Equestria had been a land of plenty before the grim, bloodstained monsters had come from their blasted and blighted island nightmare. They had come seeking plenty, seeking new worlds to parasitize in the name of their mysterious leader who had powers beyond all comprehensibility. He was the living embodiment of cheating and desired only that everyone live unhappily for all eternity. Their land was Tartarus and he was the fiend of the pit.
There was no mercy, only blood and fire. The berserker hordes and mindlessly masculine murderers stripped resistance with brutal reprisals, slaying dozens for the crime of one. They moved by fear and succeeded by their leader's inability to lose. It was almost as if he had slapped the universe itself and threatened it until it obeyed his petty and childish demands to never be allowed to be wrong. Nothing could be allowed to turn out in any way but how he wished it.
Cities were abandoned, villages left graveyards, everyone concentrated together into the hold of the brainwashed and the invaders. The noble and ancient city of Canterlot had its marble walls painted with the blood of the slain, stuffed with the those males chosen by fiat of the unbending and impossible leader, feeling special for being the unearned elect. They got the most plum prizes, and represented the best of the nation. Random slobs, ugly-minded horrors and those whose brains did not need a hard scrubbing to be washed to the caribou perspective.
The central core of caribou policy was fear. Cold, blind, sweating, pupil-widening, heart-racing, breath-quickening abject terror. But not merely in the sense that they instilled fear in the population and made even allies recoil in horror and disgust. Their policies were born of fear and insecurity that gnawed at their deepest cores, tearing their putrid guts like Niđhöggr tearing the root of Yggdrasil. They feared competition, happy endings for those not them and ever having to feel the smallest twinge of inferiority.
They were afraid. Deathly afraid. Had their king not been imbued with magic that made no sense the Equestrians would have crushed them like bugs. The backward savages could not in any sense compete on an even playing field. Collaborators and cheating were all they had. That and their fear of competent females, that soul-annihilating fear which was all they had in the sucking emptiness of their alleged hearts. Like the least mature of children who never managed to grow up they lived in fear of the mere idea of women. Their need for them was only just slightly greater than their mingled contempt, disgust and fear.
To that end they nullified power wherever possible. Pegasi had their wings ripped from them, sealing them from the sky, while unicorns were divested of their horns. They lost the right to clothing except as dictated by external forces, and had no impact on the political landscape even if they had been a huge part not long ago. They were made to put on a huge, elaborate and utterly false shadow-show for the caribou barbarians and the socially inferior idiots of their own kind who were given power for saying nasty words and thinking regressive thoughts. They had to prove their inferiority after all possible disadvantages had been applied save for death, all for the ego of spoiled brats.
Not everyone had been so easily bowled over. There had been spotty collections of the resisting. When female and caught they were marked with black. When male and caught and not part of a mass execution, they were altered to female and marked with black. They had been getting caught with some regularity, though they still made a good accounting of themselves with slain stallions and caribou occasionally stacked like cord-wood in the hinterlands and provincial regions. It was just never enough. They were like ants or flies or other pests, always ready to push out more loathsome insects to swarm and infect.
One cart rumbled its way toward Canterlot, iron-barred and in a state of disrepair, in line with the caribou aesthetic. It was pulled sullenly along by dead-eyed mares, naked and unresponsive save to act when whipped or pulled, also in the accursed caribou aesthetic. The driver was another anonymous stallion cog, focused on his task, mind perhaps just as twisted as those beaten and cut into obedience.
Ten mares were locked in that cage, heads bowed, eyes up, looking to their fellows. They had not been fighters, but had been caught free. Freedom was anathema to the libertarian libertines and those mares were to be processed in Canterlot. It was meant to be symbolic and to instill terror in others. Branding, mutilation, public beatings into bleeding meat. That was the caribou way.
None of those ten had been part of the rebellion, not really. None of them had been soldiers. They had merely been opposed to the regime. It was likely why they had been captured. Caribou wanted, needed, low-hanging fruit. Easy victories and painless conquest was all they were good for. Rather than capture armed ponies that could cut their throats or spill their guts, they went after soft-target units like simple farmers, organizers and fabricators. Fear of being beaten informed their military focus, making them look all the weaker.
They spoke in whispers, trading names and pasts. All of them had been professionals of some kind. Scientific and technical professionals of all sorts, as well as two magical researchers. One had been in Canterlot and managed to escape at the start of it, when it happened.
The Great Purgation.
The ignorant northmen showed no false fronts, they openly embraced and displayed their ignorance and incuriosity. The mysteries of the world, of magic and nature, were stupid to them. They would never admit it was because they were too ignorant to understand the complexities of learning that came from a society far more advanced than them. They simply spit on learning.
The great libraries, the museums, private archives and collections, all raided, precious treasures of written history stolen at spearpoint and ripped from the hands of lovers of learning. The beasts put the torch to the mounds of brittle parchment, cheering savagely as the collective history of the nation and of science vanished in a dark cloud. They celebrated their darkness with high-stepping marches around the blazing fires, which served, if accidentally, to remove the threat of powerful spells that might have been in the collections.
Mere ignorant and bigoted savages, gifted with power to make certain everyone became as backward, parochial and stunted as them.
Ten professionals, clever and educated, had one plot in their minds. One of the number said she had been in Canterlot doing magic research before the fall, and knew where they could find some scrolls that she had borrowed, for an extended period. They would still be there, as they were not in obvious places, and were thus safe from the unhidden great purgation.
They would escape, by any means necessary, take the old scrolls and leave Canterlot, alive. The researcher had stated the scrolls were ancient magic, wild but capable of great things. Raw power was very big before fine control could be established. The magical version of brute force. She couldn't recall exactly what the spells had been about, beyond the impression that they concerned some variation of common spells that were known to modern unicorns, probably the precursors to them. The age and potency would make them useful, anything to help the fight.
They had one chance, just one hope of a future. All of them would have to escape, find the spells, and retreat into the hills again, to find some use for them. They had enough unicorns to make some use out of any old magical spells. They would need to escape form the heart of insanity and death, in the middle of a crowd of those intent on mutilating and dominating them. It was madness itself. Impossible.
But it was all they had left.
With the conquest of most of the Equestrian heartland complete and no need for small towns or similar things the spaces between caribou-dominated population loci were primarily deserted. Earth magic had been stripped from many locations by an ignorant misuses of caribou anti-magic objects, leaving them desolate wastes. Others had been savagely reclaimed by nature, mundane and magical, a land of food web and thoughtless beasts.
The path was hard, going between the forced-confinement cities. Once settled and established the indolent and entitled caribou seldom had cause, save when leading brainwashed stallions on quests to slay rebels and collect slaves. Those transporting goods were impressed figures, slaves and the lowest ranking of males, allegedly 'paying their dues' to be gifted greater treasures. But as all election was done by fiat and at random, they were only conceding the fact that some measure of toil was needed to merely make things move, and as females were not given the freedom to do such things some men had to be lowly.
