Arcane Shadow (Re-Written)

The battle raged on until the moon was at the apex of the sky, and through it all, the enemy pegasi and alicorns were pulling their manes out of their scalps as they wondered just what had gone wrong for them, and where. Their enemy pulled no punches, despite their small numbers; every advantage they had, they used to their fullest. Weather, magic, magitek, sheer brute force and discombobulation—whatever they could pull from their collective skirts, they used it and used it with abandon.

Furthermore, despite any and all differences they had, they were far more organized than they gave credit for, working together as though they were one. Sure, the guards and Wonderbolts looked as out of place as peacocks in a chicken farm, but that did not stop their offense at all. Having their companions being slaughtered with impunity did not help the invaders' sanity at all, assuming they had their sanity to begin with.

Yet as they fell, something seemed to snap in those who remained. Those who were alicorns had red overtake their eyes completely, the geases scrawled into their heads glowing as their magic began crackling through their hooves and wings and horns and weapons. One took aim at Spitfire and charged, his blaster glowing with a fell power. Spitfire saw him coming, and danced out of the way, her lightning trail connecting with his body.

But he did not drop. He howled with an echoing cry, and kept pursuing her, firing off magic blasts from his horn as crimson bolts crackled along his wings, forming a flight contrail of his own. He screamed through the air, both verbally and magically, as he slowly caught up to her, even as she weaved out of the way of his magical blasts and watched as they exploded in the air around her. Soarin saw the alicorn hounding his leader, and flew behind the pursuer to halt his advance. A few other Wonderbolts saw him move, but had their hooves a little too full with the enemies that were now squawking for blood.

"Fucking murderpigeons! Go back to the shithole you came from!" Anna howled, even as she waved a hoof to send out a spray of smoking seeds that dug into the enemy with impunity. Rainbow Dash shuddered upon seeing vines and wood burying themselves into geased flesh, twisting skin and muscle with the same impunity that it had visited upon Greenwood. The enemies cried out as if they were one upon seeing this, and those within Anna's eyesight immediately turned to her and proceeded to fly in her direction.

"Greenwood needs to be burnt and subjugated for the glory of the Redpine Flock!" the geased cried, horns and wings beating with magic as they started unleashing several payloads all at once. Irony of ironies though, news of what went down in said community didn't seem to have reached these dunderheads yet, which was probably for the better.

Anna's eyes might have widened as the flock began encroaching on her position. Just a little. "Ah, shit…" she grumbled, teleporting out of the way before the strikes could touch her. The attacks sailed all the way to Irongrey's barrier, which rippled as it was struck, but otherwise held firm. She reappeared next to Matt, who gave her a disapproving look.

"Did Lance talk to you about seeding ponies?" Matt asked.

Anna shook her head. "And now's not the time for that," she retorted, even as the geased flock started homing in on her location again. Even those afflicted with the Blight failed to slow down, despite the plant matter racing to overtake them, for their own innate magic combined with the geases cast on them was fighting the affliction.

Natalie sent out another wave of explosive, burgeoning fire. Some of the enemies fell, but most of them charged through as though she had sent nothing at all. Her brow furrowed, and she sent out shards of frost to nick and tear at wings and legs, freezing some solid and causing them to plummet to their deaths. "I think you pissed them off somehow, Bushels," she muttered, even as she sent out bolts of lightning from her horn that failed to deter most of the flock despite catching another few to send to their early graves.

"Gee, thanks, what gave it away?" Anna growled in exasperation, loading up an arrow into her drawstring and aiming upwards. She had to avoid hitting the airship, and the planes, but she hoped that her next attack would hit some of the bloodthirsty flock that was trying to stake a claim on the Aerie.

Rainbow facehoofed upon seeing the Blight struggling to overtake flesh which might already be cursed. "And I thought the Elements of Harmony weakened that bunk of horseapples…" she grumbled to nopony in particular. She dove towards Anna's position, which might have been stupid since the Blight was in action once more. She bashed in a few seeded alicorns, yet strangely the Blight didn't try to spread itself to her for some reason. Perhaps the Elements let Anna have a finer degree of control over the affliction?

Whatever the case, Rainbow could ruminate on it later; right now, she still had a battle to fight, and faces to bash in. She flew onwards, diving beneath a wave of explosive flame and screaming shadows, wondering just how much Fantasia had jaded their casters to basically be efficient killing machines—killing machines that hid their truest nature during their stay in Equestria.

