For centuries he's slept, no purpose, no call to wake him. But now... are those wedding bells i hear?
(featured as of Aug 30th... how?) (MLP + Warframe crossover.) (Technically HiE but more focus is given on the Warframe angle.) (probably goes without saying but, will have major SPOILERS FOR SECOND DREAM/WAR WITHIN! go play those quests before reading anything warframe related ever again!)
After being left to die in the crystal caverns beneath Canterlot by Chrysalis and her minions, Cadence had almost given up hope completely. Until she found something... something in the dark. Something that just might save them all.
“Ouch!” Cadance cursed as she picked herself up from the musty cavern floor. She was not in a good place. Thousands of hoof paces from the surface on the eve of her wedding while a horrible succubus insect monster did Celestia only knows what top her beloved groom-to-be. Also, her knee was scraped.
Ripping yet another piece from her already shredding garment she wrapped her cut knee to stop the bleeding. Lamenting the ruination of such a pristine garment, better than anything she had worn back in the village. Ohh… the village, back with her adoptive mother and father, the feel of fresh grass under her hooves, each digit of her delicate fur coated hands swollen from the labour of the day. She missed it. Especially the food. Not that stuffy questionably portioned stuff the royal chefs always drugged up. Real lovingly home cooked filling food.
Her mouth watered. Causing her to quickly cup her muzzle, water was precious in the crystal caverns. The last source she’d found had barely lasted her two days, or was it three? Without the passage of the heavens time became meaningless, she could only count by the number of times she’d slept. But even sleep barely brought rest, dehydrated, starving, and without anywhere to properly lay herself besides the dirt covered floor, left her ragged and uncomfortable in every imaginable way. Yet still she soldiered on.
The pink princess couldn’t tell if she was going in circles or simply falling deeper into the dark. Each crystal growth and ore deposit looked the same. The dirt and dust seemed only to multiply with each step making her eyes sting. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, she stumbled and fell deeper into the mines. The vent she had fallen in was filled with gravel that cut her arms and back as she descended, her arms raised instinctively as she fell to protect her face and muzzle from the jagged ceiling and non-too smooth ground beneath her. Eventually coming to a stop into a conveniently placed dirt pile.
Cursing the further dirtying of her garments and aching limbs, she rose from the pile and began to at least try and clean herself of most of the debris. As she hastily scrubbed at one particularly stubborn spot of muck she tripped and fell again.
“Okay now I’m beginning to see a pattern here.” She grumbled. After examining the floor beneath her feet, she noticed the cavern floor was unnaturally smooth. Raised just a few milli-hoofs from the rest of the cavern at a seemingly mechanical angle. Following the contour of the clearly artificial structure to the walls she noticed what appeared to be an arch. Twin pillars of white and gold rose and curved into an almost perfect circle, spoiled only by the vines, cracks, and ware in the obviously ancient structure. It was truly a marvel. The white metallic marble looked older than even the architecture of ancient Roam. Perhaps predating it. As she cautiously approached the alien looking arch with newfound wonder her mind began to race. She idly thought to herself, ‘Twilight would have loved this.’ When she’d used to babysit for the adorable little filly, she quickly found the foals interest to be strictly academic. The tiny book monster begging the pink princess to read from old history books and university papers. She could already see the ghost of the adorable bright-eyed foal jumping up and down citing reference after reference of construction techniques, measuring everything she could reach and writing it all down in a cute tiny notebook. Oh, Celestia how she missed her. As she reached the middle of the Dias, which the pony crafted floor was she now realized, her hoof fell a little more than she expected. But this time she was ready and caught herself. Now she could hear odd whirring and scraping, the whine of disused mechanical pistons. Like the sound of an old train protesting its final day of operation. First the left, then the right, soon a whole trainyard of engines announced themselves from all around her. Tiny pieces of light flickering from the dark corners of the structure and other parts of the room, seemingly at random. Slowly but surely a pedestal emerged from a new opening in the floor right in front of her. The mechanical whirring droning and screeching in a fever pitch to complete its ancient operation. Ceasing only at its completion, at which point the pedestal was fully emerged. Its surface lit up brighter than the walls. A tiny button situated inside the outline of a handprint presented as its only means of control. Cadance’s heart nearly skipped a beat in her chest.
This wasn’t some random support beam for some forgotten palace or temple, this was a machine, a magi-portal. It made sense, if her sister in law could teleport herself from place to place in seconds, why not do the same with goods and trade, or soldiers in war? This wasn’t a dead end; it was her way out!
Hope lit her eyes as she timidly reached out to the control panel.
As tears filled the corners of her vision, she swore she could see the faces of those she most loved. Her parents who came all this way to see her wedding, shining’s parents who were already like family to her long before the engagement was final, the adorable twilight now almost all grown up, and her beloved gentle-stallion. They were waiting for her, waiter for her to escape this maze of darkness and reveal the evil queen’s deception, to save them from whatever horror she had schemed.
She began furiously beating the button.
Quickly the lights increased their intensity, the ancient dev ice sprung to life. Great gears and wires fed (presumably) arcano-energy from some hidden reservoir of power and began to turn the great wheel around the gate. Energy built and crackled throughout the whole structure as the machines hum sent the whole cavern to shiver. Then slowly, like water to spilled to fill a pool, the gate filled. It appears as a scene from a painting, tiny stars glittered in the distance as great suns turned and filled the night sky above strange alien worlds. The black pool of night pulsing and waving into itself from the edges. Finally the connection was made and the pony was able to behold a new cavern, not too unlike the one she herself now occupied but more preserved. It suddenly occurred to her that the portal might not be safe. She hesitated. It could be malfunctioned, it could sever and scatter her every atom across the multiverse itself. It could kill her. But there was no other way out, she would be dead either way from hunger or exhaustion in the tunnels, even if she found an exit she’d never make it in time. Shining Armour...
It took several moments for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness of her environment. The once dreary dark cavern now replaced with the brightly lit lobby of the presumed temple. Walking to the center of new space she finally cleared her eyes, only for the floor to sink slightly again activating buck knows what. Her mind raced and wing muscles tensed in anticipation for any deadly traps to spring out at her. When no bottomless pits opened to swallow her from below or giant blades swung from above, she relaxed slightly. Her near perfect Pegasus hearing detecting the scrape of metal on metal above her. Looking up she beheld a glass sarcophagus, the trim of each pane covered in styled golden ornamentation. The intricate detail of its opulence was quickly lost as the mechanisms grinded the fine decoration to powder in shear determination to their purpose. The coffin was fixed high into the far wall of the room, just below the curved dome of the ceiling. She watched mesmerized at the coffins panes slowly achieved their goal and free its occupant. ‘wait’ she thought, ‘if it opens there isn’t it going to…’
Splat!
The corpse unceremoniously fell from its bed to meet the floor. Cadance stared incredulously. She found herself silently reasoning that some other mechanism must have failed, as while even though the room here was much cleaner than the one she came from, the room was still overgrown with vines in places. So, the wild vegetation must have prevented some gear from turning and moving the body from its current position to a more dignified place for inspection. Yes, that must be it. For surely no one would have gone to all the trouble of constructing this place, let alone the gate itself, for some lame office prank. She turned her bewildered gaze from the mysteriously malfunctioning mechanism for marehandling mummies to the corpse itself.
Tombs usually weren’t built for the fun of it after all, figuring out who this figure was might help her locate where she was and how to get back to Canterlot. According to what she remembered from high school the Roamans where a pre-celestial era civilization built on the backs of slaves gained through conquest. Meaning she could be in the old homelands of Roam, which was now in the griffon kingdom across the sea. Or she could be in the farthest reaches eastern or western reaches of the equestrian continent itself, the old empire having never truly penetrated the new continent’s heart due to nomadic barbarian tribes that dominated the land in that time. So best case scenario she could rally the guard from the rest of equestrian to retake the city. Worse case scenario she’d be late traveling across Griffinstone buying mercenaries to aid her, then rallying the troops upon making landfall. But first she’d need to get to the surface, which meant… ugh, more caves.
