Xenophobia

Chapter 2

“Hurry up girls!!” the small orange mare called. She glanced through the dense brush behind her, and, seeing her two friends struggling to keep up, sighed in exasperation and sat disconsolately against a nearby poplar.

Sunlight flowed in small streams through the canopy above, splashing the forest floor with splotches of light varying in size and shape. The young filly looked up at the small patch of sky above her, hoping to catch a glimpse of a certain cyan pegasus. She blew a strand of purple hair out of her face and stretched her still developing wings, sighing once more.

“I wish I could fly already…”

She began to imagine what it would feel like. The wind rushing through her mane. Weightlessness. Freedom.

The sound of two fillies gasping for air broke into the orange pegasus’s afternoon reverie. She wrestled her gaze away from the sky just in time to see her two companions come stumbling out of the underbrush.

“Scootaloo!” panted a yellow earth pony, her voice fluctuating in a distinctly southern tone despite her breathlessness. “Ya don’t have to go so darn fast! Anyways, shouldn’t we be trahyin’ to be careful?” The earth pony sat down with a small grunt and her ever-present pink bow bounced slightly in her red mane.

“Yeah!” piped up a slightly less breathless unicorn filly. “You remember what happened last time we were crusading in the forest!”

Scootaloo rolled her eyes at the pink and purple haired unicorn.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. But that only happened because it was nighttime. I betcha half the scary creatures that everypony in town keeps whining about are day-sleepers.”

“Nocturnal,” the little white unicorn said matter-of-factly, sitting herself down next to her red-maned friend.

“What?” Scootaloo responded quizzically.

“The word is ‘nocturnal’,” the unicorn repeated.

“Ugh! Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo cried in exasperation. “We don’t have time for this right now! Do you want to get your salvage team cutie marks or what? Applebloom, help me out here!”

“All right… lets go. Just please slow down a bit fer us, okay?” the yellow filly responded, hopping to her hooves.

“Fine,” the pegasus huffed, “but if we don’t get our cutie marks because you two took too long don’t come whining to me!”

And with that, the three fillies began to weave there way through the underbrush.

Due north: thin smoke rose from the forest.

Gerald was breathing. This in itself was an unexpected development for the young man, but when he opened his eyes he was greeted with an even more unexpected surprise: the ship had not yet landed.

Jer blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the situation. He un-strapped the pilot’s restraints and moved closer to the fore console. The viewport had shattered, littering the myriad of buttons and switches with slivers of flexible fiberglass. The console itself was twisted and shorn, revealing the crystalline labyrinth of fiber optic cables and machinery. Jer, noticing something amiss, glanced to the left and found something else rather interesting: the ship’s steering column. It had been bent to an almost ninety degree angle and was currently embedded in the cockpit wall directly behind him, after having torn through half of the pilot’s-seat headrest.

“Close call,” Jer muttered to himself, turning back to the ship’s damaged instruments.

He brushed some of the slivers from the console, glancing at the altimeter and checking the craft’s event horizon.

According to the instrument, a weighted sphere suspended in liquid and endowed with an aft view of the modified dropship, the Ugly Duckling was tilted approximately thirty degrees downward on the port side and pitched forward by almost the same amount.

The dazed space-farer looked out the shattered viewport and stared at the forest floor below. Somehow the ship had gotten caught in the crook of a very large tree. Jer estimated the craft to be about thirty feet above the ground.

“This feels like a cliché…”

The tree groaned under the weight of the ship, and, realizing he was in the perfect position to lose his head, Gerald quickly ducked back into the cockpit and waited for the Duckling to plummet to the ground.

Nothing came and Gerald settled down to examine himself for injuries. Despite having taken his body armor off when he had returned to the Duckling on New India, Jer had escaped major injury. Aside from a large gash just below his hairline and a few contusions, the human was physically unharmed.

Raymond, however, had not been so lucky.

Jer glanced to his right, finally noticing his unfortunate comrade. He was wedged under the co-pilot’s seat, his left arm twisted at an impossible angle.

Gerald hurriedly crouched next to the man, fumbling for the catch on his helmet. He carefully pried the helmet loose, revealing his friend’s brutally scarred face. All previous injuries. Each with their own gruesome tale.

