The Life of Penumbra Heartbreak

by Unwhole Hole

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Other, King Sombra, Violence, Death
Length: 264156

The seven-month life of Penumbra Heartbreak, the alicorn daughter of the King Sombra

A story of the first seven months of the life of Penumbra Heartbreak, the alicorn daughter of King Sombra.

Published 2019-07-22 02:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-10-02 09:44:05 UTC

Chapter 2: Twin Gods

Slowly, Sombra approached the edge of his icy kingdom, to the border where his dome of magic met the Hyperborean tundra beyond. Though it was frigid and icy within the Empire, beyond was nothing but uninhabitable and unending storm. No mortal pony could survive there unless the stories of the Ancients were to be believed.

When he reached the shield, he stopped. There had been a time in his life where he could have gone farther. That time had passed nearly two hundred years before.

He did not need to. From above, two ponies descended from the endless storm- -if they could even be called ponies. They were tall, thin creatures. One of them was even more white than the freshly-fallen snow, her pastel-rainbow mane drifting behind her in a cloud of her own warmth. She was clad in gold. Beside her was her twin, a pony of equal height whose skin was the color of the darkest night. Her cold eyes were blue and like Sombra’s own, and she was clad in silver.

“Celestia. Nightmare Moon.”

“Sombra,” said Celestia.

“Must you frown, goddess? It’s so very unbecoming of you.”

“We could hardly be expected to greet thou with a smile.”

“Indeed,” added the far more beautiful of the two immortals. “Sombra? Willst thou not step out farther, to greet us more closely? Or are art thou frightened of the cold?”

“You mean would I step farther so that you could cut me down with your magic. As you did with Discord, and Tirac.”

“Or is it perhaps because thou cannot any longer?”

Sombra frowned. “Is there something you desire, Nightmare Moon? My kingdom is sovereign. You have no right to approach me.”

“We have not entered your Empire,” snapped Celestia. “We have not violated the treaties.”

“Although perhaps you have,” added Nightmare moon. “Do not think that we do not bear witness to the accursed armies that grow within thine borders.”

“The Crystal Empire is neutral territory. Where scientists and sorcerers are free to pursue the topics of their interest without your incessant censorship.”

“Thou meanest pursue topics of thine own interest,” growled Celestia. “Indeed, topics accursed and terrible, abominations that no pony ought to ever consider.”

“If you do not like it, leave. Unless you wish to provoke a war.” Sombra glared at Nightmare Moon, refusing to address the lesser twin directly. “And I do not appreciate having spies placed within my kingdom.”

“We have no need for such trivial things. We oversee all dreams in Equestria. Even thine shield of fear cannot stop the glow of our moon, or our stars.”

“Or our sun,” added Celestia.

“A threat, then. Depart! I have no need of you two imperialists, there are matters I need to attend to within my borders.”

A thin smile crossed Celestia’s face. “Oh yes, Sombra. We are aware of thine ‘problems’. That is why we have come.”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “Tread softly, Celestia. Or do you truly believe two goddesses can challenge an immortal and his generals?”

“We do not seek to challenge thou,” said Nightmare Moon.

“However, we are aware of the child,” continued Celestia.

“And?”

“And our request is simple. Bring her to us. Thou hath no need for her.”

“In fact, you are in danger,” added Nightmare Moon. “We have no access to thine dreams, as thou doth not sleep, but we know thine fear regardless. And it is well-founded. A child will in time usurp thou, or be used to. Thou hath sired a god, Sombra. When the time comes for her to challenges thou, thou will fall.”

“She is one of our kind. Her very existence is a miracle. She belongs with US.”

Sombra stared across the shield dome, and then slowly smiled. He even laughed. Celestia began to look nervous, but Nightmare Moon’s expression grew cold.

“The child? I created her, did I not? Do I not own her?”

“You fiend- -”

“Sister,” said Nightmare Moon, shaking her head. “Sombra. Do not be a fool.”

“Fool? It would be foolish to give YOU another goddess, to turn against her own father and my kingdom of peace and freedom. To give my own daughter, to be raised by my immortal enemies?” He bared his pointed teeth. “Do not insult me.”

“This is absurd! We only seek to give her the life she deserves- -”

“By turning her against her homeland. No. I refuse.”

“Fine,” said Nightmare Moon. She stepped closer to the shield until she was nearly touching it. “But heed my words, Sombra. That child spells doom for you, and will bring about an end to the abomination you have worked so hard to construct.”

Sombra smiled. “She does indeed spell doom. But not for ME.”

Chapter 3: Crystalling

Sombra sat atop his dark throne, staring out over his Empire, slowly clicking his armored hoof against the armrest of his chair. Before him, the room was empty save for sterile crystal and his impeccable steward.

“...and the report indicates that the N-series heavy weaponized golems have completed production. I have scheduled an inspection tomorrow at three. If you deem them suitable, I will have them added to the roster for the upcoming military parade. Additionally, production of thrall masks is up thirty percent, although armor is lagging with the current steel embargo.”

“It is of little relevance. Soldiers are expendable. Redirect our steel supplies into the next series of golems.”

“Of course, my liege, it will be done.”

“And the crystal mines?”

“The addition of new encouragement spells has increased productivity four percent. However, tunnel expansion is hindered by the archaeological expedition- -”

“The archaeological expansion is non-negotiable. Let him dig. With any luck, he shall find his own crystal vein.”

“I will inform the engineers. Additionally, with the capture and imprisonment of Edwin the Goat, the Dark Thirteen are currently short a member.”

Sombra sighed. “Then we can begin the recruitment trials. As soon as possible.”

“I have already identified several candidates. Necrophilo of Canterlot has suggested one of his own students as well.”

“She will be tested with the others. I cannot give preference. If she survives, perhaps.” Sombra shifted position and stood. “I have research of my own to attend to. I will be in the library. Unless you have anything further?”

The steward paused, and braced herself. “There is one more thing I would like to speak with you about, sire.”

“And it is?”

“Word of the birth of your daughter has been spreading through the Empire. The peasantry are whispering about a crystalling.”

Sombra paused. “A what?”

“Crystalling is an ancient Crystal Empire ritual that was practiced until you restricted access to the Heart of Darkness. It is a birth-celebration.”

“I have no need for such a thing. Neither does the alicorn.” Sombra began walking, but his steward caught up to him.

“Sire. The cystalling is a critical cultural ritual, especially for the daughter of a king. There have been rumblings. You know this. Despite our best efforts, ponies continue to challenge your legitimacy to the throne. You are not yourself a crystal pony.”

“I am aware of this. Are you implying I should acquiesce to dissenters?”

“I am implying that morale is dropping. The loyalty of the thralls is absolute, but we cannot support an army if the peasantry is not productive.”

“I am not one of them, steward. I do not intend to act like I am. I am many things, but I am not dishonest. Fear is enough to motivate them.”

“There is an additional potential benefit. Supposedly, the crystalling ceremony increases the output of the Heart of Darkness.”

Sombra stopped walking. “And is this more than a simpleminded folk tradition?”

“I cannot ascertain that. I myself am not a crystal pony. However, despite our best efforts, the power output has been dropping for the last several decades.”

Sombra was silent for a time. “Prepare a detailed description of the ceremony, and cross-reference it with our library. Determine if Twilight Luciferian or Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz have any additional notes in their personal libraries. Have it delivered to my study by sunset.”

“It will be done, my king.” The steward bowed deeply. “Although if I may, the crystalling ceremony requires the participation of a crystaller. I would suppose you would want to give the honor to Twilight Luciferian. Should I also confer about his upcoming schedule?”

“No.” Sombra continued walking. “It was Crozea who dared to plead for the girl’s life. If I decide the pointless ritual is worthwhile, have her do it.”

The steward bowed again. “Yes, my liege.”

The notes were compiled, collated, and assembled with all the skill and organization that could be expected from a former master sorceress. Sombra took them into consideration and made his decision.

Preparations were made. The event was intended to be simple; far less effort was put into it than the far more important military parade or the next upcoming conscription event. Despite this, the crowds that gathered on that day were more immense than anypony had ever imagined. The crystal ponies present were dull and gray, barely able to stand, let alone cheer, but they still came for their allotted half-hour away from work to witness the event. For the first time in centuries, a spark of excitement ran through the crowd of slaves.

They were held back from the citadel by an army of thralls and F-type golems, on pain of a thorough poking with a crystal spear. Only a select few were allowed to assemble in the square beneath the Citadel. Not that normal ponies could have approached anyway. Few could withstand the waves of pure fear emanating from the Heart of Darkness.

A few of the Dark Thirteen had gathered. The group consisted of those who had been in the kingdom and had bothered to attend. Twilight Luciferian, ever curious, had come, as had Crozea, if only by order. Luciferian had dressed in his formal officer coat for the occasion, while Crozea had donned special robes and decorative golden armor for the event- -as well as a new kind of mask.

There were others. Standing disturbingly still and apart from the others was a unicorn mare clad in several layers of red, all held together with numerous clasps and buckles. Her face was covered by a disturbing mask not too unlike those that the thralls wore. Across the way stood Necrophilo of Canterlot, an immensely tall and withered unicorn with empty, yellowed eyes and a long beard. As always, his ridiculously long legs were obscured with robes. Near him, hiding in the darkest corner of one of the Citadel’s support struts, the air was filled with a clock-like ticking and the sound of raven’s wings fluttering.

Then Sombra approached. Beside him, a crystal mare pushed held the unnamed newborn; she had to grit her teeth against the waves of energy coming from the cursed Heart. Sombra did not notice; at no point did he ever escape the energy that gave him his immortality.

A gray earth-stallion approached him from his left. His clothes were shabby, save for a scabbard he wore on his back which was immaculately clean. “M- -Mr. king? I did what you said. I found the most pure crystal available. He’s very happy to be part of the crystalline, too.”