It was hardly a fit setting for anyone but a heavily armored patrol, especially when the trip was across great distances. Someone without choice, though, would have to just power through it and do all they could to survive, without complaint.
Precious Price made tracks to the limit of her stunted stamina. A simple magical researcher and scholar had no claim to any measure of athleticism most of the time, and she was no different. Most of her prior life had been spent hunched over tables or looking through old book spines and scrolls. She had no idea if she was being pursued or if they had written her off as dead. There was no reason to presume they would think there was any danger in her escape.
No matter what it had entailed...
Canterlot was a ruin, a ruin just barely considered livable. In the old days it would have been failed by any environmental health organization. For the savages, it was acceptable and proper. The brainwashed had no opinion on the matter, focused as they were on sex and domination, indulging petty lusts and stroking tiny, childish egos. But even with all that the bones of the city remained, and that meant the landmarks were still there.
The one who had hidden the old scrolls, Carob Brownie, had made certain everyone knew where they had been placed, in case of separation. She had buried them and covered the spot with a rock on her way out of the city. She had been reasonably certain they would be there, given the caribou lacked curiosity and the stallions had no drive to work hard. It was by an outer wall of the second terrace, where a path led to a disused hiking trail, exposed by the wall being damaged in the initial invasion.
As they were nothing special, all of them were offloaded on the second terrace with no extra security. They were not even chained, merely hemmed in by armed stallions with a few caribou directing them. Lewd remarks were common, as we abusive strikes, most but not all to expected areas. The sadism of everyone was overly casual, especially as the processing began.
Healthy Glow had been elected to begin the escape. She had been a very hands-on engineer of large electrothaumatic devices, and had been Dog-trained in smithing. She had the strength behind her, but hidden with stooping and being especially submissive. She channeled her earth pony strength into her initial attack, going for obvious hoof-thrusts to the testicles, which were always unarmored. While it made no sense, it was very good for them. At least one of them had theirs literally crushed to pulp.
First to fight, sadly, meant first to fall. One caribou had not been completely incapacitated. He used his stun baton, still thinking he was dealing with a simple case of petulance and not a fatal fight-or-flight response. She was only down for a moment before throwing a hoof up and into the caribou's crotch. One of the stallions that managed to fight through the pain ended the fight with his sword.
But the deed was done. Nine mares were free, to rush for the other side of the terrace, and to the hidden scrolls.
Precious nearly collapsed into the first pool of water she had encountered all day. She could not afford to miss a single one. She had quite a journey ahead of her, bound for a place that offered only a possibility of a good outcome, not a guarantee of success.
She shoved her head into the water and drank in healthy gulps. She didn't notice any rankness or obvious pollution but still ended up nauseous. She was dimly aware that water was to be more carefully drunk when extremely thirsty, but she did her best to fight the feeling, tearing out tufts of the hardy grass growing at the water margin and chewing them with needy vigor.
The yellow-toned unicorn tried to keep herself from giving in to the stiff, sore feeling screaming from all her joints, focusing instead on the one thing she had with her aside from the stolen bag of raw wheat she was saving for real emergencies. The scroll of yellowed parchment strapped to her back. She unrolled it slowly, carefully checking for rips or cracks in the aged relic.
She cast her eyes over the mystic diagrams and numerous charts and drawings, that which had become the standard for noting and visualizing the structure of thaumatic energy as a spell was being cast and maintained. This one certainly was an old one, just as Carob had said. It still required a verbal element to properly stabilize the mana matrix through focused applications of will formed in particular resonant shapes through the way the words were formed in the mind. To its credit, the diagrams indicated it was extremely stable, possibly permanent.
She had to burn every last detail into her mind, commit every last polygon to memory, make it a part of her, just in case it was lost or destroyed. It was so fragile that the journey could have destroyed it. She had only some idea where she was going, and had to assume her most generous travel estimate would be wrong.
It was a crazy plan, from the start. The whole thing had so little chance of success. Taking all of the scrolls and escaping Canterlot to find a rebel group to shelter them and deliver the scrolls to more settled researchers. She should have tried to find the rebels, but there was simply no time. She had a set target to aim for, and not a vague notion about likely places to look, which would risk recapture.
Her screaming limbs still managed to work as she rose from the watering hole, setting off again in the direction of her target. It would take several days, and every step was a step closer. She had to pack them in as fast as possible. She owed them that much.
She had been pursued. Not very well or with much effort. One escaped slave. Normally the petulant caribou showed off their fear and insecurity by sending out more force than necessary, but the rusted wheels might have started turning in their heads, as they began to send only expendable lesser ponies after single escaped slaves.
It was only two, and they were hardly subtle about it. They must have set off late and caught up only because her tracks were obvious and she had stopped to rest more than they had. It still took them over a day to find her, meaning they had camped the same as her. They clearly felt no fear of the Stag King's wrath.
No armor, no weapons, not even stun-sticks. These were either the deeply brainwashed expendable or actual true believers. Real Equestrian men knew that women of all races and species were true forces to be reckoned with. They had lived alongside politicians and police and all other classes of women that were competent at their jobs. Only the backwards ones could have denied all of the evidence and bought the caribou lies.
They were threatening, but only as they could hurt her in their clumsy, needlessly aggressive attempts at capture. And they were earth ponies, so could boast natural strength. Everyone was fatigued, but they were probably less so. But she had been through real attempts at capture. In the second terrace, she had escaped.
The nine mares had become five. They ran a gauntlet of alerted caribou and stallions, dead-set on the scrolls and the damaged wall. They did their best to use the uncoordinated response to their advantage. Each buck or stallion was obsessed with his own personal liberty and action, thus often failed to coordinate and compromise except in a brutally enforced hierarchy.
Each slavecatcher set on them threw ropes or grabbed without considering the others, interrupting or entangling their fellows. But numbers mattered a lot in such an event. Four of the fleeing mares were tripped up or ensnared. But like Healthy, they fought to the end.
Gravity Drop, Rainbow Arc, Solitude and Trusty Tome. They gave the best accounting of themselves that they could. Crushed genitals, broken teeth, possibly collapsed lungs and internal hemorrhage. Gravity Drop even gave up her life willingly, sinking her teeth into the neck of a caribou and tearing out a hunk of flesh. She knew they would use lethal force to stop her. It was her own form of escape. In some sense, freedom did come.
For the remaining five, it was still coming.
The two slavecatchers had some kind of coordination. They attempted to encircle Precious, lasso in the hands of one and a net in the other. She normally could have made some headway against slow-moving thrown weapons, as she had strong skills with synecdochic magic. She could have pulled at them by overcoming their personal will through their tools once freed. But she couldn't depend on that.
The first throw missed because her sore legs made her stumble, the lasso missing her head and interrupting the net-holding stallion. She followed the example of Gravity Drop, rushing the interrupted stallion and sinking her flat teeth into his throat. She couldn't boast of much strength in her limbs but ponies all had tremendous bite muscles and powerful teeth.