The concerned man prodded Ray’s neck with two fingers, feeling for a pulse. He was rewarded with a slight thumping pressure, and the sound of faint breathing.

“And that’s why you wear a seatbelt kids,” Gerald thought, relieved. “If he hadn’t been wearing his suit…” Gerald didn’t want to travel that mental road just yet. He had to get the two of them out of there before the whole tree came crashing down.

A gravelly laugh echoed through the confines of Gerald’s mind.

Jer furrowed his brow. A rare frown tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“Haven’t heard from you in awhile,” he mused to himself. “Personally, I prefer your soft-spoken friend, even if he is a bit repetitive…”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Dammit…” Gerald shook his head, hoping to jar the voices into silence. This never worked, but he felt that if he tried often enough he would eventually earn some peace. He missed the soothing tones of his unintentionally inserted radio receiver. The fuzzy music often drowned out the jabbering of the voices, but only to a certain extent.

Jer refocused himself on the task at hand and lifted his immobile partner-in-crime onto his right shoulder. He began to stagger his way uphill toward the rear troop-bay doors, flipping the switch to cycle the locks. The bay hissed open, the thick titanium plated, lead shielded door swinging out to reveal rustling leaves and thick, tangled branches.

Gerald dragged himself and his companion to the open bay door. He had curled his fingers around the left-hand edge of the threshold and was about to swing out onto a thick branch jutting out below when the ship gave a lurch.

Jer froze, considering his options: not move and go down with the ship, possibly injuring himself and his companion on twisted metal and shorn wires of the console below… or jump.

The choice was obvious.

With a loud grunt, Gerald flung himself out of the troop bay, twisting mid-air in order to cushion Ray’s impact with his own body.

The young man and his unconscious cargo plummeted to the ground, voices laughing and cursing all the while.

The crash reverberated through the forest, startling a flock of birds into flight.

The three questing fillies froze immediately, listening.

“M-maybe we should rethink this girls,” Sweetie Belle stuttered.

“Are you kidding?” Scootaloo exclaimed. “Do you want your cutie mark or what?”

“Well… okay Scootaloo. If you think it’ll work…”

Truth be told, Scootaloo didn’t care about getting her cutie mark at this point. She had sat by that window, gazing out from the old dilapidated tree house for years, waiting. Her life had been a constant disappointing monotony of wandering the streets of the nearby Ponyville. The only excitement she was ever a part of was when she was caught stealing food, or Rainbow Dash caught her spying on her. Whenever she wasn’t with her friends she sat by the window and stared at the sky, the forest canopy, whatever. Waiting for something to finally happen. Now it has, and she wanted to be a part of it.

“Well hurry up then. I don’t want to miss this chance!”

The three fillies plunged onward into the undergrowth, toward the sound of the crash.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“I swear I’m gonna lose my mind if… oh… right… hehe…”

Gerald rolled Raymond’s body off of him and sat up. The ship had slid straight out of the tree, nose planting straight into the soft humus of the forest floor and digging a small furrow into it. The aft section of the ship quickly followed suit. Having escaped the crook of the tree, the rest of the ship merely flopped down onto the ground, pivoting on the buried nose cone and producing a loud, secondary thud following the noise of the initial crash. Lacking extended landing gear, the craft settled onto its left side. One of its decorative wings rested softly on the ground.

Relieved that the fall damage looked to be minimal, Jer took the time to take in his surroundings. He seemed to have crashed in a rather dark, forbidding wood. Sunlight streamed through a large gap in the canopy where the ship had crashed through and gave the illusion of a sunny clearing within the overall gloomy landscape. Jer thought he was going to enjoy this new, hopefully temporary, home.

The sudden appearance of three rather large wolves didn’t do much to dampen his opinion of the place even one bit.

They had entered the man-made clearing from the northeast, circling around the recently downed Ugly Duckling. The entire right leg of the salaciously depicted bird appeared to have been stripped off by the bark of its previous perch. Ray wasn’t going to be happy about that. It had taken him nearly four hours to get that leg exactly right, nearly half the time it took to produce the finished product. Jer frowned.

“Well that’s unfortunate.”

The wolves were dark grey in color and looked to be of the timber variety. Gerald wouldn’t know of course. He had only seen one before. It had been stuffed. In a museum.

