The weapon sat strapped into one of the seats of the APC. It was about the size of a bushel, and that was with the protective casing that had been made for it. Standing a few meters away from it, I felt tightly wound magic straining to escape confinement. But I wasn’t worried. The magic I felt was orders of magnitude beyond anything a single caster could produce. That was the Mega part of the megaspell, but without a spell to amplify, the energy would stay trapped in the device. The other component was a specially modified spark grenade, that was then mated with the spell armature.

“And that’s the plan,” I heard Icepick say. I hadn’t listened to the final retelling. Every detail of it was burned into my mind already. I knew that there was only one way into the complex. I knew that the cost of admission could only be paid in blood. And I knew that it would be paid. “I know we can do it!”

The crowded tent erupted at her words. I expected it at this point. The bulk of the army was following her, even if almost all of them were under the de jure command of Phalanx or the officers from Paradise. At least that’s what I gathered from watching them.

A thought drifted into my mind as I watched. A quick look towards Phalanx told me he saw the loyalty in their eyes. His ego blinded him to the realization that their loyalty was to anyone but him. Every conversation I had with the stallion told me he thought he had the upper hoof. On paper he was correct. His contingent was the strongest part of the army, almost entirely armoured and equipped with heavy weapons.

His contingent was also the army that had mutinied following Icepick’s example. And yet, he thought using me to assassinate Icepick would be his path to becoming High Elder. Still, the buffoon was dangerous, and he would be as long as he continued to draw breath.

“Are you ready?” Icepick asked me softly. She nuzzled against my neck, the words were vulnerable, real. Icepick could play the fearless leader, but it was an act, the character she thought they wanted, the one they needed. I knew better.

“I’m ready if you are, my love,” I whispered into her ear. When she kissed me half a second later, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be our last.

---===*===---

I watched from a prone position atop a nearby ridge as two dozen Ursa’s and mechanized artillery formed a semi-circle around the thick metal door. The door faced outwards from the volcanic rock the complex had been excavated from. Rock was difficult to breach, and a ten-centimetre thick steel door would have required more time and ordinance than we had.

Icepick was watching the vehicles manoeuvre just as I was her armour gleaming in the bright light of midday. But there had been a few alterations to the armour I had grown so accustomed to seeing. Her armaments had been changed to two Imperial heavy machine guns. The thirteen-millimetre projectiles had the best chance of breaking through magical shields.

However, that wasn’t the thing that most caught my eye. She had taken it upon herself to repaint her armour in secret. I had caught her working at the edge of the camp last night, applying solvent to the battered desert camouflage pattern. After realizing I had discovered the project, she readily accepted the help. She wouldn’t have slept a wink last night if I hadn’t helped. And she was the important one after all.

Icepick had chosen a crimson red and light orange to paint her armour. Alternating patches of red and orange danced across her armour without any recognizable pattern. We also left large swathes of the armour naked, and those patches of polished steel were blinding in the light of the midday sun. Light, fire and blood. She had embraced her role, and doing a bit of painting was the least onerous aspect of it.

As the final Ursa rolled into position, I could tell that Icepick had more eyes on her than anyone else. The last command before the assault began was hers to give.

“Fire!” I heard her voice over the radio on my foreleg, half a second before the sounds of artillery fire drowned everything else out. My eyes stayed glued to the doorway. As I peered into the dust thrown up by the impacts, the question of whether or not we’d be able to breach the complex at all was anything but settled. When the doorway became visible again, everyone could see that the door itself was unharmed, but the reinforced concrete around the door was definitely damaged. I thought I could see some steel reinforcement exposed.

I felt a vicious smile spread across my face as I waited for the next salvo. It was weird to see howitzers firing at point blank range, but watching the impact of each high explosive shell, I knew that their overwhelming fire would have no bearing on the rest of the battle. Sombra knew it too.

---===*===---

After an hour of fire, there was a final crash as the door fell towards the interior, the tortured mechanisms finally giving way to the onslaught. The soldiers gathered around the doorway waited nervously for their comrades to fire their flare launchers into the complex. My own rifle was pointed at the darkness beyond where the sunshine fell.

Icepick stood closer to the entrance, behind a wall of sandbags. She was with the volunteers for the first push. If I had thought there was a chance that she would have stayed back during the first wave, I would have begged her to stay. I hadn’t tried.

“Go, go!” I heard her voice over the radio just as the flares landed inside the dark passages. The flash of light seemed to surprise the newly visible defenders, who then fell to the Ursa mounted machine gun fire pouring down the passage. Many more had added their own small arms fire to the fusilade. But my fire hadn’t been among theirs. I had taken off towards the entrance, just behind the vanguard, just behind Icepick.

As I sprinted over the remains of the once-mighty doorway, the sound of weapons fire washed over me. The light of the flares being overwhelmed by muzzle flashes. The corridor opened into a central chamber, with several branching pathways, two to our left, and one to our right.

That was a key part of the plan, and the biggest vulnerability of the complex. If you took the entrance it would cut the complex in half. More importantly, the split was between the research wing and the residential wing. As I reached the nearest passage, I watched a flurry of glowing goop strike the armoured ranger firing into the passage. The green magic ate through their armour and into their body. The stallion beneath wailed in agony before collapsing. There was nothing I could do for them, I realized as I hugged the wall right beside the doorway.

