For a moment, she had seen her face in that cruel, condescending smile as she held her hand out toward her. The air filled with lights, like strange words written in raw fire, burning around her outstretched hand. Then they came together, and then the light grew…

Then the moment was gone. All that replaced it was light, heat, and pain. Pain so bad that for a few brief seconds it made her forget the current horrible feeling across her face---the mixture of tingling and stinging and piercing and burning like roots of lightning were streaking into it and trying to go deeper and deeper. That was gone…replaced by fire…and anguish…

Then came the cold, stark, merciless feel of the tile floor as her body slammed against it. And it acted like water splashing her in the face. It reminded her of everything else. Every bruise. Every abrasion. Everything she had suffered over the past few days and what she was suffering now. She slid across it leaving streaks of sweat and blood along with more charred fragments of clothing. And there she was left, feeling like a premature child or hatchling curled up and abandoned to an unforgiving world.

And was she not? After all, who was there left that wanted her?

Her eyes slowly cracked open again. Even without the never-ending agony in her right eye, all she saw was a blur. Yet when it cleared, she saw no surcease or relief. Just the same room of the same faces. Faces that had once seemed so proper and so dignified. Faces that gave no thought to anything except the rate of their taxes or the overreach of their prime minister and how it might intrude on their lands and properties. Those were gone. The Light Eaters had taken them with almost everything else. Now they were filled with fear and dread. Now they were long and pale.

And in spite of her cries and her wretched state, they looked on her with the greatest fear of all. Not even a sliver of pity or tenderness. Not even when faced with the impossible. The fear they once had toward the newcomer was gone now.

Now…a ray of hope was behind their panicked eyes. Did they hope for her death?

Yes. How it could be otherwise? They wanted to see an execution now. The ones who had once kissed her hand and greeted her with smiles and warmth on introducing their young sires now only wished she would expire.

There was one, however, who showed no fear of her. She could still see her. She could hear her walking up to her. She looked, and she saw the face she would never forget. The look she could never forget. The one person who was not a monster or devil but took what little she had left.

And her heartless light blue eyes mocking her along with her smug and superior sneer.

Her hand went out and casually kicked what was left of her pistol aside. It was still gleaming and smoldering even now. It seemed like an eternity ago when she had thrust it in her hand and told her to take her best shot. At that point, all of this had seemed unreal. Who was this woman? What did she want with her? Why did she not fear her like the others but seemed to want to torment her even more than them? Why was she doing this to her?

Why was any of this happening to her?

The wound hurt again. More than before. As always, it started to shove out everything else. As if it hated the fact that another pain had dared to declare itself superior to it. It made her nauseous. It started to override her senses as it pounded deeper into her…

But through the pain, she saw the fiery-haired woman turn and look back to the regent.

“Well now, do you want more proof? Or was that enough for you?”

Silence greeted the woman, but it didn’t matter to her. The pain was growing too much. It made a ringing in her head. It was getting harder to focus. Her eyes were blurring again.

She saw the woman gesture to herself. “I'll take your silence as a yes. So tell me, wouldn’t I make a much better noble and Lady of Queen’s Lynn? Aside from not having the wound of a Light Eater, I could give you everything you need to fight back against them. I could even help you have a little of this power I’ve put on display for you. Why…I dare say I could save your country from annihilation.”

She grinned and crossed her arms.

“Or would you rather like to go back to seeing who gets to destroy you first? The Light Eaters or the Dragonlands?”

She turned back to her, looking down with the same grin as her vision started to fail.

“Or listening to the people who told you to keep ones like her alive? By all means, listen to your Ladyship. I don’t think she’ll be able to do what I just did on the day scarface here turns into a monster and decides to hold another massacre right here in your little parliament…”

Whether they agreed out of passion or fear she didn’t know. The pain was growing too much. It demanded attention and it was drowning out all else.

Yet before it took her vision, she could see her face still grinning at her.

Down to the very last.

Three Months After the Awakening of the Angra Mainyu

Tempest Shadow slowly opened her eyes. She was just where she had been two hours ago when she sat down in her office chair and leaned her head back. Only a slight sneer was on her face, showing mild discomfort. Closing her eyes again, one of her hands raised and placed itself over the scar across her eye. She let out a slow wince, barring her teeth and hissing…

This hiss melted with the sound of the bulkhead door to her office, but she kept her eyes shut as it opened up. A less-decorated Trottingham officer, and one much smaller and more stout, practically waddled in. His own look wasn’t nearly as cold or stern as Tempest’s. In fact, he seemed to be making himself smaller as he slowly made his way through the various schematics, charts, maps, battle plans, formulas, and other assortments filling the chamber while stepping up to her desk.

He stood there silently for a moment, Tempest never acknowledging him, before she spoke without even opening her eyes. “Did you bring the sera?”

