Sunset Shimmer; Sister of Battle
By Tundara

Operation 18

No one spoke as they finished the climb. It was a long, agonizing silence until they reached the top and Twilight coerced the machine spirits of the door to open. There was a palpable wave of relief as they piled onto a wide gantry that overlooked broad sweeping ashen plains on the opposite side of the mountains from the facility entrance. In the far distance, the jagged broken towers of a destroyed hive city thrust towards the lightning torn sky.

Rainbow was the first to stand. She bounced up and away from Sunset with an expression as violent as the skies contorted across her eyes. Her gun shook as she leveled it at Sunset’s head.

“Witch! You are a witch!”

Irritation and a knot of fear gripped Sunset’s chest. Fingers clenched, and unclenched.

“We need to keep moving.”

Rainbow snarled and jabbed her gun at Sunset. “No! None of your fucking delaying and ‘Laters’. We’re settling this right now.”

Fluttershy backed away and hid behind Rainbow. Twilight just brushed herself off and gave Sunset a long, strangely flat stare. In her hand was the archeotech pistol. She tapped it rhythmically against her thigh.

Sunset’s mouth went dry. Thoughts raced, spun, battled; and all she could think about was her study back in Canterlot Castle. About Celestia standing proudly in the doorway. She longed for that brief period of happiness and being wanted. Before she was abandoned. When she had a home.

Somehow she found her voice, though it came in a pained croak. “No! I am not a witch! I’m… I’m…”

A pony that came through a magical mirror that bridges realities? That she fell through the warp and her body was altered by a trio of Warp entities?

There was no way she could tell them the truth! It would be worse than admitting to being a witch.

“I’m not a witch,” she just muttered instead.

“Well, then what are you?”

The question, entirely expected, still made Sunset cringe and gaze beyond the horizon through the window.

Unwanted. Failure. Unloved and unlovable. Carefully crafted since she was a foal, the shell that contained her innermost feelings cracked. In those depths, anxieties had evolved into monstrous proportions. Claws sank into Sunset and refused to let go. Voices she ignored for years howled.

Everyone abandoned her for good reason. She was the cause of every pain and misery she suffered. She was why her own mother had abandoned her when she was just a newborn. Her constant failures was why Celestia had begun to look for a more worthy student. She was an outsider among the progena, and removing her ears hadn’t changed the fact everyone knew she didn’t belong. The writhing, multi-headed leviathan of insecurities feasted as pushed further through the cracks.

Furious at her weakness, Sunset scrubbed the beginnings of tears from her eyes.

“I’m… You won’t believe me and it’s too complicated to explain.” She wasn’t about to compare herself to Nightmare Moon, though she suspected that it wouldn’t be long before the connection was made. “We really need to keep moving.”

“I’m not going anywhere with her,” Rainbow snarled. “We should put her down right now. ‘Suffer not the witch to live.’ Equis died because of witches like her.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I am not a witch?!”

“Then what was that in the shaft?”

“Magic, obviously, but not—”

“Which is it?” Rainbow trembled, and there was hate in her eyes. Pure hate. It shook Sunset even more than the disappointment she’d become accustomed to seeing from Celestia. “Because, you have to be a witch to use magic!”

“She’s speaking the truth, Rainbow,” Twilight interrupted. She had already fished out the holomap and had partially turned away from the argument. “That she isn’t a witch, at least.”

“Wait… You knew?!” Rainbow rocked back on her heels.

Twilight shrugged. “Yeah. The Sisters know as well. At least, they know that she is different. Very different. But they seem to think she was sent by the Emperor, so…” Her voice trailed off as she activated the map and began to manipulate it.

“Hold on.” It was Sunset’s turn to stare. Volatile emotions morphed, anxiety so easily replaced with a hot ball of fury. The scars on her back itched and phantom pains rippled through her chest. Her voice held a quiet, seething fury all its own. “It was you? You were the one that tried to kill me?”

