About Us, Without Us

„Wake up! Wake up, before he comes back!“

Twilight didn´t like that voice, nor what it was telling her. Sleep felt so nice. Whatever was the pony sleeping on was firm, but comfortable and her blanket was just so soft. There was nothing in the world she wanted more then to sleep there, so Twilight just swatted the sound away and tried to think about what was she dreaming about, before that annoying voice interrupted it.

But her effort was rewarded only by hooves joining the voice in an attempt to ruin her beatiful rest.

„You are under his spell! Break it, or we won´t escape!“

Spell? Escape?

She tried to remember, but the memory was slipping from her grasp. Where was she? Why would she be in any danger?

„I will try to help you, but I can´t break the spell on my own.“

Twilight saw clouded images in her mind. It felt like that kind of dream, she sometimes had, when she was half awake. To one part of her brain it seemed, as if she actually dreamed, but her eyes saw only darkness.

Forest. Dark purple magic, creeping up on her. Branches and roosts grabbing her legs and coat. And finally the memory of somepony standing behind her, saying that they ran out of patience.

Twilight´s eyes shot open, drowsiness leaving her mind like steam above a pot, as she jumped out of the bed.

„Thank the First, you are awake. Quickly, we have to leave, before the grand inquisitor comes back,“ the voice belonged to a young looking unicorn with turquoise coat and same, if bit darker, colored mane made into a ponytail.

„What happened? Where are we?“

„No time for questions! We can figure out, why would the Inqusition kidnap a random unicorn later. Now grab my hoof and do everything I do.“

Unicorn?

Could she not see the wings? Twilight turned her head and first thing she noticed was, that the coat she was wearing before was gone...as were her wings. Princess of Friendship was once again a unicorn.

That realization was like cold pair of hooves crushing her stomach. She didn´t care as much for her ability to fly, but what she feared was what made them disappear. Did this „Inquisition“ stole her alicorn magic? What exactly happened, while she was asleep?

Those all were questions to be asked later, now they had to escape whatever place they were in. When Twilight put her leg on her savior´s, she felt carefuly fabricated magic shield quickly surround them.

Once it was complete, the mysterious mare started walking towards a wall in front of them. Purple unicorn instinctively hesitated for a second, but followed. To a non-unicorn they might´ve looked crazy, but if a building was defended by magic, then the door was most likely the most heavily guarded part. At a situation like that, a simple stone wall was no obstacle at all.

That was proven true, when the turquoise pony, who was just a bit ahead passed through, what for many ponies would be impassable barrier.

Wow. She is skilled. There are multiple carefuly hidden alarm speels in this defense, not to mention traps. If her shield failed now, getting stuck in the wall would be the least of our problems.

Thankfuly it took only about two steps to get outside. Unfortunately Twilight still had no idea, where they were. What they left was a quite big house, in the middle of forest, that could or could not be the same, where they kidnapped her from. What was strange was the house itself.

It looked way too normal. She saw dozens of buildings like that all over her Equestria. It sure didn´t look like a base of any organization and it definetely didn´t look like a prison.

„What is this place?“

„It´s residence of grand inquisitor, Snaky Arcanum. Listen, now I have to do few teleportation jumps and then we will be taken by my people to the base. I swear, that I will answer all your questions there, where we will be safe.“

„Can you at least tell me your name?“

„Sunnyside Glimpse. Now keep holding my hoof and get ready for the jumps.“

Twilight didn´t know, how exactly should she do it, so she just prepared for the change of scenery and the possibility of there not being ground under her hooves right away. And that´s pretty much what happened. For a second like grass green magic flashed in front of her eyes and suddenly they were standing in a different part of forest.

Is this Equestria nothing but woods?

She didn´t have time to look around, because her world flashed green once again and now they were standing at a peak of a mountain. But once again, they teleported away way too quickly to have a good look. The only things Twilight noticed were that this world actually was not purely covered by woods. The other one was huge city towering in the distance.

