SS Transcendent

Schwarze Sonne stood at ease before the dias that the Fuhrer would soon ascend to deliver his final orders in the Equestrian campaign. In the distance, the crack of artillery sounded against the sharp electrostatic sound of shield discharge. Germanean artillery had been pounding the twin sisters’ shield system for several months, but so far, had barely made a dent. Schwarze almost frowned. For the first time in a while, the Germanean war machine had been stalled, and what’s more, it had been stalled at the final hurdle. It was irritating.

Canterlot was not self-supporting. It never could have been. Cities, by their inherent nature, were like ticks, feeding off of the agricultural surplus of surrounding villages. Not only was Canterlot no different, but this tendency was all but compounded its location up the side of a mountain. It was a magnificent, grandiose, maybe even semi-apollonian feat of engineering, but it was also a stupid one, from a military standpoint. That was why it was going to starve. But that would take far too long, really. Why would they want to starve a city they would do better massacring? Why hadn’t they given in yet? Equestria barely existed outside of the city walls, things would be so much easier for everyone if they just surrendered and died.

The impromptu briefing room was quiet, save for the distant sounds of battle. It was a sullen kind of silence, born of stress and frustration, not of a war being lost, but of a war taking too long to end. It was a large, shielded tent, with rows upon rows of metallic chairs, a projector situated to the front on a large table, also made of metal. Large banners, crimson red like blood flanked both sides of the tent, adding the only splashes of colour in the green-grey mass of waterproof fabric. The rain had been pissing down for the past month, and the grey light of overcast skies barely came in through the window flaps. Sonne suppressed a yawn, inwardly wishing the briefing would hurry up and start so that he could get back to his outpost closer to the front to observe the screaming shells strike home. Ineffective though they were, he found the flash of the bombs and the golden spectacle of the flaring shield therapeutic.

That damn shield.

Germanean troops had tried to climb the sheer cliffs to undo the lattice, but the one thing the city had was the ability to bracket approaching units in immediate enfilade fire.Those troops that weren’t cut down by fire raining down on them had found the lattice of the shield spell too complex to quickly and reliably break down. It was, by all accounts, a military grade spell. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising. The Diarchs had been around for some time, they probably knew a thing or two about combat themselves.

Shame about their soldiers.

Some of the officers shot nervous glances his way every now and then. In an army of radicals, Sonne was famous for heading up the most uncompromising unit of them all. Where the regular army would crucify one in a hundred, the Storm Battalions would crucify one in ten. Sonne did not believe in doing things by half measures. Half measures were for Equestrians and cowards.

He glanced back as the tent flap was thrown back with a sound of swirling fabric and cold grey light poured into the command tent, and shot to his hooves. The rest of the staff followed. A tall, bipedal figure with a shock of blonde hair strode in. The Fuhrer wore raindrop pattern camouflage fatigues and a grey-green rain cape, a sign of the campaign’s stalemate. He swept his eyes menacingly about the room, face cold and impassive as always before marching to the dias, boots squelching with caked on mud. He ascended, boots pounding against wood in a rhythmic thump. He cleared his throat, and stillness settled over the room. He waited for several seconds, just long enough for it to become uncomfortable, before giving the silence a sound.

“National Comrades,” he began, voice neutral, “We’re another month closer to the final decision to make Army Group Centre a part of the navy.”

The officers glanced around nervously, split between laughing in case it was a joke and remaining silent in case it wasn’t. Sonne chuckled quietly, prompting the Fuhrer to fix him with an almost flat gaze and barely perceptible half smile.

“Which is why I have brought along some new weapons systems for you to play with. A major advance, to be sure.”

This time the officers seemed more curious than nervous.

“Our scientists call it Seelenkanone, and it will crack the shield.”

Hushed murmuring as the officers tried to dissect the name.

“Through the life forces of vermin, we intend to project magical energy of such high concentration that it will simply overwhelm the shield bearers and crack the city’s last line of defence like a watermelon beneath boots. Each of you has been provided with about a dozen of these weapons, the onus is on you to keep them powered.”

“Mein Fuhrer,” one of the officers piped up, “Do we gather rats to power them, then?”

Dieter fixed him with what was, for him, a withering glare, “Yes, Generalleuntnant, of a sort. There are several Equestrian villages surrounding Canterlot that have traditionally provided it with food. Because of our occupation, they have been unable to evacuate.”