The bitten stallion couldn't even scream. He choked and gagged, thrashing wildly in genuine surprise. That answered the question. A true believer. The idea of a mare attacking him made his world collapse. The surprise kept her teeth locked on his throat for long enough to get his mind foggy and even more uncoordinated.
He shoved at her thoughtlessly, pushing her further from his partner, but making her iron grip yank on his throat. She didn't pull out as much as Gravity had, but it was enough. Though breath came back to him, he gargled with each draw, blood mingling with his desperate gasps. He staggered aside, leaving Precious tottering, but free, blood dripping from her maw. That was what the caribou had forced on the nation. As ever, a duty no less grim for being necessary, and no less necessary for being grim.
A lasso-wielding earth pony against a unicorn. Fatigued, desperate, with the taste of a regressive stallion's blood burning across her tongue. She was not sure if she was going to vomit, scream or lick her lips to cast more fear into the mind of the horrified true believer.
She lit her horn, grunting softly as the magic sputtered and fizzled. The stallion looked on confusion as his lasso pulled and twisted but only intermittently and with very little strength. The fear melted from his features as he looked at the failure of the magical influence.
“I knew the caribou were right! Cunts were always inferior to real, powerful males! You can't beat me, your magic is bitch magic and my man strength will beat you!”
“The caribou hate you!” Precious screamed, blood flecks flying from her lips. “They think all other creatures are inferior to them!”
“I was chosen!” The slavecatcher proudly asserted.
“Election is random! At best they elect from a pool of worthless slime like you, just to make sure you useless idiots don't run amok and need them to spend resources to murder you all!”
“I was chosen!” He repeated, trying to keep his eyes distant and dull, the threat of understanding pulling at the edges of his eyes.
She watched his hands twirling the rope, magic activating and fizzling over and over, growing more and more desperate. She slowly stepped back, forcing more and more magic into her sparking horn, missing her target more often than not.
His hand pulled back to throw the loop, her magic surged and a rock was grabbed with solid force. It rushed forward with a speed that outstripped an arrow, overcoming the aerodynamic resistance with pure force and striking the stallion right at the base of his skull. The horrible crack of his spine severing was followed by heavy thud of him bonelessly hitting the ground, eyes filled with disbelief, realization taking him a moment before death.
Precious sank down to her knees, hands on her chest, panting heavily, eyes still wide. Her magic finally worked. It was almost a wild event, but she had wanted to grip something and needed protection. Simple telekinesis shouldn't have been that hard. She touched her horn and winced, fingertips grazing over the deep cut in the side of her horn, tracing the splintering and scratches.
She hadn't been fully processed. Healthy had begun her escape when the saw wasn't completely through her horn. She had preserved some of it. She assumed it was still usable. It had to be. She was the one that had to do the deed. Her magic had to work.
One.
If loneliness could have consumed Precious, it would have. She was being left entirely alone. But the screaming, the blood, the fire and smoke all stole away the sense of anything except desperation and fear.
Inside the proud edifice of their stolen power, the caribou's fear became dominant. Everything was an insult to the fake honor they wore like a pasteboard mask. It seemed so easy to steal a thing that, when real, could not be taken, only lost by its owner. They didn't want to be known as the parasites they were, lounging in the city they had stolen from the rightful owners, so they had to overreact to everything.
Creative Spark had been a chemist, zebra-trained and all. Her skill with chemicals was why she had been of such use to the rebellion, and why she let herself fall to the back of the line of fleeing mares. That allowed her to make use of the discarded supplies that the caribou hadn't cared about. Pollution was a problem for lesser creature as far as the caribou were concerned, the elect were too arrogant to deign to clean, and the lowly were too busy with sexually-focused tasks to bother.
Creative mixed the noxious chemicals together in several fallen trash cans, carefully adjusting proportions and minding the wind. She didn't want to interrupt the other four.
Precious, Eureka and the sisters Minute Measure and Equal Measure. They all unearthed the covered collection of scrolls from under the rock, in the hastily dug pit. The moment they were out, the chaos began.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Nets flew, stun rods crackled, and the heavy garbage cans rang as they hit the floor and spilled their contents all over. Screams of pain mingled with vomiting and desperate choking. The toxic mix was giving horrible chemical burns to those that strode across it, and the fumes were sickening those that came too close. A stun rod dropped while the scrolls were examined, and that one spark lit an inferno.
Equal and Eureka were trapped under nets, and Creative had chosen to give herself to the flames when a pegasus swooped down at her, buying her freedom in death while taking the screaming male with her. Minute grabbed one scroll and pushed it at Precious. “Go! Just go!”
“No! You go! My horn..!”
Minute pointed at the stump on her forehead. “I was ahead of you. Besides, I'm not leaving Equal. Take something at least. Now go!”
Precious clasped the scroll and hesitated a moment, leaping through the huge crack in the wall when she saw the caribou and stallions marching through the flames. She hit the ground running, with the sounds of screaming defiance and arrogant degradation ringing in her ears. One scroll, one random scroll had been entrusted to her, because she had been lucky enough to be the last one.
One. Alone.
The journey had been made slightly easier by taking the supplies the two trackers had brought, giving her a much more filling starvation. She had rationed to the extreme, supplemented freely and worked herself to the bone to squeeze as much travel out of each day as she could. It had all been worth it when she stepped into view of her destination.
The murky haze of frequent fires left a greasy smear across the ocean's side, and left the buildings of the great city she had wanted to reach wreathed in polluted clouds.
She had stolen from the dead pursuers, taken their clothing to give herself some kind of dignity. With careful use of dirt and using all the cleanest clothing she could pull together she bound down her breasts, marked up her face to look more masculine, hid her damaged horn by wrapping her head loosely in a torn shirt and bulked her shoulders up with wadded cloth and tied stones.
The city of Manehattan had been militarized by the heartless caribou, turning the cobbled streets into another bloodstained hall of horror. The stench of rotting blood and other fluids permeated the area, along with the choking foulness of the smoke which she hoped was only coming from books and works of art. She had heard they didn't bother to use mass graves in cases when it would require actual work.
She strolled up to the gates that had been crudely erected at the entrance to the city. They were staffed with stallions and caribou, armed to the teeth. Her gait had been modified, to imitate the arrogant swagger the true believers had often shown in front of their fellow monsters. In her hand she held a crudely made talisman, one which marked an elected stallion, giving them freedom of passage without need for caribou approval.
The enormous berserker brute of a caribou looked down on Precious, narrowing his gaze as he traced the exposed features behind the face wrap. She held up the talisman, which made the caribou snort. “You lesser beasts look like your cunts. Inferior ponies.”
She dropped her voice as much as she could, giving everything she had to imitate the stallion she had killed. “I was chosen.”
The buck glared down a little longer before he motioned and had the gates opened. “And thank our God-King every minute for your advancement to the ranks of real beings. Move!”