After the third jump, the mares ended up in the middle of a meadow, next to a lake filled with pure sparkly water.

Twilight expected to get teleported once again, but Sunnyside instead fired a green shot in the air and lied down on the grass.

„Now we have to wait, for our pegasi, to pick us up.“

„Why don´t we just teleport, wherever we are heading to?“

„Huh, you don´t have much war experience, do you?“ Sunyside shaked her head, but it didn´t look, like she was upset about that question. „Sad to say, that Arcanum prick is pure-blooded unicorn. A true master of magic. Tracking down teleportation is a child´s game for him and that´s why we do this procedure. We give him, or his dogs a false lead to waste their time, while we get carried, where we need by pegasi and other winged comrades.“

Sunnyside focused on one direction on the sky and smiled.

„Here they are. Finally.“

Firest about five seconds they were just black dots in the distance, but soon she could recognise, what race they were. Pegasus and a gryphon. Both were flying really fast and after just few more seconds, they were standing in front of them. The pagasus was one to speak:

„Greetings miss Gimpse, I see that the mission was succesful?“ His voice sounded just as militarily, as he looked like. Short green mane, strong body, and stance in general reminded Twilight her brother. The biggest diference – besides the looks – was his voice. While Shining always spoke with care and solicitude, this pegasus´s voice seemed to contain much more cockyness and impatience.

But if Twilight learned anything while being friends with Rainbow Dash, it was that these emotions weren´t necessarily bad.

„Yes, militant. Take us to the base, if Arcanum himself went after her, there must be a reason.“

„As you say my lady. Greybeak, you take the girl.“

The gryphon just nodded in response, turned his back on Twilight and lied down, so she could easily climb on top of him.

„Don´t worry. They are both used to carrying ponies.“ encouraged her Sunnyside, herself climbed on the pegasus´s back and hugged him around the neck. Following her example Twilight climbed on the gryphon and once she settled, both fliers took off.

„You ever flew before?“ Asked Greybeak concerned. It was nice to see, that there still were kind ponies and others in this world, even though it was apparently really bad even in Starswirl´s times.

„Ye- No. Not like this anyway,“ he didn´t question her, just nodded and hopefuly he would take that into consideration. And he actually did, when they picked up the speed, Greybeak grabbed her front legs with his claws and holded her, even though the flight itself must´ve become a lot more toilsome, since it ruined his aerodynamics.

Now, when she wasn´t so scared of falling down, Twilight could finally have a look around. Far in the distance she could barely see a mountain side, but there was no way of knowing, if it was the one, where one of the jumps lead them.

Most of the ground below them was covered by forests, but that seemingly didn´t stop ponies, from making villages and small cities. From her position she could see at least three completely surrounded by forest and about six on it´s borders.

They were too high to see the details, but one town was too large to overlook. The same giant city she saw from the mountain, but from different angle.

„What is that city over there?“ asked Twilight the gryphon, raising her voice, so he would hear her over the wind. He moved his head, to see, which one she meant.

„You don´t know? That´s the Cantergrad. Everypony knows that!“ his voice sounded really suprised and she couldn´t blame him. Even from their hight and distance she could see that it had to be really important. Perhaps the capital? In Starswirls´s notes it was only mentioned, but nothing about it.

„I am not exactly from around here.“

This explanation was obviously all he needed, because he didn´t ask further.

„We will be landing soon.“ spoke Greybeak, and Twilight realized, that she managed to fall asleep during the flight. Her magical sleep propably didn´t truly rested her and the movement of the gryphon worked like a swingining crib for fillies.

At first she didn´t see a reason, as there was no place suitable for landing, but the gryphon seemingly had much better eyes, then her, becaue it took few more seconds, for a structure to appear at the horizont. It looked kinda like a small castle, surrounded by wooden palisade, with tents of all sizes all over the place, but when they got closer it turned out to be something much more simple.