Icepick was firing into the corridor now, the barrels of her weapons already glowing with the heat of fire. There was a shiver down my spine as I realized Icepick could have been their target. When I stuck my head out, I saw the thrall making more of the good while protected by a shield identical to the shield of the other thrall. I watched it get pulled earthward the moment it was created, before a tendril of telekinesis caught it in the air. I had never seen magical constructs affected by gravity before. It told me something important, just as it launched three more of the globs. They travelled most of the way to Icepick before I caught them in my magic. The creature tried to overpower my grip, but I shut my eyes and held onto them with everything I had.

I felt Icepick’s fury as she swept her guns towards it. The dual cannons fired, sending their heavy slugs directly into the thrall's magical shield. The impacts drove it backwards with each impact, its horn struggling to break my grip and maintain its shield against the onslaught. It held for another dozen hits, before shattering entirely. Her guns didn’t let up. The magical thrall was torn to chunks of blackened flesh by the rounds. The rest of the initial defense crumbled as we secured every passage. Each wing had a wide freight passage, and a smaller hallway.

Most of the assault would pour into the research wing, with Phalanx commanding a small force meant to secure the passages leading out of the habitation wing. When I examined the bodies of the defenders on that side, they were Arabs to a mare.

It wasn’t a big surprise, we suspected that Sombra would position his forces solely to defend himself. That left the Arabian ponies to defend themselves and their families. I had no doubt that they would fight with every fibre of their being. It wouldn’t make a difference though, Icepick had ordered them to push to the entrance of the atrium before stopping. There would be enough blood spilled today, we would not add the blood of civilians.

---===*===---

We fought our way into the research wing itself. There, the passages branched into half a dozen, across several levels. Each doorway was a potentially deadly threat and a complete waste of time. Icepick was still at the head of the assault, trading fire with Imperial soldiers and the warped husks of powerful mages. More of the abominations had pushed forward, each of them holding up our force for a time.

If it had been an open field of battle, there would have been more potent ways of destroying the thralls: artillery, missiles, and attacking from multiple directions. All of those options had been taken from us. That left us with battering down the defences of the Thralls with every bullet we could put into them.

So the assault moved forward, metre by metre, as our forces replaced those that fell, and attempted to save those that were merely wounded. I knew Rosetta was pouring every bit of strength he had into saving lives. I felt relief knowing someone as good as him was overseeing triage. That relief wasn’t enough to extinguish my anger at him. I didn’t think that anything could.

I shattered the door hinges with a surge of telekinetic energy, before tossing the door inside with a clatter. The soldiers beside me rushed inside, clearing the corners of the room with practised movements. I stepped inside with my pistol and rifle floating at each side. I was moments away from moving to the next room when I heard a muffled scream. I turned towards the noise and stopped in my tracks. A Paradise trooper was pointing her gun right at the restrained stallion’s skull. His body was covered in bruises, and the look of desperate fear in his eyes filled me with rage.

“Sir what do we-” The trooper began to ask as my horn blinded everyone else in the room. The ropes restraining him were ripped away in one stroke. The stallion gasped loudly as he took his first breath without a gag in his mouth.

“Perm?” He asked breathlessly. Principal, my older brother. My only real family still among the living. Traces of memory flooded my mind. Rosetta had almost taken him from me. He had almost made us strangers. Rage boiled up inside me as I watched my brother move limbs sore from being strapped to a table like a sacrificial lamb.

“It’s me, Principal,” I said softly. He looked upon me as if I were a ghost.

“I- we- thought you were dead,” Principal’s body shook as he struggled to make sense of his surroundings. “I’ve never been happier to be wrong.”

“I never thought I would see you again, I wasn’t myself when I left-” I started to explain, to try and explain all that had happened.

“There’s no time for a proper reunion now brother,” the battered stallion said before losing his voice to a coughing fit that sounded too wet for my liking. “There’s a trap laid ahead of the portal.” As soon as his words processed in my mind, my foreleg was already raising my radio to my muzzle.

“All forces advancing towards the Portal, halt!” I yelled into the radio.

“Sir?” I heard the confusion in the voice of the officer.

“You heard him, hold fast,” I heard Icepick yell over the open mic a second later.

“That one sounds like a real battleaxe,” Principal said with a dry chuckle as soon as the radio went dead. I offered him my canteen, and watched as he drank greedy mouthful after greedy mouthful. As soon as I thought he had all of it down his esophagus I replied.

“She’s practically your sister in law,” I smiled as I watched surprise then embarrassment flash across on his face. He looked just as I remembered. With a start I remembered that my whole time in Sall’han could be counted in months. It felt so much longer.

“I-I see,” Principal managed to get out. “I overheard one of the soldiers talking. They were told plainly that if they got too close to Sombra’s chamber, it would kill them. Painfully.” As he spoke I heard the sound of someone stepping inside the room softly.

“He would do such a thing,” Zenji said bitterly. She sounded angrier than I had ever seen her. “Sombra has cast one of the darkest spells possible. He’s created a soul vacuum.”

“Soul vacuum?” I asked.

“A soul vacuum can only be created by separating souls from their bodies and then absorbing them. The ritual creates a voida over the site, a void that will pull a person’s soul right from their body. It’s a legendary, vile magic, one thought to be lost,” Zenji took a breath. Then we heard the servos of powered armour whirr as it ran towards us.

“Why’d you tell us to stop?” Icepick asked as she plowed through the open doorway. My brother stared wide eyed at Icepick in her painted armour. He went stiffer than a board when she returned his gaze. “And who’s that?”

