Coco

Most of the rats were silent on the drive into the desert, except for the occasional exchange between Timar and his driver. The convoy followed a barely-marked track deeper and deeper into the rocky and dry expanse; as they went on, the sky became cloudier and cloudier. “Do you think it'll rain?” Coco asked, though the wrong person answered.

“Possibly.” answered Timar. “Rain storms come through here every few years... Perhaps it is a sign? The waters of life coming to a desert inhabited by nothing at all, just as we set out on this grand venture?”

“Hmmph.” Caballeron snorted. Coco was with him on this. Those didn't look like rain clouds up there... Was this too the work of the Horn? If it really was behind breaking those ships she'd been told about, and bringing them to exactly the right place and time that allowed them to find the book, could it change the weather too? That was a chilling thought. The fact that the weather out here was uncontrolled in the first place barely registered with her.

They drove for hours, deeper into the desert. It was some kind of twisted divine providence that none of these rickety-looking trucks ever broke down on the rough track. Coco was feeling every bump and jolt, but it wasn't just the bouncing around that was starting to make her feel sick. The further they went, the more nervous she got. When they finally stopped, well past midday, Coco didn't know if she was relieved or even more frightened.

“We have arrived.” Timar announced. “Out, out, everyone out! You two, get the Horn,” he ordered to the soldiers, “the rest of you, set up the bodies and take positions.” The rats jumped to it. “And as for you, ponies and officers of our esteemed Navy...” Timar gestured to Captain Barlent, Lieutenant Torner, Sergeant Grimsly, and his marines, who had ridden in the truck closest to the body-carriers. “Well, you'll be coming with me.” He waved for them to follow.

“Why are we so far out here, Timar?” asked Barlent, hand on sword hilt.

“This is a test run, Captain, we don't want prying eyes and loose lips about, do we?”

The area they had come to was below a shallow ridge; rats were pulling their cannons to the top. Just in case, huh? Beneath the ridge, other soldiers were laying out the bodies. A few were fresh corpses, if fresh meant buried within the last few years. But most of them were long-decayed, just skeletons with bits of leather flesh. Those ones scared Coco more. Those were the ones she'd seen in her dreams, as griffons instead of rats. She'd never seen a rat skeleton before, she had no idea how terrifying they were. A griffon skull at least looked like a griffon's; a rat's skull was something out of a nightmare. Coco stood much closer to her friend as she watched the corpses be laid out.

Meanwhile, Timar had opened the box, and removed the Horn from it. The dark artifact with its bleak iron bands, spiraling grooves, and strange runes lay open for all to see. “The instrument of our deliverance.” commented Torner.

“I do like that, but be careful, Lieutenant.” Timar warned him. “It's not too late to end up on my bad side. That won't be a pleasant place to be, in short order.”

Barlent and Caballeron looked at each other, and Barlent nodded ever so slighty. So it's on, then, Coco thought. Not even she knew the whole plan, though she had a guess at it. The marines waited a distance off, to the side of the Black Army soldiers. By now, all the bodies had been laid out in a grid; there must have been at least a hundred of them.

“Oh, how I've waited for this.” Timar rubbed his hands, and approached Caballeron. “You got far, Doctor, and you almost made it home. But fate had delivered you to me, instead. This is destined, this is ordained, this is the fate of a nation! Here, now, today!” He turned to the assembled soldiers. “My people, sons of Hivald! For two thousand years your ancestors searched this Earth for a home, only to be driven out time and again! And now the forces of evil are at our doorstep! Dogs, zebras, Aravians, and now Equestrians too, led by the Tyrant Celestia! Your homes are to be burnt, your families butchered, your lands taken, just as it has always been! But it need not be so!”

Timar raised the Horn above him with one hand. “Behold!” he shouted, before glancing at Torner. “The instrument of our deliverance! A weapon of the ancient world, forged in fires of power unknown by any modern science! With this, we will raise an army that shall not know fear, that shall not know hunger, that shall not know pain, that shall not know defeat! The legions of Hivald will strike out against the nations of the Earth, that have for so long stepped down upon us! This, my people, is our hour! Hail Hivald!”

“Hail Hivald!” the soldiers shouted, raising their weapons.

“And now...” Timar drew a knife from his coat with his other hand. “Doctor Caballeron, remind me of your instructions.”

“Let your blood fall on the Horn.” Caballeron said, calmly. “That’s what it needs.”

Timar gestured one of his soldiers forward, and handed him the Horn. “So it begins.” he whispered, before cutting his own palm over the Horn. Drops of red blood splattered onto the instrument, and sizzled. The runes briefly flared a dull red, before cooling to their former darkness. Nothing else happened. “Doctor Caballeron,” growled Timar, “have you been lying?”

“This is blood magic, Timar! Obviously you have the wrong blood!”

“Really?” Timar raised an eyebrow. “What is it that would lack in a rat's blood?” He paced about, waving his knife at them. “The griffons in your saga, the great ones of old, they had magic. Rats do not.” A realization came upon him. “Miss Pommel, I was told you come from the landed elite.”

“Y-yes..?” Coco said, her heart fluttering.

