Chapter Two

Enchained

Twilight’s pillow felt oddly rough as she slowly drifted awake. She moaned and, without opening her eyes, tried to push it into a more comfortable shape. It was very odd. The pillow seemed to be falling apart, as if it was made of straw, and the bed felt suspiciously like a slab of concrete. A dull headache throbbed behind her ears and, reaching up, she felt something hard and metallic, like a thick band around the base of her horn.

It took only a split second for everything to come rushing back. Spike had hurt himself and she had been knocked out by some strange device from a pair of disturbingly familiar ponies. Twilight’s concern for the baby dragon overrode all other worries and she was shouting his name as she jumped to her hooves.

Or at least, she tried to. She was stopped brutally short and thrown back to the ground in a fit of coughing and gagging, leaving her gasping for breath. There was a steel collar around her neck attached to a chain that was pinning her to the ground. The chain was long enough that she might be able to sit up if she pushed herself up against the wall.

Once she could breathe again, Twilight took stock of her surroundings. She was in a tight cell, maybe three pony-lengths to a side, three of the walls made of stone bricks, one of which had a small grilled window up near the ceiling which let in sparse rays of light. The fourth wall was made of bright, reflective metal bars through which Twilight could see only a narrow corridor and another stone wall. There didn’t seem to be a door. The collar around her neck, as well as the chain attached to it, were seemingly made of the same material. Underneath her was a crude sleeping mat with the pile of straw she had been using as a pillow piled to one end.

She was a prisoner.

A haze of panic attempted to settle over her, but Twilight knew she couldn’t afford to lose her cool. She practiced several breathing exercises the other Princesses had taught her to control her fear and anxiety and soon she was completely calm once more. Or as close to it as she would get, she thought.

Twilight winced as she came to the most important diagnostic of all. Reaching up once more, she probed around her head, feeling the metal band encasing the lower part of her horn. It was molded perfectly to fit, going so far as to encase part of her forehead. Without magic it was difficult to get specifics, but if she had to guess, she’d say it was made of the same metal as the bars and her collar.

She tried recalling the exact events from the library. She had heard a crash, ran inside and found Spike unconscious. Two ponies had been there and they said he had fallen, but then they’d slipped this thing over her horn and she had passed out. There was something else too, something important.

Her magic. When she had tried to cast a spell after they’d put it on, she hadn’t been able to. Memories of the blinding pain she had felt flashed through her head and made her grimace, but there was only one way to know for sure.

Lighting up her horn, Twilight tried to undo the collar around her neck.

Blazing agony shot through her head, dropping her to the ground as quickly as a buck to the head as a scream tore along her throat and out, echoing around her cell. It seemed hours before she could move again, though it could only have been minutes. Pushing herself up to a slouched sitting position which pulled the chain taut, Twilight massaged her temples and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

The device on her horn must be a magic suppressor, preventing her from using any magic. It was a strange one though, like nothing she’d ever seen before. Celestia had shown her some of the suppressors they had used over the years to quiet dangerous unicorns, but they had all been thick metal with heavy enchantments, usually taking the shape of a thick tube bent around so its ends touched. She couldn’t feel any magic emanating from the device on her head, and it was thin, form-fitted for her forehead and horn. Whoever had made this thing had made it specifically for her.

The bang of a door opening, accompanied by the heavy clopping of a large pony walking down the corridor stopped her train of thought. She dropped to the ground and pretended to be asleep, keeping one eye open just enough to watch the bars of her cell.

The hoofsteps got louder and true enough, a very large unicorn stallion wearing an ornate set of armor appeared. He walked a little ways into her vision before stopping and peering into her cell.

“You may as well drop the act Twilight Sparkle, we could hear you screaming from outside. I’m guessing you tried to use your magic.”

Twilight opened her eyes fully and glared at the stallion. He was big for a unicorn, quite muscular with a steel-grey coat and black mane, though the colours were a little too uniform to be natural. She tried to muster herself into the proudest, most dignified position she could despite the chain keeping her slouched a little.