Yet, the enemy pushed on, trying to gain some modicum of ground. A few went after Flash Sentry and his regiment of guards, but the contingent of guards were ready and waiting. As soon as the geased enemies came close to them, they wasted no time using their hooves to deflect the massive blasters with some difficulty and pirouetting out of the way of any magical blasts that so much as sneezed at them.

Spitfire weaved under the airship, dodging the cannonfire as the alicorn tracking her kept encroaching more and more on her tail. She had to ditch this maniac, and soon—she didn't want to know what he had in store for her, if there was anything other than the commands of the geas working within the confines of his head.

She took a quick look behind her to gauge how close the maniac was to her position, and smiled when she saw Soarin racing to catch up to them. She turned back ahead, dodging more volleys from above. Her smile turned into a frown when she saw Red Barrel's aircraft coming towards her instead of around her.

Red Barrel droned out from her radio, "Move aside Fireball, I've got something for that fruitcake behind you!" Spitfire heeded the command, and just in time, too—Red Barrel unleashed a massive missile with another peace sign sloppily painted on it, which had to take a moment longer than its fellows just to emerge. Weirdly, it was sixteen times larger than the one Blue Crow had fired earlier, though it had emerged with no visible signs of struggling, as though conjured outside of the hatch as opposed to within it. Had her aircraft had special enchantments done on it to allow this? Regardless, it moved at lightning speed to hit the lunatic right in the schnoz with a sickening crack.

Ouch. Somepony was going to have his face rearranged in the afterlife, Spitfire mused. As the dunderhead was sent sailing away from under the airship, Soarin darted aside to let him have a clear path to an explosive ending of his ill-fated crusade, and promptly caught up to his captain as they both ducked under the biplane.

Distantly, Spitfire heard a window break, and motioned for Soarin to follow her. They flew to the airship, around its cannons and up its side as they saw glass raining down from above. Further up, some dunderheads had managed to infiltrate the ship, seemingly jeopardizing Golden Chalice and her ride in the process. They nodded to one another and flew up to intercept, flying into the broken window to find a room with a table, a set of stairs, and kitchen-based items beyond a glass wall that was unmolested.

The pair nodded, and flew up the stairs to find a bedroom, a shower, and a lift heading up. The elevator had already gone up, so they flew to hit the button to call it back down. As soon as it returned, they boarded, and waited for it to take them up. Once it stopped and opened up its doors, they raced into the next room to find a most peculiar sight.

Namely, the dunderheads paused to laugh at the gryphoness, who had her tail turned to the steering wheel and simultaneously anchored to it. Also, she had a smirk on her face, and a small piece of magitek in her claws, with a trigger, a slender barrel, an ammunition chamber and bedazzled with gemstones. "Aw, look at you—coming up here thinking I was unarmed," Golden Chalice said, her gaze calm and collected as she holstered a clip into the bottom of her weapon's grip. "At least you had the decency to use the lift. That leaves less for me to clean up."

Before the dunderheads could act, much less contemplate her statement, she fired with precision and grace and speed, unloading six bullets into the heads of the maniacs before her. This wound up leaving a smoking barrel and six ponies falling dead as the ammunition made new homes in their brains. They collapsed in heaps, staining the carpet with their blood. Golden Chalice scoffed at them. "At least the stains will be easy to remove, thanks to those runes I had etched in the carpet…" she grumbled, moving to set the pistol aside in a cubby within the control panel.

Well, she seemed to have the situation under control, at least. "You good?" Spitfire asked.

Golden Chalice turned to the Wonderbolt Captain nodded, and took a moment to part from her ship's controls to pull aside a section of carpet, and with it, a trap door. She reached into the hole and hefted a gem-bedazzled blaster of her own out, hewn of gold and silver and as solid as anything the Aerie produced, engraved with ornate runes that curved just enough to look fancy. "I always make sure my weapons are nearby if I should need them," she said with a cheeky grin.

"And you don't seem to be concerned about this… like, at all," Soarin noted, a feeling of uneasiness settling into his gut as he spoke.