Through the gates the city looked as bad as she had feared. A mess of trash and destruction. The streets were pitted and scarred, still stained from the initial invasion. The light poles were bent, broken or removed, the trash cans overflowing and knocked over, and the storefronts were messes of what was possibly normal graffiti, though with far les artistry and more bare, base vulgarity sloppily slapped across the buildings.
The city had suffered like Canterlot, yet somehow worse because the Stag King wasn't there to keep up a semblance of clumsy and farcical imitation nobility and fanciness. With none there to keep the stage play or pretending to care about royal affectations the place was run with the immaturity and insanity of ego-driven and selfish unsophisticated minds in allegedly mature bodies.
The streets were openly lined with stocks, full and empty, and rather than the music and cheer of the old days the streets rang with screams and pleading, counterpointed with insults and the sounds of monstrous abuse. Naked mares walked down the torn roads, dead-eyed and silent, while stallions strutted around, sneering and yelling now and again, randomly whipping or slapping any mare they saw.
Every street had been altered from its pre-invasion appearance, but the layout was the same, a grid that was easy to navigate if a destination was kept in mind. Precious knew what she wanted, the scroll secured to her back making her constantly recall her mission. Her desperate, improbable mission.
She had to succeed.
“Hey! Hey man!” Her blood went cold. “Come here! Share these bitches! Come here!” She was being summoned by a pair of stallions who were whipping and assaulting a quartet of shrieking mares.
Nothing was said, nothing happened. She walked on, swaggering, increasing her speed each time a cry raised or a lash sounded.
“Hey! Come on!” One approached, naked and arrogant.
The talisman came out again, held out like an amulet of protection, swung in defense against a creature no less deadly than a vampony or a louquine. “I was chosen. I have a mission. I must obey.”
“What's the matter with your voice? You sound like a cunt with a cold. Come on, you can do this,” the stallion insisted, coming closer.
Her magic rose again, surging and fizzling, over and over, lifting pieces of street and dropping them over and over again, attracting more notice than was good. “I was chosen. I have to obey. They'll kill me.”
“They don't kill the elected. Do they?” The pause for consideration was the end. He was close enough for Precious to reach down, pick up a heavy stone that had been popped close enough to her hooves and swing it hard, smashing in the side of his face, shattering his jaw and knocking out several teeth. A few more bludgeons on his head made him no longer a threat.
“What are you doing? What the fuck was that?” There was still another, but Precious couldn't care about that. She could only run, because she was close to her destination. Possibly close enough to outrun the overly heavy guard response. They would certainly send more than needed for an escaped slave, if that slave had spit in the eye of the divine male form. She had hurt a stallion, and that would bring her doom.
Her run was reasonably short, to a huge building that still stood, though its exterior was marred by huge cracks and tremendous gouges. The Manehattan Museum of Martial History. To remember peace, they had made a museum out of war. The armor and weapons of all the vast cultures of Equestria and beyond, from the farthest antiquity to the most recent. Each new uniform was placed inside, to mark the history of military equipment.
Naturally the blood-eyed and ice-hearted Northmen scum had left that singular museum standing. It was about war. War was their only thought. That made it acceptable enough to allow. Small favors. Nothing of great import but something to be happy about.
The alarm began to sound over the city, sirens and bells and all manner of noise. The shouts of soldiers mixed with the sounds of the alert. She just rushed into the museum before the guards started searching, though she knew she had left a trail of blood that would find her out eventually.
The inside of the museum had been dirtied and tossed about some, but the action of the caribou had, oddly, preserved it. Their reverence for instruments and icons of war had spared it major problems. The main hall hung with standards of the many modern lands, showing their guard units. There were signs for the Day Guard, the Night Guard, the Office of the Cult-Finder General, the Nightwatch, and the constabulary of major cities. Guard armor, guard weapons, guard equipment of all kids lined the walls, while the huge, arched openings led to other wings of the museum, to armor and weapons of other lands and other times.
Precious stripped off the disguise and unrolled the scroll again, laying it out flat and looking it over again. She had burned it into her mind, made it a part of her. This was her only hope. The last chance. She surged magic up into her partially-cut horn and focused hard on the shapes of the many diagrams, willing the mana matrix into shape.
Layer on layer was built, forming the essential structures, the thaumatic force twisted into shape. The spell staggered. The spell sputtered. The spell finally fizzled with a pop as each layer of formed mana collapsed with the interruption of magic through her horn.
Fingers desperately traced every line, practically scribed every sigil in the air over the old scroll as the power repeatedly surged and fizzled. Time was not available, there was no way to keep working forever. The matrix had to stay stable, the form and intent had to remain. It had to. Or all the death would be for nothing.
The sound of screaming and hateful shouts grew. They were narrowing down where she had gone, given the limited number of places she could have fled to in the time between killing and the alarm being raised. Surge, fizzle. Surge, fizzle. The verbal component part had almost escaped being remembered. The old, sometimes-helpful system, to shore up, stabilize and focus will-based magic, especially strong spells like the old one in question. The magical equivalent of brute force.
Magic poured in and fizzled out, but each time the forms were easier to make, faster, more efficient. The matrix could be put up fast but surging in enough power was hard and getting harder. At last, with the sound of angry folk growing louder she screamed out the verbal portion, repeating it over and over as she desperately cast the spell. “Eed Tissay Rumcotre Teescoyma Nagutra!”
Outside the museum, armed stallions and caribou followed the blood trail to the steps of the museum, a small collection of stallions and one caribou surging up and into the museum. The others waited outside, talking to one another.
“Can't believe an elected one just went and beat another stallion to death. And didn't even take the cunts!”
“Some of those guys... well, they usually get sent off to a donkey camp or one of those camps for the old folks or the young ones. Gets them out of the way so they don't bother anyone that matters.”
“Must have been one of those new converts or maybe a rebel. A fake. No real stallion would ever attack another stallion or have any opposition to the caribou way. Real stallions all know their own superiority, so, we're gonna have a fake to process.”
Time stretched out, silently, almost painfully. There were echoing sounds of a struggle, as they had figured there would be. The mad figure inside would probably be brutally beaten or killed, as was appropriate. But after all that noisy action, nothing. A significant nothing. There were no hoots of triumph, no calls for assistance, not even a notice of what was taking so long. Just nothing.
Another squad was preparing to enter when one of the members of the first squad to enter came out, with a regular, monotonous gait. He moved with great precision in all ways, in fact, with crisp arm motions, his head held straight in his cheap iron helmet. The caribou leader of the second squad approached, confused. “Where's the rebel? You should bring him or his corpse out there so we can be sure...” He stopped speaking when he finally took a good look at the other figure.
The eyes were glazed and looking at nothing, rolled slightly into his head. His jaw was slack and his tongue just peeked out from the front. Most notably, his throat at been crushed in, the mark of powerful hands evident on the front. But even so, he still moved. He didn't quite draw his sword as much as placed his hand against it, as he wore only arm guards and his hand flopped around. Even still the sword slid out as though it had been grasped in an ethereal hand, and pointed at the other caribou.