She fixed the guard with a stare that she hoped would make him more cooperative. “Where is Spike?” she growled.

The guard chuckled. “Your little dragon friend? He’s fine, for now and in a much better state than can be said for you.”

“You realise who I am don’t you? I am a Princess of Equestria and what you are doing here is a grave…” She trailed off as the guard began laughing. Fixing him with the hardest stare she could, she waited until his laughter subsided.

Wiping a mirthful tear from his eye, he shook his head. “Sorry ‘Princess’, but you may be royalty out there” he gestured down the hallway in the direction of the door. “But in here, you’re just another prisoner. Now, you’ll wait here like a good little filly. The Masters want to talk to you.” He punctuated this by knocking the bars of her cell with a hoof, causing a loud clang to resound throughout her cell as he walked away, laughing once more.

Twilight’s eye twitched.

Just another prisoner? A good little filly?! Who does that stallion think he-” Twilight cut the thought short. She had to keep her cool and figure things out if she ever hoped to escape. More breathing exercises helped keep her temper in check as she re-assessed her situation.

She was a prisoner, unable to use magic, chained to the floor and awaiting a visit from the ‘Masters’, whoever they were. She didn’t know their intentions and had no idea where she even was.

It wasn’t precisely a good predicament.

She had no choice but to wait, so wait she did. She was tempted to rattle her chain and hammer on the walls with her hooves, just because the guard had told her to wait ‘like a good little filly’, but that would have accomplished nothing but make her look like a foal. She would sit calmly and be the picture of royal serenity when these ‘Masters’ made their appearance. At least, as calm and serene as she could look when her mane was dishevelled and her fur was matted with sweat and dirt.

She didn’t have to wait long.

The sound of the door opening and two sets of hooves trotting slowly towards her cell gave her plenty of warning before two more unicorns appeared outside the bars.

They were the same unicorns that had been in the library, the ones who had pony-napped her. She almost lost her cool and only just managed to keep her face calm and the snarl that wanted to rip out of her throat concealed. She knew them, and she finally remembered why.

“Oh look brother,” one exclaimed, turning to his partner and stroking his moustache. “Looks like she finally recognises us.”

“That she does brother,” the other replied, a grin spreading on his face. “That she does.”

“Flim and Flam.” Twilight spat the names as though they left a sour taste in her mouth. “What are you two doing here, where is Spike?”

The two brothers erupted with laughter, louder and more annoying than the guard’s earlier. “Oh Princess, please, your little assistant is fine. He is elsewhere being treated with the finest of respect. Needless to say we will show you to him in good time, but be patient.” Flam, for it was he who spoke, let out another chuckle. “As for what we are doing here, we run this place. We’re the ‘Masters’.”

Twilight’s skepticism must have shown because Flim shook his head. “Brother, she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t seem to realise the power we now wield.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Flam agreed. “Let’s show her then, shall we?”

They shared another grin before both of their horns lit up and several of the bars slid down into the floor, creating an opening for her to walk through. Their magic then moved to the collar around her neck which opened with a loud click.

The idea that she could use this opportunity to escape died as quickly as it formed. She couldn’t use magic, so they would likely catch her if she ran. It was also quite unlikely that she would be able to overpower them, so she did the first thing that came to her head.

She stretched. Using her newfound freedom from the confines of her short chain, Twilight stretched her back and forelegs, eliciting several pops from stiff joints she hadn’t been able to work until now. She also threw in a yawn for dramatic effect before slowly trotting over to the new doorway where her captors waited.

They both had amused smirks on their faces, but Twilight refused to give them the satisfaction of showing her frustration. They had the upper hoof and they knew it, but that didn’t mean Twilight had to let them know that she knew it too.

Once she was out of the cell, the bars raised back into a wall again and Flim and Flam led the way down the corridor they had come from. The hall was very short and Twilight’s cell seemed to be the only one there. At the end was a wooden door, banded with the same strange metal as the bars and the chain.