“I see, Mein Fuhrer. What would-”

“FETCH ME THEIR SOULS!”

Sonne grinned.

***

It was another grey, depressing day behind the front for Pear Blossom. She awoke to the sound of shell fire several miles to the South, as she had done for the past four or five months. She groaned, rolled to her hooves from the piled blankets that now served as her bed and emerged into what was left of her ransacked house. Germanean requisitions had stripped her home, and the rest of the homes in her village bare of food. She sighed as she entered her kitchen. She knew her pantry was practically empty, but she still went through it every day to try and recapture some measure of normalcy. The ground vibrated under the force of a particularly heavy Germanean superbarage.

Stupid, she thought, things will never be normal again.

She heard engines and the rumbling of trucks. More reinforcements to the front. The volume increased with every week that the Germaneans sat in siege against Canterlot. Were they getting desperate? Or were they just trying to make their coming victory as crushing as possible? She knew that the Royal Equestrian Army had tried to break the encirclement from the South several weeks ago. She had been awake for three nights straight, unable to sleep from the illumination of incendiaries and rapid tracer fire spiralling into the night air, tracking unseen pegasi. Distant, haunting screams permeated the air for days afterward, each cut short for reasons she did not want to think about.

The trucks were coming closer, and she realized that something was wrong.

The trucks weren’t heading South.

“Oh sweet Celestia,” she heard somepony scream, “They’re back!”

The sound of tires grinding through mud down the town’s main street sent her reeling back in fear. She turned and ran, mind addled in terror of what had happened the last time the Germanean army had come calling. She sprinted into her room and hid in the shadowed corner where the Germaneans would look last on entering the room, closing the door behind her as quickly as she could without slamming it. Maybe they’d miss her. She heard the Germaneans shouting in that harsh language of theirs as they dismounted by the trucks. The first Germanean truck she’d seen had been on the first day of the Canterlot Offensive. Flush with success, the Germaneans had mounted an officer’s head on the truck’s hood, and scrawled in Equestrian script beneath “Pacifists Make Good Hood Ornaments.” Pear Blossom didn’t want to be a hood ornament.

Booted hooves pounded down the streets as the Germaneans fanned out, heading door to door. She heard her neighbours scream in time with the distinctive sound of a wooden door being smashed in by magic. Blossom flinched. A Germanenan screamed something indistinct, and the screaming moved until it was outside. She heard mud squelching as a menacing presence stormed towards her front door. She bit back a cry of fear as the sound of splintering wood assaulted her ears, followed by the crash of her front door physically passing through the wall opposite it. Heavy hoofsteps pounded through her home. She breathed shallowly. For a few moments, silence. Her bedroom door exploded off its hinges. Blossom screamed as a skull masked figure stormed its way into her room, pistol floating in a crimson magical grip.

No use hiding now. She did the first thing she could think of and lashed out with her magic. The skull masked figure turned quickly, and the magic bolt winged him. He swore, recovering and advanced towards her. She readied her horn to fight him back again, but he surged forward, and suddenly she found herself staring upwards at a menacing, grey furred soldier, luger raised above his head.

“Vibe check!” he exclaimed, pistol whipping her into the wall.

The world exploded in white pain as her head bounced off of the wall like a basketball. She slumped over sideways, whining in pain.She felt blood trickling down the side of her face. The Germanean entered a power stance over her fallen body, before magically gripping her by the horn and dragging her towards the door.

“No, stop!” She exclaimed, “Can’t you just pretend I wasn’t here?”

“Well, no,” the Germanean replied casually, “I can’t, that kind of defeats the entire point of why I’m here.”

“W-what are you here for?”

“Uh,” The Geramean responded absently, “To take you away?”

“But why?”

“Because it’s hilarious? I don’t fucking know. It’s not like you Equestrian femoids are real sapient beings anyways.”

“B-but,” She stammered.

“Shut you the fucking,” The Germanean snapped.

She saw the briefest flash of movement as the Germanean raised his gun. She didn’t even have the time to flinch before he brought his weapon down squarely against her forehead. She felt her head bounce again, and now instead of a flash of white, she felt herself engulfed by darkness.