A church, or at least something very similar. One tall stone bell tower, up-close surely beatiful windows...it would look serene, if not for the palisade, wooden towers and dozens of ponies perfroming military training inside and outside the base. No, not just ponies. There were gryphons too and Twilight could swear that few of those pitch black figures were changelings.

„Welcome to the Fort Desire. The largest base of rebellion fighting against the Emperor and his Inquisition for the freedom of every nation in the Union. Let´s go to my tent and we can finally talk.“

Finally. Twilight hated being dragged around, without knowing exactly why. Usually she was the one who knew everything and others were the ones having to rely on her knowing what she was doing. Other way around it felt strange.

But now she finally had the option to talk with the ponies she came to find and help to. But the little she heard about the enemy, made her question, how useful could an unicorn like her even be?

Same time, different place.

„So you think that rebels took her away, master?“ asked a pony his companion, who might´ve as well be his brother. Both were wearing almost identical grey uniforms with pitch black shoulder patches with one red sun each and gold stars above it.

But that wasn´t the only thing. Even their fur color was quite similar. The one who asked the question had light grey, almost white with a slight hint of red. The same color was also his mane, but the shade of red was more noticable.

The second unicorn, besides being the only one with a star above his red sun, had fur grey like wet ashes. But the truly interesting thing about him, even more then his his black mane with purple lines, was the fact that each of his eyes was different color. His right one was purple as the streaks in his mane and the other one green.

„Definetely. There is no way, she would wake up on her own. Damn.“ answered him, with flat voice and turned towards him, so his companion could now see black circles under his bloodshot eyes.

„If you just listened to me! You´ve been awake for at least a week straight, reading reports and enlisting additional guards to villages. You have to rest, it´s no suprise that even a rebel was able to bypass your defenses in your current state.“

„You know I can´t. I can´t just go to bed, when Union´s citizens are in danger.“

„That´s why you have me! And the rest of the Inquisition. Damn it Snaky!“ He raised his voice, leaving the earlier formality behind. „We are not children and we are more then capable of handling this. What if the rebels launch an attack? You are our most valuable asset, but unless you plan to eat tone of garlic and then yawn in their direction, you won´t be much of a help to us.“

A smile grew on Snaky´s face in response to the joke.

„Damn you Necri. Why do you have to always be right?“

„Don´t know. Maybe superior genes?“ asked with a grin.

„Idiot.“ answered him with even wider smile and both ponies left the room, where was previously held Twilight. From there they walked to a living room, where they both sat on armchairs.

The room had barely anything to decorate it. Few pictures of ponies, same basic furniture and a fireplace. Snaky always liked, when his home had only what he needed, so that it would be easier to manage everything. There were few more doors, leading to different parts of the house, but they were all closed.

„So, there are few things I have to tell you, and few tasks I want you to complete.“

Necri stayed silent and waited.

„Your priority is that unicorn mare. You know that tall rock about five kilometers west from my house?“

„Yea.“

„That´s where she appeared. I need to you to go there and search the place for anything that might tell us, who is she, or where did she came from.“

„Sure, but why? I mean, why do you care so much for some random unicorn?“

„I am glad you asked. But first a small lesson about magic. Imagine it as a lake.“

„Okay.“

„When nothing out of the order happens, then it´s surface is calm, but if you throw a rock in there it creates waves. The bigger the rock, the larger waves it makes and the more they are noticable from a greater distance.“

„So you are saying, that something out of the ordinary happened, and this mare´s magic fell into the lake of our world?“

„Exactly. She most likely somehow gained an incredible amount of power at one moment, which leads me to why I captured her. Whatever she did it was riddled by dark magic.“

„Do you think that she was possesed?“

„Propably not, as I never seen a possesed pony to run away from the enemy, but I still couldn´t leave out that possibility and put civilians in danger.“

„Got it. And now I understand your concern. If she is as powerful, as you say, then rebels maybe just gained a powerful weapon to use against us.“

„Exactly. Now, that´s a one thing. Next I need you to go to the Citadel and help Crimson. He will explain the details.“ Yawn. „The last thing is, I want you to work on getting your cutiemark. If rebels manage to turn that unicorn to their side, we will need whatever power you have.“

The last task wiped the smile off Necri´s face. Unlike Snaky, who´s purple snake holding an apple with his tail was known across the Union, and most of ponies who got their marks at early age, Necri´s flank remained blank. By sheer training he managed to become quite proficent at magic, but it was still unclear to him, why did Snaky choose him as his apprentice – the second most powerful pony in the Inquisition.