“He’s my brother, and he’s terrified of the steel monster that just stomped into the room,” I said chiddingly. “Could you-”

The hiss of her helmet's seal disengaging was followed by her removing the helmet and locking it to her breastplate. Icepick’s eyes flashed with recognition when she looked at him again.

“I remember now. You comforted him as best you could when he came back to Maidenpool,” Icepick said. His eyes were saucers as he stared at her. “Okay Perm, I know you wouldn’t have stopped the advance just for him-”

“Sombra has laid a trap before us, one that would have killed hundreds had we advanced,” Zenji cut Icepick off before exhaling deeply. Her brief explanation of soul vacuums hit Icepick like a ton of bricks.

“He wants me to fill the moat with corpses,” Icepick whispered so quietly that only I could hear. She would do anything to save her world. But I knew that this would change her forever.

“Is there anything we can do to bypass it?” I asked with as much false hope as I could muster. Her face slackened, and I saw despair in her eyes for the first time.

“A debt of souls can only be paid in souls,” Zenji said darkly. Then I saw her mouth gape open and her eyes fall upon Icepick and I. “Unless-”

“Unless what?” Icepick asked just before me.

“Unless that was his plan all along,” Zenji replied in a distracted voice. “Icepick, Permittivity, what was the first thing I told you both?”

“You told us our souls are intertwined,” I said.

“I finally know why,” Zenji said. “When we first met your souls were attached and attuned in a way I had never seen before. But your souls were still separate entities deep inside yourselves. Now I can’t tell where one soul begins and the other ends. A soul void traps single souls because it was created with single souls. I don’t think it can trap your common soul.”

“That’s why he did it,” Icepick shouted, her armoured hoof stomping into the concrete with a crash. “Our love is the key to beating him. All our feelings, all of the time we spent together, and it was all just a means to an end.” Her words were flat.

“No Icepick, love is never just a means to an end, and it isn’t real love if it is,” I said softly, as I raised a forehoof to cradle her chin. For a moment I only stared into the depths of her eyes. “If I’m sure about one thing, it’s that our love is real.” Then, she kissed me like she had only once before. It felt like our first desperate kiss. It might be our last desperate kiss, part of me thought darkly.

“If there was any doubt,” she whispered in my ear after breaking the kiss.

“Not one,” I whispered back. I thought for a moment that she would pull me in for one more kiss, but she just shook her head half a degree as her expression changed back to the dauntless leader. The fire she’d built up inside herself roared back to life.

---===*===---

“Like you have a better idea,” Icepick asked me pointedly as I stared at the utility wagon sagging under the weight of it’s cargo.

“I wish I did,” I said with a shake of my head. The heavily armoured weapon looked absurd aboard its delivery vehicle.

“Do you think this will void the warranty?” Icepick asked. I snorted in spite of myself.

“We’ll deal with that crisis when this one is done and dusted,” I said with my tongue pressed hard against my cheek.

“And here I thought I was supposed to be the inspirational one,” she said with a laugh of her own. A moment later she hefted her helmet over her head, before locking it in place. I followed her through the door, and past the ponies held up behind the soul void. They stayed quiet, with only a few muted words of encouragement. The portal chamber was only connected to the complex through the freight passage.

So Icepick and I pushed ahead of where the last holdouts had been captured. After several paces I felt frozen tendrils reach deep inside me. My vision began to darken as they touched my soul. Like a switch being flipped, everything became darkness. I was a point of light hanging in the infinite void. There was no pain, no sense of anything but the cold wrapping around my being.

Then I felt another point of light beside mine. The other point drew closer and closer before connecting with mine. Instantly the two points became one. Then the point went from bone cold, to incandescence in one pregnant moment. The tendrils were set alight by the heat and an eruption of blue lightning around the point. I felt them recoil in terror just before I saw through my own eyes again.

My heart was pounding in my chest, and there was a sheen of sweat covering my body. I looked desperately at Icepick. The armour continued to make its many small noises, but it stayed motionless before my eyes. As I tried to process the possibility that the trap had gotten her, but not me, I heard a rumble from within the plating.

“We lived, fuck you Sombra!” Icepick yelled through her speaker.

“Ah yes, the destroyer,” I heard without hearing. It was the same voice that I had heard the night of my egress. Sombra. “And the traitor who fell for you. I must say, the compound soul trick isn’t one I would have thought of using.”

“Sombra might have, he was alive once, he probably loved once,” I spoke as evenly as I could. “But you aren’t a living creature. You’re just a hungry ghost that thinks it was once a great king.”

Icepick chuckled through her helmet, but there was no humour in it. I knew what it meant, I felt it reflected back in the depths of my mind. There was nothing short of death that would stop her. Then I felt the magical distortions of a shield in a doorway ahead. “Right door!”

She twisted in place and aimed both of her weapons at the doorway, half a second later the thrall threw itself forward into the hallway. It launched a flurry of magical bolts through it’s shield. These were less powerful than some of the other offensive spells I had witnessed, but there were several times more than those others.

I felt super heated air pass by my left side, and above where my head had been. I pulled my gun above line of sight and emptied my magazine in his general direction, at the same time as Icepick opened up with her heavier cannons. The impacts drove the creature backwards and away from the doorway, but aside from the momentum transfer, the shield held as the next volley lanced out from it.

