Bellum tyranni sol et luna Benedictus

By ChAoS pOnY

Proditores (Part 3)

Looking into the pieces of a broken mirror you will find the images are never quite the same. Each one is just a glimpse of the world from a different point of veiw.

King Sombra floated yet another crystal mirror next to the crystal heart and sifted through the history of that world for what he needed like fighting styles, weapons knowledge, weapons manufacturing, tactics, scenes from important small unit actions to huge military campaign. The crystal heart then sent the information to relevant crystal ponies for them to learn as they slept away the centuries. It had been one of these mirrors that had shown him a country that had lost a war and been completely disarmed as part of a peace agreement. The fool who had later come to power in that country might of lost the war he started, but he had rearmed a defenceless nation with better trained soldiers in a relatively short period of time with better weapons and vehicles than any of their neighbors. It might have taken two Gods a thousand years, but in a few months the Crystal Empire would be ready for Celestia and her army. How did one of those Humans in the crystal mirror put it, the best defence is a good offence. One good strike in Canterlot would be all he and Hebe needed to free at least a dozen or more Gods and force a temporary cease fire on her. The only sticking points were who to free (Hebe insisted on freeing Discord first while he favored bring him back to the Empire and using the crystal heart to cure his madness before freeing a powerhouse that was able to warp reality to his whim), what to do if they captured Celestia herself (Hebe was in favor of banishing her to the sun, but he was in favor of sending her to the very prison ment to hold powerful beings like her, Tartarus), and whether to fully retreat to the Crystal Empire or hold onto some territory in equestria (Hebe favored full retreat to consolidate power with a home turf advantage for defence, while he favored holding some territory to use as a buffer between him and Celestia so his army could exicute a fighting retreat, filled with ambushes and boobytraps every step of the way to bleed her army of troops before finishing her much weaker army just barely still inside of Equestria, then recapture all of the territory she just fought for.)

He checked the Heart and saw it would be several days for the information from this world was one of the most violent worlds out there, it would have been a month if he hadn't removed the parts involving their xenophobia, technophobia, magosophobia and strict theocracy. He couldn't help but laugh at the thought of how they would react to knowing an alien god that could use magic to grow cystaline golmes with complex thaumatech minds that were smart and self aware was watching them in order to learn from them. Of course they would also freak out if they saw his army of 10,000 crystal golem warriors

or the 20,000 crystal golems working on building Armor, helmets, and weapons for the Cystal Guards when he woke them up before bringing the rest of the Empire out of the dark place between worlds.

As he walked towards the palace's enterance he quickly tapped into the gigantic thaumatech computer that was Crystal Empire itself, seeing every aspect of it. From it's might sheilds and towering walls to the smallest foal, frozen in time, sleeping in one of the orphanages, he saw it all. Around him floated a swarm of smaller crystal mirrors, giving him multiple veiws of Equestria and how far behind they had truely fallen. But there were glimmers of what was possible and he couldn't count Celestia out. Who knew what toys she had squirled away after the Chaos Wars just in case she needed it. Thinking of Celestia brought up a mirror showing her and six mares from above that got a luagh out of him when he relized that a cystal chandelier in her throne room was providing him with a perfect birds eye veiw...

"Guards, clear the throne room, with the exception of these six mares, and send me several dozen guards inclueding Flash Sentry and a nurse if he needs one. Any stallion willing to keep fighting Nightmare Moon while being used as a shield by her has earned himself a chance to prove himself worthy to become an Archangel Alicorn." Celestia said before looking around the throne room at the nobles milling around. "DID I STUTTER YOU USELESS WASTE OF AIR! GET OUT NOW!" Celestia bellowed in the Royal Canterlot Voice as her mane, tail, and clothing burst into flames with her rage. The nobles fell over themselves trying to flee the flamming Tyrant Goddess of the Sun as her bare fur blacked with other parts glowing as if there was molten metal barely contained under the skin.

"I'LL DAMN ALL OF YOU TO TARTARUS IF YOU DON'T MOVE YOU FAT, WORTHLESS, WIMPERING, WHINING, VAIN ASS BY THE COUNT OF 3....1...2...3!!!" She threatened and gave a vicious smile as she watched Prime Minister Fancy Pants herd the last one out before taking off his top hat and bowing to her from the hall as the guards closed the doors. He had been trying to get her to bring the hammer down and rein in the nobles for years. To bad it had taken the return of her sister to do it.