Flim gave a grandiose bow with a flourish of his foreleg as he opened the door, as if Twilight wasn’t a prisoner at all, but a prestigious house guest. She held her head high and walked through as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

This illusion ended abruptly as Twilight soon found out that the door led almost directly to a sheer cliff dropped away hundreds of pony-lengths below.

“Oh yes Princess,” the aggravating unicorn announced from behind her. “Be careful of the ledge, we had to build your prison on a cliff, simply because we had no space left in the city.” With this, he gestured again, drawing Twilight’s attention to the valley into which the cliff led.

An enormous settlement wove between the hills of the landscape, each rise cut into tiers on which houses and factories and shops had been built. It was almost large enough to rival Manehattan or Fillydelphia, spread out as it was, though it lacked any of the tall, multi-storey buildings of the other metropolises.

What really struck Twilight as impressive, however, was that a large portion of the local flora had been maintained. Most of the buildings and streets were built to accommodate the trees and large bushes that dotted the hills, creating a very peaceful atmosphere to the town. If she wasn’t currently being held prisoner, Twilight would have considered congratulating the designers of the city for their planning.

The fact remained, however, that Twilight was a prisoner, a fact that Flim reminded her of by giving her a rough shove off to the side of the doorway onto a narrow ledge that ran along the face of the cliff. Her cell had literally been built into the side of a mountain. The ledge was well-maintained and ran along to a plateau that contained a sheltered contraption sitting on a set of rails that ran straight down the mountain to the city below. There didn’t appear to be any other cells or entrances into the mountain that Twilight could see. Was she the only pony locked up in here?

As they approached what Twilight could only assume was a magic-powered lift that would take them down the mountain, she expected the brothers to light up their horns to power the pulleys, but they simply led her into the cabin and shut the door behind them.

The interior of the cart was simple: blue-tinted metal walls lined on all sides by padded benches, leaving a gap for the door, with windows giving a full view of the outside. It wasn’t luxurious, but after the hard bed in her cell, the thin padding on the seats was soothing.

Suddenly, the lift was moving. There weren’t any jerks or bumps like a horse drawn cart, the cabin just started slowly moving down the mountainside. The descent was slow and Flim and Flam said nothing, so Twilight had ample time to gaze out the windows at the city below.

It had been meticulously planned, each street linked together to create a spider’s web of roads and buildings emanating from each hill. Each web joined almost flawlessly into the web centered around the next hill. As the city got closer, Twilight began to discern the different districts where trends formed in the buildings. On one hill there seemed to be only residential houses, with what looked like grocery shops interspersed at regular intervals. The hill directly next to it was completely full of stores selling everything from gardening tools and plants, to furniture and office supplies, judging from the huge signs above each building, which could only be the market district. Further along from that was the warehouse district, where enormous storehouses lined equally large streets. Bordering that was the industrial district where huge factories dominated the hillside and even from such a distance, ponies could be seen scurrying about at their tasks.

Further out in the distance, outside the city where the hills subsided down into flatlands, were the patchwork fields of farms where dark specks could be seen toiling away at their crops or tending livestock. The pastures were large and plentiful enough to probably supply the entire city. The whole settlement seemed completely self-sustained, it was no wonder Twilight had never heard anything about it before.

“Behold.” Flim said suddenly, trotting over to the window and gesturing grandly with one forehoof. “The city of Unicornia.”

This immediately made Twilight puzzled. Unicornia? she thought. That’s the name of the land that the unicorn Princess Platinum tried to create before the joining of the three pony tribes, but why would they…?

The descent continued in silence as Twilight contemplated the city, its name, as well as what her own captivity meant. What did they want with her? They seemed hospitable enough, if she ignored the blinding pain she felt whenever she tried to use her magic, as well as the decrepit cell and chain she had been confined to.