***

Pear Blossom woke to the thunder of guns and the rattle of an engine. Her eyes opened slowly, and for a moment she had difficulty focusing them. Her head hurt, and she felt a crust of dry blood over her snout. Her spine thrilled with fear as for the first instant, she saw nothing. As the interceding seconds passed, she came to realize that she was in the back of a transport truck, and that she was not alone. Against the dark canvas of the vehicle, and from the brief stabs of light that flooded in through the opening at the end of the truck, she saw that she was one body amidst perhaps fifty or more. The truck was not designed to hold this many ponies, and they were crammed together like livestock. It bounced relentlessly and painfully against craters and rocks, jostling her and the others about, smashing them against its wooden frame. At the end of the truck, two skull masked, submachine gun toting Germaneans sat. The prisoners sat away from them, even at the expense of their own space and comfort.

“E-excuse me?” She stammered, mouth feeling as though it had been stuffed full of cotton.

One of the Germaneans inclined his head towards her, eyes gleaming subtly against the backdrop of a twilight sky on fire.

“Where are you taking us?”

“We’re going to use you, fucking obviously.”

“What do you me-”

“Dammit, no more questions, Equestrian,” the Germanean growled, “You ponies have had more than enough time to ask them.”

The sound of artillery fire and the crackling electric discharge of magic, interspersed with the loud, dry twig snap of repeated rifle fire drew closer. Blossom wished she could see where they were going from the back of the truck, but she knew instinctively that they were heading to the front. The thought brought a strange comfort to her. Surely the Germaneans were just rounding ponies up for labour then? Maybe she’d just dig a few trenches and be on her way home? She noticed a few Equestrian uniforms thrown into the mix of prisoners, and knew deep down that things were not going to go well. Still, she hoped.

She risked another question.

“Are you going to let us go?”

The other Germanean’s head snapped towards her, and she almost expected to receive another butt-stroking. Instead, the Germanean started to chuckle. She couldn’t see his mouth through the skull mask on his face, and that only made it worse. The fabric distorted, making the bony mouth, highlighted in the darkness, warp menacingly. He stopped suddenly, and again, for a few moments, Blossom anticipated some act of violence to be carried out.

“In a sense,” he muttered, looking away.

The first one spoke again.

“You should be happy that you’re useful, frankly. That’s our great gift to you ponies,” he sneered the word, “Even if it’s just as industrial fertilizer, none of you will ever again experience the agony of uselessness.”

The other prisoners glared at her, as though resentful. They had, she realized, probably already asked these very same questions.

The two Germaneans glanced upwards over the tailgate as a wing of fighter-bombers rushed overhead, engines howling. Blossom could not see them, but she could hear them shrieking. The sound of engines faded, and then was drowned away entirely by the deep, booming giant’s voice of an explosion. Against the noise of the blast, the crackling whine of a magic shield being battered. The ground became rougher again, as the truck entered into a road full of potholes. Or, she corrected herself, craters. The truck ground to a halt. She listened for swearing to indicate that it had broken down, but heard none. This was the final destination, for good or ill.

On either side of her, she heard the buzz of voices over a radio. The Germaneans, in their harsh, ear grating language, were shouting orders.

“Fuer!”

The ground shook under the tremendous crash of artillery guns firing, and the sound blasted all sense of sound from Blossom’s skull. The ringing in her ears drowned out all other sounds, and she saw, rather than heard the tailgate of the truck come down. The guards dismounted one at a time, and, pointing their submachine guns up at the prisoners huddled in the truck, shouted indistinct commands. Bodies pressed her forward from behind, and she realized that they were being ordered out. She staggered, legs waking up after hours without use, towards the tailgate. Now she could barely hear the Germaneans over the false noise in her ears.

“Raus, raus, you Equestrian swine. You are slow even when hunger has taken away your obesity!”

She hesitated, staring down at the three foot drop to the ground.

The rightmost Germanean started forward angrily, horn igniting.

“Get you the fuck out of the truck, Equestrian, or may the Sky God help me, I will fucking drag you out of it and fucking lubricate the dirt with your brai-”

The other Germanean visibly rolled his eyes, “Please exit the vehicle, and Hochrot here might not hurt you.”

“Might,” Hochrot repeated.

Blossom squeezed her eyes shut and jumped. The Earth came up hard and fast, and she fell hard into the mud. She felt something in her right front leg pop, and she went down.