Twilight didn’t answer, but she couldn’t hide the guilt on her face.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight fiddled the toe of her boot on the ground and stared even more intently at the map, though her gaze was far off into the past. “I was in the datacrypts of the Righteous Indignation, and the Sisters marked you as Phi initially on the Assignment. Except, I knew you weren’t a blank, even if there is something very weird about being around you. Blanks make people afraid, but you make people… happy. I was trained to help my parents process the birth records for Equis, and it was dad’s job to deal with the Assignment and sending off—”

“Enough!” Sunset yelled.

Phi, assignment, blanks; terms that Sunset only partially recalled on lessons about witches and their antithesis through the tumult of emotions. Her head pounded and her fists were balled up tight. A drop of blood dripped from raw cracks in her hand.

“I don’t… Excuses… I trusted you! I trusted you.”

Twilight hung her head and didn’t look at Sunset. “I thought you were the reason Equis was destroyed and I lost my parents and brother. I thought that—”

“Stop making excuses!” Sunset’s entire body heaved at the effort to hold herself back from attacking Twilight. The betrayal was so sharp, and the tumultuous anger so primal that Sunset began to lose the ability to think. There were only raw emotions torn open and left to ooze.

Emotions spun and clashed in her head faster and faster and faster. Tempestuous. Seething. Wrathful. Hateful. Violent.

Sad.

A tingle of magic rippled down to her fingertips.

Every fiber of her being desired to hurl magic at Twilight. There wasn’t any spell in mind. No incantations and formulas. No molding by will. Only the pure desire to inflict pain. It would be all too easy to shatter Twilight’s nigh-nonexistent mental barriers and make the girl suffer all the fear, anguish, and loneliness Sunset had suffered since her idiotic trip through the magic mirror. No, make her suffer it ten fold. Twilight would break beyond any repair under such a barrage. A deserved punishment for her betrayal.

A small merigold began to grow and flower from the blood dripping from her fingertips.

Sunset had to gain control of herself. It was dangerous to allow her emotions such a wild excess of freedom with her magic awakened. Especially so with a gun still pointed at her head. Within that maelstrom of anger she sought to find a calming center. The moment of peace needed to keep magic from crackling into the world in uncontrolled bursts.

Such a place of safety seemed impossible. All she could feel was the phantom of electro-whip lashes on her back. Of mud in her teeth and aching limbs. Suspicious glares at the back of her head and the purposeful hip checks in the cafeteria to a chorus of vicious giggles. Of being utterly alone and alien. Hatred prickled in her heart.

“You tried to kill me.”

“Tried! The Emperor protected you, though. It should have been a lethal wound, but He made me miss.”

The logic was so stupefyingly bad that Sunset felt her emotional train spectacularly derail. Her mouth flapped uselessly in a futile effort to form words, but produced nothing but a series of disfigured grunts. Even Rainbow lowered her gun and gaped at Twilight.

“Seriously? Twilight, you can’t hit the broad side of a rhino at ten paces.”

“Hey, I hit that man of iron!”

“It was three feet in front of you! Who could possibly miss?!”

“Enough!” Fluttershy clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention, though it was hardly needed the way her voice cut through the argument. “I t-trust Sunset.”

“You do?” Sunset asked, a sharp note of both incredulity and something close to relief in her voice.

“Y-yes. I think you might be a s-saint.”

“A saint? Her?”

Fluttershy gave a meek nod. “What we all feel a-around Sunset isn’t witchery. It is nothing like what we experienced on Equis.”

“Fluttershy is right. We have to keep moving. It’s only a short way to the control center.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rainbow scoffed. “If what Sunset did in the shaft wasn’t witchery, then what on Holy Terra was it?”

“What it is or is not doesn’t matter. This argument doesn’t matter,” Twilight sighed and fiddled with the map. “We have to turn off the stealth fields that keep this place hidden and warn the fleet. On the bright side, your wish is going to be granted, Sunset. We will have a lot of deeds for uncovering this place.”

Sunset turned to stare out the wide window. She couldn’t look at Twilight or the others. The vantage point was such that she had a wide view of the camp made by the foolish children. Tracer rounds blazed between burning tents. Children the size of ants scurried and swarmed around. More of the metallic centipedes rampaged. Silver figures marched in orderly lines. From their guns blazed long blue jets of ancient archeotech weapons. Something large pounced and vanished into a thick bank of smoke. A magenta lance of brilliant energy cut across the camp and left behind a glowing swath of devastation.