The stallion held up a pure white crystal. Sombra took one look at it before anyone could even move had struck the gray stallion so hard across the jaw that he went sprawling. The crystal fell, but was caught by a puff of red magic.

“Idiot,” snapped Sombra. “This crystal could power a collision cannon capable of obliterating an entire division of enemy soldiers. I will NOT waste it on something this pointless.”

Twilight Luciferian approached. “I thought something like this might happen,” he said. He produced a crystal from his uniform pocket. “So I produced this.” He held up his own crystal in his violet magic. It was pure black.

“It’s carbanado,” he said. “Black diamond. Pure carbon. You’ll never guess where I got that carbon form. Or how much screaming was involved.”

“It will be adequate.” Sombra took the crystal and gave the other to Luciferian. “Take this one. Do not let the earth-pony have it. No matter how much he begs.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Sombra nodded and continued to the center of the ceremony, the lower aspect of the Citadel where his Heart of Darkness was located. It was where the machines converged: the tubes, pipes and conduits of the Citadel, overgrown with red crystal, reaching down from every direction in a mass of dark metal and wire that formed the clasp in which the Heart was held stationary. The Heart itself was a sight to behold: a heart-shaped piece of black crystal, glowing deep within its facets with a sinister red glow as energy was pumped into it by the Citadel transceiver.

The child was directed toward Crozea, while Sombra stopped to admire the machine that ensured both his rule and his immortality. As he watched it, he heard a familiar infernal ticking. Something scuttled toward him in the shadows, although it would not leave them, afraid even of the dim Crystal Empire sunlight. Afraid to stand in Celestia’s sun.

“Al’Hrabnaz,” said Sombra, looking down at the thing that was almost a pony. Whatever it was, it disgusted even him, although he understood its immense value. While it had four legs, it was flattened, like an insect, and perpetually dressed in a combination of heavy pressurized armor and black robes trimmed with feathers. As almost always, several ravens perched on his shoulders. A strange circle of unidentifiable metal ticked away perpetually on the stallion’s chest. “Have the systems been prepared?”

The creature’s mask hissed, and his rasping, heavily-accented voice came through. “They have,” he wheezed. “All of the machinery is in order and set to accept divergent parameters from the Core. Buffers and bypass valves have also been prepared.”

“And how do you feel about this? You understand my machines perhaps even better than I do.”

“Your decision is law, my lord. I trust you absolutely.”

Sombra smiled. “If this goes well, I will double your monthly allotment of test subjects.”

“My lord. You are too generous, but I thank you.” The creature bowed, but still did not depart the shadows. His ravens stared dubiously at Sombra, watching.

Across the way, the child was brought to Crozea. Crozea, though she had defended the child, was still apprehensive about this process. Unlike the others, she understood the value of rituals like this, and knew that a ritual such as this was far from her specialty- -and as important as it was dangerous if it went awry.

Yet it had been her orders. She looked over her shoulder at Sombra, now a father, a perfect stallion with a thick raven-black mane clad in red and iron. Something felt warm within her, even against the alien cold of the North. Her resolved was strengthened.

The nurse gave her the child. She felt oddly light. Crozea held her, and was reminded of several horrible memories. Of zebra children who by her work had never had this chance. Whose sacrifice she told herself had been necessary.

She held the child above her head. The crowd cheered in joy- -until the blanket fell away and the girl’s wings spread. Then the crowd’s eyes widened, and they gasped, recoiling from the sight of an abomination. Behind her, Crozea could feel the Heart of Darkness beating faster, absorbing their fear and amplifying it a thousandfold. In that moment, she understood what Sombra had intended, and what this child meant to him.

“Citizens of the Empire, who have gathered below the Crystal Spire!” she shouted. “I bring you this child, born of horn and wing, sired by our eternal king! A child born for conquest and to destroy, and in both to bring our kingdom righteous joy! Remember her, beneath this tower, and beware to never forget the Witchking’s POWER!”

Sombra approached her from behind and levitated a black crystal. Crozea did not even need to look at it to sense its origin, and the price that Twilight Luciferian’s own daughter had paid.

The child smiled, and she felt warm in Crozea’s hooves. Energy began to emanate from her, moving into the black crystal. The ritual had commenced, and in that moment Corzea knew that something had already gone horribly wrong.

The crystal began to grow. Not red or black, but with blinding white energy. The darkness within it cleared and it changed form, assuming a perfect structure with absolute clarity. Sombra stepped back, his pupils narrowing with concern.

Then in an instant it shot backward toward the Heart, merging with it an in instant.

“Something’s wrong!” screamed a voice in all of their heads. “SOMETHING’S WRONG!”

The blackness of the Heart began to fade and wither. It started to move, attempting to tear itself free of its support clasp as white energy began to pour from it.

Sombra looked on in horror. “Al’Hrabnaz!”

The black pony began to wildly twist the gears of the device in his chest. “Power output is increasing by an order of magnitude- -three orders of magnitude- -ten!”

“COMPENSATE!”

“I can’t! The support infrastructure is overloading!”

The Heart of Darkness suddenly erupted in a plume of blinding white energy, vaporizing the machinery that was supposed to be required for it to operate. Al’Hrabnaz leapt form his shadow and onto Sombra, pressing the dial in his chest as he did. The gears within it engaged and a yellow shield bubble erupted around them both. Despite the protection, as soon as the white light passed them Sombra lapsed into unconsciousness.

The bubble expanded outward exponentially, forcing the members of the Dark Thirteen it touched back. When it reached the edge of the crowd, the ponies it touched change. The masks fell from the thralls, and the crystal ponies ignited with light, their bodies becoming translucent. For the first time in anypony’s memory, they smiled, their energy and happiness suddenly restored. They began to cheer.

Twilight Luciferian had been knocked back by the expanding sphere, but he had not been dazed enough to not see the catastrophe that was on the verge of occurring. He planted his hooves and summoned fifty four simultaneous interlocked spells, directing all of his energy into stopping the expansion of the light-bubble.

“NECROPHILO! SCARLET! We have to stop it!”

The other two mages nodded and planted their feet. Necrophilo’s horn glowed with a putrid green light and Scarlet Mist’s with crimson energy. The three of them braced themselves against the sphere, forcing their combined magical strength into it.

The expansion slowed, and finally stopped, although the force required to do so was immense. Necrophilo was straining and sweating, and Twilight Luciferian could not believe that he had encountered a magical force so overwhelmingly powerful. He suddenly understood Sombra significantly better, and a smile began to cross his face.

Scarlet Mist’s magic expanded, expanding into a great claw of red light. She took a step forward, and the bubble contracted.

“Scarlet! What are you doing?!”

“We cannot hold it forever. I’m using too much power. We have to hurry!”

She summoned even more energy and took another step forward. This one was stronger, and the bubble was pushed back even farther. Twilight Luciferian altered the parameters of his spell, assisting as best as he could. After several hundred calculations in a matter of seconds, he found a combination that seemed to be effective. As he did, he saw a gray earth-pony with a scabbard trying to sneak away.

“HOLDER!” he screamed. “DO SOMETHING!”

The earth-pony looked at him in shock. “This isn’t exactly...um...my area of expertise.”

“He doesn’t mean YOU, you idiot,” snapped Scarlet Mist. “He means the other one!”

Scarlet Mist suddenly took a step back. As she did, one of her rear legs turned to dust. She fell, still managing to hold the bubble, although it grew by several feet.

“Scarlet!”

“My body! I can’t hold it!”

Inside the bubble, Crozea looked out, still holding the alicorn child. The child looked out at the happy ponies around her, and smiled.

The bubble suddenly increased in power. Scarlet Mist roared, trying to keep it back, but her body was already starting to collapse. Her ribs were exposed, and the rest of her was quickly becoming dust. Then, in an instant, her body decayed into a pile of ash and bone. Her red mask fell to the ground.

The bubble expanded. Necrophilo and Twilight could not hold it and were overwhelmed.

For a moment, time seemed to slow. Twilight tried to adjust his spells, but nothing was proving effective. As he desperately tried to compensate, he felt a soft hoof on his shoulder. He involuntarily turned, and found himself staring into the pupilless red eyes of a yellow pony.

“Is it finally time?” she asked. She tapped the long boot he wore. “It wouldn’t even be hard. Come on. Don’t you want to be a hero?”

Twilight smiled. “No.”

He dropped his spells and was thrown back. Necrophilo was completely overwhelmed and his spells broken.

The bubble began to expand. As it did, matter condensed beside it. A body formed from the void, and a pony clad in white appeared. Without a word, he slammed himself against the bubble, and with his single blow it collapsed and vanished. The Heart of Darkness stopped revolving and fell to the floor. The pony in white saw this, and without a word faded back to where he had come from.

Chapter 4: The Weapon

It had been many centuries since Sombra had felt pain. It had become an abstraction, a distant thing of little relevance to his immortal self. Even merging his own magic to the power of the Heart of Darkness had felt more strange and disturbing than anything else.

Now, though, he remembered what it felt like. Every muscle in his body ached, and his head throbbed just beneath his horn. Though it was minor, it bothered him, and his mood reflected his annoyance.

As he sat atop his throne, the others stood in silence. All of them who had come back, anyway. To Sombra’s left sat a large silver dish. It contained a particular artifact called the Mask of Red Death, the one and only true possession of the mage known as Scarlet Mist. It now sat inert and unused, although Sombra was in no hurry to actually touch it. He understood the consequences all too well.

“Are none of you willing to speak?” he said, turning to the still-living members of his elite corps of generals. “Report!”

Of all of them, the steward was the first to step forward. “Cleanup has commenced ahead of schedule,” she declared. “All afflicted peasants have reverted to their normal states and resumed their occupations. Over the past several days we have commenced with a standard propaganda retcon, with moderate success.” She paused. “Though some still whisper. A dangerous sentiment moves through the city.”

“We will dispose of dissenters, as always. Let us hope that doing so is enough.” Sombra turned his gaze to the others. “Al’Hrabnaz?”