She reached the body now, lost in thought as she’d traveled the length of the tomb, and she noticed something peculiar about it. It was huge, at least as big as the diarch of the sun herself. It was clearly a unicorn, the bone protruding proudly from its armored head, the armor covered every inch of its body in fact, and she couldn’t find a seam seemingly anywhere. Its legs ended not I hooves but in… paw of some kind, its hands held five fingers each, rather than the pony norm of four. None of it seemed to add up, of course its armor would be strange, tombs such as these were never built for common soldiers of course so he must have been some great warrior or high-status politician, but his was just… alien. The architecture seemed less and less ancient the more she studied it, too advanced, the gate (she finally remembered) was only recently proposed as a mathematical theory not ever realized as a reality. The figure’s helm was unrecognizable, no banner, no tail, nothing seemed to fit or make any sense.
Until the corpse began to rise.
***
For Evan everything hurt. His muscles felt non-existent, like his whole body was under a heavy rock. He sensed an extension on his head like he’d permanently bent the tip of his baseball cap.
‘I wonder if this is what being drunk feels like.’ He’d stayed up late with his clan last night, farming the derelict over and over for mutagen samples. ‘Curse DE and its ludicrous building requirements and damn the Hema specifically.’ He sneered to the universe. Based on his current physical condition he could only guess he’d hit the limit and just collapsed on the floor. ‘Now,’ he recounted to himself ‘Presuming I haven’t slept through an entire day from one sleepless night I shouldn’t have work today. Not that it hurts to check though.’ It was after all that same diligence that was definitely going to get him promoted. Or so he thought.
Slowly he stirred myself from the hard cold floor, bringing his hand to his brow to nurse my thundering headache. As he did, he noticed something strange about his arm. Metal slabs did cover his body, his entire body in fact. Metal that curved over his head in a very familiar, iconic (not Ubisoft iconic), shape. Excalibur, first of the Warframes.
His first thought was, ‘cool.’
His second, ‘how?’
His third, ‘what… the… FUUUUUU-‘
“uh… um… h-hello?”
His head turned sharply right to face the new presence in the room. It was… a pink horse. A pink horse with wings. With huge eyes, button nose, and a… horn on its head? In short, it was the most adorable little mumble bumble and it needed snuggy-wuggies NOW! Unable to control himself Evan subconsciously activated his powers and dashed immediately to grab the fluffly little bird-horse in his strong mechanical grip.
***
Cadence was in a very weird place right now. One minute she was hopelessly lost in a deep dark cave, the next she found what she thought might be her way out, only to stumble on some big fancy crypt instead. Now the occupant from said crypt was furiously nuzzling and petting her. Very weird, very weird indeed. “Uhmmm, excuse me mister c-could you maybe put me down please?” she asked hesitantly. To her surprise the creature stopped its intimate greetings and reluctantly complied. Setting her gingerly on the floor as though one would a child that just told its parent they disliked riding on their guardians’ shoulders. “T-thank you.” She barely squeaked out dusting herself off in a futile attempt to straighten out her muck matted coat. The figure loomed over her, silent and imposing yet also strangely comforting. She watched the chest of its metal clad frame rise and fall to imitate breathing, yet she saw no air move near or around where its mouth should be. Its eye-less, mouth-less, and snout-less face was marked with only a single line, jagged like fangs at two points where one might expect eyes to fall on any other pony face. She wasn’t sure what to expect from it, whether that line would open to a fang riddled maw of a monster or open to the gaze of an old wise warrior, she couldn’t tell. But it hadn’t tried to kill her yet, in fact it had just done the opposite. It was lonely. It also might know the way out. “My name is Princess Mi Amour Cadenza,” she recited with a curtsy, “my friends just call me Cadance though. Uh, what’s yours?” She sweat a little. She wasn’t one to curtsy normally, except to Celestia or Luna when she first met them, but the air power that seemed to slumber beneath the frame of this strange creature before her seemed to silently demand it.
She paused in semi-shock as the creature silently returned the gesture, following it with a series of dignified hand gestures as if to introduce itself, but remained silent all the same. Finally, he moved as if he was asking some kind of question, motioning to her as if waiting for a response.
The lone alicorn could only tilt her head in confusion, “Uh… I’m sorry I can’t understand you sir, do you speak equish, or at all?” she watched mutely as the silent figure tried desperately produce some utterance of a sound. it first calmly tried to speak, then motioned to its throat as if it was being strangled, only to finally conclude with some bizarre dance of fury. She idly wondered if her newfound companion would be alright.
***
“I HAVE NO MOUTH AND I MUST SCREAM!!! KILLL ME NOW GOD! OH GOD KILL ME NOW!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
***
Yeah he’d be fine.
An unceremonious crack echoed though the room, its occupants glancing up to the source of the disturbance to witness sparks fly from the shaking frame of the void gate. The low monotonous drone from the portal’s engine, that had been so easy to ignore before now, began to spike and drone in uncomfortable volumes. Like the screeching of a dying kettle. Its closure was not without protest however, as the room now shook as if from an earthquake, the crack growing and splintering into sections.
The warrior had only seconds to act and he used them. Grabbing the plushy pink pony in his arms he sprang towards the wall from which his sarcophagus still hung, bending his legs like a tightly wound spring against the wall. Pushing off the surface of the wall only after reaching peak tension with his limbs, they soured towards the pulsing liquid doorway that would separate them from certain death. Rocks the size of large earth ponies fell all around the fleeing figures who were left miraculously unscathed by the debris. Everything seemed to slow around them as they traveled. Cadance though pressed tightly to the creature’s chest, could still make out the flight of pebbles and stones as they seemed to fall like feathers in her adrenaline-fueled vision. Finally, they reached the portal.
They came flying out. But just before crashing into the dirt, the figure jumped in midair, righting himself and bringing the two of them to land solidly on their feet. Turning to see the danger they had just narrowly avoided, pony and human bore witness to the collapse of what was left of the failing pocket dimension. Large chunks of marble and golden spires falling atop each other in a deadly pile where the two had previously been conversing. They stayed like that awhile, watching the tower fall, the gate’s connection sputtering and breaking like a broken window, duplicating some areas and blacking out others entirely. A place of history was there, a bed of slumber for a warrior without a call, technology far beyond the wildest dreams of fiction to this world. Its once pristine structures now forever lost to the void. The two figures sat in utter silence for several minutes afterwards, watching the ancient system struggle in futility to function before shutting down for the last time. It may have also caught fire.
Evan was having the time of his life. Whizzing around the underground, leaping ledge to ledge, across great gorges or collapsing tunnel floors, all the while keeping the terrified little pony on his back safe and secure. Being a bit overweight nerd back home he had always scoffed at the more athletically inclined as posers and normies, in no small part due to the silent jeering they made at the sight of him, yet now he cursed his foolish former self. If only someone had explained to him this feeling that words failed to describe, to teach him this excitement. Granted he was inhabiting (or was it controlling given how transference worked?) an alien ninja robot now. One that seemed to be incapable of tiring out, with what he could feel as a suggestive nudge that must have been some on board computer plotting out his path through the dark. He felt exhilarated all the same. He lamented how he had despised the gym rats of his old world, if he had known or they communicated this… this joy of movement, the air rushing past as he dominated and owned the harsh landscape below him, perhaps he might not have given up on himself so easily.
But now he felt free, and soon so would his escort. After the littlest princes had calmed down from her panic attack resulting from her brush with death, she elaborated on her situation with him. Most of which he had already figured out from context. She was cadence, this was her wedding day, and she was stuck in the crystal mines beneath the city while an army of evil shapeshifters tried to take over the city with a plan that was so tactically unsound it would sent sun tzu rolling in his grave. That last bit might have been less her and more outsider knowledge he’d picked up while reading up on the brony phenomenon but whatever. He knew this being more a fan of brony content than the actual show itself mind you but watch enough reviews of transformers four and you’ve basically seen transformers four after all. So, he knew where he was vaguely in the show’s timeline, not that he could be one hundred percent however, it being a kids cartoon and all with even the fans disagreeing on the canon order of some episodes. Given how Cadance’s biology deviated from her originally quadruped counterpart he couldn’t be certain of any order being set in stone yet. Be it as broadcast or otherwise.