Okay, so maybe they weren’t that hospitable at all. They themselves had been nice enough to her though. If you discounted…

Her thoughts continued around and around in a circle until Flam tapped her on the shoulder. The lift had been so smooth and she had been so caught up in her thoughts, that she hadn’t noticed it stopping.

Looking out the window, Twilight saw they were in a large building at the base of the mountain, three walls made up of brick and metal, with the fourth was the almost vertical slab of stone that was the cliffside. There were two guardsponies standing at attention outside the elevator, the same coat and mane, as well as armour, as the pony who had come to see her earlier.

There was little else in the room, though there were several doors and windows lining the sides that showed ponies going about some work in other parts of the building. There were also a few ponies crossing the room containing the elevator, but they immediately stopped as soon as they noticed Twilight. As Flim and Flam led her out of the building, their gazes followed, all the way up until they were out of sight.

Flim and Flam said nothing as they exited the building, which led out onto a street that seemed too wide for the number of ponies occupying it at this hour. The sun was approaching the top of the sky, when ponies should be bustling about the streets till nopony could move without dodging around everypony else, but there was enough space for all the traffic to walk abreast and have plenty of room to spare.

The road did bottleneck down at two places, where two pairs of enormous pony statues stood, one at each end of the building they had just left and the other pair down the other end of the street. Both pairs were set facing in towards each other. They were seemingly made of metal, with overlapping plates making up the majority of their body and limbs. They wore stern expressions and their poses were at military attention while the two large red orbs that were their eyes gave them a sinister appearance. In place of manes, they had a solid ridge running from the back of their necks to the crown of their heads at the base of their horns. They certainly were a curiosity, and one that Twilight was intent on unraveling.

The district that they had descended into seemed to be adjacent to the warehouse and industrial districts, but Twilight hadn’t seen any of these statues anywhere else in the city. They were large enough that she would have spotted them from the lift, being as big as multi-storey houses as they were. Did they hold some religious significance? They weren’t Alicorns, so she doubted it.

Twilight noticed Flim gently waving her over, clearly expecting blind obedience. In a streak of rebellion, she decided to ignore him, instead continuing her examination of the unicorn statues.

Suddenly, a blinding pain shot through her head, much like the agony earlier when she had tried to use her magic, causing her to cry out and drop to her haunches. When her vision cleared and her brain began processing information again, she looked over to see Flim’s horn glowing with magic. He gave another small gesture, clearly a summons and Twilight begrudgingly complied.

Flim’s grin was as wide as ever as Twilight made her approach, a dull ache still throbbing in her head. “Marvelous creation, that device on your head,” he exclaimed. “Designed and created by the Flim Flam Brothers, as brilliant as you please.” The unicorn gave a flourish and a bow, in clear tribute to his own intelligence.

Twilight just scowled. Part of her mind admitted that, yes, the infernal device was incredible: blocking her magic completely, with no magical residue, as well as containing the capability to shock the victim. It was ingenious. Completely insane and unethical, but ingenious.

Flim continued on, ever the showpony. “It’s actually more clever than you think. Most magic suppressors simply prevent magical energy from leaving the horn, but obviously given enough power, these can be broken and rendered useless.”

Twilight found herself nodding along, and quickly stiffened her neck to stop. This pony had captured her and imprisoned her in a dingy little cell, but Twilight’s studious side couldn’t help but enjoy a good lecture, particularly about such a forbidden aspect of magic.

“That suppressor, however,” Flim talked on. “That suppressor is special. The design was made specifically for Alicorns, but that specimen was built to fit you. What it does, is actually sends probes into the ley lines at the base of the horn. These probes can then manage the flow of magic heading through your body to your horn, meaning we can let you use a little bit of magic, or cut off your magic flow completely. It also lets us send feedback back down the ley lines of your skull, which is the marvelous sensation you just experienced.”

A normal pony might have balked at such a flow of sudden and technical information, but Twilight was adept at understanding and memorising this kind of thing. Which is why she immediately knew that she really was in far more trouble than she had thought.

“So why doesn’t it have any magical residue?” her mouth asked before she could stop it. She silently cursed her studious side for betraying her.