“Yes, master?” The stallion moved forward, careful to keep out of kicking range of the others. The shadows indoors were deeper, so his motions were more bold. Even then, this was the most that many save for Sombra had seen of him in some time.

“The repairs?”

“Are complete. All operations have resumed as normal. Shield integrity is within normal parameters, and both fear acquisition and transmission is continuing.” He paused. “But you already know this, my king, don’t you?”

“I do. But I would prefer for you to explain to me. For your own sake. What is the condition of the Heart?”

“The crystalline structure has been altered. The facets have changed, although I have recalculated the interface matrix and made the appropriate adjustments. Most interesting, though, is that the power output has changed.”

Sombra’s expression darkened. “Changed?”

“Transmission intensity has increased by nineteen percent, and inversion loss is down by four points.”

“Then the event can hardly be called a failure.” Necrophilo slid forward. He moved as though he were almost hovering.

“Our fourth member manifested,” snapped Twilight Luciferian. “Do NOT underestimate how serious this was, or how close we came to disaster.”

“We have gone many a rising of the sun without having witnessed the rise of the Nameless One.”

“And where were you when it happened?” asked Twilight, slowly circling Crozea. “If I recall, you were holding the source of our problem for the duration.”

“Before you try to tan my zebra hide, know, Twilight, that I was trapped on the incorrect side.”

“As was I,” said Sombra.

“With your help, we surely would have stopped it together.” Necrophilo’s empty eyes narrowed at Twilight Luciferian. “Your spell would not destabilized when we needed it most.”

Twilight Luciferian glared back at the taller unicorn. “Perhaps if that filthy rock-pony had drawn his blade.”

“...and plunged it square in your back while you were distracted, mayhaps?”

The entire room looked upward to Sombra’s side. A small red filly with ridiculously long and curly sky-blue hair appeared from the shadows. Sombra did not even look up.

“Infiltrator,” he said. “You have returned from your sojourn.”

“I have,” said the filly. “And just in time to a rather shameful sight.”

“If you were there, you ought to have helped!” cried Necrophilo.

“By doing what?” She gestured to her empty forehead. “Do I look like a master mage to you?”

“Perhaps you found something that will improve my mood.” Sombra’s red eyes turned slowly toward the red filly. “Because if you have not, your interruption is most unwelcome. And most unwise.”

“I would not have bothered to come if I had nothing useful.” She stepped forward, her immensely long mane and tail trailing on the stairs behind her. “My journey was not easy. The Solar-Lunar kingdom has grown increasingly more difficult to navigate. Nightmare Moon’s legions grow by the day.”

“Which is to be expected,” said Luciferian. “They have already conquered Canterlot, and they have their eyes on the Crystal Empire as well. The twin goddesses will not stop until they have dominated the world.” A smile crossed his face. “Of course, if that makes your job harder, perhaps you would be willing to retire?”

“Harder. Not impossible.” Infiltrator produced a crystal. It levitated before her, suspended in a field of green magic. It vibrated, and then projected several dark red lines that traced through the air, forming a text composition. “I was able to infiltrate the Royal Library. I am well-versed on the current affairs of the Empire. It appears that our king has succeeded where even Starswirl himself had failed.”

Twilight Luciferian approached the projection. As he did, he grimaced; he had walked through Infiltrator’s mane. “Could you do something about this?” he asked. “You’re being excessive.”

Infiltrator glared at him. In a flash of green, her mane shortened instantly to a blue pixie-cut. “How about now?”

“Better, but only marginally. You reek.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that. Learn to live with it, or leave.”

Luciferian ignored her. He instead directed his attention at the transcripts the girl had stolen.

“It is certainly the fool’s writing,” said Necrophilo. “Illegible as always.”

“The provenience hardly matters,” muttered Luciferian. “Only the theory.” He read through it in an instant, his mind immediately processing and compiling the spells. In an instant he understood, and his eyes widened.

“This is absurd,” he said. “My lord- -”

“I can read as well, Luciferian. Infiltrator, can you guarantee that this is indeed active research?”

“Not anymore. It was the last spell he created before his disappearance. That I assure you.”

“This is a spell to create an alicorn.” Luciferian looked up at in awe- -and in well-disguised excitement. “The fool...he was trying to become a god.”

“He clearly failed,” said Infiltrator. “The spell is incomplete.”

“Can it be applied?” asked Sombra.

Twilight Luciferian looked back through, quickly scanning the key parts. “No,” he said. “Look here. The spell is powered by the Elements of Harmony. Only the twin goddesses possess them.”

“We could steal them,” said Infiltrator. “It would not be hard. I once stole Celestia’s hairbrush.”

“Lies. She has plasmatic hair- -that’s not the point. I have studied what remains of Dee’s original work on the subject. They are too unstable. Even under my orchestration, this spell would not be practical. Even Starswirl failed.” Twilight sighed. “However...”

“However what?”

“Celestia was Starswirl’s greatest protege, and is a powerful sorceress. It is only a matter of time before she determines how to complete the spell.”

“She is already an alicorn,” protested Infiltrator.

“Then she will use a sacrifice. My point still stands.” Twilight addressed Sombra directly. “With this spell, Celestia will, in time, create an alicorn of her own. Perhaps many. Of this, I promise you.”

“This makes sense...yes...”

Several individuals jumped; they had not realized that Al’Hrabnaz had moved in front of the projection, or that he was reading it.

“What?” demanded Sombra.

The black-draped stallion turned to address his king. “This spell. It can be extrapolated. If the Heart of Darkness is substituted for the Elements of Harmony- -”

“Ridiculous,” spat Twilight. “That would be impossible.”

Al’Hrabnaz glared at the unicorn through his opaque mask. “No, no, it is reasonable!” He turned back to Sombra. “The Citadel itself is a transceiver designed to harness the power of the Heart. According to my archaeological research- -”

“Of course! The archaeology AGAIN!”

“Let him speak, Twilight. Right now, he is the only one offering me an explanation as to why my daughter was born a monstrosity.”

“The Citadel and the Heart receive and disperse power,” continued Al’Hrabnaz. “That power has a direct impact on living things. I have evidence that the crystal ponies are not the original inhabitants of the Empire; rather, the Ancients who built the Citadel and harnessed the Heart brought them here, as a kind of cattle or slave-race. Exposure to the radiation from the Citadel caused their current mutations, over time.”

“While greater knowledge is always a plus, what impact does this tripe have on US?”

“If this spell is to be believed, then the energy produced by the Heart could theoretically be harnessed to produce an alicorn. Sire, since you are directly linked to the Heart, it may have manifested through you. A second mutation event.”

“Which would explain her connection to the Heart...” Luciferian paused for a moment, considering. “If this is true, she is incredibly dangerous. Her presence could produce catastrophic interference with the Heart.” He looked up at his king. “Sire, she is a danger to us all.”

“But her link to the Heart has already been shown to increase its power!” Al’Hrabnaz stepped forward. “If we could harness it, in a controlled fashion- -”

Sombra raised a hoof. Al’Hrabnaz recoiled in fear.

“Sire?” asked the steward.

“I have come to a decision.” Sombra stood and slowly walked down the stairs to his throne. When he reached the floor, he addressed his disciples on equal ground. “Luciferian. Are you capable of performing an age spell?”

“Of course I am. It’s hardly even difficult.” Twilight’s frowned. “You mean on her, though. On your daughter.”

“As you said yourself. It is only a matter of time before Celestia creates an alicorn of her own. How long, do you think? A month? A year? Three? We no longer have time to wait on this project.”

“Sire.” Crozea stepped forward. “I do not mean to offend, but what is it that you intend?”

“To protect my kingdom. By creating a weapon that can engage our enemies on equal terms.”

Crozea stiffened, and was silent for a moment. Then she spoke. “Were it any pony but you, I would doubt that what you speak is even true.”

“I assure you, Crozea, this is what must occur. She is unstable, and a danger to my work so long as she remains untrained. The crystalling ceremony was evidence of that. But the project must be accelerated. I have no use for an infant. I need an adult to serve my purposes.”

Twilight continued to frown. “I understand. And yes. I could use an age spell to accelerate her growth. But even with what the Infiltrator has brought back on them, we know precious little about alicorn biology. Even if she were a unicorn, there would be severe physiological and psychological consequences.”

“I never took you for one with empathy, Luciferian.”

“I would never waste our time on it. I only want you to be sure in your decision. Doubtless she would survive, but what is left over may not be usable.”

“I am willing to take the risk.”

“Wait, I must object!” cried Crozea. “My king, forgive me if I interject.”

Sombra slowly turned to her. “I am listening, Crozea, if only for the risk you have taken by interrupting me.”

“By herbs and grass and the seeds I sow, I can brew a tonic that shall make her grow! The change will be slower, but still quite brisk; most importantly, there is far less risk. While in both cases she will surely survive, with my method she is likely to even thrive.”

“A potion. I am not familiar with it.”

“I need only grasses, and the bark of a tree, but of its success you have my guarantee.”

“I do not trust her method,” interjected Twilight Luciferian. “Zebra alchemy is imprecise and impossible to quantify. But if what she says is true, it may be the better option.”

“While I think the same, it sounds to me you wish to avoid the blame.”

“You wound me, filthy zebra.” Twilight smiled. “I simply have our dear princess’s best interest at heart.”

“I am sure you do,” said Sombra. “Crozea. Attempt your herbs and spells. I put my faith in you. But do not fail. If you do, we will use Twilight’s spell instead, and you force me to eliminate a valuable asset. Violently.”

“As the Sun and Moon are halves of one, what I have promised you shall be done.” Crozea bowed, and Sombra nodded. Yet, even though she knew she may have saved the girl’s life, Corzea felt dirty and foul inside. She had sealed her fate, and condemned the princess to a life of torment. Crozea only hoped that whatever spirits still watched her could forgive the choice she was forced to make.