This made the smaller man shrink; apparently the question he had been afraid of. “Uh…um…yes, about the sera… I had every intention of getting just that, and…um…bringing it here… But there were some complications involved and one thing led to another-”

He cut himself off. Tempest had opened her scarred eye and fixed him with a glare that resonated with a spark of blue light.

“…He wouldn’t give it to me.”

More of Tempest’s teeth were exposed as she pulled her hand away. “I am breaking my back trying to meet all of his demands with the little bit of time I still have, and he can’t even give me the one thing that I need from him? You can go back and tell him he’s not getting the demonstration I promised until I’ve had another injection.”

“Er…yeah…about that…” he gulped, more nervous than before. “I…think you can tell him yourself.”

Tempest gave the man a look like a shard of ice. Seeing that the comment had been interpreted as insubordination, he quickly corrected.

“Because he’s on his way here right now. I…I think it’s about the 27th Battalion.”

Now, it was Tempest’s turn to lose her icy demeanor and show the slightest hint of genuine anxiety of her own. However, it lasted only a moment or two. Then she quickly composed herself, turned her chair about, and rose. She looked a little dizzy once she stood but she forced it back.

“Alright then. Let’s go. I want to meet up with him before he gets here.”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, Tempest.”

Again, a wave of the fear came over her, although it had a much greater impact on the shorter man as he practically scurried to one side. That allowed Tempest a good look at the still-open hydraulic door to her office…as well as the old, spindly hand of her commanding officer as he grasped the side of it and pushed it open.

A moment later and his shadow passed into the room, crouching through the doorway both due to his excessive height as well the ostentatious new crown he had made for himself. Matching the styles of the Trottingham kings of old, it looked more like a set of fell deer horns from some otherworldly stag than a true headpiece. It enhanced his impressive size as well as the somewhat unhinged look on his face that had only grown worse since he had taken the tile of “Storm King of Trottingham”. His other arm, however, remained behind his back—the only simulacrum of dignity and propriety of his forebears that he had.

As soon as he had stood and accented his own height and build over her, he gave a small, toothy smile of his own. “As you can see, I’m already here.”

Keeping as calm as they could, both stood at attention for the man. The smaller officer nearly gave him a bow before he remembered himself, and then quickly stood to one side and cleared his throat. “Uh…ahem…announcing, his most royal majesty, King of Trottingham, Emperor of the Storm King Alliance, the…uh…Storm King.”

The man shrugged as he stepped inside. “Eh, kind of a redundant title for now. We can work on it later. Impressive though, am I right? Not bad, not bad! Retaken all of the old Trottingham territory and then some and all before the holidays!”

“My lord,” Tempest began, “I…was not anticipating you for the demonstration until Friday. There’s still a bit more to-”

She was cut off with a hand wave as he drew nearer, now passing the minor officer. And as he did, she took notice of something new. Namely that two of his larger and more intimidating personal guard members were following in behind him. And that two more were following behind those.

And that all four were armed.

“Oh, I’m not here for that, Tempest. I just wanted to swing on by to give you a little present.”

He reached her desk, and Tempest had to fight the urge not to step backward. Especially when his smile and tone dropped on what he said next.

“And I regret to tell you it’s not the latest hit of your ‘vitamins’.”

The hand behind his back came out and proceeded to drop a rather heavy load right on top of her latest schematics—the helmet of one of the special soldiers that she herself had given him. However, based on the fact that a red liquid soon began to soak into those same papers, it became clear that the head of the helmet’s previous owner was included.

The smile disappeared all together as his shadow loomed over Tempest. “Grubber here gave me the unpleasant news that this is all that’s left of the 27th Battalion. I wanted to bring what was left of the 12th Airborne to put right alongside it, but wouldn’t you know it? I couldn’t find a matchbox small enough.”

The woman shifted her jaw slightly at the grisly sight, silent for just a moment before looking away. “They were necessary losses.”

“Oh…oh-ho-ho!” He turned to Grubber. “What a scream! Hey, did you hear that? That’s news to me. Apparently I’m not the one who gets to decide what a necessary loss anymore! I guess I’m not as in charge as I thought I was! Heh-heh…silly me!”

His face wheeled back to Tempest; twice as cross as before.

“So you want to decide what’s ‘necessary’, Tempest? I figured that you were forgetting that I’m the one who knows what’s necessary for you. And how about I decide that the money and resources I’m pouring into your little freakshow factory aren’t necessary? Or the sera I keep shelling out to you to keep your little case of ‘eczema’ under control?”

While Tempest kept her eyes steely enough, there was a momentary ripple across the rest of her on hearing that. “I have faithfully served you for years now. I’ve given you all the fruits of my research and family legacy. What reason have I ever given you to doubt my needs?”

Silence in the office for a moment. Tempest’s own firm gaze met the Storm King’s…one stoic and the other irritable…as Grubber continued to try and make himself smaller and shrink to one side before he noticed some of Tempest’s ignored food trays that had been served to her the night before. Especially an untouched pastry. Sure no one was looking, he began to inch over to it.