Flim’s grin only widened, impossible as it seemed. “It has no magic in it, of course. It is a feat of technology, nothing more. Magic may have gone into the crafting of it, but it does not actually contain any magic itself, it is simply a conduit that we can control with our own magic.” With one last infuriating chuckle, Flim turned and headed for his brother, who had continued lazily down the street, effectively ending the conversation.

Twilight ground her teeth. She knew she couldn’t just run away. The suppressor saw to that. She knew she was trapped following them, and she knew that they knew it too. All she could do was follow and seethe.

The brothers led her through the warehouse district, keeping to the main, too-wide streets as they showed her around. Traffic in that district was sparse, limited to mainly ponies piloting strange self-powered carriages that had large, flat platforms for transporting goods. Many of them they saw were piled with crates or boxes or even strange pieces of machinery. Hoof traffic was limited to those ponies assisting those driving the carts, and Twilight and her entourage themselves.

They never had to dodge out of the way of oncoming traffic, nor did they even have to swerve or deviate from their path at all. The drivers would simply move their vehicles out of the way, or stop completely when that wasn’t an option. Either they knew who Twilight was and she was finally getting some of the respect she deserved or, more likely, they knew Flim and Flam and knew to move out of the way.

Something struck her as they left the towering warehouses behind and entered the market district, where the hoof traffic increased so that the streets were near to being packed. Not a single pony, other than the ones in the lift shed, seemed perturbed by her presence, or even acknowledged that she was there. They didn’t bat an eye at the iron band around her horn and they didn’t even glance at her wings. Did they not know who she was? Or was it that they knew and just didn’t care?

Her concerns went unnoticed by her escorts, who stopped at a stall selling fruit. Flim trotted up and took three apples from the pallet. He didn’t pay for them, didn’t even acknowledge the mare standing on the other side, nor did she seem affected at all that he had just taken some of her produce without payment. Even Celestia insisted on paying for food she ate outside the palace.

Flim then held one of the apples up under Twilight’s nose. “Are you hungry, Princess?” he asked, suddenly so polite that she had to do a double-take.

Lifting up a hoof, she took the apple and looked at it askance. Had he done something to it while she wasn’t looking? She sniffed it and it smelled just like a normal, juicy apple. It didn’t have the distinct, mouth-watering fragrance of a Sweet Apple Acres apple, but it looked ripe and juicy. She was still a little apprehensive.

Flam gave her a deadpan look. “Princess, really? Must you be so suspicious? Had we wanted to kill you, we would have done it whilst you were asleep.” Flim nodded his head and took a large bite out of his own apple.

It was only then that Twilight noticed that her stomach was growling angrily, reminding her that she hadn’t had any dinner the night she had been taken. In fact, it made her realise that she didn’t know how long she had been out. She might have gone days without a single meal. She bit into the apple hungrily, devouring the entire thing in a matter of seconds, not wasting a single drop of juice.

They threw her a few more apples as a master would throw a bone for a dog, but Twilight was suddenly too hungry to care. She ate them as quickly as the first, but after the third, when she looked back to Flam to take another apple, he simply motioned his head down along the street and again, without looking back to see if she was following, continued the tour of the city, leaving Twilight hungry and disappointed.

It was slowly getting through the afternoon as they left the market district, Twilight feeling slightly less hungry than before with some carrots and an orange accompanying the apples in her stomach, that Flim had thrown her in much the same manner. They entered the residential district where the traffic dropped off somewhat, leaving the streets feeling comparatively empty, though there was still a number of ponies walking about for some business or another.

The streets here were lined with brown-walled brick houses with tightly thatched roofs, each looking large enough to house three of four ponies comfortably. Each and every house was completely identical, down to the shade of the thatch and the contents of the window gardens. It was eery, sending shivers down Twilight’s spine. Thankfully, they didn’t stop.