Golden Chalice frowned. "Truth be told, I am… but I cannot show any weaknesses to the enemy," she said tartly. "I would wonder why Starcovert hasn't cast her Geasbreaker spell yet, but the maniacs probably aren't giving her any breathing room to do it…"

"Geasbreaker?" Spitfire asked.

Golden Chalice nodded, her expression souring with the motion. "That's what we call it; she calls it by a different name. It's a spell that can heal burns, defrost, remove paralysis, purify poisons… but she takes a bit to charge it, and her targets have to be afflicted by something for the spell to work. But, when she first cast it, she used it to remove a geas; hence, Geasbreaker," she explained. She moved to open a window next to one of the camera screens, and gestured out of it. "You might want to hop back into the thick of it, because it looks like it's picking up in intensity," she said calmly.

The Wonderbolts nodded, and moved to hop out of the window, pausing only for just long enough to make sure Golden Chalice would close it behind them afterwards. She did, and she waved, and returned to manning her airship, keeping her blaster nearby in case some other idiot decided they wanted to try their hoof at being made to walk the plank. The pair dove back into the fray, being careful to avoid the cannon volleys once they reached the airship's underside, when Soarin noticed something weird. He turned to observe it, and frowned at what he beheld.

"That red-maned mare is charging some kind of spell!" Soarin reported, using a hoof to indicate Natalie. Spitfire twisted her head in the direction his hoof pointed, and then halted mid-air to better see what he was talking about. He was right; some sort of spell was dancing upon her horn, pure white with flecks of gold drifting down her face like small feathers. Runes formed around her spiral, dancing intricately as they framed themselves into a small cross with rope wrapped around its middle and innermost corners. The parts of the flock that ignored the others began to clamor around the crystal mare, and yet strangely, their eyes grew in awareness as they drew closer.

Whatever she was doing, they seemed to recognize the forming spell. "Stop her! She will undo everything!" one geased member cried, charging up a retort to strike down Natalie where she hovered. Matt intercepted the attack, slashing the attacker's head clean off his withers and causing both halves to plummet down below.

"Our livelihoods! Our society! Our stability!" another frantically cried, aiming to use his blaster like a mace with which to strike Matt upside his shadow-cloaked head. He swung and missed, darkness trailing after the barrel of his weapon on the downswing. "You understand nothing! She will cause Redpine to crumble! Stop this at once!" He was met with a sword impaling him through the stomach and clean through to the other side, before the blade sharply wrenched to the side and spilled his guts everywhere.

"Your livelihoods? All you fucks do is fondle mutilated foals and cast them aside to be used as machine fuel when they grow too old to breed!" Matt replied, waving his sword at the incoming tide as if telling them to do their worst. "Your society is built on puppeteering and lies! Your stability's practically non-existent! What do you have to lose by being purified of your geases?!"

Soarin and Spitfire's eyes widened. Was Natalie's spell about to turn the tides of battle in their favor?

The flock continued charging, some seeming to even suddenly forget Anna as the declaration left Matt's lips. Now, most of the remainder were circling around Natalie, hoping to score a hit as her spell grew in size. Anna teleported over to intercept those members of the tide that even Matt couldn't get to, striking them down as they came too close for comfort. Soon, the rest of the flock caught on, and formed a tight, impenetrable ball around the three, clustering together as though of one mind.

Flash Sentry and his contingent regrouped with the Wonderbolts and Rainbow Dash, wondering what was about to happen. The airplanes circled the mass, ceasing fire as they watched hawkishly. Golden Chalice ceased her elemental vitriol, and she didn't even need to look out of the windows thanks to the cameras in her airship relaying to her what was happening beneath the hull.

Yet… whatever it was the flock was doing, they weren't doing a particularly good job of it. White light shone through the gaps between the moving throng of bodies, looking like a disco ball made of flesh and fur that made its own light rather than reflect it. Just faintly within the mass, the Equestrians and pilots could see moving shadows and hails of arrows retaliating, even as the growing intensity of the light began to drown them out.

More geased alicorns and pegasi fell down, by the dozens. The light seeped through more and more with the diminishing numbers, and just as Spitfire opened her mouth to ask what was going on, the spell Natalie charged was unleashed. Runes formed around the flock, circling and forming into a complex spell circle with a rune-engraved, feather-laden cross at its center, rotating on every axis it could. Its golden-white light enveloped geased maniacs as it passed, and as it touched them they stopped moving, hovering in the air as though they had suddenly gotten amnesia and were contemplating how to move forward with that hollow knowledge of the fact.