Finally, the Storm King straightened and formed a more casual smile, if not an unsettling one. He more calmly went around the edge of the desk until he was at his subordinate officer’s side, right before he extended a large arm around her shoulders.

“Admiral, admiral…walk with me a moment, won’t you?”

Tempest betrayed nothing save her body language, which only reluctantly let itself be pulled from behind the desk. She didn’t show the slightest relaxation until the Storm King held up his other arm to the soldiers and gave them a wave; causing them to shoulder their weapons and go back out the way they came. Of course, that was the direction he soon began to lead her.

“You know the day I found you bleeding and wallowing in that mud hole looking like the corner of an old newspaper in the gutter was the best day of both of our lives, right? I, obviously, reaped in most of the benefits, but you? You’ve gained so much more yourself, haven’t you? A lot more than you would have being some noble debutante being married off to some ugly duke, am I right?”

Tempest said nothing. Just kept her eyes forward as he kept leading her on.

“And you know why that was?” He let out a single chuckle. “It was because we’re different. Those people in the old order that are now dead and buried…and which I had such fun killing and digging graves for…they looked at that unfortunate accident of yours and the only thing they along with most of this world said up until now was what they say about all the Nighttouched: ‘kill on sight’. But me? Oh-ho…I knew you had some pizzazz. Some chutzpah. Something special when I found you. I mean…you hadn’t gone nuts even after four days!”

Tempest suppressed a silent grimace as the Storm King led her out and into the hall behind, continuing to lead her forward through the capital now that they were beneath the skylight roof and the smog-choked skies of Trottingham. Nevertheless, he looked skyward like some sort of faux visionary as he kept going.

“That’s why you ended up being such a good investment! And you paid off quite handsomely with the improved airships, the lovely little steroid cocktails…even leadership! Trottingham owes you far more than some miserable little pig-nosed regent ever gave.”

He let out a tired sigh, as if he was “sorry to break the news”, and let his head fall as he reached over and gave Tempest a condescending pat-pat on the chest.

“But…as all of us folks in the military know…an officer is only as good as their most recent success. And, sorry to tell you, it’s been a little while since I’ve seen one from you. You weren’t even able to do much against those new armor suits back at Mount Aris, remember. Not exactly what I was investing in… So hearing about another loss…a crushing…bloody…financially painful loss…”

“As I told you,” Tempest interjected, “it was-”

“Uh-uh-uh…” he silenced, pressing a finger to her lips. “Let me finish, let me finish. You’ve been spending too much time among the test tubes and boilers, admiral. Otherwise you’d have heard it through the grapevine. My new empire has hit a little snag that’s grown into a big snag. Now it’s starting to look like a roadblock. It seems Mount Aris was a bit more prepared for our annexation and, without air superiority, any of those nice soldiers you provided me with will just be ants to be stepped on. Winter has fallen which is all well and good, but it also seems to be taking them an annoying long time to starve and freeze and those Appleloosan rednecks keep complaining about keeping our own army fed. While I’d love nothing more than to come in from the other side, it looks like Griffonstone has only been good at being the world’s largest roadblock to Fillydelphia.”

He pulled back his hand but pulled Tempest closer with the arm around her shoulders—a gesture he made sure to note wasn’t intended to be totally friendly.

“In short, admiral, I was rather digging my conquest vibe when it was going on strong but the hype train is slowing down way too much for my tastes. I’m starting to get a little sick of waiting for you to throw some more coal in the boiler.”

“And you’ll get just that in a week. The newest treatment I’m perfecting will outclass those armors they demonstrated in-”

She was cut off as the Storm King raised his knuckle and rapped it against her own forehead; just hard enough to be a little painful.

“Oh, hello? Hello? This is the Storm King. Is Tempest Shadow there? Can she come out to talk?”

Tempest now visibly had to suppress a frown as he looked her in the eyes again.

“You know full well I’m not interested in any more magical freaks beyond what it takes to kill them, admiral. I’m after the big one. The promise you gave me. The Soconus Engine.”

She exhaled and swallowed. “You’ll get it. Exactly as promised.”

“Will I, though? I paid a visit to the construction site. The toilets aren’t even installed yet. And I’ve seen tugboats that look more war-ready. Tempest…buddy…pal…”

His eyes turned hard.

“You wouldn’t be playing for time because you wrote me a bill for something you can’t deliver, would you?”

“I promised you that you would have the ultimate weapon and the greatest work of my family legacy,” she answered; tenser now but firm and unshaking. “But I need this project to be complete to do it. I need acceptable losses of my own to finish. But if you want me to be sharp enough to complete the job, I need that sera as well along with the increased dosage.”

The Storm King looked back silently. His face was turned down, but didn’t look angry again. He simply stared at her as she stared unwavering back.

