“Just watch.”
The transmission did its best to focus. The obscured face of a unicorn stallion with a running gash over one eye showed itself and spoke, every few words interrupted by the cacophony.
“From...Summersweet...Army of...Came down...couldn’t hold off...All dying...Coming for...Send for...”
That was all the speaker could manage before a slamming sound and a blood-curdling scream shot out of the transmission as the obscuring overpowered the projection before it dissipated.
The guard were quiet.
Magic messaging rarely ever ended that badly.
Whatever had happened in Summersweet, it sounded like it was already too late.
“Now this wasn’t so long ago. Even on the border villages, they have emergency alarms prompting immediate aid yet whatever sprung on them took that out of the equation. From that and the state of the message, we are more than likely dealing with an enemy versed in anti-magic.”
The soldiers glanced at one another with unease.
After generations of rule from the alicorns, anti-magic was a word one never needed to say or hear. Magic had granted Equestria master over craftsmanship, engineering, healing and learning, not just to the unicorns but to all. Anti-magic was not just something that nulled spells or enchantments, it was something that stripped a pony of their inner strength.
Most forms of it were forbidden or sanctioned and the methods kept only in the hooves of those who could be trusted with it.
For an enemy to have such power was a frightening thing indeed.
“In o’ two-hundred hours we head south to Summersweet. A commando platoon from the forward garrisons at Fillymore will be meeting us there. We rescue any and all survivors and either annihilate or drive off those who attacked the village”
He skimmed his eye over the officers.
The soldiers were arranged into different companies from the six legions of the royal army, distinguished by the colour and style of their armour and plumes.
Bold nodded and allotted the command structure.
“Right. Gusty, you shall command the troops from the Dawn Legion. Ginkgo, troops from the Morrow Legion. Good Grace, the Noon Legion. Pavo, the Undern Legion. Crown o’ Thorns, the Dusk. And Midnight Blade, goes without saying, the Nightfall.”
He stamped down and saluted “Dismissed!”
The guard departed slowly and quietly, shuffling off in groups.
Gusty turned to Midnight.
“Where do you suppose this leaves us?” she asked, concern in those deep sea-green eyes of hers.
Midnight grimaced.
“I’m not sure I want to know. I’ve never met anything that can knock the magic out of an entire populated area like that. I just hope it’s something they can only use once.”
“Well, if this does turn out to be worse than we anticipate...I want to make sure I don’t go off without saying goodbye.”
“You do what you need to do, Gusty.”
Gusty gave him a look of sympathy.
Midnight never talked about anypony close to him. The two acted as more than bodyguards to the young princesses. Growing up as alicorns, beings Equestria still had little knowledge or experience in, the two hadn’t much in the way of friends. Laurelore always tried to introduce them to her fellows whenever she could but the two were shy creatures. They could never shake off the feeling of being not so much a colleague as a curiosity.
Gusty and Midnight, Star-Swirl’s most accomplished students who’d been with them since their earliest days, were the closest thing they had to friends.
Gusty’s lineage descended from the Flutter Valley, laid to waste by the hordes of Tirek an eon ago. Her parents were a well-to-do but secluded couple, a druid and a wand-maker, and her little sister, Gale, who’d just gained her Cutie Mark recently, was still in pre-school. She wasn’t as close to them as she would have liked to be, her work for the princess cut most of her time short, but she made the most of seeing them whenever she could.
Midnight, meanwhile was something of a recluse. A while ago, his uncle, the dignitary, philosopher and swordsteed, Vorpal Blade, and his sons had been the ponies he’d been closest too but they had all perished during the Vampony Plague, something Midnight refused to say a great deal about.
The guard was now the closest thing Midnight had to a family.
The pearl-white armour Gusty wore on a daily basis had become like a blanket over time. Her family were probably the only ponies who saw her often in her home garb. But they’d grown to look up to her.
It wasn’t every family that had a daughter in the princess’s bodyguard after all.
Gusty found them near the city gates. Gale was hopping around excitedly, her schoolbags at her sides, her red and green-streaked mane wavy in the gentle breeze. Her father, the distinguished Willow Wisp, white a cyan speckle-pattern across his coat and his dark-green mane tied in a topknot, was nodding sagely, ruffling her daughter’s mane, while Summer Solstice, a pale orange mare with a curly red mane, heavy lashes and an almost permanently flustered look to her, tried to shush her, firmly but not sternly.
Gusty smiled at the sight.
They weren’t the perfect parents. Willow Wisp was a touch more muddle-headed than the average stallion while Summer Solstice could have fussed for Equestria. Growing up, Gusty could remember more than a couple of times they communicated less than well.
But parents didn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful.
And Gale? She wouldn’t trade her for the world.
At the moment, Gale was bound on a school trip to Eminence City, a mountain metropolis in the former Flutter Valley where a remnant had valiantly fought Tirek till his defeat and boasted stunning history and art of a forgotten age.
Gusty approached, her little sister’s eyes widening as she shuffled awkwardly.
So she hadn’t forgotten their last conversation.
Gusty swallowed hard and spoke.
“Gale, sweetie...I’m sorry for yelling at you.” she craned down and looked her little sister in the eyes “I get why you were upset...I wish there was some way I could come with you but...”
“I-i-it’s okay...” Gale stammered. She was known for stammering when under anxiety “I...I’m s-sorry I was angry at you...G-Gusty...I understand...The p-princess needs you.”
“Hey, hey, sometimes even the princess has to take second priority when it comes to my little sis.” Gusty gave her a nuzzle.
The morning hadn’t started cleanly. Upon informing her elder sister of her upcoming trip, she partly-hoped-partly-expected she would accompany her. Gusty, not quite in the morning mood yet, had told her it was out of the question. Tempers flared and both sisters had left the house with little sympathy for each other.
Evidently, things had cooled since then.
“Look, when I’m back home and I have a moment, I’ll look at all your drawings and help you bake cookies and then I’ll read you your favourite books, okay?”
Gale’s eyes twinkled.
“You promise?”
“On my mark.”
Gale reached up on her hind legs and wrapped her forehooves round her sister’s shoulders in a fond hug.
“Thanks, Gusty. You’re the best.”
Beside them, Willow and Summer observed their daughters reconciliation with warm, proud smiles.
“Go on, Gale. I’m sure you’ll have a fantastic time. Eminence City is beautiful this time of year.” Willow Wisp cooed.
“You’re absolutely sure you’ve packed everything?” Summer Solstice asked for the eighteenth time that day.
“Yes, mummy. Goodbye everypony” Gale reached up to give and receive goodbye kisses from her parents before joining the trail of chattering foals heading to the caravan station that would take them to Eminence City, giving them one last wave.
Summer Solstice gave a sigh.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” she asked nopony in particular “I mean, now that war’s been declared.”
“I wouldn’t worry, darling.” Willow said sagely, patting her shoulder “The attacks are due to come from the far west and south. Eminence City’s in the north. And besides, the city has a well-manned garrison of its own. Gale will be fine.”
“I hope you’re right...Maybe I’m just fussing over nothing. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“It’s okay, mum.” Gusty gave her a cheek a light nuzzle “I gotta’ go. Love ya!”
Kissing them both goodbye, she fumbled with her helmet and prepared to meet with her battalion.
A soldier’s work was never done.
*
Nopony dared stop the Warmonger as he strode through the caverns of New Hycarion optimistically named ‘The Halls of Magnificence’, searching grimly for his employer.
There was no door to his washroom, only a couple of guards who parted obediently for him.
He hadn’t been in New Hycarion for a full two days and already the populace knew their Potentate Magnificence was much a ruler as he was a true alicorn.
Only one pony approached him. One of the Cosmos Legion, stepping into his sight with a supercilious little smirk.
“Oh Warmonger, you come at last. Any longer and you would be an outcast.”
The mercenary quietly groaned. It was Limerix Adversi.
A pus-yellow New Hycarion with a bone-white mane standing wildly on end and a face that was always either smug or spiteful, his tiny, sallow eyes always gripped by a perverse egomania, Limerix Adversi had been the second-in-command to the late Luximus Fulman and had now, it seemed, was heading the Legion. Dvinius’s court poet, he had the most annoying habit of rhyming every two lines that came out of his mouth, or at least doing what he thought was rhyming. It was a desperate show of self-satisfaction most of the time and was never above substandard. Cascadius had known many proper poets in his lifetime and Limerix was not one of them.
“I bring news for his majesty’s ear. Not yours.”
“I am his majesty’s finest sword. From weapons and words I must be his guard.”
Rolling his eyes, Cascadius shot him an unimpressed look and sneered.
“Has anypony ever told you that you have all the skill and sophistication in the field of poetry as a spilt chamberpot?”
Limerix’s smirk curled into a grimace of indignation but his words came uneasy.
“...no...”
“Well, now you know. Good day.”
Passing the speechless poet without a word, he entered the washroom of the Potentate Magnificence.
Cascadius found himself looking at a large stone-carved tub. Dvinius was bathing, kneeling in the middle of the tub, splashing the water over his face in some frantic pleasure. He didn’t seem to notice his visitor.
He wasn’t alone. There was a mare and two fillies in the tub. The mare was the same one that he’d dressed as Laurelore in the throne room, wearing her costume again. One of the fillies was dressed in similar accessories but with a primrose-pink wig while the other had inked her coat to a dark-blue and wore a navy wig. The three of them were unmoving, slumped motionlessly against the stone tub.
As Cascadius drew nearer, he saw why.
Their throats had been cut. The water in the tub was now a deep red.
Their lifeless faces were ones of despair, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. There was no sign they’d tried to fight back. Perhaps they’d been taken from the pleasure houses to the Potentate’s chambers knowing what would happen.
Cascadius remembered the blank look the mare had worn in the great hall. Had she known her fate was sealed? He was unlikely to find out in his lifetime.
He wondered if Dvinius had bathed in blood at the same time he and Servilia had done the same.
But this was without purpose or accomplishment. This was meaningless, just another of the many fantasies Dvinius would spend his days trying to live out, no matter how much it cost him.
Cascadius cleared his throat loudly. The king-in-name-only’s head spun round as he stared with those pathetic milky eyes at the one who stood as both his servant and master.
He stared for awhile. Cascadius knew the stallion before him was choosing his words carefully.
“I...did not want to be disturbed.” he said at last.
The Warmonger twisted his lips in an unimpressed look.
“In life, one must get used to not getting what one wants. For only then will one learn how to get it.”
Dvinius scowled. Clearly he wasn’t smitten with this philosophy.
“I heard you were ready to...march upon our enemies.”
“I am.”
Dvinius straightened up, leaving the tub as an attendant handed him a large drying-cloth. To call it a ‘towel’ would be general, it was little more than a frayed hempen rug.
“I want the Cosmos Legion in the vanguard.” he snapped “And their grand commanders directing the field of battle.”
Cascadius rolled his eyes.
“I already have a vanguard and command, your grace, one I have utter faith in.” he replied “I will of course consult the legion on matters that concern them.”
‘Whatever those may be’ he privately thought.
“Good.” Dvinius said, nodding “And...your spies. You spoke of an...insurgent sect, hiding from me in New Hycarion.”
“I did. A resistance movement. Alas, I fear they’ve left the city some few days ago. We found a secret tunnel leading to a hideout, quite close to your throne room in fact. But all that was left was dust and refuse. Clearly, they knew we were on to them.”
Dvinius growled and furiously struck a serf in the face. Cascadius remembered the serf had previously been one of the smattering nobles about his court. Evidently, with the serfs and slaves taken in by his armies, Dvinius was resorting to some emergency employment tactics.
“We have, however, found their names and lineage here in the city. As per the decrees of New Hycarion, all those who have birthed, raised, educated or otherwise guarded them have earned...”
“The death penalty!” Dvinius shrieked, storming to the throne room, throwing on his robe and crown “All of them! Death penalty!”
“Of course.” Cascadius said tiredly.
*
Equestria needed its army.
This was not to say that the Magic of Friendship had been unsuccessful. Many former enemies or unlikely allies had become dear companions of Laurelore, her Bearers and all others beside her, throwing down their blades and joining together with open forelegs. It was through the adoption of such philosophies that Equestria had nearly doubled in size and influence.
But there were always those who would not be swayed, for one reason or another. These were the ones who would prove a problem. Equestria had not been perfect when the alicorns had arrived and while they were not the first good beings upon the world, they had no shortage of enemies during their early years and the unification of Equestria had taken many, many years and near a thousand times as many lives.
Throughout Laurelore’s reign, when any king or commander had attacked Equestrian soil or the ponies upon it, it was often for no better reason than to show they could.
However one felt about them, there was no denying that Alicorns were beings of exceptional power.
So what better way was there to prove one’s courage than through spiting them?
The Flutter Valley had not been undefended. From its rise to its fall, it had relied on the deep and mysterious Flutterpony magic to ward away any enemy for many generations. But when foes came who proved themselves immune to this great power, centaurs in particular, the Flutterponies saw their land charred and ruined.
Laurelore was a wise monarch and knew that the best way to defend a kingdom was to avoid over-specialisation. The royal army was comprised of earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns and even a number of foreign recruits, bringing their own unique skills and knowledge to Equestria’s codex of warfare. Each class was honed as far as possible and every battalion was manned by specialists of every kind.
Gusty’s own company from the Legion of the Dawn comprised of around a hundred-and-fifty armed legionnaires, sections of which were separated into spears, bows, lances, healers, scouts and engineers accordingly. Each company was allotted a two-pony-drawn cannon and a Legion banner, the rose and cyan Dawn waving in the breeze. Around a dozen junior officers beside her could be counted on for advice on strategy, logistics, communications and documentation. Such was military organisation and when faced with an unknown enemy, no oversight could afford to be taken.
Captain-General Bold made sure of that.
Still, Gusty looked forward to the day such things would no longer be needed.
Laurelore had once said that a world without war would be a long and costly journey.
As if it hadn’t been enough already.
Her company, along with six more of equal number and a hoof-full of senior commanders, led chiefly by Captain-General Bold, were making their way over the Badlands, a wave of just over seven-hundred members of Her Highness’s Royal Army, their cloaks and banners a shimmering rainbow on the great plains. The mighty miles of sand, at the early winter’s turn, appeared grey below the cloudy sky and filled travellers with a sense of unease.
Even in such numbers, Gusty couldn’t help but feel as if the foe could spring from any corner in numbers not possible to contemplate.
They’d just passed Fillymore in the temperate valleys, scouts had made a quick stop there to resupply, and the village of Summersweet wasn’t too far off, barely visible in the great sunset, a gloaming wash of red and gold sinking into the grey valleys. Bold had just sent the scouts ahead, to rendezvous with the Fillymore Commando Platoon.
Gusty shivered as devious rushes of cold, biting wind ran beneath her armour. She turned to Midnight Blade, standing broodingly on a rocky outcrop, his navy-blue armour appearing jet-black in the dim light.
She made her way over to the young officer.
Though about as similar in appearance to one another as chalk and cheese, the two had a history. Midnight, a foreigner from the mysterious Dun Valley, had been slow to fully warm to the Equestrian way of life and some of those around him had been slow to accept him. Gusty had no trouble with him. Growing up, Midnight regarded her as something of an angel on his shoulder, encouraging him to explore himself and take part in matters of teamwork.
Not all too many of her old friends had ended up in the guard however. While she’d gotten to know her fellow officers, she didn’t find them quite as relatable as she found Midnight.
Bracing herself against the winds, Gusty smiled at the dark pony whose eyes were fixed on the canyons above.
“You okay?” she asked flatly.
Midnight was quiet a moment before Gusty followed his eyes.
She could have sworn there was movement between the pillars of sand and soil.
“We’re being watched.” Midnight said flatly.
“Captain!”
There came a yell further down the path as the scouts returned. Their leader was a mahogany-brown, white-striped zebra with a mane of blue and white locks and the brick-red armour, grey-blue cloak and raven-feather plumes of the Dusk Legion. “Lieutenant Crested Crane reporting, sir!” he said, breathlessly, with a quick salute.
“At ease, Lieutenant, what have you found?”
Crested Crane gave a shiver and answered with solemnity and dread.
“The platoon.”
Behind a great rocky outcrop, bare yards from the village, the Fillmore Commandos floated in mid-air; tight, black nooses constricting their throats as their bloodied bodies swayed in the wind.
“Damn it all...” Bold groaned as he and his command stared up at them hopelessly.
Captain Gingko gave them a closer look. Gingko was a young Pegasus from Neighpon trained in the ways of Bushido by the Kirin and Kabuto Changelings and whose family had been guards and attendants to Lady Mistmane. A quiet, secluded mare with a silver coat, flowing dark-auburn mane and piercing indigo eyes, she wore the intricate, shell-like armour of the Kabutobushi, coloured pearl-white with sand-gold inlays and bright blue accents like that of all the Morrow Legion. She was a friend of Gusty and Midnight though they confessed to not knowing her all too well. Gingko was not one to reveal a whole lot in general conversation.
Taking to the air, she looked over the bodies before cutting them down to rest. Once the last of them had been placed upon the ground, she turned to the Captain-General with a grim face.
“The noose was not what killed them.” she said flatly “These wounds are deep and deadly. These poor folk had passed long before they hanged.”
“It’s a message.” Gusty answered.
“Not a very subtle one. What are they telling us?” Bold asked gruffly.
Gusty tilted her head and suggested.
“Come get us?”
“I’ll gladly oblige 'em.” Crown O’ Thorns snarled, a giant of a unicorn, dark sepia of coat and deep green of mane, his slate-blue armour with maroon plumes studded with silver spikes. Midnight and Gusty remembered him being something of a bully in their training years and while he’d greatly improved himself over time, he still possessed the short temper and brutal sense of reprisal to this day.
Bold meanwhile shook his head and turned to Gingko.
“Wrap their bodies in cloaks and send them back to Fillmore. When we get back on the path, we’ll give them our deepest apologies and our promise that they will be avenged.”