Turning, she marched up the steps to the throne and threw it through the stain glass windows behind it before kicking the burning red carpet out of her way. she then stomped in the right spot, shattering several tons of stone in the center of the dais that hid the enterance to one of her caches. As she bent down to see if she had used a stasis or a petrification spell to protect this cache, she heard someone coming up behind her. It problely was her student because the Wonder Bolt fan girl and the fashionista (trying to pretend to be a proper lady and hide the fact that she was looking) would be too busy watching her ass, the farmer would just cover her eyes with her hat and try to ignore the naked, bent over Goddess in the room and the fact that she was hand cuffed to the crazy pink party planner, and the animal care taker had fainted as soon as she used the Royal Canterlot Voice and was blissfully unaware of what was going on, heir to the mighty Hurrican indeed. Not that she should be so harsh about it, Fluttershy just mistook the incressed heart beat and quickening of breath for the physical signs of fear and the increased awareness and time dialation sometimes looked like anxiety. None of them really had a clue about their bloodlines, well with the exception of Twilight Sparkle, she was Celestia's faithful student for a reason, and maybe Pinkamena Diane Pie who's mind is so random she would problely say the truth and not realize it.

"Yes, my faithful student, can I help you?" Celestia asked as she spread her legs a bit more, pretending to get a better veiw and letting those watching get an eye full.

"Umm...Uh... Well you see.... Uh.... You kind of burned away all of your clothing and... well your kind of naked in a room full of ponies... and well with more guards coming soon..." Twilight tried to explain.

"Did you know the first artical of clothing I ever wore was a strap with a pouch at the end made from the pelts of several small animals that me and my sister ate." Celestia said in a matter of fact type manner, just before hearing Fluttershy fainting again. "I was about 115 years old when I invented the purse and it was another 35 years before I invented the loin cloth and breast strap. It wasn't until I was 356 years old that my sister invented the chiton that you actually see the beginning of real fasion. Before that clothes were very utilitarian, with function dictating form, but then a mortal caught Luna's eye and she invented what could be called the first little black dress, even if it was an off white." Getting down on her knees and stretching into the hole, she tapped the almost invisible barrier of the stasis spell, breaking it and causing the shattered stones from the dais to fall to the floor below. "In a way you could say clothing still follows function dictating form since fashion is ment to make a statement of status or to attract a mate. Personally I think it's silly since I am a Goddess who towers over most mortals by a good three feet and I am concidered the very ideal of feminine perfection personified." She stretched further to try and find the touch pad to turn on the lights while letting her fur return to it's usual white color. "I personally blame myself for allowing it to reach a level of stupidity that has you wear fancy clothing as a status symbol while hunting dangerous monsters at the edge of the Everfree Forrest. The clothes the nobles wear for hunting offer no protection, make you look like a big easy target, and will be blood stained if they actually manage to not drink themselves into a stupor before they find anything. Applejack over there, cuffed to Pinkie, is problely a better hunter because she has to be to protect her farm and her leather long coat looks better on her, protects her better, and hides her better than the giant 'Eat Me' sign the nobles wear." Finally finding the pad, the room below lit up. "With half of what they try to call fashion, I problely look better naked on the throne to begin with, but then I would have to deal with the whole 'Molestia' thing yet again. It took a hundred years after the last time I took a consort for the rumors to die." Standing up she smiled at her student and said, "And Luna wonders why I act like a prude so much, but forgets she started that silly name to begin with on my 4,502nd birthday. Let's just say it might have involved me drinking too much and inviting close to 2,500 royal guards into my bed chambers." With that she stepped off the edge of the hole and dropped through it. "You might want to find a rope to join me down here, because It's a two story drop." She called up as she looked around at the rows upon rows of shelves and racks filled with weapons and armor.