Finally, his smile became casual as he released her and stood up again. “Well now…of course. Ask and you shall receive. Anything for my favorite prodigy. As a matter of fact, I was bringing it down right now.”

He held up his hand and snapped his fingers. On cue, one of the soldiers walked up to his side. Once there he held up a small case…a fact that wasn’t lost on Tempest. In addition to the hungry gleam in her eye on spotting it, her lips parted a little on seeing that the case was only large enough for one vial.

“I’ll be giving you your meds on a dose-by-dose basis from now on. Works out best for everyone, really, since your dosage keeps seeming to need a tune-up nowadays.”

Tempest fought hard to close her mouth; clearly realizing what this meant. The Storm King picked up the case and turned to extend it out to her. A moment passed, but then she reached out to take it.

Right before she could touch it, the Storm King turned his hand up to pull it from her hand. His voice turned low and menacing.

“You and I have both seen the gruesome sight that is a soldier who turns into a Nighttouched, Tempest. And we know from the looks on their faces that the horror they left behind was nothing compared to the horror that took place in those last few precious moments of human consciousness. Unless you’d like to feel that for yourself, work a little harder on making me confident in you, got it?”

“I will not fail,” was the only cool reply she gave.

The king’s smile returned as he let the serum go down into Tempest’s outstretched hand. “Good to hear it. Have a nice day now.” He spun about. “I’m going to pop off for a bit of tea before I go say hello to the dead men who thought they could come crawling back here just to tell me they couldn’t drive Fillydelphia out of Grifftham on the latest operation. You know where to find me so don’t be a stranger!”

With that, he fully turned about and kept walking; his soldiers soon silently falling in behind and going after him. Tempest was left there standing in the hall, gripping the case with one hand and not moving or flinching in the slightest.

It was only when they had reached the exit of the hallway and passed through the doors that she almost frantically opened the case, yanked out the glass injector inside it, thrust it into her own neck with practiced skill, and promply injected a rose-purple solution inside of her with grit teeth that toughed through all of the pain involved. She had emptied it by the time Grubber had left her office and come up behind her, cheeks still stained with a bit of sugar from the pastry, and he stopped only to flinch himself when she let out a half-gasp from yanking the needle out and casting the injector to the floor hard enough to break the glass.

“So, um…did it go rough?”

Tempest let out another seething groan before pulling herself back together as much as possible. “Just follow me to the magitech workshop… We’re starting now.”

The hydraulic doors that slid aside in the magitech facility were far thicker and more well armored, to say nothing of the fact they were guarded night and day both by locks as well as armed soldiers. Even Tempest had to present her security clearance before she was able to pass through the set along with Grubber, and an even larger and thicker set was just up ahead.

“Well, in all fairness,” the smaller of the two continued as they walked. “The Soconus Engine was what you promised him way back when we came upon you rooting around in the mud like a pig for truffles all those years back. No offense. He’d probably get off your back if you just hurried up and gave it to him…”

“I don’t want him ‘off my back’—I want whatever he has that’s making that serum so I can finally be rid of this.” Her sharp response was accented by pointing her finger like the tip of a knife at her scar. “As for the weapon, if I was to dump you into the most remote forest of Equestria without food or water could you build me a fully functional locomotive in a week?”

“Uh…er…well, I’m not that mechanically inclined. I’m more suited to administrative-”

“The answer you’re babbling for is ‘no’. You can’t make engines out of sticks, rocks, and dirt. You need to make charcoal. You use the charcoal to refine iron and make tools. You use the tools to dig for actual coal. You use the coal to forge and heat a boiler. You use the boiler to make a steam engine. And you make a steam engine to get a locomotive. I can’t give him a weapon when I don’t even have the building blocks for it. Do you understand that much?”

“Oh…” the officer answered as they reached the next set of doors. Tempest again gave clearance, this time needing to press her fingerprints into a special mold to be compared with inked ones on record before security opened the door and stepped aside—leading into the most technical, metallic, and cold-looking portion of the facility yet. Guards were everywhere now as she walked in to this new area, readily going down the hall toward her destination.

“So…” Grubber spoke up again as he finally caught up with what she said. “Are we, like, on the boiler phase or the steam engine phase? If we’re on the coal phase, I think he’s going to be mad…”

“We’re on the phase where we transcend the current formula for something better. Something that takes us from needing a dozen soldiers to take out one ‘Sunset Shimmer’ to a formula that lets us make a dozen ‘Sunset Shimmers’ of our own.”

“Neat!” Almost immediately after saying that, however, he began to look uncomfortable. “Uh…this…um…doesn’t need another of those…er…special ‘secret ingredients’ does it? I think I still have nightmares of the last time I saw it…”

As a bit of good timing, Grubber suddenly held a hand up and covered one side of his head. This was to avoid seeing through a large glass panel that took up most of the wall to the left of them. Tempest, on the other hand, had no problem glancing into the chamber without batting an eye.