And Snaky would obviously never tell him.

„It will be done. How long do you expect to sleep?“

„I hope that two days straight, but I expect three. So good bye for now and good luck.“

„Seeya.“

Snaky´s horn shined, but he didn´t disappear right away, like Necri expected.

„Remember. I have full trust in you and there is a reason for it.“

Before the other pony could react, his superior teleported away, presumably to his quarters in the Citadel.

He just can´t ever be straightforward.

With his tasks known, Necri teleported back to the room, they came from. To find one item he noticed and which could help him learn about this new threat. A coat that only a mare would wear and which Snaky must´ve taken off of her, when he brought her.

„Heh. Guess not being a pure-blooded unicorn has it´s advantages.“whispered to himself and after picking up the piece of clothing with his magic he put it to his nose and took a deep breath. Snaky wouldn´t smell propably anything unusual, but Necri´s sense of smell was much more sensitive.

Hmm. A bit of sweat, definetely no blood. Seems like our target is not a fighter, but I can´t know for sure.

Now the coat had no more value to him, so he just put it back and in the next second teleported again. This time he was standing in the middle of the meadow, with a huge rock behind him. Unfortunately he wasn´t as magically sensitive as Snaky, so unlike him, he couldn´t just feel whatever spell their target casted.

Let´s assume, that she wasn´t an idiot and had a look from top of that rock.

The next moment he was there. The unknown surface caused him to almost lose his balance, but he was confident in his abilities.

Okay. I think that village over there is the Old Stable. The only sensible thing for her would be head in that direction.

Necri jumped down, protecting himself from any damage by barely visible grey shield. And just after few minutes of walking through the forest, Necri noticed something off place. Branches were broken, roots were loose and out of ground.

This must be where she was running away from Snaky. Now I have to really look for clues.

„Wait. What is that sound?“ Whispered to himself. It was barely noticable, but he could swear, he could hear something, that wasn´t sound of the forest. It sounded like humming, but nothing that an animal could make, so he headed in the direction the sound was comming from.

„Hmm, what do we got here?“

Apples? In the middle of a forest?

Necri could hear the humming louder now, so he just left the fruit alone. Animals would eat them eventually.

The sound is comming from of that saddle bag.

„What the hell? What is a report book doing here?“

Unicorn pulled the book out of the saddle bag and holded it in front of his eyes.

No insignia. This is not ours. First of, let´s find the other end.

When making these items, enchanters always had to use a crystal as a core, holding the magic inside. But because of this, it was also impossible to protect these report books by any kind of spell. It didn´t matter if it would make it more durable, or to hide the other end. Any shield would sever the connection and render it useless.

What? The second book is...not in the Union? Grey aura surrounding the book got stronger as, Necri tried harder to find it´s sibling.

Another world, huh? That explains a lot. That mare didn´t get rapidly stronger. She was like a stone, that fell from the sky into the lake.

„Let´s have a look inside.“

Necri opened it several pages in, but it was empty.

Not used very much.

So he found the first page, just to see a pretty one sided messages.

Twilight, did the mirror work?

Twilight? Are you there?

The mirror stopped working. What happened?

„So now we know the name. The question is. Should I answer?“

Here´s an idea.

With the book in his hooves, Necri teleported back to Snaky´s house.

There has to be a pen somewhere.

After finding it, the unicorn sat to a table in the livingroom, opened the book and whispered to himself, what he was writting in it:

„My name is Necri. But we´ve found a purple female unicorn. Does it sound familiar?“

It seems, that whoever wrote this, cares a lot about this Twilight. If so, then the answer might come soon.