I felt the charge from the spells spooling up that time, it felt eerily similar to my own lightning spells. It was electromagnetic energy, but instead of electrical energy created and directed by warping spacetime itself, it was a single frequency of light with the energy required to ionize the air. When one of the pulses struck Icepick in the foreleg, it didn’t rip the leg off, or even penetrate straight through like a high velocity projectile, it vaporized a chunk of the outer coating. She was being heated and ablated through her armour.

Icepick’s cannons continued to batter the shield, it failed to stop every cannon round, yet the Thrall remained upright, empty black eyes focused on her. My fire ceased as I realized my rifle rounds wouldn’t scratch the shields on that thing. I watched in horror as pieces of her armour began to glow incandescent.

Then I realized this creature left itself open to a counterattack. Everytime it fired one of those overpowered sunbeams it left an electrically conductive plasma in the wake of every pulse. With a breath of cordite laden air, I started to warp the space around my horn by channeling every watt of power I could into the spell. The air above my horn grew heavy with potential, like a capacitor bank just before discharge. Just as I felt my control of the roiling energy begin to slip, I felt a channel form as one last beam struck Icepick.

At the last moment I remembered to close my eyes. The lightning still glowed through my eyelids. My eyes opened to see the thrall standing where it had been, shield shattered, and its eyes blank. Black blood dripped from the huge rends in its body opened by the cannon shots. I couldn’t feel any other thralls nearby. Then again, I hadn’t felt that one until it was right on top of us.

“They really are soulless,” Icepick said from just behind me. I turned to face her. Bits of her armour had been vapourized, others had been heated and refrozen. Her breast plate had been hit the worst, but it was also the thickest. It glowed the deep red of incandescence.

“I knew that as soon as I laid eyes upon one,” I said as I emptied my canteen onto the hot spots and watched as it steamed up instantly. Her armour was working in overdrive to cool down, and it would keep her from being cooked by the steel around her.

She had been burned by the attacks, but it wasn’t going to stop her. I lit my horn to pull the wagon towards us as we moved ahead. My overpowered spell had taken a lot from me. I was just a pony, afterall.

“I was hoping to cook more of your flesh,” Sombra’s lilting voice echoed in our heads as he taunted us. “I can feel your hatred burning hotter than ever Destroyer. That fire has always been a part of you, but now it’s roaring inside you. Do you think that victory against me will extinguish it?” Sombra laughed heartily, but it was the laugh of the damned.

“And there’s the rub, if you win, the cycle will continue as it always has. I was just like you once Icepick. I was consumed by terrible purpose. I was blind to the suffering I caused as I rebuilt the world in my image-”

“I won’t let you become him, not as long as I draw breath,” I yelled at Icepick. It was enough to make his voice in our skulls’ stop.

“I know you will Perm. Because you’re the spark that set my heart alight,” Icepick said as she started forward aggressively. I knew we were getting closer to him. His cold dead magic overshadowed everything: the soul vacuum, my own magic, and even the magical potential within the megaspell. Everything except for her. She was an inferno of roiling magic, she was the bright light in the sea of darkness.

“There it is,” I said scant moments later.

At the end of the hallway, a heavy steel door hung open. My eyes caught movement just inside the doorway. Icepick shoved me aside just as a long skewer of ice flew through the air where I had been. Her cannon rounds slammed into the steel of the door, throwing it backwards, and revealing the caster. Another shaft of Ice flew towards me, but Icepick strode right into it. It didn’t scratch her breastplate. I rolled behind her as the thrall cast another spell. It created a thick sheet of ice that broke while absorbing the energy of the impacts, before letting the slugs drop harmlessly through the reforming barrier.

Of course he’d save the thrall with the best barrier for stopping kinetic weapons for last. I got back to my hooves just in time to see another horn poke around the doorway. It fired a sphere of superheated plasma on a direct path for Icepick, I created an electric field ahead of Icepick, pulling the ionized gas into the nearest wall. Its containment cracked as it contacted the concrete, burning the concrete as it dissipated.

I grasped a grenade with my telekinesis, letting it cook for three long seconds, before tossing it towards the doorway. It went off in the threshold, knocking the ice mage and the plasma caster away from the doorway.

Icepick sprinted forwards, and I followed, knowing that a grenade would do little to them. We were only a meter away from the doorway when a plasma bolt rounded the corner. The Icewall was just behind the bolt. I formed an electric barrier just in front of Icepick. The bolt reflected off of my field, before sinking into the Icewall of the other Thrall. The Icewall melted away at the touch of the bolt.

The wall shook from the impacts of the shots Icepick poured into it, and I felt the distortions as the other Thrall charged its next spell. I had to attack, I had to even the odds. I couldn’t win with defense alone- The ice would stop any fast moving projectile, and the other thrall would continue to cast spells from behind its cover.

In that warped place, in those brief moments that stretched into eons, a memory resurfaced in my mind. My knife buried in the chest of a Celestian soldier, and the smell of cooking flesh.

I pulled it from its scabbard, while sending as much current through the steel as I could. It had just begun to glow red when I felt the next bolt travel over the ice shield. I didn’t have the strength to restrain the bolt. I could only change where it struck her. The bolt glanced against her breastplate, eating into the steel and ceramic of her armour. She roared in pain, even as she kept her weapons firing.