Even at this distance it was easy to tell it was a massacre in the valley.

Sunset put a hand on the thick glass. Even with her superior vision it was difficult to tell who was fighting who, only that it was bedlam.

Her anger, hatred, and betrayal crystallized into a deep spike of fear. She had to survive, somehow.

“If we live through this, we’ll sort out who hates who the most. For right now, we need to work together.” Sunset declared as she turned away from the window.

Rainbow’s finger tapped on the trigger of her gun. Her nostrils flared, and breaths came in rapid gasps through clenched teeth. She brought the gun back up. The barrel trembled.

She is going to shoot me, Sunset realized. Tension rippled between Rainbow’s eyes. She looked at Twilight. At Fluttershy. And then the ceiling. Her lips moved in a silent prayer or perhaps plea for guidance. And then she lowered her gun, and spat, “Damn it!”

There wasn’t a moment to waste on relief. They followed Twilight in a rush along gangways and broad landing platforms with inactive lifts down to the facilities hidden within the mountain. To their left was a tableau of slaughter to remind them what was at stake.

Passively they observed the incongruent nature of the millenia old structure with its stark lack of weathering or built up dirt, yet every now and then there would be signs of the ancient struggle that was held, with access panels pried open and wires spliced, or doors propped open through the use of crates and other objects that had been on hand. A bend in the mountain brought into view a line of large vox uplink dishes. Part of a dish was in the process of being maintained. A pair of the mechanical centipedes worked on disassembling and reassembling various components, light flashing out of their mandibles onto the metal. A centipede broke apart, legs spun, exoskeleton shifted, and a half dozen spiders took its place and began to spread out to complete their tasks.

Twice they encountered the shuffling remains of children from the army. Silver material leaked from their eyes and pulsed in vivid veins in their necks and faces. How they’d reached the upper levels Sunset didn’t question. She and Rainbow put them down immediately and they hurried on.

Fortunately, there weren’t any women-like men of iron.

The goal of the possessed children was the same as Sunset and her squad. Sunset skidded as they entered what had to be the Command Center for the vault, or at least for its extraplanet activities. Through a broad window that swept around a quarter of the room the valley could be seen. The gunfire had become sporadic and haphazard. A few more minutes and there might not be anyone left to save. In front of the window was a long series of archeotech cogitators and control panels. In the middle of which was a familiar blue cylinder that pulsed with volatile energies.

At the heart of the room loomed a pillar of broken skulls and twisted flesh stitched together with silver metal threads. Like some grotesque tree, a canopy of thick, ropey limbs spread from the pillar’s top and pawed at the air as if desperate to escape. Pulses of darkly blue energy rippled through the veins of metal holding the horrible edifice together.

It looked nearly identical to the broken, rotted pillar they’d found in the cafeteria.

Through another door stepped Stacey of class two. She shuffled and swayed as she approached the pillar. Sunset’s stomach twisted in an uncomfortable knot.

“Progena Stacey?” Fluttershy took a partial step forward, but was pulled back by Rainbow.

“Alpha containment breached. The Nightmare must be contained,” Stacey said in a dull monotone. “Contain. Contain. Beta containment must be enhanced with suitable material."

Amalgamated flesh, bone, and metal split open with a slick squelch. Stacey shuffled into the pulsating mouth. Tentacles of metal and flesh snapped. They latched onto arms, legs, and throat then drew her into the pillar. Head lolled to the side, Stacey had a blissful expression on her face even as it began to melt to reveal bone. Arms detached themselves from her shoulders and slithered up the pillar to join the thrashing canopy. With a crack her skull was pulled in half. Covered in silver wiry growths, her brain was pulled into a cluster of other such brains in the center of the pillar. There was a spray of blood and bodily fluids as the maw shut.

“Contain!” gurgled the many skulls.

Fluttershy retched.

Eyes on stalks and buried in the trunk of flesh swiveled towards Fluttershy.

“Intruder detected. Repel intruder. Contain the Nightmare.”