„That´s her. Please, tell me she is safe.“

„I don´t know that. She was alive, when we found her, but was kidnapped by rebel forces.“

„I take that you are servant of your Emperor?“

How does he or she know that?

„Yes.“

The book suddenly shined with light blue magic. It was so unexpected, that Necri almost fell from the chair he was sitting on.

„Somepony from our world visited your world thousand years ago. He left behind him notes and a portal, which is now closed. The notes seem to describe your government as evil. They are not complete, but our leaders decided to send Twilight into your world, to save you from your Emperor and Inquisition.

I don´t  know, if we are doing the right thing, but I can feel, that you are not all bad. You have no reason to accept my request, but can you plase find Twilight and send her back? She don´t understand politics and is way too trusting.“

So this is what happened? Some arrogant pricks from another world think that they can decide, what is good and what is bad for us? Deciding on uncomplete notes of somebody from thousand years ago?

Necri´s blood was almost boiling and his pen was shaking.

„Don´t care what you feel about me. If this Twilight is innocent, then I will protect her as any other citizen, but if she hurts our ponies, the only thing I will send back to you will be her head.“

Snaky would propably by more deceisive, and tried to gather as much information as possible, but Necri was furious. He usually stayed calm even in the middle of a fight, but if he truly hated something, it was when somebody judged without knowing any informations.

„I wouldn´t expect anything else. Thank you so much. Just few more things I need to tell you. The pony, who visited you back then was called Starswirl the Bearded. Maybe it will be helpful to you. Now I need to destroy this book, so the others don´t know about this conversation. Good luck.“

The report book shined one again with that strangely gentle blue magic, until Necri heard something break inside. With the crystal core destroyed, the sentences slowly vanished, until there was nothing left but a regular empty book lying on the table.

Strange, but there is nothing I can do at the moment. If we knew, where the rebels are hiding, then it wouldn´t be a problem. Guess she wouldn´t  get kidnapped if that was the case. Well, the least I can do is to visit the Imperial Library and see if it has something about this Starswirl. But first I have to find out, what could Crimson – head of interrogation department – possibly need.

And with that thought in his head, the unicorn once again disappeared in the grey flash, just to appear in front of a door, at the bottom of a staircase. That place was just tiny part of the Citadel - ancient base of Inquisition. The whole complex of buildings was more of a city of it´s own, but it wasn´t open nearly for everyone.

Some things were better to leave unclear, just like the room Necri was about the enter.

Unicorn opened the door.

Everypony in the Union realized, that Inquisition used turture as one of the ways to get informations and although it wasn´t often, as they could just use mind spells to read suspect´s mind or to make the prisioners tell them everything, sometimes there was no other option then the old way.

Necri didn´t know why, but he sensed Crimson in this room, so he simply assumed that there was some torture going on. It was always better, if they could just use magic and then execute the traitor, but at the end, he wasn´t against using things like red-hot pieces of metal to „untie tongues“.

The room he entered wasn´t  for torture. Instead of terrifying equipment made for inflicting as much pain as possible, it had comfortable armchairs, table and some other accessories to make visitors comfortable, as this room worked for Inquisitors and their allies to discuss informations they learned and to rest.

Crimson must be in the other room. What is he doing? I would expect more noise.

The door slightly creaked, when Necri opened them and revealed a room, that looked much more like what one would expect. Tilted floor with drain channel in the middle for disposal of blood, long shelves on the walls, with all kind of equipment. Most of them the apprentice didn´t even know, how they worked. But that wasn´t his job, it was of that unicorns´s standing in front of a pony, who was chained to a huge wooden board.

The prisioner looked terrible. Before, he propably was rather handsome orange stallion, but now his body was covered with burned spots, scars and of course – his own blood. At that moment he seemed be unconscious, which was why the room was so silent.