Multiple Trottingham engineers dressed in clean whites and gloves were inside, although even they seemed to be interacting only uncomfortably with what was in there. Large sets of pipets and tubes made of glass were strung everywhere, being differentially heated by various oil flames or pressurized through hand pumps to force fluids of various kinds throughout the chamber. All of them, however, either seemed to be going in or coming out of what was framed and kept behind steel and barred glass against the back wall. The very thing everyone was trying their best to avoid.

To the onlooker, the only way to describe them would be disjointed, severed limbs of various kinds. One almost resembled an arm while another almost resembled a foot and a couple looked like a collection of eyes. Yet they were too misshapen, too elongated, and too twisted to be proper limbs or to have belonged to any person or animal that anyone alive had ever seen. That, however, was not the most horrifying part in the least.

While it wasn’t obvious at first, looking long enough, one would realize that each dismembered body part appeared to still be alive. The muscles in the limbs twitched every once in a while. The joints flexed. The ones that had finger or toes would wiggle or tap them. They eyes appeared to look around and dilate or contract…or at least they had until recently. As of late, they had been painted black. And all without blood or nerves connected to anything; in spite of the vessels and endings clearly being exposed.

More than that. The tubes throughout the room actually went into the severed arteries and out of the severed veins. In fact, everything in the chamber seemed to be carrying out moving the fluids throughout the severed appendages.

“I mean…even the big guy doesn’t even know all of what goes in to making the superman juice. It’s kind of messed up that we even do it like this…”

“Yeast is used to make bread and alcohol. Leeches are used to bring down swelling. Honey comes from bee vomit. I’ve found a new use for a new organism is all,” she uttered as she looked away.

“But…but…this is kinda…gross, you know? I mean…how did you even get the idea to…to…ugh…it makes me sick to even say it. You know…run some blood through those ‘dead-ish’ body parts and get what comes out from the other side?”

“Do you know what it’s like to wake up to itching from one of your wounds, pull off the rag you have on it, and find a bunch of maggots eating it, Grubber?”

The pastry seemed to come up at that, forcing the smaller man to cover his mouth.

“Well I do. Several times. Until the day I wound up in that mud hole you and the Storm King like to remind me of. The maggots were different there. They looked bigger. ‘Meaner’, even. And they went right for the scar. Somehow they made it feel better when they did. And so I looked around and there it was. Rotted and broken open from the rain storm and half-buried in mud. A box full of these severed limbs. They had been eating them, and it had done that to them.

“And after I had been picked up and cleaned up, I tried feeding some to some hungry mice. I’d rather be stuck in a barrel full of Nighttouched rats then ever have to go through what I had to in order to kill them the next day ever again. But I got much better results from the batch I only gave some drops of blood to. Even better with the dogs. And finally I found that this way was the best way to make sure they lasted forever and gave me an unlimited supply of transformed plasma. But even then when I was still trying to get my first human test subjects, I was already looking ahead.

“I didn’t know where they came from, but that didn’t matter. All I knew was that in order to go to the next step I had to find their source.”

They were nearly past by at this point, prompting Grubber to risk lowering his hand to glimpse inside the chamber. He immediately winced and covered up again until it was gone. “Uh…I…I’m not sure I want to know the answer to this, but… Why didn’t you paint out the eyes long ago…I-I mean, why did you paint them out now?”

“I realized it still sees everything out of them.”

Grubber nearly wretched again. “Not gonna lie…this whole bit seems straight out of a nightmare.”

“Nightmares aren’t real. Just like demons and devils and gods and monsters. Those are fairy tales and superstitions. Worry about what’s real and in front of you. Don’t run away from it like the fools who got overthrown did. Do what humanity does best---master it and bend it to your will.”

The two walked on in silence for a bit longer, worming through a few additional halls, before they finally approached a double-doored room with some glass porthole windows in the doors. This one was manned not only by soldiers but by other Trottingham citizens dressed in white. No sooner had Tempest made her presence known than they quickly stood at attention, although they seemed nervous both at her arrival as well as to what they were guarding.

Before the lead engineer could say a word, Tempest addressed her. “They’re all assembled, yes?”

“Yes, admiral. But-”

“Then proceed to generate the first human experimentation lot. We only have so many volunteers to work with so we’ll have to do only one lot per clinical trial. We’ll make adjustments as necessary.”

“As…as you wish, admiral…” the engineer stammered as she walked by her, clearly intending to go into the chamber. “B-B-But…”

Tempest’s eyes flicked coldly to her. “Did I say something that confused you, madam? Or is there an actual problem?”

“It’s just…we…we’ve only done a fistful of animal trials and many of them have been hit-or-miss…”

“We’re in a wartime situation. The Storm King must understand you sometimes need to work out a few kinks with a new weapon on deployment during extreme situations.”