Chapter 5: Unknown Rivals

Sombra stood at the edge of his great throne room, waiting and contemplating. As a pony who did not think, he had a great deal of time to do so- -even if time was a luxury he would never again know in his immortal existence.

The room around him was vast and dark. The only light came from crystals that generated a sickly, unnatural light. Dark tapestries of unspeakable events hung on the wall, their edges in tatters and their age unfathomable. They were the last remnants of the race from which Sombra was derived, apart from himself. While they decayed, the crystal below remained strong and unchanged.

He could sense them before they arrived. Their heartbeats, the warmth of their bodies- -but most importantly, their fear. Of all the creatures in the world that could be defined as living ponies, there was only one able to escape Sombra’s detection, and Twilight Luciferian had already departed back to whatever foul tower he chose to repose in.

They entered from the far side of the room. A pair were thralls, dressed in their characteristic masks and rusted armor. Between them stood two ponies: one, a Pegasus with limp, crippled wings; the other an astoundingly beautiful unicorn mare, nearly nude save for her extensive jewelry and a scarf of the finest silk.

Sombra moved silently through the shadows, appearing before them in an instant and without a sound greater than the gasps from each of them. Even in their surprise and fear, both bowed deeply.

“Freeflight,” said Sombra. “I see Crozea’s work is impeccable as always. The weather today is excellent, is it not?” He smiled. “A beautiful day indeed for flying.”

Freeflight forced a smile and held back the tears. “Yes, my lord, thanks entirely to your grace and expertise in the weather preparation.”

“The weather, like all things, is merely a manifestation of my will. Its creation is trivial and largely pointless.”

“Of course, sire.”

Sombra turned his attention toward the mare. She smiled, demonstrating a practiced ability to create a perfect and sincere smile on command. She bowed a second time. “My lord,” she said. “I am- -”

“Topaz Clarity.”

The mare blinked, and blushed beneath her makeup. “You remember me, sire! I am truly honored!”

“I remember the names of all my stablemares.”

“Well.” She curtsied. “I am also honored that you chose me for today. The other girls were very jealous. You come to visit us so seldom!”

“I do run this kingdom, Ms. Clarity. Or do you have a better recommendation as to how your king spends his time?”

Her eyes widened, her composure shattered- -but only for a moment. She bowed. “Forgive me, my lord. I spoke out of turn.”

“Such a thing is not of concern.” Sombra turned away and walked toward his throne.

“My lord?”

“Tell me, Clarity. You were Hope’s closest friend.”

Even without looking, he saw the girl’s expression fall, and the sadness in her eyes. “Yes, my lord. We were purchased at nearly the same time. The breaking process was...hard for me. And the others were cruel. Only Hope stood by me. Helped me. I would not be what I am today without her.” She lowered her gaze. “What happened to her is horrible. She was special. And...for what little I can do for her...it may be out of turn, my lord, but she loved you. She truly did.”

“Even after all I did to her?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sombra smiled. He looked over his shoulder, and his red eyes met Topaz’s blue. “Love does not exist. You are aware of that. She hated me as much as the rest of you.”

“My lord, no! That isn’t true!”

“It is,” said Sombra, calmly circling the others. “But it is to be expected. It is the purpose you serve. I do not seek companionship. Not with your kind. I stocked my stables because I enjoy watching you and your sisters suffer. To see your pain, to watch you break. To insult what few fathers you have left, for they stood against me as dissidents.”

Topaz smiled. It was as sincere as the first one she had given Sombra. “As is your prerogative, my king.”

Sombra stopped. “But thank you for telling me. If she truly did love me, then she is better off in her current situation. YOUR situation, however? That is a bit more precarious.”

“My lord?”

“You knew that she was pregnant. And you conspired to hide it from me.”

Topaz’s eyes widened, and this time she did not gain composure. She turned sharply to the Pegasus beside her, who could neither meet her eyes nor hide his tears any longer. “Freeflight! I trusted you!”

“I’m sorry, Topaz,” he whimpered. “But my- -my loyalty to my king must come first!”

“The king who took your stallionhood, and your wings? Now you let him take your honor too?!”

“Please, Topaz. Please...I did what I had to.”

“His course of action is correct,” added Sombra. He turned sharply, facing Topaz from across the room, near his throne. “You knew she was pregnant. She confided in you. Yet you lacked loyalty. You betrayed your king.”

“My lord! I did no such thing! This child was meant to be a joy, to be Hope’s greatest gift to you! How many times she talked about raising it, to watch her grow into a mare as kind and beautiful as her, with you at her side!”

“So it was meant to be a surprise? Or did you fear that I would intervene?”

Topaz froze, and could not at first meet Sombra’s gaze. Then she looked up, and did. “I did what is right. Hope loved you. She didn’t understand. But I know what you are.”

“A monster? That’s common knowledge.”

Sombra’s horn flashed red. Topaz and Freeflight both recoiled, but no blow came. Instead, an object was lifted from a silver dish beside Sombra’s throne.

At first, the pair stood, confused, not knowing what the object was. As Sombra slowly walked closer, though, both of them understood. Freeflight’s knees buckled, and Topaz screamed.

“Hold her,” ordered Sombra.

The thralls grasped her in an instant, even as she cried out in terror and struggled at the approach of the Mask.

“No! NO! My lord, please, PLEASE! Let go! LET GO!”

“I will not tolerate betrayal, Ms. Clarity. So much pain could have been avoided if you had been honest and loyal. You disgust me. I cannot bear to look upon your face any longer.”

Topaz resumed her struggle, screaming and desperately trying to break free- -but the thralls were stronger. Behind their masks, they watched, fully aware of what they were doing but powerless to stop. They held her firm.

She turned her head. “Freeflight! Please! Help me!” Tears were running down her face, smudging her makeup. “I don’t- -not like this- -”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” wailed Freeflight, covering his ears and closing his eyes.

Sombra stopped walking. He lowered the Mask of Red Death, and one of the thralls held Topaz Clarity’s head. Her eyes were wide and terrified when the Mask was placed over her face. Sombra could not help but smile.

As soon as the mask touched her face, her screams of fear rose to an impossible pitch, forced from her by pure agony. Her body bucked, and one of the thralls was thrown free. Freeflight was weeping, and covered his head with his forelegs against the unnatural sound of a pony experiencing a pain that so many had known all-too-well.

Topaz Clarity stood, and in a flash of magic the other thrall was blasted across the room. It was green, her natural color, but already infected with scarlet.

She arched her back and raised her head. The screams of agony became more terrible, transforming into a bellow of rage. Magic cloaked her, changing and hardening, synthesizing a costume of many layers of red leather fastened by numerous straps. It draped over her, reconnecting and applying itself as the molten remnants of her jewelry dropped free. In a matter of seconds, Scarlet Mist stood before her king.

“Sombra. What happened? How long have I been without a host?”

“A matter of days. Long enough to clean up your mess.”

“My mess? How is this possibly my fault?! YOU were the one who insisted on a crystalling!”

“An admitted mistake. But your last body was a trained mage, a young mare with a natural aptitude for magic. She lasted three weeks. The bodies you use are expensive. Must you be so wasteful?”

“My body...” Scarlet Mist froze, and looked down. “What the...what did you put me in this time?” She looked up at him. “What is THIS?”

“She was one of my most beautiful consorts.”

“You put me in the body of a SLAVE?! A host this inferior- -how do you expect me to accomplish anything like this?!”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “Be glad, Scarlet Mist, that I did not affix you to an earth-mare. Or perhaps to Freeflight.”

Scarlet Mist grumbled to herself in her native language. “Yes,” she said at last. “I am grateful you bothered, to the extent I can be. But surely you were not hoping to get any more use out of this body.”

Sombra sighed. “I could not bear the embrace of a mare who has betrayed me so horribly. I have given you this body freely, and with no expectations of its use apart from that you do not waste it.”

“There is not much to waste. One strong spell- -”

“You will not be using such spells for a time. I have a task for you.”

“To increase production, no doubt.”

“Your mask production is already outpacing the rate at which we can breed conscripts. No. It extends beyond that.”

“Then what?”

Sombra did not hesitate to give his order. “You will train my daughter in the use of magic.”

“Me?!” Scarlet Mist leaned forward and gestured to herself. “Do I LOOK like a teacher to you?!”

“You are half of one of the most powerful purebloods ever to exist.”

“Which does not mean I have time to waste foalsitting an infant!”

“Crozea has been placed in charge of accelerating her development. I need her prepared for battle, post-haste.”

“Then have Necrophilo do it. He has plenty of students.”

“Students who hardly need to be taught the basics of magic. Besides, Necrophilo of Canterlot is strictly skilled in necromancy. While a valuable skill, it is largely impracticable on the battlefield.”

“Then Twilight Luciferian, your favorite. He spends most of his time in that infernal tower, let him do some real work.”

“Luciferian is required for other tasks.”

Scarlet Mist paused. “You don’t trust him.”

“I trust none of you. But not every heir is born. Some might also be made.”

“Fair enough. For what it's worth, I will aid you in his elimination, should you desire it.”

“Meaning you desire his body.”

“I would even take a male if I could have power like that.”

“Even me?”

Scarlet Mist laughed. It was a terrible and unnatural sound. “Yours is hardly worth my time. Being trapped in this city does not further my goals in the slightest.” She paused. “Why do you not teach the girl, then? Or are you too busy?”

“I am her father. It is not my duty to raise her.”

Scarlet Mist paused, and then laughed again, this time more softly. “Or you do not want her to know you. Speaking hypothetically, Sombra: you could easily rectify her role as a potential usurper if she happened to become a subservient, submissive queen.”

“I have considered it. But it will prove far more useful if she meets a glorious, heroic end in mortal battle against Celestia. I will even commission a tapestry to commemorate it.”

Scarlet Mist chuckled. “I do not regret taking this position. I do hope you one day rule this world. Perhaps once I have my body, you could even consider me for the position of queen.”

“Perhaps. Only if you prove yourself worthy.”