“Fucking mulebrain,” Hochrot snapped, “Do you not know how to jump prop-”

“Ach,” the other Germanean spat dismissively, “Equestrians aren’t real ponies, go easy on them.”

“That’s even more of a reason to fucking beat their fucking brains out, Mitternacht!”

“Waste of time, waste of effort. You have to grease them all at the same time.”

“No you don’t, it’s cathartic as shit to single the dumbest of their kind ou-”

The moan of pain that Blossom had tried to hold in escaped.

Her eyes opened to find the two Germaneans staring down at her.

“Well, Hochrot, let’s get a third opinion on this.” He leaned down towards Blossom, “Little Equestrian, would you rather Hochrot stomped you to death, or would you rather be shot into a trench with ten others?”

“N-neither,” she stammered.

“Ach,” Hochrot groused, “Fucking centrist coward.”

“Depraved and weak-minded,” Mitternacht agreed, hauling her to her hooves with his magic.

“It’s a third position,” Blossom tried to reason.

The two Germaneans paused for a second.

“Shut up,” Hochrot snapped.

“A third position,” Mitternacht exposited, “would be if Hochrot beat you half to death and then we shot you into a trench.”

“Not a bad idea, actually,” Hochrot’s eyes brightened.

“Yes, actually,” Mitternacht nodded in agreement. He turned back to Blossom, “You are good for something after all, Equestrian. You are a credit to your...”

He paused.

“Uh...racemix?”

Blossom groaned, her leg throbbing.

Hochrot suddenly turned to Mitternacht, “You got any pervitin?”

***

Sonne raised the binoculars, gazing out across the blasted field to the great mountain city. Its glinting golden dome stood out against the darkening sky and the angry red of burning grassland. It held strong, flaring against the steady, continuous pounding of Germanean guns. More than any other shield the Germaneans had run into throughout this campaign, this one was the most difficult to deal with. It was especially bad that the twin sisters could lower small portions of the shield to deliver counterbattery fire, and then shut it up again tight before Germanean shells could find their way in. Counter barrages had forced Germaneans down into trenches. The Equestrians would eventually starve under the relentless siege they had been subjected to, but that would take months, years even.

That was, until now. He grinned as he lowered the binocs, glancing to the gun line behind him. Mixed in amongst the vast siege artillery pieces that the artillery regiments had brought up were new, strange looking devices. Spiny pieces with no visible breaches or muzzles, but plenty of tubing. They hummed, a malignant background thrum that made ponies’ teeth ached if they stood around them for too long and carried with them the stench of ozone and corpses. Unlike the guns around them, they looked like a row of teeth sprouting from the smashed and muddy ground, a predator’s maw, ready to bite. Sonne rather liked that comparison.

Rows upon rows of Equestrians were marched under escort to the guns. Battered, broken, defeated, afraid, they refused to make eye contact with the Germaneans. Sonne felt his smile turn as he registered the scene of unforgivable weakness in front of him. They were a mix and tangle of every walk of life, a heterogenous mass of useless flesh. Some of them were crying. No dignity at all. At the head of the ragged line of subequinity, a pear brown mud crawler limped, whimpering with pain. Sonne scanned across the line, noting a number of tattered khaki militia uniforms. Again, a disgusting sign of weakness. A Germanean would never have allowed himself to fall into captivity, the Equestrians frankly should have blown themselves up with hoof grenades, like respectable ponies.

There were hundreds of them here, carried by several armoured lorries, and kept in line by a section of submachine gun equipped Germaneans. They were made to line up in front of the gun line, retching on the corpse stench of a battlefield turned gangrenous greenish-brown by endless fighting. Before the two sides had settled into their comfortable and boring pattern of continuous barrage and counterbarrage, a number of break-in and break-out attempts had sowed the fields with the dead. Thousands of corpses, left to bloat in the sun, had over the months been pounded until they were indistinguishable from the mud around them. In one memorable instance, a battalion of captured Equestrians had been dressed in Germanean uniforms and marched towards Canterlot in an attempt to bait the sisters to lower the shield enough to strike. The shield was lowered enough for the battalion to get flattened by artillery and incendiaries, but not quite enough for the trifluoride to make its way in.

And now, finally, these guns would do what two hundred thousand shock troopers and four thousand pieces of artillery could not.