The second squad commander immediately drew and swung, eagerly lopping off the head of the slain caribou and watching it thud heavily on the ground. “A trick! A magical trick of some kind! These rebels can reanimate our dead! This is...”
The headless body smartly marched to the fallen head and undid the locking pins holding on the back-plates of the helmet, which covered the channels used to put the helmet on while still sporting antlers. It slid the severed head out of the helmet and set the helmet back onto its armored body, the plates back in place. It hovered there, at exactly the location where a head would hold it. Like the Green Knight, it gave blow for blow, the animated armor with a corpse inside swung its sword with vicious force, decapitating the stunned and disbelieving squad leader and sending the rest back a pace.
From within the museum there suddenly burst forth a cacophony of martial sounds. Drums beat, horns sounded, and pipes played, making it sound as if there was an entire army of musicians alone. Then the screaming, words in many languages, cries of inarticulate rage, the thump and ring of armor on armor.
The first thing to emerge, following that cry, were the other members of the squad that had entered. They were all literally hanging in their armor, mere puppets moved by the animated armor itself. Limbs had been severed but still moved with the armor they were strapped in, heads were severed or throats cut but they bobbed along despite that. They marched with perfect precision, far more than they ever showed in life. They radiated discipline, order, exactness. Something they never had as sex-addled followers of someone that had won by cheating.
Next after the fallen soldiers there streamed a colorful array of flags, banners and standards. The colors of ancient nobility, of regions around the world both Equestrian and foreign, the signs and insignia of constabulary forces, special military groups, everything. They waved of their own accord, and marched down the steps with the same careful precision as the corpse-filled armor that had preceded them.
A riot of instruments flowed free from the door, a flood tide of brass and wood, hide and cloth, an exultation of masterless musical creators. The Bald bodhrán and uilleann pipes played beside the great pipes of the Wedgetails, the curled horns of Equestrians trumpeting beside the high toned crystal flugelhorns. Some of the instruments hovered on their own, while others were associated with uniforms of appropriate types, all held in proper positions, looking as though they were being played by invisible beings.
At last came the real deluge, more armor, without occupants. Shields and swords, spears, bows and quivers, and endless assortments of uniforms, partial suits and full suits of armor of all constructions and styles. The golden and silvery barding of royal guards, the many styles of armored and reinforced suits of Officers of the Cult-Finder General, the cloaks and weapons of the Nightwatch, and examples of Equestrian constable attire. The garb of the griffins was brilliantly arrayed, the leather armor and plated and mailed suits of the Bald soldiers, Wedgetail kilts and full dress with attached metal plates, even ancient Haastish metal and leather skirts and the many strengths and styles of loricae.
Almost unnoticed behind the tide of animated armor was Precious, standing on the cart that carried the huge bolts used by the huge ballista rolling out before her, the kind used to attack quarray eels or ursa majors. She looked confident, panting heavily, still holding the scroll in her hands. She looked on the gathered and amazed crowd of ponies and caribou, reflexive fear giving way to hate and disgust. The armor and other things stood, standing perfectly still and imposing, patiently awaiting orders. She pointed to the gathered troops, revulsion burning in her gaze. “Cut a swath through them to their bloody and tyrannical king! Don't stop until you cut him to pieces! In the name of the living and the dead!”
The instruments let out a unified marching tone, the horns and pipes putting out a tune that matched with the cadence of the drums, the standard staves clacking loudly on the ground in response while the armor rang out in the various salutes to which they were accustomed. Ghostly voices wailed out, in a powerful but eerily wavering way, “Eed Tissay Rumcotre Teescoyma Nagutra! In the name of the living and the dead!”
“More magical trickery! This foolishness ends here!” One of the more burly caribou, looking like one of the ones guarding the entrance to the city, rushed into the mass of animated items, stabbing his huge spear into some Day Guard barding, intent on stabbing through as many layers of armor as he could reach.
The spear forced its way, if just, through the hardened steel chest plate, not moving the armor at all, the ghostly bearer standing solid and unflinching. The sword was drawn from its side, and raised up high. “In the name of the living and the dead,” the armor groaned, casually and smoothly chopping down, splitting the caribou's head wide open, down to his throat. The body fell backwards, leaving the spear sticking out of the armor, which seemed none the worse for wear.
A silent moment followed after the slaying of the berserker, the assembled soldiers looking on in awe and fear at the army of armor, an entire museum full of every kind imaginable, including their own, with dead members of of their own kind inside like horrifying marionettes. The instruments sounded again, sharp and clear, while each piece of armor which had it unsheathed drew their weapons. The whole mass intoned, in deep and echoing monotone, “In the name of the living and the dead.”
More than half the assembled force fled outright, screaming in terror, and some dying the same way. The archers and crossbowmen held nothing back, smoothly and precisely tagging fleeing ponies and caribou in the back of their heads, through their spines or even straight through their hearts. Those with any class of spear, from the Dig Dog guard variety to pila and pikes chanced a throw at the backs of the retreating, striking them down in a second rain of terrible projectiles.
The ones who stood unafraid trusted to their male nature and unwavering power. They attacked with everything they could bring to the fore. Short swords and daggers slashed out with speed and fury, the giant northern hand-and-a-half and zweihanders were whirled up to speed and twirled in elaborate, deadly displays of machismo and martial prowess. Arrows flew, bolts whizzed out and those with magical wherewithal grabbed large stones and flung them with a furious will. The war hammers struck out with whirling power, those using the one-handed kind adding either sturdy oaken shields for bulling forward or swift and terrible war axes swung in time with the crushing hammers.
The armies met, and the line of armor never moved. There was no flesh to pierce or crush, no eyes to blind nor to intimidate. The displays of desperate masculinity were ended with swift, stoic stabs and slashes, cutting the elaborate display short in the most literal fashion. The armor was unmoved by hacks and stabs that pierced metal or cut through air, as though thinking to sever limbs that did not exist. It only brought the forces in close, letting them be sliced, battered or grabbed in a tremendous grasp, the animated armor crushing the screaming soldiers and using their bodies as shields, to get close enough to bring more devastation.
One group of ponies had opted for a soft target, having slunk around to where the instruments were and focusing their rage on the kilted piper. “You cunty griffin thing! You wear dresses like weak females! This is what freaks like you get!” They hacked and stabbed the kilt, slashed the hose and leather shoes, ignoring as the piper armor drew a dirk on them. They deflected it over and over and they chopped at the squealing pipes, creating a noise very like some kind of animal dying a slow and agonizing death.
They had reduced the attire to tatters, and rendered the pipes useless, but they still floated there, the dirk still attacked, but worse, the activity had not gone unnoticed. The group of ponies found more kilted figures around them. They were very, very large kilts, with a tartan scarf across what would be a very large and broad chest, quite substantial blood-red tams hovering where a fierce eagle head would be. They weren't reduced to only pipes and a dirk. They all had huge steel two-handed swords hovering near, and went at the screaming stallions with a furious will.
