Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non: Women of Brass and Steel

Chapters

Tale One: Aerie go Bragh
Tale Two: The Last Stand of Daring Do
Tale Three: Blue-Eyed Matador
Tale Three point Five: Suffer the children
Tale Four: The Stolen Child(ren)

Tale One: Aerie go Bragh

“... From dusk 'til dawn! I'll drink to the health of me friends! I'll drink to the health of me friends!” A clear, high soprano rang out across the diseased wasteland of the fallen Equestria. The voice carried with it a rich, heavy brogue that spoke of the central Griffin Kingdom. The voice came from a griffin hen, a muscular, but shapely, hen of the bald eagle type. She was dressed in open-toed cloth traveling boots and heavy wild oryx leather trousers and a shirt of the same. She also had oryx leather gloves. On her back was a large, heavy cloak of green cloth, in a perfect square. It was held shut with a clasp shaped like a Claddagh.

Any woman traveling alone in the fallen land was unusual. A woman with no collar more so. One in trousers was shocking and disgusting. But a griffin meant that trouble was brewing. When a griffin showed up in the lands the caribou claimed there could only come bloodshed.

With the rebel duchies still actively pressing their insurgency against the High King, almost all the griffins remained at home to fight for their side. And with the caribou giving material and military support to the insurgents any unattended griffins were not looked on favorably if they were not with official caribou envoys.

The woman, however, seemed supremely unconcerned with the political realities. She seemed quite content to loudly sing her homeland's drinking songs. She wasn't even really marching along. It was more of a rambling amble along the pitted and scarred dirt road that wound through the once-beautiful land.

The loud singing, by a female voice, attracted plenty of notice. The accent made it even more clear that something was up. Those that had heard it began pursuing the track of the unconcerned voice. It was a group of lightly armored caribou soldiers, six of them, looking like a scouting party, slavecatching group or light infantry. They were quite an anomaly, being all caribou. Since the fall of certain important bucks at the Battle of Paddock Fifty-One the Heartless Hind had decreed that caribou remain in more secure positions while he sent ponies to die en masse for him.

The caribou charged over a low hill and onto the road, loosely surrounding the casual, unconcerned hen as she sang her way along the road. “... The bog down in the valley- oh...” she sang, a smile crossing her beak. “Well now, hullo there, ya white and tans. And what can a servant of the High King do fer ye?”

“In the name of his supreme and pitiless invincible majesty who rules this land you are under arrest for the crime of being free while female! Surrender yourself to us for processing!” the lead caribou cried.

“Are ya daft? 'Tis a strange crime ta be sure. Have ye got it right, then? I do have business about, and can't take up the time coshering wi' any folk, least of all créadóirs, ol' buaileam sciaths and especially nasty little amadáns. There are serious things about!” The hen cried.

“Such disgusting filth!” The leader spat, lashing his hand out to slap the hen across the face. Her head followed the slap but she did not react. “Take her! We'll question her about this. She must be a counter-insurgent if she's talking about the High King. The rebellious fool.”

“Oi! None of that! That's my king yer rubbishin' there, boyo! And I do not hold wi' that!” the hen screeched. “It's his land and he should keep it if he still wants it! He won't be handin' it off ta yer king as long as he has breath in 'im ta fight ya white and tans.”

The caribou slapped the hen again, repeatedly, and punched her in the stomach. The others rushed in and grabbed her securely, tearing off her cloak and making the clasp fall to the ground. They tore at her clothes but found the leather hard to harm. They mostly just jostled her around. “Take her to the interrogation space! She will talk. Then she will break.”

“You'll be makin' a day of yer own neck if ya keep on like that, boyo,” the hen spat, speaking with a slight huskiness.

“Silence! Females do not speak unless tortured!” the leader said, marching along back from whence the group had come.

Over a rise appeared a burned waste. It looked like it had once been a small homestead, but the house had been razed and burned. The charred skeletons of several figures, twisted by the throes of death in the fire, could be seen through a broken wall. It looked like an extended family, of all ages. The only things still mostly together were the double-doors to the cellar.

The lead caribou pulled the doors open and unleashed the fetid stench of blood, infection, charred flesh and undiluted death. Down the stone stairs the place got darker and darker, until the sunlight just barely illuminated indistinct features in the cellar. A few scrapes of flint on steel lit some very primitive torches, and lit up the location.

In the center of the room was a wooden table, absolutely covered in bloodstains of various ages. Chains extended for the four corners, ending in heavy iron shackles with shout locks. On the shelves of the room were implements of torture, along with bottles and pouches of materials to induce agony, hallucinations or anything else needed. An empty, bloody cage sat in each corner, braziers beneath each other them, charred flesh still visible clinging to the metal.

“Aye... now I take the lessons about how the place has changed. I came here when I was a wee chick. It was nice. This... this is far from nice. I don't suppose we could skip it all and just get me back to the border? They'll let me through just fine,” the hen said. “Just tell 'em Maureen sen Kate O'Bald wants ta go home and they'll take me in and end yer hasslin'.”

“We don't broker deals with counter-insurgents!” The lead caribou shouted, slapping Maureen across the face again.

“Aye, that much was clear. Yer makin' two days of yer neck, boyo...” Maureen muttered as the caribou pulled at her leather clothing, managing to yank the shirt and trousers off, then pulling her gloves off. In her thrashing, she raked her freed talons across the throat of the caribou stripping her, making him fall back choking and sputtering as blood sprayed.

“You'll pay for that, worthless griffin cunt!” The leader screamed, punching Maureen repeatedly in the bare belly and chest.

“'Twas a mistake! Me talons just do that!” Maureen gasped, head shaking. “He got too close and that happened.”

“Secure her!” The caribou rushed to obey the orders, shoving Maureen down onto the table, shackling her wrists securely, and being scratched up by her twitching talons, then shackling her legs without pulling off her boots, not liking the look of her lion paws.

“So now... ye have me. The griffin hen in yer cozy little basement. I'd imagine ye don't have much chance to leave here, am I right?” Maureen asked with an amused tone, hiding her pain very well.

“You griffin cunts are smart-mouthed. They had you held down but not enough. They still taught you how to talk,” The lead caribou snarled, spitting in Maureen's face.

“They done a damn sight more than teach me to talk, ye rank bastard,” Maureen grumbled under her breath.

“What was that? I didn't hear that!” The fists flew, punching the restrained and helpless captive. “You're going to talk? Then talk loud enough that we can hear it! That way we can properly punish you for it.”

“Clean out yer filthy ears, ya white and tans, and I'll tell ya all ye may want to know. Maybe more than ye ever thought ye'd know,” Maureen said, loud and clear, spitting a glob of bloody saliva onto the ground. “Because I have a plan, to get back to what ye interrupted. A plan to get out of all this.”

“Oh do you? Yes, you uppity women types always think you have a plan,” the lead caribou said.

“Right before the collars come on and your wings come off,” another said, taking up a curved knife.

“You need to learn the place for your kind,” A third said. “Barn, Kjøkken, Kirke.”

“And just what is that scat?” Maureen asked, looking fearless despite the threatening tools approaching.

“Children, Kitchen, Worship,” The leader said brusquely. “You will make the next generation of torturers and flesh puppets, serve in menial and subjugated roles and worship men like the gods we are and the King as god of gods.”

“Well no wonder you can't make a decent land, ye got half yer lot wastin' their time on rubbish,” Maureen quipped.

“You won't think so when you're mewling for sex and begging to be tortured. Some do,” one caribou said.

“Ahh ye white and tans... know why our end calls ye that? 'Tis a good tale,” Maureen said cheerily. “Used to be we were calling yer lot the black and tans, from yer tan coats and black hearts. But we've also got a drink named that and we weren't about ta have us givin' ye good press. So, we noticed on the dead that some parts are white so there it goes. Ye've also got lily white livers and spleens that couldn't muster up a drop if we squeezed the whole lot of you.”

The caribou flew to work, punching her across the whole of her body, with all the force they could while she couldn't protect herself. “You're very chatty for someone about to be tortured. Good. It shows how much you deserve it.”

“Oh aye? This is the power and pride of ye white and tans? Punchin' up a hen that can't throw up a defense and torturin' women so they can't compete? Oh, the power you have,” Maureen said, with a twinge of pain.

“Yes, we have power!” the lead caribou snarled, slapping Maureen several times. “Bring the blades. We'll save the skinning if we can avoid it. We should focus on the wing-removal.”

“But I never even told ye the plan,” Maureen said, glaring at the caribou. “And yer up another day on yer neck.”

“Shut up. You'll speak when you're broken. You'll tell us anything,” the lead caribou insisted.

One of the other caribou came up with a thick rubber gag, and reached for Maureen's beak. Her head moved like lightning, deftly snapping the razor-sharp edge and her teeth on the soft flesh of his wrist. The buck's screams echoed through the basement as all the vessels of his left arm were ripped open and out, pouring with blood in hot pulses with each beat of his heart.

“That was intentional, I don't like rot in my beak,” Maureen said, after spitting out the flesh and blood. “Thus spitting that out. We did consider eating you lot. But just like yer ideas yer flesh is all bitter, diseased and rotten.”

“Now you've done it. Accidents happen and foolish bucks die when they fail to take precaution with unbroken cunts. But the violent soon learn of the powers that we have. We know how to deal with you,” the lead caribou growled darkly.

“You haven't a clue. That screamin' idiot will be dead even if he claps somethin' on it. Nothing in here is clean and I doubt you lot have medicine that could fix a ragin' infection. See what happens when yer too stupid to even consider you might get hurt? How did you love so long up where ye did?” Maureen asked.

“We were strong and ruthless. We do not need fancy technology or womanly things such as art, beauty, comfort or complicated cooking,” the lead caribou spat, punching Maureen in the beak.

“Addin' days, you are,” Maureen snarled, spitting out more blood. “But there's still a plan, and it works and all.”

“No!” The leader shouted, motioning to Maureen. “No more plans or smart talk. We will leave your beak clear. All the better to hear your screams and pitiful cries for mercy! Now come here and begin the torture!”

“S-sir... she may need... starvation, or solitude. She's...” One of the remaining caribou stammered out.

“You filthy does!” The leader shrieked. “Do you want to be reassigned?”

The remaining three shivered at the threat. “No, sir...” they mumbled in unison.

“Then bring your blades here and cut her wings off. Just as it must be,” the leader demanded.

“Y-yes sir...” one of the blade-carrying, fearful bucks said. He positioned himself at an arm's length from Maureen, looking with trembling fear into her smiling face. He made an attempt to cut at Maureen's wing but couldn't touch it, because it pulled and waved out of reach.

“You! Hold the wing down,” the leader yelled to one just standing around watching.

The hesitant buck likewise came in to arm's reach, but found the wing slipped from his grasp. He had to get near the table to spread it out and hold it down securely. He watched the wing and the talons on her hands, which clawed and flexed, still showing the blood on the hand which had been used.

With the focus on the wing, and the nervous buck tentatively bringing the knife closer and closer, none noticed her legs. Her toes vanished from the open front of the boots as she made a lot of noise, rattling the chains attached to her wrist shackles. She carefully wiggled her feet through the narrow openings of the shackles, compressing them down without harm and pulling them from the boots.

At the first touch of steel on her wing Maureen sprang into action. Her body pulled up, bent almost double as she pulled on her wrist shackles for leverage. She did it with such rapidity that none of the caribou around could react. The one nearest to her, the one holding her wing, releasing a wet gurgle as her leonine toe-claws raked up his throat. The one holding the knife dropped it and fell backwards, just avoiding a similar fate, though his throat took a nasty nick.

The three caribou still living backed far away from Maureen as she continued to bend herself double. Her right foot's toes pressed against the lock of the right shackle and wiggle a little bit. The lock popped open with a click and she pulled her arm over to work on the other shackle. “Know why wearin' the traditional brat is so good? Not just the status. It's the clasp. Usin' a pin-clasp may be tacky but if it falls by yer feet...” She pulled her other hand up once she was free and showed off what she had been using. The Claddagh clasp from her cloak, with the pin part sticking out from the back.

“Impossible! Stop her! There are still three of us and she's only a woman!” The leader shouted, hanging back as he directed the last two.

“'Only a woman,' boyo? A woman, aye...” Maureen didn't bother to try anything. She used the hesitation of the bucks to press a lightning attack. Her talons dug fiercely into their throats and she pulled back quickly, sending out a shower of blood to spatter on her bared body. “But 'only'? There's a lot more to me than just 'only.'”

The leader looked at his small group. The one with the bitten arm was the only one left, and he was uselessly sitting in a corner, moaning as blood seeped ceaselessly into a filthy rag that had once been clothing. He picked up one of the knives used for skinning and rushed at Maureen. “Insolent cu-!”

“And no more of that!” Maureen screamed, interrupting him. She dodged his basic attack and grabbed the hand with the knife. She slammed it onto the table hard enough to break his wrist and force the knife from his grip. She then bum rushed him to the wall and slammed him into it, hard enough to knock his breath out. “Ya listenin' to me? I'll bet ya wanna know what it is that has happened. How it is that a griffin hen has got the best of you, bein' caribou and all ye thought that it would be easy.”

The final caribou ground his teeth and hissed as he hid the pain of his shattered wrist, struggling with all his might against Maureen but not shifting her an inch. “You... you foolish woman. You will never get away with this...”

“Shut yer gob, I'm talkin'!” Maureen screeched. She cleared her crop and put a smile on her face as she went on. “Well I'll tell you. When them... rebel dukes went all crazy fer yer ways and yer little drootheen of a king and thought they could turn traitor on the High King they fought like they had won. They didn't. They were halted. There's a good reason fer that.

“Ya see... when they turned traitor most of the RGA didn't. I say most and I mean it. The big, important parts remained faithful. And ya may not know it, boyo, but there are plenty of parts in there, beyond the simple marchin' claws and paws. They got some special ones.

“Like them High Crag Guards in their kilts. The caribou that had come up to direct the fight laughed at that. Called them women just because of their kit. Pointed at the sporrans and tams and asked if they were gonna be on the abuse menu. The High Crag guard showed them they fought like a thousand angry hornets. Sent their heads back across the border, hornless, eyeless, tongueless, and marked, 'Aerie the Brave.'

“Or the low-land ones, the Ice-Rill Guards. They were never thought of well. Just herders, keepin' pigs and domesticated deer and other food-beasts. They couldn't be a danger. But a food-beast brings that what wants the food. They whetted their beaks and talons on slavering timberwolves, and cragodiles, the odd misplaced quarray eel, wandering ursa or young hydra. They weren't afraid of the beasts that came just to kill and be gone. They didn't back away from beasts that came to kill and stay, as the next caribou found when they thought they could be intimidated.

“But above and beyond, there's one that is suicide to anger. And yer lot angered them. They call 'em the Tuatha dé Danann. Those, those are the elites, boyo. Those are the ones that make the High King proudest. And as ya look at me, yer eyes full of pain and yer heartless chest full of hate, ya wonder. Aye, it's so. I'm a Tuatha.

“Within the Tuatha there's a group, all hens. The Sinn Bean. They call us the Bean Sidhe. When ya see a hen where there ought not be a hen, where they'd blood and fire and death, ya hope ta whatever it is ya send yer hopes to that she ain't a Tuatha. Because when the Bean Sidhe comes a-keenin' fer you, then yer already gone.