Soon enough, the battle had halted completely. Red Barrel, thinking fast, pressed a button on her control panel, the underside of her plane opening up and throwing out a net that was anchored to it by a thick rope. The net secured one member of the dazed flock, tying up around his hooves, weapon, horn and wings and leaving no breathing room to struggle or cast spells. She promptly carted him off to the Aerie, with Blue Crow and the rest of the magitek squad following her.

Afterwards, the rest of the enemy flock screamed, aimed their blasters towards their own faces, and started blowing their brains out en masse, a sight that made Spitfire and the rest of the gathered Wonderbolts sick to look at. Cries of "Godcat forgive me!" and "There can be no atonement for what I've done!" erupted from formerly-geased throats as the mass suicide almost instantly reached fever pitch. Seeking to do something, Rainbow Dash flew towards the diminishing flock, grabbing ponies by their hooves to get them to stop.

"But you're free now! You can use that freedom however you want!" Rainbow pleaded, only to be batted aside every time she grabbed a former maniac without fail. "You can get your cutie marks! You can help us stop the rest of Redpine! Just find something to avoid ending it all!" Her words fell on deaf ears, and she realized she wasn't the only pony trying to stop the mass death—Natalie and her squadron had joined in, seizing ponies in shadows, vines and magic with words of their own that, likewise, went unheeded as they were rebuffed in turn.

Soarin moved to intercept the suddenly-suicidal, unable to stand the sight anymore. Yet the first pony he grabbed hit him with a wing, sending him spinning away before he regained his balance in time to see that pony cleave his own skull in half with blaster fire. Flash Sentry watched, his head shaking as he struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. Under the geas, these ponies were maniacs, but now that they were free of it… they had changed completely.

The herd continued to thin. Another few Wonderbolts moved to intercept the former maniacs, joined by some guards from Flash's retinue, making their own pleas that had gone ignored. Spitfire watched as Soarin moved back into the thick of it, trying to persuade them onto a better path than the one they were about to tumble off of. Was this… was this what a geas did in the end, fill a pony with so much regret that, upon being broken, left them with no other option but to take the cold embrace of death itself? Natalie swung her scythe, severing the horns of the dead-eyed, but alas the gesture was futile—those that had their horns lopped off simply stopped flapping their wings and allowed themselves to plummet towards the unforgiving ground below.

Spitfire was at a loss for words. She was unsure of what to do. Nothing seemed to be working, nothing seemed to be stopping the former maniacs from willing themselves to die. Nothing seemed to be stopping them from taking any avenue of death that was available to them.

Nothing was working. That hollow fact alone carved pits into her soul, and she was left wondering… if this was what Redpine did to ponies, then what else did Fantasia have in store for her and her Wonderbolts yet?

It would be a while before the sun bore witness to the tragedy, and its counterpart was already starting to set over the horizon. And their efforts spent trying to prevent suicide would not go unnoticed from afar.

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Spitfire never thought it was possible for the Aerie to have such a desolate place in its mountainous mass, but being a changeling hive and gryphon aerie all rolled into one, with magitek reinforcing everything, this would make some semblance of sense. She and the others who had participated in the repelling of Redpine's attack marched through a solemn hall, lined with sturdy magitek doors on either side, with only bars on those doors secluded in a small square to permit anyone to see what was within.

Up ahead, Red Barrel and Blue Crow wrangled their netted catch, who struggled as much as his hind legs would let him. His horn had been capped, his wings tied uncomfortably tight, and his front legs restrained and held aloft as he was dragged. His muzzle had been clamped shut by a cage, preventing him from speaking, not that it drowned out his muffled cries completely. They sported grim faces, almost as though they had seen this exact scenario play out before—their expressions unnerved Spitfire the longer she dwelled on it, so she turned to the hall itself to see if it could yield anything.

Despite the small bars on the doors, the area was completely, almost unnaturally quiet, with only the sound of hooves, claws, talons, and the muffled whimpering daring to make any sort of racket. Lights flickered overhead, a sterile white to contrast the gray steel of it all. Each door had a lock, but instead of a standard key, they used horns slotting in a similar manner to open and close, which Natalie had demonstrated when asked about the locks.