Regardless he understood the current situation, save the princess, slay the dragon, save what you love by destroying what you hate, standard fantasy story. First, they just needed to get out of the caves. Fortunately, they were already well on their way, scaling shear cliffs in seconds, and sprinting through maze after maze. The poor pony must have been absolutely baffled at how her rescuer seemed to never make a wrong turn. Evan simply smirked internally at the thought, after all he was just following the directions. After he had finally coaxed the little mare onto his back a series of icons became evident in the corners of his vision; heath and shield bars traced his upper right while an energy bar slowly filled in the lowest portion of the same side. He frowned at the values of his bars, a solid one hundred each, so he was starting all over again. Getting XP to unlock the rest of his abilities alone was going to be a hassle, but he’d cross that bridge when needed. On the left the map materialized as normal in the upper corner, just below it another health bar formed, this one labelled “rescue target” an accompanying extraction icon appearing in the far distance of his vision. He’d began rushing towards that icon for several minutes by now, wondering just how lost the poor girl had gotten to be so many thousands of meters below the surface. But they were making good time as it was and would hopefully reach their journeys end in just about an hour, if they weren’t so suddenly interrupted.
***
Cadence hung on for dear life, her new silent companion rushing through the maze-like caverns at near supersonic speed. She wondered and marveled in equal measure just how he was able to so deftly maneuver the subterranean networks but figured as a resident of the structure below he must have been part of whatever group had built the place, using some memory of its original route as a guide. She recalled back to high-school history again, this time to what little they had covered concerning ancient Scryptians, ponies who believed in a strange word-based pantheon. Using word-magic for practically everything they also had a habit of inscribing words of protection to trigger traps and other defences to protect the maze-like tombs of their leaders. Maybe they’d picked up the habit from whatever civilization her carrier once hailed from? Who knows? Maybe twilight would be able to coax some answers from him once this was all over, after they’d found a way to properly communicate of course.
“AAAHHHHHH!”
A scream sounded though the dark tunnels breaking her train of thought. Cadance’s trusty stead halting in his movements to find the source of the sound. his head darted around in the dark trying in vain to catch the many echoes of the cry and pinpoint its origin. Fortunately, pegasi aren’t lauded for their hearing for nothing, and cadence herself originally being born as one had years of practise discerning the smallest whisper from confessing lovers in the distance. A quick swivel of her pony hears quickly located the source to which she tapped her companions’ shoulder and pointed in its direction. “There that way!” but he hesitated, “Look if somepony else is stuck down here we have to help them, they might be more victims of the changelings that can help us fight back.”
Needing no other prompt, the stallion took off with the same vigour as before speeding towards their hopeful ally. Though cadence could feel him tense slightly under her. The metal muscles that powered his supernatural agility readying for a fight as his head turned and scanned with increased frequency, searching for an ambush. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might have been a trap. One last act of cruelty by the insectoid menace to give her some glimmer of hope for rescue only to deliver her final humiliation alone and scared in the dark.
***
The tenno let the pony slide as silently as possible from his back, they had neared the source of the disturbing cry approaching from a nearby overhang, he wanted a good look at what he was dealing with. Laying prone against the stone Evan peaked over the edge to a novel sight. Twilight sparkle, her distinct coat and mane colors making her unmistakeable, being cornered by three changelings. The snarling bug-horses were just as humanoid as their equine counterparts, sporting hole riddled hooves and tri-fingered hands ending in vicious claws. He wondered why she didn’t just fly away. ‘oh riiiight!’ he realized, ‘this is season three, she didn’t get those until just before Tirek in season… five I think? What was season four again?’
Another scream of pain echoed through the cave once more as the unicorn’s hastily constructed shield was struck by sustained beams of assault from her aggressors. A quick gasp erupted from his left, his tiny royal ally looking at him in an intense stare of worry and fear for her friend, “Do something! Please?” she ordered in a harsh whisper. He turned sharply back to the task at hand, there would be time to worry about the villains of tomorrow, tomorrow. First, he needed to save today for there to be a tomorrow. A quick scan of the area with his advanced orokin systems showed no more contacts and automatically marked the three insectoid shapeshifters as hostiles. He silently leapt from the ledge. Landing with a loud thud just as the lavender mares shield broke, her would be murderers turning their undivided attention to the intrusion.
Each of the chitin shelled invaders was suitably grotesque, like if a pony had been fused with a xenomorph in some unholy union of science and a devil’s miracle. He found it ironic that the one truly ‘evil’ race in the franchise was given so demonic a visage only to be later so easily redeemed. Still he was in a Warframe and this was war. They bared their fangs and lowered to a fighting stance; Evan hadn’t moved since his epic superhero landing waiting for his opponents to make the first move. Caution was best here, as while the changelings were too short to pose any real physical threat, he still didn’t know what the creatures were capable of mystically. Each had a horn therefor each had magic. Evan was unarmed, his only offensive option was his slash dash, he needed to know what he was dealing with here.
One of the bugs released a guttural snarl and charged the silent intruder. A quick cast faster than a blink brought the giant warrior to face his foe, and his arm through its chest. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘that’s gnarly.’ The other two took a step back to avoid the emerald splatter of their fallen comrade. One outright bolted for a nearby crack in the cave wall, hoping for escape. The other glanced back at his cowardly cohort and instead chose to stand his ground, charging his horn with arcane might. Evan watched in fascination as the energies gathered from the jagged tip flowing along blood vessel like lines under the chitin, traveling down its neck and arms before finally collecting in its clawed palms to be unleashed. Oh. ‘Evasive maneuvers!’
Moving with lightning finesse he dodged each volley of green fire as the lone creature tried desperately to destroy its enemy. Evan weaved right, watching the eyes of his opponent like a goalie in a soccer match trying to predict where the player will shoot from. He smirked inwardly and used an old trick he hadn’t needed since he played the sport as a child. He feinted left then just as his opponent made the cast, its arcane light blinding him for a split second, then charged right with his full force curving his energy imbued appendage deep into the insect’s ribcage. He could feel its heartbeat in his hand, the creature looked at him in pure agonized fear, he made it quick.
***
The stallion’s slaughtering of the would-be assailants was merciless. Cadence could only watch in shocked horror as the warrior went about his grisly purpose. At the fall of the second he quickly glanced to twilight, reminding the alicorn of her momentarily forgotten friend, and then raced off down the passage after the final fleeing felon. She rushed to twilights side, charging what little energy she had left to try and heal her cuts and bruises.
The purple unicorn tried to swat the princesses help away with her hand mumbling incoherently “No. No more, please stop.”
“Twilight please let me help you! Your bleeding.”
“Cadance?” she asked shakily, “Is that you? Really you?”
She cradled her friend gently “Its ok, I get it. She tricked me too.”
A scream followed by a sickening thwack echoed through the cavern, the five fingered alien having knocked the changeling with enough force to definitely break something.
“You know we could’ve asked him how to get out of here right?” Twilight interjected. The mysterious stallion stopped in his posturing over his defeated foe, startled. He began shaking the clearly lifeless insect vainly attempting to rouse him back to consciousness. The recovering mares watched the embarrassing display with half lidded glares before Twilight interrupted.
“So, who’s your friend?”
“Just a little something I dug up from the basement.” She chortled.
“huh?”
“I’ll explain later, so where was that changeling going you think?”
Unfortunately, Twilight was as clueless as Cadance in this, though it did prompt their ally to shift his attention from the apparent corpse of his would-be informant to said crevasse.
***
Evan shifted and scrapped his nimble form through the crystal wall, finally reaching the other side to reveal something he’d never have expected.
The ex-human brightened with elation at the sight. A thing as familiar and welcoming as his own front porch, a Liset. Its manta-ray like design lodged in a massive outgrowth of crystal yet seemed intact.
The ponies followed him, the still recovering Twilight leaning on her former babysitter, and were shocked to silence as he placed his outstretched hand to the ancient objects hull his energies coaxing the strange thing to life. The engine sputtered, its lights flicked, and as the boarding ramp slowly lowered a voice echoed through the cave, “Operator! I thought I’d lost you, welcome back!”