The three predators leered at their perceived prey: a wounded biped and his immobile companion. They bared their teeth, letting slip low growls that hung in the sultry air.

Gerald grinned and carefully slipped his fingers into the crease of his boot, feeling for his favorite tool. He hurriedly glanced at Ray, making sure he was still breathing. Confident that his friend was still among the living, the exterminator examined the oncoming hunters and closed his fingers around the hilt of his knife.

“This should be fun…”

The lead wolf lunged forward.

Maniacal laughter echoed through Jer’s crowded skull.

Furious barking broken intermittently by pained yelps and a miserable whining sound echoed through the Everfree forest. Scootaloo turned to look at her two friends, only to find them hugging each other, eyes wide and bodies trembling with surprising force. A faint voice drifted through the dense foliage.

“You wanna dance bitch?! You wanna DANCE!?!”

More yelps of pain followed, coupled with the echo of almost childish, yet frighteningly familiar laughter. It sounded almost like Discord…

Scootaloo gulped, gave one last look to her trembling friends, and pushed onward. After a brief hesitation, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle hurried after her.

“I prefer the tango myself, but swing is perfectly alright,” Jer mirthfully declared as he wiped his blade on the mangy fur of the predator-turned-prey lying before him. He sheathed the blade, promising himself that he would sharpen it and clean it fully later.

He looked down at his body armor, which was now adorned with the blood of three hungry canines and one hapless mosquito. Another promise: clean clothing.

A glint of metal caught the meditating warrior’s attention. He stooped down and picked up his service pistol, a semi-automatic handgun with an extended magazine and finger guard.

“Well this could have been useful earlier,” he considered, smirking to himself. “Nah.” He replaced the firearm in its home: the nylon holster on his right hip.

Gerald checked on Ray, propping his head and feet up and covering him with an emergency blanket from the now grounded dropship. He then gathered suitable firewood for cooking. Luckily, the Duckling’s impromptu landing provided plenty of viable tinder and cordwood.

A laser torch flashed. Flames danced in the now dusky clearing. Humming, Corporal Hanes commenced to gut the wolves.

The moon rose and stars formed bright pinpoints in the night sky.

The savory smell of seared dog-flesh filled the clearing and Ray began to stir for the first time. He mumbled unintelligible gibberish for about two minutes while Jer sat and patted his shoulder, whispering encouraging words as he further checked his friend for injury.

Ray’s armor had thankfully taken the brunt of the damage, leaving only large, black contusions… and a broken arm. Jer had set it as best he could under the circumstances, using large sticks as splints and gauze and torn fabric to hold everything together. All other injuries seemed to be superficial. Jer just hoped his friend hadn’t been concussed too badly during the crash.

He had made the man comfortable. Now all he could do is wait.

Jer ambled through the troop bay of the Duckling and changed into an old pair of combat fatigues from his days in the Colonial Marines. He pulled on his leather service jacket, hoping to ward off the growing chill. He grabbed another blanket for Ray. After rummaging about the small bunk area, Jer had a flash of insight. He quickly walked past the troop bay and made his way to the slightly larger vehicle-storage compartment. He peered inside, taking stock of their ground transportation. Ray's and his much fawned over combat jeep was still standing, despite the crash and subsequent tilting of the Duckling. Ray had sure strapped that sucker down tight.

They had stolen the jeep during a raid on Gerald's home colony of Jiboomi: a desert world known for its excruciatingly dry summers, numbingly cold winters, and really rather pleasant spring weather. Many up and coming Company members have spring cottages there. The jeep was a dusky brown color, matching the rolling dunes of Jiboomi quite well, had GPS, a genetic identification ignition system (requiring a fingerprint and quick tissue analysis to start up), a rear-mounted, rotary 50 caliber pulse cannon, and two cup holders.

Jer briefly searched the compartment for their second vehicle, a dirt bike they had purchased a month or two ago while taking leave back on Earth. Weyland-Yutani didn't deem it fit to provide their extermination crews with proper ground transport, so Jer took it upon himself to make sure he and Ray were well equipped with whatever toys he felt necessary. He spotted the cycle in the dim light, lying in the corner of the compartment, having come unbolted from its usual storage rack. Jer decided to deal with the downed bike later. Before exiting the compartment, he checked the fuel supply on the jeep along with the spares. Thankfully, all the extra fuel rods had remained stable during the crash.