“And so it is...” Maureen said, tightening her grip on the caribou, using her knowledge of pressure points to make him cry out in sudden pain, “Ya come to the end of this short, bloody, meaningless life ya had. Or maybe... maybe ya don't...”

“What... do you mean... bitch..?” the caribou grunted out, still holding a defiant hatred in his eyes as he squirmed in pain.

“Ya recall how I kept talkin' of yer neck? There's an old curse from where I come. We'd always say, 'May Discord cut the head off of you, and make a day's work of yer neck.' The angrier, the more days ya cursed on 'em. It just meant we wished that them that did us wrong didn't get out of it so quick or so painless. So... yer the leader, but you don't get to go as fast as the rest of them,” Maureen said, calmly and evenly.

“Just what are you- Argh!” The caribou let out a scream as Maureen's iron grip broke his other wrist, and agonized the already-broken one. One paw came up and crashed down on one knee, pushing it back so far it snapped, while her talons raked out the kneecap.

She dropped the helpless buck to the ground and went over to the one still partially alive. She cleanly snapped his neck before returning to the one screaming and swearing on the ground. “You get to be here alone.”

“No... no, I am a caribou. I am a male! I am of the master race, and the master gender! I am the peak of all the universe! The commander of all nature!” The agonized buck screamed out his objections as Maureen dragged him to a far cage over a cold brazier.

“Command this not to hold you,” Maureen said flatly as she opened the cage and stuffed the screaming buck inside. She closed it, locked it and stood up. Thinking for a moment, she grabbed a nearby knife and jammed it into the lock, ruining the works and breaking off a bit of the brittle caribou-made metal. “How's yer kingdom, commander of all nature?”

The caribou attempted to rattle the cage but found it hurt his broken wrists. “You're just like us! Now don't you see how right we are! Join our cause, serve willingly and see all the suffering you want!”

“Are you mad?!” Maureen shrieked. “Even if I thought like you, joining means I'd get plucked and beaten. I'm no fool! What kind of mad claitseach would ever give in to that? No, no, ya feic, I'm killin' you like this not because it makes my parts all moist and soft, but because you deserve it.”

Maureen casually dressed herself again, after wiping off as much of the blood as she could manage, all with the indignant screams of the caribou as background. She walked out of the basement without a look back and securely slammed the doors shut, silencing all the cries. She then rammed a stout bit of loose metal into the handles to prevent easy opening from within.

Her deeds done, Maureen got back out onto the road, looking as though nothing had happened, save the for the remaining blood flecks. She seemed in as good a spirits as ever, as she jauntily went down the road to rendezvous with the rebel group that would take her to the Black Knight. She was there to train up the rebel forces, by order of the High King, so they could possibly lend aid faster.

She ambled a long the rocky road to her meeting, singing a cheerful song. “Come out, ye white and tans, come and face us if ya can! Show yer king how earned death at the border! Some 'im how the RGA made ye run so fast away from the gray and lovely crags of ancient Tara!”

Author's Note

Notes on slang

Coshering- Going on a friendly, chatty visit to a friend's house. Here being used very insincerely.

Créadóir- Literally a potter; metaphorically someone who sits all day like a potter at the wheel; a lazy good for nothing.

Buaileam Sciath- Literally it means 'Let us beat our shield.' It indicated a boastful nothing, who fights when drunk and has nothing to speak for him.

Amadán- A fool.

Barn, Kjøkken, Kirke- A literal translation into Norwegian of the German 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche,' more properly rendered as 'Children, Kitchen, Church.' The 'ideal position' for Aryan women during the Fascist period.

Drootheen- A name for a slug, and a slang term for a tiny penis.

Tuatha dé Danann- The name for the mythical ancestors of the fairy-kind in Ireland, fierce warriors that fought the ancestors of the modern Irish.

Sinn Bean- Butchered Irish (on my part) for “We women.”

Claitseach- Slut

Feic- Literally 'a sight.' An embarrassing little man, an object of derision.

Tale Two: The Last Stand of Daring Do

Hoofsteps on bare stone echoed around the close walls of the bare room. It was a simple rectangle of dark gray stone, with a door at one end. The door was composed of gold, silver and gems and depicted a circular abstract object, with a fierce face looking out from the center.

The one walking slowly up and down the corridor was Daring Do, explorer extraordinaire. Her wings were raggedly feathered but still feathered, and twitched rhythmically, as though performing some kind of exercise. She wore the tatters of her usual khaki attire, and still had her pith helmet perched on her head, though it was very much the worse for wear. The whole of her attire was simply caked in dried, rust-toned blood.

She paced, almost nervously, along the gray floor, occasionally looking up at the door when she thought she had heard something. When nothing came of it she resumed her pacing, the meditative action casting her mind back to when things had all gone entirely pear-shaped.

The oppressive heat of the jungle tended to sap the strength and will of those that had not been acclimated to it. Those who failed to prepare were often the worst hit. Those who thought too much of themselves or brought the wrong equipment were most likely to simply be swallowed up by the expanse of green, to never be seen again.

Daring do had spent a long and storied career seeking the secrets of jungles, and was practically a native of the places. Her expertise was being put to the tense, as she crashed through the thick undergrowth and dodged around trees. She had given up on using techniques designed to evade pursuers. The mob of angry voices ringing out behind her were too close and too numerous to be long fooled by the subtle techniques. Running was all she had left.

She had lost count of how many there were, mostly by virtue of starting her run when there were only a few, and only finding out more had come by the increase in volume of the mob. It was something she had never thought she would ever see. Slavecatchers. They actually wanted to grab her and drag her back to the nearest port city to take her to... madness. Her and her friend Twilight Velvet... former friend...

Daring smiled as she saw the back of Velvet's head. The color and profile were unique. Her collaborator didn't often come in person to gather material for the next book, and seldom so soon after the last one. But Daring had heard of some kind of big do in Canterlot, and thought that had some connection to it. “Hey there. What's the big hurry?”

Velvet was standing behind a large trunk, which only let her head be seen. She walked around it as she turned, revealing a mirthless, vapid smile, total nudity and the lack of a horn. “Daring... there have been some... changes...”

“No shit, Vel... what the buck happened to you?” Daring asked, her normal thin veneer of propriety breaking down due to shock.

“It happened to us all. I know you were far outside the zone of effect but you need to know, this is how things are now. We have new leaders,” Velvet said, with an unsettling drone.

“'New leaders'? Impossible. I don't think the Princesses are going to step down. They've worked out for a few thousand years. I think they're sticking around,” Daring said with a sarcastic tone, rolling her eyes. It had to be a gag.

“The Princesses now serve. They serve as all mares must. Men are masters and we are cunts,” Velvet recited.

“Okay, gag's over. Use some magic to put back your horn and throw some clothes on. For Celestia's sake you're embarrassing yourself talking like that,” Daring huffed, looking sternly at Velvet.

“This is the new way,” Velvet said, with a kind of soft insistence.

“I still have no idea what you're talking about. New way for what?” Daring demanded.

“Cunts,” Velvet said, casually.

“You're in a weird mood today and it's not cool,” Daring grumbled with a roll of her eyes. “Look, do you want what I've got or not? I'll make a decent partial book. Sell it to the company as an advance preview and I'll try to have more next time...”

“I don't sell. Master sells,” Velvet said.

''Master'? Oh I've got to her this, Vel. What in Celestia's name are you gabbling on about?” Daring asked, frustration creeping into her tone.

“Master is master. He owns my worthless self and makes money and power with my useless skills,” Velvet replied.

“You want useless skills that's the average noble,” Daring grumbled. “But your skills are turning my awesomeness into literature that gets studied in the modest universities. They're good for both of us.”

“No, no. I am completely worthless, so Master Nightlight's pity is a blessing and reward,” Velvet said.

“Nightli... your husband? Oh... you're getting into that now. Well look... more power to your... weird personal sex fetishes but this isn't the bedroom, you need some clothes,” Daring said.

“This is the way of the new order,” Velvet said, vapidly.

“Cut out the mysterious nonsense! What 'new order' are you talking about?!” Daring shouted.

“This new order, Daring Bitch,” a harsh male voice rasped out. From seemingly no where the airship port's landing tarmac was suddenly occupied by burly stallions, as well as a few caribou, which was unexpected. All were wearing semi-armored outfits with an unknown insignia.

“Hey! Watch the... caribou?” Daring questioned, indignation cooled by curiosity. “That's new. I've poked in your barrows now and then, usually the ones that were forgotten. The 'draugar' are a real pain. I don't like having to put a torch to a desiccated husk but when they start grabbing at me...”

“Shut up!” One of the stallions snapped. “Bitches speak when commanded. Then usually get slapped.”

“Buck you, asshole!' Daring said, throwing up the double fingers and blowing a razz. “I say what I want.”

“You say what you're told. You must obey,” Velvet said, oddly calm in the middle of her friend being insulted.

“How can you go along with this idiocy? He's calling me a bitch!” Daring cried. “It's been known to happen but you usually cut them down to size.”

“I embraced the new ways. The better ways. Before I was doing wrong by thinking I had value. Now I know I am worthless except as master's toy,” Velvet explained.

“Griffin scat, you always had a good head on your shoulders. Yeah, maybe I saw you looking at the weird aisle of the naughty book store but you were grounded,” Daring said.

“You must give in. Daring, we can keep making books!” Velvet squealed.

“Well, yeah, I have the notes...” Daring began.

“No. Sexy books. We take you back, you get trained as a slave then you go have sexy rape adventures and we write about that!” Velvet squealed in delight.

“Is your brain scrambled?!” Daring yelled. “A slave? Rape? What are you even babbling about?”

“The new world, bitch,” one of the caribou grunted. “We rule your nation now. Women are slaves, willingly or not. We will cut your wings and break your will until you are like all the others, caring only for the needs of men.”

“Here's an idea- no!” Daring cried at the caribou, staring daggers at him. “This is crazy. The Princesses wouldn't let this happen.”

“Our King is mightier than your Princesses. He took over and now all is as we desire. Dark, bleak, hard and masculine. No more of your soft femaleness which ruins all it touches. The world is pure and wholesome and set up for the convenience of men and men alone,” he caribou smugly asserted.

“Vel..?” Daring asked, looking just a little fearful.

“Just go out and get raped, I write about it and Master Nightlight sends it to the publishers. All the men will love it,” Velvet said.

“You've got nothing in your head anymore, do you?” Daring asked, tone and eyes softening.

“I always knew I was supposed to be under a stallion. But I foolishly believed the lies of the old world. Master Nightlight showed me the way. And now the whole world will know. Please come and be abused,” Velvet pleaded.

“Vel... I'll say this one time. I don't want to,” Daring said, with a gentle tone.

“That doesn't matter. What the men want is what mattered, and them alone. The needs of women must be beaten out of them until they obey what the great men demand,” Velvet said, with a disturbing gushing.

“Screw that!” Daring cried, turning a glare on Velvet. “Okay, you're one of those submissive types. I may think you have dry cheese between your ears but that's your business. Doesn't effect me because we used to work together. But you're saying you want it to affect me. That's not cool. Once it crosses the bedroom walls you can stuff it up the nearest guy's piss-hole!”

The men, who had been watching to see if Velvet could change things, all pulled out robes, chains and manacles. “The stupid bitch had her chance. She failed. Now we grab her and drag her back...” one caribou said.

“Master will punish me for failing!” Velvet wailed. “He sent me to get you for abuse!”

“I'm not happy you're getting hurt but it beats the alternative,” Daring spat, eying the collection of men attempting to encircle her. She dashed forward and used her considerable natural strength to knock one pony into another with a flying shoulder, knocking the two down.

“Got you!” the nearest caribou cried, clapping a manacle around her wrist. It was very thin, likely intended for weak and mostly unresisting mares.

Daring pulled hard suddenly, yanking the chain from the caribou's grip then bashing it against his face. She heard a sickening crunch as the hard strike impacted, likely breaking his muzzle. She pulled the manacle off and threw it down, turning on her tormentors. Another grabbed at her and she dodged deftly, throwing a buck into another caribou's stomach.

She recognized the armor plates. Cheap, brittle, poorly-forged high-impurity iron. The draugar wore various amounts of it, and it always broke with some ease. It wasn't age; the savages were just bad with metallurgy, and the tradition seemed to continue. They probably didn't anticipate serious opposition.

Daring reached down to scoop up a jagged shard of the plate, figuring even a weak weapon was a weapon. She made a feint towards the mass of men who cringed back just a touch, before dodging in the other way, towards the jungle at the edge of the airship port.

Before Daring could go far she was confronted by Velvet. “Outta the way! Just let me go and we're all square!”

“No woman can be allowed to resist! You have to submit to the rape and abuse of men! It's your job as a stupid, bimbo cunt!” Velvet screeched.

The men were coming for Daring, their eyes full of fury. “You know me. Let me through!” Daring shouted.

“No!” Velvet cried, reaching out to grab Daring. “Master dema-!”

Daring ran, listening to the shriek of pain behind her. She had had to escape. She thoughtlessly shoved the shattered armor plate at Velvet, just to get her aside. She felt the resistance, saw the red stain on her empty hand. She had left the plate behind, because pulling back was less important than running with all her might.

She wasn't sure if that had done it. She had no idea if that desperate thrust of jagged metal had killed Velvet or not. She wasn't about to go back and find out. What stuck out most in her mind, as she pounded the ground and fled towards the jungle edge, was that she wasn't sure if she hoped she hadn't, or hoped she had.

That had been hours ago. The sun had been low then; it was past the peak but still blazing away, heating the jungle like a sauna. Daring was soaked with sweat, and every muscle burned as even her adventure-trained muscles were pushed beyond their limits. The clawing plants tore at her clothes and pulled feathers from her wings, which she tried to keep closed.

She panted and gasped, ears up and trained to keep a listen out for the pursuers. They were motivated, to be sure. The cold-weather caribou were likely dying in the jungle's oppressive heat, while the ponies were nowhere near her equals when it came to the techniques of going through such a place. But, like brute-force robots, they pursued.

Daring stumbled into a clearing, sucking in huge, desperate lungfuls of the hot and humid jungle air. She almost felt like she could drown in the thick atmosphere. She pushed herself back to her hooves but grunted. Her muscles were reaching the limit. But desperation was giving her strength. She spread her ragged wings but quickly figured she'd never reach the canopy with all the feather damage, at least not fast enough to elude the guys that were hot on her hocks.

It was fight or flight, and had been since she stabbed Velvet. The flight was over. The fight was yet to come. She had no choice but to stand, fight and die. If even half of what Velvet had implied was true death would be preferable to the monstrous fate that awaited her back... where home used to be.

She dug under the leaf litter of the jungle floor, and came up with a modestly sized stone, along with a fallen vine that retained rubbery flexibility. The armor was garbage, they had no skills, but they had numbers. She didn't know how many slavecatchers were after her, but given that she had harmed someone potentially important, probably a lot.

“Come on, guys, stay with me just a little longer,” Daring mumbled to her muscles. They burned with lactic acid, and felt tense and tight as she stood there waiting, but she still felt good about her chances. Odds were they wanted her alive. She had no such desire for them. The balance of power and devotion to a cause was on her side.

The first one through, a nimble, skinny-looking dun earth pony, ran straight to her, holding up a net. His eagerness clouded his brain and ran him straight into her rock, shoved forward with all of her might. The crunch rang so loud it disturbed a small group of birds, sending their cries through the jungle.