„What´s up Crimson?“

The adressed inquisitor turned to the newcommer. He was wearing the same unicorm, but unlike Necri´s and Snaky´s who had them in perfect conditions his was just like the room and his victim covered in all kinds of bodily liquids.

„Oh, hello Necri. What brings you here?“ Crimson was about ten years older then him, but that didn´t stop them from becoming friends the day Necri joined the Inquisition.

„Snaky said, that you needed some help. So I am here.“

„Oh yea. But I am not sure if you can help. See this pal right here was captured, when he tried to cross from Badlands to the New Land region, without proper documents. After the usual magical scan, we found out not only that he is a rebel, but also that there is a spell protecting the informations. Unfortunately we can´t break it, without him loosing his mind. Literally. And as you might imagine, he isn´t being very cooperative either.“

„Uhg -k you.“

Both unicorns turned to the chained pony, who seemingly was not only awake, but had enough energy to be impudent.

„This is what I have to deal with. Let´s go to the relax room, so we can talk.“

They left the tormented prisioner in the room and after closing behin them, they sat comfortably on the armchairs.

„So what else have you learned about him? From familly of traitors that we could use, or something similar?“

„Nah, we obviously interrogated the familly, but they had no idea about what he was doing, I am sure of it. I asked few questions and sended them home. You can imagine they were pretty heartbroken. I would be too, if my kid turned out to be a traitor.“

„Yea, I get it. Well, suppose he will break in due time. Just boil his leg off or something. Shame that he isn´t a mare. So much easier to break and we could at least have some fun.“

„Assuming I would let you and didn´t  just give her to somepony, who deserves a reward.“

„Pff. Well, guess it wouldn´t be fun anyway, since you now have ball on chain attached to you, so you can forget about having fun with any young meat.“

„I can but you could have fun with him just fine. He is a flowey.“ with the last word, the torturer stuck out his tongue to mock his friend. „Flowey“ was a word used to label a stallion who was attracted to other stallions instead of mares. In the Union behavior like that was strongly judged, employers had right to not let ponies like that work under them and almost always these „floweys“ either suppresed their deviancy, or were send to jail.

„I swear to Emperor...!.“

„Come on guys, don´t tell me, that you would lower yourself to have fun with a defenceless lowlife rebel girl. And joking about this flowey filth is also unfit of ponies of our ranks.“

Both friends looked to the entry door and saw a mare, wearing the same unicorn as them and judging by her smile she heard everything.

„I wouldn´t. I have a wife to be loyal to.“

„I am not talking to you Crimson, but to Necri. He is old enough to finally find a girl to be with, rather then...helping you in your work.“ she walked to the the younger unicorn and gently stroked his mane, as if she was his older sister. In fact they were just friends, just like with Crimson. Her job was the leader of executioners. A sadly needed role in those times.

„Guillotine, you know that I can´t. Too much work to do. Besides. This way it´s much more fun. No consequences and no problems.“

„Although I do understand the enjoynment, I just think you should enjoy life a bit more. Stop eating ration packs for example.“

„Yea, yea. Whatever. Why did you come here, anyway?“ asked Snaky. Thankufly his colleague was willing to let him dodge her suggestions this time.

„What? Can´t a girl sometimes see her best friends? Crimson is too busy with his familly and you spend most of your time closed in your study.“

„I guess. It´s just that I am suprised you have no deep throating to do.“

Hoof stroking his mane suddenly stopped and Necri could see behind her one raised eyebrow a storm comming.

„Get it? Cause Guillotine? It goes deep into the...“ his words were quieter with every letter, until all he was doing was tapping the side of his neck with his hoof.

„I have to go!“

And before the more and more angry mare could react he was gone and she was left int he room with Crimson.

„I wonder how long was he waiting to say this joke.“ Crimson got up from his armchair, expecting their little meeting to end soon. Guillotine was just silently standing, but the unicorn could see a growing smile on her face. Though it seemed sad to him. And he knew why, but couldn´t do anything about it.

„Wanna help me with the interrogation?“