Then she saw it, her personal armor and the armor for 6 ladies in waiting, all on their own individual racks and their individual weapons shelves beside them. Stepping up to it, she ran her hand down the sleak, slim armor, "Hello old friend, it's been a while hasn't it? I guess the peace we fought for together was really fleeting." she said quietly as she picked up the neckless hanging off of one of it's shoulders and put it on. She stepped back and took a long single breath before closing her eyes and pressing the gem and saying the words, "Et miles fracta , est manere iussit, leniter ; Ignis sedit , et locutus noctem flebat vulnera doloris aut tales fieri scapulis suis tenens fusum , et ostendit quomodo sunt proeliis vicit." She heard it teleporting from the inside out before feeling it rematerialize on her body layer by layer, within seconds she stood there clad in blue, gold, and silver armor and smiled as she reached to shelf next to the armor's rack and grasped the hilt of her sword once more. Pulling it out, she allowed herself to slip into the mind set of the warrior Goddess once more. The Tyrant Sun was now ready to go to war.

Something must of happened or was about to happen to cause her to start rearming herself, Sombra thought as he shift through mirrors before remembering that former student of her's. Another mirror came up as he strided down the halls of the palace. It took him a moment to realize that the veiw was shifting from glowing naturally forming crystal to cystal, causing the color to change with each new crystal. Only it wasn't her exactly...

"Brother of mine, I believe we can safely say any date with the Shim Sham Sisters, has the potential to go wrong and in ways we were not expecting." Flam said as they were being carried, tied up in webbing, through a fungus jungles, by giant spiders.

"Indubitably Flam, but it must be love since they are chasing the spiders with our dear niece and her friends." Flim said as he sniffed and then licked the webbing to tried to identify it's chemical composition with out his equipment, but other than it tasted horrible, he was coming up blank, but it did remind him of something simular. "The taste reminds me of the time I taught sunset how to make a stink bomb/all purpose pest repelant. The Princess was not happy when they tried it out during a picnic, dropped the whole bottle, and cleared out the park for several days."

"So once they rescue us, how, pray tell brother of mine, do we get rid of the smell?" Flam asked as a spider ran past with it's back on fire.

"Bees wax, trust me, any soap with bees wax will do the trick." Flim said as a rather large spider went airborn. "Why do you think I insist on using bees wax only for polishing the wood on our self-propeled wagon you made. One drop and no more pests for a week."

"Well that's good, but do we have any in the wagon?" Flam shouted over the sound of his black powder propeled projectile device being fired. Thinking of it he thought General Ultimate Neutalizer might sound better, G.U.N. for short.

"With out a doubt brother of mine, we did raise Sunny after Peachy Pitt passed away and you remember all the things she got into. That's why I always bought Honey Bee's Bees Wax Soap in bulk." Flim answered as two spiders racing beside the one carrying them were frozen solid. "Well that Glimmer girl we rescued from those guards is having fun, but have you seen any sign of the Dusty's little girl."

"I think I saw her pass over head with Maud just a second ago, I think their trying to cut them off up ahead." Flam said before there was a loud crack and a hole appeared in a mushroom ahead. "Next date, we teach them how to shoot the G.U.N." He stated while looking at the hole in the brim of his hat.

"'Gee, You In?' nah the joke is to easy for that one." Flim laught as several more spiders ran off in flames. "How about combining the letters into a word and just call it a gun?"

"Well it's easy to remember as well as short and deceptive, like the gun itself, but it just doesn't seem to be a name that commands respect." Flam thought about it as he flinched as a boulder slammed into a just ahead.

"I don't know, the guards were really respectful after you shot there commander in the leg and threatened to shove it up their collective tail holes if they tried anything." Flim said as he saw a temple of some sort up ahead.

"It was the double barrel. We'd have been in trouble if they had known I only had two shots." Flam pointed out as the spiders began scurrying around to the side were the enterance was.

"Well that new one with the rotating projectile holder with those new brass projectile carteridges should solve that problem once you finish it." Flim pointed out before there was another loud crack and the spider carrying them stumbled as one of it's legs was shot off. Looking up they saw Maud push a boulder off the edge of the temple as their spider barely stumbled through the enterance just as the boulder slammed down and cut off the only way back out. "I give Dr. Pie a 10 for effort and creativity, but a 3 for timing and execution if you ask me."

"Same on the first, but I give her a 4 1/2 on timing and execution because she clipped it's back legs." Flam said as the spider came to a stop in a throne room or sacrificial chamber of some sort.

"Why am I not surpised you two are actually alive and critiquing the way someone was trying to rescue you, while bantering with each other over unrelated stuff, like invention names and how to get the smell from the webbing off." A female voice pointed out as the spiders hung their web next to her's setting both webs swing.