She quickly checked the fallen stallion for anything like a weapon but found only a few scraps of propaganda, which Daring threw away in disgust. She made sure the fallen body was positioned to be seen by all entering. That was her version of propaganda. They wanted her, but she wasn't going to be taken.

The next wave of slavecatchers was a trio, more earth ponies. They had the stamina and speed on the ground, and would likely be at the head of the group. They, too, were only holding means of capture, ropes and a net. The net was tossed inexpertly, desperately even, the trembling stallion likely suffering a combination of fatigue and terror at the sight of the dead stallion.

Daring caught the edge of the net and pulled hard while running in a loose circle. The stallion hadn't thought to release his end of the net, which swept the other two off their hooves and tangled them up. With a harder pull Daring yanked the last stallion down. She didn't relish what had to be done, but she cracked them on their heads, with the force needed to stop them from moving.

As before, they carried no weapons. She was forced to conclude that either such figures had no weapons at all or the ones she found were advanced scouts who only tracked down the figure so the later ones could come in with the weapons. She was doing well, but there had been a lot more than just four behind her.

Almost as it reading her mind, the clearing was suddenly flooded. The main body of the pursuit group rushed in, brandishing ropes, nets, chains, manacles and magic. A few unicorns had their horns lit, ropes dancing like snaked in the enchanted grip. The caribou in the gathering looked much the worse for wear, being outside of their frozen wasteland.

The confrontation led to a still silence, the men forming a wide circle around the clearing, cutting odd Daring's means of ground-based egress. The few pegasi would be fast enough to catch her if she went up. They all seemed fatigued by the pursuit, and a little unsettled by the prior victims of Daring's desperate fighting.

They whispered to one another, and pointed, as though telling each other who should go first. They all seemed to be daring, almost demanding, other s go, while hanging back in justified terror. Daring figured that if things were really so bad back in Equestria they had never seen a mare who fought, just doormats like Velvet. She smiled a bit. They were right to be terrified of her.

The standoff ended when one of the caribou surged in, huffing and puffing like a badly-tuned steam engine. He had a chain in his hand that he was swinging around, likely intent on beating Daring into submission before capture.

The intention was disrupted, Daring whipping her vine out into the spinning chain. The chain lost all momentum as it tangled up with the vine and flopped down in the buck's hand. His surprise turned into a momentary look of fear as the rock crashed into the side of his head and he fairly flew to the side, his skill cracked at the weakest part of the temple.

That single charge and the failure after lit a fire under the angrier and more indignant ones. They were used to getting their own way, it seemed. A number charged in, thinking that numbers could carry the day. But they all came too fast and without coordination, their various strikes and grabs interrupting each other and creating a chaotic mess.

Being a single, coordinated, fighter meant Daring only had to pay attention to her own body. She pushed her aching muscles to be as deft as they had always been, twisting around grabs and the use of restraints, taking punches if it meant she could move into a better position for her own punch, buck or slam with the rock.

Daring was really holding out well. Fighting was, oddly, less strenuous than running. Running necessitated long, mechanical periods of sustained and ceaseless effort. A fight was broken into a series of small, lightning moves, each one called for by her prior actions and the actions of the opponents. She was managing, but getting overwhelmed.

Boldness increased as Daring's position weakened. The cowardly mob, rested by standing around watching Daring under assault crushed in. The bodies of the groaning wounded or silent slain did not restrain them. Even if they had no plan the sheer weight of numbers would be sufficient to overpower her. Already she was taking hard hits and had ropes attached to her, while desperate hands clawed at her attire.

A roar rang through the jungle, stopping everyone dead in their tracks. For a breathless space nothing happened, then one of the outer stallions screamed as he was pounced upon by a snarling jaguar. A cheetah rushed up to clamp its jaws on another pony, a lynx leaping up and clinging to the face of a third.

A soft whistling sounded through the jungle and a dull, meaty thunk was followed by two screams. Two stallions standing close to each other were impaled on the same wooden shaft, the obsidian point of the spear shining with blood in the afternoon light.

In short order more of the obsidian-tipped spears rushed through the air and rammed through the brittle armor, sending the disorganized stallions and bucks scattering. They couldn't quite run as the feline marauders were drawing their focus. They could only look around to see from where the deadly missiles were coming.

No more spears looked incoming, but what did come in was no more comforting. At first the explosion of color and detail made the whole difficult to separate from the sum of the parts. The head looked like a stylized jaguar head of carved hardwood, stained and painted, inlaid with gold and jewels, as well as lined with feathers of red, green and blue. Over the body was what looked very much like a jaguar-skin cloak and jumpsuit, though inspection revealed it to be composed of cloth and leather, dyed to resemble a real coat. Down at the feet were sandals of leather and cloth, decorated with gold. Bright golden chains wrapped around the neck, and a collection of bracers, bracelets and other bands of gold went up the arms.

Staring from out of the wooden jaguar head was the stern and unfeeling face of Ahuizotl. He held three of the same weapon in his three hands, a trio of macuahuilzoctli, the smaller version of the more famous, two-handed macuahuitl. All three were dark hardwood clubs, about two feet long each, looking like a cricket bat, with the narrower sides having four wickedly sharp blades of hemicircular obsidian each.

“My ahtlatl is silent,” Ahuizotl rumbled out. “All the tlacochtli have stricken like the wrath of Opochtli and stand out from the bodies of the rightly slain, hunted to their proper death. But fear not, my felines are still fierce, and these...” He held up the three weapons. “The hungry wood... hungers for your blood!”

Ahuizotl leaped to battle with an inarticulate shriek of fearsome rage, the obsidian blades brutally severing flesh and bone as they wildly struck out at the mob of screaming slavecatchers. The brittle metal armor was useless before the enraged strikes of Ahuizotl, who struck with furious abandon.

Daring's eyes met Ahuizotl's, for a brief moment that almost seemed to make time stop. Both were bloody and determined, a tiny nod passing between them. Wordlessly, Ahuizotl's tail-hand reached out to pass the macuahuilzoctli along to her. Thus armed Daring unleashed a cry of rage and raised it high.

“This is for taking away my friend!” She screamed before she brought it down, down and split the skull of one of the last caribou wide open.

The scrape of stone-on-stone broke daring out of her reverie, and drew her focus to the good-marked door. The golden seal had twisted in a particular fashion and the whole thing rose up into the ceiling. By rising it revealed Ahuizotl, still in his jaguar-like attire, soaked in blood but unarmed.

“The jungle swallows the unwary,” Ahuizotl said deeply. “In but days the bodies will be gone. My cats eat heartily as do the piranha, the army ants and the other things that live in the dark undergrowth.”

“I should have been finishing the job,” Daring insisted. “I could have mopped up the last of them.”

“They all had to die, before proper word could return to your homeland,” Ahuizotl replied. “Those who witnessed the events in the jungle say nothing. Those who did not only saw all enter, and none leave. They will believe you were all gobbled up by the jungle's gluttonous maw.”

“So, you're clear, and I'm officially missing,” Daring said, looking Ahuizotl's attire over. “Getting fancy on me?”

“I knew nothing, until I spoke to Dr. Caballeron... Dr. Cabrón,” Ahuizotl spat, a snarl creeping into his voice. “He explained with such disgusting glee how he... he also told me, finally, what had happened, and how aggressive they were to stamp out symbols, and how he was planning to capture you. I hope he likes the bottom of that quicksand...”

“Going to sell me yourself? That's a lot of work to just hand me over, but I guess I'm worth more money now,” Daring said, casually leaning her aching body against a wall.

“What they do to mares... to all women is intolerable,” Ahuizotl said. “If there is no more equality there is no purpose to life. They all may as well give themselves to the beasts if they would rob the world of so much.”

“I never expected to hear you be the one to say that,” Daring said, looking at Ahuizotl's face for a trace of insincerity.

“If there was nothing to you but a beaten and broken body, there would be nothing. An empty shell,” Ahuizotl said quietly. “I would not contest with an empty shell. I would not fight with an empty shell. I would have no purpose with an empty shell. Your fire, your glorious energy and wisdom makes you who you are. Worthy.”

Daring gave a breathy chuckle and clicked her mouth a bit. “Thanks. You're not so bad yourself. Still doesn't explain a full tlahuiztli in Jaguar Warrior colors and decoration, with a matching jaguar cuacalalatli. I've never known you to wear more than ichcahuipilli. And I'll bet you have that on under the tlahuiztli.”

“You see there, you see?!” Ahuizotl cried out, pointing at Daring. “That mind, that knowledge, that is what makes you worthy. You know what I bear, how I bear it and what it is called. You even know the unseen.”

“So... the Jaguar Warrior getup?” Daring asked.

“I have always had this. I am, after all, entitled to all glory as the last descendant of the these vanished nations. I may wield the ahtlatl and hurl the tlacochtli, like an aristocrat, and dress as a Jaguar Warrior. There are none to tell me 'no.' I wanted their last thoughts to be fearful awe. And I think they feared. But what pleases me, is they feared you more. Feared you before you took up the macuahuilzoctli, and feared you more after. A strong mare, a bloody mare, a mare fighting them. The cowards. They died because they deserved death, and it was more proper you delivered it.”

Daring chuckled lightly and rolled her aching shoulders. The fleeing hadn't done that. The pitiless slaughter with the macuahuilzoctli had gotten her a little sore. “Yeah, yeah... one strong mare. If Vel was right, there are no more like me. Or there are very few. I'm not likely to do much good.”

“Dr. Cabrón was very... forthcoming as he dangled over the quicksand begging for his life...” Ahuizotl said darkly. “He knew much of what had happened in Equestria. The talk is suppressed, very heavily, but a black market stallion like him heard much of what is secret. There is a rebellion. There are freed mares and others hiding and fighting back.”

Daring punched into her hand and cheered. “Yeah! You can't keep a mare down!”

“That is why you have bested me many times. This new order is ridiculous. How can we enjoy the game if they intend to just beat and rape you into some kind of doll? They don't even care about how this affects us!” Ahuizotl groused.

“At least you want to do something,” Daring said with a roll of her eyes.

“And I wish to bring back the old world! If I destroyed it now it would be an improvement,” Ahuizotl said quickly.

“And I'd have more trouble stopping you,” Daring noted.

“I do not wish to be handed my victory. I require your conflict, like a condor rising against the wind. Our contesting is what makes life worth living,” Ahuizotl said.

“And you know... exploration wouldn't be anywhere near as fun without you there being a pain,” Daring said with a laugh. “So now what do we do? Besides taking a long, hot bath and getting some food?”

“Once enough time has passed I will begin dealing with the loose-tongued criminals, but this time I will do so with a different purpose. I will be a naualoztomeca,” Ahuizotl said firmly.

“Naualoztomeca... a merchant spy? Who are you going to report your intelligence to?” Daring asked.

“We shall collect it...” Ahuizotl said.

“'We'?” Daring asked.

“We both desire the old world, yes? Our game returned and all the folk freed to enjoy their own personal activities as we do,” Ahuizotl said.

Daring nodded. “Well, sure. That would be great. And I’d love to get a bunch of secrets and spy information. But what can we do with it?”

“While you are here, you can look through my codices,” Ahuizotl said. “Your active mind may see that which I have missed. You could find indications of some magical artifacts that might help the rebellion. We collect them, and then bring them down, along with our intelligence.”

“You do have a good collection...” Daring mused, stroking slowly over her chin. “I'm pretty sure I can find something you missed. It'll be good to keep active, even if it's only mentally active. Anything to throw a beating at those bastards.”

Ahuizotl nodded and indicated the exit from the secure hiding space. “That is why it will be such a pleasure to work with you. Come, you will find my temple has all the comforts, including a hot spring with excellent plumbing. I too find myself in need of cleaning. And I must re-brine my ichcahuipilli after taking off any blood that soaked through.”

“And while you're washing your stuff, give mine a soak. And be careful with the pith helmet, it's special,” Daring said, casually peeling off her tattered attire. “And make some food, I haven't eaten since breakfast.”

“Of course! I am nothing if not a gracious host,” Ahuizotl said. “The hot spring is...”

“I know where it is. I may not have known just where this place was but I looked through an old architecture codex for its construction. I'll still be soaking when you get there. Try to be quiet; I really, really need to unwind,” Daring said with a roll of her shoulders.

“Of course,” Ahuizotl said, nodding his head and walking away with Daring's clothes.

Daring watched Ahuizotl go and took off for the hot spring only after he was out of sight. “It's been a bizarre day... I never expected any of that. But at least things show some promise...”

Author's Note

Notes on terms

Jaguar Warrior- The highest ranked of the Aztec warriors, a title attained after securing four live wartime captives.

Ahtlatl- A long piece of carved wood with a cradle on one end, using to hurl large darts, or small spears, with great force. Considered the exclusive tool of the aristocracy and also seen as the weapon of the gods.

Tlacochtli- The darts hurled by the ahtlatl. A symbolic aspect of Opochtli, the god of the hunt.

Cuacalalatli- A carved, hardwood helmet made in the shape of an animal's head.

Tlahuiztli- Highly decorated suits of leather, hide and quilted cotton cloth armor for elite warriors which opened at the back to cover the torso and extremities.

Ichcahuipilli- Ordinary quilted cotton armor for lower soldiers. It was soaked in boiled salt brine which was allowed to crystallize and increase the strength of it.

Macuahuilzoctli- The smaller, one-handed version of the more infamous macuahuitl, which was larger and tended to be a two-handed weapon that could be from four feet to an extreme of a man's height. Flat and long like a paddle, with obsidian blades arranged along the sides in various configurations.

Naualoztomeca- A trader or merchant who also acted as a spy, because merchants went everywhere and could learn many things by virtue of having money and connections.

Tale Three: Blue-Eyed Matador

The fall of the nation had turned the once well-populated land into a collection of clusters. Once spread widely and ably served by mass transit and mass communication the hideous and execrable savages that controlled things had massed the ponies into various facilities. Most mares were concentrated into some kind of encampment, breeding or training or serving. Males were press-ganged into the services to keep the abuse steady and the invasions coming.

Vast areas of land had been depopulated, by forced relocations or wholesale slaughter of dissidents. That left those things left behind in a sad state of disrepair. From quaint villages to modest towns and even the manors of the gentry. Those quislings that took up the cause moved to the more populated core areas in order to have maximum opportunities to hurt, exploit and kill.

Being so empty did not make the waste-lands any safer. Without pegasi to control the weather there were often wildfires, floods or tornadoes. Without careful plant management things got overgrown, which meant more places for animals to establish the food chain. Nature red in tooth and claw, with magic to create apex predators that went beyond what raw nature could make.

The lands surrendered to the waste, though dangerous, were of great interest to the rebellion. Being essentially fallow-land ignored by the caribou patrols, due to the vast size, it was easy for them to set up covert farming operations and harvest a crop with speed and efficiency that outpaced the Stag King's larger but grossly inefficient agricultural holdings. And as they properly used earth pony magic they could bring forth more harvests faster.

As well, the hastily depopulated areas were full of useful, discarded items. Even if the caribou and their lackeys had broken and destroyed much, some things had been bypassed, hidden, or lost. There were plenty of spare bits of magical electronics, handy metal scraps, gem bits, and other such salvageable scrap around the empty towns.