The gray-eyed human exited the Duckling, stepping out into the fading light with Ray's blanket. Once having covered Ray again, Gerald circled around to the right side of the Duckling and stopped about halfway down the side of the ship, directly under the wing, and kicked the gray titanium paneling as hard as he could. There was a light hiss that could barely be heard over the crackle if the fire and the panel dropped completely off, revealing Gerald’s personal storage compartment.

Out of the velvet interior Jer salvaged a miraculously unharmed acoustic guitar, among other instruments. Smiling to himself, Jer meandered over to the wing currently resting on the ground and settled down on it, gazing up at the stars. He cracked his knuckles, and began to play a very old ballad he had learned as a child. It was a classic: dating back to before the Weyland-Yutani Company had risen to power in the depressive wake of the global energy failure. He sang softly:

“Am I loud and clear? Or am I breaking up?

Am I still your charm? Or am I just baaaad luck?

Are we getting closer or r’ we just getting more lost?”

Jer heard a faint rustling at the edge of the clearing. He pretended no to notice.

“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours first.

Let’s compare scars. I’ll tell ya’ whose - is worse.

Now let’s un-write these pages and replace them with our ooown words.”

The rustling distracted him again, but he continued to feign ignorance.

Jer began to play a quicker tempo and calmly moved on to the chorus.

The three fillies, using their meager stalking abilities as best they could, crept up to the fire-lit clearing, unwittingly announcing their presence by brushing against every plant imaginable.

The recent trek through the forest had been a nightmare since the three equines had last stopped to the sound of animals crying in pain. Applebloom had gotten thoroughly muddied after slipping down a slight incline into a smelly bog, and the others, while attempting to save her, were ferociously attacked by mosquitoes and voracious biting flies. Then it got dark…

If it weren’t for the warm glow of the mysterious fire in the distance, the three fillies would have most likely broken down from fear. They had been in the forest at night before. But then they had been on the trail… and they had had their capes.

Scootaloo shivered. Even this close to the clearing and the fire, the night chill seeped into her and prompted her muscles to feel especially stiff.

A faint sound drifted over to the three crusaders. Scootaloo cocked her head slightly, listening intently. Somepony was… singing? And isn’t that a guitar? She glanced back to her friends as if to confirm her deduction. Applebloom wore a perplexed expression similar to, if not the same as, how Scootaloo felt she must have looked, and Sweetie Belle had a far-away look in her eyes. She seemed to be mouthing something silently to herself.

The orange pegasus beckoned to her friends and began to creep toward the clearing as best she could. From the sound of slight rustling she inferred that her friends were right behind her.

When the three fillies reached the edge of the clearing, the first thing they noticed was a huge metal structure glimmering in the combined light of Luna’s moon and the nearby bonfire. The second was the smell… a sickly sweet, greasy smell. Whatever it was, it made Sweetie Belle and Applebloom slightly uncomfortable. They were accustomed to rather clean home environments. It didn’t bother the young pegasus, however. She actually kinda liked it…

She bent farther forward, sniffing, trying to find the source of the strange scent. That’s when she saw it. The thing.

It was slightly obscured by the shadows cast down by the moonlight and the flickering fire, but she could make out most of its strange countenance. It was lying down, back against a strut that protruded out of the huge metal structure. It had long, muscular hind-legs, but disproportionally small forelegs, which cradled a beautifully crafted (though dramatically oversized) guitar. It had no mane to speak of, merely a patch of fur adorning its oval-shaped head. Scootaloo couldn’t make out any fine facial features in the dark, but she noted that it had no visible snout. The strangest features of all, however, were the creature’s front hooves. They were flattened sideways and split into five separate pieces. The pieces appeared to be jointed, as they bent every which way along the neck of the guitar, pressing on the strings.

Oddly enough, the creature appeared to be wearing clothing. It was dressed in baggy grey-green leg coverings and large boots. As Scootaloo looked at the creature’s hooves, she noted that they were elongated like those of a dragon. An unbidden image of Spike, the town’s assistant librarian, popped into her head.

On its torso, the strange being wore a dark jacket covered in fabric patches and metal pins of every shape, size and color.