“Wait.” Midnight held up a hoof as he stood on one of the protruding mounds of sand and soil and gazed into the heart of Summersweet, visible just below the great Honeywarm Mesa his deep blue eyes wide with concern as the powerful flush of yellows, oranges and reds didn’t so much disappear behind the landscape as sunsets were wont to do, but instead rose, its glow severe, almost angry.
There was smoke on the air.
He turned his gaze to Bold.
“Captain.” he began, knowing he would need to address his old academy rival by his title if he was to be taken seriously as an advisor “I need to take a crack squad and check out the canyon. It’s urgent.”
Bold looked to the village, then the mesa, then back to Midnight, an expression mixed between suspicion and consideration.
“What’s the concern?”
“That!”
Midnight pointed to ochre flash rising from the valley.
Bold tilted his head.
“The sunset?”
“Captain...” Midnight said quietly “That is no sunset.”
*
The crackling of flames and the buzzing of flies sounded almost mocking as the battalion walked grimly through the charred ruins of Summersweet, looks of horror and dismay etched on every face.
‘Too late. Too late.’ Said the fire and the flies ‘Dead, dead, dead.’
Bold had sent Pavo and Crown o’ Thorns with their companies round the village to create a perimeter. It would take a while but it made the chances of being ambushed drastically lower. If they were attacked down the valley, defence would be key.
Gusty stared at the barely recognisable scraps of bloody flesh that used to be the cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and goats on the village farm thrown about the place like gruesome confetti. She felt her last meal feel restless in the pits of her stomach, threatening to push itself up into her throat.
She’d never seen anything like this.
She’d seen battles. She’d seen death. She’d seen some very foul-intentioned beasts of war in her time, some of which she’d slain herself. She was an experienced guardian of Equestria, the entire battalion was.
But this level of wanton slaughter, this cruelty and sadism, to tear apart living animals and scatter their pieces across a village.
This was just savage.
“Where are all the villagers?” Bold asked, concern brewing his normally-stoic voice.
Gingko was inspecting the ground, scraping at the churned-up sand and dirt, her eyes keen.
“They came at least a thousand-strong. From the south-east. No warning. No escape.”
“But where are the villagers?” Bold repeated frantically.
There was a snap as a scaffold on the barn cracked and collapsed, showering strands of hay about the area.
In the current environment, it was enough to jump several of them.
“There!” Gusty was heard to yell.
A thundering clash of shields rumbled the village remains as the guard flew to attention, shields at the ready, weapons drawn.
Shadows could be seen in the distance.
Figures.
“Ponies...” Gusty said aloud. Ponies were indeed coming over the hill, lumbering, trudging, swaying from side to side.
“Wait...” Bold retorted, holding up a hoof “Something’s not right.”
As the figures emerged further over the hill, Gusty paused.
The smoke and heady mist began to clear and as the villagers drew near, they seemed to float, their hooves hanging below them as they were lifted off the hill.
Gusty’s eyes widened as a gasp caught in her throat.
“Oh Laurelore...” she groaned.
An almighty yell shook the valley as beasts of war emerged, carrying the villagers impaled on sharpened staves, swinging them around in the air, morbid trophies, the lifeless ponies shaking like dolls, dripping gore over the landscape.
In the centre of the company, Captain General Bold gritted his teeth as more and more of the impalers emerged from the south, east and north, hundreds strong. Behind them, a congregation of dark, heavily-armoured brigands closed the exit from the west.
As the enemy horde stood atop the hill, they stamped the staves down into the ground, trapping the company with a fence of corpses.
“Bastards!” Bold snarled before swinging his sword in the air, gesturing to his battalion “Form up! Orb formation! Spears and shields! Now!”
As quick and sharp as an arrowhead, the battalion sped into action, running into a group and facing out as a vast circular formation. Two layers of shields, one at ground level, the other raised high, formed the exterior with lines of spears at every angle. In the centre of his troops, Bold’s horn lit up to cast an area shielding spell. With a grunt of pain, a scatter of sparks spat out his horn.
“Anti-magic.” Geranium the scryer said, standing in the centre, staring out at the mass “Minor spells can still be performed but anything greater will be unobtainable. Somewhere close, there has to be a subverter. A crystal, a sonic instrument, a...”
“The smoke!” Gusty exclaimed “It’s in the smoke!”
“Pegasi, clear the air!” Bold thundered “Give them cover.”
“Wings out, everypony!” Good Grace called, a glamorous pegasus mare with a peach-orange coat, long eyelashes and a mane of magenta and cream swirls, as she and her fliers spread their wings and rose gradually into the air, blowing away the smoke surrounding them.
Bold groaned. While their magic was now at better focus and capacity, the smoke now encircling them gave them very limited vision. When the enemies came, they’d emerge from the mist without warning. He gritted his teeth. He had to do this. He was Captain-General now and he wouldn’t be the stallion that dishonoured that title.
His father and old Master Vorpal Sword’s voice hollered in his head.
‘Think, young Bold, when an enemy is before you, yet you do not know where, what do you do?’
Bold’s ear pricked and raised high.
A holler came in the distance as the thunder of hooves drew near.
They were charging.
“Archers ready!” he yelled “Clear for cannons !”
Bows were nocked and drawn, pointing at the smoke in their tightly-knit formation as shields parted on either side of the six company cannons as they were loaded and primed.
They were bound to hit something.
“Fire!”
The thrum of bowstrings and the crash of cannon fire sounded on every ear as the orb formation let fly their quarrels, spreading out into the smog. There came cries and shrieks and curses of agony around and, as the cannonballs struck the horde, the smoke was pierced, waning visibly.
Through the haze, Gusty saw the surrounding forces were charging, bedecked in improvised armour and weaponry, wild of face and mane, screaming and raging like mad-beasts.
Her horn glowed a bright teal as she drew her spear, a long one-sided blade, its edge deft and keen, attached to a spear-handle of hardy white oak. Pointing it forward she shot the horde a dark glance, casting her shield slightly to the sky in her forehoof, bearing the rising sun of her ward over the gilded earth of her monarch.
‘Come then, you spineless barbarians.’ she whispered ‘Know the wrath of Canterlot!’
“Canterlot!” the cry went up from her and travelled round the formation, a battle-hymn that matched the horde’s roar as the two sides neared for the great clash.
The sounds of battle echoed even as high as Honeywarm Mesa. Midnight Blade glanced below, thankfully never being too apprehensive of heights. Neither, to his knowledge, were his squad.
The zebra, Crested Crane, stood among them along with several of the most accomplished members of the Nightfall Legion. Carefully making their way up the mesa, keeping to the shadows as their oily black cloaks and deep blue armour hid them from view, they sought out the source of the anti-magic.
Midnight turned to the company scryers, an aged maroon unicorn.
“Fortinbras, can you detect anything?” he asked.
The old stallion’s face went craggy with focus, his tufted ears vibrating wildly.
His eyes opened wide and he spoke at last.
“Further up. There is blood-magic at hoof.”
Midnight nodded.
“Silver blades, everypony. Silver for monsters.”
There was a metallic hiss as silver weapons were drawn by all his guard.
“Sergeant Stoker and Legionaries Wintergreen, Buckler, Mirabelle, you scale the mesa. Sergeant Sierra and Legionaries Gulliver and Cymbeline, you three fliers make sure they don’t fall. The rest of you, with me.”
The Nightfall guard split off in two groups, Midnights slinking round the mesa and Stoker and Sierra taking a strike team up the rocky edge, silver glinting in their grasp.
“Listen...” Fortinbras whispered. Midnight’s ear pricked to the sound of a voice, low, husky and likely foreign.
“Foul incantations...But weak...And not in any familiar tongue.”
“It’s Camnetic, Old Eastern Stirropean...But I don’t think it’s his first language. There are mispronunciations everywhere.” Midnight said before he turned to his men, all of them tense but showing no fear.
“Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlecolts...You’re about to do some Vampony-Slaying.”
The smoke was lessening drastically. Down in the valley, what was meant to have been a vast swarm, enveloping and slaughtering Laurelore’s army, had become a disorganised surge. Parts of the horde were still pinned down on the hills whilst others had already reached the orb formation, desperately hammering blade to shield as the spears shot in and out of the wall, felling thousands.
Atop the mesa, a stallion struggled to regain control of the spell, his forehooves tipped by crimson shadow that formed four ghostly claws.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Midnight Blade stood with a squad of eight ponies of war, their blades glinting with a silver sheen that spelled doom for any monster. Midnight’s own broadsword was a double-purposed one. One side of it was tempered black steel, the other was silver with inscribed runes of amber, lead and mercury.
He drew it up meaningfully and gave a command.
“Stand down. This is your only warning.”
Facing them were two-dozen of the wild ponies, their armour a mismatch of leathers, furs and iron scraps, and five or six New Hycarionites, dressed in their white rubber suits and silk half-masks.
In the foot of the mesa, a caped figure rose and glared at them. He was a beady-eyed stallion with a face that reminded Midnight of a pickled walnut, sickly-green and furrowed, with a jutting grey widows-peak for a mane and a protruding set of fangs.
An archetypical Vampony, almost stereotypical, yet Midnight detected no phenomenal show of power.
He spoke, his voice low, growly and possessed of an accent that was vague and inconsistent.
“How dare you interrupt my incantations, mortal filth! You insult the great Count Balanitus and thus seal your doom! But tell me, soil-pelt...did your fate lead you here...or your destiny?”
The Nightfall captain was quiet a moment as his squad awaited his orders.
“Okay...” Midnight’s tone had grown significantly bored “Fate and destiny are the same thing. And...‘soil-pelt’ is exceptionally racist. And that didn’t sound like a ‘We surrender’.”
“Silence! Minions! Pluck out their eyes and then bring me their souls! I, Count Balanitus will rule this land and see all who defy me crumble to ash and serve me for all eternity” He threw back his head and cackled, his bat-wings spreading out underneath the cloak and flapping wildly.
Midnight stared at the sight, his face and voice flat, and face-hoofed.
“This is bad comedy. Back to steel, fillies and colts, the poser’s mine!”
The two assemblies clashed, iron, steel and silver ringing against each other. One of the New Hycarionites readied a bow, taking aim at Midnight Blade. With a thump, he was pulled to the ground, then dragged over the edge, shrieking and flailing, as Stoker and Sierra brought their ponies up from the behind, the pegasi taking to the air with crossbows and firing off hails of bolts. Midnight Blade circled in on the Vampony who hissed loudly and threw his cape. Midnight watched, nonchalantly, as the cape caught in the wind and flew gently off the mesa.
There was an awkward pause.
“Er...gah! Your worthless magics will not save you from my wrath!” Balanitus snarled.
“Wow...I just feel bad for you” It was all Midnight could do not to laugh.
“Enough!” The Vampony drew a sword of his own, barbed and serrated, and clashed with Midnights, staring him in the face, his eyes twitching.
“Across the world, there is one name all mortals fear above all. It is Balanitus! My name! My legend!” he gave his sabre a shove against his foe’s broadsword “And now you know that fate and destiny are but two sides of a worthless coin that should be given to a baker on skid row!”
His rant was cut off by Midnight Blade slamming his head into that of the Vampony’s, causing the Count to cry out and stumble wildly.
“Okay, four things.” Midnight barked “One, what in Tartarus does a baker on skid row have to do with this? Two, you do know that Balanitus is an inflammation of the foreskin? Three, not gonna’ say it again, fate and destiny are the same bucking thing! And in life, a pony chooses their own. Four...I am now officially sick of your horse-apples!”
Before the Count could retrieve his blade, Midnight stamped one hoof on his foreleg. As he screamed, the Vampony found his neck inches from the broadsword wielded by his foe.
“Right. Start talking. Who started this attack?” Met with a blank look, he spun the sword so that the silver side began singeing the Count’s throat.
“This smoke is high-level anti-magic. You weren’t its creator, you were just left to keep it active and you couldn’t even do that. You didn’t lead this attack. So who did?”
As the sound of battle died down, the Nightfall Company finishing off what was left of the Count’s guards, the Vampony snarled.
“You have no idea what you’ve brought upon your world!”
“Stop talking in cliché’s and give me a straight answer!”
The Vampony’s brow was beading with sweat.
“If...If I tell you...you must-urkh!”
The Vampony jolted, his head spasming up and down, cutting his throat open on the sword.
It didn’t bleed.
Count Balanitus’s eyes lost all colour, the veins spreading across the pupils and irises until a completely red gaze met Midnight Blade. Slowly, the Count smiled, fangs bared.
The Vampony’s voice was not his own.
“You work faster than we had anticipated.” The accent was different, the tone was different, everything was different “Most impressive. Such is to be expected from a Slayer of Dunholm in the ranks of Equestria’s Princesses. I shall await our confrontation tentatively. And when I break your sword and open your veins...I promise the gift of death shall be yours. I can be merciful to those who impress me...I will not force you to live as the creature you hate and fear.”
And with a blood-curdling scream, the Count’s eyes bled, then his mouth, then every other part of him as he disintegrated into dry, blood-red scraps like a pile of autumn leaves, blown away in the breeze.
Midnight said nothing.
“What manner of sorcery was that?” Fortinbras said, strapping a bandage across Stoker’s gashed brow.
“Very powerful blood-magic...If not, the most powerful...” Midnight brought his blade upright, gazing at his reflection in the steel side, then turning it to catch the silver gleam.
“It seems the Vamponies have chosen a new ruler...one with eyes on me.”
Gusty’s spear flew in and about like a lightning-fast firework, blazing with colour and sparks as her magical grasp held true, slaying dozens with every swathe as the battalion opened ranks. The captains had already broken from their guard and taken to the fray, demonstrating their strength and skill for all to see. The smoke had now completely cleared and as the horde gave one last surge, the rumble of hooves and wing-beats sounded from behind.
The Undern and Dusk Legions slammed into where the horde was strongest, taking them by storm, led by the sturdy Crown O’ Thorns with his flail and the elegant Pavo with his pike. Splitting off into two, the reinforcements encircled the orb formation and joined up as they split off in wedges, driving at the horde, who were only now beginning to have second thoughts. As one of them fell to her spear, another ran shrieking at her, only to be met by Pavo’s pike cutting him down.
"Careful now, Miss Gusty." he chuckled in his silky baritone "We'd hate to lose your lovely face to these vermin."
A powder-blue pegasus stallion with his mane of orange and green streaks, Pavo was a flamboyant fellow who fancied himself a charmer. Gusty was among one of the few mares who did not share his opinion.
“I had that one.” she said, slightly grouchily.
“Far be it from me to argue, Miss Gusty. Carry on, we’ve almost finished up here.”
Indeed as the fleetest of the horde’s remnants reached the hills and carried on over, Bold raised his battle-axe, heavy with blood, and let up a cheer, joined by the entire battalion.
The valley was strewn with the corpses of the barbarians, struck down with lethal blows, close to piling where the fighting had been thickest. The battalion had certainly earned their stripes.
It hadn’t come cheaply however. At least two-dozen had died under the horde’s fury and were now being identified in the carnage, mourned over by their captains and their comrades.
Captain-General Bold, walked with Gingko and Crown o’ Thorns to the impaled bodies of the villagers of Summersweet.
Solemnly, he gave orders.
“We’ll bury them here. Properly. Then we’ll rendezvous at Fillymore, send a message to the Princess, deliver the commandoes to their regiment...and then we head back to Canterlot to bury our brothers and sisters.”
Gusty paced over, her mind clouded with concern as the guard began the retrieval and proper burial of the villagers.
“Something’s not right.” she said, looking over the carnage.
“You alright, Gusty?” Bold asked.
“Well...look at this.” Gusty waved a hoof across the valley “These beasts caught an entire village off guard, disabled their magic, swarmed them, slaughtered them, did the same for the commandoes and then when we showed up, when strategy really mattered, they just threw themselves at us and got annihilated. This doesn’t make sense. Why they launch such a careful and calculated assault on villagers and skeleton guard and then attempt such an ill-conceived rush at the Royal Army?”
Bold pursed his lips.
“Overconfidence?”
“No. If they used high-tier tactics and weaponry against villagers, it would have been madness not to use it against us.”
The captains paused.
“Bait?” Gingko suggested “A wanton slaughter was sure to gain our attention. They were luring us in...”
“No...wait...” Gusty’s breath quickened, her eyes widening, her brow dampening, as the horrifying revelation seeped in “No, they weren’t luring us in. They were luring us...away!”
“What?” Bold brow raised in confusion.
“Look, think about it!” the mare exclaimed frantically “They come here, do some damage, leave their work plain for all to see, they’re going to bring us here! And that’s exactly what they wanted! This was a lure, alright, but we weren’t the target! The target was what they were drawing us away from! Throwing us off! Drawing us into the south and leaving them to attack...”
Her words stuck in her throat as horror struck her like a thunderbolt, freezing her on the spot.
“...Attack what?” Bold asked nervously.
Gusty replied, a tear of dismay rolling down her cheek as she knew what was surely coming.
“...the north.”
*
“Eminence City really is beautiful at this time of year.”
One would hardly imagine aestheticism from he who carried the name of ‘Warmonger’ but he enjoyed surprising ponies.
He lay idly on the grass, the bracing early-winter breeze running over him as he gave a satisfied smile, gazing with wonder upon the vast mountain city far in the distance with its silver waterfalls and running marble bridges and towers.
A sight one could take to the grave.
Stretching, he stood up, brushed his forelegs down, equipped his cloak and belt and raised his forehoof.
Gravel and pebbles began vibrating around him as the sound of countless hoof and wing-beats thundered in the distance, growing ever closer. Rocks cascaded down the mountainside, reeds and grass shook feverishly.
Above him, storm-clouds were gathering. As if to welcome him to the city.
Stirrope was the most beautiful and untameable land that was or ever would be.
One only had to ask any Stirropean.
Yet it was a wild land. As the first ponies of Equestria, Zebrica, Aswa-Uma, the Frozen North and the Mysterious South had to contend with dangers and adversities to build their home, so too did Stirrope.
One of these, a near continental-wide threat, were the trolls.