Searching the waste-lands was a hard job, given the wild apex predators and questionable weather. It took a stout and sturdy heart to go in, and that was what Quartzite had.

She was a Diamond Dog of a notably great and robust musculature, with impressive dimensions which likely marked her as being a Dig Dog. But that was all the personal detail that could be gleaned. She went around in a shell of metal that protected her from the dangers of a world gone insane. She had forged the suit herself after the events of Paddock Fifty-One and the rise of the rebellion from the core of desperate refugees. She hammered together glowing brass and shining steel into a solid and weighty collection of articulated plates that gave her decent movement and could withstand most any force, mundane or magical.

The chest plate of her armored suit had been embellished with a plate of decorative gold and silver. She depicted the former symbol of Equestria, the dancing Princesses, combined with the mark of the rebels, the crossed hammer and sickle inside the compass of their dance. Around that was studded six different gemstones, to represent the Elements of Harmony. The bearers had fallen but the idea remained.

Representative of the rebellion, the hammer and sickle hung at her hips, ready to be taken up for battle. At her right hand's ease was the heavy brass hammer, with the broad crushing face and the spike-tipped peen. For her left, there was the wicked crescent curve of the steel sickle, the blade thick and the point tipped with a diamond, for harvesting more than plants.

Quartzite had been dispatched to a small town known previously as Gaskinwich. It was larger than Ponyville but not quite a city. The streets had some paved areas, the buildings more stone and there had been more use of both magic and electricity. Without a power plant or lightning infusion that mattered little, but it meant electronics would be more in evidence.

Her armored steps echoed eerily around the ghost town. Neglect and active destruction had left their marks, with fallen thatched roofs and gaping holes scarring the sides of buildings, and with the streets torn up. The decorative lantern poles had been ripped up and thrown around; the decorative wrought ironwork had been twisted and tossed aside like garbage. Any statues that had existed were reduced to piles of rubble by the unfeeling barbarians.

More depressingly, she found spots where captives or slaves had been murdered, either as an example to others or simply at the whim of the invaders. Rusty red-brown bloodstains marked the entrances to homes which contained flyblown skeletons, of all ages. Not even interred, just killed and tossed away. Quartzite made a mental note of locations for the gravediggers. All the fallen deserved the honor of a burial.

She also made mental notes of what she found. She couldn't very well carry away all the usable scrap she found. She was a preliminary scout, assessing the location for a full scavenger sweep, under guard. She was also there to note traces of dangerous animals, check for possible caribou activity and assess the state of any arable land.

The area had been swept through quickly, which was a positive. The caribou carried away spoils, which were usually defined as simple treasures. They broke everything else. There were electronic parts all over, still in fair condition. The machines in an arcade were demolished, but the components seemed in good order. Dog smiths could do great things with the bronze and iron that had been treated like scrap. She noted that though the cloth scraps were dirty they were present. The leavings of a demolished village would serve the rebellion well.

She scratched notes onto her left bracer, the expanse etched with Dog runes that expressed maximum information in minimum space. Metal types and estimated amounts, electronics, even estimated number of bodies for burial. There didn't seem to be a significant predator presence, which meant a simple scavenge team could sweep through and bear away all the useful objects. A restoration team could even take a chance on rebuilding for potential habitation.

A sound from somewhere in the distance caught Quartzite's attention. She whipped her armored gaze around, and used the high peaks of her ears to home in on the noise. It was at the town's edge, further on than she had explored.

She slid along the wrecked street, being as silent as she could manage in her suit of armor. It sounded likes hooves on the stone street, which only told her she wasn't dealing with a predator. There was still the possibility it was a scout from the Heartless One's army. The hammer and sickle were taken up, and set in proper position for immediate use.

She rounded a corner and gasped softly. A mare was awkwardly walking down the ruined street, looking weak and unsteady. She was an earth pony, with a brown coat and a darker brown mane. She was nude, as most were, and had her mark covered with burn scars. She stumbled along, looking exhausted, ready to collapse.

Quartzite immediately went to her aid, ringing and clattering as she ran up and quickly stopped the mare from falling. “Not worry! Are safe now,” she wurfed, her husky voice echoing slightly inside the armored helmet.

The mare's weak, trembling hand patted Quartzite on the back, her slim and unsteady fingers running up and down the plates of the armor. “Wh-who are you? I thank you for your help but... I need to know who you are...”

“Name is Quartzite, am rebel heavy scout. Here to find things to help rebels,” Quartzite said. “What happened?”

“M-my name is Verdant Glade... Viscountess Verdant Glade,” Verdant said with a sigh. “When the disaster happened... I was so scared. I saw horrors happening, and I hid away in my manor. I pretended it was empty, I kept out of sight. I was so weak...”

“Not weak,” Quartzite asserted with a shake of her armored head. “Careful. Want to live. Go on...”

“I had ample supplies of food, fresh water and other beverages and what I thought was a good place to hide,” Verdant said with a shudder. “It wasn't...”

“Tell what happen, when happen, need facts,” Quartzite said matter-of-factly.

“It was after the town... ended up like this. When they carried off the mares and most of the men went crazy. I didn't think they would be back. But they came back to see if they missed anything in my manor...” Verdant whispered.

“Know pattern. Some mares hide and escape. Some mares hide and are caught,” Quartzite rumbled.

“They dragged me out of hiding. But they... didn't take me away. They wanted to use my manor. They destroyed much but kept a lot. And they abused me. Look at my Cutie Mark!”

“Is way of stupid caribou,” Quartzite barked. “Hurt women, break things. Too stupid to live like normal creatures.”

“I've learned that lesson well,” Verdant said with a shudder.

“Now have escaped. Need go to rebels? Have doctors, have food, can help,” Quartzite said.

“Oh yes. I need to see the rebels. I need to find them and go among them. But before that, I have a request,” Verdant said softly.

Quartzite's armored ears twitching a little bit. “Please tell. Wish to help how can. Am strong Dog, good rebel.”

“I want to recover my manor from the one who holds it. He's a caribou. I don't know his name. He always forced me to just call him 'Master,'” Verdant pleaded. “There are things in there that might be helpful. And I think it would be a good thing to destroy him.”

Quartzite nodded enthusiastically, making her armor clatter and rattle. “Yes! Kill caribou, hurt Heartless Hind, and free victims. Is very good!”

“I must warn you...” Verdant said, slowly standing on her own hooves after stroking and patting Quartzite's back again. “It's more than that.”

“Tell, please,” Quartzite said. “Need all information. Can plan assault better.”

“He's not the only one there. There are some stallion soldiers, and other caribou,” Verdant explained. “And they put it some traps. I didn't see all of them but I managed to avoid the ones I set off when I escaped.”

“How escaped?” Quartzite asked. “Can use path out to get in maybe.”

“Master had been trusting me more,” Verdant said, “He thought I was perfectly obedient. When he was finished abusing me and didn't want me to serve him or anything like that he let me wander the grounds. He figured I was too broken down to do anything. He let the other soldiers have me, so they didn't think anything of me wandering around. I remembered a section of the wall was lower than the rest and I managed to get out of sight, climb up and escape. I just... I ran here, because I thought they would be following me when the figured out I escaped.”

“Might follow. Use standard hunting formation. Will come here because is good fallback position,” Quartzite said, turning her head to regard her surroundings. “May meet pursuers on road. Is direct path to manor?”

“Up the road, just two miles. I didn't even think about hiding my tracks, I...” Verdant began.

“There she is!” A male voice cried out from beyond the edge of town.

The owner of the voice was revealed to be a blue earth stallion, wearing cloth armor with metal scales and an open-faced metal helmet. He was flanked by two unicorns dressed in a similar fashion, though without the scales on their armor. All three carried spears and had manacles hanging from their belts.

“Get behind!” Quartzite shouted, pushing Verdant behind her bulky, armored body. She felt the trembling mare press up against her back, fingers seeming to caress the articulated plates as she sought their protection. “Halt! Leave place and never come back! In name of rebellion, just go away!”

“Look at that, some butchy cunt thinks she can order a man,” one of the unicorns, a dun-colored one, said.

“You rebels are just fooling yourselves. His pitiless and invincible majesty will defeat you all once his plans have been completed. You will all fall down at his hooves at once and see how powerless you are. You'll all surrender!” The other unicorn, a dark red one, confidently asserted.

“Throw down your weapons, give us the worthless whore and surrender to your natural betters!” The earth pony demanded.

“Have to do hard way...” Quartzite grumbled. “Always want to do hard way.” She turned around to see Verdant still desperately clinging to her armor. “Go, hide in house. Will finish them and come for you.”

“But... but...” Verdant looked at the three stallions and shuddered. “But they're killers. They know what they're doing.”

“Know this, too,” Quartzite said proudly, taking the hammer and sickle from her waist. “Go. Will find you again.”

“Promise?” Verdant asked, looking up hopefully, her blue eyes meeting the blue irises she could see in a sea of canary.

“Promise pretty pony,” Quartzite said in the softest tone she could muster. She then turned on the trio and crossed her weapons over her chest to form the rebel insignia. “Come! You want hard way? This way hard as diamond!”

The four figures stood there, still, sizing one another up. The three slavecatchers held their spears low and with both hands. Tossing them was too much of a risk. A miss rendered them helpless. Though Quartzite was armored there were still places where the armor plates were jointed which could allow the spears to slide into her flesh. They had medium length capability but nothing beyond or below that. She was short range only and had to survive long enough to get there.

The stalemate was finally broken by Quartzite, who released an unearthly howl and dashed straight for the trio. She looked ready to crash through the three speaks and hope her armor held.

The three spearponies dug in their hooves and set themselves, intending to have their spears beat her armor with the rigidity of their stance. They brought the spears to the same level and pulled them in slightly, concentrating on the area beneath the gold and silver insignia on Quartzite's chest.

Quartzite's armored footfalls rang out loudly as she pounded the broken cobblestone street, and the clanking of her armor plates added to the cacophony of her mighty howls. She carefully examined the arms of the three ponies as she ran, noting exactly how far they would reach when they stabbed forward, and just how ready they were to thrust up with them.

Several things happened at once, almost in slow motion. The trio judged the time right to give a mighty thrust, to meet the oncoming momentum with some of their own and add to the impact of the spears. Quartzite also judged the time right to throw her shoulder forward and toss herself down, tucking into a roll. The thrusting spearheads grazed her shoulder and rang loudly through the abandoned town.

Quartzite clattered loudly as she rolled over, going from her side to her back to her paws. Her arms had been held at her sides, the muscles tense and storing all the energy she could muster. They whipped forward as soon as she could muster the stability, the hammer in her right hand shattering one of the kneecaps of the unicorn on that side, the sickle in her left biting bone-deep into the thigh of the other.

Without hesitating a moment she gave a titanic bark of rage and effort and leaped up and forward. Her armored bulk, propelled with great force by her muscular legs, shoved up the spear in the shocked grip of the earth pony. Her momentum carried her helmeted head into contact with his chin, snapping his head back with a sharp and sickening 'crack.'

The end result of the charge and roll was the three stallions downed, the leader dead and the others gravely wounded. The one with the gashed thigh was already slipping away. He was gushing blood so badly it was obvious a major vessel had been sliced open. The one with the crushed knee was screaming and holding his injury, blubbering loudly while attempting to scoot away.

“No! Please no! No!” He cried out, watching Quartzite approach and the deadly weapons being lifted again.

“Many women beg for mercy,” Quartzite growled, her armored form and the echo of the concealing metal adding to the intimidation of the sound. “You not give mercy! You make rules! Only do what evil pony want done.”

“It wasn't my idea! It wasn't my doing! We were told! We were sent!” The stallion whined.

“Yes! Sent by caribou!” Quartzite barked.

“I have some treasures! I do! I promise! You can have them and the rebels don't need to know!” The stallion pleaded.

“Can give much? Anything?” Quartzite asked, slipping the weapons back into her belt.

The unicorn breathed a sigh of relief, looking much more relaxed though no less pained. “I have a lot of good stuff from the plundering. I can give you almost anything.”

Quartzite's armored hands were on his head in an instant, twisting it violently to the side against his objections. “Want old world back, bastard child of tatzlwurm!” With a single, hard wrench she snapped his neck and dropped his unmoving body to the ground.

Quartzite slowly rose up, panting heavily, fingers slowly flexing. She heard gentle hoofsteps behind her and the light sound of fingers on the plates of her back.

“You were magnificent,” Verdant whispered, running her digits over the scrapes on the brass and steel armor plates.

Quartzite stood up tall and proud, head as high as she could get it. “Pretty pony is too kind. Now, take to rebels and then go take manor...”

“No! No...” Verdant said, turning away with a sigh and the hanging of her head. “I... I want to see it. After all they did... I want to see it happen.”

“Yes, understand,” Quartzite said softly. “Anger in many women. Why they fight like starving cragodiles, make good warriors. Watching help women feel better. Will take and protect pretty pony, let watch evil caribou die.”

“Thank you...” Verdant whispered, taking up a position behind Quartzite, a few paces behind. “It's easy to find if you just go where I said.”

“Two miles, up road, low part of wall can get over,” Quartzite said with a nod.

“Right. You'll make some noise but... you can probably take care of that,” Verdant said softly.

“Fear nothing. Will storm manor, kill caribou, protect pretty pony,” Quartzite barked proudly before setting off.

The two-woman parade clanked along the ruined road, made tossed, muddy and cracked by the neglect and active destruction of the occupiers. Quartzite was marching boldly, taking long strides and leaning forward as though already facing an enemy. Verdant was behind, an arm's length back from Quartzite and occasionally having to run along to match the huge Dog's long strides.

The pair reached the manor in time, the first rise of the roof making Quartzite drop down and more slowly approach.

It was a small sort of manor. It had three floors and no wings, but the floors all looked suitably tall and wide. Part of the roof on the left side was caved in, weeds and ivy had grown over the grounds and the walls; algae chocked the broken fountain; most of the visible windows were cracked at best or broken at worst. The wall that ran around was in a state of disrepair, better or worse depending on which section was concerned, while the iron gates at the front were locked and chained shut, and also patrolled by two spear-wielding pegasus stallions.

“Not go in front,” Quartzite whispered to Verdant. “Could take ponies but would alert more. Come, show low part of wall.”

Verdant led Quartzite around the wall, keeping to the thickest of the surrounding bushes, leading her eventually to a part of the wall that looked to have suffered some collapse as well as sinking. It was a dip, and just enough to allow Quartzite to climb up and over. “Good, can use. But need make noise first.”

“'Noise'?” Verdant queried. “I would think that would be the opposite of what you need.”

Quartzite initially passed on comment, looking at the wall rubble and finally picking out a substantial stone. “Leader teach us, noise where are, always bad. Noise where are not, always good.”

“You mean a distraction?” Verdant asked.

“Yes! Own noise less noticed, if send guards off following first noise...” Quartzite drew her arm back gathering up all the natural strength she could muster and aiming near the front of the manor, yet also towards the opposite side of it from her.

Quartzite's arm launched forward like a torsion ballista, the huge stone propelled powerfully over the wall and out of sight, impacting with a powerful thud a good distance away.

“What was that? It sounded huge,” one of the guards called out, two sets of wingbeats audible and moving toward the location of the fallen stone.

“Cling to back, must do fast,” Quartzite insisted, offering the broad expanse of her armored back to Verdant.