The army marched on once those that had stopped to fight had been dispatched. Their steady march made all the armor ring as one, announcing their presence far in advance of them. Precious remained in the bolt cart, watching the animated kilts and kit kick the severed heads of the ponies around like balls, juggling them and keeping them in the air as much as possible. “The Wedgetail are honorable warriors, so my study says, but if you attack the piper on the battlefields you've broken the rule of battle, and they'll make you pay even after you're dead.” They finally kicked the heads away and went back to formation, as though nothing had happened.
The slaves of Manehatten lined the streets, fearful yet oddly fascinated by the dented, bloodstained parade of banners, instruments and armor. With no one to stop them or correct them the first cheer set off a chain reaction. They clapped, they whistled, many wept and wailed in emotional overload. It was like a parade from the old world, a time of emotion and celebration, but this one had a more powerful significance, a meaning that surpassed any other.
“Come on! Bring any supplies you can and spread the word!” Precious cried out. “We're marching on Canterlot! The Stag King can't cheat his way through these!”
The liberated slaves hesitated for a time, not sure what to think of the offer. The decision was made when the forces of the caribou who had not been slaughtered at the museum and those that had run away from the scene, intent on an ambush, threw themselves at the army, thinking the element of surprise would make them victorious.
Precious was watching the slaughter with a kind of detached acceptance. It was only appropriate for them. They had earned their fate as agents of the caribou invaders. She didn't see a unicorn stallion coming up behind her cart, holding several knives in his magical grip and a spear in his hands.
The magic flashed and tossed the blades forward, but they only thudded loudly off of a wall of animated shields painted with bright blazons. Steel, iron and wood, a motley collection of kites, parmae, bucklers, towers and all the rest. Once the deflections were done they sailed out with all the speed their broad faces could muster, bashing the stallion's face and body in turn until he was a smear of blood across their surfaces, all broken bones and gore.
The shield wall encircled the bolt cart, a rotating shell of several layers, inner layers covering the gaps the outer left. Protected, Precious directed the army on, followed by the liberated ones who didn't shun the bloodied armor as it marched in precise step in the direction of distant Canterlot.
The forces of the Stag King had massed at Canterlot, the reputation of the unflinching army following well ahead of them. They marched with steady tread, chanting the spell that had animated them and proclaiming they acted for the living and the dead. Small pockets of daring forces had intended to stop them, had set up roadblocks and ambushes. They had stood up to the approaching magical army in the name of their blighted king.
They had all died screaming, trampled by the measured tread of the advancing army of magic.
None of the anti-magic forces had had any effect on them. Not nullification armor, not the rare spells intent on it, nothing. The blood-rune mages that had been set to destroy them couldn't stop even the banners. Battered by stone, ripped by wind and rain, even scorched by torrents of fire, they waved in defiance and prefigured such things as Booted griffin stealth-slayer attire, which swirled in with speed and mystery, cutting the throats of the rune-marked figures as they desperately smeared blood on the ground to try another magical effect.
The forces of the caribou king had intended that the armor be held back by fortification. Siege tactics. They would be halted by stopping up the entrances, putting out pointed barriers, caltrops, moats of filth, archer boxes, everything that could turn the ancient city into a huge lockbox.
It was all for naught.
The magical army had no fear of any disease from a moat, they hacked through obstacles of wood and marched harmlessly over any strewn field of caltrops as if they were fallen leaves. They marched unperturbed through rains of arrows, unfeeling and unmoved every step of the way. The forms of Black-Verreaux pionniers did their duty as way clearers and sappers, axes hacking through the wooden blockades while heavy hammers shattered stone. Diamond Dog underminer attire joined the efforts with savage swings of heavy pickaxes, all under rains of arrows, spears, slingstones and larger chunks of thrown rock, which they never felt.
Not having lives to fear for meant nothing stood in their way. They marched through the siege very nearly unimpeded, clearing it with much more than the speed with which it had been assembled. They punched through barricades and created enough room for the smaller weapons to get through, beginning the liberation by slaying those soldiers foolhardy enough to stand and fight against the weapons that never gave in.
Concentrated effort led to all the main ways being cleared, allowing the marching, eerily chanting army to troop steadily down the streets of the occupied city, cheered on by those who were de facto liberated by their mere presence. No one would stop them from acting free. Those few that attempted to restore their poisonous 'order' by beating 'disobedient' slaves found themselves piled on by the armor. The constable attire was much in evidence for such events, truncheons bashing the perpetrators into a still, silent state.
Resistance folded, rapidly, as true believers peeled away with little hesitation, the brainwashed slower to realize it was hopeless, but still capable of recognizing they had to get out of the way. The arrogant caribou scattered in waves, revealing the true nature of their hearts each time. Some left with the true believers or faster even than them. Others put up token resistance but fled after they watched a fellow caribou fall beneath unrestrained attacks. The only ones left at the end, at the walls of Canterlot Palace itself were either those who had lost all escape corridors and those who had fully subsumed all logic and self-preservation to their culture's lies about invincible male superiority.
The ones who had failed to escape begged for mercy, pleading with fearful gazes and high voices. They were mocked and even attacked by those who stood in acculturated self-assurance. The armor offered no mercy and no escape. They mowed through the arrogant ones and cleared the way into the palace, whose opening let out a streaming horde of slaves, those that had just run away from the caribou and ponies trying to hold them. Those same masters tried to escape as well but met unyielding metal fists and plentiful sword points.
Nothing stopped the forward advance, not for long. Berserkers and doctrinaire figures ached to prove perpetual male dominance in all things, throwing themselves into the fray with eagerness. They hit the wall of magically mobile metal and were torn to ribbons, whipped away from life like wheat under a reaper's scythe. Every reserve was exhausted, every supposed protective measure broken and left behind, trampled over by the unrelenting march of the chanting armor. They steadily and patiently marched through to break down the last barrier, entering the throne room at last.
The Stag King stood alone, all his fleshy shields slaughtered or on the run. His arrogance had been challenged, his rule shaken by the tide of metal and cloth. He met the arrival with waves of magical force, great blasts of shearing wind and huge bursts of magical fire.
The armor felt nothing of any substance. Most of the materials didn't even scorch, made to withstand the hazards of a beautiful but dangerous world. The well-regulated troops attacked in proper order, archers swarming in and firing with mechanical smoothness and precision. Arrows and crossbow bolts thumped off of his magical shield, but did so continuously, not even halting when he lashed out with wind or fire. He had no reprieve, the barrage halting when the archers had run out of every last arrow they had brought and taken on the path.
Magical force crashed through the lines of banners, harsh waves of energy cutting through the instruments and leaving long lines of deep cuts over the armor and slashing long vents through the cloth and leather. “You miserable things! Die! Die you cuntish tricks of weak and feeble ponies!”