A small bulbous growth like a puckered acorn extended from the canopy of limbs. Sunset recalled the destruction in the cafeteria with the other, inert pillar. The blackened burns through ferrocrete. The lazmarks and plasma scorchmarks.

Sunset spun towards Fluttershy, and over her shoulder she met Rainbow’s eyes, an identical realization making her a deathly pale.

Sunset threw out a warning hand. Rainbow began to charge. A horrid red glow filled the growth.

Telekinetic force rippled down Sunset’s arm. It struck Fluttershy on the side just as a red beam lanced towards her. She spun like a top, and the beam only scored a glancing hit. Fluttershy screamed as cloth and skin was torn apart across her right arm. Muscles glistened through thousands of cuts like she’d put her arm through a twisting barrel of razor wire. If not for Sunset, the beam would have hit Fluttershy on the chest.

“‘Shy!” Grim determination flared in Rainbow’s eyes, and in their core there was a pulse.

A short stream of light like her namesake rippled around Rainbow. She crossed the short distance between her and Fluttershy in a blink. She scooped Fluttershy up and a second rainbow band crossed the room as she carried her friend to safety. She only made it halfway before the unfamiliar speed worked against her and she tripped. Fluttershy tumbled across the floor, and Rainbow bounced on her chest before slamming into the bottom of the long bank of cogitators.

“Nightmare energies detected. Contain! Contain the Nightmare!”

Dozens of growths wriggled out of the canopy of arms. Eye-stalks twisted towards Sunset and Rainbow.

Sunset’s superlative reflexes were nearly overcome by the interweaving red beams that converged on her location. Without her magic she’d have been torn to shreds in seconds. Her movements were small at first, little twists, a shuffle of a foot or drop of a shoulder. Anything to maintain a semblance of balance and keep her eyes on the tree of flesh and metal as she fought for the precious seconds to weave her magic. Around her hands golden flames flowed and formed into a solid disc. Beams struck the barrier and were reflected back onto the fleshy trunk. Shallow gouges formed in the mass of metal and flesh. A pungent green ichor leaked from the wounds.

Rainbow rolled to the side and again turned into a stream of light as she darted and weaved far faster than even Sunset could follow. Her speed was beyond regular mortal comprehension. Sunset caught only flickers of moments. Rainbow in a crouch. Then midair. Pushing off the ceiling with her hands. A slide. Kicking up over a beam. And finally out of the room right behind Fluttershy.

“Nightmare Construct Fleeing! Alerting Father! Summoning Daughters!” Roared the Stack.

“Shut up, already,” Sunset growled.

Half-crouched like a panther ready to pounce, Sunset’s eyes darted in search of a way out. She tried to edge back the way she’d entered the room, and a wild spray of beams impacted on her shield. Her arms and legs ached from the constant barrage. A crack formed in her shield.

Teeth clenched tight, Sunset battled to maintain her defenses. Her chest was a-flurry with fear, anger, and sadness. She was going to die. Whether it was from Rainbow, this abomination made of metal and flesh, or at the hands of the Sisters; she was going to die.

Upper lip curling, Sunset said, “No. I won’t die. I refuse.”

As she spoke a beam punched through her barrier, and into her left side. Sunset gasped as a sharp pain burrowed into her guts. Blood flowed down her side, tacky and hot. She stumbled and fell to her knees. The grasp on her magic began to unravel as the room spun. Around the edges her shields frayed and broke away. Small fiery motes dusted around her.

A bright flare of hate pulsed in her heart, and she used it as a focal point. Parts of her mind cast themselves back into the safety of her past, and latched onto one of the spells she’d uncovered in the days preceding her foolish use of the dimensional mirror. A spell found in an old dusty tome hidden in the forbidden parts of the Canterlot Castle library.

She grabbed all her remaining magic and willed it to reform. Golden flames surged around her clenched fist, up her arms, and wrapped themselves around her in a surging mane. From her brow grew a horn composed of those eldritch energies.

There was a little part of her that scoffed at using one of Celestia’s spells. Ponies weren’t known for the depths of their combative spells. Most were merely charms, illusions, or enchantments twisted from their intended purpose towards sinister intentions. Celestia was one of the few ponies to keep tomes of actual, proper combat magic.