The largest and most dangerous of the race of Fey that had populated the continent long before equines came into being. It was hard to believe that they were more closely related to Breezies than they were to any other monster of similar size and strength. While most of the Fey were either negotiable or dying out, trolls were neither.
They hated nothing more than sharing their territory and enjoyed nothing more than the flesh of four-hoofed beasts tearing apart in their hands and grinding to mush in their mouths. They were as tall as trees, strong as the base of a mountain and as fierce and cruel as a sea-storm.
One thing they weren’t, however, was particularly smart.
When ponies developed strategy in warfare in their struggle to make Stirrope their own, the trollkings fell one by one, driven to the mountains to the north where they’d always dwelt as the equine race took the hills and grasslands for their own.
Yet the trolls were persistent and always found a way to return like the bad smells they carried on them.
Dousing their blades in oil and setting them afire, a tactic that would rend a troll’s flesh and char it to ash in moments, the knights of Stirrope galloped into the fray in gleaming armour and bright, vibrant banners. Behind them, their squires, yeoponies and steeds-at-arms would bring up the bulk of the army. Few had proper arms and armour, most of the time they made their own, but they charged nonetheless to protect their homes and families. For the knights, though strong and well-equipped, were few. Together they stood against the foe and charged over the rolling green plains to face the oncoming troll warhost lumbering down from the mountains.
Archduke Ballistix however, was rarely among them.
Ballistix was an archer. Many said he was the best in Farmany, perhaps in Stirrope. He wasn’t one to say it himself but if others said it, he wouldn’t argue. It fell to him to ensure the knights had firepower.
He was presently galloping a few feet to the side of the charging knights, his whisperwood bow floating beside him in his magical grasp, an arrow primed on the trolls.
They weren’t extensive in their Warhosts, rarely ever venturing in groups larger than a few dozen. But when they towered over any tree, even meagre numbers were enough to strike terror into the hearts of weaker folk.
Unfortunately for the trolls, Farmans were not weaker folk.
Nor were most other Stirropeans to Ballistix’s knowledge and when they got together, gods of all kinds help the poor fools despoiling land that wasn’t theirs.
Pulling hard on the bowstring, his magical capacity reaching its limit as the arrow sparked with hissing flames and blinding light. Letting it fly, it gave a screech as it cut through the air and landed dead centre between the eyes of the troll closest to the charging knights. As it struck, a blast of golden light and flames blasted through the troll’s head, disorientating his fellows as the charge of the knights of Farmany fell upon them.
Ballistix meanwhile took a pause, breathing deeply as his magic exhaustion was allowed to settle as his bannersteeds and kinsponies followed up, loosing quarrels at the foe.
The strategy was simplistic but effective. The knights would cut deep at the troll’s ankles, thighs or groins, bring them down to earth and have the militia pin them down as they took off the head.
At the front of the charge, three trolls were felled by the great, dazzling blade, Freudja, wielded by Farmany’s unifier. Fullemagne Morgenstern roared as his enemies fell, an inspiring sight in his ebony and brass armour and cloak of manticore fur, his gilded helm bearing great, gleaming wings behind the ears and the visor long and curved like the beak of the great eagle god of Farmany. Cutting his way through the wave of hulking monsters at break-neck speed, the cheers of his fellows went up like a thunderclap.
“Morgenstern! Oberfurst! Pferdlandersieg!”
“Panzerfaust!” came a mare’s roar as Fullemagne’s new wife, Wenda Panzerfaust of Traxony, followed her beloved into the fray, her mighty war-hammer rocketing up into a troll’s privates, swinging back as it fell to its knees with a squeal, spinning round its wielder’s head and smashing into the monster’s pain-stricken face. Husband and wife seemed to be in the middle of a some form of contest as they loudly racked up numbers with every strike.
‘At it again, I see.’ he gave a chuckle at the sight.
Ballistix maintained fire, his horn flaring as bolt after flaming bolt flew through the skies and embedded themselves in the trolls. As another oversized creature went down, one of his kinsponies gestured to him.
A glamorous mare of pink and fuchsia tone in coat and mane. One of the castle servants, a hoofmaiden. Her real name was Saubrot but she’d been allowed to change it to something more ‘princessly’ when her sister had been betrothed to one of his nephews. He couldn’t remember what she was calling herself now. His memory wasn’t what it used to be.
“Meister Archduke Von Armbrust” she began in her best ‘noble’ tone “Meister Breckhart Fray has located the Princess de Gilphin.”
“Ah, good. The wedding will proceed as planned. A first for our family.” Ballistix cricked his neck with a grunt and smiled “Where is she?”
“I...regret to inform you that she has been taken to the troll caves. At present there is only a gathering of Schurks guarding the cave but...it’s a large gathering.”
The old stallion’s face fell.
“The fool didn’t go in alone, did he?”
“No, Archduke. Meister Breckhart took with him three squires and around a dozen close friends with their own squires and some Jagers from the Guildhall, around five of them.”
“Thirty-three armed ponies? How many Schurks is he planning on finding?” Shaking his head, he turned to one of his castellans, a white whisperwood deer.
“Myrwuld. Lead in my stead. Cut off the trolls strikes before they land and protect the Oberfust at all costs.”
With a nod, the deer complied, leading the archers on while Ballistix followed the hoofmaiden into the troll caves in the uplands.
With a guttural shriek, the Schurk leapt at the pony it had hoped would be prey.
A moment later, it flew into the cave wall, its hideous head splattered into pieces by a well-swung mace.
“Seventeen!” Brekhart Fray Von Armbrust yelled over the cacophony of battle.
Schurks were little more than a nuisance in small groups but the troll caves were where they would use stealth, shock and numbers to their advantage. Huge-headed, bandy-limbed midget cousins of the trolls, possessed of the same bulbous noses, jagged tusks, furrowed brows and violent dispositions, Schurks were endemic to North-Western Stirrope and acted as slave labour for the trolls. With their giant overseers out of the cave, they’d been busy victimising prisoners until the knights of Stirrope interrupted their folly.
Lighting the way with torch and spell, the knights had found the meddlesome creatures swarming them in minutes, scrabbling at them with improvised weaponry or scratching at their faces with their bare hands.
Fortunately for Breckhart, Farman armour-craft was some of the best in the world.
His particular armour he had redecorated after a very successful monster-hunting brought him home a slain chimera that had been ravaging the nearby villages. He’d had the tiger’s fur worn made into a cloak, the goat’s head fashioned into a shoulder-plate and the snake skin wrapped into a belt and scabbard.
He’d fought the chimera tooth and hoof and brought it down after a long and gruelling battle.
These Schurks were nothing.
Behind him, his fellows were counting their kill-strikes as they cleared the cave of monsters. The less feverish Schurks made a run for it, scuttling into the crags, but the swarm was still thick. Like wading through muck or snow, Breckhart swung his mace side-to-side as the cave-beasts fell in droves.
A piercing shriek came from his left as one of the creatures leapt at him from the cave wall, pouncing at his face.
Falling to the ground, his plumed helmet came loose and clattered to the ground as Breckhart was beset upon by the packs. Quickly rising his forelegs to shield his face, Breckhart fought to get back on his hooves, swatting at his attackers wildly, shutting his eyes tightly.
The whistle and thump of well-aimed arrows rang in his ears as he opened his eyes. More than several of the Schurks had fallen to the quarrels, others were retreating.
Pawing around for his helmet, he found it being hoofed to him by a familiar figure. A green unicorn with a golden-blonde mane and sea-green eyes, like his own colours, but older, broader, possessed of a beard and a somewhat shaggier mane, his fur around his cheeks, neck and chest thicker and bristlier. He was holding the helmet out with a helpful hoof but an unimpressed smirk.
“I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” the older stallion chuckled.
Replacing the helmet, Breckhart scoffed.
“I can hardly recall the last time you tried...father.”
Sighing, the two patted each other on the shoulder as Ballistix gestured down the cave. Behind them, the hoofmaiden formerly known as Saubrot served as another archer beside the ensemble.
“Come on, boy. Let’s find that bride of yours.”
Venturing further into the cave, father and son leading the way with bow and cudgel, his fellows behind insisting that Ballistix’s kills didn’t count as Breckhart’s, they came to a den, filled with the creatures along with something very different.
Ponies were within, trussed up with cord as the Schurks poked and beat them with sticks and stones. One of them, a mare, was kicking back at them, struggling as they tried to tie her back-hooves.
Catching sight of the intruders, the Schurks rushed forward but didn’t get far. Breckhart very graciously allowed his companions in, giving up a surge of easy kills, but even by then he was ahead by a good half-dozen.
Once the den had been cleared, the imprisoned mare, an elegant unicorn with a scarlet coat, a long, silky, primrose-pink mane and bright orange shadow over eyes of blue turned over and smiled behind a set of slight but noticeable bruises.
“Ah...Archduke Ballistix and his famously rangy son, I presume.” her accent was Bitalian, possessed of a sultry tone despite her breathlessness “I had planned for a more formal method of introduction. I suppose our wedding may be slightly delayed.”
“The fault is ours, my lady. We neglected to keep the path on the Coltics free of danger. Please accept our apologies.” Ballistix said as Breckhart propped her up and took a moment to look into her eyes.
“Princess Sellatura...Did they hurt you?”
Sellatura raised an eyebrow.
“Not severely, Signor Breckhart, but I must insist you undo my bonds. I’m in danger of chaffing...and I’d like to thank you properly.”
Cutting the cords with a knife, his fellows doing the same to the rest of the Princess’s entourage and helping them to their hooves, Breckhart was clutched by the shoulder of his bride-to-be as Princess Sellatura Gilphin of Malian drew him in for a long and deep kiss.
Ballistix rolled his eyes but secretly related. Times were he’d been where his son was now.
Though admittedly the roles had been somewhat reversed as his own wife loved to remind him.
The lovers pulled themselves apart at last.
“I admit...” Breckhart said breathlessly “I’m feeling a lot more comfortable about this arrangement.”
“I had heard tales of your courage, Signor Breckhart, though my father was ever the sceptic.” Sellatura purred “I confess, my family didn’t hold you in such high regard.”
“No? Well, that’s alright then, my family didn’t really hold you in such high regard but we need Malian’s wool. Isn’t that right, father?” Breckhart chuckled.
“No, boy. I need Malian’s wool. You need a sensible wife to keep you out of trouble.”
As Breckhart gave a sulk, Sellatura gave a lilting laugh.
“And I promise he shall have it, my father-to-be. But just for the next few nights...” she gave Breckhart’s mane a ruffle, her hoof curling under his chin “I’d like to see what trouble you can give me.” As the young stallion’s face flushed pink, Sellatura tilted her head to the entourage with a wry smile and cast her eye at the hoofmaiden formerly known as Saubrot.
“And perhaps I would enjoy getting to know my new ladies-in-waiting during this time. You, madam? What is your name?”
“M-me, Fraulein Sellatura? I am Alpenvelca. Maid of Stutegart Hall.”
The Malian mare’s mares eyes gleaming invitingly.
“Well, Alpenvelca. I would very much like it if you shared our bedchambers tonight.”
The pretty pink mare jumped.
“You mean...me...in the...with...” she blinked, stared at Sellatura’s smile and shrugged with a smile of her own.
“Ja, alright. Sounds fun.”
“Wonderful!” Breckhart brayed as he hoisted his fiancé into the air and kissed her roguishly as his fellows let up a cheer.
Ballistix rolled his eyes again.
‘Adlerverdammt! Do young ponies these days have any modesty?’
*
“You’re improving in the bedroom, I’ll say that.”
“How...did we get on this particular branch of conversation?”
Far off in distant Equestria, in the deep acres of the Everfree, a young couple passed through the woodland canopy on the gleaming white bridges that made up Elengar or Starwolf City as it would come to be known by Equestrians.
The couple were cervines, deer of the Wolfsong, sometimes referred to as Moon Deer or Night Deer.
The doe was a flash of black and white, the tips of her hairs as if dipped in silver and a pair of small grey antlers unlike most other doe species. Her mane was ginger and hung in a wild but vibrant flow down to her shoulders, shaking and dancing in the breeze. Her face was bright and cheerful, possessed of wide ebony eyes with long eyelashes, a splash of ruddy blush-like ginger-brown over both cheeks and a pair of slightly elongated canine teeth in her chirpy grin.
The stag, meanwhile, was quite different. Born into the Greathorn Seer Kings of the Misty Isles, lost to great calamities in ages past, he possessed enormous antlers near as long and wide as his own body as well as a shaggy chest of mahogany hair below a nape of silver and black streaks. His eyes were almond-shaped and grey in colour and his sable-black mane was arranged into locks trailing over his head and down his neck. His twitter-patterns, cervine equivalent of Cutie Marks, were a set of bronze stripes curling down each brow and over either side of his muzzle.
With very different appearances and personalities, there were many who wondered how they’d ended up together.
But Princess Dantalas and Prince Norsul, better known as Fallingleaf and Runningwind in the new tongue, had loved none as greatly and dearly as each other.
At his awkward question, Fallingleaf shrugged and answered nonchalantly.
“Just felt like bringing it up. Thought you’d be flattered.”
“I would’ve been if you’d said it...you know...in the bedroom...right after...”
“Yeah, but you were passed out and I’d fallen asleep.”
“Ouch!”
“Hey, you know I’m kidding.” Laughing, the doe reached up and ruffled her husband’s mane. Runningwind was quite a few heads taller than her kind and Fallingleaf had always been slightly short for an elk.
But Fallingleaf never felt small beside Runningwind.
With a playful ‘grr’, she nibbled at the Greathorn’s ear. The pair giggled.
“So...any plans for today?”
“Dawnwind needs help with the owlbears. They’ve gotten a bit antsy again. She says it’s something the Equestrians are up to.”
The stag sighed.
“There she goes again, always blaming the ponies.”
“Hey, everydeer’s still warming to them. And Dawnwind takes a long time to warm to anyone.” Fallingleaf shrugged.
“True enough.” Runningwind, Dawnwind’s younger brother, conceded to his wife’s point.
“I mean, at least it’s not as bad as the Whitetail saying they need to be scourged into the Badlands for daring to look upon the forest.” Fallingleaf gave a distasteful growl “They make me sick.”
As they neared the water towers underneath the botanical gardens, a shrill, furious shriek went up from below.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE, YOU DISGUSTING, DOG-PLOUGHING BARBARIANS!”
“Case in point.” The doe gave a sardonic chuckle as she took a small stairway down into a secluded and rather squalid area of the city’s exterior.
The cesspits. Though mostly comprising of plant-waste and peat, the smell of animal-waste was quite pungent. Fallingleaf, who tended to animals and ventured into battlefield, was no stranger to the stench. Runningwind less so but he nonetheless followed his wife down to find the source of the voice, coughing a couple of times.
“Good morning, your highness! Sleep well?”
Fallingleaf craned her neck forwards as she looked over on the walkway, an insolent grin on her face as she beheld a doe in the pits below.
When last she’d stood over the Wolfsong, Princess Damson, daughter of Lord Mallorn of the Whitetail Confederacy, had taken over the tribe beside her husband, Palestride, Fallingleaf’s traitorous, kin-slaying brother. Every hour under the sun and moon, she had strutted about with impunity in an ostentatious green and plum-pink dress with a high collar of lace and swan-feathers, more jewellery than one could count and, just for an extra insult, a cloak of white-wolf fur. Her mane had been a white-gold and bundled up between her ears in a net of amber beads with her eyes and lips painted and shaded with silver and gold, though all this finery rarely did anything to make her sadistic smirks and spiteful scowls any less venomous.
Now, having been ousted from power along with her husband, she wore nothing, her makeup had smudged untidily, her mane was a long, tangled mess and her once-regal figure was now trussed up with stinkweed root, sitting up to her shoulders in a thick sea of sewage, her face still caked with the stuff since Fallingleaf and Dawnwind chucked her in two days ago. Said face was now a picture of indignant rage, her piercing green eyes boring into Fallingleaf as she snarled.
“When my father and uncles get here, they’re going to make every single one of you misbegotten savages SCREAM FOR MERCY!”
“Yeah, last I checked, they’re still very busy with the Draconequui.” Runningwind said flatly “In fact, your father told your uncle that particular war was not to be neglected. Seems you’re stuck here for a little while longer, my lady.”
Damson gave a screech, flailing around like a worm stuck half-way in the soil.
“I am a Princess of the Whitetail Kingdoms! It’s heathenry to treat me like this!”
At this, Fallingleaf shot her a vindictive scowl.
“You’re getting exactly what you deserve for what you and the kin-slayer did to our tribe...what you did to Hazelmay!”
At this, Damson gave a sneer, giving her head a disdainful toss that would have looked haughty if it were cleaner.
“Your common little bed-maid should have been grateful she was worth our time!” she spat.
Runningwind, a normally-calm stag by nature, shot her a look of rage and disgust.
When Palestride returned from his exile with his new bride and Whitetail army in tow, the Wolfsong weakened and destitute after the Raptor War, he had demanded Fallingleaf be given to him for his sick pleasure. What obsessions he’d developed for his sister was something he was never clear on but though Cinderstone, Fallingleaf’s other brother who’d taken leadership of the Wolfsong, was prepared to surrender to save the tribe, he was not about to give up his only sister.
So Hazelmay, Fallingleaf’s hoof-maiden and life-long friend, had dyed her fur and posed as her Princess, subjecting herself to Palestride’s depravity and Damson’s spite to protect her dear companion.
Hazelmay had been recovering for the last few days, comforted by Cinderstone who had long held a certain fondness for her.
At this, Fallingleaf’s expression turned almost neutral.
Drawing a coy smirk, she flipped a lever behind one of the pillars on the walkway.
There was a sickening churn above as one of the hollow wooden pipes began shaking slightly.
Damson’s face paled as she glanced up with horror.
Runningwind joined the dots and precariously looked to his wife who was smiling menacingly at her captor.
“Think you’re clever, huh?” she leered.