My lips curled into a feral grin as I drove the superheated knife into the ice. The blade slid through the ice, with the handle shattering the barrier behind the blade. When the blade made it through the Ice, I felt a tendril of magic try in vain to resist the blade. The momentum of the blade sent it straight through the eye socket of the Thrall. This was the close bloody work of hoof to hoof fighting. There wasn’t any room for mercy.

So I jammed the knife down to the hilt before twisting it viciously. There was a splash as the ice turned to water in an instant. I tore the knife from its skull as the remaining Thrall cast it’s own magical shield. It was formed just before Icepick’s bullets struck home. Without a millisecond of hesitation she took off sprinting towards it guns blazing.

I followed just behind her as the creature created another envelope of plasma. Icepick’s guns stopped, their ammunition supply finally exhausted. It didn’t even phase her as she accelerated as hard as her armour allowed. She got up to full speed just as he cast his bolt. I trapped the bolt with electric fields as she crashed into the Thrall. Icepick crushed the Thrall between its shield and the concrete wall behind it. Then the shield broke as the horn casting it was shattered.

I took a deep breath as the plasma bolt evaporated into the cordite scented air. The thrall twitched as it lay broken on the ground. It's dark eyes flickering between us as Icepick picked herself up. Without saying a word I levitated my pistol above its head, and squeezed the trigger.

“What in the fuck?” Icepick said while looking up. I gasped when I followed her gaze.

Instead of the concrete ceiling I remembered there was an eldritch tunnel suspended above. Black obsidian walls that seemed to contract and expand like a lung connected this chamber to Sombra’s throne room. I shivered as I looked down upon the crystal mirror suspended upside down above me. This must have been how he had gotten an army into Sall’han. I forced my attention back to our target. Looking into the Sall’han gateway I saw a shifting kaleidoscope of barely contained energy.

“You don’t have to be a transient Permittivity, you can come home,” Sombra said into my mind.

“I’m already home,” I said through gritted teeth as I sprinted into the hallway.

“Do I look like I know what a draconequus is?” Icepick said with a shake of her head. “Hurry, this guy is supernaturally obnoxious!”

I pulled the wagon into the room, before letting the creaking cart coast into the room before stopping in front of Icepick. I parted my lips to speak before reconsidering. There wasn’t anything I needed to say. So I stood beside Icepick as she began priming the weapon. It wasn’t a lengthy sequence, but it was necessary. The actual trigger was just a light switch welded to the back of the bomb.

“Those inbred unicorns have been a disappointment to a mare. The problem with most mages is their limited repertoires. Some unicorns are born with greater potential. Some unicorns need only the right guidance to reach their potential. Now if you had asked the right questions, if you had fought him before...” Sombra’s words exploded like bombs in my mind.

“It’s ready, but I think it needs to be inside the portal to destroy -” Icepick’s amplified voice cut off abruptly. Her armour was frozen, and the last flickers of a disruption spell played out over the outer surface.

“I like that spell. It’s a shame none of the others could cast it,” Rosetta said from just inside the room. Around his neck was the talisman Sombra had given me. “But I love this form. It’s young, strong, and versatile.”

“Y-you did it to me. You made him alter me,” I seethed as I watched the pink stallion waltz into the room. His eyes were still bright. Which meant his soul was still in there. For a moment I wondered how he had survived the soul vacuum. Then the moment was over, and I only saw Sombra in front of me.

“I only whispered to him that he should help you,” Rosetta said before sneering at me. “And I wasn’t the one to give him the orbs.”

I whipped my rifle towards him and fired. The shots that would have perforated him were stopped by a shimmering ebony barrier. “Did you seriously expect that to work?” Sombra asked with Rosetta’s voice. I didn’t answer him with words. I started to push the weapon towards the gateway.

I had just gotten the wheels rolling when I saw Rosetta swing a long tendril of fire at me. I managed to side step it before ducking down as a fusillade of magic missiles passed above my head. I cracked off a burst from my rifle but I had to release the cart. Rosetta blocked the bullets nonchalantly before glancing down at his own foreleg. The pistol holstered there was a large calibre revolver.
He drew the weapon just like we had practiced. Then he fired twice.

The shots slammed into my chest, the soft lead of the bullets flattening out against the ceramic of the plate beneath my clothing. The force of the impacts knocked me down and forced every molecule of air from my lungs. I almost felt relieved when I felt the cold concrete beneath me.

I looked up just in time to see Rosetta press the gun barrel against my forehead.

“These weapons lack the theatrics of magical combat, but I see why they dominate. I wouldn’t have awoken if it wasn’t for their power. I didn’t start the war Permittivity, but I did end it. Just as I’ll end you- ” Rosetta said with approval. I felt Icepick growing more angry by the second. Her muscles were warmed up from straining against the armour. But now she’d stopped struggling, it was like she was waiting for something. I caught my breath enough to laugh weakly. “Why are you laughing? Did your fragile mind finally break under the strain?”

“I started my journey here, and it’s going to end here. Even I can see the irony in that,” I said with a genuine smile on my face. “But that’s hardly the only irony at play.”

“Of course,” Sombra said in Rosetta’s voice. “The greatest irony is Discord binding this one’s soul to both of yours. Whatever his plan was, it failed.” His grin reminded me of a cat playing with a mouse just before playing with it’s entrails.

“That is pretty ironic,” I said while preparing a spell in my head without letting a drop of magic flow through my horn. I knew that if he felt the magic flowing he’d fire. But if something could draw his attention away. “But it’s not the most ironic thing.”