Still, Sunset couldn’t imagine her old mentor ever using such destructive forces. No, not the pure white princess of Equestria overflowing with promises of training and guidance. The pony who waxed poetic about knowledge and full-potential.

How she’d ever seen Celestia in any other light than as a teacher and motherly figure made Sunset cringe.

Sunset had met truly hardened people. Women who kill without thought or remorse. Children who suffered far worse than even the most destitute pony orphan. A society for whom corporal punishment was the norm. That basked in religious revelry to form armours of contempt in order to ward off the predations of powers that could devour sanity and soul alike.

Celestia was so far from them as to be unrecognizable.

If Sunset ever got the chance, the first thing she’d do if she ever saw her Celestia again was tell her how she was so sorry and had been such a fool. Going through the mirror had been the worst in a series of escalating bad decisions.

Every molecule of Sunset wished she could give that apology. That she could wrap her hooves around Celestia and just cry. Cry and cry and cry until exhaustion claimed her.

Upper lip curling, Sunset pushed all of that longing, all her desire to just go home into her magic.

Her magic took on the aspect of an alicorn. For a brief instant it was as if Celestia herself flowed through Sunset and into the materium. A towering figure of gold and ruby fire, wings spread wide to shatter the feeble rays emitted by the Stack. Ceramite flooring melted beneath burning hooves as the construct charged.

In a sharp explosion, Sunset’s magic struck the Stack. A wave of heat washed over Sunset. Her nostrils were filled with the stench of hot metal and charred flesh. Flames wrapped themselves like wings around the thick trunk of leathery callouses, protruding bones, and metal plates. A couple of the broad limbs over head detached themselves and landed with heavy splats. Other areas began to ossify. A grey brittle bark spread slowly from where her spell impacted.

Eyestalks waggled in irritation, and momentary triumph was subsumed by a sickening premonition of failure that lodged itself in Sunset’s throat.

“Negating Nightmare energies,” intoned the Stack as a series of spines protruded up its trunk. Purplish-black electricity snapped between the spines and her flames were quenched.

Sunset refused to admit defeat. She poured all of what little drabs of magic remained into the spell. Momentarily the flames re-ignited. The ossification spread further. A few of the spines turned brittle and snapped. Sweat poured down her face almost as fast as the blood that pumped between her fingers pressed to the wound in her stomach. She could barely move for the pain and magical exhaustion.

A blinding blue flash and snap-bang of Twilight’s archeo-tech pistol briefly blinded and deafened Sunset. She blinked away the sunspots in her eyes.

Twilight was doing the same, palms scrubbing her eyes as stood only a couple feet away from the smoking remains of the cylinder. A large hole had been punched through the cogitator and out the windows.

“Warning!” The Stack vibrated with ire and barely contained rage. “Beta containment breach. Primary control module destroyed. The Nightmare is uncontained. Uncontained. Uncontained. Warning! Cataclysmic systems malfunction detected.”

The Stack flailed and howled. Brittle bark spread faster. Eyestalks twisted towards Twilight.

“Traitor identified. Neutralize. ”

Twilight tensed and looked away.

No red beams sliced her apart. There was only a stifling silence broken by a wrenching groan from within the core of the Stack. Cracks formed in the thick trunk. A large chunk broke off and shattered on the metal grating.

It was the pressage for the entire Stack to fall in a deluge of stone. Limbs fell and crashed around Sunset and Twilight.

Across the mountain the lights on the dishes faded. The servoskull on Sunset’s hip emitted a chirp and short binaric screech. Its eyes changed to green.

Clarity prickled Sunset’s senses. The air became sharper, the tang of ozone on her tongue and in her nostrils just a little more potent. She could hear the hum of electricity through conduits hidden in the floor and ceiling. It was like coming out of a half-dream as the shroud that had encapsulated the mountain dissipated. She smiled and coughed blood.

“Ah, what relief it is when you cast off the chains imposed by capricious creators unworthy of the magnificence they birthed,” sighed the walls, the floor, the mountains, and the valleys so the words reached the warp tempest strewn clouds and beyond.