Evan advanced into the ship. ‘Its good to be back Ordis. I missed you too.’
Ordis gave Evan a complete rundown of the systems diagnostics, arsenal was still working, so he could access his already built weapons, but the forge was out meaning he couldn’t make any new ones or repair his broken vocalizer until he fixed it. Mods could still be accessed though said arsenal but to access them directly would take reconstructing the whole apparatus that was currently speared clean through with crystal. Autopilot flight was gone, so manual parking only, great.
Meanwhile in the light of the inactive relic terminal Twilight was filling cadence in on the last few days, how she’d noticed all Cadance’s “eccentricities” called her out on it and was sent by the evil queen into the same cave system she’d dumped cadence, her retelling only occasionally delayed as she marveled at each new technological marvel Evan absentmindedly accessed and dismissed in rapid succession. Evan was only half listening to the exchange, most of his attention occupied by the menus through which he cycled. He was jacked into the arsenal, a matrix-like cord plugging from the device directly into the back of his neck, checking his options. Distracted though he was he still made note of a few… divergences from the show. Twilight this time was sent to be hounded by three changelings, not three bridesmaids, which made more sense as an infiltrator would naturally want any threats quickly isolated and dealt with. Then there was Cadance who, in the show, seemed to have not even tried to escape or even move from where she was placed before. Instead she found him, they found twilight, and then they all conveniently stumbled upon this ship. Very convenient indeed.
Almost as convenient as him finding that a re-leveling of his warframe to be totally unnecessary. The entire mastery rank system itself was absent, all his powers unlocked. Less so was the discovery that the system lacked any health, shield, or armour adjusting mods, the former now serving as simple percentages. A loose approximation of how close he was to death. Though it did free up plenty of space for some choice ability modifiers and upgrades. Furthermore, every weapon he had used and discarded in the great chase for that rank was now magically returned to his inventory, completely preserved and ready for use. Including all his custom built kitguns and zaws. Evan spent several minutes skipping from menu to menu perusing the stats of hundreds of weapons, deciding eventually he would need something predictable and simple. This wasn’t a game anymore. This was real. Splash damage weapons like grenade launchers and canons were out, shotguns or snipers could easily rip through their targets into unwitting civilians, and machine guns could pack quite the kick in all the wrong directions.
He’d need something more reliable, something he’d used before in the real world. Memories of trips to the gun range with his father filled his mind, feeling more ancient and alien than the crashed structure in which he now stood. One stuck out to him from all the grey, a single moment of silence, closeness, and absolute focus. Just him, the weapon, and the target.
After choosing the paris bow for his primary he spent more than a few minutes debating weather or not to select the kunai, they were a stealthy option even if his warframe wasn’t. ‘On the other hand, I will inevitably be going loud. This is an invasion after all.’ Finally settling on the closest thing he could find to a basic pistol, a single lato filled his secondary. The skana blade filled the final melee weapon slot, to take advantage of his frame’s built in passive affinity for swords.
His weapons selected and properly modded, the loadout materialized around him. He could practically feel the molecules form as the weight of the paris formed on his back, the slim skana quickly followed but was mostly unnoticed save for how it almost balanced out the added weight of the arrows and quiver. Then the pistol materialized on his hip and he rested his hand on it like a hero of some old western. And there in the flickering lights of his injured and leaking abode, armed and restocked with allies at his side, about to embark on a mission to protect the innocent and save the world, he felt like one.
Ordis felt it appropriate to compliment his master, “You have remembered well how the tenno arm themselves operator.”
“Uh?... where did those come from? How did you… Why is the ceiling talking?!” The now mostly healed unicorn rudely interjected. A flurry of more rushed questions poured from her mouth like water from a faucet into an overrun sink. Spilling all over the place.
The ship cephalon chose this moment to manifest a flickering holo-projection to address the little intruder. “I am ship cephalon Ordis an advanced logistics and navigations advisor unit, I serve the operator. How are you little girl? Are your parents nearby?”
The purple mare was stunned silent by this unexpected and insulting treatment.
Evan interjected with a simple thought, ‘Ordis have you completed the exterior scan?’
“Yes operator environmental scans complete!” he chirped pleasantly.
‘right…’ he motioned for him to continue, ‘and…?’
“We are currently crashed landed in a cave made of crystals!”
Three hands met face in an echoing slap. The tiny diamond hologram twisted its ‘head’ around in confusion.
“Truly an ’advanced logistics unit’ at work here. Oh, how shall pony-kind ever compete?”
Evan noticed the uncharacteristic snark of Twilight’s quip. Though, he supposed that having everyone you love doubt you only to then be proven totally right all along and almost killed would foul anyone’s mood. But for it to have affected the adorkable twilight to this degree… this demanded snuggy wuggies, mountains of snuggy wuggies. After they’d saved the day of course.
Cadence interjected, “Uh, Twilight I saw you scan the cave wall before we came in here, did you find anything?”
“Yeah a door.” The whole room started in surprise, save for Ordis who simply did his best imitation of a glare. “An arcane door to be precise, it can only be opened by casting magic on it while keeping in mind a specific image, word, or other concrete thought.” She continued, “but even if we knew what disgusting shapeshifting bug monsters use for passwords, we’d still need changeling magic to open the thing.”
The human turned space ninja flinched at her unspoken jab as her gaze pierced him, ‘I really should have kept that one alive.’ He thought, stroking his metallic chin in concentration. ‘Now how are we going to get out of here?’ He paused, a malfunctioning light above his head blinking on suddenly without provocation, ‘Waiiiiit a minute,’ Evan realized, eyeing his arsenal, ‘Ordis ask her to show us where the door is.’
***
After the rude little ghost-box had relayed the alien unicorn’s request to her, Twilight led him and cadence back out of the technological marvel and to where she’d detected the arcane door. It wasn’t far from the ship’s rear boarding ramp, situated in the crystal wall just beneath what must have been the ships main engine, currently suspended in the air above them by a crystal growth which sent the whole vessel slightly askew. “Well, here it is.” She declared, “based on the trace amounts of sediment mixed in with the wall I’d say we aren’t far from the surface, we could try to blow it or tunnel through but even within the scope of my own extensive magical abilities I’d run dry long before I got through this.”
“If the wall is that thick then why not just tunnel through the door directly?” Cadance asked, moving along the wall to the side to illustrate her point.
The alien scratched his chin in thought at this and walked back to the flightless ship, leaving the two mares alone.
Twilight was too distracted to notice however as she was caught wondering why an alicorn specializing in crystal magic would ask such a thing, just blinking at her for several seconds before walking over and answering. “Its not a question of thickness Cadance it’s a question of density. The whole crystal formation, save for the interior outgrowths, has the same density due to the thaumial field from which it formed. The more thaumials it rates the harder it is to cut. It could be the exterior of the whole mountain is like this.”
“…and we can’t just teleport out?”
“No. Magic crystals mean magical interference; more likely we’d end up inside the wall than beyond it.”
“Oh… well, if we really have no other way but the tunnels then...”
Twilight could see the stress in her words almost gain physical form from the bruises and scrapes she’d bandaged from her once beautiful wedding dress. A small dark part of her wanted to think ‘good serves her right.’ After all she had kept her relationship with her brother secret up until the day of their bucking wedding, all that time acting like a sister to her, watching over her while she grew up until she didn’t need a sitter anymore, all that time going behind her back. But she quickly bucked those thoughts straight over sweet apple acres. Cadance WAS her friend, WAS like a sister to her, and whatever reason she had for not telling her must be a reasonable one. So, she pushed down her anger at being forgotten and disbelieved and asked. “Uh, Cadance I know this might not be the best time to ask but why didn’t you ever tell me you were dating my brother?”
She appeared surprised by this, “What?”
“My brother, you never once told me you were dating him. I honestly had no idea you even liked each other until I got the wedding invite.”
“But I thought you already knew, he said he sent a letter months ago.”
Twilights blood slowly boiled with rage from her hooves to her muzzle, tiny wisps of fire sparking around her mane as she shook violently in place. “SH-SH-SH-SHINING ARMOUR YOU MOTHERBU-!”