After a quick loop around the block, Twilight was led back out of the rows of look-alike houses and back through the markets. Twilight tried not to show her disappointment when they didn’t offer her any more food, though her stomach seemed intent on giving her away as the smells of fruit and baked goods made her mouth water.

The sun was approaching the horizon by the time they trotted into the Industrial District, which Flim and Flam had pointedly avoided before. The air had the faint scent of smoke, giving Twilight no doubt that in a few years, there would be an almost permanent smog in this part of the city. It was the only place where there was no natural plant life, all the space being taken up by giant factories or huge slabs of concreted ground. The hill had also been almost completely leveled, Twilight noticed as the slope they were walking up suddenly leveled out before they were even near to the center of the district.

She could see, even from behind, the smiles Flim and Flam were wearing growing larger and more smug by the minute as they walked. Their big reveal, the purpose to this whole tour, must be coming up. Twilight prepared herself for the worst. Hopefully once it was over, she would get to see Spike and make sure he was okay.

Most of the factories and manufacturing grounds were empty due to the late hour, Twilight presumed, but some that she passed had lines of hundreds of ponies in what looked like military uniforms doing parade drills or marching back and forth. The frequency that these appeared increased as they got closer to what looked like the main building at the centre of the district. At least, it was the largest building in the area: Twilight approximated that it was just off-centre to where the top of the hill would have once been.

Smaller groups of ponies began appearing, wearing white coats and fussing over some form of machinery or another, though they never slowed enough to give Twilight a good look at what they were working on. She did get a lucky look at one of the groups as they stepped away from a large machine just moments before her horn started to tingle with magical feedback and the device let out a muffled bang and a blast of intense light. Her vision cleared just in time for her to see the enormous scorched line leading up to what was once a huge block of concrete, now just a pile of dust and small rubble.

She barely had time to marvel and wonder why in Equestria these ponies would be developing something like that before it was out of sight behind another factory building. They passed more and more of these groups, each working on a different device, some just as destructive as the first, others that seemingly had no result at all. It all began to add up in Twilight’s mind, and she began to come to a horrifying realisation.

Lines of parade troops in military uniform, testing of dangerous technology combined with magic in ways that would make Celestia weep for the destructiveness of it all. An isolated city that nopony would have even heard of. Flim and Flam were watching her with matching grins of wicked satisfaction and she couldn’t stop her face from going slack.

They were building an army, well trained and equipped with technology like this… they could invade Equestria without much resistance, the Equestrian military having grown used to the extended reign of peace.

“You finally understand now, don’t you princess?” Flim said, walking slowly up to her and throwing a hoof around her withers his grin only growing larger.

Flam copied him on the other side, sharing his brother’s expression. “Do you know why we called this city Unicornia, Twilight?”

The sudden question snapped Twilight out of the stupor she was in and she found herself unable to answer. “I…” An image flashed through her mind. A unicorn levitating a sheaf of papers behind a glass window at the base of her mountain prison.

More images quickly followed. The giant unicorn statues on the street, workponies levitating crates onto the back of transport vehicles, marketponies using magic to organise their wares, a tradespony levitating up a sign that had fallen down off its post at one of the shop buildings. A unicorn mare using magic to lock up her house, rows and rows of military unicorns doing parade drills, led by a pony using magic as the marching queue. Unicorns… they were all unicorns. Every single pony she had seen was a unicorn!

Flim shook his head and laughed. “I may never get tired of seeing that look on her face brother.”

“Indeed brother,” Flam replied. “That look of hopeless realisation when she knows something is true and she can’t do a thing about it. Come Princess, we have one last thing to show you.”

Twilight couldn’t imagine what more they could show her. They clearly wanted to unsettle her and she couldn’t deny that it was working. A city full of unicorns… that was racism on such an extreme level she could barely comprehend it. A small, hopeful voice in the back of her head suggested that maybe there were pegasi and earth ponies around and she simply hadn’t seen them, but Flim and Flam were looking far too smug for that to be true.