"Bees wax, Dusty, it's close to the same stink as my pest repelant." Flim said with a smile.

"Hello guys, how's my daughter and god daughter doing?" She asked as their webbing stopped swinging and the spiders settled down and waited.

"Not bad, Sunny found documentation on everthing you suspected and tons of other things Celestia has been hidding for years. And your daughter has really come a long way since getting kick out of the Wonderbolt's Academy on those trumped up charges, but we all know it was political because of who her mother is and spitfire's grudge against you." Flam said as he finally wiggled his hand into his pocket and found his pocket knife. Now he just needed to figure out how to unfold it with one hand, maybe something to do with the webbing itself.

"She's been a big help trying to get the truth and our invention designs out there to the public, what with us being legally dead and Sunny's face on wanted posters all over Equestria." Flim said, "It could be easier with a permanant base of operations, but we keep finding either towns in the middle of a fued with the locals, towns being brainwashed and about to be raided by the guards, or with a really high guard presence in the town." Looking around he said, "Somewhere like this would do if you can take care of the small pest control problem."

"Don't get your hopes up, there's one other minor problem with this place." 'Dusty' said.

"Daring Do, I have your two friends who have come to rescue you and..." Ahuizotl declaired as he entered the chamber with his cats.

"Actually we didn't even know she was here or in trouble." Flim stated with a bored look.

"And technically we were out on a date when your spiders captured us and stomped a nice romantic picnic with the Shim Sham Sisters into the ground." Flam pointed out as he finally got the knife open.

"It doesn't matter because Daring Do will tell me the secret to unlocking..." Ahuizotl started to annonce yet again, only to be interupted.

"Whatever ancient artifact of untold power your after this time." Flim said with a wink to Daring before faking a yawn. "Seriously, just get a room you two and leave the rest of us out of your foreplay."

"Wha.. I... How... I'M NOT INTO HER LIKE THAT!!!" Ahuizotl screamed in frustration as Daring tried to hide her giggles.

"So your saying you want her to tie you up for once instead?" Flim asked as Ahuizotl began pulling on his ears in fustration.

"WHAT IN TARTARUS IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU ARE IN MY LAIR, SURROUNDED BY GIANT SPIDERS, AND IN A SACRIFICIAL CHAMBER WHERE YOU'RE GOING MEET A HORRIFIC END IF I DON'T GET WHAT I WANT AND YOU'RE SUGGESTING I'M INTO SOME KIND OF BIZZAR FETISH BDSM ROLEPLAY WITH MY WORSE ENEMY AND THAT I WANT HER TO BE MY DOMINATRIX!" Ahuizotl ranted. "WHAT TYPE OF MESSED UP PERVERT SEES A GIANT DEATH TRAP AND THINKS S&M FOREPLAY AND SPINS SOMEKIND OF STRANGE SISSY DOMINATION SEX FANTASY?"

"A guy who was going to get laid before your spiders stomped that ideal flatter than sissyzotl's chances with Dommie Do." Flim pointed out, getting a laugh out of Daring. "Especially with the trouble you have brought down on yourself this time. You have our dates armed with our invention, our niece who is Princess Celestia's former student, Daring's daughter who broke your jaw last time, an insane former cult leader who is wanted by the guard for brainwashing an entire town in a single night, her coltfriend the former royal libraian in charge of the black archives, and last, but not least, Dr. Pie, you remember her, the mare who put you in a body cast last time you met her." Flim kept it up as he felt the webbing loosening, keeping Ahuizotl's attention on him. "To put it bluntly, your fucked, you over grown blue chimp with dreams of grandeur. The only question is which one will get you first and how badly are they going to fuck you up royally this time. Personally, my money is on Lightning Dust and Dr. Maud Pie."

"AND WHY THEM?" Ahuizotl demanded.

"Because you should really invest in some glass for your skylight." Maud said as Lightning Dust dropped her and her fist colliding with his jaw.

"Mom!!!" Lightning Dust shouted as she flew over to try and free Daring 'Dusty' Do.

"We'll get her." Flam said as he finally freed them from the webs. "Just keep the spiders off Maud so she can focus on Ahuizotl."