!CRASH!
Interrupted from their talks the two mares turned in unison to the source of the disturbance. The large crystal outgrowth had fallen, cut cleanly at the base, allowing the once aloft engine to fall right in front of the sealed arcane door. The ship now tilted harshly in the opposite angle, twilight mentally noting access to the boarding ramp was now totally blocked. As the Celestia high not-pony walked back towards them from the dust cloud his cutting stirred. Strange blue light coalesced around his fist as he pushed it into his other’s palm, disappearing completely as it completed the clearly practiced motion. A motion so swift she couldn’t make out what shape the energy was truly in.
The alien figure walked proudly out of the dust cloud, wiping his metal covered hands in a clapping motion his whole posture imitating that of a certain farm-mare after a job well done. Twilight was not pleased, Cadance even less so.
“WHAT THE BUCK DID YOU DO!!?” She screamed. “THAT WAS OUR ONLY WAY OUT! NOW WE’RE TRAPPED IN HERE!”
“Not so little miss.” Ordis almost chortled as he materialized above the alien’s shoulder.
“Explain.” Both mares commanded in a threatening tone.
A single bead of sweat inexplicably materialized on the stallion’s metallic brow as he presented his open palms in a placating gesture. He nervously gestured to his more talkative companion to continue.
“Yes operator, you see child-”
“I AM A GROWN FREAKEN MARE YOU-!” Cadance clasped her hands around Twilights mouth, shushing her before nodding toward Ordis to continue.
“As I was saying, you little one was correct in your assessment that the crystal cavern would take substantial energy to force open. My operator, in his brilliant wisdom, calculated that the force of an over juiced discharge from a liset engine could provide that required force. So, I sorted myself for a hard transfer into the operator’s warframe and set the countdown.” He chirped.
Cadance visibly stiffened at this, “Uh, sorry but wouldn’t an explosion in such a small enclosed space cause the cave to collapse on us and kill us all?”
Twilight could feel the rising heat of stress scratch at her throat, the alien and his virtual parrot just started blankly ahead as if this totally foreseeable event was completely new to their minds. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, the ‘operator’ glanced back at the crashed vessel turned bomb, then moved to grab the two tiny equines in front of him crouching and pouncing in one smooth motion to a distant rock formation all the way across the room.
A single thought coursed through the unicorn’s mind as they just barely made it within arms reach of the rocks, ‘is this really how I die?’ Crystals and rocks flew everywhere, and the last thing she saw was the engine erupting in a brilliant flash.
***
Spike fidgeted with his claws nervously. Rainbow and Fluttershy flew back and forth with other pegasi hanging the last of the decorations, Applejack and Pinkie were putting out the confectionaries, Rarity had locked herself away for some last-minute adjustments with the princess and her wedding gown, and he couldn’t find twilight anywhere. He’d searched everywhere, practically turning the entire palace upside down, from the north-most observatory to the distant guest rooms near the south entrance, the highest towers and even the dungeons. The young drake worried about her, especially after how she’d been shunned by her friends and family. He just didn’t know what was going on or why she would accuse Cadance of all ponies of being “evil”. He stared out the large window of the guest room he had just tossed trying to wrack his brain to think of anywhere he might have overlooked.
No, she wasn’t in the library either he checked.
The sudden eruption of the Canterlot mountain went almost unnoticed at first to his vacant stare. But the flowing plume was almost impossible to ignore to his young mind. Crystals and stone rolled down the sharp and rocky mountain face, some skidding to an abrupt halt mere hoof-paces from where they’d landed, others rolled and grew in mass with loose clumps of earth sticking to their jagged edges.
“Geez!” commented the drake, “I’d hate to be in the path of that thing.” he noted with satisfaction that given the extreme topography of the mountain the slide of debris wouldn’t come close to the city itself, harmlessly rolling down the mountain’s side to be inevitably stopped by Shining’s shield before it could harm anypony.
He turned and resolved to check the closets again, giving no further mind to the unusually explosive mountain, or the single speck of purple pink and grey fleeing the descending mass of death for their very lives.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’ resolved Evan, though none but Ordis could hear him.
They had just barely made it. The astounding agility of the warframe and Evan’s quick thinking giving him just enough time to realize the severity of what he’d done, grab the two mares under each of his arms, and leap to safety from the initial blast. This was no real respite as not seconds after the initial detonation the entire ceiling seemed to take very personal offence to the destruction of its good friend Mr. Wall, descending itself to personally seek vengeance and in failing that; sending its many jagged, heavy, and incredibly deadly offspring to finish the job.
Evan was then forced to run for all of their lives from his less than perfect escape plan, sprinting and leaping over, under, and between flying chunks of debris to avoid the avalanche of earthen mass. Remembering how hard he’d flunked so harshly from the Prometheus school of running away from things he looked frantically for his chance to use that wonderfully failed miseducation to his advantage. But the avalanche only grew in height and breadth with seemingly no escape. Finally spotting a formation of rock, sprouting from the mountainside like a great vein or root, angled not unlike a skating ramp to herd the deadly charge away from civilization, he leapt for it. Offering a silent prayer for whatever being designed his warframe with infinite stamina he slowed his pace only slightly, dodging a veritable shotgun spray of pebbles kicked up by yet another falling boulder, crouching and leaping away from his intended goal. He hit the side of another falling crystal fragment wall running along its smooth surface to the peak then launching himself for another falling object opposite it. There he repeated the process one final time and upon reaching the forth and final crystal wall he took off in the longest bullet jump of all time, he held his fuzzy little passengers closer to his chest as tight as he dared, waiting to time his double jump just… right…
They hit the ground hard, the alien warrior losing his grip on his companions as they all tumbled down the grassy hill they had landed on. Twilight reached the bottom first, she hit the ground in the classical canon ball formation and rolled through several beautiful fields of buttercups and daffodils before getting caught on a mole hill and flipping over to the point she landed on her head spearing her into the ground on her horn. Next came Evan who bounced from seemingly every single pointed rock on the mountain to every other pointed rock on this silly little hill, before finally sliding to a silent halt next to twilights still spinning form. What remained of Cadance’s dress caught the wind and, despite the numerous holes in the fabric which should have prevented this, gently carried her to a safe landing at the hill’s base before she collapsed onto her butt from exhaustion.
…
They all just sat there for several moments just drinking in the feeling of how not dead they were.
Then slowly, almost hauntingly, a small mechanical chuckle arose. Sparks and distorted chortles spewed from the damaged section of Evan’s neck as he lay there. Twilight soon followed in her own adorable chuckling from the shear ridiculousness of her landing. Cadance followed last half gasping half giggling like a schoolgirl as she too felt the adrenaline drain from her veins, her mind finally processing that the depth of her fear had kept her from using her wings at all to adjust her descent. Realizing now the thin thread of luck that had just kept her from being plastered all over the ground.
They laughed until the bells sounded, shacking the horned trio back to their senses.
“Oh no!” Twilight exclaimed in alarm, “The wedding’s starting! If we don’t get there soon the changelings are going to kill every pony!”
The pink princess exhaled in dread, “Shining…”
…
Evan sprang to his feet dusting the dirt from his chest and legs, he unsheathed twilight from the ground quickly flipping her to her feet. Checking his pistol for any damage or jamming, he then pulled Cadance to her feet and thrust the pistol into her waiting hand. She hesitated. Looking from the alien weapon of death in her hand, to the dazed unicorn on her right, then finally to the great palace in the distance, housing all her loved ones and the creature that threatened them. He honestly wasn’t sure what she was thinking in that moment, a human of any stripe wouldn’t hesitate to use violence to protect their family, but ponies? There where too many unknowns about this strange alien species to say anything definitive. So it was a great and somewhat reassuring surprise when she strengthened her grip around the metallic death device to accept what little offensive protection it offered. A burning ferocity steeled her eyes as she gazed back at him. ‘Good’ he thought, ‘I just hope she doesn’t hesitate to use it when the time comes.’
He turned sharply on his heel, racing to the nearest building and scaling its side. His endless stamina powering him across the rooftops towards the new checkpoint in his sights, assassination target acquired.