The Whitetail princess gave an almighty shriek as the pipe expelled a vat’s-worth of compost directly upon her.
Runningwind was actually quite impressed with the accuracy.
By the time the pipe had emptied, Damson was shivering with dismay, one eye covered over by the muck that had piled high on her head like some towering wig, blades of grass and even some wilted flowers sticking out. Her mouth opened and shut as she gasped for air.
Fallingleaf sniggered, her face a picture of satisfaction.
“You sure don’t look too clever to me.” she took in the sight and sniffed “Ah, I think they were feeding the manticores today.”
As Damson began to let loose a string of profanity most unbecoming of a princess, the couple chose to let her do so in private, journeying back up the stairways through the city.
“When do you think the Whitetail’ll come to collect her?”
“A doe like her? I’ll be surprised if they don’t ask us to keep her. But Alder’s going to stop by to pay the ransom at some point. He can’t just storm the city, his armies have another war to contend with. He’ll give us what we ask. When that happens, the Mithril Towers will be rebuilt and the tribe will be restored to glory once again.”
Runningwind nodded. He’d shed no tears for the peril of the Whitetail, or the Pimpanimi to use the Wolfsong phrase, a word that had become synonymous with ‘tyrant’, ‘fool’, ‘mad-beast’, ‘braggart’ and various other defamatory titles and was one of the worst insults a Wolfsong could give or receive.
When the elk of the Misty Isles like the Greathorns, Bushhorns, Bowhorns and the gigantic Cervalceans fled their ruined home and came upon the shores of north-western Equestria, venturing into the forests, King Alder and his family had treated them like vermin, driving them away and barring them from the more liveable parts of the Everfree.
It was High Chieftain Fairfortune who’d granted the refugees safety and settlement into Wolfsong lands, marrying Princess Winterpearl of the Golden Shore-Deer and having with her three fawns, Cinderstone, Palestride and Fallingleaf.
And it was Fallingleaf who had, one fateful day, rescued the young Prince Runningwind from an Etten cave and brought him into the Wolfsong ruling family.
He had them to thank for everything he now possessed. And if the Whitetail spat on the Wolfsong tribe, Runningwind would spit back with venom.
“So you think Dawnwind won’t want you helping out this time?” Fallingleaf asked once back on the main bridges of Elengar.
Runningwind scoffed.
“My sister’s never trusted me with the dormice, let alone the owlbears. You’re twice the beastmaster I’ll ever be.”
“You’ve given me a lot of practice.” she chuckled, prompting him to do the same. Her mood turned sullen slowly.
“She says your dad’s been trying farsight. Further than he’s ever gone before.”
“Well, that’s where he gets his name, after all.”
“Yeah, but, you know what it can do to him...”
Runningwind sighed.
His father, Farseerer was known to be the greatest oracle among deer-kind. Espousing the idolism of warriors or princes, the Greathorns had always been led by oracles, high priests whose wisdom and focus into the future of the tribe was unequalled. This had sometimes caused chaos, as it could in any system of government. Farseerer himself had lost his parents to a mad king whom he had slain and deposed shortly after the destruction of the Misty Isles.
He had been there for his son and daughter often, a loving father and a wise king.
But recently, his mind had been troubled. Taking to his chambers most of the day, not wishing to be disturbed or distracted for any reason.
Runningwind knew the signs.
He was looking into the future...and it didn’t bode well.
*
A knight’s camp was a glorious sight in these times, spreading over leagues in the valley off the rocky shore. There were large, square tents for groups of soldiers, singular tents for knights and great pavilions for kings and lords. Banners and colours of all kinds blew in the wind as the sounds of revelry and merriment resonated across the valley in the early evening the call of nightingales. The black eagle of Morgenstern, spreading its wings over a golden field, flew in place in the centre of the camp.
To the west of it, the blue dolphin of Prance rose elegantly on its cream background and around all sides the flags of Stirrope’s kings, queens, ladies and lords joined the fray. The great Pardan tulip of blue, white, red and orange streaks; the wheat-gold, red-chested carthorse of Haustria; Ponhemia’s silver lion with the peacock’s tail; Menmark’s beautiful blue mare with the flowing white mane, cradling her snowy orb; the scarlet seagull-headed hippogriff of Pommelrania; the Lombarding narwhal over grassy fields; Furin’s shaggy golden bull with the third horn of a unicorn; and the white horseshoe on red the ponies of Blitzerland made their sigil.
All were making merry among themselves or with each other, praising or mocking each other. Feasting, drinking, fighting and frolicking, the ponies in the camps were enjoying the better parts of a knight’s life.
Ballistix gave a sigh, rolling his eyes. The freshly victorious were always at their most indulgent. He could smell the fires of feasts and the faint drone of music and dance.
Bloodied after battle and the first thing they wanted to do was forget about war.
Beside him, Breckhart in contrast gave an eager smile and raced down to join the festivities, carrying his new betrothed who, in turn, was carrying Saubrot, or Alpenvelca as she was calling herself. His fellows joined him swiftly, letting up a cheer and a set of bawdy songs.
The camp was also occupied by knights and soldiers all over Stirrope. Beside the Farmans were the Prench, Pardans, Haustrians, Ponhemians, Manish, Pommelranians, Lombardingians, Bliss, and Furinese gathered and made merry in their congregations. In the case of monster hunts or invasions from far-off, the ponies of Stirrope commonly put aside their differences to do battle with the year’s onslaught. Most Farmans regarded them with respect, particularly as many of the knights had in-laws in the foreign ranks.
Fullemagne Morgenstern was seated majestically in a makeshift throne of oak and cloth, the banner of the black eagle flying above his head. Beside him, Wenda Panzerfaust reclined over the arm of the throne, her hammer replaced by a large flagon she was waving above her, cheering on the name of Panzerfaust and all proud Traxons, already thoroughly drunk.
The lords, knights and militia of Farmany all took up the chant.
“Morgenstern!”
Beside them, the other noble houses replied with their own salutes.
The king enjoyed his food and drink, Farman cuisine was hard not to enjoy after all, but he was neither a glutton nor a drunkard. He toasted with his fellows and sampled any dish recommended to him but he did so with a sense of temperance and humility that made him the able ruler he’d become.
Those around him were less measured. They drunk much and cheered loud. Some of the stallions were cavorting with the serving mares, some of the mares were cavorting with the serving-stallions, some were cavorting with each other. It mattered little. Stirropeans were wild in their triumphs, this was well-known.
Breckhart was no exception. Eagerly taking a jug of wine from the table, he took several great gulps, gasped in satisfaction and fell about the tablecloths with his giggling new wife before anypony could stop him,
A tapping of hoof came from Ballistix’s shoulder.
Turning, he looked upon another green-coated, golden-maned unicorn colt, smaller, thinner and altogether more temperate, dressed in a scholar’s gown.
His second son, Bradahorn.
“Father...” he said quietly and solemnly, as was his habit “Mother wants to see you. It’s Meister Tencendor, he’s been Halsening.”
“Has he improved?”
“I fear not. He does not see himself alive in the coming year.” Bradahorn said solemnly.
Ballistix’s eyes narrowed.
“He said the same thing last year...But I’ll see what the problem is.” Edging his way out of the celebrations, the old stallion found a secluded spot, lit up his horn and vanished beside Bradahorn in a bright citric-green flash of teleportation.
The city of Stutegart, capital of the Archduchy of Trabia was still in its early days yet it still looked remarkable to any visitor and welcoming to any local. Rows of stone houses with their thickly-thatched roofs surrounded the local businesses, many of them relatively new and small. But this was what made Stutegart an ideal living-space, it was open for opportunity. The city had become prosperous both through its Archduke Ballistix’s feats in battle and for its mastery over the horse-drawn cart, collecting details and assemblages from all over Stirrope and refining the cart to its peak, granting Farmany its edge in trade between its cities and outside its domain. And as such, with Stutegart plentiful and generous with its resources, competition and corruption was at an all-time low.
Ballistix could not hazard a guess at how long it would last but hoped it would endure as long as he was able to keep it so.
At Castle Armbrust, he and Bradahorn were greeted by a beloved face.
Archduchess Wyrthngild Fray, a tall, elegant and peerlessly graceful doe, white of coat with speckles of beige over her face, back and rump and a trailing tumble of wavy pale-gold mane.
The Frayar-Wold of the Whisperwood Forest were one of the few deer clans in Northern Stirrope that were prepared to resolve the contention with the ponies diplomatically. When the ponies of Stirrope began clearing the great forests to make room for their settlements, they unknowingly declared war on the cervine clans living within. Years of bitter fighting erupted as a result. Ballistix met Wyrthngild after being captured by her clan and made to explain himself. Wyrthngild had listened patiently and worked to end the conflict through balance of compromise and necessary tribute.
But deer were stubborn at the best of times, easy to anger and slow to forgive. Eventually, she was listened to but not before half the Gray Forest Clans and many noble pony houses had wiped themselves out in the bloody conflict over timber and terrain. Yet it was thanks to her the other half lived and the forests still stood, the deer and ponies having agreed to a compromise. Old wounds were slow to fade but her work had paid off. Both remnants were recovering in harmony.
Unlike the Equestrian deer, most Stirropean cervine females did not possess antlers, nor gave birth to fawns in mixed-parenthoods.
Folk said this was down to the thinning of the forests but seeing as it had never happened before or since, it was hard to determine.
Wyrthngild nonetheless cut a radiant figure and her walk was more akin to a gentle glide across the courtyard as she welcomed her husband with a smile, kissing him fondly.
Ballistix was a notoriously reserved stallion, his grimness the source of mirth to the commonly exuberant lords of Stirrope, but around his family, he was never in brighter spirits.
Now, however, his mind was more pressed than usual.
“My dear.” he returned the kiss, noticing Bradahorn shuffling awkwardly on his hooves, before asking.
“Where is Tencendor?”
“Where he normally is, my love. My sister keeps him stable but he’s been getting worse. He keeps saying he needs to talk to you. It’s of the utmost importance, he claims.”
The old stallion sighed.
“I’d better see him.”
The way up to the Halsening Chamber was a fairly long one but Ballistix enjoyed exercise whenever it presented itself. It helped him think. And since the Halsening Chamber had been converted into Tencendor’s bedroom, the long way up the stone spiral staircase allowed Ballistix to suitably prepare for meeting a stallion he normally did not relish speaking to.
Passing by sandy-yellow gossamer curtains on the way up, Ballistix gave a chuckle.
His wife and in-laws had been busy dressing up the castle.
Wyrsnlie, Wyrthngild’s younger sister, had constantly bemoaned the ‘cold, hard, unwelcome atmosphere’ of the typical Stirropean castle and had her fellow doe dress up the place in silks, jewellery and flowers.
On more than one occasion, Ballistix also found the odd bird or animal making home in the castle as well though that wasn’t part of the deal. Wyrthngild often had to have a word with Wyrsnlie whenever this occurred.
He met one of his guards who bowed and opened the door for him.
A small gathering of ponies and deer sat around a large bed upon which resided an ancient-looking pegasus with a burnt-umber-coloured coat, a long, shaggy mane and beard and a pair of piercing grey eyes. His body was gnarled and frail, huddled tightly under the embroidered blankets.
Decades past, Tencendor Van Strayf had been the High Priest of Adelar and had first called upon wars with the deer, the goats, the boars and the various other beasts of Stirrope to assert the dominance of the equine across the realms. When the Farmans perfected armour and their Prench and Caballero neighbours the blade, this had been seen as a fine idea by many. But violence was only met with greater violence and now, Tencendor was considered a pariah for having driven his kind into a long, bloody war.
Officially, however, he was a Trabian steed just as Ballistix was and the High Priest had fought beside Archduke Kriegshavic, Ballistix’s predecessor, and brought the Farmans much glory in the field of warfare. Regardless of how the war ended or even the point of it to begin with, Tencendor deserved some modicum of respect.
And regardless, he’d suffered enough. In the final battle Kriegshavic and the other disunited Farman warlords had fought against the deer, High Deerking Donar had brought the pegasi squadrons falling to the ground with a terrible storm-spell. Tencendor had been left crippled for life and had spent every year since a barely-moving shell of the proud pegasus warrior-sage he’d once been, his hooves constantly shaking, his breathing weak and dry, needing to be fed, clothed and changed like a newborn by the very deer he’d hoped to humble.
For a society that promoted the strong and able warrior and knight, ideals he’d headed himself, it was the ultimate punishment.
Determined to still do some good in Farmany, Tencendor had studied the art of Halsening, a Farman school of prophecy and prognostication open to both pegasi and earth ponies as well as unicorns, using alchemy, weather-patterns and powerful mental focus to see into potential futures. Unfortunately, Halsening had a detrimental affect on body and mind, eating away at the senses. But in his state, Tencendor had little interest in prolonging his life.
The musty smell of scrying pyres still lingered around the room, ceramic bowls on the desk filled with the burnt remains of horse-hair, river-reeds, blue silk, powdered eggshells and catfish roe, according to the recipe book.
Seated around the bed was Wyrsnlie, appearing a smaller. wider-eyed and slightly scruffier version of her sister, beside Bradahorn’s young wife, Lady Beneleia of Buxomberg, sapphire-coated, blonde-maned and famously well-endowed (Bradahorn often ridiculed for his seeming lack of interest in her in favour of his precious books) both wearing expressions of concern. Beneleia stood up and skipped over to Bradahorn with a giddy smile, hugging him warmly and rubbing her cheeks against his as was her custom, something Bradahorn found uncomfortable and degrading and something all around them found quite amusing.
All except Tencendor who had rarely ever found anything amusing in his life.
He let out a groan and barked.
“If you’ve all quite finished being blunderheads, I’d like to speak with the new colt! The rest of you, bick off!”
The ‘new colt’ was what he’d always called Ballistix as he’d done when the stallion had first taken up the mantle of Archduke of Trabia, a mark of derision. No matter how old Ballistix would grow, Tencendor would always know him as ‘new colt’ until his last day.
Sighing, Ballistix shooed away all those present, hung his bow, quiver, blade and helm by the doorway and sat down beside the cantankerous sage.
“How are you, Lord Tencendor?” he asked flatly.
Tencendor snorted.
“As if you bicking care.”
The unicorn scowled.
“I’d like to remind you, I had you treated in my home, given every care and aid a stallion of my position can provide.”
“So you did...But it wasn’t because you cared about me. It was because you saw it as the ‘honourable’ thing to do. If you weren’t so damned obsessed with a notion that can change like the wind in any stallion, you’d have left me to rot where I fell.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Not really.” he shrugged “I can’t remember giving you any reason to care.”
“Would you have done the same?”
“No boy.” Tencendor fixed him with a rheumy stare “Had I found you on the forest floor, broken and helpless as you found me...I’d have smashed your head in and put you out of your misery. And unless I was in a particularly good mood, I’d have used your shattered helm as a quark-pot.”
“Well, that’s nice to know.”
“All those nights of planting your face in cervine rump have softened you, Ballistix, in heart and head.” Tencendor’s tone grew poisonous “Kriegshavic wouldn’t let a stallion waste away in a broken body.”
“Kriegshavic and I were very different stallions. The past is gone. Present and future are more important for now.” Ballistix stood up, trying not to let Tencendor’s words get to him “I’ve been told you’ve been Halsening.”
“What of it?”
“You know what it’ll do to you.”
“Can’t come soon enough. And you’ll be glad of it when you hear what I have to say.”
“Well?”
The old pegasus grumbled.
“You may as well laugh at me now...You were right. The deer aren’t as savage as I said they were.”
“That’s....good to know but why do you say this now?”
The sage gave him another stare and answered.
“Because I have learned what that word truly means. I have looked into the fires of fate and have seen savagery...pure, bloody savagery” He turned his head towards his Archduke, his voice showing the closest Tencendor had ever shown to fear.
“I have seen death...For all of us. Every stallion, mare and foal, every male, female and child of the neighbour races, good and evil, wise or ignorant. I saw our soldiers and sorcerers die with blades broken in their grasp and magic fading in their hold. I heard our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters scream as they were taken, again and again and again, until there was nothing left but flesh and filth. I smelled the fires that took the lives of the newborns, tossed into the flames, their first true taste of pain also their last.” His breathing grew more forced than usual “I saw the end of our age and all others like it. I saw an age of chaos, an unstoppable nemesis, a raging storm of treachery, deceit, greed, cruelty, misery and unholy magic...”
He gripped Ballistix’s collar as he whispered.
“And it’s coming this way.”
Ballistix’s was quiet a moment as Tencendor fell back in back, coughing loudly..
“Coming...to Farmany?”
“Farmany, Prance, Caballera, Bitaly and all other states that think themselves our equals. Huh...These savages will make us equal...all equal in death...”
“But how? Why? Tirek? Grogar?”
“No. Not this time. They won’t come from the East. They’ll land on our shores and turn them red...from over the West.”
“The West?” The Archduke’s mind was boggling itself “You mean to tell me this threat set to swallow us all will come from...
“Equestria.”
He gave Tencendor a sceptic look.
“I remember you saying ‘Nothing of worth ever came out of Equestria and nothing of worth ever will’.”
“I was wrong. Mock me by all means.” Tencendor grumbled “It matters little. Your bow won’t help you. They’ll come to Stutegart, burn it to the ground and hang you from the walls with your guts on display and the floppy little twig your soft-headed cervine wife calls a wurst split in two and rammed up your nostrils.”
Ballistic ran his hoof over his mane in thought, sighing.
“Lovely. So...when does it happen?”
“It depends.”
“On what?” The unicorn’s ears pricked with hope as Tencendor gave him a glance.
“What season is it?”
“Autumn.”
“Next winter or spring then. All I know is that you didn’t look much older than you are now.”
Ballistix was quiet again, his face emotionless, weighing the scales in his mind.
“So everypony died?”
“Died or chained. They all certainly suffered.”
“Stirrope was laid to waste?”
“And after that, all lands beyond.”
“You, me, my family, my friends...”
“All turned to ash.”