Sonne waited for the Equestrians to fall into line with butt strokes and cursing, running his gaze over them a final time for effect. He magically amplified his voice.

“I am certain that you Equestrians are wondering why we have brought you here. It’s simple, really. Behind me are a series of guns. You are going to help us make them work.”

The Equestrians muttered, concerned. It was unlike the Germaneans to let them anywhere close to their weapons. Some, Sonne was certain, thought that perhaps they could turn the new wunderwaffe against their captors. Let them hope, he shrugged mentally, it would probably make the effects more potent.

“Well,” one of the Equestrians, a militia member, started uncertainly, “What do you need us to do?”

Sonne chose to ignore the interruption, but only barely, “We’re going to hook you up to the weapons. It will be, as your people say, quick and easy.”

Those would have been lies if he had been speaking to beings with the credentials to exercise free will.

“So, it’s not hard labour?”

Sonne sighed, “No, not hard at all. You just need to sit back and let it happen.”

Another pony piped up, “Let what happen?”

“The help, obviously.”

“But what help?”

“Holy shit!” Sonne snapped angrily, without thinking, “Have you even been watching what we’ve been doing? At what point do you see us mounting heads on fucking tanks and go ‘oh yeah this is going to totally end well for me’? Indra’s fucking teeth, we’re going to use you as batteries!”

One of the Equestrians broke away in a blind sprint. Sonne growled, withdrawing his sidearm. The crack of small calibre discharge was almost lost in the continuous drumbeat of artillery fire. The Equestrian stopped suddenly and rolled as his front hoof was blown out from under him. He screamed, knee oozing blood and shattered cartilage.

“Fuck it!” Sonne snarled, gesturing to Mitternacht, “Scharführer, get them jacked in.”

The Germanean squad jumped into life.

***

The Equestrians screamed in agony as the gun powered up, an azure agglomeration of energy at what could roughly be described as the gun’s barrel heralding the coming maelstrom. They howled as the gun vibrated, a dull rumbling growl. Various tubes attached to the prisoners pulsated with sickly energy, their magic and souls, ripped straight from their bodies and fed through capacitors to generate a beam of raw power fueled by hatred, fear and pain. One of them, the pear brown mare with the messed up knee, seemed to have enough presence of mind to roll a pleading eye towards Sonne, as if begging him to provide succour. Her shriek was raw, heart-rending, mixing fear, pain and death together into one singular blast of horror. Sonne rolled his eyes. He strode up to her and struck her across the face.

"Oh shut the fuck up you decadent weakling," He snarled, "You should be thanking us for giving you the opportunity to die for a worthwhile cause for once. You are not good for much, but you are passable batteries."

The gun fired, a dazzling beam of light that flashed between several shades at once, and the Equestrian fell silent, body turning dark and then disintegrating. In turn, her cry of desperation became part of the abyssal wail of the artillery piece, a rising crescendo of dozens of souls ripped from their vessels, forced together, and thrown towards their countrymen to kill them.

In the distance, the bright lance of pure magic smashed into the golden dome surrounding Canterlot. The brief flash of light momentarily blinded Sonne, and outshone the slowly rising sun. The world seemed to turn dark against the burst of radiance. The shield wavered.

Sonne chuckled.

“Next!”

***

Celestia flinched. The magic backwash of the Germanean attack flowed over her psyche just as it did over the magical latticework of her shield. She felt as much as heard the psychic force of the blast that had just struck her defences. For a brief moment, dozens of voices echoed in her head, and their fear and agony became her own. She tasted copper, and had to physically stop herself from vomiting from the sheer force of the attack. Next to her, Luna fared worse. Her younger sister was a better combatant, but in her own way was also less emotionally disciplined. Luna physically recoiled, nose bleeding from the pressure, eyes flicking about the throne room in abject panic as her personality was temporarily subsumed by the terror.

“Luna,” Celestia gasped, “Hang on, sister.”

Luna’s eyes flickered, and then sharpened as she reasserted her personality.

“What was that?” She asked, gasping.

Celstia wasn’t sure what it was in totality, but she knew what it was in essence, “It’s evil, Luna.”

They both cried out as the second blast struck their mental defences, then a third, and a fourth. Celestia let out a whimper she could no longer hold back as she felt herself fading away amidst a sea of panicked souls. Her horn flickered, then with a sharp crack of disengaging magic and smoke, failed entirely.