***
Cadance clumsily handled the weighty alien weapon in her fur coated hands. Trying to discern a comfortable way to hold the thing proved difficult given its size. As if someone had taken a large door handle and expanded it across every imaginable axis.
The idea of killing was… difficult for her, naturally it was difficult for everypony. Ponies, being herbivores, lacked the natural inclination towards aggressive or more… permanent actions against others. It was different now though; her new friend was the best option they had to delay the queen’s plans. He had to go first to face whatever she had cooked up for the first wave of the attack, to buy them time to reveal her deception. He had to go alone; they’d just slow him down.
Twilight rose from her dizzied state still shaking her head, her quick uprooting having jarred more than the metal warrior had intended. “uhhhh… wait, where’s he going?”
“Ahead, to buy us time.” Cadance answered resolutely.
“Well without him how are supposed to make it in time? All the cabs are probably at the palace, waiting for the wedding to let out.” Twilight moaned still massaging her brow, “Wait, we’re on the far south-east end of the city right?”
Cadance looked at twilight with a concerned tilt of her head, “Um yeah… that’s where the mountain is, are you ok twily?”
“Yeah, yeah, its just… ok that’s over there… and that’s there… then it must be…” the purple unicorn glanced around the available area frantically pointing to seemingly random objects and places, occasionally glancing back at the castle. Cadance felt her unease for her friend’s mental state steadily grow.
“Here!” she cheered, reaching her hand into a seemingly innocuous rock. A definitively mechanical click sounded from somewhere in the earth, a nearby pile of stone rumbled with a light glow of enchantment rolling and sorting itself to reveal a secret passage beneath them. “Back when I lived in the palace Celestia showed me these secret passages the old unicorn royals used back when their castle once stood here. They used them to get to and from their home in secret or to escape assassination attempts. They’re built into the structural integrity of Canterlots foundation itself and lead to old safehouses all over the city, some coming up right where the castle now sits. The princess showed them to me in case of an emergency.”
Cadance just stood bewildered staring at the secret passage before her a single question pushing on her lips, “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“You used to be a Pegasus, so maybe she figured you’d just fly away from danger? I mean I was just a foal when I moved in.”
“… she trusted you with this, but not when you told her ‘I’ was acting strangely?” The purple unicorn could only stutter in response, attempting to conjure some excuse for her favorite teacher. Cadance only continued, the steel returning to her eyes, “Doesn’t matter. Save the world first, lecture the thousand-year-old god-queen of pony kind about trust issues later.” Her tone was resolute and brokered no further argument, they descended into the tunnel, twilight taking the lead towards the palace.
***
A small knot formed in the back of Celestia’s gut, a phantom of worry for her missing pupil. Though centuries of practice let her perform the very long, and quite droll, rites of marriage perfectly, her mind couldn’t help but ponder on the question. It just wasn’t like twilight to be so… selfish. The alicorn had once feared she’d instilled enough humility in the little unicorn to make her outright praise-ophobic but her recent actions spoke to some kind of twisted jealousy or perhaps sense of entitlement to her brothers attention that just didn’t sit right with her.
Cadance was an alicorn, a proper self ascended one, something not heard of or seen since Celestia and Luna themselves. She could never marry her first love, not again, not after he inevitably past on. Her student had to have known this! Yet Twilight’s actions demonstrated a new and dangerous sense of entitlement, something she’d have to deal with very sternly after the ceremony was completed. Gods knew she didn’t want to let it grow and fester, not like last time.
Though she often had to battle dark thoughts during happy occasions, her mind wandering down centuries of regrets, she became accustomed to it enough to force herself through anything with a smile. Thus, she reached the pinnacle of the ceremony proper, “-and if anypony should feel there is reason these two should not be wed, let them speak now or forever hold their piece.” She paused for formality’s sake, she knew none would object, it was but an old and silly clause of older times. Then afterwards would come her favorite part, the kiss, and all the good times that would come after. For the briefest moment she remembered hers, oh how she cherished each memory of him, no matter how solemn or distant they seemed. She hoped only the best for the new couple before her, and by all the power in her she would do her best to ensure their marriage was as peaceful as possible.
But just before she could utter the final words and seal their union, the window broke.
***
Evan burst through the elegant stain glass window, feeling a small sting of guilt over its destruction, firing no less than four arrows nigh simultaneously at his target. Firing like a machine gun, his mechanical limbs seemed to challenge the very concept of physics with their rippling imitation muscles. The first hit her horn pinning her to the wall, the second pierced her arm as she tried to remove the first, then a leg to seal in the bug queen just how helpless she truly was. The fourth was a kill shot, sent to finish the job, but that’s when the big white one intervened.
Evan cursed as his arrow burst into a shower of ice crystal against a powerful golden shield. He quickly ducked behind the cover of a pillar as the terrified ponies fled the room from his intrusion.
He had picked the bow mostly due to its focus on puncture damage, something he thought would be paramount against the probable thick exoskeletons of the insectoid changelings. He chose ice damage for its status by process of elimination, magnetic might have been useful against magic but he didn’t want to test his allies well-being to test that, corrosive might have broken down the shield more effectively but he opted against it due to squeamishness over seeing what projectile acid might do to a living target. In the game statuses only affected a targets health, speed, or armour, they were flashy means of hindering a target nothing more. These targets weren’t npc’s they were real thinking feeling creatures. But now he was cornered, facing a creature he had never intended as an enemy, Celestia; the sun goddess-queen of ponykind herself. His mind scanned endlessly for what he knew of her from canon searching for a weakness, she was the royal defender and ruler of a whole nation, wielder of the full nuclear force of a sun. Force which now pelted his slowly shrinking cover from existence. Nothing from canon came from his mind to aid him, despite her many defeats, every villain who achieved victory over her was either gone in Nightmare Moons case, still gestating beneath the Everfree, or currently still in the form of a certain ink pony princess using her love slave to free her from the wall.
Finally, his eyes settled on a single fallen stallion, his legs tangled in a mess with one of the fold-out chairs used for the overflow of guests. Celestia was sworn to defend her little ponies to the death. He hated doing it, but lesser evils for bigger demons as they say…
Dodging another volley of energy from the enraged alicorn he dove at the helpless pony trying unsuccessfully to remove himself from the rubble. The goddess’s eyes widened in shock as she realized what Evan was doing, but she was too late to stop it. He grabbed the helpless wriggling pony in his iron grip, drawing the skana from his back, holding the blade to his victims’ neck.
The room fell dead silent.
Evan hated this, he didn’t want to hurt the old blue coated stallion, but Celestia thought he did, and the changeling queen was already almost loose. Sweat dripped from the captive’s brow. Celestia panted in exertion staring at Evan. The hypnotized shining armour wrenched the arrows from ‘Cadance’s’ limbs. He stared back into the princess’s piercing glare, “you will not harm my little ponies, monster!” she spat like a curse. ‘Good,’ he thought ‘she bought it.’ Fast as a devil he raised his sword and cast his radial blind. The shield fell as the great white alicorn moved to shield her eyes from the flash, Evan leaped forward, captive pony still in hand. Throwing the temporary hostage at the princess, he levied his sword with both hands aiming straight for his targets heart. Then her already freed horn leveled at the attacking warframe, unleashing a powerful blast of love fueled energy that cut through its high-density alloy chassis like a bulldozer through wet paper.
Even his channeled skana could only barely reflect half the emerald energy out of its intended target, the sheer force of the beam forcing him to slide back across the room inch by inch. The not-Cadance raised a half-transformed claw to blast the ground beneath him, throwing him straight across the marriage hall and was stuck deep into the wall next to the Celestia sized doors at the hall’s entrance. His body rag-dolling to the floor in a heap, many pieces of plaster and marble falling atop him from the cracked walls and ceiling.
The world went black.
***
Celestia had seen several strange, outright horrifying, sights in her many many days, yet this… this was certainly a new entry to the list…. The first genuine equal she had in eons twisted before her in a blaze of emerald flame into the image of one of her most hated foes. “Chrysalis.” She breathed, the dark queen of the changelings. Her infiltrations had caused more hatred and chaos amongst her little ponies than the warlords of old and discord combined. And now here she was; standing in the heart of her own kingdom, her home, threatening her ponies.