Spitfire paused to peer into one of the doors' small bars, seeing a disheveled unicorn mare—elderly, blank flank, horn capped—in the room. She pressed her ear against the bars, trying to hear what that mare was ranting about. "Sweetie Belle! When I get my hooves on you, I will make you enter a suitable marriage with the first stallion that wants you! You will be his wife until the end of your days!" the mare inside ranted, stomping a hoof petulantly as the words echoed in her cell.

Spitfire felt a hoof wrap around her own. She turned to the source, to find Matt tugging her away. "That one's been banished from Equestria for the crime of foal-trafficking," he said sourly. "Only reason she's here is because Discord plopped her into our mess hall, and we had to cart her out to keep her hatred from killing any changelings."

Spitfire's brow furrowed, and she let herself be pulled away. "Discord might have neglected to mention that…" she grumbled.

"If it helps you feel better, a former noble came in not too long after her," Matt said with a shrug, letting go of Spitfire's hoof. "Tried using a shitty hotel as a front to start a damn war with us."

Spitfire's eyes widened. "What," she said.

Matt nodded. "Yeah, it's stupid, I know," he agreed. "If you want, when you head back to Equestria, you can ask Celestia about it—when she isn't pulling her mane out dealing with Parliament." He gestured to Natalie and Anna, using the mobile shadows of his mane. "Or them, if you want—they even got to deal with that noble in person."

Soarin frowned. "Didn't that noble make the news this morning?" he asked, turning to Spitfire. "For crimes against the Equestrian crown?"

Spitfire's eyebrows tabled, then furrowed as she recalled reading a paper earlier that morning. Details that she now regretted glossing over stuck out at her, and she wondered who let that plothead even get that far with his ploy. Matt produced a dossier with a flick of his horn, spread her wings for her, and cupped them around the sheaf of papers. "Trust me, you will want alcohol when you read that. I wish I did, but I had to be responsible for once," Matt said, shaking his head.

To take her mind off of… well, everything about this section of the Aerie, Spitfire perused the dossier that had been crammed into her wings as she walked with the group. Carefully using her primaries, she shuffled the papers as she got to the bottoms of the parchments, brow furrowing at what she beheld. The dumbest plan to initiate war between the sister worlds was scrawled out before her, penned in the curviest of cursive that would have been hard to replicate. And yet, whoever wrote this thing hadn't bothered to go over the finer ramifications of their plan.

Said plan entailed using a hotel and the lackeys running it to violate, then murder, two of the Fantasians leading her through this dismal place. As well as the hippogryph foal that accompanied them that night, to prevent her from squealing—whole lotta good that did the involved lackeys in the end. Then the plan derailed into wiping out the Fantasians completely, before plunking a puppet ruler in the place of the alicorn Princesses, who… probably wouldn't have just rolled over for a wannabe tin-pot tyrant trying to pass themselves off as a successor.

"You're right… this is a stupid ploy," Spitfire agreed, amazed that the pony who had penned this dreck was so bold as to assume that his plan would go off without a hitch. "And you say he's here?"

Matt halted at a particular cell to gesture to it, and the others halted with him. "Right here," he said. "He lost both his horn and breeding privileges," he added curtly. "Celestia actually threw him here, knowing he was armed with a weapon that could prevent horns from growing back, and he tried to strike at Anna."

"Didn't expect me to deflect his attack, much less counterattack," Anna added with a snort. "Thought I was just a 'lowborn false alicorn whorse,' who should have died the night of our visit like a good little bitch would do."

Spitfire's brow rose. "He said that?" she asked.

Anna nodded. "In front of practically the entire damn army," she confirmed. "And his son, who's trying to right the wrong."

Soarin whistled. "And here I thought the Canterlot nobility couldn't get any more stupid and entitled," he said, frowning. "The last Grand Galloping Gala we attended, they kept making snide remarks about me and my fellow Wonderbolts being a bunch of no-good, sparkly-hooves, savage feather dusters every time they thought our backs were turned."

Matt gestured to himself using his shadows. "One reason I hid this shit from them," he said. "They'd have drowned Celestia out and would have kept us from speaking if we revealed our true selves to them."