"Bombs away!!!" Sunburst yelled as he tossed several smoke bombs down into the largest masses of spiders just before Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer teleported in amongst them, freezing and burning everything in their path. As Maud and Ahuizotl traded blows with each other, Ahuizotl's tiger crouch, preparing to pounce on Maud, there was a loud crack and it's head erupted in a fountain of blood.

"I got one Shimmy!" Sham yelled as she reloaded the single-shot gun.

"Good, just don't hit anyone on our side Shammy." Shim said as she blew the panther head off and turned the small white kitten into a red stain with the double barrel gun.

"Incoming!" Sunburst yelled as he levitated and fired a rocket at the largest spider he could see, noting several of it's missing legs before it was blown into a pile of brown and green goo.

"This is for interupting my field work with Dr. Do." Maud said in her usual monotone as she upper cutted Ahuizotl. "And this is for almost making me late with my doctors thesis." she continued with a body blow that doubled him over. "And this is for making me break a Pinkie Promise to be home in time for Hearths Warming Eve last year and making my baby sister cry." She finally said with a touch of emotion before pulling back and hitting him with a right hook that threw him across the room and through a stone wall. In the distance a cheerful voice could barely be heard over the fighting, "Thank you Maud!!!"

With Ahuizotl down for the count, the remaining spiders and Ahuizotl's last two cats fled for every intact exit from the temple as fast as they could. As the last spider scurred out of the chamber, Flim and Flam finished cutting Daring Do free and she helped her daughter fly the two of them down to the floor. "Just like I told you brother of mine, just clean up a small pest control problem and we have a nice secret base to use." Flim said as Flam raised an eyebrow at him while scraping off some spider guts from his shoe.

"Yes, it has potental but the clean up is going to be killer, and there are two main problems." Flam said before pointing to the knocked out Ahuizotl. "The previous tenant will not be to happy with our eviction notice we just delivered when he wakes up." Then he pointed to Daring Do, "And Dusty will not be to happy with us for stomping all over her dig site or that she can't even use it as a dig site if she wants to keep our location a secret. Plus there is what ever Ahuizotl was after this time. Setting up house over top of a potential bomb is not a very good ideal, remember when Lightning and Sunny tried to get their barbecue cutie marks and blew up our shed. Something tells me this won't be something we can fix with a pile of lumber, a hammer, and some nails."

"Actually Starswirl the Bearded's Clockmen Army was entombed here with a petrification spell by Princess Celestia, sometime between Grogar's defeat and the beginning of King Sombra's and Princess Luna's 200 year long courtship. So the chances of anyone but Princess Celestia knowing how to release them is very extremely slim." Daring interupted, "The university wouldn't fund a dig because of a royal decree against it and I only came here on the off chance he got lucky and woke them up."

"It's 'efn farshiltn ir!'" Sunset said before they all looked at her, "What? She uses the same phrase for releasing petrification everytime. You just need to know the time period to know which language she used and at that time she was still using Goatish because Grogar was a Goat."

"So your saying the phrase for releasing any petrification spell cast by Princess Celestia is 'Open damn you' in what every language the last big bad spoke?" Daring asked in disbelief. "Do you know how many people have spent years trying to crack the 1,000,000 bit petrified flower challenge in Canterlot and you could of did it in a heartbeat?"

"Actually I didn't know it until I robbed the Archives with Sunburst and Lightning Dust when she threw me out for speaking out against suppressing thaumatechnologies and after Sunburst was fired because of his relationship with Starlight Glimmer and their suspicion that he had been the one to give her the brainwashing spell from the Black Archives." Sunset explained to her god mother. "They couldn't believe she found it in an old spell book from the Chaos wars in a cave and with her on the loose they couldn't find out she had triggered a trap spell on the book that was driving her insane with a variation of the 'Want it, Need it' spell that focused on the ideal of equality and making everything equal inclueding people. A nasty spell, but simple to disspell once we caught her."

"Okay, so how does Maud fit in to all of this? Because I know the Shim Sham Sisters can always track down your uncles, even when their suppose to be dead." Daring asked as she watched Starlight Glimmer teleport their stuff into the temple along with Shim, Sham, and Sunburst before figuring out how to close the doors to the tunnels leading out.