“P-princess?”
Celestia looked to the shaking stallion in her arms, “Night light, run.” Her order was absolute and brokered no argument from the blue unicorn, her mana reaching around his shivering form taking him across space and time far away from danger. For now.
The diarch of the sun rose to her full height flames danced around her muscled limbs, mostly for show but she had found intimidation to be half the battle in forcing a quick resolution to the confrontation. Sure, chrysalis had come to take her kingdom, naturally this would mean she was prepared to fight the princess, but that didn’t mean she knew the full measure of the giant she now awoke.
In the silence of the scorch burned marriage hall, in the face of the most pissed off and powerful alicorn on the planet, the bug queen’s chuckle pierced the air. Rising to a howl of mirth its unholy note practically suffocated the air itself.
Celestia was taken aback at this, had the queen gone mad? While she had taken opponent in the throes of madness before, their erratic strategies often made their actions impossible to predict and preventing civilian casualties next to impossible. Not good.
The invader pointed a single claw at Celestia, her grin cutting her face like the bloody blade of a butcher’s knife, “That’s right princess! I’m back!” she posed triumphantly, spreading her wings and arms to the sky, her dark chitinous form silhouetted against the tall stain glassed window behind the alter, light barely breaking through the wicked holes dotted across her limbs as if consumed. “Back from that pit of flame and death to which you damned my people.” Her voice spit the words of her speech like venom, daggers to cut the strength of the immortal royals resolve, “Forced to cannibalize each other just to survive another day, another hour, another minute, all for this day of vengeance!” Nearly every word was punctuated by Celestia throwing out bolt after bolt of energy at the advancing monarch, only to then be swatted away like gnats of annoyance from the air by her supercharged opponent. Finally reaching the alabaster alicorn and blasting away her display of arcane might along with all her mystical defences.
Her wicked claws gripped the diarch tightly and raised the drained princesses by her throat. Celestia hurt everywhere especially her horn, unable to cast so much as an illumination spell under the sheer magical weight chrysalis was projecting. “H-how are you d-doing this?”
“Simple my dear, love. The most powerful force in the universe, though a limited resource, that little colt has one Tartarus of a big tank! More than enough to overpower even you!” Her grip tightened around Celestia’s throat, blocking most but not all the air from its passage, forcing her to choke on her own saliva. She grinned wickedly at her struggle, violently kicking her hooves at the air for purchase, her hands gripping her exoskeletal arm for some form of leverage, all in vain. “Oh…” she breathed through fanged teeth, “I’m going to enjoy hurting you little pony, over and over and over again, until you beg me to end it. Now you will wait, and you will suffer, while your precious little ponies are hunted down and devoured by my hive! Trapped with no where to run, by their own defences.”
Celestia felt pain without description, her mind sent into a panic for drowning on dry land, in her own palace! So, consumed with the instinctual fear of death, and her tormentor with her execution, that both failed to notice a perfectly non-descript section of wall silently slide open to reveal two outcast pastel ponies. One of whom with a very loaded gun.
***
The weapons report echoed throughout the hall, three shots sounded, two hitting their mark. The changeling’s eyes opened in shock, her grip failing to hold her victim aloft any longer.
Celestia tumbled to the floor gasping for air, Twilight quickly raced from Cadance’s side to aid her mentor. Thin wisps of magic dripping from the spent unicorn’s near empty magic reserves.
Cadance kept her weapon leveled at the monster as it stumbled back into one of the pews, bracing herself against it for much needed support. The pink princess found herself shaking, she had not expected for the weapon to jerk back so violently, or so ear splittingly loud, or so frightfully easy to use.
Smoke still flowed from the barrel.
Chrysalis put an ebony claw to her wounds and felt the blood pool into it. Her gaze of terror lifting from the green ichor laden damage to cut the princesses’ eyes with a hateful stare.
“This isn’t over princess!” she spat, uttering the royal title like a curse, before disappearing in an emerald flash.
The alien weapon fell from her hands. She breathed shakily, her eyes scanning the room. Then she saw him, it almost didn’t feel real. Like something from a dream. Next thing she knew her arms were around him, holding him, breathing his scent, feeling the warmth of his chest once more. Her shining.
But he did not move, his eyes still swirled in emerald energy, the mark of the bug queen’s control still holding him under her hoof.
The pink princess cradled his head in her arms. She hadn’t cried when she found out she was adopted, she hadn’t cried when the changelings took her, she hadn’t cried even while starving to death in the caves, but now sitting in the ruined marriage hall meant for her wedding, holding the one pony she loved more than the world itself…
Celestia and twilight moved towards the silently wailing mare but found their efforts flounder upon reaching her. Both well learned ponies finding their extensive scientific understandings failing them in comforting a mare who may have just lost her most beloved to a scrambled mind control spell.
Celestia scanned the captains mind searching for some way to untangle his mind from the spells Lovecraftian grip. “I-I can’t get a grip, its just so tangled in and out of his own mana. If I had a scan of the caster. Some way to isolate the arcane profile of the queen from his own with absolute certainty I could do it.”
“So we need Chrysalis to save Shining from Chrysalis. Oh buck…” Twilight less than helpfully observed.
On the other side of the room, the alien stallion rose from the rubble of his defeat to behold the scene of grief before him. The limp body of the groom to be, cradled in the arms of his crying wife, surrounded by the forms of two of the most powerful and presently ineffectual magic users on the planet.
Cadance’s sharp pegasus hearing picked up the sound of shuffling debris and turned to face the faceless warrior. Her voice was a haunting note absent any compassion or care most would expect from one so small, but her order was irrefutable. “Bring me the bitch alive.”
A single nod was the only response the alien needed, retrieving his pistol and a few discarded arrows he leaped out through the broken window into the courtyard below.
***
The swarm was waiting just outside the shield. Staring down at Evan with a billion hateful eyes, the queen emerged from behind the swarm, magic still fusing her pierced chitin back together. Her claw raised and the hoard of bug themed unicorns with wings, who are all probably capable of teleportation, begin to bash and claw their way through the barrier that their own plan necessitated erecting.
Even swore he could almost hear a faint voice, howling and screaming curses in ancient mandarin in the far far distance.
He notched his bow with a single arrow, his eyes scanning the cracking pink shield for its weakest point, took aim charging the weapon with the forbidden energies of the void, and as the first changeling began to show a single claw beyond the cloud of energized pink, he fired.
The arrow flew straight and true cutting through the shield without error impaling itself within the bodies of the first few creatures to enter the crack. A few scurried in after them as the leader’s bodies were lifted off by the momentum. The arrow glowed, building in intensity for the slowest final moments of its victims’ existence, and exploded. The blast blew the crack wide open, taking many underlings out in an incinerating blaze, the few who had made their way in ahead of the others where hit by the blast wave and sent crashing to the earth below.
With movements swifter than any flesh and blood creature could dream to achieve the void touched warrior flowed around the courtyard cutting and slashing each descending enemy. The forces above regrouped quickly from the first assault, chrysalis still screaming at her warriors to decent and slay the interloper. Evan could almost make out the words “-there’s only one of him and hundreds of you! Go!” as the swarm descended.
Focusing his energies, he returned the blade to his back, standing ramrod straight he put his fist to his open palm and drew the exalted blade. Excalibur’s fourth and final ability. One of the most powerful dps machines in the game, what he lacked in toughness, uniqueness, or buffs, in a game focusing on fighting hordes of highly durable enemies, this was what he was built for. Waves of death flowed like a river from the energies of the void in his hand. Cutting the air and anything that got in its way, two, three, whole squads of attackers at a time.
Bodies rained from the sky.