"Bunch of entitled old fuckers, thinking they can just trample on everypony to get their way," Anna grumbled, her wood rustling as her claws clenched. The group began moving again, trotting past another couple of cell doors. "Fuck, what I would do to castrate the whole lot of them and end their precious bloodlines…"

"Now now, their kids might not be as entitled as them," Soarin pointed out, fanning his wings in a calming gesture. "We don't need to be going that far…"

"But the fucks are raising them to be as petulant as themselves!" Anna retorted, turning her head to Soarin with teeth bared. She angled her body a little to better look at him. "Besides, entitlement breeds entitlement! Nip that shit in the bud, and hit me up for some alcohol after!" She made to rant further, when she turned ahead and noticed that Red Barrel and Blue Crow had stopped again to peer into a particular cell on the group's right.

"This one's empty," Blue Crow said, nodding to his superiors. "Open 'er up, and we can let this one simmer down for the night." Anna sighed, trotted over, and slid her horn into the lock before lighting it up with magic. The runes on the lock triggered, clicking and whirring echoed from deep within the mass, and as Anna pulled away the door opened with her. The pilots moved around her to throw their catch into his new home, and closed the door before he could think to scrabble out on his back legs.

Spitfire sighed, and tucked the dossier under her wing to keep it safe. It might make for a good story to tell the other Wonderbolts, and maybe they could use that as an example to not let bits decide everything in the end for future recruits. "So… what do we do?" she asked, glancing at the others.

"Well… we let Bindy McBinds calm down, and interrogate him tomorrow," Natalie said with a shrug. "Besides, we might have to repel more attacks elsewhere, assuming the sky pirates don't beat us to it."

"Sky pirates?" Soarin asked, raising a brow.

"Whole tribe of wingless gryphons, who run planes and a massive airship we dug up for them. They call their mobile base the Big Magnum," Anna answered, turning back to the Wonderbolts. "They came up to us earlier today, telling us that Redpine poked them, too."

"... and how well did that go?" Spitfire questioned.

"Not very well, for the attacking force from Redpine. The sky pirates made quick work of them," Matt answered. "However… the force attacking them consisted of two groups that went after other towns—towns which had been evacuated, temporarily relocated onto the Big Magnum, and then dropped off here until we can figure out what to do with them." He willed some shadows into existence. "Basically, biological folks revealed their true natures, got everypony out safely using their darkness-related abilities, as well as their treasures and possessions and some… important sacred jewels."

"And your biological folks…?" Spitfire pressed.

"Umbrum," Matt answered simply. "And my earth pony father." He shrugged and shook his head. "And there have been no casualties, at least from the towns that got sacked." The Wonderbolts sagged in collective relief upon hearing that. "Either way, we gotta pack the auditorium full of the ponies who lost their homes, inform them of what's going on, and where their new temporary lodging is gonna be." He lifted a hoof and spun it as the last part of his statement left his mouth. "That is, if Lance hasn't done so already."

"Speaking of… they're probably packed into the auditorium by now, and chances are, Lance is already there," Anna said, lighting her horn. "Everybody ready for a teleport?"

Golden Chalice and Rose Windmill shook their heads. "We'll keep watch on our newest catch, see if he simmers down some," Rose Windmill said.

Anna sighed. "Okay then, everybody else? ready?" she asked. Once she received resolute nods for an answer, she magically grasped everyone but Golden Chalice and Rose Windmill, and teleported them and herself into a massive auditorium that was elsewhere in the Aerie. They appeared on a stage, one at the far back of an absolutely massive room crammed with soldiers in many rows. At the frontmost rows were a collection of ponies, which Spitfire noticed sorely lacked pegasi. In fact, she could see two Umbrum amongst them, a lavender mare and a maroon stallion, talking with a hulking, speckled earth pony.

On the stage was Lance, sporting bags beneath his eyes, as well as Shining Armor and the wraithling, sporting likewise. Lance was standing next to a podium, fanning his wings out to halt the clamor. Spitfire was glad to see that his feathers had grown back, but was also impressed with their size, before forcing herself to focus on current matters. "Everyone! Settle down!" he ordered, his voice reverberating across the room thanks to a microphone on the podium. "The attack has been successfully repelled, and for now, we can rest easy, knowing that casualties have been prevented."