"I was working on studying the crystals that light these caves when they showed up and decided to take a break catch up with Sunset, Sunburst, Glimmer, and Lightning when the spiders grabbed Flim and Flam and dragged them here." Maud said as she studied the stone blocks of the wall, "Interesting, these blocks are from over a thousand miles away and show no sign of smoothing from dragging or rolling. That suggests unicorn or alicorn magic, but that wouldn't have been used in a temple constrution during that time period, for fear of contaminating the holy sight. Unless it was built elsewhere and then moved at a later date, say when Princess Celestia entombed the Clockmen Army. Which would suggest a mass teleportation on a level that would drain a god to almost nothing and explain the slight sorching in the cracks between the blocks. So as a dig site it is already contaminated by the Princess herself around 1,652 years ago during the long day when she was said to be sick and couldn't move the sun for two days which would be 50 years before the beginning of the long courtship of Sombra and Luna." Turning to Daring Do she asked, "Sound about right to you?"

After juggling the dates in her head she said "Yeah, somewhere on the long day, say 8:30 to 9 o'clock in the morning according to artistic renderings of the long day from that time period. It never made it over the noon day hump so Luna couldn't take over and set it. It's also coinsides with the first recorded instance of Luna using an eclipse to simulate night and forced Sombra to end the Crystal Empires isolation after the Chaos Wars while keeping their ban on Celestia visiting that only fueled the rumors that he was hidding the last Chaos God, Hebe from Celestia." As she thought about it she asked out loud, "But if she moved it all here, where is the enterance to the chamber where the Clockmen are said to sleep in the stone's embrace?"

"It depends, does this temple have a throne room?" Sunset asked.

"With this style... No, the sacrifical chamber would be the center peice with all chambers and tunnels radiating from it and the massive stone alter at the very heart of the whole temple, right below the skylight. Why?" Daring asked.

"Because Celestia is over 60,000 years old and very set in her way. It's right under the alter, the same way she keeps a box of sweets under her bed next to a sword and the enterance to the black archives is under the hour glass in the Starswirl the Bearded wing of the royal library. If you want to hide something, put it right where they can all see it, but will walk past it a hundred times a day still looking for it. It was the first lesson she taught me when she showed me that the bust on her desk in her study was actually a well hidden cookie jar." Sunset explained.

"Uh... What is Starswirl the Bearded's Clockmen Army?" Asked Sham with her hand raised while her sister shook her head and cleaned her glasses.

"Once upon a time," Sunburst started as he rumaged around in his bag for something, "Queen Tambella united all of the Goat tribes into a kingdom called Tambelon, which she ruled from the isle of Tambelon. They were a peaceful and happy people and overjoyed when the Queen gave birth to a son, Prince Grogar. He grew to be a strong and brave Goat who Slayed many monsters, but also a kind and generous soul who would help any in need.

But like all tales like this something happened, a Deer assassin poisoned the Queen with a very slow and very painful poison that would take months to kill her. Yet there was a cure known only to an Undead Donkey named Bray, imprisoned in a tall dead tree deep in the Everfree forrest and guarded by a unspeakable being pulled from her loving father's arms in another world and cursed to hunt and kill all who seek the knowledge of Bray's former master. Only Grogar, was willing to make the journey to find the cure deep in the primeval forrest. As he journeyed he came upon two sphinxes and upon beating their riddles he was gifted with the words that would win him the heart of any female no matter the race and a bottle of containing a single drop of Sleipnir blood that would grant him the speed of the wind for a single day and a single night. Upon thanking them he drank the blood of a god and made the month long journey by morning. Within the forrest he faced a foe flowwed like a shadow between the trees. They faced each other in a long brutal battle from sun rise to sun set with neither yeilding, but in the final rays of the dying sun light he finally saw her fully and fell in love with her tall slender frame, her deep blood red lips, flowwing black smoke like mane, and red eyes that smoldered and flickered like burning coals. From his heart and from his mouth flowwed the words of love that thawwed her icy hate filled heart and for a single night they laid together as lovers. In the morning he told her of his quest to save his mother's life and she took him to the tree and freed Bray, binding him to Grogar as his bond servant. Before leaving the forrest she told him that she was bound there and could not jorney on with him. Upon hearing this Prince Grogar pledged he would return and free her in order to make her his bride and she pledged to wait until the sun burned out for him. With a single kiss they parted and he journyed home, but only found heartache there. The Deer had enslaved his people and their king held his mother prisoner as she wasted away. With a terrible fury and rage in his heart he swore an oath of vengence and to break the heart and soul of the Deers so they would never raise arms against his Goats again. For thirteen days and night he niether ate or slept, but learned the very secrets Bray held. He learned every spell and dark ritual, gleaned every last piece of lore and dark knowledge Bray had to offer. And on the evening of the fourteenth day he sacrficed himself, only to rise as a Lich and went forth to the ancient Deer burial grouds and raised an army of the dead to wage war upon the living.