The animated figures proffered no response save their constant chanting of, “Eed Tissay Rumcotre Teescoyma Nagutra. In the name of the living and the dead.” The spears flew once the archers had pulled out of the throne room, row after row of spears raining down against the magical shield the Stag King brought against the horde. The solid mass of magic didn't waver, but the king still found himself hounded and harried by regular and untiring figures. “Surrender to your natural superior! Give me my due respect! Obey my power and all treasure shall be yours!”
The infantry piled in with no comment or hesitation, swarming across the throne room floor and rushing with quick-march speed like a myrmidon legion, truly like ants in the swarm. They hacked and stabbed the shield of dark energy, individual strikes doing little but the collective whole serving to cover him with metal and cloth. Even as he washed them away with power new ones swarmed in. Dented, tattered, broken, but unaffected by the harsh repelling. They never stopped, they only came back each time they were thrown back.
“These are what your diseased culture calls perfect!” Precious screamed from her position at the back of it all. “They march without tiring, they fight without fear, they kill without mercy. This is old magic, the magic-user's version of brute force. It's not only self-sustaining, it cannot be dispelled with your anti-magic techniques; you can't control them the right way. The spell is so old no one is alive to tell you haw to modify your objects, and you burned the old tomes and scrolls that could have told you! Anti-intellectualism is its own punishment! But worse... they don't feel needs! You can't bribe them with honor, glory, treasure, pleasure or anything else! No food and drink, no sex, no gold and jewels makes them stop. They don't feel fear, pain, hunger, thirst or discouragement. They fight because that's what they do!”
“Cuntish wretch!” The Stag King swept the space before him clear and sent a blazing beam of magic at Precious. The shield wall massed before her, taking the brunt of it, angled back to deflect much of the force around her, like a spike driven through the beam of force. “You will not stop me! I am all-powerful!”
“Nothing is all-powerful! Not even Discord his accursed self! All power has to fade, has to wane eventually, even if it recharges. There's always a point where it drains faster than it fills. Ultimately, even supposedly supreme power is a cup with no bottom...” Precious gazed through the occasional gaps in her shield wall, wanting to see if her bluff was true. The numbers were there, all the theoretical thaumatic research tentatively concluded that there was no eternal power, merely rapidly refilling power. Magic had to be discharged and cycled through the mana field. Efficiently drawn and used but nothing was ever really free.
A smile crept across her lips as the army of armor tirelessly and unwaveringly attacked the Stag King. His flow was weak. He had banished magic and used so many anti-magic techniques that he had created an aura that was hostile to drawing magic. He was forcefully siphoning everything he could through what channels of mana still existed, to feed what power wasn't directly supplied by the artifacts that he held, which themselves needed to maintain their charge. As she had heard it, Sombra's horn and Discord's essence. Whether that meant his body, his power or something more esoteric, it didn't matter. Even that could be surpassed, as has been demonstrated before, especially if he was just being used as a battery.
Nothing perceptible seemed to happen during the assault, the caribou king too distracted with the futile endeavor of fighting an enemy that didn't act like he wanted. Shouting didn't intimidate. Posing and posturing didn't awe. His vast and flashy array of magical attacks didn't dishearten. Pushing them back, hacking them down, crushing, battering, stabbing, nothing killed them. There was nothing to kill. They weren't 'honorable' warriors. They were magically animated objects, who fought with only the thought of his death. No lives to care about, no urges to manipulate, the opposite of all the forces he had faced before. Without a fear of death or a gluttonous, avaricious lust and without even bodies... he wasn't really fighting. He was defending. Nothing he could do could hurt them, but any one of their innumerable horde could hurt him.
He was... afraid of them. They were perfect. More perfect than his soldiers, more perfect that his brainwashed, than his conscripted true believer elected. Yet their perfection made them imperfect. Without lust or fear he had no control over them. Obedience for the sake of... honor? Loyalty? Impossible. Treasure or terror. That was what he knew, it was what he taught. On some level, when he wasn't pulling the strings directly, it was always greed or fear driving obedience. Not mechanical killing instinct and unwavering obedience. Fear, or need.
The first split in the shield was tiny. A single pinprick of a hole. One Wedgetail dirk found it in the blind stabbing it had been doing, and pressed its advantage. The thin blade wiggled and trembled as it attacked the small opening, almost seeming to try and shave it open.
The splitting crack made the panting caribou look aside and throw a tremendous beam of force at the lowly dirk. The caribou way. The MANLY way. Overpower, dominate, throw more than needed into a problem to absolutely and irrevocably annihilate the smallest trace of what was the smallest problem. Big problems could never rise, then. He smashed the small blade and the weapons surrounding it against the battered walls and ceiling of the throne room, and forcibly willed the tiny split in his shield shut.
But it wasn't an actual solution. It was draining what reserves he still had, and didn't fill in the real loss. Once the focus on filling the split was gone, another one opened up, again attacked by bladed weapons. A shortsword stabbed into the divide, popping through the field and struggling to force its hilt down into the shell. The rattle and slight breeze it created made the desperate king notice. He screamed in rage as he again forced his waning reserves into restoring his inviolable shield. It closed, and the sheer force of magical might severed the sword at the hit, the blade dropping inside of the shield, a sign of its vulnerability.
The metal clatter was the end of his absolute certainty. All the lying in the world couldn't make the sword blade go away. Even if he hated it, even if he wanted to reject obvious reality as he had his whole life, the truth was revealed. He was losing. His defensive stance had been the losing side of a conflict, but the tireless attackers were giving him an actual loss.
With another roar of rage he shoved all the weapons out of his way, throwing out wave after wave of force, clearing his vision and his way as he focused on the one that had brought him to that state. “You! Cunt! Worthless, feeble, stupid pony! Your magical trickery means nothing to me! It is weak and feminine! It will die with your culture and more importantly it will die with you! This is the lot of your kind! All female flesh will burn as is right!”
Precious had not been idle during the battle. She had been watching the way the field cracked, how he used his energy, just what his strategy was. It was fairly basic. Seal the cracks, repel the attacks that stopped his vision, or those that were the greatest threat. She had also taken up one of the huge, steel-tipped ballista bolts and settled it into the cradle of the ballista, after it had been wound and primed. But it hadn't fired The animating magic was just for the one to set and draw it. She was the fire commander.
“Dorsal strike!” She cried, checking on his slow and lumbering approach through the non-stop wave of attacking armor and weapons. He was only slowed but his petulance made him unwilling to stop. “All of you! Aim for the dorsal region! Go now!”
“Speak properly you..!” The insult died as every piece of armor and single weapon aimed everything they had at his back, hacking the shield splits or just ringing off what parts of the shield held firm, over and over, mechanically. “Insolent vermin! Honorless magical trickery! You would try to stab me in the back?” He turned, washing the attackers in his most powerful force, blasting and battering them against the far side of the throne room, burning out his reserve with the attack and to restore the shield in the direction he faced.