Ballistix took a deep breath and cricked his neck.
Then he spoke.
“In that case, I take back what I said...Continue Halsening by all means.”
Tencendor fixed him with a suspicious glare as his ‘new colt’ looked older and bolder than ever.
“Because you were wrong.”
“I’m not blind yet, you little quark!” the old pegasus hissed “I know what I saw!”
“I believe you. But what you saw wasn’t what is meant to happen, only what could.”
“It doesn’t matter either way. The storm is unstoppable. The power of those quark-eating alicorns means nothing to this force, one that cannot be halted by mere magic. And when Equestria falls, the storm will spread until there’s nowhere else for it to touch.”
“Then it’s settled.” Ballistix reached for his helm, bow, quiver and blade “Look for me in the scrying flames, old steed.”
“Where the bick are you going?”
“Where do you think?”
“You’re not serious!”
“I am completely and utterly serious, Tencendor. If the greatest battle in history is about to take place...” Ballistic donned his helm “Then I will never have it said that an Armbrust wasn’t there that day. If all those I love, or even know, will die if I do not join this fight, I will not hesitate a moment.”
“It’s a fool’s errand, new colt, much as that suits you.” The sage snapped “The storm is unwavering, possessed of power one cannot comprehend. The chances of Equestria prevailing in any meaningful way are as meagre as one of their princesses running off with a bicking draconequus!”
“But there’s still a chance, however meagre. And that’s enough for me.”
“Are you mad or just stupid?!”
“Look at it this way, old steed.” Ballistix gave a wry smile “Supposing Equestria prevails, just suppose. Folk would forever say that Farmany was saved by Equestrians...What would you say to that?”
Tencendor was quiet a moment, a look of distaste on his ragged features, giving a slight shudder.
“To that I would say get your sorry deer-loving flank on the deck of the nearest ship and bicking well show them how to fight a war!”
Ballistix managed a chuckle.
“That’s all I needed to hear.”
*
“I said back in your pen, you big, feathery bastard!”
The immense owlbear’s holler was nearly drowned out by Fallingleaf’s bellow as she and Dawnwind herded the manic creatures to and fro, struggling to place them back in their grove.
A creature that was nearly twice the size of the average bear with a great feathery mane; long tuft-ears; wide, mesmerising eyes and a huge, bone-cracking beak, owlbears were no mean task for a beastmaster to deal with. Though Dawnwind was mostly used to it by now. Rattling her staff, the beads and bands giving off a powerful sound of rushing reeds, and thumping it on the ground or swinging it from side to side, she somehow managed to command them, calming them and prompting them slowly into the grove.
Fallingleaf, however, was a more conventional herder. She would cart an owlbear back into its enclosure once it had been wrestled to exhaustion.
Stumbling wildly, dazed and dismayed, the largest of the creatures consented to obey her.
As the owlbears surrounded her, Dawnwind swung her staff toward the grove entrance and made a sound, rolling her tongue round her lips and mimicking the owlbear’s call in a pitch she didn’t normally use, echoing across the woods.
“Waaaiiilooooooooooo-huk!”
After this, she made a series of ‘knock-knock’ sounds with her cheeks, imitating the clacking of their beaks.
Steadily, one by one, the owlbears headed home and lay down, disciplined.
Sighing in relief, Fallingleaf brushed her brow and smiled giddily.
“That was easy enough.” she said breathlessly “I don’t know how you do that thing with the animal-calls.”
“I’ll teach it to you one day.” Dawnwind chuckled to her sister-in-law “Just, for crying out loud, don’t try it during mating season. It...gives them the wrong idea.”
“Oh really?” the Wolfsong doe raised a brow.
“Yep. Getting mounted by a horny owlbear is not a great way to start a morning...so I’ve been told...” Dawnwind’s eyes darted side to side.
“Of course.” Fallingleaf sniggered “What do you think’s got them on edge?”
“Tch!” The beastmistress rolled her eyes “Everydeer’s thinking it, I’m just saying it. Nothing’s been the same since those crazy ponies got together and had some poor mare shoot a ‘winged unicorn’ out between her legs.”
“Yeah, well that may have had something to do with the Long Winter ending around that time.” Fallingleaf pointed out with a hint of smugness.
“Look lady, beasts of the earth can cope with winter or summer no matter how long it lasts. If they’re not coping with this, something else is up.”
“Well...I’m sure if its anything, Farseerer will know.” Fallingleaf’s face fell with concern “So...uh...how’s he been doing?”
Since the death of both her parents, Fallingleaf and Cinderstone had regarded Lord Farseerer and Lady Silversong of the Misty Isle as adopted parents, teaching them many arts and studies previously unknown to them and caring for them as well as any parent by blood.
Dawnwind sighed dismally.
“Well...he’s rarely ever seen anything good in his visions at the best of times. And if he’s more depressed than usual, I dread to imagine what he’s looking into.”
“You reckon we should have a look?”
“He doesn’t seem to want anydeer interrupting him.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
At this, the Greathorn gave the Wolfsong a wry smirk.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Runningwind approached the scrying pool at a slow, steady pace, taking in the sight he never fully got used to. A stone stairway that led out into a silent courtyard where the scrying ceremonies were held.
The great Cilintir Histarcar, the Misthorn Mirror, his father, Farseerer used in his scrying, one of the few remaining pieces of the Greathorn heritage since they fled the Misty Isles. A small elevated bowl, forged from the Misty Isle’s sacred Nornwood, carvings of the rise and fall of the deer encircling the span of it. Water taken from the River Marillind, its parent now swallowed up by the sea, shimmered hypnotically in the pool.
Farseerer himself sat patiently on a marble bench. He was a huge stag, even for a Greathorn, with a dark-umber coat and a shaggy mane of slate-grey, twitter-patterns of red and white flames over his staring, silver eyes. Each of his mighty antlers spanned the length of a bed and, like many seers of his kind, Farseerer hung braids of flowers, herbs and fruits from them to use in his scrying (Or to nibble on whenever he was feeling peckish).
At the foot of the stairs that led down to the mirror, Runningwind’s mother greeted him with a serene smile.
Similar to Runningwind and Fallingleaf, Lady Silversong could not have looked less similar to her husband. She was a lithe and graceful Bowhorn Deer, her chestnut antlers growing out and upwards behind her head, her delicate face long and slender (A trait that earned her the nickname Ruscata or ‘Foxface’ among the Greathorn) Silversong was an albino, her eyes a splendorous magenta with fluttering lashes, but upon her ascension to Lady of the Misthorn, she had died her white mane in streaks of bright crimson and gold in memory of her lost kin, the Bowhorn famous for their vibrant red or blonde coats. As well as Lady of the Misthorn, Silversong carried the prestigious title of Tyalangeri, Lady of the Harp, the most skilled musician and songstress among the deer. On each cheek and between her brows were twitter-patterns shaped like a crescent coupled with a diamond.
Numerous kinsdeer and officials of the Wolfsong and Misthorn tribes were gathered, idly passing the time in their own way. Runningwind noticed his brother-in-law, Cinderstone, a dark grey stag with bright auburn cheeks, bronze-brown mane and silver antlers, crowned in mithril, sitting next to Hazelmay, his wife’s dainty hoof-maiden. They were playing a game for couples Silversong had taught them called ‘Thank You, Fair Songstress’ where the couple would sit opposite each other and the stag would close his eyes while the doe would whistle. The stag would then follow the whistle’s sound and try to kiss the doe on the lips or nose. Cinderstone seemed very good at the game though it was more than likely that was Hazelmay’s wish as she was barely keeping her muzzle more than an inch from his, not quite how the game was meant to be played.
Maintaining a stately, respectful manner as was proper around his father, he approached the Sage-King, knelt and spoke in the language of the Greathorn.
“Aiyal lautal nolmo Heru-Histacar, Atar-Harcantir.” This, roughly translated, meant ‘Greetings and praise upon the wise lord of the Greathorn, my father Farseerer.’
The old stag didn’t seem to notice his son until he was finished speaking, whereupon he stood, bowed his head and replied.
“Aiyal hantal valda Haryon-Histacar, Yon-Norsul.” This, in turn, meant ‘Greetings and thanks upon the worthy prince of the Greathorn, my son Runningwind.’ followed by his smile.
Runningwind returned it.
The traditional royal greeting of the Greathorn was considered ponderous by their Wolfsong guardians but it was a sacred tradition and would be preserved if their kind were to remember their heritage. The language of the Misty Deer, ‘Histari’ and the Wolfsong, ‘Gaurlir’, weren’t the same and the Greathorn’s ancient text and tongue would survive as long as they remembered it.
Skyflame had been the nickname both his parents and in-laws had given him, coupled with Fallingleaf’s nickname of ‘Elenya’ or ‘Starflame’.
“Father...” Runningwind said, standing “You sent for me. Has your scrying taken you to a brighter or darker future?”
Farseerer gave him a knowing look.
“Scrying is a path that always leads to a crossroads, child. One can find darkness and light in either, sometimes at the same time. It is like a crystal of many sides. Beautiful to imagine, astounding to behold and...difficult to understand. However...” his normally mild voice grew dark and foreboding “There can be no mistake. I have seen darkness, Norsul, I have seen the mithril towers shatter to dust, the forests choke on ash and flame and the doom that the deer have avoided again and again brought upon them without pity.”
“Where?! How?!” Runningwind started, looking around for a weapon.
“Keep calm, dear one.” Silversong said softly behind him. Her voice had something of a calming effect on anydeer.
Farseerer paused until he was certain his son had heeded the advice of his mother. He was, generally, a stag who took a long time to do anything.
“Norsul...” he began again “My predictions are...rarely ever particularly clear. Indeed it is for the best that scrying is so vague. A power that allows one to see into the future and determine how to manipulate it, for whatever end, is a dangerous thing indeed. However, one thing I can be clear on...something is happening close to home, in the plains and roads and crossings, where the Uncloven folk make their home.”
“The ponies...” Runningwind supposed “Equestria?”
“I believe so. Least, I know not of any Uncloven domain closer to home.”
“And...” Runningwind motioned with a forehoof “Anything else with clarity.”
“No great deal. However...” Farseerer murmured, facing the pool.
There was a pause.
“Father?”
“Hm? Oh sorry, I lost my trail of thought.” Farseerer shook his head, blinking sleepily “I must always remember to take that herbal draught after my scrying. I’m terribly woozy otherwise.”
Burying his frustration, Runningwind faced his father.
“Is there nothing that can be done?”
“Oh, there are many things that can be done, my son. Whether they will have the effect we need is another matter.”
Runningwind was losing patience.
“Father, what do we do? I need a straight answer!”
At this, Farseerer chuckled.
“Asking a seer for a straight answer is like asking a wolf to eat grass, young Norsul.” he placed a hoof on the wooden frame of the mirror “But if we are to protect our way of life here in the Everfree...Then we would protect those of others.”
“You mean...the Equestrians.”
“Aye.”
At this, Runningwind looked to Cinderstone who had torn himself away from his courting.
“How quickly can the Wolfsong muster?”
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty, my fawn.” Farseerer butted in before Cinderstone could answer “My predictions do not show the deer going to war. Indeed, I do not see that being wise.”
“But father, if there is a threat to the Wolfsong in Equestria, shouldn’t we fight it.”
“We should.” Farseerer drew himself up, looking a great deal more kingly than sagely, his voice booming and unwavering “However, if we were to take our battle-host to the reaches of Equestria while they are at this moment more jittery than the owlbears your sister and wife have been herding this afternoon then we shall cause more chaos than ever. As it stands, the cervine are not particularly well-trusted among the uncloven folk...or that well-liked.”
“Because of the Whitetail?”
Behind them came the sound of several deer loudly spitting.
“Aye.” The sage-king’s brow furrowed with disdain “Their transgressions have made the equine wary of our kind. The Pimpanimi fools despise the uncloven and what’s worse...they underestimate them. If they spur the uncloven into fury, they will not separate Whitetail from Wolfsong. King Nolder would have driven our kind into war. His son, Alder, would do the same if he had to chance and as for Aspen...” He made a growl of disapproval “Mists and Moon help the deer if that insane fawn takes the throne. I would sooner have your Thostaranel.”
Thostaranel was the nickname given to the captive Damson. It loosely translated to ‘Princess of the Land of Stench’.
“I see.” Runningwind thought on his father’s words “So...you would send...a group? To represent us? To work with the uncloven, to understand them?”
“Aye.”
“In that case, father...” Runningwind stood up and placed a forehoof over his chest in a stalwart gesture “I would like to head this mission.”
“Alright.”
There was a pause. Runningwind’s eyes glanced from side to side awkwardly.
“Uh...Aren’t you going to...argue?”
“No, no.” Farseerer chuckled “I have known you long enough to realise that only makes you more stubborn. And I can think of few better-suited warriors, provided the flaws you still possess can be made up for by those beside you, which I am sure they will be. And besides...” Farseerer peered through the shimmering surface “I have seen your return.”
The young stag raised an eyebrow.
“Right...So I leave...and come back?”
“Aye...As far as I can see.” Farseerer said flatly.
There was another pause. Many believed the quiet of the mirror’s garden was as a result of the awkwardness of the conversations held there.
“Right, well...” Runningwind cleared his throat “I shall make preparations to head out. Atar-Harcantir, Amil-Celebrelind, Hano-Yulondo,” He bowed to Farseerer, Silversong and Cinderstone and addressed them by their Misthorn title “I take my leave. I shall bring honour, glory and protection to the tribe.”
And he departed in the same, steady, respectful manner as he entered.
On an unseen (To their knowledge) knoll, two deer spying on the meeting turned to each other, glints of intrigue in their eyes.
“Well...you heard him.” Fallingleaf said to her sister-in-law “I’d better pack my things.”
“Hey...” Dawnwind held her shoulder and gave her a meaningful stare.
“You take care of my brother.
*
Her family would die at dawn.
But not her. Not yet.
Dvinius was not done with her.
Strictly speaking, her family were not hers by blood. In fact, she’d never met her parents or even knew if they were still alive. Her mother had been separated from her father on the podium of the slave auction and after she’d given birth, she’d been given away to a family friend of those who had bought her.
The filly had been born, raised and educated as a slave.
Yet never once had she truly let take that name to heart.
The New Hycarionites knew her as Ath-Lita, for her status as a courier slave, taking messages to and fro in the shortest time possible.
Yet she remembered her real name, written on a floral silk scarf her mother had left her.
Tseresa.
One day she’d find out what it meant. In this life or the next.
Freedom or death awaited her.
The guards at her shoulders had been planning on dragging her out her cell and down the corridors of the dungeons. Instead, to their surprise, she still possessed the strength to walk. Indeed, she managed it better than they.
Dvinius’s guards wore the most impractical helms that were all adorned by a foot-high statuette of himself standing on two-legs with his two sets of wings spanning out like axe-blades. Such was their weight that the guards often had to look directly up to keep their balance or be forced to drag their heads along the ground. Such had given rise to the belief that holding one’s head high in New Hycarion wasn’t just a figure of speech. One could have probably used the helms as better weaponry than most of what they were given.
Yet the guards did not wish to chance angering their Potentate Magnificence.
Tseresa, however, had done just that.
And she was not about to regret it.
The door to the interrogation chamber was opened and Dvinius looked up from his makeshift throne, a vindictive scowl on his face.
The guards saluted, unable to bow.
Tseresa simply returned his scowl.
The preening monarch held up a sheet of paper in front of her and barked.
“Sign it!”
Tseresa tilted her head to the side.
“What is it?”
“Just sign it! I command it!” Dvinius snapped.
“Not until I know what it is.”
The Potentate Magnificence bore his milky eyes into Tseresa’s but nonetheless conceded.
“It is a confession.”
“To what?”
“Your guilt, your defeat, your pleas for mercy and your admittance to the cowardice, greed, hatefulness and stupidity that all my enemies possess!”
At this Tseresa gave a derisive snort and replied curtly.
“Tell you what...You wrote it, you sign it.”
Dvinius shot out of his throne with bared-teeth fury and struck her in the face with his forehoof.
After a pause, he shook his forehoof, wincing, as Tseresa blinked.
It had been like taking a punch from a bread-roll.
She honestly felt like laughing.
Gesturing frantically, Dvinius signalled his guard, who reached out clumsily at the prisoner’s shoulders and shoved her to her knees. Still, Tseresa gave the Potentate Magnificence nothing but a look of contempt.
“Sign the damn paper, you filthy little nag!” he hissed again “You will before we’re done with you!”
“I’ll sign nothing for you to gloat over after I’m dead.” The mare said flatly “Put me on trial or murder me and face the consequences of both.”
“Oh, there will be no trial!” Dvinius squawked, his eyes twitching as he leered “I don’t need a trial to prove you guilty!”
He then drew back with a yelp as Tseresa spat in his eye with impressive accuracy and let loose.
“A song sung by every sick-minded brat with his flanks on a make-believe throne...which is what you are and what you should have stayed!” she yelled as the guards drew back with alarm while Dvinius backed into a corner with shock.
“I have watched your reign with fascination, Dvinius! It's been a revelation to me! I've never fully realised before how a massive ego, allied to miniscule talent and robbed of every shred of compassion, can destroy the future of an entire state! I've seen how frail is the structure of a civilisation before the onslaught of the tantrum of an angry little colt that won’t shut up until he gets his way!”
“Silence!” Dvinius screamed, shaking his head and hooves dementedly as the guards woke up and feebly shoved Tseresa to the floor. After a pause, the only sound being Dvinius’s seething, Tseresa looked up and shot him a smirk as she finished her piece.
“Yes... But I suppose you are not really the destroyer. That’s giving you too much credit. No, we must look elsewhere for that. Perhaps time itself brought the fall of Hycarion. You are merely the delinquency in its next generation, the outward and visible sign of its failure to produce a worthy inheritor! You're a lesson in history to me, Dvinius, proving that, above all, ponykind needs to know when to beat a spoiled foal!”
A dreadful silence hung over the room for at least a minute.