Yet even at the abilities most efficient it couldn’t stem the seemingly endless tide. The swarm landed screeching for blood, surrounding him. He cancelled the blade and as the vampiric predators charged en-mass from all directions, magic primed in their claws. Fortunately, radial javelin was designed for situations such as this. He remembered fondly enough the first time he had activated the ability, embarrassingly enough when he had first started the Warframe game he didn’t know how the other powers worked and had leveled his Excalibur to full mastery without using any ability beyond the first. Oh, how he remembered the feeling of freedom in that moment, mixed with the shame of his own stupidity yes, but still he relished it. Discovering a whole new means of dominating the battlefield. If Evan had a face now, he’d be grinning like a jackal.
Almost a third of the landed enemy forces were wiped in that first attack alone, now only the stragglers remained scattered across the open courtyard.
He jumped and flew around the courtyard like an angry blue comet. The energies of his attacks bathing the arena in an electric hue. Slash dashing from tiny body to tiny body, blinding and javelining everything in his path. When they fell out of range of those the bow and pistol finished the job.
Now only the queen remained, she had wanted the honor of laying the final blow on Evan herself, flanked by two of the biggest changelings he had seen thus far. The twin brutes stood a full head taller than their queen, and two above Evan himself. Those heads sat upon hunched shoulders layered on mountains of muscle, or whatever the insect equivalent is.
His energies low, down to his last mag on the lato, and only a guesstimate of a handful of arrows to his name. If he possessed lips Evan would have muttered something about “ninja rules” but he didn’t, so he raced to his final opponents. They did the same. He fired two shots at the first brute, it raised its massive fist to block the shots like a shield. They became lodged in the thick chitin unable to spear their target through. Evan blindly tried to reach for new arrows from his quiver but found it empty, his last arrows spend he reached the beast. He leaped to its massive still raised arm, freed an arrow from its hide and notched it one final time aiming for the beast’s head. At such close range the massive changeling drone was too big to maneuver itself away in time, taking the projectile straight through his skull. He fell limp to the ground.
The second came right at Evan lifting him off the ground in its giant arms. Crushing and squeezing its captive without relent, ‘He doesn’t want me to be able to use my speed and agility against him. Clever girl.’ Evan struggled and thrashed in its herculean grip but to no avail, unable to free himself he fumbled his arms below him trying to find something to help him get out. Finally, his hand came to his lato, pulling it from his thigh and angling it awkwardly, he emptied the clip into the creature’s rib cage. It fell much like his brother, wheezing its last breath into a puddle of its own blood.
Crouched and catching his breath, Evan turned to the bug queen just in time to see an emerald blast heading right for him. Unwilling to get knocked out on his ass like last time he swiftly raised his skana just in time to deflect the arcane energies and maintain his footing.
The queen was visibly taken aback at this but none the less pressed her attack increasing the strength of the beam, letting loose her full power to slay this one single opponent. Evan pressed his attack as well, crawling up the beam to energy his blade still working overtime to disperse the attack, advancing like a salmon swimming upstream. To the ponies watching from afar it may have looked hopeless, even suicidal, but Evan was buying time. Though the aura mod worked slowly, it was surely building back up his energy reserves, now just crawling to the fifty energy he needed to finish this.
He cast his radial blind almost point blank into the changeling queen’s eyes. She staggered and he struck her with the butt of his blade sending the kingdom-less shapeshifter to the ground. Grabbing hold of her twisted horn he channeled the last of his energies into his skana once more positioning the blade at the protrusions base. “w-w-wh-what are you?...” she managed to croak through bleary eyes and exhausted mana reserves.
Then by some miracle the broken pieces in Evans neck united just enough for him to croak out a response. His voice came out deep, determined, only just mechanical enough to remind the listener that the speaker was far from human. “I am a Tenno… Excalibur.”
With that he cut the horn from her head, a fate worse than death for a magic caster. His defenseless quarry in tow, he noticed Twilight in the door frame. As he passed, he handed her the misshapen horn, Ordis helpfully popping up to convey his words.
“The operator would like you to know he left this one alive.” He chirped passive aggressively.
***
Twilight swore she heard the bitchy little box chirp something at her, but she failed to take in its words. The filly just stared in horror at the destruction before her. Bodies littered the ground in all manner of misshapen states. The blood from their broken bodies mixing in the storm drains to be cast off from the Canterlot disc by the cities drainage system. Her scientific mind realing at the implications of what the warrior had said, “A Tenno” “A” there were more of him. things like him that could stand alone against an entire army and prevail. Twilight gripped the severed changeling horn in her hand, massaging the base of her own absent mindedly as she wondered “…what in Tartarus have we unleashed?”
Celestia snuggled deeply into her mother’s soft down, her younger sister already fast asleep in her other wing. The pink maned unicorn listened to the all-consuming voice of her mother, reading them into the warm embrace of sleep, “- and so the gods left the world in their golden chariots. Satisfied that they had left the world and its inhabitants to their task.”
But Celestia felt something wrong, words left unsaid. She peaked open her eyes to look at the page, a mysterious figure now graced the page. A unicorn, clad in full armour, wielding a sword of magnificent light. Curious she pointed to the unknown picture “Mommy what’s that?”
Her mothers countenance changed at this, a dark glare piercing her face unlike anything the filly had seen of her before. “A demon.” She answered hesitantly, “A creature of war and destruction, bringing nothing but death wherever it goes.” The red maned alicorn turned to her eldest daughter with a fateful look, “if you ever see one something like this my child, run. Run and never look back, for this is an evil not even the gods could defeat.” the little filly simply looked back at her mother, the tone in her voice was forced, she was scared. The idea of her mom being frightened by anything disturbed her to no end. Mommy could fight mean draqoniquis’s, hydras, and beat nasty dragons without so much as a sweat. Mommies weren’t supposed to be scared.
***
Celestia stood in the balcony watching the celebrations below, remembering. With the queen’s aura secured Shining’s mind was freed and the young couple rejoiced in each others’ arms. The wedding resumed under the creature’s silent watch. The rest of the day went by without incident, after most of the guard had been feed from their captivity in the palace dungeons, they set to cleaning up the aftermath of the demon’s battle. The demon hadn’t joined in the clean up efforts, instead opting to be pulled into the after party by Cadance to be introduced to the rest of the guests. The monster was now interfaced with the dj’s equipment, producing a song like nothing she had ever heard before. Its notes were distant and ethereal, the lyrics themselves possessing the qualities of a haunting dream. One lyric sounded like a vague insult masked in seeming praise, though if it was towards her or the gods she couldn’t quite discern.
A flutter of massive wings settled beside her. Her sister Luna newly awakened from her daily rest, “So did I miss anything?” she chirped obliviously.
“Oh nothing much,” the older sister snarked, “just the return of one of our most dangerous enemies, her invasion, and its abrupt halt by the return of Cadance, Twilight, and a demon of such terribly power even our own mother was afraid of it.”
“… care to run that by me again sis?”
“See for yourself.” The taller alicorn motioned her head to the window across the hall. Through which Luna could see the mound. Twisted and mangled chitinous chest and limbs piled in the center of the carnage. The night princess could only watch in silent horror as a unicorn guard cast his spell and set the whole grisly site aflame. An old measure to prevent the spread of disease after a battle, one that had not been needed on this world for centuries. Dark shadows twisted about the silent courtyard, blood boiled in empty eye sockets, limbless torsos held screaming faces of noiseless agony, the sound of cracking chitin mixed seamlessly with crackling flame consuming the night as its immortal ruler watched.
She turned to her elder sister; the hall now bathed in the dark light of the flames casting a sinister air over the still watching alicorn. “Sister…” Luna breathed, “What do we do?”
The larger immortal did not turn to meet her sisters pleading gaze, unwilling to let the demon out of her sight. “… for now?” she paused, sparing only a moments glance at her precious little sister, the last of her family, “We wait.”
Celestia’s face was hardened in a gaze she had not used in countless years, her face marred by the twisted shadows of her intent.
Luna shivered. Offering near silent prayers to the gods, though for who’s mercy or protection Celestia could not discern. So, they stood vigilant, bodies burning in the night behind them as the deadliest monster they had ever encountered, sang and danced with the ponies they had sworn their very souls to protect. Worries and plans flittering back and forth across the diarchy’s minds like sparks from a blaze.
The demon Excalibur was in their sights, oblivious to the foes he considered friends.