“I suppose I will do my best.” Scarlet Mist turned toward to where Freeflight was now cowering in a pool of fluid. “Now. Let me see just how well this body works...”

A red mist escaped her form, and drifted down. Freeflight gasped and tried to hold his breath, but it was too late. His eyes widened and he choked as the visions filled him, and Sombra’s throne room was once again filled with unearthly screams.

Far below, in a distant, isolated part of the Crystal Citadel, a white unicorn moved in silence. The spells that perpetually coated him muffled his sound and obscured his location and vitals, a process that would normally take several powerful mages in a state of absolute concentration. For him, though, it was a trivial expenditure of energy but a trick of significant value. It meant that Sombra could not trace him- -at least not directly.

Twilight Luciferian came to a long-forgotten door and moved it aside, disassembling the spells that kept it sealed and invisible. The room behind it was dark, save for a horrid sickly glow cast from its center. The air was filled with the dull and quiet noise of machines and fluid pumping through narrow tubes, and the smell was as strong as ever- -a scent of chemicals and metal.

Apart from the sound of machinery, the only sound audible was of distant humming.

“Eternity?” asked Twilight.

He heard a gasp cutting into his mind. If he had not been using shielding spells, his mind might very well have been sliced in half. “TWILIGHT! You came to visit! I NEVER get visitors!” This was followed by a girlish squeal, then silence. “I hate visitors. Go away. Do you know what I can see right now?”

“No, Eternity. I do not.”

“Two ponies, Golden Clasp, age twenty two, height eight hands, color off-teal, and Facet, age eighteen, seven point two hands tall, color sort of a pinkish red.”

“Do you occupy time staring at lovers?”

“Lovers? Didn’t you just hear? The king just said that love isn’t even real. Also, Scarlet Mist is back.”

“She never left.”

“And the two of them, they are plotting a beautiful meeting.”

Luciferian raised his eyebrows. “The king and the parasite?”

“No, you idiot. The crystal ponies. They have a plan to poison the king’s wine!”

“I already tried that. He is...durable.”

Eternity Gaze laughed, both in Twilight’s head and from her real mouth, the latter sound being nearly inaudible. “I’m going to direct some soldiers to them. Gxurab will be so happy! His new anatomy text is almost finished, have you seen the pictures? They’re so pretty!”

“He comes to visit you?”

“No. I don’t like him. I don’t like his books either. I don’t like you. But I can see him. For the sake of the Occulus, I CAN’T STOP SEEING.” She giggled. “Did you know that Celestia lost her hair brush? Not now, but a month ago. I’m just getting it now. Also other things I don’t understand. Today is a good day. Does the name Harvestor mean anything to you?”

“Eternity, calm down.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re yelling. And it might literally render me a vegetable.”

“Corn is a vegetable. I can count the exact number of kernels in the kingdom right now. Do you want me to?”

“No. That isn’t why I came.”

“No.” Eternity paused. “You came because you WANT something.”

“You perceived that with your powers?”

“No. I perceived it because I am not an idiot. No one comes to me if they do not want something. Specifically, something they will not get. Go away. Also, shake your tail on the way out. Your rump is so...rumpish.”

“How flattering,” muttered Luciferian. He took several steps forward, approaching the ghastly remnants of what had once been a pony. Perhaps even a beautiful one, although none alive could recollect what Eternity Gaze had once looked like. At this point, not even herself.

Luciferian smiled and began to circle her. “Eternity. Did you know that I am over two hundred and fifty years old?”

“Not unreasonable for a wizard. Which reminds me, you should wear a wizard hat.”

“It’s actually quite young, especially compared to Sombra. But in that time I have already mastered virtually every discipline of magic, even if only in theory. Telekinesis, dueling, pyrogenesis, biomancy, necromancy, cromniomancy- -I’ve even studied the fine details of chronoplexy, even if its horrible impracticability makes it impossible for even me to use.”

“Exactly. A wizard hat. To cover your big head. And that massive, long horn. Ooh! Look! She’s checking under the bed! You’re not going to find it there, Celestia!”

“But even in all my studies, I never managed to even comprehend your gift. The magic that you wield. Because no theory exists for it. None of you even exist any longer. You are the last seer.”

“And for good reason. If I knew then what I knew now. But to do that, I’d have to be a seer. Oh wait. I am. Or was. Or will be. But you wouldn't understand that.”

“That’s what I came here to talk to you about. I understand that you can see everything within the Empire, and hear the thoughts of ponies. But I have heard that you can do so, so much more.”

“Do not press further, Twilight. You are treading down a road that certainly does not lead to Celestia’s hairbrush.”

Twilight stopped walking. He stopped in front of her, to where she could see her with her own eyes- -if they could even still see. Twilight could not imagine the horror of being able to actually see or, worse, feel in her state. “I require a prophecy.”

“No. You do not. You don’t even comprehend what you are asking for.”

“You can do it, though.”

“Of course I can, but a simple mage has no concept of how much work is required even just to PHRASE a prophecy, let alone the unspeakable risk for...well...speaking it. One wrong word is all it takes. Just one wrong word...”

Luciferian frowned. His patience was running thin. “Necrophilo already has a prophecy. He generated it by speaking to those passed to the Other Side. He foresees an Empire of the Dead, a kingdom ruled by an eternal Litch King in the shadow of the One True Goddess.”

“And I will tell you what I told him! His prophecy is unstable! You don’t understand! You can’t! No stallion can...there are an infinite number of possible futures, and possible pasts! Sure, the necromancer sees one, perhaps, but not necessarily OUR one. Or the RIGHT one. Those threads don’t matter.”

“Then what does.”

“The CANON. The Canon is absolute and pure. There is only one, from which all pasts and futures derive from. It is unbreakable and perfect. A prophecy told from the Canon...it’s like trying to break a block of cheese. The kind that does not break. Do you know what I mean?”

“Cheese? What?”

“Of course not. I knew you wouldn’t.”

“I think you are insane.”

“You would be too, if you knew what I knew. I see our thread. I can tell you the exact hour, time, and method of my own demise. What would you do with that knowledge? Could you survive it?” She sighed. “Sombra keeps me, because he is wise. He remembers when my sisters still walked the earth, before the madness took them. He would never ask what you ask of me because he knows the consequence. He knows that the cheese must not be broken and the acorn never formed. You don’t.”

“Well. I could come over there and decant you, couldn’t I?”

“A threat?” Eternity Gaze burst out in laughter. Twilight was knocked back; his protection spells had not compensated. He was in too close of proximity to her center. “I already told you! I know the exact date I meet my...well...meat. You know. And it’s not today. It was not yesterday either. Or the day before that. There’s your prophecy. It is so much safer to know the past...why can’t you ask me for that?”

“Would you answer?”

“Of course not. I hate you. Your stupid rump. So round and firm...”

Luciferian shivered. “Please,” he said. “I rarely say that word, at least not sincerely. I must know.”

“It will destroy you. Do you not understand that? No, of course not. Fine. As long as you know that nothing good will come of it. Just to get you to turn around. Then, ideally, leave. I don’t like you looking at me. Not like this.”

“Then stand and deliver.”

Eternity scowled, and then sighed. “So be it. I will tell you the truth, and what you were never meant to know. The Princess will indeed sit upon the throne, and ruling the Crystal Empire by her side shall be her beloved, a white stallion of House Twilight.”

A hideous grin crossed Luciferian’s face. “I knew it.”

“If you knew, why did you ask? Now go away. Slowly. Then I want to watch the cute couple meet Gxurab. The look on their faces is always so funny.”

Twilight Luciferian, the scion of House Twilight and its last, final heir, bowed deeply. “I thank you, seer. I look forward to working with you in the future.”

And so he left, his plan resolved, needing only to be put into action.

Chapter 6: The Dark Princess

The result was always the same. It was to be expected, and Crozea found she could not begrudge them for their reaction. They were afraid of her. She was Seventh of Thirteen, the seventh member of a group of irredeemable souls chosen for both their skill and their cruelty. She wore a mask to invoke that reaction, because, in a way, she enjoyed their fear, as she was meant to- -although it was not the only reason. Yet, every time she saw weaker ponies stiffen and recoiled, she wondered if it was because of her role, or if it was because she was not like them. If they would fear her even without the robes, bones, chains of potions and strange herbs. If she appeared before them naked, she wondered if they would recoil in fright at the mere sight of her stripes.

The reaction of the servants was no different. The moment she entered the room, the leader of the group stiffened and shivered. She bowed, of course, as she had been trained to do. The behavior of these servants was impeccable. They were not like the crystal ponies who lived in the city; they were clean and neatly kept, not disheveled and downtrodden. Their eyes were alert and awake, and wracked with the guilt of their fortune while their friends and families starved in the streets and toiled in the mines.

“Lady Crozea. Welcome. Is there anything you require?”

“I bear no needs, you churl; I have only come to take the girl.”

The servant raised her head and smiled. It was a strange smile indeed. Part of it was happy, perhaps even proud, but the rest bore a distinct sadness. “Yes of course. We were nearly finished dressing her. Right this way, milady.”

Crozea followed the pony into one of the next rooms. The suite was large, but not well appointed. The walls were bare, and there was nearly no furniture. What purpose this room served originally had been lost to time, but it could have been a place of beauty. Instead, like all rooms of the Crystal Palace, it was sterile and empty. Crozea shivered. It reminded her of the laboratories allocated to many of her comrades.

In the next room, several crystal ponies surrounded a small stool, preparing the princess. When Crozea saw her, something twisted deep within her heart. The sight was something she had seen before, though rarely- -but she had never grown used to it.

The girl was three months old. She should have been a mere foal, clad in diapers and smiling and giggling at the new sights and sounds of the new world. A foal raised, perhaps, by parents who loved her. Instead, her body was thin and tall. Though she was small, she bore the characteristic indescribable age of one whose growth had been markedly accelerated. She could have been mistaken for being five, or eight, or ten. It was impossible to tell.