Suddenly, the creature began to play faster, and Scootaloo finally registered the creature’s voice. It had a raspy, masculine quality and lilted softly as it sang with greater vigor:

“We sit on front porches and swing life away.

We get by just fine here on minimum wage.

If love is a labor I’ll slave ‘till the end.

I won’t cross these streets until you hold my haaaa-”

*SNAP*

Scootaloo froze and squeezed her eyes shut.

She had taken another step forward, mesmerized by the sound of the being’s voice, and had stepped on a fallen branch.

There was a soft click.

She opened her eyes slowly to find the creature down on one knee, forelegs pointed straight at her, gripping a metal object with a dark hole in the front.

Scootaloo looked into its eyes: grey as the ash raining down from a volcanic eruption. In its eyes she saw no emotion, no mercy, no deeper meaning. Only grey.

Neither creature moved for an eternity. Then, finally, the kneeling creature lowered the metal object, flicking a small switch on its side and returning it to a black pouch at its hip. The creature’s eyes softened slightly as it regarded the Scootaloo with mild bemusement. A wacky smile graced its thin lips.

“You’re lucky I’ve already caught my dinner little one,” the creature said with a grin, “or I might have shot first and asked questions later.” He (Scootaloo could now definitely tell it was male) stood up on his hind legs and pivoted back toward his former seat, bending down only to retrieve his carefully discarded guitar.

“I don’t really like the taste of chicken anyways…”

Scootaloo sat down with a thump, her legs trembling from excess adrenaline.

“Wait,” she thought suddenly. “WHAT did he just call me?!?”

Jer settled back down on the wing and replaced his guitar on his lap.

“Now where was I?” he thought aloud to himself. He raised his right arm to begin playing once more, but was interrupted by a sharp prod in the calf.

Jer looked down, only to be met with the icy stare of the strangely colored poultry. Looking more closely at the small animal, the human couldn’t help but realize his haste in classifying it as avian.

“It looks kinda like a little horse… but with wings. Cool?”

He was taken aback by the boldness of the creature that, not seconds earlier, had been frozen within the sights of his firearm. The orange and purple quadruped abruptly opened its mouth and spoke with unconcealed rage:

“I am NOT a chicken!”

The creature’s eyes widened exponentially, clearly taken aback by Scootaloo’s outburst. It stared at her for a full second before bursting into a fit of spasmodic laughter.

Now it was Scootaloo’s turn to gape. Her confusion quickly converted back to anger, however.

“WHAT is so FUNNY?!” she raged at the chortling biped, who was currently doubled over in his laughter.

“Please… don’t provoke it Scootaloo,” a voice sounded behind her.

The orange filly turned to see her two friends carefully entering the clearing, flinching at every new burst of hysterical laughter.

The creature sat up.

“There’s more of them?” he cried, eyes wide and mouth still split into a grin to rival that of Pinkie Pie, Ponyville’s resident prankster and self-proclaimed distributor of mirth. He fell back and continued to laugh for almost three minutes. The three fillies sat, confused and slightly disturbed, watching him.

Eventually, Gerald calmed down enough to sit up and lock eyes with the three young ponies before him. Seeing their confused (and in Scootaloo’s case, angry) glares, he tried to explain himself:

“I’m sorry about

“Kill them…”

that. It’s just a little bit surreal for me that

“Kill them…”

three quadrupeds, two appearing to be creatures from ancient mythology and one being a regular horse, are talking to me… in perfect English.” He stopped, glaring off into space for a moment then shaking his head, trying to shut the voices up once more.

“Well of course we can talk,” Applebloom piped up, clearly hesitant because of his strange behavior. “We’re in the third grade!”

Gerald stared at the filly in disbelief for a moment, and then started laughing again.

All three fillies were becoming rather annoyed now.

“HEY!” Sweetie Belle yelled indignantly.

Gerald sat up once more, addressing the young unicorn: “I’m *giggle* sorry. My race has been searching for sentient life for countless generations, and I, of all people, have found it, and my first *snort* contact is with seven-year-old, talking horses.”

This explanation only increased the intensity of the glares.

“I’ll have you know I am exactly eight-and-a-half years old, Bub,” Scootaloo growled.

“Yeah, and Ahm nine!” Applebloom added.

“Was that a southern accent? Jesus that’s cute…”

“Kill them…”

A stirring to the left of the fillies stopped the individual declaration of ages short.