“B-B-But…admiral…this…this…this thing… I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither has-”

“Doctor…this morning I heard in no uncertain terms that the Storm King is getting impatient with our lack of progress. He wants the Soconus Engine and he wants it now, and that is something I cannot give him unless the Mage Knight initiative is successful. And he has no interest in giving me infinite time and infinite resources to eventually come up with it. I need progress immediately to placate him or he’ll have my head. And I assure you that long before we reach the point where my neck is in terminal danger from him, your necks will be in terminal danger from me. Do you understand?”

A gulp. “Yes, admiral.”

“Then stop wasting my time with your cowardice and get me the first lot.” She turned away and the doors. “It’s not like I’m testing it on you, after all…”

The engineer nodded silently and quickly, backing away before she could arouse any more of the admiral’s ire. As for the doors, the soldiers soon opened them, and a moment later Tempest walked inside with Grubber right behind her.

The next chamber was rather large and spacious. Big enough for two different floors in the same chamber, with other engineers and people in white walking around on a raised railed area that encircled the upper portion. The back area had a rather large set of double-doors. These ones were big enough to allow an entire locomotive through if necessary, and were manned not only by soldiers but by large, chugging engines that were the only things powerful enough to even open them. However, none of these things held Tempest’s attention. That was focused entirely on what took up the bulk of the main floor.

Seated in two rows of special chairs that both faced the center aisle…ones with clamps and restraints that were unfastened for the moment but could be deployed as necessary…were several people. Most of them had looks of malnourishment, poverty, or other haggard signs about them. In other words, one or more things to make them rather desperate. However, now that they were here in this room, almost all of them showed varying degrees of anxiety. Even fear. It wasn’t helped by Tempest’s arrival and her cold, emotionless demeanor. When they turned to her, they seemed to only grow more withdrawn and afraid.

Tempest glanced over those gathered for only a cursory movement; clearly just giving them a quick evaluation. Nevertheless, her eyes lingered longer than she wished on several of them; noticing their faces. As the doors shut again behind her, they let out a long, booming echo that, when faded, left only the sounds of soulless mechanical engines running throughout the facility. It gave the impression that those assembled had been locked in a cage with a panther.

“Good morning,” she finally addressed; clearly only issuing formalities rather than having the slightest hint of warmth in her voice. “Welcome to Magitech Delta. My name is Admiral Tempest Shadow, and I will personally be overseeing this historic occasion. Congratulations. Each of you volunteers have passed the final medical and psychological checks to be our prime pool of candidates for the testing of our newest clinical formula.

“By now, all of you are fully aware of what this formula can mean for you and for Trottingham. The age in which mankind was forced to live in fear of the Nighttouched, the Light Eaters, and even these strange individuals who have been spreading terrorism and fear across our world is over. From this day forward, humanity is again the dominant species. And it begins right here with all of you. All that remains at this point is to choose which of you women will be the first to receive true greatness.”

With that, she began to slowly walk into the space between the rows. Her narrowed eyes flicked out and surveyed them for a moment of silence.

“Um…ahem…”

Tempest’s green eyes flicked like a predator to the source of the noise—landing on one of the nearest individuals who almost immediately began to try and meld with her chair the moment her eyes landed on her.

“Do we have a problem?”

The woman, a violet-eyed individual with misty-colored hair, cringed a little more as she tried to bury her head in her neck. “The Great and Power…I mean, Trix…I mean…I was just wondering. Is this new drug or whatever…um…safe?”

“You read the inherent risks that were involved when you signed up as a test subject.”

“Well, yeah, I know that, but…I mean…has this ever been tested on…uh…a human before?”

“No. Hence your title ‘test subject’.”

“Then…uh…pardon my asking, but…how do you know it’s going to…go well?”

“The last ten canine subjects are stable, as are the last 30 rodent subjects. The risk level to you should be minimal.”

“Right…minimal. But not gone?”

Tempest was quiet. She pivoted to look the woman straight in the eyes, making her gulp.

“Are you saying you want to opt out? Now that you’ve cleared final selection?”

She stammered. “I…I just…the… The thought had occurred to me as a possibility…”

“And where do you plan to go after opting out, Trixie Lulamoon?” Tempest coldly continued, starting to walk up to her. “Back to being the same sideshow fraud you were before? Peddling people false hopes that you were ever some savior that could defend them from Light Eaters and Nighttouched?”

“Uh…well…”

“Finding some hard labor job you can work for slave wages and subsist on bread, water, and mud? Assuming you can even find that in the current state of affairs? Until you’re old and broken down and barely able to move, let alone care for yourself?”

“N…not…what I had in mind…”

Tempest halted in front of her, casting her shadow over her much as the Storm King had done with her as her eyes blazed into Trixie’s own.

“Or maybe you’d like to do what the rest of the maggot populace does. Find some hole to hide in and pray it all blows over. Maybe you’ll starve. Maybe you’ll get sick and die. Maybe you’ll be buried alive by rubble. Or maybe you’ll live to poke your head out again and see the next horrible, world-changing event that comes to pass, and then you can slide back into that hole and repeat the cycle.”