The worst, though, was her eyes. They stared forward blankly, seeing everything but correlating it to nothing. She was a creature without context or memory, and the potion had already taken more from her than she would ever know.

She sat perfectly still as her servants dressed her. They gave her boots of dark iron, like those of her father, and a matching collar that covered her long gray-pink neck. One affixed the skirt of a dress to the rear of her armor, while another combed back her hair and placed a ruby-studded tiara. While the girl had been born with multicolored hair, it had since been died black to at least give the semblance of normality.

“She is a beautiful girl,” said the head hoofmaiden. “So thin and soft, and with such large eyes. But...”

“But what?”

The hoofmaiden shook her head. “Never mind.” She stepped forward and bowed to the girl. “My princess. Lady Crozea has come to accompany you.”

The girl’s expression did not change, but she stood and faced Crozea.

“Lady Crozea,” she said, bowing. Disturbingly, her voice was not totally flat and neutral. It was perfectly cultured, the epitome of etiquette.

“You look well, I think.” Crozea reached into one of the bandoleers beneath her robes and produced a small vial. “So now it is time you had your drink.”

The girl took the small vial in one of her hooves and swallowed the contents in a single gulp. Crozea knew that the potion tasted disgusting; any normal pony should have been retching as their body attempted to reject it. This girl, though, did not react. She was not aware it tasted bad. As Crozea had learned recently, it was the only thing in her life that she had ever been permitted to taste.

“I have come today with a need to talk. If you would, princess, proceed to walk.”

The princess obeyed, falling in step with Crozea, although slightly behind. Her motion was measured and exact, and her metal-clad hooves clicked across the crystal floor. As they walked past the girl’s bed, Crozea noticed that it was perfectly made- -and laid out exactly as it had been since she had got it.

“You do not seem quite at your best. Tell me, child, how well did you rest?”

The girl stared straight ahead. “I was...cold.”

“I will not leave it unsaid, but we can always make changes to your bed.”

The girl blinked. “Bed?”

“You are just a filly. We can add more blankets if you grow chilly.”

“Blankets?”

Crozea stopped walking. She pointed at the perfectly made bed. “Child, you require a clear head! Tell me now if you require a better bed!”

The girl stared at the bed, somewhat astounded. “Is...is that what that is?”

“It sits empty during the day, but at night it is where you go to lay.”

“Oh. I did not know that. I have been sleeping on the floor.”

The pang in Crozea’s heart grew. The child could speak, indeed, but not of her own volition. Crozea herself had done her best to move along the girl’s growth, examining her closely for symmetrical bone formation and signs of potential toxicity. The process had been going flawlessly. Her mind, though, was still that of an infant. Things had been done to her, and processes applied; speech had been written into her mind. She could think and reason- -and yet she knew nothing.

“We can discuss your misbehavior in turn. We will have a long conversation once we return.”

“Yes, Lady Crozea.”

The princess assumed walking beside Crozea, as she often did. They had passed through the halls of the Citadel many times, with no eyes on them but the thralls and the servantry. The thralls did not react in any way, as usual, but the servants recoiled in horror. From both of them. The witchdoctor and the cursed child, the foal born in the form of the Great Enemies. It should have been hurtful to the girl, but she did not notice. Or she simply did not have the context to care.

Crozea once again found herself waiting, as she had been for months. For the girl to ask the question, the one that should have been obvious. Yet for three months, she had been quiet, only speaking when provoked. Otherwise, she did nothing but sit quietly and grow.

It did not come on this day either. The question that should have burned within her, that Crozea burned to hear. For on this day, she finally had an answer.

Yet the question never came. The girl did not speak. She did not ask why she had been given no name, or to ask what she was called. She simply stayed nameless, an anonymous princess devoid of identity.

Crozea could bear it no longer. “I tire of this game. Your father has finally given you a name.”

“A name?” the girl looked up. “That is good to know.”

She fell back into silence. Even given the chance, she did not ask. She did not even seem to realize that she ought to.

“Are you truly that broken?” snapped Crozea. “Do you not desire to know how it is spoken?”

“No. I desire nothing currently. Thank you for inquiring, Lady Crozea.”

Crozea sighed and stopped the girl, putting a hoof on the filly’s shoulder. “Remember this well, for this is the name you shall take. Your father has decided your moniker is now Penumbra Heartbreak.”

“Penumbra Heartbreak. This name has been committed to memory.”

Penumbra continued walking, nonplussed by the news. Crozea had expected at least a glimmer of happiness, but in truth the girl saw no reason to care. This was a potential side-effect of the process. Crozea only prayed that it was not permanent.

“Are we going to the westmost hallway today?” asked Penumbra. “I like that hallway. There is a window there. The outside world is so big.”

The window, of course, faced a wall. There was not even a view of the sky. Penumbra had not been permitted to leave the Citadel or even witness the outside world since her crystalling. Crozea had convinced herself that it was not unreasonable, and that all ponies were raised that way.

“No. Today I shall give you more. I will take you to a place you have never been before.”

The room was the largest that Penumbra had ever seen, as well as the darkest. It gave her pause, although she did not understand why. The black-dyed hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she stared into the expanse. All she could see was a strange red fog, drifting and swirling slowly across the floor. The only light of the room seemed to come from the singular gas.

Crozea entered the room as well, and from beneath her robes produced a small glass vial containing a single flash-bee. She uncorked the cap and took the been in her hooves, holding it close to her mouth and speaking in a strange melodious language. Thin yellow lines traced themselves down her hooves and into the bee, and as her magic touched it the bee sparked and ignited, its body shimmering and glowing. A circle of light surrounded the alicorn and the zebra, and the fog writhed and retreated at its touch.

“The fog is a byproduct of her cursed existence,” explained Crozea. “Even this dilute, breathing it can induce a deadly trance.”

“Who is cursed? I do not understand, Lady Crozea.”

“You will soon wish you did not know. But for now, to her we shall go. Leave not the glow of my enchanted wasp; wander into the mist, and you will be forever lost.”

“And that was barely even a rhyme.”

The crimson fog began to move, swirling and parting from Crozea and Penumbra. Penumbra had never seen anything like it before, and watched with detached amusement as it condensed and hardened, assuming the appearance walls and a floor, complete with ornate paneling and delicate, stone-like tiles. Within moments, she found herself standing in a hall that had previously not existed, surrounded entirely by shades of red and black.

In the center of this hall stood a pony. She was clad in red, though the parts of her skin that were still visible showed fur that might once have been blue. When Penumbra saw her face, though, she took a step back. Something was wrong, but she did not understand what. She wanted to turn away and go- -but there no longer was a door. Only a seemingly endless hallway.

The pony wore a mask. It was angular, harsh, and terrible. In a way, it was like the masks that Penumbra saw on the ponies that Crozea said worked for her father- -but different, both in construction and in color. The eyes were the same, though. Two empty, luminescent slits.

“Ugh. She even looks like him.” The masked pony moved forward. “Of all the indignities. Does it have a name?”

“I have been designated as Penumbra Heartbreak.”

“How prosaic.” Scarlet Mist looked up at Crozea. “You. Leave. You are disrupting my effluvium.”

“Does Lady Crozea truly need to go?” Penumbra leaned against Crozea’s leg. Crozea kicked her away.

“She disturbs me. That, and her incessant rhyming. Everything she says takes so very long.”

“Though my speech may be much more demanding, it derives from a cultural impetus beyond your understanding. Though I do not trust you, mask-wraith, in this instance to our king I owe my faith.” Crozea leaned down. She placed the enchanted flash-bee on Penumbra’s tiara. “Do not fear, as it will not attack, and know that at the end of the day, I will be back. There are things I must attend to, and I hope that the company of Scarlet Mist will do.”

Penumbra frowned, but only slightly. “Yes, Lady Crozea. I understand.” She turned toward Scarlet Mist and bowed. “Hello, Lady Mist. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“It talks. Why must everything in this kingdom be so unnatural?”

“Like a mask disguising a leech, striving for a union forever beyond her reach?”

“Which I suppose makes the two of us, then.”

Crozea frowned through her own mask. So Scarlet Mist knew.

Without another word, she turned and left, departing through a red door that opened to greet her. Penumbra watched her go, and felt strange as she did. As if she did not want to see her depart. Crozea was the one who came to her every day and brought her medicine, and the only one who was willing to talk to her. Seeing her go hurt.

Yet the door closed, and Penumbra was left alone and in silence, her only company a parasite attached to a rapidly depleting host.

“Know this,” said Scarlet Mist. “I do not begrudge her for being a zebra. I have even considered taking her body at one point, at least until I knew about her curse.”

“She is cursed?” Penumbra frowned. “What is a zebra?”

“A type of striped donkey. Never mind, it is irrelevant. But you must understand. Prejudice is a luxury. A zebra will betray you just as fast as a unicorn. They are all your enemies. They all want to hurt you.”

“Crozea...wants to hurt me?”

“She would not hesitate to do so. You would not be the first filly her magic has ruined.” Scarlet Mist turned sharply. “Follow.”

“Yes, Lady Mist.”

“Have you met your father, abomination?”

“No, Lady Mist. I have not. But Lady Crozea says that he is very handsome and powerful, and that he works very hard to make sure everyone in the whole kingdom is kept safe.” She paused. “Except she said it in rhyme.”

“Of course she did. Some of those things are correct.”

“Will I ever get to meet him?”

“If I can do an adequate job preparing you, maybe. Right now you would only be a disappointment.”

“Oh.” Penumbra looked at the floor. “I see.”

“Your father tasked me with teaching you how to use magic. Satin knows why.”

“Magic?”

“Yes. Or did you think the horn on your forehead is for decoration only?”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” Scarlet Mist pointed to her own horn- -or, rather, the horn of her host. “It is the organ which provides the only true separation of the races. Neither of us are unicorns, but we are both able to use magic.” Scarlet Mist’s horn glowed, and a plume of light formed around a nearby red flower. It levitated from the vase it sat in, and she held it out to Penumbra. Penumbra stared in awe, unable to understand how it was being held up.