The three fillies jumped as the currently unconscious Ray shifted, causing the reflective emergency blankets wrapped around him to crackle loudly.

“Don’t mind him,” Jer soothed. “He didn’t fare too well in the crash and is gonna be asleep for a little while.”

“So you WERE the thing that fell from the sky earlier!” Scootaloo exclaimed, brightening.

“Well, not me personally, but m-- our ship.” The creature answered, gesturing to his sleeping friend, then to the gigantic metal box behind him. “You can call me Jer by the way, and my sleepy friend over there? You can call him Fuss-Bucket.”

“My name’s Scootaloo, and these are Sweetie Belle and Applebloom,” the pegasus replied, gesturing to the white unicorn and the yellow earth pony. “And we are… THE CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS!!!” All three of the young horses screamed the name of their club in unison, jumping into the air while doing so. Jer flinched and thanked God that Ray

“Hehe… Fuss-Bucket…”

was really unconscious and not sleeping. He had always been a light sleeper. It paid to be easily aroused in their line of work.

“I’m not even going to ask about that little outburst,” Gerald muttered while rubbing his ears. “I assume you three live in the settlement south of here?”

“Yeah, but… how did ya’ know that?” Applebloom answered.

“I noticed it on my way down,” the warrior said with a winning grin.

Having grown to trust the odd biped as only children can, the three fillies began to extol the many aspects of life in Ponyville, pausing occasionally to ask Jer questions about himself: mostly superficial things about his clothing and what the funny smell hanging around the clearing was. He dodged that particular question quite well. Scootaloo seemed especially interested in how the giant, shiny, metal thing could fly if it was so big…

“It probably won’t be flying for awhile now,” Jer sighed. “But I can assure you it usually flies quite well.”

“Mister Jer…” Sweetie Belle asked, a nervous undertone invading her previously animated questioning. “Could you… um… play your guitar a little more… please? I’ve only ever heard anyone play a guitar once, but it was Pinkie Pie playing, and we were all a bit distracted by a swarm of parasprites. Oh wait… that was a banjo… so it didn’t really count…”

“How the hell did… Wait, seriously? Pinkie Pie? Did I die and go to kindergarten? How the fuck did a horse play the banjo without fingers???” Jer thought, baffled.

“Of course I’ll play a bit more for you guys… but shouldn’t you be back in that town by now? From your description of the place it seems that you have pe- I mean ponies waiting for you.”

The three fillies looked at each other anxiously.

“Judging from the visitors I had earlier, the forest is a dangerous place: night and day. Amiright?” Jer asked, understanding finally setting in.

The three fillies nodded solemnly.

The human thought a moment.

“Well you’re welcome to stay here for the night. I’ll set up the perimeter defense system around the clearing and I’ll accompany you into… Ponyville in the morning. If you don’t mind, that is.”

The three fillies, though unsure of what the “perimeter defense system” was, accepted the generous biped’s offer.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jer stated, more to himself than his three-pony (and one Fuss-Bucket) audience. He picked up his guitar, checked the tuning, and, as the moon continued its journey across the night sky, began to play.

Night had fallen on the Canterlot Palace statue gardens hours before. Capering ponies, dragons, and griffons, frozen in marble, danced for eternity under the twinkling sky.

She clawed her way out of the roiling blackness, into the damp night. Into reality once more. She moved her arms with great care, sending jolts of pain through her left, cut off near the elbow but no longer bleeding. She pushed herself up onto her hind legs, using her segmented tail as balance. The sword-like tip dug into the carefully laid sod of the statuary.

"Shelter... food for my children... flesh..."

The ebony giant limped through the gardens, searching the darkness for shelter. She came upon the statue of a snake-like creature, frozen in a state of abject fear, formed as if by a three-year-old in a period of extreme angst against all forms of social order. The statue appealed to her in a way she did not understand. Her tail wrapped around the base of the stone creature’s torso, razor-tipped end clicking against its throat. She leaned forward, opening her maw and caressing the mismatched statue’s face with her second mouth, smaller jaws quivering slightly. A glob of digestive fluid dripped onto the statue’s goatee. There was a faint cracking sound, and the granite encasing the God of Chaos began to fall away.

“Thank you… My Queen…”