Trixie was speechless now; both from Tempest’s presence as well as her words.

“There’s no place in this world for cowards anymore. I offer you the chance to be free of fear. Free of subjugation. Free of helplessness. To actually change the world yourself instead of simply floating by through it like a leaf on the wind. And are you saying you are such a miserable, worthless, sniveling, craven little excuse of a charlatan that a little risk is all it takes for you to cower in fear from that opportunity? An opportunity millions both living and dead would give anything for?”

“I’ll go first.”

Tempest removed her withering gaze from Trixie, spinning it around to a different test subject. She hadn't noticed her before. In fact, she seemed to stand out the least from all of the others; enough to where she almost blended in with them. Not at this moment, however. As humble and average as she seemed in all other respects compared to the others, the look in her eyes was hot as flame and hard as steel. Resolute and unbreaking as she stared ahead.

Turning fully away from Trixie, Tempest faced her instead and walked up. Yet even on reaching her, the woman didn’t look up or waver in the slightest in her glare.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen such resolution. Wallflower Blush, correct?”

“Yes ma’am.” She never looked away.

“Miraculously snatched from the hangman’s noose by our usurpation of the old regime. Yet I’m still surprised to see you so willingly give back to the military that failed you once. Is this loyalty and gratitude that makes you so bold? Or do you have your own motivations?”

Wallflower tightened her grip on the armrest.

“You said you can make be better than Sunset Shimmer ever was. If you’re not lying, I’ll take whatever you want to give me.”

Tempest raised an eyebrow at the name.

“Well, well…we have something in common, don’t we, Ms. Blush?” She turned away. “Ask and you shall receive. You’ll be first.”

She proceeded to walk past all of the test subjects toward the gigantic doors in the back of the room. Guards were there as well, but unlike any of the others they made it clear they did not want to be there. Even hulking from the sera that Tempest had given them, they frequently swallowed and one of them had to fight as hard as possible to keep from shaking as he gripped his weapon. Tempest came to a stop in front of both of them, looking to either side silently. It was clear what she wanted from that glance.

Very reluctantly, they turned, shouldered their weapons, and activated the engines to open the bulkheads. Numerous steam locks…far more and larger than before…began to hiss.

“I don’t believe in hiding secrets from individuals like yourselves,” she called behind her. “And since I want to monitor the extraction of the first lot, allow me to introduce you to the creature that has made all of this possible.”

As the last of the locks broke, the doors let out a burst of steam as they slid aside. As they unveiled an even larger room behind, a three-story converted dock for construction of small airships, they rapidly slid back and left only Tempest behind to stand among the fading vapors and stare directly into the chamber.

From where Tempest stood, she was now on the second level. The thing in the chamber was perched on the lowest, although it stood three stories high. As the lights came on in the area, the sound of dozens of chains converted from ship anchors jingled. Cables and glass containers and tubes shifted all over as something massive began to breathe and move about—large enough to send echoes throughout the spacious interior. The test subjects looked inside, but even Wallflower couldn’t help but show terror on seeing something very large and living beginning to shift its weight. Far larger than any elephant or even whale.

Yet the lights coming on only brought more dread, because it didn’t reveal anything distinct or living that they had ever seen or heard about. Nothing but an amalgamation of limbs, muscles, and disjointed and multi-shaped body parts. It was sickening…even maddening…to even look at.

But somewhere around the front of it, in the midst of what looked like long, flat manes of hair, something shifted. Eyes. Dozens of them, each one a different shape and size and moving independently, twitching in different ways. One by one, they all came about and focused on Tempest shadow. From within the mound of flesh, an opening broke—revealing a cavernous opening that seemed to be multiple mouths filled with multiple rows of teeth all put together. The noise that came out was enough to make some of the test subjects burst into tears.

Tempest alone remained unmoved.

“Behold the next stage of human evolution.”

The Storm King frowned as he watched the woman in the small, private laboratory setting finish the latest batch of the sera. His patience with her seemed to only be slightly greater than he had with Tempest Shadow. Nevertheless, he was forced to do little more than wait as she completed the last of the heat treatment before shifting the contents into a new injector, sealing it, and putting it in its container.

“Have someone bring that to her this afternoon at 6 o’clock. She’ll need one every twelve hours from now on. And I’ll need a blood sample of hers every three days to make the proper adjustments.”

“I'll admit, I don’t get much joy out of being forced to be an ‘errand boy’ for little things like these…”

“Would you rather one of your subordinates did it? Let the secret to her treatments be exposed to more people?”

“Alright, alright…” he grumbled as he leaned off of the wall and began to walk up to the table. “By the way, about this little change to her prescription schedule… I’m all for having dogs on tighter leashes, but Tempest doesn’t really do me any good turned into a Nighttouched.”

“It doesn’t matter. The serum is losing its effectiveness already.”