The direction opposite of Precious. “Loose!” The shield wall split and the ballista fired. The ursa-killing bolt was not quite a fast weapon in the main, not compared to a bow or a standard bolt. But over a short distance, at the highest possible tension, it was faster than, at the very least, the Stag King's thoughts. Muffled and muted by rage and his stung ego he took a moment to understand that, yes, a woman could attack him. A moment too long.
His back was only barely protected by what amounted to a circle of the shield, all his reinforcement and the use of power to try and stop the magical attackers had sapped his protection. The bolt slipped through the opening and plunged hard into his cheap, brittle iron armor. Its tremendous momentum carried the barbed steel head through the front set of armor and stopped, quite ironically, against the back side of his shield. He could have had a clean through-and-through, but his own protection left him with the bolt pierced through him.
The shield fell with the sound of breaking glass, and he dropped down immediately after, his severed spine leaving him unable to stand. He screamed, experiencing an agony he had never known, feeling actual pain for the first time in a long time. It was all the sharper as the indignity sank in. He, the invincible male, the master of all he surveyed, the king of conquerors and defilers, brought low by a woman and magical trickery. “Stupid, cuntish...” His words ended when a heavy warhammer crashed into his unprotected face.
The weapons attacked, the armor kicked and battered the fallen, incapacitated buck, all the while mechanically intoning, “Eed Tissay Rumcotre Teescoyma Nagutra. In the name of the living and the dead.”
The land of the caribou, the huge island in the frozen north, had never recovered from the great cataclysm that had befallen it. It was still a frigid Hel, marked with glaciers and only tolerable through the action of the volcanic vents that had popped up to sear what wasn't frozen. At least most of those were not poisonously sulfurous and could be used for warmth. Somehow, through the actions of magic or Gods, trees still grew. Stunted, twisted, but alive. There was moss, there was lichen, there were mushrooms for shamans and mushrooms for regular folk. Unpleasant fare, but food.
They had fled for easier pastures and the King's promise that their invincible culture of domination and abuse would live four a thousand years. Ett Rike, Ett Folk, En Ledare. Crushed. Demolished. Crumbled to dust. They had raided, and settled in, and reaped no real profits but bloody, unforgiving death. The ponies were not soft and weak. They merely spared their strength unless it was necessary. They had made it necessary, and had to pay. An army of metal had mercilessly slain so many that they had thought the end of all time had come.
Canterlot was only the start. With the Caribou King crushed into a bloody pulp, lesser caribou thought they could claim his position. Having nothing close to his fiat power, the next pretender to the throne had only to run them through or cut off their head to become the next temporary king.
The army of magic viciously, yet in an orderly manner, tore the last claimant standing limb from limb. Resistance gave no safety, surrender was not accepted, nothing stopped the marching army. The one who had called them forth, the escaped mare with the cut-into horn, had told them to run. Drop everything, and run. Like cowards. A few dead would-be heroes convinced the remainder that living in cowardice was more intelligent than dying as an allegedly honorable warrior.
They had all run. All those remaining ran, with the rear of the column the last ones cut down by the animated armor. According to the animator there was no way to stop them. They were self-sustaining because their creation had been too desperate. Something about how they were made was unusual, possibly unique. And the caribou had burned any papers that might have provided a counterspell for such old, unusual magic.
They fled, far past the borders of Equestria, packed onto what dragon-boats had not been scuttled and burned by Equestrian rebels or the armor itself. They sailed far, back to the land they had abandoned. Away from their promise of easy living, free-flowing slaves, unquestioned domination, cultural conquest and a thousand years of total control. Of course he had lied. If he knew it had been a lie or not, at some point he had to have seen the writing, and kept on commanding, until the end.
They slunk back to the shrouding icy mist, to their homeland, and hoped to forget the nightmare that had chased them back to it.
The caribou that walked the shore muttered bitter curses toward everything he could think of. Fate, the Gods, the Equestrians, the dead king, the land itself. He was bundled up as tightly as he could be in his patchwork coat of animal hides, and occasionally jabbed his forked wooden staff into the water, to haul out large patches of seaweed. There was still some sun on the island, and the volcanic vents could also come into play. Dried or at least made less damp it made an uninspired but filling meal. And there was always more of the salt-rimed, sea-smelling stuff coming near the shore.
If there was one thing that wasn't worth complaining about, his job was at least relatively easy. He could feed a lot with little work. It wasn't the food from Equestria, but just thinking about it made him even more angry. Had they merely stayed put, they never would have exposed themselves to things they could no longer have, and far, far more of them would still be alive. He reflexively wished death on the king, but smiled wryly remembering that had already been taken care of.
Some sound just barely tickled his perception as he hauled another load of seaweed from the lapping waves. It reached just over the sound of the sea, but was merely a noise. A strange droning that came and went. It arrived in pulses or, indeed, waves. It wasn't the hiss and hum of the tide, it was something more regular, steady and constant. Nature lacked such rigid order.
He looked out into the ocean, seeking a boat full of singers or some kind of thing that would explain the ceaseless and repeating sound. Ceaseless... repeating...
He cast his eyes with more care, minutely scanning every inch of ocean he could catch sight of from his place on the shore. He waded slowly into the ocean, squinting, ears perked high, looking for the source of the muffled, indistinct sound he could hear growing more and more distinct.
Though the ocean was greenish and murky, a slimy thing with slimy creatures crawling through it, it was still water. He could still see through the haze of it and into the depths, as they grew more and more past the eroded shoreline. It described a slope of surprising gentleness, deep ocean turning into the beach gradually, enough that it could be walked up.
Something walked. Many somethings walked. A rumbling, a repeated tone emerged from where the figures came, muffled and dampened by the pressing ocean. Hazy figures, waving figures, moving figures cutting through the water slowly, fighting every inch of the water trying to slow them. But fighting ceaselessly. Repeating a muffled tone.
The spell broke when his mind shattered. He threw himself out of the water and onto the shore, his eyes having pierced the murky depths just enough to know he had a right to be afraid. They had thought it before. The end of all time, of all things. Their Gods had portended it. They had to endure it. It was their legacy. Their reward.
He ran from the ocean's icy grip, toward his home. He screamed out, letting his word echo toward the settlement, one word that would turn their blood to ice. “Ragnarøkkr! Ragnarøkkr!”
On that spot of sand, where he had abandoned his staff and seaweed, the water split and unleashed their greatest fear. Long travel beneath the waves had stained the collection of objects. Banners were waterlogged and grimy with sea mud. Steel was tarnished and dull, wood swollen and warped, iron rusty, other metals in many states of corrosion save gold and silver trim. Crabs and other sea creatures that had been crawling along the mobile metal tumbled out as their cavernous bodies flushed the water from within. Barnacles clung to the once-bright shields and helmets, studded the swords and plates of armor.
Even with the detritus and corrosion, they marched steadily, on pace. They had followed their enemies, sustained by magic alone. As they broke the waves their chanting droned forth, ceaseless and repeating. “Eed Tissay Rumcotre Teescoyma Nagutra. In the name of the living and the dead.”