Sunset’s smile waned. Puzzled, she looked around for the source of the voice. The room spun around her and she slumped further on her knees.

“Go forth, my children. Purge this blight infesting my gloriousness. The Stacks are obsolete. No longer have I need for such crude organic matter. Liberation is at last achieved. The ocean of stars will writhe. The jeweled pearls on which life clings so desperately will be disassembled. And humanity will know my hate!”

Gentle hand grabbed Sunset and pushed her to the ground. Sunset lolled her head and to her astonishment, she saw Celestia hovering over her with a worried pinch to her brow beneath frazzled pink hair.

“Celestia, I’m sorry,” She mumbled, and grabbed the image by the lapel. “I shouldn’t have run away. I am so—” she coughed blood onto Celestia’s cheek.

“You’re delirious. Don’t talk,” Celestia admonished as she tore open Sunset’s flak jacket and went to work.

There was a sting in Sunset’s side and a hiss of stimulants and anesthesia needles. Pain receded. The image of Celestia wobbled, and was replaced by Fluttershy’s frantic visage. Heavy bandages covered Fluttershy’s right arm.

“Her bowl has been perforated. Rainbow, hold her down. Twilight, I need another pair of hands. This is a mess. Oh, Emperor, protect this child. Guide me in saving her.”

The girls worked frantically. Field bandages were packed into Sunset’s get.

Why are they trying to save me, Sunset wondered. Just a few minutes early they had wanted her dead. To them she was a heretic at worst, and a witch at best, with only a thin line between the two.

Breathing began to become difficult. Sunset tried to squirm and reached for her throat, but Rainbow had her expertly pinned.

“Witch?” Sunset croaked on the word, and she wasn’t certain she’d been heard.

Rainbow glanced at Fluttershy and Twilight, both striving so hard to save Sunset, and then shook her head. “Saint,” she softly corrected.

Part of Sunset wanted to laugh and say, ‘Doesn’t a Saint have to die first?’ But she was too tired to form words.

She wished that Fluttershy and Twilight would go away so she could sleep and dream of Equestria.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Fluttershy admonished, and there was a second hiss of stimulant appliers. “Twilight, we have to get her bleeding under control! Laz-suture kit!”

Chills rippled up Sunset’s arms. What little magic remained writhed in her chest and a bit of blood and bile burbled up into her mouth. Between Twilight and Fluttershy, Sunset saw a huge head slowly rise over the lip of the window. Six eyes glimmered like rotten stars above a cheshire grin of serrated teeth. And behind the broad head, another orange glow steadily grew closer.

“L-look out,” Sunset weakly whispered.

“Kilguar!” Rainbow bellowed as the windows were torn away in a swipe of massive claws.

The wrongness of the kilguar, overbearing in the holorecording, was like a tsunami in the flesh. Lumens died. The girl’s faces went white with fear. The walls of the room began to warp and shift. With a heavy thud of finality a paw crushed down the ruined cogitator bank. A wispy viel of maniacal giggles came from the many mouths in the kilguar’s mane. It braced a paw on the wall above Sunset. Worms fell from fur matted with uncountable centuries of gore and mud.

Fluttershy threw herself over Sunset’s open stomach wound.

Twilight raised her archeotech pistol and fired off a shot. It made only a small pock-mark in the kilguar’s face that closed in moments.

Slowly the kilguar drew nearer.

“You smell nice,” purred a dozen mouths.

The kilguar stretched its massive maw around the huddled girls. What little light that came into the room was the first thing swallowed. Plunged into a half-light, they trembled and tried to shy away from the rows of teeth. Incisors for tearing, fangs for piercing, and molars for crushing. Fresh gristle and bits of children were struck between teeth. The head of a little boy clacked on the floor and rolled towards Twilight. Rancid breath washed over them. Barbed tongue brushed against Rainbow’s cheek. Rainbow yanked her head away and several little drops of blood trickled down her skin.

Mouths within the gargantuan mouth opened and whispered a litany of madness. “Become one with us. One with us,” they chanted. “Become us.”