Verdant hesitated a moment, fingers tracing the armor plates before she resolutely leaped onto the huge Dog and clung to the unmoving metal with all her might.

Quartzite bore the burden like it was nothing, grabbing the top of the dip after a small leap. She used her powerful muscles to yank herself up hard and draw her sturdy body over the top of the low portion of wall. She had no need for grace or fineness once she had crested the dip, throwing a leg over, turning to face the inner wall and letting herself drop down with a muted clatter of armor.

Verdant, who had been silent and still, slid off of Quartzite with a small tremble, breathing a bit raggedly. “That was... oh my... I had the distraction of adrenaline when I did it. I didn't have the luxury of thinking about how foolhardy that was...”

“Yes, not for ordinary folk. For trained ones,” Quartzite agreed, nodding her armored head slowly. “Where came out of manor? Will follow path to master. Kill first, then others. Chained gate mean cannot escape.”

“If you go further around the corner there is a window in the back that leads to a room they often saw me in,” Verdant said as they snuck along the side of the manor. “I was allowed to be in there because it was thought to be a dead-end. But I got the window open.”

“Clever mare. Know how escape, how survive. Would be good rebel,” Quartzite said, with a smile in her voice.

Verdant waved off the compliment, her hand gently brushing the plates of Quartzite's back again. “I'm not that great. Not compared to a woman like you. If only this hadn't happened. The fall, the capture, all of it. Things could have been different.”

“Can be different,” Quartzite said matter-of-factly. “Will be different. Leader sees world, like old world. Back to way world was. Will have peace, will have love.”

“I like peace and love,” Verdant said, pressing her fingers a little more firmly against Quartzite's back.

“Shh, time for quiet,” Quartzite suddenly said. She had spotted the open window, and dropped her posture even more, doing everything she could to properly conceal her armored bulk as she worked her way along toward the opening.

A peek inside showed some measure of good fortune. No guards had been stationed within, and the door leading into the manor proper remained open. The room itself looked like a very small drawing room, though largely bare save for a pile of torn cushions that could serve as a makeshift bed, and a few wooden skeletons that had once been fancy furnishings. The parquet floor was torn up, and the walls were heavily damaged, both the wooden lower portion and the plaster above that.

“Sorry for manor. Caribou and minions too stupid to leave beauty,” Quartzite mumbled as she pulled herself up and over, through the window to land with a dull clatter and scrape of armor.

“Objects can be fixed. Other things...” Verdant let the statement hang heavy in the following silence, as she daintily pulled herself up through the window and into the room, once more pressing herself against Quartzite's armored back.

“Understand. Now more quiet. Not want to kill unless must...” Quartzite drew her hammer and sickle, shuffling her way slowly along the floor, rather than risking the ringing of her brass and steel sabatons on the hard floors. She could see that beyond the parquet of the drawing room the floors of the main house were stone: dressed, quality marble.

“He has staked out the highest point. The attic over the third floor. I tried to tell him that wasn't an actual habitable space, but he... he beat me for speaking out of turn and said it sufficed for a caribou,” Verdant whispered, pressed tight and close to Quartzite's back and shuffling her own hooves in time with the Dog's shuffles.

“Live in smallness, squalor, ugliness,” Quartzite whispered back. “Like traitor Dogs. Ugly things live ugly life.”

There were no sounds of motion, which would have been instantly apparent, which was curious. Verdant had said that there were guards and traps. Likely the guards had been dispatched to hunt down Verdant, and the traps would be silent until sprung. Quartzite kept an eye out for pressure plates, tripwires, pit openings and other such things, the extent of caribou technological advancement.

The whole time Quartzite moved, in agonizingly slow shuffles, Verdant was there with her, pressed against her back, stroking the articulations in the armor and whispering encouraging things. Quartzite's sensitive ears picked up simple flattery, but also warm statements of thanks, and promises of some for of personal reward when all was said and done.

Ascending the stairs proved to be slightly easier, as a torn carpet still ran down the center, and helped muffle the footfalls. Also in the realm of 'lucky breaks' was that the stairs to the third floor were beside the stairs from the first, meaning they did not need to stop on their way up.

“Attics stairs are where?” Quartzite asked, as she made her way to the stairs to the third floor.

“At the far end of the corridor to the left when we arrive at the third floor,” Verdant answered.

“Are loud when pull down?” Quartzite queried.

“No need to worry. He keeps them down at all times,” Verdant said.

“Fool. Good. Fools die faster,” Quartzite mumbled, cresting the stairs and turning her head, checking both sides. There was little to the upper story, mostly just the landing, and three corridors. Straight, left and right. The rest of the place was a collection of doors. As said, there was a rough wooden staircase at the far left, leading up into the ceiling.

“The rooms are empty now, they ripped them up and use them for living quarters. But anyone not on patrol is probably still looking for me,” Verdant whispered.

“Then can take evil caribou down quick,” Quartzite said firmly, taking long, slow strides along the corridor. The center was still carpeted, though the carpet was stained with all manner of things and rather ripped up.

The stairs up to the attic presented a unique challenge, being made of wood and lacking any muffling at all. Careful steps minimized the noise of the travel, each step being taken in turn, with the slowest and most careful motions. “I never thought such a powerful creature could move so softly...” Verdant whispered, practically clinging to Quartzite's back again.

“Am not fool. Trained by leader so am strong, but tricky. Leader says tricky most important, make hard to fight against. Rebels very tricky,” Quartzite breathed, just barely audible as she reached the top. She poked her head up, to see what she could.

Like any other attic, it was dusty, and gloomy. But daylight streamed through the small, high windows set into the place, shining on fallen piles of antiques and broken bits. Despite the chaos there was still a wide path through the middle of it, which led to a bedroll, a window, and the caribou who had misappropriated the manor.

He was another northman cipher, an identical and dull thing of tan fur and a rack of antlers. He wore the standard suit of cloth armor sewn with scales of metal, though they looked to be Equestrian or Dog-forged metal, rather than the brittle mess the northmen themselves made. His back was to the entrance, which revealed the sword strapped to his back, a titanic, two-handed thing that looked like a mass of nicks and chips, a more genuine example of the forging of the northmen.

Quartzite decided the time for subtlety was done. She pushed down hard on the stairs and leaped up, landing with a heavy, armor-rattling thud on the attic floor, drawing the attention of the caribou. He seemed less than surprised. “So... a Dog. But not one of ours. You wear blasphemy against our pitiless majesty. You must be a rebel.”

“You not own place!” Quartzite barked, her powerful voice ringing around the attic. “Take from owner! Are thief and monster! Will die for crimes against nation-state!”

“Your precious nation-state died first!” The caribou hissed, pulling the sword off of his back and showing the ease with which he worked the great weapon. “Your leaders are gone. No one buys this idea of an unbroken line. It doesn't matter that they still claim The Silent Voivode is in the royal line, your leaders surrendered!”

“Did not have right!” Quartzite cried out. “They surrendered. Did not surrender nation. Only passed ruling. Legitimate government stands! Now stands with Silent Voivode, who writes to rebel leader!”

“Yes, the rebel leader. The Phantom. I don't believe such a creature exists. It's impossible,” the caribou grumbled.

“Yes, is impossible. Leader do impossible things before get out of bed,” Quartzite said with an amused tone. “But is not important. Time you die. Then can kill others.”

“You won't find me that easy to kill, you stupid cunt!” The caribou dropped into a fighting stance, one hand high on the grip, the other on an edgeless part low on the sword blade. “I am a caribou solider! Tough, skilled, and male. You are a lowly cunt, my natural inferior. It shames me to even fight you because you are so unworthy.”

“Come, test blade on armor! See how 'inferior' bitch is,” Quartzite growled, thumping a meaty, armored hand on her chest, below the insignia. “Forged this armor, stood and panted over glowing forge for days, made strong, invincible!”

The caribou held his position, sizing up Quartzite. “Fast weapons and slow armor. How stupid. You think that one will offset the other. But you are wrong! I will teach you how wrong. I wish I could torture you properly but your death will have to be as instructive as all that.”

“Stay back, is time for fight,” Quartzite barked at Verdant, carefully directing her to the side.

“Don't worry, just win, for me,” Verdant said dreamily, scurrying off to the side, amongst a pile of small boxes.

“My slave seems to have chosen a new master. She will pay for her treachery,” the caribou snorted.

“Am not master or mistress or other! Am heavy scout for rebellion, is only thing,” Quartzite said, taking a step forward and brandishing her weapons threateningly.

“You don't even know how to use power!” The caribou shoulder, sweeping and stabbing the blade a few times, in demonstration of his technique. “You use force and control to get all you desire, you don't just let folks be free!”

“Must be free, make world stable. Unstable world terrible, hurt old and young, feed selfish slime and suck life from victims,” Quartzite countered, not taking the bait and just holding her weapons still after her threat display.

“More of that worthless drivel from the pathetic cunts you follow. You just don't understand being a master! But how could you? You're female, a stupid womb with legs and a mouth that needs to be punched until it shuts up,” the caribou coldly said, moving his hand from the blade to join the other on the grip.

“Come, shut up bitch. Come, dare stupid caribou,” Quartzite snarled, beckoning with her sickle.

The caribou spat towards Quartzite, his face falling into an annoyed scowl. “This delay of clever talking is so feminine and useless! How do females stand living like this?” He charged down the center of the attic, sword held low and ready for an upward sweep.

Quartzite didn't comment. She dashed forward in her juggernaut fashion, armor clattering loudly in the enclosed space of the attic. Her hammer swung out and down, to catch any upthrust while she cut across at chest level with her sickle.

The caribou had feigned his attack, the sword sweeping in directly from the side. The attacks interacted, the hammer blow taking away some force from the strike, though the sword still rang loudly against Quartzite's side, while the distraction of the sword strike and the off-balancing made the sickle's diamond tip just scrape against the caribou's chest.

The two-handed sword came up in a quick defensive motion as the caribou stepped out of the close range of hammer and sickle. “Your quick weapons don't make up for the slow armor. You'll get fatigued faster. I'll win when you falter. And you will because you're a woman.”

“Bones are steel so still can feel, but mind has shield of diamond,” Quartzite said, backing just out of effective strike range, and chancing a glance back at Verdant. She was watching intently, while her hands dug through one of the boxes.

The momentary distraction allowed the caribou a chance to sweep into a huge slice, which Quartzite only barely managed to avoid with a very uncharacteristic backwards stumble-hop. She twisted awkwardly aside as a second sweep swept up, grazing her armor on her shoulder, and had a chance to organize a parry with her hammer when the caribou drew back and stabbed at her.

Quartzite continued to stumble back, losing round by inches as she looked for the opening in the surprisingly quick assault. Two-handed weapons often had the disadvantage of being sluggish, but with proper training and enough strength the great mass could be put into motion and whipped around with lightning speed. But like the spear, the reach of a two-handed weapon was effectively medium, being exceptionally poor at close range.

She pushed forward when the caribou pulled back to try and other sweeping strike. She forced her armored form against his front, momentarily pinning his sword between them. He had to stagger further back to free his hands and take a swing. The arc was small and the force was poor, the chipped blade ringing off Quartzite's armor, though ringing loudly and leaving a small dent and nick.

They pushed and pulled, wavering in the middle of the room as they fought for their ideal positions. Medium-range sword strikes competed against close-range swings from the deadly sickle and the threatening hammer. Her armored form would resist blow of the sword but made her a large target, and if he mustered the right force he could deliver severe pain, and damage to the armor, enough to make her vulnerable to a thrust into the articulation.

Quartzite could read the action with some degree of care. He was trying to wind up an overhead chop. If he connected and severely dented her helmet or crushed an ear the pain and distraction would sway things to his advantage. She tried to push her advantage but he staggered back far enough to bring the sword high. Her hands were in just the right spot to turn the move to her advantage. The right thrust with her hammer would stop the chop and she could follow through with her sickle to gut him. She dropped to one knee as the sword came down, thrust up the hammer... and paused.

She was not formally trained in magic detection. Her capabilities with mana-reading were low, but present, as with most dogs. She left that to professional scientists and enchanters. But she still claimed some capability. She was just good enough to read a mana trace, like friction against her armor. She couldn't quite feel through it, but she knew the slight distortion of a living being through the brass and steel. It made her fur stand up a little. Especially with a familiar trace. Like the hands that had been on her back all day, feeling over the articulated plates, feeling over her spine, and ribs.

She couldn't hesitate. If she was wrong it would be a tragedy; if she was right but did nothing it would be fatal. She needed to live, to at least deliver her data. So as the sword bounced slightly off of her hammer, having taken a sharp bite into the brass surface, she twisted to the side and lashed back with her sickle, at the neck level of a mare.

A thin stiletto blade rasped sharply along a plate of her armor, the twist denying it swift entry into an articulation and her vulnerable body. The sickle found brief resistance as the leading diamond point pierced Verdant's throat and the rest slid smoothly through, with scalpel-like precision.

The stiletto tumbled from Verdant's hand, as her eyes grew huge and disbelieving. She gurgled out a few soft questions, as the crimson stain at her throat grew. Blood spluttered from her lips as she fought to breathe, eventually falling backwards, clutching her throat and spasming wildly as blood pooled around her.

Quartzite turned on the caribou and launched herself forward into his body, her momentum knocking the wind out of him. She bulled him along until she practically crushed him against the fall wall, demolishing the flimsy table that had been there using his body.

The caribou coughed and struggled for breath as he slid down to his knees. He released the sword, which Quartzite threw to the over side of the room. He recovered just in time to find the diamond point of the sickle under his chin.

“Traitor! Was red-throat traitor to nation. Leader says, they want wear red at throat, we oblige,” Quartzite snarled, her hammer hand held up high.

“She used to be like she seemed,” the caribou gasped out, still not quite recovered from the huge charge. “A filthy dyke who believed that women had some kind of right to be alive. When we found her hiding we beat it out of her.”

Quartzite turned to briefly regard Verdant, who had stopped twitching in her puddle of blood. “Once was... could have been. If life were same, if old world lived...” She suddenly released a collection of howls, yaps, and noises both above and below the caribou's hearing range, in a quick, short burst.

“What was that? You sound like our Dog collaborators when they talk together,” the caribou noted.

“Is expression in Dog lands. Mean, 'Like magic diamond of two-fist in size in situ, found by one Dog, shattering at last scrape of Dog's own claws when would have tumbled out to paws.' Literally,” Quartzite said. “But is not supposed to be literal. Mean... fate take away beautiful thing by accident, and Dog was responsible. Doing on purpose, but doing on purpose to do normal thing, when fate say that action will make bad thing happen.”

The caribou spat disdainfully and ground his teeth as the diamond spike pushed under his chin. “No matter... you ruined this! Ruined a perfect opportunity to destroy you rebel scum!”

“Use beaten pony to bring rebels to you? Not good; I kill three guards,” Quartzite said smugly.

“They were supposed to be outmaneuvered, not fought. You rebel types are supposed to be all about sneaking. I guess that was a flaw that could have been fixed,” the caribou grumbled.

“How many have killed before?” Quartzite asked.

“You would have been the first,” the caribou said. “You spoiled it. There could have been so many of you, dead. So many innocent lives taken for the glory of our pitiless majesty, The Dead One.”

“No,” Quartzite said sternly, hammer-wielding hand trembling as she prepared to bring it down. “Will stop death of innocent at...”