And waged war he did, he tore the cities of the Deers apart and slaughtered every stag, doe, and fawn, only to raise them again to attak the next one. The blood ran like a river in their streets and he impelled their nobles and clergy upon every roof top. He had every virgin sodomized by the undead and forced them to give birth to hideous abominations that feed upon the very souls and life force of their victims. In terror, the King of the Deers, pled for aid from Princesses Celestia and Luna, and they sent forth a mighty army of over 150,000 guards to battle Grogar's army of the dead. Only for 300 to return bringing word of an army now numbering 12,000,000 undead marching to war against Equestria. As town after town and city after city fell all seemed lost... Until a young wizard created a mighty army immune to the dead, as fearless as the iron and steel that made them, as relentless as the fires that birthed them, and as quick and cunning as the father that created them.

Starswirl the Bearded's Clockmen were a force of nature on the battle field. They never needed to eat, sleep, or even rest. When damage, they just put themselves back together. Even when it seemed they were out numbered, they waded through the enemy as it they were nothing more than blades of grass before a scythe. Onward and onward still they fought like daemons from Tartarus, 10,000 against 12,000,000, but they fought on for every inch, for every foot, and for every mile until finally they reached the very bridge to the Isle of Tambelon itself and watched as it turned to mist and shadows before disappearing, never to be seen again, but if it ever should reappear or if they are ever needed again to defend the lives, the liberties, and the happiness of ponies everywhere, they will rise from where Starswirl hid them to go forth once more, beholden to none so they may defend all. And in time of need all that you need to do is call them with the very words Starswirl inscribed on the armor over where their hearts would be: Da mihi libertatem dederit mihi mors pauci adhuc manus consererent!"

"Um, Sunburst as great as it is to hear someone recite an abridged version of The Tradgity of Grogar and an abridged version of The Triumph of Steel and Freedom. Did you have to say the words on their chest after Sunset said the words to unpetrify them in the room above where they are at?" Lightning Dust asked, just as everyone started to notice the strange sounds coming from under the alter and started backing away real slow. Then it stopped and seemed quiet before the alter exploded in a shower of dust, mist, and steam. They all watch as the first one emerged from the clouds of steam and mist, just watching them.

"Oops."

Author's Note

Man this one was tough and I had so much more I wanted to put in it, but thought that Oops was the best place to end this chapter at. I hope you like my steam punk faction and the interaction between Flim and Flam. Yeah their the reason for the Comedy tag, I can just see them playing off each other so well and if Shim and Sham are a little flat it's because I have yet to play with the air head and the smart sister who swears their mother must have ate Poison Joke while pregnant. As for Maud, I felt she needed the most bad ass way to really bring her in and punching out Ahuizotl was just perfect for her. Daring Do, Lightning Dust, Sunset Shimmer,Starlight Glimmer, and Sunburst will all be given more than a nod later. And I love I finally found the right picture for the Clockmen and Grogar.

As for Sombra and the yet to be seen Hebe, yes their faction will be higher tech, but like Sunset's crew, they are limited by size and area. But their the only faction that does have it's act together. Luna has a ragtag group of freedom fighters. Celestia hasn't dealt with any serious threats that needed her to pull out the real weapons until now. The Unicornia faction is just going to hand a lot of power to Sweetie Belle and hope for the best. The changeling are somewhere in the background with an axe to grind with Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. The Discordians haven't got a clue. In the end, everything is leading towards one fateful school trip and the type of chaos you only get from mixing small children, former lovers, angry rebels, clueles cultists, gods, and one very over worked under paid teacher.

Here's the best ideal I could find for what Celestia's Armor looks like.

And an ideal what the average guard will have, not as fancy as her's or the mane six, because it's the mass production model.

And just so you know this story anthros is number 4