“Okay I’ll bite, what is the greatest irony?” Sombra asked. Icepick strained against the armour with everything she had.

“You’ll see,” I said just as Icepick slammed into the wagon, pushing forward despite the weight of her frozen armour and the cart.

Rosetta’s mouth gaped open as he watched her do the impossible. My horn became a blinding blue light as I threw everything I had left into the spell. The electricity travelled from my forehead, and through the gun before arcing into Rosetta’s chest. He collapsed onto the cold concrete, his muscles writhing uselessly as he lay there unmoving. I smelled burnt fur tinged with ozone in the air. I wasn’t sure if I had killed him, or just knocked him out for a long time. I couldn’t feel the minute electrical impulses of a heartbeat in that sea of powerful magic. It didn’t matter right now. We had our opening.

“Told you,” I said to Sombra with a smile of my own. The response was impossible to miss. The tunnel above my head started to shake, and his chamber looked like it was trying to pull away. “The real Sombra was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a coward.” I guessed that having connected the two gateways so completely it would take some time to pull them apart.

Icepick had shown me the emergency armour release before. So, I got to my hooves and trotted up to her. My horn sparked uselessly as I tried to turn the release with it. Giving up on my magic, I leaned over her armour before grabbing the handle with my teeth. My neck muscles burned as I forced the handle to turn. When it turned all the way, I heard the distinctive sound of movement inside the suit. I decided to walk around to the front of the armour. I also felt Icepick staring a hole into my head as she waited.

As the back of the armour opened up I pulled her helmet off with my hooves, before dropping it on the floor.

“It took you long enough,” Icepick said with a look of total relief on her face. I just snorted as she climbed out of her inert armour.

“You can thank him for that,” I nodded my head towards Rosetta’s crumbled form. I didn’t want to look at him myself. My feelings about him were muddled, but I realized something in that moment. I didn’t want him dead.

“Is he-” Icepick started to ask before I interjected.

“We have a job to do,” I said firmly. I pressed my barrel against the cart and started to push. The passage above our heads started to crack. As well as the surface of the portal growing more chaotic by the second.

“He’ll be the last to die because of him,” Icepick added her strength to mine and the cart moved forward, the wheels squealing in protest. There was a high pitched whine in the air as we pushed the weapon halfway into the gateway. It probably wasn’t safe to jam an armed megaspell into an active gateway.

I looked up and saw the other half of the cart sticking out of the crystal mirror. Icepick laid her hoof on the trigger. I saw her hesitating to set it off. So I leaned forward and kissed her deeply. My hoof joined hers as we flipped the switch together.

“Perm, perm, perm,” I awoke to Icepick poking my chest with each utterance of my name. I opened my eyes and saw her standing above me. Above our heads was the concrete ceiling complete with buzzing fluorescent tubes. I turned my head to stare at the portal. Half of the wagon and it’s payload sat there perfectly bifurcated.

“I don’t feel the soul vacuum anymore,” I said as I moved to get up. I drew in a sharp breath as a lance of pain shot through my chest. “Fuck, I forgot that he shot me twice-” I turned my head to look at Rosetta.

“He’s breathing, I checked,” Icepick said before offering me a hoof. I took it and got painfully to my hooves. “That cursed talisman turned to sand as soon as I tried pulling it off.”

“Good riddance,” I said softly before walking over to Rosetta and looking down at him. “I wonder what Sombra tempted him with.”

“We’ll ask him when he’s ready to talk,” Icepick replied wearily. “Now help me get this oaf on my back.”

---===*===---

“Hey everypony, the soul trap is gone, Sombra is gone, and I’d really appreciate it if someone else could carry Rosetta!” Icepick yelled at the ponies waiting for us outside of the soul trap.

It was darkly funny watching ponies decide whether to believe her or not. Eventually Talon broke away from the rest and stepped towards us. Ironsight followed behind her.

“What happened to your armour?” Talon asked with a puzzled look. Icepick nodded up at Rosetta’s limp form.

“He was possessed by Sombra. He sparked me from behind. So it's laying in the portal chamber, with it’s emergency release pulled,” Icepick said before gesturing for one of the two power armoured mares to turn around.

“Why didn’t he get his soul sucked out with a straw?” Ironsight asked Icepick as she pulled up alongside her. “Can you magic him over Perm?”

“His soul is tied in with ours now, thanks to Discord. I would help but I’m burnt out from fighting Sombra and his thralls,” I said with a shrug.

“I got you,” A familiar voice said as she trotted up to us. Icepick sighed deeply when Cotton Candy lifted him onto Ironsight’s back. “It’s the least I can do for the ponies that killed Sombra.”

“Candy stop, you’re going to make her blush,” I said before chuckling at Icepick’s baleful look. “Can you take him to the field hospital?” Ironsight nodded at me before picking up her pace a bit.

“I think I deserve a smoke,” Icepick said in a low voice. A dozen hooves instantly reached into their pockets. Cotton Candy was the closest and she hoofed over the cigarette gratefully.

“Don’t look at me I’m burnt out,” I said when Icepick glanced at me.

“Does someone want to light me up?” She asked, and again, everyone with a lighter offered. As Icepick got her smoke lit I trotted over to Talon.

“Do you want to meet my brother?” I asked the older mare softly. Her eyes lit up like diamonds.

“You have a brother? He’s here?” Talon asked with excitement I had never seen before.