Outside, Germanean loudspeakers blared loudly. As Celestia sank to her knees, a stab of hard sound assaulted her ears. She wondered, distantly, despite the emotional resonance of the repeat attacks, just how loud those propaganda pieces had to be for her to hear them in her spire. For them to be so clear, and yet so free of distortion...

“Equestrians! This is not a call for surrender! This is not a call for you to throw down your arms and live! You no longer have any recourse or option! Others will ask you to submit or die, we demand that you submit and die! Fight back, if you wish. Clutch your families, if you must. Make use of your final moments as you think is productive, and find us indifferent.”

The steady beat of what sounded like thousands of insectoid wings echoed throughout the city, chopping up the sounds of shouted threats and blaring music. The pin dropped.

“They’re in the city!” Celestia yelled, using her magic, despite the strain, to amplify her voice, “To arms, they’re in the city!”

***

Nachtenkrieg chortled as he fired. He sprayed bursts of withering machinegun fire from the side mounted turret of his helicopter. To the left and right of his black, locust shaped transport, he saw the diving forms of Germanean pegasi, whooping and cajoling, skull masks filling their manner with a sense of malignant ease. He saw one, eyes bloodshot with pervatin use, casually lob a grenade through the third story of an apartment complex as he flapped by. The window blew out in a spray of glass. The pegasus gracefully spun under a burst of tracer fire, bringing his submachine gun to bear in a fluid motion. He fired downwards in quick precise bursts as he passed smoothly over an Equestrian checkpoint below. The Equestrians twitched and spasmed under the hail of bullets, splattering the cobblestones with vitae. Sometimes, Nachten wished he could experience the beauty of pegasi flight, even if it meant being an honourary unicorn.

Nachten’s helicopter rushed over the rapidly overwhelmed Equestrian defenders, magically controlled frontal machinegun bifurcating civilians as it went. He frowned in the next moment as the helicopter banked away from its objective, under a concentrated fusilade of Equestrian anti-aircraft fire. While the pegasi could fly between buildings, the helicopters were too large to do so, a fact the Equestrians were now exploiting. He saw the anti-aircraft gun, its quad barrel spraying fire in the vicinity of his transport wing. Time seemed to slow artificially as he saw the weapon swivel to point, it felt, directly at him. He felt his heart beat twice.

Three pegasi rushed upwards from the street below, and swept up behind the defence. They pulled themselves into a hover just long enough to lob white phosphorous into the gun. Even over the rotors and gunfire, Nachten could hear the crew screaming as the chemical ate their flesh. The gun’s ammunition began to cook off. One of the pegasi lazily threw a wing up towards him, retaining forward momentum even as he interrupted the natural rhythm of his own movement. It was simultaneously a greeting and a show of skill. Nachten could sense his comrade grinning behind his mask. He waved back.

The helicopter corrected its course, and continued.

Equestrian pegasi battalions were beginning to disgorge from positions across the city. They reminded Nachten, for all the world, of a flock of birds. He was in the thick of it now. To his left, a transport fell out of formation, hurtling towards the ground. He saw a flash of movement as the fireteam of Equestrians that had maneuvered their way onto its canopy and shot it apart leapt up and away. As he observed the helicopter’s hurtling, twisting decent, Nachten found himself subtly impressed. He caught a brief glimpse of a cockpit turned red with blood before the chopper smashed through a building, rotors snapping off even as they smashed the structure apart.

A dive bomber rushing overhead literally came apart as it found itself suddenly swarmed by Equestrians. Its shrieking horn cut short as an Equestrian managed to flip over its buzzing propeller, only barely avoiding being shredded. The Equestrian landed hard, and smoothly shot the pilot. Nachten only had a brief moment to see the Equestrian’s head lurch sharply towards his group. Then the Equestrian was gone, a Germanean pegasus battering him from the plane, a combat knife smashing through his eye. Nachten caught a glint of white fur and the flash of a gold icon on the Equestrian’s right foreleg. Royal Guard.

“So these are Equestria’s elite.”
Below, far from scattering, the Equestrians were rallying. Nachten felt a stab of regret that he hadn’t fought these soldiers earlier in the campaign. Finally, a challenge worthy of his skills.