Then, with a high-pitched screech of rage, Dvinius dementedly threw himself forward as the guards hauled Tseresa up as he flailed his forehooves wildly at her face.
Still, she continued between punches, showing no sign of pain.
“You’re a joke, Dvinius!”
‘Punch!’
“A footnote in the history of failure!”
‘Punch!’
“And you punch like a sissy!”
“SHUT UUUUUUUUP!” Dvinius screamed as the guards threw her to the ground again, Tseresa rather wishing they’d make up their mind.
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”
The Potentate Magnificence fell against the throne, gasping for air and trying to hide his tears from his guards. His impotent fury spent, he bellowed orders to them.
“Take her away! Execute her at dawn with the others! After every refinement of torture! NOW!”
Saluting and making their way, with difficulty, out the low doorway, the guards took the prisoner back to her cell.
Once the doors slammed shut behind her, Tseresa fumbled about in the darkness, her hoof sliding along the walls until they found a stone slab smoother than the rest.
‘Freedom it is’ she thought with a smirk as she pressed her hoof against it.
With a quiet but rumbling growl of stone on stone, the cell itself lowered.
Down, down, down it went until at last, light greeted her eyes.
The orange glow of torches grew closer and closer until the ponies who held them stepped into view.
A mare and a stallion. The mare was a patchy-coated brown and beige pegasus and wore a dark-indigo cloak, while the stallion was chestnut-brown with a white stripe down his muzzle and wore a leaf-green cloak complete with a green hood.
Tseresa smiled and greeted them gratefully as they draped her in a plum-purple cloak.
“Naughty Dog.” she hugged the mare before doing the same to the stallion “Corn Cob.”
“Tseresa.” Corncob sighed “Good to have you with us. The whole team’s accounted for.”
“We’re ready.” Naughty Dog said with a determined smile “Grab what we need and let’s get moving.”
It had been the work of some several years to mine a tunnel system beneath the dungeons of New Hycarion. Those who were wrongfully imprisoned could be set free through a hidden lift-system in the cells and either ferried to safety or trained to in the guerrilla tactics mastered by the Recoloured Fellowship.
The resistance against Dvinius was alive and well, working completely without his knowledge (Many were uncertain if that said more about them or him) and now, with the arrival of the Warmonger, they had considered it time to make their move.
Their hidden base had housed a foundry, granary, training area, library and lounge.
Now all but the head chamber were completely emptied a vast gathering of dull-coated, bright-eyed ponies in vibrant cloaks waiting for the full assembly of their fellowship.
As Corncob, Naughty Dog and Tseresa entered, an enigmatic black-cloaked stallion in a brass, featureless mask showing only a mane streaked orange and white, held up a torch and spoke.
“Sisters and brothers.” he began “For years now, we have protected the innocent from the reign of the tyrant and his minions. I would like to think we’ve done well under the circumstances. But now, thanks to this ‘Warmonger’, what we’ve fought to achieve hangs in the balance. Equestria gave us hope. Now, when the founders of New Hycarion spoke of Princess Rememberly, they spoke of a mad queen that deserved to die, they spoke of the bravery of those who put a knife in her back. Something I often wondered though...Did anypony try to talk to her? Was the wit of our ancestors so dull that we drew blades before words in an instant?” he shook his head “I don’t want to live in a world where such a path is considered safe and sane. I think proof of the contrary is all around us.”
There was a murmur of agreement as he cast the torch towards a stone slab four of the cloaked fellows were moving aside. A vast underground expanse greeted them. Tunnels and walkways set out for miles.
“I trust in Laurelore. I trust in the alicorns. I believe they are not abominations nor are they unfathomable deities...They are ponies just like us, with the eyes that will behold us and ears that will listen to our pleas.” He stepped down off his podium and walked took his first steps on the path.
“I go to Equestria. To protect the world we could find a new life within. Sisters and brothers...are you with me?”
As if in answer, the fellows turned and arranged themselves in single-file beside him.
‘Yes, Maxim...’ Tseresa whispered, trepidation thumping at their chests as the chill of the tunnel beyond cooled them like a spring breeze 'We are with you.'
Smiling behind the mask, Maxim the Legendbringer stared down the path, silently praying the scouting party, chiefly among them his brother, Fullmetal, and his forgemaster, Scipio, would report back with good news before the day was out.
“Onwards.” he murmured “For our future...our freedom...and our friendship.”
Gale Solstice cantered along the high walls of Eminence City, a bright, giddy smile on her faces as she raced her friends.
Lucky Dip, a lemon-yellow pegasus colt with a curly mane of red and white.
Shallot, a petite bespectacled earth filly with a silver coat and a long, curly golden mane.
And Chancy, a small but plump pink unicorn girl whose magenta mane was tied in pigtails.
The walls of Eminence City, built into the old mountain that had once talked to the Flutterponies and offered them water and safety. The mountain had long since died but in remembrance, the city had been built, as if the entire expanse was a great tombstone. It was marked by great stone walls and ornate marble architecture, celebrating the First Age of Magic when Rememberly first graced Equestria. Through many perils, it had prospered in its mountainous sanctuary and housed a population of over a hundred-thousand. One could spot the mountain from a thousand miles away and the city from two-hundred thanks to the marvellous marble walls, two hundred feet tall and so wide that twelve chariots could race along the battlements side by side as they did each year at the celebration of the Heart-Stone’s discovery by the Flutterponies.
All of the basic knowledge was already well-known to the foals, it had simply been a matter of sitting through them, passing by the dusty tomes and statues in the galleries and museums as Mrs Dearling or any of the half-asleep old ponies managing the tour would talk and talk.
Now it was time to play.
Down the walls they cantered, mimicking the great annual race. The genuine event would not take place for another season so while the walls were quiet, the foals figured they may as well take the opportunity.
At the moment, Shallot was in the lead. Shallot often proved herself the fastest.
“I’m gaining on you, Shally!” Lucky Dip beckoned.
“Oh no, you’re not!” Shallot retorted.
“Keep up, Chancy, you’re doing great.” Gale called behind her.
Plump as she was, Chancy was faster than she looked and possessed quite a bit more energy than one could imagine. But she nonetheless often found sports stressful.
“Thanks...” She squeaked as they bundled into a corner of the city walls, right before one of the massive round towers, marked by the banner bearing the mountainous face of Eminence.
“I won that time!” Shallot cried out as they gathered on the tower-top.
“Did not!”
Gale sighed as her friends bickered, looking up at the great sky with wonder. Clouds grew large and spacious around the mountains, pleasantly warm at this time of year, the cool mountain breezes never far.
Her father had said it would be a slow winter and a cold spring.
She’d enjoy it while it lasted.
She blinked.
The clouds had gone slightly pink.
But it couldn’t be too close to evening.
Then she noticed the bizarre hue was everywhere across the sky. A great miasma of magenta and lime green. Casting her eye to the far north up the tip of the mountain, she noticed the haze was slinking further and further, smoke-shaped.
“Really?” Shallot asked “I thought it just got colder, my hooves feel shaky.”
“C-can we go inside?” Chancy whined “I’m getting a headache.”
“Me t-t-too.” Gale added, rubbing behind her ears, trying to nurse wherever the strange ache was coming from “H-hold on everypony, I...I’ll try to cast a spell, see if it helps.”
Concentrating hard, Gale focussed her magical energy into a small healing field, a spell she’d practiced with her mother.
Then the little unicorn crouched down, holding her head in pain.
Her head felt like she’d been trying to wade through icy waters. No magic came to her.
What was wrong?
“Gale, are you okay?” Chancy squeaked, clutching her friend’s foreleg tentatively.
“D-don’t try using a spell.” The little unicorn groaned, getting to her hooves “There’s...there’s s-s-something in the air.”
“Wait...” Shallot’s ears pricked “You hear that?”
It had sounded like the wind the first time, high-pitched and whistling.
Then it grew louder and Gale realised it was coming again and again.
It wasn’t the wind.
It was...screams.
Around the four foals, watchponies and citizens glanced over the towers. Gale, Lucky, Shallot and Chancy teetered on their back hooves to peer over the tower ramparts.
There was a tide coming.
A tide of terror.
Ponies from outside of the city were rushing desperately up the mountain in their hundreds. Stallions, mares and foals of almost every profession, wide-eyed and screaming, some pushing past each other, others helping each other forward.
But each one wore faces of utter terror.
“Open the gates! Open the damned gates!” A stallion yelled.
One of the guards, armoured like the rest of Eminence’s guard in fur-lined northern iron with a turkey-tail crest, rushed towards the centre of the walls to unchain and pull the lever to open the great gates.
Gale blinked.
In her ears hollered a hiss. Then a thump.
The guard stood stock-still, wide-eyed, a quivering hoof inches from the lever.
A fine, feathered arrow jutted out of his neck, the puncture weeping blood.
The guard staggered, choking, before falling to one side and toppling over the great wall into the city below.
The hissing began again, closer than the screaming. Guards fell in all directions.
The four foals screamed, ducking under the ramparts, covering their heads and shutting their eyes tight as arrows seemed to rain down from the clouds.
There came a thundering from the other side of the gate as the terrified populace desperately banged against it, screaming to be let in.
Their combined wails and pleas rent at the foal’s chests. The cries of the desperate, the fearful, ponies more afraid than they’d ever thought possible.
Supposing it had been they who weren’t so lucky...
Gale stared at the lever, still flecked with blood from its once-intended user.
It wasn’t too far a reach.
Pressing herself against the city ramparts, Gale reached with a shaking hoof at the gate lever.
She could feel the cold moisture on her brow. Her eyes felt blurry with tension.
There was another whistle...very close.
Shunk!
Gale shrieked, falling flat on the ground, almost pinned to the floor by an arrow lodged in her outstretched hoof. On and on she cried out in pain, shutting her eyes tight, trying hard not to look at the injury.
“Gale! Get away! Quick!” Shallot shrieked behind her.
“No...” the little unicorn yelled through gritted teeth “Almost there!”
Heaving herself forward on all forwards, she gave another great reach and found her hoof clutching around the lever. Another arrow landed bare inches from her muzzle, juddering in place between two tiles of the floor.
Throwing herself backwards, the sound of the lever clunking back with her sounded triumphant. Chancy, Lucky Dip and Shallot grabbed hold of Gale and held her tight
A mighty rumble echoed across the walls as the gates slowly creaked open, the first villagers tearfully pushing their way inside, through the ornate tunnel into the base city.
Then the sky seemed to darken.
Looking up, they saw the sun had been seemingly blotted out by a great round shape.
A growing one.
Peering through the parapets, Gale’s eyes boggled with horror.
In the time it took to notice, it was already too late.
The crowds before the gate gave a collective scream, some shielding their eyes, others making one last mad dash for the gates. It did them no avail.
A great boulder had hurtled its way up into the sky and come down upon the crowd, rolling forth like a thunderclap, its rumbles a roar across the mountaintop
The whole city appeared to shake. Guards fell to their knees and the four foals huddled into the corner on the wall, holding each other tightly. The oncoming boulder smashed open the gates and came to a stop right before an ornate stone statue of a bellringing pegasus who lost her head and bell through the impact. The bell gave a mighty ‘Clong!’ as it landed, as if it were the death knell of the entire city.
All the way through the gate, where once there had been a tide of stallions, mares and foals from the neighbouring villages, there was a gruesome sludgy red trail spread across the ground.
Parts of it were still twitching and letting out agonised groans.
Nearly all those gathered outside the gates had suffered the boulder’s full force, crushed like fruit under its weight and impact.
As the city settled a moment, there was an eerie silence.
Shaking, trying hard to ignore the pain of the arrow through her hoof, Gale peeked through the parapet.
A stallion was approaching, pacing quietly over the stream of pony remains.
There was the coldest, most sinister gaze upon him.
The Warmonger often walked through rivers of blood. In fact, he found it stranger to go through a battle where he didn’t.
He found this sort of thing brought back old times.
How many times had he done this, he wondered.
Enough to forget the exact number, it seemed.
He took a deep breath of mountain air, now intermixed with the stench of death and disaster, and raised his hoof, taking a deep breath with which to bellow a command.
At least it never got boring.
“Advance!”
The mountain rumbled as a tide of death approached, covering the mountain like a blight.
“Kids!” Gale was drawn away as an officer of the guard yelled from the stairway “Get over here, hurry! Get to safety!”
Below the Eminence City Guard and even generous collections of armed civilians were rushing to the walls with any weaponry they could carry. Arrows began raining down upon them, stopping many of them from firing back.
As the guard waved his hoof frantically, Chancy, Shallot and Lucky Dip scampered off the walls, Gale limping behind.
“It’s okay, kids. We’ll get you out of here!” The guard assured them, having to yell over the chaos, spreading his marbled cloak like a cover for the foals “Just stick by me.”
A piercing screech rang in the ears of those around. The skies grew dark again as blots of shadows melded into one great mass. The arrows and crossbow bolts rained down harder. Guards raised their shields and militia ducked behind barricades.
“Griffons!” somepony yelled over the chaos as the battle-flocks dived into view.
“Stay close.” the guard said as pegasi and even griffons wearing the Eminence city colours and arms took to the wing. As Gale struggled to keep up, the end of the arrow jerked against the cobblestone.
With a cry of pain, she fell to her knees, clutching at her bleeding hoof, undetermined as to whether it would stop hurting if the arrow was removed or kept there.
“Gusty...” she found herself screaming “Gusty!”
“Kid, it’s okay!” The guard had stopped, checking on her, his silver mane wet with sweat and nearly obscuring his olive-green face and his kindly blue eyes “Look, don’t move that arrow. We have doctors at the keep. They’ll get that out and then you’ll be safe from anything they can-”
“Death from above!” A shrill cackle cut through any surrounding noise as a white shape flew by.
The hard ground rushed up to meet her. Screams and battle-cries seemed to roll around in her mind as she fought to get back on her quivering hooves.
There came a gurgling wail above and a hideous wet sound of tearing flesh. Looking up, her wide green eyes boggled with terror.
The guard that had tried to shield her friends was in two halves. His mouth was open wide with anguish, his dead eyes staring at his own back hooves twitching morbidly.
The one holding the front and back half was a great white griffon in spiky bronze armour with a featherless, head of an aged rooster with a clacking, yellow beak dripping with blood and cold blue eyes wide with frenzy. His fleshy crest and wattle shook and the spiky golden bristles at the crown of his head made a rustling sound as he let loose a mighty avian screech, spreading his battle-worn grey wings out fully and holding the two halves of his kill high in victory before throwing them to the ground. His cheetah back-half pawed the ground in preparation as his claws whipped forward and drew two axeblade-like sabres fastened to the sides of his wrists. As he noticed Gale frozen to the spot in front of him, he gave a feverish grin.
“Hiiiiiiiii!” he drew out the word, heaving with breath every word, bile dripping from his beak, his knives “Stand still, why doncha’? I won’t make it too slow! Promiiiise!”
“Gale! Run!” She heard Lucky Dip’s yell.
The griffon flew forward with another high-pitched screech. Gale found her hooves and ducked under him, rushing as fast as she could, casting a small spell to carry her forward, small sparks flying around her hooves.
The griffon was fast behind, bellowing loudly.
“Scratch it! Slash it! Slice it! Cut it! Kill it! A-ha! A-haaaaaaa!” He clucked and clacked madly. He was joined by more of his kind, all in bronze armour, spattered with the blood of their quarry.
Eminence City had been transformed from an archaic mountain metropolis into a bloodbath.
The Warmonger was pausing by the fallen statue.
Adora the Heartkeeper, daughter of Valentine. She’d a prominent Humanist philanthropist who’d helped found Eminence city and keep it during the turn of the First Age.
The Warmonger had always found it fascinating how pony hooves could destroy in moments what had taken pony hooves ages to build.
One wouldn’t think it would be quite so simple.
There was a whistle as a thin curlew-headed griffon in a hood and cloak, bow in his hand, landed and dipped his long, curved beak in salutation.
“Milord.” he chirped “We’ve taken the walls and the courtyard. Scratchit’s leading air support.”
“I’ve noticed.” He turned as his various lieutenants gathered “Grond and his juggernauts will stay here and flush out any sheltering in the towers. King Gallow, you and your sons will lead the charge with your ebony blades. Bloodburst, you’ll be the first one into the courtyard, that’s where they’ll have their most powerful mages. Crenn, Golgotha, Rippoorwill, Garmendias, Hitiiyeh and Brimstone Angel; to the front. Bluefallen, Ulex, Lacedon, Shikki-Gaki and Greyrender; you take the defensive, salvage any spoils and watch the mountainside. The true fight is yet to come. Let us hope Eminence has its fair share of legends we may conclude today.”
His eyes lit up with trepidation.
“Take your positions and bloody your blades, my friends. War has begun!”
Gale found her friends at the entrance of an alley. On and on they ran, sweat cold on their brows. The griffons behind them took to their talons, crawling round the corners and leaping through the alleyway like spiders, screeching all the while.
At last, salvation lay at the end of the tunnel. Four guards stood with shields and spears, raising them as the foals rushed past and barring the way. There came a great slamming sound and cries of pain as they held the line as long as they could.
All around them, screaming citizens flooded through the streets, flanked by guards trying hard to cover them as griffons dive-bombed them again and again, picking up a screaming straggler and cutting them to pieces in mid-air in full view of their friends and family. From the rooftops, ponies in strange armour could be seen firing arrows or throwing javelins.
They were picking them off one by one. There was no escape.
It was all a question of whether you were lucky or not.
The foals struggled to keep up, fighting not to be trampled under hoof as the crowd reached the square.
But here, they were at their most vulnerable. The griffon battle-flock gathered, swirling round as a single organised force and honing in on the forerunners of the crowd, murder in their eyes., the chicken-headed griffon from before leading the charge with his insane cackle.
“Away!”
There came a great blaze of blue, orange and pink erupted from the centre of the courtyard. A maroon-coated unicorn mare with a long, silky black mane and piercing cream-beige eyes and long eyelashes slammed her hooves upon the ground, her periwinkle cape billowing upon her and her necklace of powerful Oolstones glowing with magical energy.