"But where will we go?" a pony dressed in warm clothes asked from the row behind the Umbrum pair. "We'll have to start over from scratch!"

"Yes, but we have a city on the top of the mountain," Lance answered, keeping his wings fanned. "Lodging is available there; there is room for everypony whose towns got destroyed. You can stay there for the time being."

"But don't we have to fly to get to it? Nopony in Whitefall or Goldenbrick has wings!" another pony, dressed in light clothes, said from another row.

Lance shook his head. "No; I made sure that there were stairs built into the city when plans were drawn up for it, in case something like this happened," he answered. "And as the city is our residential district, we have more than enough housing to go around."

"Will we have to become soldiers?" another pony dressed in warm clothes asked.

"Not unless you specifically wish for such," Lance answered, once more shaking his head. He lowered his wings a little, but kept them spread. "However, seeing as your homes got destroyed, you might have to move your businesses here for the time being." That got a rise out of the ponies of the crowd, and he shushed them by raising his wings again. "This will not be permanent unless you desire such; this is only so you can continue to earn bits as you have done so before. That way, when the time comes, you can relocate if you desire and buy the materials needed to build your new homes." That seemed to calm the crowd down, as the clamor had hushed once more.

"And as for the flocks of alicorns and pegasi, we will take care of them. We know where they're coming from, and we need to strike them down before they can do this again," Lance added, causing the crowd of ponies to sag in relief. "In the meantime, we catch our breath for the night, but keep our guard up—that way, we won't be blindsided like this in the future."

"Meeting adjourned," Lance finished, and with that, the crowd dispersed, with soldiers helping ponies along to direct them to the city on the top of the mountain. As they filtered out through lifts, stairs, and were being airlifted through shapeshifting holes in the walls, he turned to his group, noticing it had gotten larger while he was delivering his little speech. They moved to an area behind the main stage of the auditorium, mostly so the departing crowd wouldn't hear them.

"... I see you're an okay motivational speaker," Spitfire observed dryly, frowning. "You're not really good with words, are you?"

Lance wilted, and shook his head. "No… and you can thank my shitty folks for that," he muttered in response. He elected to not speak about the Wonderbolts being present, and instead turned to Rainbow Dash. "What's the status of the attacking flock?"

"Deader than dead," Rainbow reported, shuffling uncomfortably. "Except for one, and he's muzzled. His blaster was confiscated."

Lance slowly nodded. "His mental state?" he pressed.

"Tried offing himself as soon as he could, but Red Barrel and I put a stop to that," Blue Crow answered, shaking his head. "It's almost like watching you try to do the same all over again, except with the horn still attached."

Spitfire tilted her head. "Horn still attached?" she echoed. "Discord didn't mention that to me…"

"Look, just…" Lance lifted a hoof and slid it down the bridge of his muzzle. "I'll tell you in the morning, and what you hear cannot leave this hive-nest." He wobbled briefly as his hoof went to rejoin the others. "But right now, I have got to take something for this mana drain I subjected myself to, and then crash into a bed before the doctors crawl up my ass."

Matt rolled his eyes. "I'll take him to bed," he offered, conjuring more shadows to wrap around himself and Lance.

"Wait," Spitfire said, looking at Lance for a moment. "I just want to be sure of something before you do." Matt halted, and waited for Spitfire to continue speaking. "You can fly again?"

Lance nodded. "Yes. Took a potion from a shaman to regrow my feathers, but I can say, it worked," he confirmed. "I might need to get some more flight training in while I can, to steady my wingbeats before we do anything."

Spitfire grinned. "Alright. That's all I wanted to know," she said. With that, the shadows wrapped around Matt and Lance, and the mobile blob of darkness moved to follow the crowd of soldiers and ponies out of the auditorium. She turned to Shining Armor, and frowned. "So… what's all this business about mangled alicorns? Discord mentioned something like that to me, and truth be told, I thought the notion was blasphemous when I first heard about it."

Shining sighed, looking pointedly at Anna and Natalie as he did so. "I think they should explain it," he said, gesturing to them. "Won't you, ladies?" They groaned in tandem, but nodded and hunkered down to prepare themselves to enlighten Spitfire about certain… intricacies regarding the insane planet they were currently standing on the surface of.

Spitfire didn't quite like what she heard afterwards. In fact, none of the Wonderbolts did.