“It was unicorns who built civilization.” The tone of the magic shifted, and the flower withered and died as the spell surrounding it consumed it. “And it is unicorns who will one day end it. Unless your kind beat them to it.”

“My kind?”

“The alicorns. Cursed beings of the highest order.”

“I’m...cursed?”

“Yes. Just like the rest of us.”

The room reconfigured itself. The hall vanished, and was replaced with a different assembly, one consisting of a single flat floor and a number of doors lining either side. Masks hung from the walls in various stages of assembly. Though the configuration was still changing, Scarlet Mist began to walk. Penumbra followed, desperate to not be left behind and trapped as the room shifted.

“Wait.” Penumbra ran to catch up. “You said I need to learn magic. How do I do that?”

“Most likely? You can’t. Most children demonstrate magical skill almost immediately after birth. You have never once shown any implication that you can. Crozea informed me in an especially long-winded rhyme that your horn does indeed contain marrow, but it is possible that you will never use magic.”

“Then I will never see my father.”

“That would be the least of your worries. I will not mince words, abomination. He does not love you. He intends you to be a weapon, to serve the kingdom of the field of battle. I was not assigned to train a student, or even a soldier. Like always, I was tasked with building a weapon.”

“Then I will be the best weapon he has ever seen. If that means he will be happy.”

“Happiness is a pointless illusion. It serves no purpose in the Crystal Empire.”

Penumbra paused. “You do not feel happy, Lady Mist?”

Scarlet Missed did not speak for a moment. “No. I do not feel happiness. It is something entirely different.” She turned to face Penumbra. “Happiness serves no purpose. What truly motivates ponies is FEAR.”

“Fear?”

One of the walls parted and opened, revealing a small room. Penumbra entered beside Scarlet Mist to find that the large room contained a circular pen. Inside, a crystal pony had been changed to the wall. Upon seeing Scarlet Mist- -and the hideous abomination beside her- -he screamed and tried to flee, only to choke himself as his chain ran out.

“He is afraid?”

“Of me, yes. Because he knows what his role in life is. But also you, because you are a monstrosity. Not that either matter. He will only serve as a demonstration today.”

Part of the wall shifted, and it formed a red box. Scarlet Mist took it in her magic and walked to the edge of the pen. She opened the box and produced a small, white rabbit.

Penumbra gasped, her eyes widening in amazement. Something inside her felt different than any emotion she had ever known. “It is so fuzzy!” she exclaimed. “And it looks so soft!”

“It is both. It is a rabbit. We normally raise them for food. Also fur. Here. Hold it.”

Scarlet Mist shoved the rabbit into Penumbra’s grasp. Penumbra nearly squealed when she found that not only was it both fuzzy AND soft, but it was also WARM. The creature nuzzled her face and licked her chin.

“I want a thousand of these,” she whispered. “And then I want to lay in them...”

“I find them abhorrent personally. But the point is, this creature is utterly harmless. Now watch.”

Scarlet Mist placed the rabbit in the pen with the chained pony. He blinked, surprised that he was not being administered the first of his daily beatings, and stared at the creature. “A...bunny?”

As the crystal pony stared at the rabbit, he did not initially see the red gas escaping from Scarlet Mist’s person. When he saw it, though, he cried out and tried to flee.

“No! Mistress, please! Not again! NOT AGAIN- -”

His cries were cut off as he choked and gasped. The gas entered him, and his demeanor immediately changed. The stallion stared at the rabbit, blinked, and then began screaming in abject terror.

“No! NO! Not the Caerbannog! ANYTHING BUT THAT!” He retreated to the far side of his pen where the chain was attached and curled into a shivering ball. “Please! PLEASE SAVE ME!”

“All things a pony see are magnified by fear. Reality itself has little meaning to them, not objectively. They only know the reality we give them.” She prodded the rabbit, goading it to hop forward.

The crystal pony shrieked in terror. “NO! Somepony HELP!”

“In this state, a pony will do anything to escape it. To make the fear stop. Freedom? Happiness? The lives of their friends and family? They will give these things up in an instant, all in the name of security. For freedom from fear.”

Scarlet Mist cast a spell, and a red cage appeared around the rabbit. The Crystal Pony burst out in tears of joy.

“Thank you mistress! Oh thank you!” He pulled his shaking body forward and groveled. “You are my savior, my god! Thank you! THANK YOU!”

“Do you have a wife, slave?”

A look of fear crossed the pony’s face, but only for a moment. “Y...yes.”

“Tell me where she is. I will make her a test subject. Like you. But not for me. For the dark one. Do it, or I will release the Caerbannog.”

“The east district, in the red house! On the third floor! There is a secret panel on the ceiling! She will be hiding there! My brother’s family is hiding them! Take them! Take them all, just please, PLEASE let me live!”

“Eternity?”

“He is correct,” said a high voice in Penumbra’s head. “There were spells in place to hide them. How interesting. Troops have been dispatched. Oop. Looks like one guy is resisting. This should be fun. I hope he likes mining.”

“See?” said Scarlet Mist, turning to Penumbra. “Fear is the main driver of ponies subservience and obedience. It is their single, sole motivation. You are lucky. As an alicorn, your race is synonymous with fear and destruction.”

“It seems...easy?”

“And in that regard, you are mistaken. Watch.”

Scarlet Mist released the rabbit, and then threw it at the Crystal Pony.

His eyes widened and the highest, most terrible shriek Penumbra had ever heard escaped his lips. He ran, fleeing the rabbit, all the way to the end of his chain. It yanked and joked him, but he kept pulling. In an instant, it snapped, and with its remains still dragging behind him he leapt over the edge of his pen and into a ventilation duct. His feet kicked for a moment, and then he was gone, save for the echoes of his terrified screams.

“Fear can motivate a pony to do great things. Impossible things. This can be a blessing, but it can also turn back on you. Press too hard, and you will crush them and yourself along with you. This is the nature of fear, and of magic in turn.”

“But it is only a bunny. You said it was not dangerous...so is fear not real at all?”

“Of course. But not when you feel it. Then it is more real than anything in the whole world.”

“I do not understand, Lady Mist. I am sorry.”

“You do not understand because you fear nothing. Not quite yet. If I used my power, what would I find? You are too young to have true fear, but Crozea’s work has stripped you of the fears of a child. Not that it matters. Your fear will be how I control you. But you will inspire fear in ponies, as your father does, and use that fear to rule them. When your magic is fully developed, you will be the Princess of Fear.”

“The Princess of Fear...yes, Lady Mist. If you say that is what is required of me, then I am glad to help.”

“How charming. Then let us begin.”

Chapter 7: The Disappointment

The bricks flashed with blue light, levitated shakily, and then quickly charted their path through the air, moving from one pyramidal pile to another. Penumbra performed exactly as she had been trained, although it took all of her focus. Focus her mind on one brick, lift it, move it, turn to the next. It was a repetitive process, but she could feel herself sweating from the strain.

Crozea and Scarlet Mist were both beside her, standing one on each side, watching carefully. Penumbra doubted that she could have even begun to maintain this focus without them there, the one who cared for her and the one who taught her everything she knew. Especially not while HE was there.

It was just as Crozea had said- -but also not, in a way. The king was indeed handsome. Even though he was the only stallion Penumbra had ever been allowed to see, she understood that he was unique, from his black mane to his muscular body, to the way his horn was bladed and curved. His eyes were piercing and strange. They did not look like Penumbra’s, but they felt like Scarlet Mist’s.

He watched her carefully. It was the first time Penumbra had met her father, and she needed to succeed. She had to impress him, to show him that she was a good pony- -and that Scarlet Mist had done a good job.

“Stop,” he said at last. Penumbra stood at attention. The brick she had been holding dropped and shattered, although she did not especially care- -nor did she understand why he had stopped her in the middle of her task.

Sombra approached her. Penumbra felt her heart beating faster. She did not understand why.

The king stared at the creature before him, a gaunt, grayish alicorn with pale, blank eyes. Then his horn flashed. A narrow strip of light condensed into a whip, and Penumbra instinctively summoned a shield spell. She knew this drill well. The makeup Crozea had given her was still covering the marks that Scarlet Mist had left on her face practicing it.

The shield spell shattered the instant Sombra’s magic touched it. Penumbra cried out both in surprise and in pain; her spell was so pedestrian that she had constructed a feedback mediation system. Sombra’s magic slapped her in the face. It was roughly equivalent to being slapped with a heavy bootstring, but it still smarted- -and it smarted the same when he slapped her on the other side of her face, just for good measure.

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “I am very disappointed,” he said. “Both with you...” He looked up at Crozea and Scarlet Mist. “And with your handlers.”

“Disappointed?” Penumbra’s heart sank. Something inside her hurt very badly, but she did not know what it was. She did not understand why her eyes were suddenly so wet.

“If you grow impatient with our plan, know that she is doing the very best she can.”

“Which is exactly the problem, Crozea.” Sombra kicked over one of the pyramids of bricks. They were made of a comparatively light material; several skittered across the crystal floor. “THIS is her best?”

“Unfortunately, it is,” said Scarlet Mist. “I’ve done what I can, but there is nothing to work with. She has the magical potential of an especially weak unicorn. Two months of training, and this was as far as we could get.”

“And you bothered to waste my time with it? A report to my steward would be adequate. This is simply insulting. And embarrassing.”

“My king, the girl had grown impatient; she wanted you to see her power, even if it is only nascent.”

“And you allowed this? Why? Do you take orders from a child now, Crozea?”

“Father,” said Penumbra. “It’s my fault. I am sorry, I had miscalculated- -”

“Do not call me that. You will refer to me as ‘my king’ or ‘sire’.”

“Yes, my king.” Penumbra was embarrassed, but secretly overjoyed that he had adressed her directly.