Her voice was low and booming, possessed of an odd Northern accent that indicated she and her kind were natives to the mountain areas and had been ever since.
Chocolate Cosmos, Battlemage of Eminence City, held the courtyard with her fellow magical practitioners, casting a great dome-shaped shield around the crowds that had gathered.
“Fear not, gentle folk of Eminence, we are here to turn the tide.” she said serenely “These foul encroachers will henceforth come no further.”
Gale and her friends collapsed before her, gasping for air. The little unicorn clutched fitfully at her hoof, her eyes streaming.
“Children?!” The fussy voice of their schoolteacher, could be heard over the crowd. The elderly, bespectacled pegasus edged her way forward as the four foals rushed to her.
“Mrs Dearling! Gale’s really hurt!” Chancy cried, pointing to Gale’s hoof and the arrow that had pierced it.
The schoolteacher glanced at it with panicked eyes.
“Oh, oh goodness...” she gave a small gulp “D-d-don’t worry, we’ll soon find a doctor. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Sh-should I take it out?” Gale whimpered.
“No, no dear. You’ll lose too much blood. Just...here.” Mrs Dearling carefully picked her up and placed her over her back, budging her way forward to the mages as Gale clutched her. The crowd were mostly silent, staring at the hordes swarming around the shield murderously. Eminence City Guard flooded out of the nearby barracks, setting up a wall of shields and spears around them.
“Excuse me?” she pleaded “This filly’s badly hurt. Please can we get a healer over here? Anypony?”
“Apologies, ma’am. The shield requires my complete attention.” Chocolate Cosmos. answered, light swirling round her horn “Do not fear. Healers come quickly.” There came a canter as more mages and alchemists approached.
There came a shout from outside the shield and the guards motioned apprehensively.
“What in Tartarus is that?!”
“Brace at the front! Hold!”
Then came a mighty crash from the side of the shield wall. A breech that had sent guards flying, broken like ceramic dolls.
Gale’s eyes boggled at the sight. Chocolate Cosmos whispered in the brief silence.
“By the Firsticorn...”
A hideous grey beast had emerged, as large as a buffalo, built like a tank, armoured in what looked like metal braces and spiked bands adorned with flayed pony coats. Its head was enormous, bulky and welted, lined with bristly fur over its scalp and down its spine and on the underside of its jowls. But despite its hooves, its teeth looked as though they belonged in an alligator. A bloodstained mouthful of tusks and fangs gnashed together, dribbling bile.
Its sheer black eyes glinted with hunger as the crowds screamed, rushing back towards the barracks. Chocolate Cosmos bellowed an order.
“Maintain the shield. I will send this foe back from whence it came.” the battlemage focussed a jet of magic around and from her horn, blasting it at the creature’s face.
The creature barely blinked as it let loose a growly snort and charged.
It dawned on Gale what this thing was, having read some of Gusty’s books about faraway species and former enemies.
The beast before them was an Entelodont.
In the history of Equestria, relations with the porcine races such as boars, hogs, warthogs and peccaries had been cautious for a single, very prominent reason...
Boars were immune to magic.
The means by which they did this was relatively unknown. But for a few exceptions that required powerful and careful tactics of pegasi and earth pony battle formations, that had never been a problem, the boar civilisations across Equestria and its reaches reasonable for the most part.
But their carnivorous ‘uncles’, the Entelodonts, colloquially known as ‘The Hellpigs’, were another matter entirely.
This one most definitely was not reasonable.
With a spittle-spraying roar, the beast charged at Chocolate Cosmos who gave one last plaintive command.
“Flee!”
With a sickening crunch, she was hauled into the air, her entire body clamped in the beasts jaws, giving a hellish cry of pain as the Entelodont shook its hideous head rapidly from side to side, biting down hard.
Pieces of Chocolate Cosmos flew in all directions.
The shield dissipated. The crowds rushed deeper into the city, towards the garrison, the college and the government centre, met on all sides by the swarming horde.
As Mrs Dearling and the four foals rushed deep into the city, Gale looked with horror over her shoulder.
A congregation of young pale earth stallions with scarlet tattoos around their eyes and jet-black armour and horned headbands were heading the charge.
One of them raised a curved black sword and yelled.
“Onward, Sons of Gallow!”
“Don’t look, Gale!” Mrs Dearling cried out over the chaos “Just hold on, I promise we’ll be fine.”
The inside of Gale’s chest felt somehow cold.
She’d never imagined Mrs Dearling would ever lie to her.
But now it seemed very likely that she was.
At an elevated podium under the dome of a government centre, a mare was making one last attempt at sending a message via the crystal array before her. The sodalite globes were spinning quicker and quicker but the star ruby held in the middle remained dim.
The mare was a pale blue pegasus with teal streaks across her back and around her amber eyes and an arching scarlet mane and a tail tied into two streams of crimson hair. She was dressed in an umber-brown chest-plate with a collar and shoulder-pads linked to depict a stone-faced Cerberus. Her cloak was slate-grey streaked with lilac and depicted the first Flutterponies climbing the smiling Eminence Mountain, lined around the back of the neck with cave-lion fur.
It was this mare that held the position of Viceroy of Eminence.
Seastreamer had lived all her life in Eminence City, her great-grandparents had helped in founding it.
And it seemed it would be her resting place.
A spark of hope shot through her as the star ruby flushed magenta and a thin line of light shone out of the centre of its asterism, straight out of the opening in the ceiling and into the clouds.
The door burst open. Seastreamer saw a lone guard, a griffon with the head of a white-throated ibis. She was relieved to see he was wearing the colours and arms of an Eminence City Officer. But as he collapsed in a breathless heap, blood pooling around him, she knew there was nothing to be relieved about.
“Soldier.” she flew over to him and held his shoulder. The guard’s armour was split, a great gash across his chest sealing his fate.
“They’ve...taken it...All of it...Your grace...Did we send a signal?”
“Yes, Theristicus.” Seastreamer said with a slight smile “They’ll come. Eminence will never be a haven for these monsters. Laurelore will sweep them from our mountain...soon.”
The ibis-headed griffon gave one last smile.
“We saved the city...we saved it...”
His eyes closed and his head fell back, the blood-flow slowing significantly.
Seastreamer gave a sigh as the doors hammered with the encroacher’s advance.
Around her, the denizens of the government centre came with improvised weapons.
Beside the Viceroy’s personal bodyguard and a handful of surviving officers, there were old clerks, young couriers, even cooking and cleaning staff, wide-eyed and shaking, biting their lips to avoid breaking down in tears.
Seastreamer stood and nodded.
“Mares and stallions...Eminence City and Equestria will remember our sacrifice this day...It shall not go to waste, I promise you. The Royal Guard are coming. The victory our murderers have this day will be short-lived.”
Pacing over to an old mosaic framed in heavy bronze, she lifted it up to reveal her helmet and blades.
Her helm was adorned with the spiky, speckled tail of a sage grouse, visored to hide almost all of her face bar her eyes. And her swords were an impressive pair of jagged blades, the groove between them fitted with slivers of amber.
Spreading her red-tipped wings, she held the blades to her chest and made a vow as the doors gave out.
“I swear to Laurelore and the Founders, no matter how many blades they slice me with, no matter how many arrows they pierce me with, I will not succumb until I send a hundred of the bastards to Tartarus!”
*
A forced march from Fillymore to Eminence was a fool’s notion. But teleportation wasn’t out of the question. They had enough mages and magic-users to pull it off.
Though they would have to be north enough to have proper focus and direction or they could end up anywhere. And a great deal of time to concentrate the spell was needed.
The entire battle-force at a swift canter, Geranium, Crown O’ Thorns and Gusty navigated the army northwards, detecting where the best spot to begin the teleportation would suit.
The young red and green maned unicorn prayed, tears of anxiety intermixing with the beads of sweat running from her brow.
Her thoughts were fixed on her little sister. How she’d smiled when she’d promised to spend time with her when they got back home. That final hug.
‘Please be okay...Please be okay...Please be okay...’
Midnight and his Nightfall Legion galloped ahead. The dun pony’s head tilted left to right, his steely eyes darting about.
There was trouble afoot. He didn’t even have to be a unicorn to sense it.
He’d spent years hunting monsters, both the physical and moral ones.
Gusty galloped ahead, eying Midnight’s wary gaze.
“How close are they?”
“Getting closer by the smell of it.” the stallion answered “The dust around here’s still in the breeze. They haven’t been here long. In fact, I’d say they’ve stopped and...”
He stopped, his scarred face creased with amazement.
“The crafty bastards...” he whispered, before lifting his head and yelling at the top of his voice.
“Stop! Everypony stop! Start the teleportation right here, right now! Move it!”
“What in Tartarus are you talking about, Blade?!” Bold thundered “We’re not close enough! There’s still a mile and a half to go.”
“A mile and a half until we’re turned into dogmeat! We’re running right into a trap!”
“What, another one?” Good Grace piped up.
“The real deal!”
“Are you seriously suggesting...” Pavo was interrupted by Midnight practically throwing his forehooves in the air.
“They knew! They knew we’d work out Eminence City was under attack, or at least be called to it! They have an army waiting right at our destination!”
“To cut us off on the way?”
“No! They knew we would teleport! They knew where we’d do it! A mile and a half from here, they have the proper army, the ones they’re counting on wiping us out.”
“Well...” Bold shook his head “Got to say, I’m flattered at how they’re not underestimating us.”
“Don’t be. An enemy underestimating you is the best thing that can happen to you...”
“Yes, yes. I remember Vorpal’s lessons, Midnight.” The Captain-General sighed before barking out an order.
“All mages and magic-users, begin the teleportation! Right now! Quickly!”
“Sir, at this range, we’ll be at least a mile away from the city!” Gusty added.
“It’s good enough. We’ll gallop the rest of the way! We’re no good to Eminence City as a pile of corpses! Work the spell, hurry for Laurelore’s sake!”
“We’ll go as fast as we can but we can’t go cutting any corners here.”
“Fine, fine, everypony else, defensive positions. Midnight, you and your scouts’ll go peek over the hillside. If there’s anything coming, run like hell back here!”
“Righto guv’.” Midnight cricked his neck and set out northwards.
Dust and sand kicked up under his hooves and those of his scouts. Their cloaks partially hid them, making them appear like a dune or drift upon the ground.
The Dun pony scaled the hillside in a half-trot-half-crawl, sniffing at any turn in the air.
Then he caught it. The tell-tale signs.
Resin lacquer from eastern ivy.
Green tea leaves, raw, unprocessed.
Not a hint of rust.
Tell-tale signs of death approaching.
Waving a hoof across the sand, he motioned the other scouts far away. Crested Crane and Sienna approached.
“Tell them to get the teleportation going as soon as possible and hold out as far as you can. Full defences.” Midnight gritted his teeth “They’ve caught on. They’re coming this way.”
The scouts didn’t wait to see just who ‘they’ were.
Midnight stood his ground. Rising to his full height and drawing his sword, he became aware of the dusk in the distance steadily clouding, gradually drawing closer.
The dun pony drew his sword, letting the sword catch the faint sunlight and observed the runes inscribed down the edge, each of different stone, colour and ward. White mercury for flesh, purple amethyst for arcane, orange amber for wood, red carnelian for earth, blue opal for water, black obsidian for fire and green jade for air.
No spell would counter it nor hide or mail rebuff it. To brush its edge was to cut oneself straight to the bone.
He gripped the hilt tight and reminded himself of something the sword always told him.
He feared nothing.
The sound of hoofsteps became audible.
The sands appeared to shift with motion as hoofbeats sounded like drums.
Midnight gripped the hilt tighter in preparation.
Then silence.
The hoofsteps suddenly halted, continued only by those of a single pony.
A tall, rotund stallion in armour strode into view. Armour that covered nearly all his body.
His chestplate and massive shoulder pads looked like coloured, metal thatch-work. Strips of folded steel carefully fastened together with leather and brightly-coloured thread. Overlaying them was a thin metal pad bearing patterned cloth lacquered into place. His shoulder pads were flat, rectangular and very imposing. The plates continued over his legs, back, flanks and fetlocks, that which wasn’t covered by steel was enveloped by shimmering black leather.
His helmet however, was the most imposing sight. In similar design to to his armour, his helm was made up of a hard steel dome with wing-like plate-guards before his cheeks, ears, forehead and all around back and sides of his neck, fastened by a small cuirass around the chin and jugular. By over his forehead, resting on the small brim at the front, was an effigy of a great golden demon with tall blood-red horns and a grinning maw. Above the demon’s head was a circular crest of four diamonds forming one and behind that, dominating the helm, was another pony’s mane, shaved from the head and fastened to the top of the dome, a huge mane of winter-white hair, swaying in the breeze, with a single lock died blood red and trailing over his face. His actual face was obscured by a crimson mask of a bared-teeth war god, a bristling white moustache between the nose and mouth.
The armour of an Ubanese Samurai, the most feared warriors in all the Known World, peerless in their skill, unwavering in their resolve and devastating in their wrath.
His just-visible eyes were fiery and gleaming, like a tiger.
Midnight lowered his blade with amazement and spoke the stallion’s very familiar name.
The stallion chuckled, producing a flat, pear-shaped fan known as a Gunbai and cooled himself nonchalantly.
“Ah...Kagekama.” he recognised the pony, addressing him in his Ubanese title “I hoped to find you in good health...so that our fight would be a worthy one. You stand alone at the front, I see, just as before when you stood beside the usurpers.” He hung his Gunbai around his hoof by a tassel and removed his helmet.
His uncovered face showed a smoky-white, coat pitted with innumerable scars and a hairless head but for a pair of bristly black moustaches, as if in contrast of the massive white mane and red skin of his helmet and mask.
Midnight knew the full story of that helmet. The mane atop it was that of Furinkazan’s wife. It was custom for some wives of samurai to grant their husbands their mane to wear with their armour to forever remind them of their unwavering loyalty and love for one another.
His wife had died in the Rebellion. Furinkazan had killed her when she sent away her new-born son to Equestria when all her other sons had died fighting for their father.
Furinkazan had shown no joy in killing her yet nor had he shown hesitation. The two things he had ever truly loved more than anything else were the Shogunate and the glory of war, both of which Equestria and its allies had taken from him.
The mighty samurai bowed his head in the traditional manner. Midnight stood still.
“You’re working for Dvinius?” he asked sardonically “You surprise me.”
“Ha! That posturing, spineless pup is no master of mine, boy!” Furinkazan guffawed “I’ve been invited here by a pony with whom I share a mutual goal.”
“Hazard a guess...the destruction of Equestria?” Midnight snarked with a raised eyebrow.
Furinkazan’s feline eyes narrowed with distaste.
“Uba was our land. Its ponies, ours to command. Those who encroached, our enemy to slay. Yet you, in your arrogance, dared grant aid to the usurpers, Mistmane, Kimono and Yuki-Dono, fiends and mad-beasts who brought ruin to the age of the samurai!”
“You can’t blame us for wanting to help out friends.”
“You had no place in our war and your hoof in its workings sullied it! You ended the Iron Sun Shogunate, Kagekama. Now, we come to bring about its rebirth...in Equestria.”
“Not while I draw breath.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Samurai loved a challenge, it was practically in their code.
Furinkazan gave a relishing grin and drew a wickedly-sharp katana and held it forward.
“Then breathe no more!”
The drumming hoofbeats sounded again.
Midnight’s eyes widened as the dunes around him became swarmed with heavily-armoured samurai, their masks depicting demonic visages contorted with menacing glee or murderous rage. Moving as one, the sound like a great hiss of deadly metal, they drew their swords.
Samurai were among the few most capable warriors to master running on three hooves with one free hoof for a weapon, practicing from a young age, mastering equilibrium and building inner body strength.
It was almost unnerving seeing it. Of course the average royal guard could hold themselves on three legs but only for a time, enough for the average battle to end.
Samurai could do it for weeks, so it was said.
“Wait!” Midnight barked “This is our duel. Your warriors have no part in it.”
“Indeed they do not.” The warlord chuckled “And they shall take no part. While we duel in honourable combat, they will do the same to each of your fellow guard.”
“No!” the Dun pony exclaimed “The rules of battle are clear. A duel demands the pause of both armies! You know this!”
“I do. And I agree. My warriors shall pause...Just so long as your own army calls off their teleportation ritual.”
The muscles in Midnight’s jaw clenched. He really had no leverage. Not against this one.
And by the look of his devious smirk, Furinkazan knew this.
“Go, warhorses of the Iron Sun!” he bellowed “Sweep them from the dunes and bring their heads!”
“Kiai!!!” The samurai yelled as one, their hooves thundering over the sands.
With a cry of rage, Midnight rushed forward, swinging his sword upon the oncoming storm of invaders. In the time it took to blink, it had met the blade of Furinkazan. The two formidable commanders clashed, sparks flying as each strike met the other. The Sentinel Blade was made in very much the same manner as the katana and thus could bore the weight of it. But Midnight found himself trying desperately to break off the duel to help the others, knowing full-well how a force their size without magical aid surrounded by samurai would end.
He almost didn’t notice what may have been the sun rising behind him.
Then he noticed the sun was already setting to the left of him.
A blinding light caught on the edges of their swords, both of them stumbling back from each other in disorientation.
Midnight fell to his knees and squinted at the dune below.
Something had materialised between the oncoming samurai and the guard force below.
A unicorn mare with a bright yellow coat and a long, luxurious violet mane, dressed in a silver cape that covered most of her body. Deep indigo eyes surveyed the scene as a necklace bearing the amethyst star of the Magic of Friendship gleamed radiantly.
Even standing behind her, it didn’t take long for Gusty to know just who this figure was.
She half-whispered half-gasped the name.
“...Aurora...”
The Bearer of Magic smiled serenely at the guard. Her horn lit up with a deep blue glow which added to the rings of magic shimmering around the army. The rings glowed, nearing total activation.