The large building they were approaching dominated the landscape, overshadowing everything else and looming above like a sleeping giant. There were two more of the giant unicorn statues seemingly standing guard on either side of a massive set of doors leading into the building that, up close, seemed to be a warehouse of some kind.

The walls were solid metal with a slightly sloped roof sitting on top. The only windows were small and shuttered, lining the top of the building all the way around. Everything else about the structure was completely uniform, down to the corrugation in the steel of the walls.

They approached in an eerie silence and Twilight couldn’t help but feel a little curiosity through all the apprehension and fear. The statues glinted in the late afternoon light as the sliding metal doors loomed overhead, taller than a large house and just as wide.

Flim and Flam made no move that Twilight saw, nor did they use any magic, but the doors began to open, sliding sideways without a sound, well-greased runners spinning smoothly. Inside, there was darkness, not a single light or lamp to illuminate whatever it was that the brothers were so gleeful about. Flim and Flam led Twilight inside.

A hum began to sound from somewhere off to the side, reverberating through the very ground beneath their hooves. With a loud clack! huge floodlights switched on overhead, illuminating the entire space instantly. What she saw made Twilight jaw, and mind, go completely slack.

The warehouse was completely filled with the pony statues. All of them made out of the same metal as the ones outside, all the exact same shape and size, lined up in rigid rows, every one perfectly spaced to the ones in front, behind and beside. There were hundreds of them!

Twilight could barely form words as she trotted up to the closest statue for a closer look. She struggled to form coherent thoughts. Why do they need so many of these? What purpose do they serve? How did they make this many of them?

She inspected the statue closely. It seemed to be made out of overlapping sheets of formed metal, much like the old plate-mail armor the royal guards in Canterlot sometimes wore on parades or special ceremonies. Circling it, she saw that it was the same all over, the knee joints even looked like they might be able to bend, though why a statue would need to bend its knees, she had no idea.

Stretching her neck, Twilight looked the thing in one of its big red lens-like eyes. It sent shivers down her spine, lacking a proper mane as it did. They did seem to have tails, though they were long, thin and didn’t look like any kind of pony tail Twilight had seen before. They also, upon closer inspection, seemed to be sharpened at the end. Why would a statue have a sharpened tail?

Suddenly, a loud hum filled the room, emanating from everywhere and echoing around the enclosed space so that it became a deafening roar that almost drowned out the thoughts in Twilight’s head.

She looked back up at the head of the pony statue.

The statue tilted its neck and looked back.

Twilight leapt backwards with a shriek, tripping over her hooves and landing on her back as the remainder of her breath left her lungs in a whoosh. She didn’t even notice her inability to breathe. She probably wouldn’t have been breathing anyway.

She could hear the laughter from her captors dimly in the background, but she didn’t care.

What are these things? Why are they here? What do they do? How did Flim and Flam get them? What in Equestria are they?!

Her thoughts grew more and more frantic, circling around and around, tunneling her vision to the point that she only just noticed the ‘statue’ in front of her take a step forward, forcing her to desperately scramble out of the way or be crushed as it walked, just like a regular pony, over the space she had just occupied.

The others followed, hundreds and hundreds of them filing in perfect synchronisation out of the giant warehouse and into the city, on their way to an unknown destination. The ground shook as they walked, their hoofsteps landing all at the same time. Each one was a marvel of technological genius, but Twilight couldn’t form thoughts coherent enough to process the sheer techno-magical implications of these things.

Army… The thought sparked something in Twilight’s mind, immediately filling her with dread. She rounded on Flim and Flam.

“Where are they going?” She demanded, for a moment forgetting that she was a captive, completely under the control of these ponies, becoming a Princess again. “Where are you sending them?”

Flam took a step forward. “Wonderful, aren’t they? Our mechanical, metal unicorns. We call these ones ‘MAC Drones’, or ‘Mechanical Armoured Combat Drones’. They have pilots, but for all intents and purposes, they’re just drones. There are others, commander units, but you don’t need to worry yourself with those yet.”