He looked surprised at that. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not watering down her dosage by making it twice a day; she needs that much now. The same with my constant adjustments. The best I can give her is until the end of winter, though. You’d best give her whatever she needs and demands until then if you want your Soconus Engine.”

She finished sealing the case, but no sooner had she done so than she heard a thunk nearby. She glanced to the side of her worktable, seeing a two-pronged combat knife sticking in it with the Storm King’s fist wrapped around the hilt.

“I hate to be ‘that guy’, but seeing as it looks like your memory isn’t quite what it used to be, I guess I’ve got no choice. You did remember that if I lose Tempest, and I lose the Soconus Engine, I don’t really have any reason to keep you around, right?”

The woman looked even less impacted than Sunset had. She only gave a wry smile as she stared at the weapon.

“Now, now…no need for such subtle threats. I want to see the Soconus Engine in action even more than you do, after all. I told you full well at the onset that it was Tempest you needed, not me. I’m only your 'vet'. It’s still the responsibility of a pet’s owner to make sure they’re properly fed, watered, walked, and groomed.” She pushed the case slightly in his direction, but halted on reaching the weapon. “Would you mind getting your fork out of the way?”

The irritation on the Storm King’s face was unmistakable, but his silence made it clear he realized she had him over a barrel. The knife went up and returned to his side, and the woman slid the case into its place.

“Stop wasting so much energy trying to intimidate Tempest Shadow and me, Torban.”

“It’s the Storm King. How many times have I told you that’s what the focus groups agreed on?”

“You have bigger concerns. I noticed that we’re all on rations now.”

He let out a growl as he turned away. “That’s the problem of those Appleloosans. A man goes to all of the trouble to conquer the ‘breadbasket’ of Greater Everfree, and what does that get him? A bunch of rednecks who can’t grow food!”

“Well, you did start the invasion during their harvest season. That can’t have helped things.”

An even deeper growl.

“Then, of course, there’s the problems with Mount Aris. Being more trouble than your admiral thought they’d be, aren’t they? And it’s not helping that she’s no longer able to be on the front line either… Then there’s the matter of Griffonstone-”

“Those oil-coated industrialists need to get cooking or they’ll be finding themselves fired in the worst way. What good are patsies when they can’t take any decent falls for you?”

“Have patience. Give them just enough to feel like they still have the bulk of your forces backing them up and not just the leftovers. So long as you do that, they’ll fulfill their role quite well—being a perpetual thorn in Fillydelphia’s side and a dam against their land invasion.”

“I’d rather turn them into pavement so that I can drive into Fillydelphia with a steamroller. Last year was a smash hit. Explosions! Advancement! Conquering! Subjugation! The name of the Storm King on every major monument from here to the Hyperboreans! Season two is turning into a slog!”

She shrugged. “Whenever an army expands so fast, its bound to thin itself out. And that’s exactly what your opponents are hoping for. Yet so long as Chancellor Neighsay remains in power, there will never be the only thing that could trouble you now—an alliance. Just be patient and keep putting your faith in Tempest Shadow. Once you have the Soconus Engine, all of your dreams will come true.”

The Storm King seemed rather like a petulant child being told he had to wait another week for his birthday in response to that, complete with crossing his arms and practically sulking. He glanced back at the woman. “How come you can’t just whip me up this Soconus Engine? You seem to be the one with all the answers. Including how to make a Nighttouched human useful…”

She laughed a little at that. “Oh, if only it were so simple. Tempest Shadow is special. More special than you realize or she realizes or anyone realizes, for that matter. The ruling family of Queen’s Lynn had ties to Equestria, and access to places and knowledge that no one else in Greater Everfree currently possesses. Not even that new warlord. That’s why the Light Eaters went for her family first. You’re quite fortunate that only did she survive, but that she only has the vaguest sense of how important her heritage is. And touched by a Light Eater to boot, giving you a carrot to dangle in front of her nose so that she’ll pull your wagon wherever you desire.

“The bottom line…you need her. At least until the Soconus Engine is complete. Then it’s best you destroy her before the sera loses all effect.”

“Not to worry,” he smirked as he turned back to the entrance. “I hate nostalgia, so I’ve never been a fan of keeping around tools I don’t have any need for.”

“And I know that all too well. Hence why you won’t be seeing any more of me the moment I catch a whiff that you’re ready to ‘do me in’, so to speak.”

The Storm King had taken a step to the exit, but he froze there and let out another low growl. He shook it off and looked back. “Speaking of that… I’ve realized after all this time that I didn’t ever get you a proper name tag. What exactly do I call you?”

The woman turned her chair slightly, revealing a beautiful, fair face with lavender eyes and a coy smirk.

“Just call me Celestia.”

Author's Note

Well folks, it's back. And while I assume I'm going to have even fewer readers than before...namely only the half dozen or so who care to keep reading it...I hope you enjoy just the same and that this introduction got you hyped for what's next.