“Midnight!” Gusty called out “Hurry!”
“I’ll be fine. Go!” Midnight yelled back from the dune, rising to his hooves, propping himself up with his sword.
Behind his mask, Furinkazan’s face creased with indignation as he bellowed.
“Alchemists! Stop them!”
Amongst the samurai, a few old ponies in simple armour, painted masks with brightly coloured manes drew censers of powdered cinnabar, adzuki-bean rattles and poisoned blowpipes, anti-magical weapons among the Ubanese alchemists.
Aurora held them back with a large but fragile shield that they hammered and cracked with their sabres.
“Come on...” Midnight growled “Just a little longer.”
The dune lit up and the army waned out of vision, the rings shining every colour of their casters before vanishing, taking the full strength of the guard force with them, Midnight having noticed Gusty giving him an encouraging salute before she vanished.
He managed a smile.
The samurai paused then slowly turned to him with enraged grimaces. Above him, Furinkazan snarled and raised his sabre.
“Damn you to the jaws of Gyuki, you faithless worm!”
“Same to you, mate.” Midnight retorted as the blade came down.
A mighty clang rang over the dune as Aurora emerged from a small, swift teleportation, bedecked in ivory-white armour with rose quartz inlays and bearing a rounded shield and hardy javelin. Slamming into Furinkazan, she took up a stance behind the rising Midnight.
Furinkazan seethed and raised his sword as the samurai gathered around the two Equestrians, bellowing war-cries.
Aurora and Midnight glanced at each other.
"Well...” the mare said awkwardly “This...isn’t quite how I imagined us meeting up again.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.” the stallion sighed “Ah well, let’s make the most of it.”
*
It was still just gone midday.
But with all the smoke in the air, it may as well have been dusk.
Yet still, light gleamed off the brazen mask of Maxim the Legendbringer as he surveyed the scene.
They were barely three miles from Eminence city, obscured in the distance by carnage surrounding.
Yet somehow, nothing had spared this place.
Beside him, his bodyguard, Shattersteel the horned-owl griffon stood ready, casting their gaze to any possible threat in the shadows.
Shaking his head, he turned to his brother, Vanguard-Commander Fullmetal.
“No sign of any stragglers, sad to say.” The sandy-yellow, scraggly-maned stallion said dourly, his red coat billowing in the breeze, showing off the hint of his metal prosthetic foreleg to replace the leg he’d lost breaking his brother out of Dvinius’s torture chambers.
The leg’s builder, Grinding Gears, was the group engineer. A brown-striped zebra with dark dreadlocks and a massive sword at his back, he was examining the hoof-steps left in the dirt with small tools and measures.
Next to him, the healer, Panacea, a weathered but warm-faced mare with ruddy-auburn mane and a white gown and cap, checked each body they’d recovered with a solemn face.
Maxim knelt opposite her and spoke tentatively.
“Mother...” he said flatly “Are there any...”
“None, I’m afraid.” she said flatly “These poor folk didn’t stand a chance. Some have been tortured. Not long, but its noticeable...” She pointed to deep incisions, empty eye sockets and burnt scar tissue.
“So I see.” The masked pony nodded, giving a deep, hissing breath behind his mask, his expression hidden but he could have held back a sniff.
“This was not the work of Dvinius.” Scipio the Forgemaster said, a hardy pony swathed in blacksmith's attire, eyes obscured by wide goggles and a leather headband over his mane dyed red and white in streaks. He was taking down the measurements and examinations Grinding had made “We count at least a hundred strong. Of varying species.”
“Must have been a scouting party of some sort.” Maxim supposed “Came on them quickly, scavenged and slaughtered anything they could.”
“It’s the work of the new colt on the block, no doubt about it.” A stallion known by his colleagues simply as ‘The Renegade’ spoke up. A dark stallion swathed in black sap-leather armour, his crimson-coated face hidden by a very different mask made from the skull of the New Hycarionite commander that had killed everypony he’d once loved fifteen years ago “He said he had an army of his own waiting to move.”
“He wasn’t kidding by the look of it.” Fullmetal said, shaking his head.
“They’re all bound north.”
“Right.” Maxim scratched the back of his head in anxiety and pointed out four of his cadre. An eggplant-coloured earth pony stallion with dusky blonde mane with a brass bucina at his belt; a bespectacled puce pegasus mare with healthy wings she'd kept active in the deep drops of the mines; and a frail-looking lime-green earth pony with flame-like streaks dyed into his mane, bearing a great brazen shield over one foreleg.
“Fanfare, Enharmonica and Humble Heart; you scout ahead to Eminence City. If there’s any chance you can get any survivors out of there, do so. If it’s too dangerous, contact us.”
“Right.”
“Renegade, Tseresa, Naughty Dog, Corn Cob; see if you can chart the army’s direction. If we can stumble across their barracks, the opportunity to cause chaos behind enemy lines shouldn’t go unenjoyed.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Everybody else, continue through the mountains. It’s not long now. Once we get to Canterlot and, hopefully, are allowed to settle, we should be able to use their crystal technology to get in touch with all the others. Dvinius has chained them long enough. Let’s see how potent and magnificent he feels when he hasn’t a kingdom to hide under when this is over.”
*
The last mage in the college’s throat was cut on the steps, a mare barely older than an undergraduate, the city knew it was lost.
No way to send letters or teleport or anything that would call upon their princess.
‘And how does Equestria fare without?’the Warmonger thought as he cleaned his blade ‘It's worth watching, I dare say.’
“Sir.” One of the pale stallions in jet-black armour and horned headbands bounded over the fallen stonework and saluted.
His runes inscribed under his eyes betrayed his identity between his many twin brothers.
“Dantalion Gallowson, is it?” The Warmonger asked.
“Aye, sir.” the young stallion nodded and pointed to the government centre, largely untouched “Brother Andrealphas took his cadre into the main keep but we haven’t seen him. There still appears to be fierce fighting within.”
“Perfect.” the Warmonger’s eyes lit up with intrigue “You can’t deny though, they haven’t done too bad under the circumstances.”
Dantalion raised an eyebrow.
“If you say so, sir.”
“Don’t you agree?”
“Milord, my father has long wished to demonstrate the weakness of the Equestrian princesses and their childish, saccharine ways.” Dantalion protested “Now we finally have a capability to prove as such!”
“And what do you find?”
“They fall before us! In their droves!”
“And yet they go down fighting. They haven’t gotten down and begged and scraped as you seemed certain they’d do.”
“They will in time, my father is certain.”
“Are you?” The Warmonger gave him a knowing look as they neared the steps of the government centre, taking care not to slip on the streaming blood.
The griffon leader was perched above, pecking clumps of meat out of a severed head he’d been roasting in the pyre a statue held above.
“I gotta’ say boss, I’m havin’ a lot of fun on these trips you put together.” he cackled, swooping down, throwing the head onto a pile.
Cascadius smirked.
Scratchit Ankleslicer was a pullet griffon warrior who’d aided the raptors in their purges during the first of their civil wars, wilfully slaughtering his own kind. He’d been exiled as a result with a hefty price on his head. Times were Cascadius had pursued that price.
But the value of his skill in battle as an ally was worth significantly more.
It seemed that investment had paid off.
“Glad to hear it, Scratchit, old pal.” he clapped the griffon’s shoulder “Let’s see what we’ve won.”
As Dantalion kicked open the door, the sounds of battle and murder sounded through the halls.
“Well...” The Warmonger looked about with impression “It seems begging and scraping is not on their agenda just yet.”
Corpses littered the white stone floor. Each and every serving Equestrian within the house yet almost twice as many bodies belonged to the invading horde.
“Cluck me...” Scratchit hissed “Somepony’s been busy.”
“Wait...No!” Dantalion exclaimed, rushing over to a corpse slumped over the stairway. Another pale stallion in jet-black armour, slain by a gash that had split his shoulder and chest wide-open.
Dantalion cradled it and whispered, holding back a sob.
“Andrealphas...Forgive me...I should have been with you...”
He raised his head as Cascadius placed a hoof on his shoulder, drawing his sickle-shaped sabre.
“Come Dantalion.” he said gravely “Let us see your brother’s blood repaid.”
As the three invading commanders scaled the spiral staircase, the cries of battle sounded louder, chiefly among them a mare’s roar, calling out numbers.
“Ninety-six! Ninety-seven! Ninety-eight...and a half...”
As they reached the upper floor, they had just enough time to see one of their troopers, from the stomach-down at least, crawling away, coughing blood, reaching out at them.
A shape fell down from a candelabra and impaled the hapless trooper in the back of the neck, rising slowly.
Seastreamer stared at them with a battle-crazed face, one forehoof missing, the other sword clutched in her teeth. Near a dozen wounds bled freely without her notice. Around her were at least forty of the Warmonger’s vanguard, cut to pieces on the observatory floor.
“Ninety-nine...” she panted, glaring at the ringleaders of her city’s slaughter “Who wants to finish up?”
Scratchit, Dantalion and Cascadius each brought their weapons forward and charged, each taking a different angle.
As time seemed to slow, the cacophony of battle-cries ringing, the Warmonger closed his eyes a moment and gave a contented sigh.
‘Ah...marvellous.’
A lightning-fast flurry of blades clashed against each other. Seastreamer’s swords burst into flame, the enchanted amber within imbuing the blades with fire, streaks of it flying in all directions. The pegasus had become near-mad with fury, lashing out at any foe she saw. Cascadius could see this was a beast that would require fast but careful strategy to bring down.
Nodding at Scratchit who flew up toward the ceiling, he signalled to Dantalion who jumped upon Cascadius’s shoulders. The young stallion was vaulted up as Seastreamer lunged at the two.
Two hind legs encased in coal-black calk kicked the mare across the face. As she staggered, the griffon pounced from the chandelier and raked his sabres across Seastreamer’s shoulders. Screaming, she stumbled and was thrown across the room by a hefty punch in the gut by Cascadius. Rolling blindly, struggling to find her hooves, she was easy prey.
Dantalion Gallowson charged, his ebony blade held high as he hollered a battle-cry.
A moment later, his battle-cry turned into a morbid, bubbling gurgle as Seastreamer’s blade found its mark. The young stallion fell as his face and most of chest was cut in two, a red-brown river snaking down from his forehead to his navel.
Dantalion fell dead. Scratchit and Cascadius drew back as Seastreamer gasped with one last ditch effort.
“One hundred and buck you all!”
The pegasus flew forward.
Time seemed to stop entirely.
When the silence returned, Seastreamer’s hooves fell to her sides, her head lolled forward as she slumped lifelessly, Cascadius’s sabre as deep in her chest as Scratchit Ankleslicer’s blades had carved through her shoulders. The body of Seastreamer fell to the ground, the fire of the two blades extinguished.
The last two living beasts on that floor caught their breath.
“Ah...Well...That was something.”
“That nag didn’t go down easy.” Ankleslicer growled.
“Well, I wouldn’t have wanted this to be too easy.” The Warmonger paced over to the body of Dantalion and closed the colt’s eyes with one hoof.
“A shame. He had skill, this lad.”
There was a clatter of hooves as their reserve scoured the place. Rising, Cascadius turned to them, depositing his sabres in their sheathes.
“The city’s ours. Gather the prisoners in the square below and take names of the dead.” he turned to Dantalion’s body “And see that Gallow has his sons returned for burial.”
“This isn’t happening...This isn’t happening...This isn’t happening...” Shallot’s terrified whispers could be heard out the corner of Gale’s ear.
The little red-maned unicorn huddled on the ground, cradling her impaled hoof. The pain was driving her mad.
Shallot’s words made sense.
‘Wake up!’ she begged herself ‘Please wake up! End this nightmare! I need to wake up!’ Mrs Dearling stood shakily before her school-foals, shielding them as best she could.
Every guard was dead. Only the city-folk were left, unarmed and terrified, sorted into groups in the great city square, the smell of death threatening to choke them.
Chancy was openly sobbing, having seen more death in one day than most grown-ponies back home had ever seen in their lives. Lucky Dip was trying to remain on his hooves, reminding himself that pegasi like him were brave.
But were they brave in times like this.
Had there ever been times like this before?
Breaking the horrid silence, the guards around them made way for others.
The calm-faced stallion Gale had seen enter the city approached.
One of the pale stallions in black armour strode to meet him, far older than the others with a high crown of black horns and a two sashes across his chest, one of locks of mare’s manes of many different colours, the other of tiny shields with runes inscribed into them, arranged in rows like a honeycomb.
Gallow of Gibbland was one of many petty kings who had sought to ruin Equestria during its founding. His war hadn’t ended well for him. It was little surprise he and his near-countless sons were trying their luck with another while the time was right.
He stopped and stared as the Warmonger’s attendants brought forth the bodies of Dantalion and Andrealphas.
“I bring your sons, King Gallow, and my condolences.” Cascadius pressed a hoof upon his chest and bowed, Scratchit and his attendants doing the same.
The stallion named Gallow knelt and bowed his head.
“Did they die well, Warmonger?”
“To be sure.” Cascadius answered “Their killer’s life was ended by our hooves. She was a mighty foe, it was the honour of a hundred to die fighting her.”
“I thank you for it. Eligor joined them to my grief. But he too died well, to my pride” Gallow rose, his sunken eyes falling upon the prisoners.
“The blood of three sons of Gallow shed in this city demands justice! For every son, ten stallions are bled dry. Bring them out!” he ordered his sons who indiscriminately picked out prisoners to slay.
“No!” a young stallion screamed as he was dragged forth “You can’t do this! We didn’t kill them! We didn’t kill anypony! We weren’t even fighting!”
“Perhaps you should have.” Cascadius said without a shred of pity “You probably would have gotten a quicker death.”
“No! Please, listen!” the stallion wept before them “I’ll...I’ll do anything. Just please, let me life. My wife, she’ll die without me!”
“Oh? Where is this wife of yours?” Gallow’s eyes flickered as a teary-eyed young mare was dragged forth.
The petty king smirked.
“A pretty one indeed. Very well, spare this one.”
Before the stallion could thank him, Gallows added three words that made his blood run cold.
“Take the mare.”
“What?! No!” the prisoner threw himself forward, grabbed and held by the Gallowsons “Don’t! Please! Spare her!”
“That’s exactly what I shall do. She shall pay the city’s dept for my son’s lives the best way she can.” Gallow stared into the weeping stallion’s eyes as the mare was dragged away, her whimpers turning to screams as she knew what was coming.
“She will give me more sons.”
Cascadius tutted as the prisoner broke down into screaming cries on the ground.
“Bad move, matey. A quaint view of justice the Gallows have.” Shaking his head, he approached the school-foals, his gleaming eyes turning their legs to jelly.
A shaking Mrs Dearling stepped forward, one forehoof held out in plea.
“Listen...please...they’re just foals. They’re not even from here, you don’t have to do this! They’re from Canterlot, they-”
“I know.”
A cold sabre snaked through the air. The elderly schoolteacher’s eyes boggled, her spectacles shattering on the ground as she fell, clutching at her opened throat, her words never finding sound.
Shallot screamed.
Nonchalantly, as if it hadn’t even happened, Cascadius took the register from the dying Mrs Dearling and eyed it.
“Hello class. Lovely day for an outing, isn’t it.” he gave them a smile.
As Gale tried to stand to look him in the eye, she slipped and cried out in pain as the arrow’s shaft caught in the stonework, her wound burning.
A hoof held it.
The Warmonger was sitting down in front of her, eying the filly with intrigue.
“What’s this...” he murmured, as his other hoof clasping the arrow. Casually, he broke off the arrowhead and took the projectile out of the foal’s hoof. Gale gritted her teeth and whimpered as it bled.
To her surprise, the stallion before her wrapped the hoof in a length of cloth he’d torn off his cloak, staunching the wound slightly.
“Wh...why did you do that?”
Cascadius eyed the arrowhead.
“This is one of mine.” he chuckled, fixing her with an impressed look “So you’re the one who opened the gate...Brave little lass aren’t you.”
“Is...is that why you’re being...kind?”
At this, Cascadius burst out laughing. It was a sincere laugh, not evil-sounding as Gale had imagined cruel beasts would laugh. It genuinely sounded like a normal pony who’d just heard a good joke.
“Little one...Believe me.” he smiled “If I was feeling kind...I would have shot you through the head.”
“You...You’re a monster!” the filly screamed, nothing making sense in her world anymore “Why?! Why are you like this?! Why do you want to do this?! Why do you want to hurt us?!”
“Oh sweetheart.” the stallion appeared to coo, ruffling her mane with mock-sympathy “I don’t want to hurt you.” He pulled her by the ear to stare dead into her eyes as he whispered with malice.
“I want to hurt...your parents.”
Gale's words came out as a mere squeak.
"Wh...why?"
"Well, they'll be scared, won't they?" His eyes flicked "Won't they."
Tentatively, Gale nodded.
"Right. And here's the thing, little one..." The Warmonger's gaze was as cold as the mountaintops, all the evil Gale had ever imagined appearing trivial compared to what she saw in the flesh. Cascadius craned his neck towards her, their muzzles nearly touching, and whispered a code he lived by.
"Scared ponies lose wars."
He stood up and gave orders.
“Take this one to the camp. I want to run a few tests...Don’t give me that look, Scratchit, it’s for the next battle.”
As Gale was hoisted into the air, kicking feebly, she stared back as Cascadius scanned the register.
“Now...let’s start with...” he paced along the line of terrified foals and stopped “...you.”
“No!” Lucky Dip screamed as the Entelodont approached with a murderous grin “Why?! Why me?!”
“Come on now, your name’s ‘Lucky Dip’!” Cascadius chuckled “I’m not passing off this chance to be ironic.”
He turned to the rest of the foals as the flailing pegasus colt was strapped to pillars and the sound of knives drawn hissed in their ears.
“Now, fillies and colts, a question for you for today’s lesson...Do you know what ‘Flaying’ means?”
Near petrified with fright, the foals shook their heads.
“Well...” The Warmonger shrugged “You learn something new every day.”