The helicopter lurched, and he looked down to find a batpony hanging upside down from the landing skid. The Equestrian glowered up at him, eyes gleaming with hatred, face partially obscured by the skids themselves. He held a pistol in one forehoof and a brick of explosive in the other. He levelled the pistol.

“Fuck!” Nachten swore, throwing himself back from the turret just in time to evade having his head blown open.

Using his magic, he swung his submachine gun out the side of the transport’s troop bay and fired downwards. It was a long, spraying burst that had no regard for fire discipline. He leaned back over the side to check if the Equestrian was still there. Shockingly, he was. The Equestrian had been hit four or five times, bloody puncture wounds sending blood streaming in a long trail in the whipping wind of the chopper’s movement. Still, the Equestrian reached upwards to plant the charge. Nachten shot him again, this time squarely in the head. The Equestrian slackened, then fell away, body spiralling to the ground below. The explosive was still magnetically attached to his hoof.

To the sides of his chopper, loudspeakers continued to blare music, distorted by the rotors and punctuated by the sounds of battle. A product of the Führer’s homeworld, it was a rousing piece of opera, one that spoke of goddesses riding out to collect the dead and dying warriors for an eternity of triumphs. He could see it now, in the flurries of pegasi and thestrals twisting around each other and spiralling by, shooting and stabbing, screaming and snarling. He barely had time to flinch as a Germanean and an Equestrian, locked in a manic death struggle hurtled through one side of the open troop compartment and out the other. Barely missing him, they twisted around each other wildly, trying to slip knives in.

They were bearing down on the main spire, hard and fast. The whole world seemed to fade away in light and noise as the rocket pods to either side of the choppers spat death into the face of the building, smashing vast, smoking holes into its edifice. Below, anti-aircraft batteries sprayed wildly into the air, tracking targets too numerous to coordinate around. Hundreds of planes roared overhead of the duelling pegasi. The teeth rattling roar of their engines set the background tone for the entire battle. A flight of them dove out from the vast, geometric patterns of formations overhead, rocket pods shrieking fury. They impacted just as the helicopters swug and, still moving forward came close enough for the infantry to dismount.

“Out! Out! Out!” Nachten roared, unclipping himself from the chopper and hitting the ground running.

He saw his squad hit the ground, scattered over a few meters as the helicopter rushed ahead, and banked upwards. The helicopter group roared upwards, split, banked around both sides of the tower and vanished from sight.

“Attack by section!” he heard his platoon leader shout over the comms.

“Section, section, section!”

His troops began to leapfrog forward towards the tower as machine guns began to spit withering tracer fire from the battered edifice. He pushed forward, in the trailing element of his line. Behind him, to the left, he sensed the covering fire his 2IC’s group was laying down across the face of the spire. Pushing the Equestrians’ heads down. A platoon of pegasi rushed over their heads, heading for the upper floors. They blew out windows with smgs, showering the rooms within with broken glass and spraying blood. They disappeared inside, to fight, downwards, room by room, to meet the infantry advancing upwards.

If they could manage to get inside.

They were close to the stairs now. Another squad of pegasi blazed past, hurling hoof grenades as they went. As soon as the grenades landed, they launched themselves upwards, firing into windows as they went. A burst of fire winged one of them. He spun away, screaming, end over end to a hard fall miles below. Blood trailed from his body in pseudo-artistic fashion. Another immediately jinked to the side, flipped upside down and rushed downwards past the window and lobbed a grenade through. The machinegun fell silent. So close now, so close. They simply had to shoot those two puffed up creatures in there and the war would be ove-

“ENOUGH!”

Nachten couldn’t see. He couldn’t see! He couldn’t see! He yelped in alarm, tripped and fell hard. Around him, he could hear his comrades do the same. Around him, blazing golden light reduced the world to dim nothingness. The voice was loud, it was deafening. All around him, the sound of battle faded away, first overwhelmed by the shout, then ending in fact. He knew, instinctively, that all eyes were fixed on the scene transpiring before him. His vision cleared just enough to see two figures emerging from the spire.

Celestia, Luna on her right, eyes blazing with light, horn gleaming. It was like staring into the sun. Nachten could feel his eyes turn dry before a power greater and more ancient than he could comprehend.He attempted to rise.

“CEASE!”

The echoing volume of the command made his ears ring. He nevertheless found his footing, and tried to bring his weapon to bear.