Twilight could only stare at them in amazement, Flam’s words washing over her but not really sinking in. “Why call them drones if they have pilots?” she heard herself ask.

“Oh, the name is to keep them in line, keep all imagination out of their heads, all sense of singularity. They do what we tell them to do, exactly how we tell them, exactly when we tell them. Really, the equine bodies are just there as a power source. The units themselves are made completely out of a type of synthetic metal we developed, forged into overlapping plates. The entire exoskeleton is magic resistant, reflecting small spells and dispersing all but the most powerful.”

On cue, Flim lit up his horn and sent a blast of magic directly at the chest-plate of the nearest monolith, and it dissipated smoothly against the shiny metal.

“They are powered entirely by the magic energy of the pilots, who are contained inside the head. They are completely sealed in the cockpit, fed information through a neural uplink with the gemstone eyes.”

Twilight shakily looked up into the eyes of the passing monsters and realised that each and every one of them was staring straight at her as they thundered past. It was unnerving, to say the least.

“They use a method similar to your own imprisonment device, in that the ley lines are directly tapped, then linked up with a magic enhancement unit, which uses an array of gemstones, crystals and lenses to amplify the magic potential of a unicorn by a hundredfold or more. Obviously operating one of these takes a huge amount of energy, so not many unicorns can keep it up for long.”

Twilight could barely speak. “H-how? How did you even begin to create something like this? This is beyond anything Equestria has ever seen before.”

This only fuelled the brothers’ ego, but Twilight was beyond noticing or caring at this point. The ramifications of this force of war machines was swiftly sinking back in, and she once again rounded on the two unicorns, for once feeling her Princesshood take control again, finally noticing that, despite the two being tall stallions, she stood taller than them still.

“Where are they going? What do you mean to do with these monstrosities? And where is Spike?”

Her sense of superiority lasted only for a moment, as Flim lit up his horn and a painful jolt shocked through Twilight’s brain, almost dropping her to the ground as the goliath metal ponies continued to file past.

Flam simply grinned as she shook her head and struggled to her hooves, the pain lingering in the base of her horn. “Spike is fine, Princess, no need to get demanding. You need to learn your place here, that much is obvious. As for these beautiful works of technomagical ingenuity, they’re going to Equestria, and the rest of the world! All will fall under our purview.”

Twilight bit back a harsh response. All she would get was another shock. Her glare must have said enough though, as another jolt pulsed into her mind, less powerful this time, but a headache began to form in the center of her forehead.

Again, it was Flam who responded, this time to her unspoken question. “You’re wondering why, Twilight Sparkle? Why are we developing an army of giant mechanical ponies, why are we designing magic-enhancing super-weapons, why are we even bothering with any of this? Well the answer is simple: to bring about the glorious revolution, of course!” Another shock drove Twilight to her knees, though she hadn’t said anything, or even looked at either pony, but the look in Flim’s eye said he was enjoying seeing her squirm.

Pushing herself back to her hooves, Twilight attempted to hold her head high. “Wh… what revolution?” Her voice was failing her, breaths coming in pants and wheezes as yet another painful jolt dropped her to the floor completely.

Looking up, she saw both of her captors standing over her, grinning widely, taking perverse pleasure in her torment. “The unicorn revolution, Twilight Sparkle. We can’t ensure the mastery of the unicorns without first doing away with your pathetic little nation and their freedom rights for the inferior races, so we have created an army capable of crushing all who would stand in our way. Not even your precious Princesses will be able to stand before our might!”

Twilight could no longer muster the strength to speak, or even lift her head as one last bolt of pain shot through her horn and her vision began to fade. Her last conscious thought was of the two brothers laughing to the backdrop of enormous hooves pounding their way to her home and everything she loved and held dear.

Author's Note

Sigh. Sorry everyone who was waiting on this, my life fell to pieces recently and I'm only just getting back on my feet. Have an epicly late chapter two, I hope I've managed to prepare you all for it, it's pretty full on. Have fun!