“One...” the caribou said scornfully, looking past Quartzite to the body of Verdant, well aware of the sort of worthless, feminine 'emotions' which were embraced by the pathetic rebels.

The hammer came down with a furious strength, and a subtle whistle. The last thing the caribou heard was Quartzite's guttural, yet regretful intonation of the word, “Zero,” before the hammer crashed into his skull, driving his shattered head down onto the point of the sickle and stealing away his ability to hear the agonized sobs that wracked Quartzite a moment later.

Tale Three point Five: Suffer the children

The town of Gaskinwich lived again, in some abstract sense. The dead no longer lingered above ground, picked clean by carrion hunters or sharing their dominion with apex predators who fed on their lesser carnivorous cousins. The rebellion had done their sweeps.

Guarded scavenger teams picked up usable materials and sent them off for processing. Gravediggers had performed their sad duty, building a cemetery for the known and unknown found strewn through the town, with rows of Princesses-marked stones behind walls of brick and mortar. Cleaners had tidied up what broad things they could, rubble and debris getting carried away. The divots and holes remained but they were at least clean, like a debrided wound.

With the fallow land turned, and the place rendered sufficiently clean, the town was turned over to homesteaders. A mix of Equestrian citizens, mostly ponies with a few donkeys, Changelings and Diamond Dogs, were given the homes and a starter set of furnishings, and told to make it work, with assistance.

The Equestrian government-in-exile had had its statisticians choose a complementary mix of inhabitants. They had the proper proportion of those with necessary social and manual skills to form a functional town. Farmers were paramount, with laborers of a general sort below that, followed by artisans, crafters, and even supportable entertainers. The old Equestrian bit was put into circulation, and as expected the population took to using it very naturally, as if nothing had changed.

Because of the efficiency of the selected population and the dedication of those who wanted a return to what they had known the town achieved stability and full repair in a matter of months. It genuinely resembled a pre-fall Equestrian town, with all the buildings back to their proper states of repair. The artisans had even recreated the destroyed statuary and decorative touches as they most likely had been.

The town got visitors now and again, from the main body of rebels, the active fighters who also followed up with projects such as resettlement. In Gaskinwich's case, the visitor on a particularly sunny day after their repair was the one who had cleared the town and nearby area, Quartzite the Diamond Dog.

She came into the town still clad in her suit of brass and steel plates, with the helmet covering her features. Her impressive robustness still spoke of a Dig Dog, and her polished gold and silver chest plate still spoke of her loyalty to Equestria and Harmony. The steel sickle and brass hammer still hung at her hips, even though she was walking into a peaceful place. She would not allow herself to forget she was in a war.

She clattered her way down the streets, casting glances around at the town and remembering how it had been that day. The day she came in, when she had met Verdant and...

It was all very different. Not just swept up and given a pretty facade. It felt really and truly alive. The lovely cleanliness rang with the understanding of an active hand maintaining it. Voices mumbled in the background, distant conversations from an active and vibrant community. She could distinctly smell baking bread and pastries, and hear the ring of metal being hammered, as well as the small shop owners crying their wares.

She turned into the main portion of the town and was greeted with a wall of sound. All the happy inhabitants called out to her, all of them knowing on sight that she was the one who had cleared the area and made the place safe for habitation. Ponies and others came up to her armored form, nodding and smiling and some almost weeping as they thanked her. The small kiosk owners offered her goods, which she humbly waved off. She didn't need that.

“Did you need an escort to the Mayor of this town?” A unicorn female asked, a plaster cast over her amputated horn showing her to be a freed slave.

“No. Not official visit,” Quartzite wurfed from behind her helmet. “Come to see how town doing.”

“We're growing and happy, all thanks to you,” the mare said with a bright smile.

“No, thanks to all who work. Thanks to you, to all who fix and clean. Only scout area, make safe. You make live again,” Quartzite stated, humbly.

“We all did it. We're all connected after all. Just like in old Equestria, we rise as others rise and fall if they fall,” the mare said with a nod.

“Yes, is true. Thank you for kind greeting, but want look around,” Quartzite said.

“Of course. Enjoy your time in Gaskinwich,” the mare said, waving to Quartzite.

Quartzite wended her way along the streets, finding things as she had when she entered. Happy folks and the active signs of a living town. It warmed her heart and made her tail wag as she made her was out of town to the more rural-ish section.

The farming area was just as active and alive. Plants thrived under the careful and loving hands of the ones brought in to tend the crops. Grains, fruits and vegetables stood in carefully-tended rows, hands walking the fields, waving to Quartzite when they happened to notice her.

“Hello there!” One of the farmer earth ponies called out to Quartzite as she passed, leaning over the wooden fence enclosing a small field of wheat.

“Hello! Field looks nice. Much food for all,” Quartzite said.

“There will be, once I get it all reaped and ready,” the farmer pony noted with a sigh. “But, it's just me and it's a big job. Not that I mind but I was hoping for some help, but no one's come around today. That sickle looks plenty sharp and it's made for this kind of work.”

Quartzite pulled the sickle out of her belt and regarded the steel blade tipped in sharpened diamond. “Is tool from farm... but use for war. Is for killing evil, not harvest...”

“It'll work just the same, probably better because it's sharp,” the farmer said, picking up a scythe and sweeping along near the base of the wheat, cutting the stalks down with some ease, thought the blade was not as sharp as it could be.

Quartzite vaulted over the fence, landing with a heavy clatter of metal plates. She had never done anything like harvesting before, but got the basics of the act from watching the farmer. Her razor-sharp sickle whipped easily through the stalks, and she gathered them up as she went, pulling them into ample bunches.

The field was not an especially large one, but it did take some dedicated work. Between the two of them the job was done with a good bit of speed. They were setting up the stacks of cut grain to dry, tying them off with rough twine at their well-pinched middles.

“I'm fairly certain the blood on your sickle won't affect the wheat,” the farmer joked as he arranged a stack.

“Always keep tools clean,” Quartzite asserted with pride. “Represent hope of old world. Must look right.”

“I don't know about looks, I just care that you can get rid of those caribou,” the farmer said. “And looks like you can. We're living here now, after all.”

“Yes, Gaskinwich good town now. Clean, strong, have life,” Quartzite observed.

“That's what I missed the most about the old world. That feeling of unbounded life and joy,” the farmer said with a sigh. “Sorry to have kept you from what you were doing.”

“No! Is fine. Was only walking,” Quartzite noted, going over the fence again and wandering her way further into the rural area, with a parting wave to the farmer, who began whistling as he tidied the standing bunches.

A short space down the road she found a collection of children, mainly ponies but with some others.. They were all in a small age range, not too young nor old, very much pre-teenage. They were gathered around a thick tree with a branch thrust off low to the ground, backed by another near it but higher. They had some slats of wood with them, along with wooden mallets and carpentry nails, and were endeavoring to hammer the wooden assemblage together into a structure.

“What young ones to? Try and build?” Quartzite asked, tilting her armored head curiously.

“We want a treehouse, like we've seen in the books and magazines from the old times,” one of the little colts stated. “But... we can't really do much. It's hard to use those mallets.”

“Mallets only part of problem. Need plan,” Quartzite informed them, clattering her way over and sweeping her hand along a patch of dirt to create a smooth surface. “Not know how work with wood, but am Dog. Know plans.”

“Can you help us build this?” A small filly asked, looking into the eye-slits on Quartzite's helmet.

Quartzite nodded slowly. “Can help. Need make plan.” She scratched lines into the dirt slowly, playing various glyphs around the developing diagram to note dimensions and angles. As she drew she noticed that one of the Changeling nymphs was hiding behind a burly young donkey. “What matter? Changeling scared?”

The Changeling whispered to the donkey with a sibilant hiss, his eyes only briefly flicking to Quartzite. The donkey nodded as he listened and said, “He says your armor is scary. Armor makes him think of the caribou that came into his hive-space and hurt the 'lings inside.”

Quartzite winced. She had heard tell of what the caribou did to to non-compliant Changelings who had not managed to escape Canterlot or who thought they had found a safe place outside of rebel notice. “Sorry. Not mean to scare friend. Will fix.”

Quartzite unhesitatingly pulled off her helmet, revealing her jowly Dig Dog face, and pale gray coat color. She smiled to the children, who had gathered together a little closer, and started working the hidden catches that held on the pieces of her armor. The heavy suit of plate metal was pulled off piece by piece, revealing her broad and stocky body of heavy muscles. She also revealed her under-padding of cotton-stuffed linen, styled like a tank top and shorts.

Fully divested of the confining suit of armor, Quartzite stretched out grandly, looming high over the children, and smiled again. “Is better?”

The nymph at first made no move to come around the protective donkey, but slowly stepped around after a moment. He approached Quartzite with trembling steps until he was nearly against her, and looking up with some degree of awe and wonder at her jowly face. All of a sudden he threw his arms around Quartzite's waist and squeezed tight.

“Oh! Is better, yes,” Quartzite said with a booming laugh, which set the other children to laughing. She stroked the nymph's chitinous head and took her brass hammer from the belt of her set-aside armor. “Now, want small house for play? Is best can do with wood and nails and no training.”

“That would be really nice,” the nymph mumbled, voice almost lost in Quarzite's body as he hugged her tight.

“Good to know have love, do good for good of all,” Quartzite said, glancing down to her scribbled plan. She set one of the boards across the lower branch and used swift, powerful strikes of her heavy hammer to drive the nails into the wood, securing the first piece of the house to the tree

She worked fluidly and efficiently, moving with an easy grace without the close press and great weight of her armor. The killing strikes of her terrible hammer-blows were converted into a creative endeavor. The nicked-up face of the hammer struck each nail solidly, and twice each. Once to set it, again to sink it. As she followed her plan she softly sang old songs of the Colonies, of mines and gems and the joy at being in the Colonies, and the later songs about the wonder of vassalhood to Equestria.

The Changeling nymph that clung to Quartzite was the first one to try singing the strange songs, working his voice to try and match the ultrasonic and infrasonic points in the songs which he felt in the membranes of his wings. Soon all the children were gamely singing along as best they could, making every effort to imitate the unusual barking and growling words of the songs.

The tone of singing and working changed as time went on. Quartzite began to sing the Dog versions of popular pre-fall Equestrian songs, wagging her nub-tipped tail wildly behind her. She also used her hammer to set the nails, directing the children to use their mallets in turn, everyone taking up the task of sinking the nails. They took pride in their work, and scuffled over the right to take a turn on the circle of nail-strikers.

The structure crafted by the little party of workers was little more than a box sitting on one tree limb, and leaning against the one above and behind it, with a roof that sloped at exactly forty-five degrees, and an entrance which was merely the front half of the box removed.

“Mm, not fancy. Need next team, decorators. But good, strong thing. Dog-made. Fit to plan, by rule and square and compass,” Quartzite said, as she regarded it with her young charges. “And not have rule, square or compass! Is more impressive.”

“This is amazing! Come on and play with us!” The nymph pleaded, still firmly and snugly squeezed around Quartzite's middle.

“Oh no. Not have need be back now but...” Quartzite began to protest but found herself faltering as she looked into the nymph's hopeful blue eyes. She sighed in resignation but put a large smile on her face. “Yes. Will play. Go, start play, I come.”

The nymph happily buzzed his wings and finally dislodged from around Quartzite's midsection. He rushed off to join the other children in what looked like a game of tag. Quartzite smiled as she watched that, briefly thinking about the time before, when all children were free to play. She could almost ignore the war, the loss, the insanity. In Gaskinwich, even though she had been betrayed there, she could almost forget anything was wrong.

She became keenly aware of the massy weight in her hand, the brass hammer reminding her there really was a war. Females suffered, screamed and died in abject misery, while resisters only looked forward to the eventuality of death. One madman's bitter selfishness made it necessary to bear the weight of the armor, and carry the tools she did, changed from their normal purpose to instruments of death. She ran a finger over a huge line on her hammer, the bite of that caribou's sword. Even if she ignored it, Gaskinwich would always mean more than what it had become.

Quartzite resolutely set the heavy hammer down with her armor, intentionally crossed with her sickle in the rebel insignia. She was a heavy scout. She was fighting a war for the past. She was never to forget she had a duty. But in that moment, she could walk away from the armor and weapons, turn her smiling face to the laughing children, and give a loud wurf of abandon as she ran to join them in play.

”Suffer, they suffer, the children

When I see them, gods, my heart aches!

Is it ever and always the children

Who pay for their parents' mistakes?

Who pay for their parents' mistakes?

-Mercedes Lackey, Suffer the Children

Tale Four: The Stolen Child(ren)

The grim reality of the Northmen's invasion of Equestria came into sharpest and most hideous focus when it was remembered that nations were not made entirely of adults in the sexual prime with appealing features. The very old and very young still existed, and were forced to serve the new order in a manner that shored up their rotting structure.

For the very old, menial manual labor was demanded. Those males not fortunate enough to be ruthless and capable of dominating mares were sent with the elderly mares to make products and lift loads until they dropped down from exhaustion or succumbed to diseases and injury. They were confined close to the main cities, so they could be easily massed and then thrown away.

The children presented a different problem. Breeding camps were producing new children for the new order, as were slaves in cities on their masters' schedules. There were also children from before the invasion, not yet of an age for official activity, but very often victims of unofficial abuse. They all, too, needed to be controlled and concentrated.

Many of the stronger children were forced to work on the farms, desperately trying to supply the nation with enough food. They were there getting strong enough to either take up the position as future abusers or survive the abuse to be visited on their unsuspecting bodies.

The youngest ones, however, needed to be raised to that level of development. Large and strong enough to hold a farming tool, a mining tool or to sit slumped over making some product. Until that point they were effectively useless, drains on the new order's resources and destroyers of entertainment. They weren't simple sexual objects yet, but were a necessary expense in order to keep up the supply of victims and victimizers. They couldn't just be starved or ignored to death like the sexless old.

They children from birth to an age of sufficient development and basic education, when not raised by slaves in a specific master's home, were raised in walled camps far from the centers of civilization, so no one had to think about the responsibility inherent in keeping a population growing.

A few well-tamed females tended to the screaming infants and fussy toddlers, under the watchful, and disdainful, gaze of bucks and stallions who loathed the assignment. Most hated every minute of it. They could abuse and violate the caretakers, but not too much, as they had to be healthy enough to do their jobs. They took out such frustrations on the young, when they could get away with it. A few did not hate the posting, and took every advantage they could get away with, never fearing reprisal.

The children were afraid of the place, being so alone, and so far away from everything they had known. Some younger ones could still barely remember how things had been before the fall, what it had been like to have loving parents and a caring extended family. They had shadows and whispers in their young minds of cheery songs, delicious treats, bright colors and a world that was lush and green.

The northernmost child maturation camp teetered on the edge of the Equestrian habitable space. It was a land in perpetual gloom, and in the snowy season it could pile well in large drifts. It was also nearly swallowed up by a dark and imposing forest. It was, in some way, two forests. A coniferous wood had grown up to the edge of an established hardwood forest, which was on the side of the camp which got less snow.

The trees stood like woody bars, the darkness and tangled collection of low bushes beneath the gnarled and imposing forest titans were their own version of guardians. The caribou and their minions regarded the mental effect of the frightening trees as a general good. Beasts were hiding in that wild tangle, and the very sight stirred something in the pony psyche. The forest primaeval was the last true unknown in their world, and would gobble them whole without a trace.