“KNEEL!”

Nachten fell to his knees, clenching his eyes shut against the terrible brightness. He felt wet blood dripping from his ears, sticky and hot. He was going to die. He knew it in his gut. This was where his life ended. He wasn’t afraid. He was simply numb.

The light intensified. A sharp snap of burning air drove Nachten flat once again. He was dead. He was dead. It was over. But the light was fading, the pattern of veins in his eyelids were no longer overwhelmed by the astral power they had been assaulted by. He opened his eyes. Two bipedal figures towered ahead of him, uniforms sharp, capes fluttering in a non-existant wind. They blazed with a light, that far from blinding, seemed to soothe his eyes and push back the force of the false sun. He caught a shock of golden hair beneath the storm cap of the one on the right.

The Führer!

But who was that on the left? It was not any of the field marshalls, he knew. This man was shorter, but held himself with an aristocratic dignity. Both figures turned, seemingly indifferent to the two princesses behind them. For the first time, Nachten saw the face of the man on the left. His uniform was simple, brown, and all the more powerful for its restraint. Black hair poked out under his cap, bearing an eagle and swastika. But what drew Nachten’s attention was the moustache. Small, distinct, disciplined, noble. This man was important.

“You have done well, soldiers,” Dieter Hienrich called, voice clear, “Now, you need only watch.”

“You are the heroes of the Reich,” the second figure commented, “True National Comrades.”

“YOU!” Luna roared from behind, “COME AND DIE, MONSTER!”

Dieter and the figure turned calmly.

“Your power cannot defy the will of the Volk,” Dieter intoned.

“Your power cannot change this world-cycle,” said the black haired man, “Alone.”

“I am Lightning.”

“And Sun.”

And the two became one.

Eyes blazing with white light, Dieter spoke again, voice echoing with power, “I am against Time.”

Nachten shot to his hooves, saluting wildly, “KALKI! Praise Kalki! The Avenger! Cleanser of the unclean!”

Around him, the platoon repeated the same chant.

“Kalki! Kalki! Kalki! KALKI! KALKI! KALKI!”

“Come and fight, false Kshatriya,” Dieter intoned solemnly, “Fight and relent.”

Luna roared forward, eyes blazing with lightning, a magically manifested sabre ready to rip the Avatar’s head from his shoulders. He raised his hand, casually, and caught a blade made of pure night between his fingers. In a twist quicker than mortal eyes could comprehend, he twisted the blade, shattering it. Luna howled from the magical discharge, and fell back. Celestia was immediately on her heels, roaring as she bathed the tall figure of the Führer in solar radiation. For a moment, the biped disappeared, and Nachten almost feared the worst. The light cleared, and the Führer wasn’t there anymore. There was merely blackened cobble.

Celestia smiled triumphantly. The smile cut short as a brightly glowing hand reached from behind her and grabbed her by the horn.

“I am the Sun,” Dieter reminded her, and wrenched her head back.

“I am the Lightning,” he wielded a burning sword, that dimmed the world around it and thrummed with incomprehensible might.

“Through the power of will and vril, I ascend,” He brought the sword to her horn.

“I bring truth,” Dieter continued as Celestia choked, and Luna rushed towards them, “And this is truth: The weak and servile may rule by deceit and false power-”

Luna lept towards him. Dieter, in one swift motion, turned, wrenching Celestia with him, and allowing Luna to overshoot him. She collapsed hard into the marble ground.

“-and I stand to face them. I bring might and light,” he continued, “your rebellion ends today, my steed.”

Celestia screamed in rage and pain as Luna was drawn into her.

“You split yourself in twain, but what has been done can be undone. You have the degenerate to trample, and I worlds to burn. Resist it no longer.”

Celestia and Luna fused together, their screams becoming fainter and fainter. Dieter hauled himself onto the back of a now larger and singular white Alicorn. She reared back, as he raised his sword triumphantly. He gestured with it across his equine soldiers lined up and watching him. They were changing too. White, blazing with power, tall and apollonian.

“You,” he said, “are worthy. You shall pull the chariots of light to end the Kali Yuga.”

“Kalki!” They roared, “Kalki! KALKI! KALKI!”

The field marshals stepped forward through the haze of light, radiant.

“We ride,” he announced, “To reclaim what was lost.”