“Yes, and yes,” my voice was subdued but it had a levity missing since the train took me from Maidenpool. It would also give Icepick a chance to escape the crowd of adoring soldiers. “We both need some air.”

“We’re going topside, can you lovely ponies let us through?” I asked with my voice raised against the clamour of conversation. The mass of ponies moved aside as I offered Icepick my hoof. “Thank you.” I could feel the sense of palpable relief flow through her as she took my hoof.

“It warmed my heart to see you all waiting for us, I just wanted to make that clear before I go,” Icepick managed to say without her voice breaking. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Then she turned her head and we walked back through the blood soaked passages. I had walked out of this complex once before, but a part of me knew that I wouldn’t step foot in these passages ever again. It was a pleasant thought.

“What’s got you smiling like that? There are a lot of good reasons, but I’m curious about which one,” Icepick asked. I snorted derisively.

“It’s not what you’d expect. I’m smiling because I never have to see this place again,” I replied.

“I feel that. It begs a question though,” Icepick said with a smile to match. “Where do you want to go? After we sort things out.”

It struck me that I hadn’t thought about what I wanted to do after Sall’han was at peace. I had ideas and plans for making that peace in the absence of Sombra. Then I looked back at Icepick.

“I want to go where you go,” I said with utter conviction. I felt affection and consternation flare up inside her at my words.

“Okay, let me rephrase that. What do you want to do after all of this?”

“I think you’re asking me this question because you don’t know what you want to do after this,” I stuck my tongue out at her before continuing. “We did make one plan for afterwards. I’m hurt you don’t remember.”

“No- wait what plan?” Now she was downright flustered as she aimed those beautiful eyes at me like a weapon. I mean they are weapons. They certainly got me right in the heart.

“It was that lovely planning session we had in the APC a few nights ago,” I raised an eyebrow at her as the meaning finally struck her. “If I remember correctly, it was your idea.”

“I-I remember now,” Icepick replied after a moment to collect herself. “That’s seriously the closest thing to a plan either of us has made?”

“Yes, as far as I can remember,” I said with a bit of extra emphasis on the last word.

“We’re gonna talk about this later, when we’re not in earshot of-” She cut herself off before nodding slightly in the direction of Talon. Thankfully she didn’t seem to notice my glance at her.

“Good call,” I said with complete agreement. Icepick had spent enough time around Page Turner and Rosetta to know how parents felt about grandchildren. Talon would be way worse.

---===*===---

“I didn’t know you had a twin,” Principal said as Talon walked in behind Icepick. He was lying on the standard issue Steel Ranger field bed. Talon smiled broadly at that.

“Thank you, but I’m her mother,” Talon replied. “I’m old enough to realize that you should take a compliment if one is offered.”

“You wear those years well,” Principal said in his sweetest voice.

“I know,” Talon answered before flashing a feral smile his way. “I can tell you’ve never fought before. So what did you do in the empire?” He looked abashed at her bluntness.

“I operated a bank branch,” Principal admitted to her.

“What’s a bank?” Talon asked a moment later.

“Are you joking?” Principal asked slowly, his eyes darting between her advanced armour and her apparently serious question.

“She isn’t,” I said to him before turning to Talon. “He took money from ponies for safekeeping and then gave that money to others on the promise of more money in exchange for that money.”

“How is that a job?” She asked incredulously. I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing. He shot me a dirty look in return.

“It’s a lot of work actually,” Principal said defensively.

“That’s exactly what a banker would say,” I teased.

“Former banker now,” he said with a deep sigh. “I hadn’t even realized until this moment.”

“We’ll find you something to do,” Icepick said in an upbeat tone.
“Maybe even a real job,” Talon prodded.

And so it went on. By the time we had said our goodbyes the sun had set behind the great mesas. We had heard the sounds of festivities begun in earnest. Soldiers from all sides were taking this opportunity to get drunk and revel in our victory. It only took a moment for the closest ponies to recognize us.

“C’mon over, have a drink!” An intoxicated ursa driver said with a steel cup held precariously in her magic.

“Thanks for offering knight!” Talon said from behind us. She winked at us as she passed in front of us. I subtly grasped Icepick’s hoof and tugged in the general direction of escape. I didn’t need to tug again.

----===*===---

The two of us were almost out of the camp when a dark shape materialized from behind a parked half-track. I lit my horn instinctively and was surprised to see Crescent Moon staring back at me, eyes turned to slits because of my light.

“Did you have to surprise us like that?” I almost shouted at her. If I’d been attentive to heartbeats, I would’ve felt her presence, but I hadn’t been concentrating on them.

“I did not. However, you both look like you’re going for a low profile at the moment,” I could hear the smile in her voice better than I could see it.

“You got us there,” Icepick admitted before meeting the other mare’s gaze. “So how are negotiations going?”

“They’re going,” Crescent said with a bit of forced cheer. Icepick and I both felt the undertones in her words. I shot a glance at Icepick, and saw her biting her lip. “Would you like to see one of those ancient catacombs? You’ve definitely earned it in my book.”

“I’d love to. Please lead the way,” Icepick replied with a bit of haste. I felt discomfort roiling in Icepick as Crescent turned towards the nearest butte erupting out of the sands. A pregnant silence fell upon us as the true purpose of our journey became clear.

---===*===---

“How old is this place?” Icepick asked as we passed through the entrance of the cave.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Crescent Moon answered from ahead of us. An electric torch blazed ahead of her, strapped to her withers.