Though the keepers regarded the forest as more an intimidation tactic than a real threat there were still whispers about it. They weren't meant to believe in the beasts that supposedly lived there. But they believed in the beasts they could see out of the corners of their eyes.

In the cold gray distance, past the bone-decorated walls of the camp the forest barred them in as much as the children. And beyond those bars were the wardens that they could not name. Flitting shadows streaked just past perception and focus. Whispering sounds flitted past their capacity to note any detail. They were real beings beyond the trees, real creatures whispering words in their ears. Real creatures that hated them.

They never said a word; it would have been blasphemy to confess to a 'female' emotion like fear, or uncertainty or anything like it. They couldn't risk their maleness on shadows and whispers. They acted tough in front of each other, violated the caretakers or abused the young ones, and slowly went mad from paranoia.

There was more to the shadow-show besides the creeping fear that slid up their spines and gripped their attention. The gray distance almost seemed more gray than what they had ever experienced. It went beyond the bleached blandness of the new order; the stallions had grown used to the colorless pall cast over what had once been a pastel world. They were inured to a land that was various shades of boiled oatmeal. Even the caribou stationed there noted the grayness of the environment, and it struck somewhere in their ice-encrusted hearts.

The wind, when it wasn't whispering across their ears in words that were not words from all the muttering, was moaning through the dour and dismal trees. The hanging needles of the conifers drooped like weary and hopeless creatures seeking some small reason to even bother to go on. The hardwoods, their branches stripped by season and wind, rustled as the tips of their branches touched, skeletal and looming in the low light. They were all but dead, living but not living well.

Long shadows reached through the closing of a day or stood out in harsh starkness in the watches of the night. All that they touched took on the darkened thoughts. The emptiness influenced by the isolation and fear made it hard to feel much besides a dragging depression.

Within the compound, in the areas for offices and living quarters some spark of something remained. Not much but something. A little touch of anger. It was some measure of anger that drove the abuse, but even more was invested in the petty. Small things grew big shadows in the face of the fear and sorrow.

Annoyance prickled all the ones who were working inside the structures of the camp. This or that little thing would go missing, to turn up under a desk, in the yard, occasionally in the equipment of another. They might simply move from a spot on the desk to another spot, without witnesses. Sometimes they would just vanish for good, driving the frustrated fury of the searcher higher and higher as he scoured the whole place for the vanished object.

The children themselves seemed quite immune. Most could not speak of their resistance. Of those that could, most would not. Those few that confided in their caretakers simply told them about the animals. The animals made them smile. They bounced or strolled by the fence, they sometimes came into the fence, all to act in a manner that would make the poor children smile.

It was strange to the caretakers, and fleetingly confused the males who happened to hear. Animals hated all aspects of the new order. The magic which altered minds added a tinge of some undefinable ugliness to the holder which repelled many animals. Almost every skittish and small creature would be repelled by the abhorrent presence.

The very few who spoke reported they weren't small animals. They were very large small animals. All of them the size of a large dog. Rabbits, squirrels, birds, mice. They were punished for making up such stories. But they said the animals could still make them happy.

The unhappy stallion tasked with leading the camp was a brutish pegasus named Thunder Blast. His coat was a reddish-toned black color, like an ember-filled charred piece of wood, while his mane and tail were both bright yellow and quite spiky. He had been a singularly unpleasant, but tolerated, pony before the fall. He needed little help to go over to the new order when the time came.

He regarded the bleak and dismal assignment as some kind of punishment or torture. He had no love for children, carnal or emotional, and the caretakers were too fragile to bear his play and still do their jobs. He had been told it was a great honor to run the facility, that it would step him to a higher position. He was ready for the higher position.

Thunder regarded his desk blankly, looking on the paper work he was doing but not really seeing it. He was more focused on the fact that his hand had been reaching out for a pen which was no longer there. He had had things go missing before, but the latest act finally got to him.

The monotonous, tasteless rations served in small portions; the cold and fearful chill of the dark and clawing woods, along with the suffocating angst and ennui that came of long shadows and sighing wind; the children ever near, worthless and asexual little annoyances stealing his time; the frustrating little hings, the misplaced objects and lost things. It was all grating on his mind, like a rasp on a block of wood.

The lost pen made him sweep his desk with a roar of rage, his wings flaring powerfully. “Ridiculous! It's a pen! How does such a thing simply vanish without a trace?!”

In the ringing silence that followed the outburst the air grew heavy, as if filled with magic. The tiny reprieve of sound was broken then by a tiny puff from some indefinite point, along with a small sound that resembled a sigh.

Thunder cried out again and attacked the room itself. He ripped the battered drawers out of his desk, turned the desk over, looked under, behind and in everything he could get his hands on. “I heard you! I hear you now! Where are you? I know someone is in here!”

Another sound of puffing came, and another heavy feel of magic worked through the room. He tossed aside boxes, paper weights, knives, papers, chairs, everything. He sought smaller and smaller intruders until even his own warped and furious mind had to admit he wasn't going to find children that small. There was nothing but clutter. To add insult to injury, he didn't even locate the missing pen.

“A trick? How female,” he snarled, bloodshot eyes casting about for hidden openings, where sounds could be piped into the room. “Who would dare play a trick on their commander? I have the power to have you reassigned. One word form me and you will be another moaning cunt whipped to bloody ribbons in Canterlot...”

No sound greeted the outburst, just the last echoes in the shut room and the stillness of the thrown-aside objects. There was still a strange press of magic, a flow just barely felt in the odd 'presence' that permeated the environment. Something was happening but there was no real indication of what it might be.

“I'm warning you! All of you! Whoever you are, I'll torture until you wish you were dead! Then until you think you are dead!” Thunder stalked around the disheveled room, holding a large dagger that had been thrown down from his desk. “Show yourselves! Now!”

The magical feeling ceased suddenly, and a green fire sprang up around several small objects. Paper weights, boxes, other detritus that Thunder realized he hadn't recalled being there before. The fires cleared to reveal a small collection of white beings. They were smooth, chitinous, with holes through their legs and arms. They were like tiny versions of a pony, but their wings were diaphanous and insectine, they had a horn on their heads between two antennae, and each was holding a small object, including the missing pen.

In the midst of Thunder's confusion the dagger in his hand, which he also didn't ever remember having, washed itself in green fire and revealed another little creature, a female. She pushed open his hand with surprising strength and flew up from his presence.

“What in the name of the frozen north are you?” Thunder demanded, eye growing wide.

The small fae creature did not deign to respond to the question, and did not even look at Thunder as he glared in her direction. She snapped into a straight posture in the air, prompting the others to follow along and thump their right arms across their chests in salute.

“The time has come. Now we summon the queen!” The white-bodied figure cried, in a tiny voice.

“All hail the queen! All hail the queen!” The other creatures cried out in equally tiny voices.

“'Queen'?” Thunder asked, incredulously. “No mere cunt can hold power worthy of such a title. Even that bitch Chrysalis is the slave of his dire and invincible pitiless majesty.”

The female leader of the tiny, white fae spat contemptuously, as did her fellow creatures, at the mention of the execrated name. “Call! Call to she, the queen!”

Thunder was about to comment when the environment began to buzz and hum. The small creatures were flapping their wings faster, creating a sound like a swarm of bees. The vibration thrummed through the air and through the magical atmosphere, rumbling through Thunder on every level. As their buzzing reached a magic-rippling, air-shaking strength all the fae opened their mouths wide to release a high, clear tone that rang off the walls. Soon the tone began to vary, becoming like chanting without the interruption of individual words.

The vibrating environment and calling creatures stirred something in Thunder, something incredibly uncomfortable, which grew into something far more terrible. His stomach cramped tightly, his muscles pulled in, and his very brain seemed to scream at him as the magic of the mind-altering spell seemed to writhe in response. He was bent double, hands on the sides of his head while he screamed in an unfathomable agony. It wasn't a mere bodily pain; his very magic-suffused essence was being ripped and rasped as the dark sorcery of the northmen seemed to want to flee his body but couldn't.

The wooden door to the facility proper shattered inward, showering Thunder with splinters and making him turn as much as he could to protect himself. The doorway was empty, save for a looming mass of shadow just beyond the shattered mass of wood. Tendrils of darkness, seemingly more that mere shadows, reached into the room as the small fae creatures ceased the buzzing and calling.

“All hail the queen! All hail the queen!” The assembly of white fae cried, flittering to the door and standing in two lines, the lead female at the head of the small honor guard.

“Yes...” Whispered a harsh, but feminine, voice from within the pool of black, which slowly turned blood red. “All hail the queen...”

While Thunder's office was being invaded, one of the guard ponies, a bulky earth pony, noticed a heavily-wrapped figure gathering up children, who looked bundled up against the cold. A closer approach revealed that the figure was ostensibly one of the caretakers, looking sad as she prepared the children.

“You, what do you think you're doing?” The earth pony guard asked. “You know you worthless things aren't allowed to wear clothes! And why are these little annoyances being bundled?”

The mare turned to look at the stallion. Her face was lined with a preternatural sadness, that wasn't just expressed, but was nearly being radiated by her dour and grim features. Her cut horn marked her as a processed unicorn, but she wasn't immediately distinguishable from the others the stallion could recall.

“You speak so in front of the children?” The mare asked, her tone one of ineffable sadness.

“I am a male and you are a cunt!” The stallion spat, slapping the mare solidly across the cheek. “I speak as I desire.”

“That seems excessive...” A male voice caused the guard to turn. He found on of his fellow guards, his armor somewhat disheveled but present. The unicorn also wore a look that radiated sadness, though he was making every effort to look strong.

“What's the matter? Do you want to be turned into a worthless cunt too?” The earth pony snarled, turning on his fellow guard. “This is our job.”

“This madness...” the unicorn stallion sighed, his features falling to the perfect sorrow on the face of the mare, “This madness, it brings only pain. The sorrow is widespread. But with no hope, no reprieve, it will eventually wither and die, or grow bitter and unbearable. What good does it do then?”

“'What good'? What are you talking about? Snap out of it! You've been here too long. I'm getting...” The earth pony had been walking away, out of the room with the caretaker and young, when he saw a body on the ground. Naked. Just from what he could he, he could tell it was the unicorn that he had just been speaking to. No blood or obvious marks marred the body, but he was surely dead. “Who... what are you?”

The earth pony was suddenly grabbed by caretaker and ersatz guard, pulled into the room and pushed against the far wall. Green fire washed across their forms and revealed dour, gray chitin, drooping, tattered-looking wan-gray insect wings and horns that rose from their foreheads. Holes were shot through the exposed parts of their hands and their eyes were wide and blank white.

“Your sorrow is tainted with bitterness and misery, as everything is in this filthy world you made,” the male said in a scolding, but sad, tone.

“But it is sorrow...” the female said, her horn glowing with a gray light which was matched by the male's horn. “It may be disgusting and horrid and barely worth the trouble, but it is sorrow.”

“Did you plug the ears of the children?” The male asked.

“And told them to look away,” the female replied with a nod.

“Then we may snap his neck when all is done,” the male said, both fae creatures pressing in, horns glowing brighter as the helpless earth pony screamed.

Elsewhere in the camp another group of children had already been bundled up against the cold and were being led to the fence by a giant white rabbit. The bone-decorated expanse of metal and wood was being slowly deconstructed by what appeared to be giant beavers, though beavers who used their huge teeth and also pliers.

A passing guard noticed the collection of children and the destruction of the fence, drawing his sword immediately. “You little brats get away from there! You know what happens when you disobey! Get back inside and away from those animals!”

The beavers paid no need, but only finished opening a hold in the fence. The deed done they all became washed in a blaze of green fire. The drop of the fire revealed a collection of smiling fae creatures, bodies composed of smooth, green chitin with polished holes shot through their arms and legs. Their horns were rounded at the tips and very short, while their wings were long and iridescent, looking like dragonfly wings.

“You made happiness a rare commodity, and that is not good,” one of the smiling green creatures stated, slowly approaching the trembling guard. “Happiness should flow free and easy through a whole nation!”

“We get so little, and always tainted with something else. It's horrible and disgusting,” another one said.

“And happiness from you is the worst,” the rabbit noted, while he directed the children to exit through the hole in the fence.

“You smile all the time but there is an evil in your smiles. You laugh all the time but it is cold and mirthless. You don't know how to laugh or smile right. Your happiness is devoid of anything happy and consuming it is a chore, not a joy. You sicken us all,” one of the other green fae beings said, though all with a smile.

“We don't want your vomitous fake smiles, with pain behind every grin and giggle. If you can only be happy when others suffer... you don't deserve the ability to be happy,” the rabbit said, leading the last child out of the opening before following behind them.

“If only we could draw out all your happiness. But only Unseelie creatures would dare. You'll keep your capacity to happiness... for however long you live...” one of the green fae said. The whole transformed assembly flashed with green fire, the flames vanishing to reveal their new forms to be large, ferocious tigers.

On the other side of the fence, one of the moderately aged children refused to move. The screams of the guard, along with the rising sound of others approaching paralyzed the little one. He almost looked back to see the roaring carnage, but the big rabbit got in his way. “No need to look back at that. Just join the others...”

“But... I'm too... and if they can do that, can you?” The small earth pony colt asked of the white rabbit.

“I can but... I'm only good at making happy animals, like rabbits. I'm very good with rabbits,” the fae rabbit asserted with a winning smile.

“But...” the colt began, trying to look around the rabbit.

A gentle paw pressed on the colt's shoulder and made him look up into the rabbit's buck-toothed smile. “What's your name?”

“Elmwood...” the colt replied. “Why?”

“Names are comforting,” the rabbit answered. “If we know names we're not strangers. We don't have to be afraid.”

“But I don't know yours,” Elmwood said.

“What name do you like?” the rabbit asked back, without hesitation.

Elmwood considered for a moment, thinking back to happy times before the fall. He remembered comic books all about fun and happy characters. Including one about a donkey who always got things done and was very strong. “Hardy. Like the donkey in comic books.”

The rabbit smiled bigger and brighter. “What a coincidence. My name happens to be Hardy. Do you feel comfortable now?”

Elmwood cringed as a new round of screams wailed from the other side of the fence, along with the roar of tigers and the impact of bodies. He pressed up against Hardy for warmth and comfort before slowly nodding his head.

Hardy wordlessly placed a paw around the colt and hopped along with him on the trail of the other children who looked to be heading into a burrow where other giant rabbits beckoned.

Elsewhere, in the dark and frigid depths of the camp, three guards strolled the corridors lined with boxes and barrels, filled with the rations and surplus of the camp. The shadows danced and loomed in the blow of their lanterns, while the chilling wind made them shiver, as it moved back and forth like a huffing breath.

“Why are we down here?” A pegasus soldier asked, eyes darting around at the wavering shadows that almost seemed to grow and claw as they passed.

“The yowling brats are growing cold and hungry, and we need to bring up more rations and an extra round of blankets,” the commander, a unicorn, said.

“You're sounding a little fearful,” the third soldier said, another unicorn. “Maybe we need to ship you back to Canterlot to process you into a caretaker.”

“I'm as powerful as any other!” The pegasus snapped, turning on his fellow soldier. “I abuse the helpless as we all must, and I savor the y- I savor!”