“Are there any unicorns in your family?”

“Three generations back-” Too late, Coco too realized what Timar had.

“Rats do not have magic, but ponies do!” He seized her hoof, and held it straight out.

“No-!” Coco tried to say.

“You want power?” Timar asked, looking at the Horn. “How's this for power?!” He plunged his blade into her leg, and wrenched it down the length. Coco shrieked in horror, even as her blood spilled onto the Horn.

Instantly, the runes came alight, brilliant purple instead of dull red. The light spilled into the spiraling grooves and spread over the length of the Horn. “Yes!” Timar roared, hoisting the Horn above him. He laughed in wicked delight. “Yes! That day has come!”

Caballeron pulled Coco back, away from the Horn. He put a hoof firmly around her, and held tightly. She tried to speak, but found she could only whimper, and looked everywhere but at bleeding gash down her leg. She wouldn’t even be able to walk… That would have to wait, though; because Timar had the Horn, and it was awakened. “Use it!” Caballeron whispered, a wildness in his eyes. “Use it!”

“What's the plan, Doctor?” Barlent asked, kneeling down by Coco.

“He needs to use the Horn!” hissed Caballeron.

“What then?” pressed the Captain.

“You get a truck for us and your marines and fight your way out if you have to!”

“And what makes you think-” Barlent was cut off, for Timar had raised the Horn, and now sounded it.

An unearthly wail screamed across the land, tearing into the ears of all those who heard it. Coco knew that wail, she had heard it in her dreams, far off. Rays of blue light shot out from the Horn, shooting up into the air and down into the waiting bodies. One by one, the empty eyes of the corpses lit up with the same violet hellfire she had seen in her vision, and spirals of dark magic spread across their bodies and limbs, animating them to unnatural life. He actually did it, Coco thought, too shocked to cry even as the terror coursed through her.

“Rise!” howled Timar, waving the Horn above him. “Rise! Rise now, obey your master!”

“Heaven and Earth,” swore Torner, “he's done it! He's really done it!”

“Don't stand there, go!” Caballeron waved. “We need to leave! Now!”

“Oh, it is beautiful!” Timar yelled for all to hear, as the dead rats rose from the ground and turned towards him. His own soldiers backed away in revulsion. “Soldiers of the new era, turn to me!” The corpses looked to Timar and the Horn, waiting for his orders.

Barlent and Torner had rushed back to the trucks with their marines; the Black Army soldiers looked like they wanted to do the same. Grimsly, however, stayed with the ponies. “This is an abomination!” he said, war-hammer and shield in hand. “It cannot be!”

“But it is.” replied Timar, gesturing with the still-glowing Horn. “With this weapon, we can challenge the Sun-Tyrant herself! Nothing will stand before us!” The assembly of the dead stood at attention, their flickering eyes staring blankly ahead. “Ah, are our friends from the Navy leaving so soon?” Barlent and Torner had reached a truck, and were cranking the engine into life. “Shoot them.” Timar ordered to his soldiers with crossbows.

“But sir-” one protested.

“Do it. Or should I send someone who will follow my commands?”

The rats looked at each other; and the cannoneers up the ridge looked at them in confusion. Caballeron too glanced about, growing more and more agitated. “Very well,” Timar sighed, turning to his undead, “you lot, kill them.”

The corpses turned towards the convoy, and began to slowly and steadily advance. “Madness!” whispered Grimsly.

“The future.” corrected Timar, smiling smugly.Was this real? Was this a dream, like the ones she’d been having all these weeks? She couldn’t tell anymore, through the haze of fear and pain.

Coco felt it first, and then smelled it. A tiny wave of pressure washed against her, and a sharp metallic scent began to sting her nostrils. All the rats stopped what they were doing; even Timar was pulled out of his reverie. The dead stopped moving, frozen in place for a moment, before they turned again, staring at a space not twenty yards from where the ponies now stood.

Another wave of pressure, stronger now. The air began to shimmer and bend, and the chill seeped into Coco’s heart. A third wave came, and the air pulsed with it, tiny cracks of light forming. A fourth wave; rumbling through the ground, more cracks of light.

“What is this?” Timar asked, frowning.

Caballeron laughed. “I told you, Timar! I told you to learn Old Frithish!” A stronger wave hit them, the ground shook, the cold bit deeper, the wind began to howl, the air rippled like water and the cracks of light flared and spread, arcs of violet lightning shooting out from them, faster and faster. Caballeron had to yell over the clamor. “Perhaps then you could have learned for yourself why this thing was buried so deeply!”

“What?” Timar asked again.

The air bent and buckled as if something were punching it from the other side, the cracks split open and a burning light blazed out, wreathed in violet energy. Their breath turned to frost, the dry desert was coated in a sheen of ice.

“The Horn of the Damned has but one master,” Caballeron said, in reverent awe, “and he has arrived.”

With a blast that shook the entire world, a column of icy fire shot into the sky, and a gaping hole in the universe tore open. Out of the storm stepped a towering figure, draped in darkness itself, shadows flowing off his ghastly frame the same as frost.

The Winter King had come for what was his.

Author's Note