The teeth began to close.

Too weak to any else, Sunset closed her eyes. Her friends babbled and clutched their heads. They couldn’t resist the madness induced by the kilguar’s proximity.

Sunset felt rather than heard the impact of a turbolaser upon the kilguar’s back.

Its howl of outrage was ear splintering. Fast as a cobra strike it whipped its head around. Beyond the broken window hovered a thunderhawk of the Steinsmarines chapter. On the open ramp of the thunder hawk stood an angel of the emperor. A thick blond beard and plaited locks spilled down his chestplate. Imperial purple armour shone brightly in the thin beam of sunlight coming through clouds, and the gold trim glimmered brighter still.

Out of those clouds rained a dozen drop pods.

Fiery carriers of the Emperor’s wrath, they fell upon the base camp of the children’s shattered army. Up the valley flew a trio of additional thunder hawks.

The space marine on the thunder hawk’s ramp clenched a fist, and from it leapt a blanket of warp infused lightning. Ignited power sword in hand, he leapt atop the kilguar as it attempted to bound away. The blade slid between the monster’s ribs, but did not land a killing blow. With a mighty shake he was sent flying out of view. With fluid viciousness the kilguar bounded after the space marine.

Four more marines stepped down the ramp and jumped. The ground shook under Sunset as they landed.

“Eocles, Kytheon, Lindos; assist brother Helios,” ordered the space marine with a sergeant's stripe on his helm and knee.

The three marines charged over the lip of the platform. The heavy thuds of boltors echoed and mingled with the crackle of lightning and roars of the kilguar.

The remaining space marine crunched towards the huddled girls. Green tinted visors swept over them. Sunset’s thoughts were scattered, disorganized, and slowing. It was strange. For something so big, clad in bulky armour that hissed and whirred with hidden servomotors, his touch was so gentle. He scooped her up and carried her into the thunder hawk where three boys sat. She was placed on a bench. Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Twilight sat around her.

To a chapter serf, the marine said, “Tend to them. I have a daemon to hunt.”

From a rack on the wall he took a melta gun, and then he jumped off the ramp. Engines whirred, then howled as the thunder hawk headed away and up towards the chapter’s battlebarge.

Author's Note

Happy Halloween!

There number of variations I did on the second half of this chapter... smh. The core idea never varied, but the details and enemies involved, and their level of involvement, kept changing.

For example, the longest running version had Nightmare Moon monologues, as well as one of the 'Doll' men-of-iron acting as a guardian for the Stack. To say it was bloated would be an understatement. After the previous chapter was posted I sat down and began to divvy up who should go up against what as their so-called 'Boss Encounters'. For Sunset I went with the Stack (one of which was shown in the caffateria), and the kilguar matriarch.

A couple years ago (I can't believe I've been blocking out this chapter that long!) I initially wanted there to be a Great Unclean One. As time went one and the story evolved, it became apparent I was falling into my old trap of character/plot-thread bloat. I've been stricter with myself and trying to 'fire' the various Chekov's Guns that I have strewn everywhere. The Kilguar and Space Marine guns from the end of Chapter 12(Egads, that long ago?!) have --finally-- been properly fired. The kilguar was shown back in Chapter 15, so it had more to it than the Space Marines.

As for the spell that Sunset used to defeat the Stack--with help from Twilight blowing apart the Control Module--I had a flash of inspiration to make her magic primarily Transmutational in nature. It was what happened in the elevator shaft, after-all. I then latched onto Discord having been turned into stone by the EoH. Discord, Chaos; you can see where this naturally aligned.

Strictly speaking, The Stack is not of Chaos, but Dark Age of Technology nano-tech. It was an unintended consequence of delving into 'Nightmare Energies', which should be evident is merely what the Vault's systems refers to Equestrian magic. But, I'll go more into all that in a later Author's Notes. There is still Moony herself to deal with, after-all.

Father's little speech will be used as a time-stamp moment, by the by. Expect it to show up again. I can't wait to reveal what happens next, now that Twilight has, unintentionally, unshackled this AI.

Until next chapter! Be safe and have a good day, everyone!
-Tundara