“Quiet, you jabbering mares!” The commander hissed. “You'll both be made caretakers if you persist in chattering like cunts.”

Before either one could comment on the threat a low, rumbling groan echoed through the stony passage. It sounded like the stones settling, grinding and sliding across each other, but with a strange control. The scrape of stone rushed on the icy wind, whispering and groaning words that passed without comprehension.

“This place...” The commander grumbled, hitting a shadowed stone solidly.

The stones all seemed to scream and groan, the grinding growing deafening and the wind roaring in an icy rush. The writhing shadows on the wall coalesced into solid figures. They were mares, unicorns, their horns removed and shoved into their mouths, all of them dangling from gallows, necks angled unnaturally from the snapped neck of a hanging. They lined the corridor, making it look like infamous Avenue of the Hung in Canterlot, where the most recalcitrant were displayed to intimidate others.

“Why do you break me?” The question eerily echoed, a plaintive wail emerging from every broken throat, uninterrupted by the horns in their mouths.

“Wh-what is this?!” The commander demanded, staggering back a step from the hung mares.

“It's like in Canterlot! What's happening?” The unicorn soldier asked.

“This is crazy... this can't be...” The pegasus reached out to touch one of the hung figures.

The whole line of mares burst into columns of flame that threw unnatural light across the walls while tortured wails emerged from within. When the flames died down the hung mares were replaced by impaled mares burnt to charred husks, resembling the Boulevard of the Burned in Manehattan, established to punish mares who had held professional roles.

As before, a plaintive cry rose from each throat, cracked and blistered lips moving as they called. “Why have you torn me? Have you no pity then?”

The three stallions were stunned into silence. Incredible fear was surging in their core, eyes wide, mouths agape. They were a bare inch from soiling themselves in abject terror. But they knew they couldn't let it show, or else they would risk conversion. They all ground their teeth and stared at the burned bodies.

“What madness is this? Has it finally gotten to us?” The commander asked of the bodies, while drawing his sword.

“No pity for us? No pity from us!” The voices screeched in unison, bodies engulfed in a sickly green fire. Five female figures emerged from the blaze, bodies covered in blood-red chitin. Ragged holes were shot through their arms and legs, and their wings, which were jagged and resembled membranous serrated blades. Their horns were like small scimitars from their foreheads, with a ring of jagged spikes around the bases. Points and spines grew at their joints, and their fae fangs were especially long.

“They're only females...” The commander boldly declared, sword still held up.

“Females. But you know to fear us. You know what we are...” One rasped, in a buzzing voice.

“We are males! We fear no lowly female!” The commander declared.

Following a subtle nod from the one who had spoken the two cringing soldiers briefly cried out as two other red fae females emerged from a green blaze and sank their fierce fangs deep into the stallions' necks. They went silent quickly, and expired not long after.

The lead fae creature curled her lips in a triumphant smile as the commander's sword began to tremble, his eyes growing wide when he saw his only backup bleeding out on the stone ground. “Do you fear us now?”

All the lights were extinguished by a huge, icy blast, engulfing the corridor in inky darkness which was filled with the soul-crushingly terrified screams of the commander.

In Thunder's office the blood-red pool slowly oozed upwards, the shiny substance moving out into a rough shape, like a tall, proud, feminine figure. The liquid pulled tight to the rough figure and solidified into glistening red chitin. The figure was like the red fae that had been in the lower passages, but taller, more muscular, with eyes that had glowing yellow irises in a sea of red. Her horn was larger, grander and more jagged, looking truly imposing. Her wings were larger and looked ever more like a pair of serrated shields. She wore a raiment of red velvet with plates of red-lacquered steel sewn on to make it gown and armor, even over the modest bell. Her fangs gleamed, more visible than normal as her mouth was pulled into a deep, fearful scowl.

“Now see and honor her majesty! See and fear her, the queen! Allies give honor, enemies give fear to her, Phobia of the Fir Darrig, Queen of the Seelie Court!” The white-bodied female fae cried out, the others crying out in celebration.

“Be at ease, faithful Gremlins, and join the rest in the liberation,” Queen Phobia said, with a surprisingly gentle tone.

The lead Gremlin looked up at Phobia and tilted her head. “Are you sure, my queen?”

Phobia nodded and moved away from the broken door. “I will be well. Your loyalty is admirable but the rest need you as well. Go now and deliver my will.”

The collection of Gremlins saluted and the leader bowed grandly. “Your will shall be done, great Queen Phobia. We go!” The lead Gremlin flew off quickly, followed by the rest.

“The Gremlins may look like little, but they can call through the mana-flow. They are such excellent heralds, if limited in their scope. But what wonders they work in their small way. Stealing small things, misplacing other objects, prickling and rankling the mind. You and yours have fed them well on the frustration and anger you have in so ready a store. You have done at least one thing of some use,” Phobia said, voice turning from her kind tone to a contemptuous one, as her gaze turned from the door to Thunder, who was slowly recovering from the work of the Gremlins.

“Wh-what..?” Thunder groaned out the question in a pained manner, rubbing his temples as the magic inside him settled and the strange sensation faded from his body.

“Conversation. Elegantly proper social intercourse. Making small-talk with a truly small creature, showing you infinitely more respect and deference than a crawling load of pestilence like you deserves,” Phobia said, in a buzzing and imperious tone, dripping with contempt behind it all.

“What in Tartarus are you? You look like that cunt Chrysalis painted red...” Thunder huffed out, slowly rising to his hooves and squinting at Phobia.

Phobia hissed sharply, a wave of green fire washing over her, leaving her spiky points much larger, and her mien to get far more hateful. “You do not speak to me of the Unseelie Queen! She has placed herself beyond the pale and broken any hope for a return to the quiet hate of the prior accord!”

Thunder staggered back, throwing up an arm defensively to shield himself from the cold flames. He tried to hold back reaction to the change but the slight widening of his eyes told of some internal surprise. “She's just a tool of his pitiless majesty now! Who makes you, a female, think she can speak to a male in such a way?!”

Phobia contemptuously backhand slapped Thunder across the face, a huge flash of green fire bursting from the point of impact. The slap had the full strength of a fae queen behind it, sending the burly pegasus stallion stumbling wildly to the side to slam his face into the wall. A raw, red patch of furless and singed flesh in the shape of Phobia's hand remained. “I am Queen Phobia, grandest of the Fir Darrig, and ruler of all the Seelie Court! You will not speak to me in such a manner!”

Thunder finally shouted, if only briefly, gingerly touching the burned portion of his face while glaring hatefully at Phobia. “You bitch!”

“Bitches are Diamond Dog females,” Phobia stated flatly. “Your execrable ignorance only enhances the rightness of my contempt for you and the your fellow traitorous milites gloriosus, who think that dressing up in the armor of the foul fool makes you mighty, like a cringing, toothless serpent crawling into the shed skin of an adder.”

Thunder ground his teeth and lurched forward half a step, wrenching back after a bit of the momentum had begun, making himself look awkward and bumbling. “He is your superior. And I am yours as well, being powerfully male. I am your better in every way.”

Phobia gave a low chuckle and a mirthless smile. “Show me.”

Thunder drew a dagger from behind his back and settled himself in a posture prepared for attack. He hesitated, eyes quickly darting up and down along Phobia's body. She stood, casual and unconcerned, arms open and hands empty. Her horn did not glow with magic nor did she do anything but coldly smirk. “You are helpless.”

“You are pathetic,” Phobia countered. “Spare me you hobbling attempts at intimidation, your crippled mind-games and gutless bluffs. I am fae. We can all taste emotion. But I am queen. I can taste it even more minutely. I can taste your fear, your hopeless, helpless fear. It it like sweet nectar to a Fir Darrig. You know to fear me.”

“I fear no cunt!” Thunder roared, holding the dagger out in front of him as a threat.

“I drink the sweet purity of the fear in the deepest core of your soul like clear water, without ever activating my horn,” Phobia rumbled, her smile growing wider. “Your speech says it all. No truly powerful being need remind others how powerful they are, need not denigrate to dominate. All your insults and boldly egotistic trumpets are the impotent bluster of a truly powerless fool. Pathetic.”

“You're insulting me too...” Thunder began.

“Oh! The mindless coward speaks!” Phobia boomed, her tone ringing like the Royal Canterlot Voice, but with a darker echo from the stone walls. “No, I speak truth. I speak the facts I can demonstrate in a cold and unforgiving manner. If it stings your tiny, naked ego that what I say matches what you are it is none of my concern. What I speak, I can show. If you cannot show it, you don't know it. What you have babbled without evidence can be dismissed with all my contempt.”

Thunder's hand trembled, his grip on the dagger getting at strong as he could make it. All the fear he held was plain to her, the terror radiating off of him like mist from a chilled drink. A woman dared defy him, but a woman of inescapable power. He didn't have magical tricks, cheating traps or contrive setups. If what she implied was right he didn't even have backup. He had anger at being toppled from his rightful place by his inferior. That anger drove him forward, arm thrust forward to drive the blade into Phobia's chitinous chest. “I will be obeyed!”

Phobia moved with brutal efficiency, wasting no motions as she responded. She barely twisted her body to allow the thrust to follow through, one hand grasping Thunder's wrist and pushing up. The heel of her other hand slammed into his elbow, passing the point of incapacitation, dislocating the elbow and tearing the ligaments from their anchors. A small burst of green fire accompanied that strike, though only for effect.

Thunder was thrown forward onto the floor, screaming in pain as he tumbled on the unforgiving ground, holding his elbow and looking up at Phobia in disbelief. “Y-you b-bitch! Fucking cunt...”

Phobia shoved Thunder across floor, slamming him to the ground on his injured arm and raising another cry. “Silence! I have gamely tolerated your disrespectful blubbering and bleating, but my patience is not all-enduring. I have better things to do than remain here. I have a facility to liberate. If all have gone well my Sluagh, Pooka and Fir Darrig have slain your guards and freed the children. The Pooka will lead them into the tunnels, and then to the rebellion.”

“Y-y-you're wo-orking for the r-rebels...” Thunder stammered out, fear and pain both contributing to his loss of articulation. “I should have guessed, m-miserable c-”

A wave of red magic silenced Thunder, making him gasp as he felt his very core practically yanked inside of him. He felt suddenly drained, but less afraid. “I said silence...” Phobia hissed. “You can only imagine the mercy I show. As a Queen I don't need the efforts of others to suck your fear entirely out of you, leaving you so suicidally brave you'd taunt a hydra or leap off a cliff. But I will not. That is the Unseelie way. And however you may deserve it, I am Seelie, and I will not compromise myself for you.”

Thunder did feel braver as the siphoning went on, or more to the point, less afraid. “What are you talking about? You're a bug like the Changelings.”

“Changelings are fae. But there are more fae than the Changelings, in both courts,” Phobia stated, ceasing her siphoning. “And the Courts of the Fae, Seelie and Unseelie have been in a cold war for centuries. We sniped and snapped at each other. But when the world was peaceful we left each other alone. Even when Chrysalis attempted to conquer we did nothing. There was no need. She never would have held power long. It was not our matter. But now...”

“Why help the rebellion? They're just worthless and weak Equestrians...” Thunder said, wincing as Phobia used magic to tweak his elbow.

“Traitorous monster! It was your land and now you throw it away... but, I help because it is right. We can no longer be the invisible and imperious Fair Folk acting as though life never touches us. The Equestrians were always right. We are connected. What brings them low brings up low. And while the Changelings always felt it, the Pooka confirmed it,” Phobia explained.

“The Changelings who became Equestrian citizens were Unseelie, who turned against evil to gain stability and uncoerced love. Noble, admirable. They could have joined us but the chose to leave the war altogether,” Phobia said, with a hint of a smile, “It weakened Chrysalis and the Unseelie court, which is when I should have moved against her. But we had never made our war one of utter destruction. We had the luxury of balance, of being the capricious fae, because there was plenty of peace, on which would be grown our petulance, vanity and complex hate.

“Then came your mindless monster,” Phobia hissed, tweaking Thunder's elbow again. “The Unseelie cheered, even if Chrysalis became a flesh puppet, because their forced extraction of feeling became the way. But my Changelings hungered for love from a willing source. My Pooka cried because their happiness was gone. They feed on happiness, and that is the base of all the rest. The anger and frustration for Gremlins, the fear for Fir Darrig, the sorrow for Sluagh, even love for Changelings. It all needs happiness first. Without a base of happiness the negative emotions have no base to which they may return. They spiral down to nothing. Your land is filled with bitterness that permeates all the anger, fear and sadness. And the happiness... my Pooka ate the happiness of one of your obedient monsters, and were violently ill. It was tainted with dark horror.

“Without happiness, the Pooka are sad. And when the Pooka are sad something it wrong, for they show if a land is sustainable or doomed to spiraling death. You are doomed. We would become just like the Unseelie, mere unsustainable parasites drinking down the gall you call feelings while the Pooka become mad, or die out. And as long as I am Queen of the Seelie I will not let my fae suffer!

“So I bring these children to the rebellion. They are my bona fides, to get me into the good graces of this Phantom I have heard of. I will not wait, capricious and mysterious, to see the war resolved. I want the old world back just as much as they do, with one difference. Restraint is over. The Unseelie will feel the hate of the Seelie, and we will show them our true might, our power...” Phobia buzzed darkly.

“H-hello..?” A small voice made Phobia and Thunder turn. At the door was an earth pony filly, bundled up against the cold. “The gray lady dressed me but I was scared. I ran away from the big bunny and... and...” She looked at Phobia and fell to the ground, hiding herself.

“No! No, child... please don't be afraid...” Phobia said, in a calm, low voice. “Please, I'm here to free you. I'm here to take you someplace happy. I know I look scary but I promise I'm nice.”

“You're not so nice to me you buggy bitch!” Thunder snapped.

Phobia ground her teeth but held her tongue, washing herself in green fire and taking on her prior look. It was still intimidating but less so. “Is this better? It's my normal look. I promise you, I'm here to protect you.”

The filly looked cautiously at Phobia and shivered a little. “You're scary... but I want to leave. I want to go somewhere happy.”

Phobia gave a winning smile and motioned out of the door frame. “Please, step away. This stallion hurt lots of others and I have to make sure he stops hurting mares and children.”

“He's always yelling. He makes the caretakers sad and sometimes he hits us,” the filly said with a sniffle.

“Just go, child, I'll take you to a happier place,” Phobia said gently. When the filly was out of sight her magic wrapped around Thunder's mouth, silencing him while she turned a cold gaze on him. “No more crying children...” She reached down and took hold of his head, Thunder ineffectually struggling as she twisted his head and snapped his neck with a muffled crack.

The little filly was obediently waiting down the stone corridor when Phobia emerged, all smiles. “Come away, pony child...” She offered a hole-filled hand to the filly, who slowly took it.

“Are you sure he's not going to hurt anyone anymore?” The filly asked, attempting to look into the room.

Phobia gently led the filly away, stooping slightly so the young one would not have to strain. “I promise you, he will never hurt anyone again.”

The filly smiled, leaning in and placing her head against Phobia's hand. “And there really is a happy place?”

“Absolutely. Just stay with me,” Phobia whispered, rubbing a thumb over the back of the filly's hand. “For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand...”

Author's Note

Just for fun, spot the three literary/creative references in the text. One is obscure, one is semi-obscure and the other is a bit overt.