“I guess archeology died with the bombs,” I said resignedly. The passage through was tight, with barely enough clearance for us to shimmy through in places.

“That’s not entirely true. We have a number of books written by Equestrian Archeologists in our stable, and we’ve applied some of their techniques to the sites. We know that some of the sites are much older than others. This one appears to date back to before the Minotaur conquest. It’s the one I mentioned to you before,” Crescent said as we turned a corner and her light flashed over a complex series of glyphs painted above our heads.

“Have you translated these?” Icepick asked as she strode up to the shapes written in startling carbon black.

“Where would we start? We have no points of comparison between our modern languages and these glyphs. We don’t even know if this is a language. Though it shows some similarities to the script left behind by the primordial river civilizations,” Crescent Moon seemed resigned to the mystery as she led us further into the cave system.

“How old are those civilizations?” I asked as my eyes tried to take in every line and curve of the ancient work. The two mares stopped and looked at one another quickly, before turning to me.

“The Equestrian diaspora is much closer to us in time than those civilizations were to the diaspora,” Icepick answered. I was taken momentarily aback by that description. The Equestrian diaspora happened in my timeline, way before our apparent divergence. My people had settled the north at least a thousand years before the duel between Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon.

“That’s incredible,” I said as I followed behind them.

“It’s actually quite credible Perm,” Crescent replied liltingly. “But we don’t know much about those ponies, other than their pottery style and a few buried ruins.”

“When were those excavations conducted?” I asked automatically. The cave seemed to grow several degrees colder as Crescent Moon cleared her throat.

“During the initial occupation, and with the participation of the Arabian aristocracy. It was one of many gifts,” her voice reached absolute zero at the last word. “The bunker was set aside for those same nobles after the majority of the scientists working here left for Equestria. Those few scientists became teachers and students for my ancestors.”

The passage widened out a few meters ahead, and I lit a flare with a twist of telekinesis that left me clenching my jaw in pain.

“It’s huge!” Icepick exclaimed as the bright yellow light from the flare fell upon every corner of the chamber. The ceiling was suspended at least six meters above our head, and I could have fit a half dozen Ursa’s in here with room to spare.

“Look there,” Crescent Moon said while pointing a hoof at a mural running across a whole wall. It depicted groups of Arabians living life millenia ago. There were other creatures illustrated on the wall. Camels, Gryphons, Water Buffalo, and even Minotaurs. One of them showed a merry gathering, hundreds of distinct shapes danced around a firepit, with stars glittering above their heads. It could’ve been the scene we left behind, plus or minus a few millennia.

So I lost myself examining the murals. Some of them were clearly depicting things that had taken place. Others were incomprehensible symbols or images of creatures long dead.

“Holy shit,” Icepick exclaimed from the other side of the wall. She was looking up at a red painted symbol. It had five straight segments branching off from a roughly square core. Underneath that symbol, a smaller version of it hung at eye level. “Those are hoofprints!”

“Pawprints would be the right word, I think,” Crescent Moon said while peering at the red imprints. “But that’s not why I brought you here-”

“I was wondering when you were going to speak your mind,” Icepick said darkly.

“I thought I’d let you enjoy this gift for a moment,” She said with emphasis on the word gift. I pursed my lips and watched her true emotions come to the surface. “The negotiations with my people are just a way to drop your guard and buy time for Phalanx.”

“Buy time for what?” Icepick asked.

“How did you learn about this?” My throat suddenly felt bone dry.

“I had a bug planted in his command vehicle, and learned about his plan to become the Elder of Ramsgard. He’s obtained support among a lot of the highly placed Steel Rangers by promising positions of power in his new regime. Phalanx believes that he can use my people as a wedge issue, to pull apart the coalition and win the loyalty of the Equestrian Supremacists among us,” Crescent took in a deep breath and I saw the abject terror lurking behind her eyes. “I helped you both because it was the right thing to do. I never expected help in return. Now I’m asking for your help, and praying that I made the right decision…”

Her voice cracked and she looked away from us. When she looked at us again there were tears glistening on her cheeks. I stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. I felt her shake with those silent tears.

“He wants to claim victory over you. He wants to bring the survivors back to Ramsgard in chains,” Icepick said acerbically. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t let this chance for peace get strangled in the cradle.” Her eyes were locked on the ancient images of peaceful co-existence.

The flare flickered as a silence fell upon us. Crescent collected herself before patting my withers. She wanted to stand on her own. I released her and backed away from the mares. Crescent stood gracefully, before clearing her throat.

“Prove it then!” Crescent challenged loudly. Despite her tone and volume, I saw hope in her eyes and a ghost of a smile on her lips. Icepick and I shared a glance.

“We will,” Icepick answered resolutely. They shared a long look with one another before Icepick looked away. She wore a confident grin for Crescent Moon. After another immeasurable interval, Crescent let out a deep breath and visibly relaxed. I felt Icepick’s true feelings through my own. She was determined to fulfill her promise to Crescent, but that wasn’t what I felt radiating from her.

“It’s time to face the true enemy,” I caught Icepick’s eyes with my own. Her sapphire eyes weren’t full of fire, no, they were an inferno. “It’s time to come home.”

Author's Note

It's a bit rough, but it's done. This was a difficult chapter to write, and I've had some difficulties in my own life during this drought. I intend to finish the next chapter a lot faster. If you want to pre-read the next chapter or help me finish Transient, write in the comments. I'll see it.

We're in the end game now.