“Penumbra,” he said, easily levitating and stacking the bricks absently with his own red magic. “This is not good. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, my king.”

“I had intended for you to take the open slot in the Dark Thirteen, to accelerate your career. But After this demonstration, that is out of the question. Steward.”

“Yes, sire?”

“We will move forward with the selection process. There is no point in holding the space any longer.”

“I am sorry,” said Penumbra, lowering her head.

“I do not require apologies. They are meaningless. I require RESULTS.”

“Perhaps if you gave her a real teacher instead of me. I knew the idea was absurd from the start.”

“Do not dare show our king such disrespect! If you do, you surely know what you can expect.”

“What could he possibly do? I have no body. I feel no pain. I have nothing to lose.”

“You have your honor,” said Sombra, calmly. “Or reputation, I suppose. Am I to believe that the great Scarlet Mist cannot train an alicorn to do more than lift and stack some blocks? Or perhaps your competence lies with your other half?”

Scarlet Mist stiffened. “You bore.”

“Penumbra.”

“Yes, sire?”

Sombra pointed to the door. “Get out of my sight. I have much to discuss with Crozea and Scarlet Mist. Do not return until you can offer something worthwhile.”

The water in Penumbra’s eyes began to increase, and she wiped it away with her foreleg. The metal she wore felt cold on her face. “Yes, sire.”

“And the next time someone strikes you, if you cannot learn to block with your magic, at least learn to dodge.”

Penumbra sat outside the door, waiting. Her eyes felt hot and tingly, and some amount of water was dripping from them, causing her makeup to run. She did not know where else to go, or what to do, so she just waited. Crozea and Scarlet Mist would be out soon. Scarlet Mist might yell at her, but she could accept that. It was not nearly as bad as Sombra’s calm debridement of her skill. She had been trying her very hardest, and apparently she was still not good enough.

As she waited, several ponies passed down the hall. Most were masked thralls, in the process of patrolling or moving to new assigned areas. A few were slaves who looked at Penumbra in awe but quickly turned away in fear, hurrying their pace to go about their duties.

No one spoke to her. She supposed that was better. No doubt, they would only remind her that she was a failure.

That was until one pony stopped, standing over her and casting a long, dark shadow. Penumbra did not look up, but she noticed a distant smell of something strange. Like rotting flowers.

“Oh my. Are you crying?”

Penumbra looked up. The pony standing over her was a white unicorn. She nearly gasped, as she had never seen one before. He was clad in an officer’s long leather coat, and beneath it he wore armor carved with incredibly intricate lines of runes. His long violet main was tied back in a braid, and his eyes were deep violet. He was the second unicorn stallion Penumbra had ever seen, but he was somehow nearly the opposite of her father, and not just in color.

“Hello,” said Penumbra, wiping her face. She stood and bowed. “I am Penumbra Heartbreak. I am pleased to meet your acquaintance.”

“So that is the name they gave you. It is a very pretty name. Here. Let me help you.”

Penumbra felt magic cross her face, and braced for pain. There was none.

“Huh? What did you do?”

“I fixed your makeup. It would not do for the Crystal Princess to be seen crying like this. Please remember this. You are meant to be a symbol of strength.”

“Crying?” Penumbra did not know the word, but nodded. “I will commit your advice to memory. Thank you, sir.”

The unicorn smiled. “My name is Twilight Luciferian. I work with your father.”

Penumbra bowed again. “I am glad to have met you, Lord Luciferian.”

“It would actually be Lord Twilight. The house-name comes first for unicorns. But you may call me Luciferian, if you like.”

“I can?”

Luciferian chuckled. “Only if you would like to.” He looked up at the closed door. “I came here to discuss a matter with your father, but it appears he is indisposed. I suppose I have some time to waste. Tell me, princess, would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a walk?”

Penumbra blinked. “Am...am I allowed to?”

“Of course you are. I am your father’s most trusted adviser. Believe me when I say, I only have your best interest at heart.”

Penumbra was led through many places she had never been allowed to see. The unicorn who accompanied her was quiet, but he also seemed kind. Though, for some reason, Penumbra felt strange. It was the same feeling she got when she got too close to Scarlet Mist; a sharp tightness in her chest that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Something instinctive told her to be wary.

That instinctual voice was quieted, though, when Penumbra was led to the most amazing sight she had ever witnessed. She gasped when she saw the open room before her: a large, round room with a luminescent dome-shaped roof, the base of it filled with trees and plants of every sort.

“What is this?” she asked. “What are these things? Why are they so GREEN?”

Luciferian laughed. “These are plants, my dear. I forgot that you have never seen their like. This is our botanical garden. This is where rare herbs and reagents are produced for our research. Acquiring rare plants from distant places is very difficult, what with the embargo. So we grow them here. Your father and Crozea use it mostly, and Edwin the Goat required it almost constantly. I use some from time to time.”

“And this has been here? The whole time?”

“Indeed it has. Come.” He began on the path that led into the garden. “But be careful. Many of the plants here are...violent. Stay by my side, and no harm will befall you.”

Penumbra did as she was told, holding close to the white unicorn. Something felt good about it, knowing that she was safe there- -but the smell of him became even more disturbing, even through the aromatic scent of so many dark and evil herbs.

“I have been following your progress, Princess.”

“Oh.” Penumbra’s heart sank. “Then you are aware of my failures as well.”

“I am. Although I do not believe it is as bad as you think it is.”

“I was created to be powerful. Yet I am not. Does this mean my birth is a mistake?”

“No,” lied Luciferian. “It is simply fate. Perhaps if I explain by analogy?” He crossed to the edge of the path and pointed at several small, leafy plants. They twisted on his approach, as if preparing to uproot themselves and bolt.

“These plants are horseradish,” he said. “They are a very rare and very important ingredient for alchemical research. However, they will never grow any taller than they are now.”

Penumbra looked at the plants. The tops of their leaves barely reached the tip of her horn.

“The trees behind them are manchineel. A useful ingredient indeed, but common. Yet look how tall and stately they grow?”

“I do not understand, Lord- -I mean Luciferian.”

Luciferian smiled. “Do you think that the horseradish wishes it could be as tall as the manchineel? Even though in its small, diminutive state, it is far more important?”

“It is a plant. It does not ‘want’.”

“Then you misunderstand its role.” Luciferian stamped his front hoof- -the one that was not clad in a heavy armored boot- -and the horseradish immediately leapt from the ground, revealing roots that looked like warty brown ponies. They squealed and ran, bolting past the trees and into the forest. Penumbra squeaked in surprise, but then giggled.

“Excuse me,” she said, regaining her composure.

“There is no need to apologize, my dear.”

“I am not a deer.”

“Indeed. But you understand my point? Here.” He began walking, motioning for Penumbra to follow. “Perhaps a more direct approach. Penumbra, do you really need to be proficient at magic?”

“Yes. It is my purpose. It is the only way my father will be pleased with me.”

“So that is what Crozea told you then?”

“Well...no...maybe. It’s hard to tell, sometimes. She speaks in rhyme.”

“And I am glad to see that you do not. It is an unpleasant habit. The zebras are a primitive tribe with strange, pointless persuasions.”

“Scarlet Mist says that prejudice is a luxury.”

“For her, yes, because she no longer has a body of her own. Forgive me, I simply do not trust Crozea. If you knew her crimes, neither would you. But I have digressed.” He pulled Penumbra to the side suddenly. She gasped at his touch; he felt so warm and soft. Unlike her, his body was covered in a fine fuzz.

A dark vine swept by her, barely missing. A bolt of violet light from Luciferian’s horn struck the tendril, and it recoiled, swearing quietly in its own language as it retreated back into the grove of herbs.

“Forgive my impudence, my princess.” Luciferian set her back down. “That one is known to be especially aggressive. One of the last of its kind, I’m afraid; the modern breeds are far less tenacious.”

“Thank you for saving me.”

“It is not a problem. I could hardly let you come to harm after giving you my word that you would be safe. Further, you are quite valuable to this kingdom, even if you cannot use magic.”

“I...am?”

Luciferian nodded and smiled. “Of course. As I have said. You are a symbol of the Empire. Of its strength, and of its power. An alicorn born to our great king, a princess to be feared and obeyed. Even now, the crystal slaves speak your name in hushed tones.”

“They do? Why?”

“Because they fear you. And in time they might come to respect you, as they do your father.”

“Even if I cannot use magic?”

“In distant lands there are kings who are earth-ponies, or Pegasi, or even zebras, although I suppose those would just be chiefs. They rule without magic, do they not?”

“I don’t know. I have not seen this...I don’t even know what some of those things are.”

“My point is, you can still have a role in the kingdom. Simply by being born to a king, you are in a perfect position for politics. And politics is something that requires no magic.”

“Politics?”

“To assist your father in the governing of the kingdom. Its operations, and its rule. To support him in that way.”

“So I can still help him.”

“You can. This is the role of a princess. And, in time? You may even take the role of a uniter, something no one else can do.”

“I do not know what that is.”

Luciferian stopped. “It is a thing that only a princess can do. By marrying a prince or a noble, you can unite the Empire with another land- -and take control of both.”

“I can?” Penumbra shivered. Somehow the idea made her feel dirty.

“Of course. I am quite familiar with the subject, being nobility myself.”

“You are?”

“House Twilight is one of the most powerful of unicorn houses. I am the last of a long line of necromancers, dark wizards, warlords and cultists. Though, since the other Houses consider mine to be tainted with evil, we rarely have a chance to marry outside our own blood, let alone to a princess.”

“Wait. You mean YOU would want to marry me?”

Something flickered in Luciferian’s eyes. He took Penumbra’s hoof. “I am honored that you would even consider the idea, but alas, I am not worthy. Not for one so beautiful as yourself, my princess.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

“I do not ‘think’ anything. I KNOW.”

Penumbra felt her face grow warm. No one had ever called her beautiful before.

“Now,” said Luciferian, putting her hoof back down. “We really must return to your father. He is probably finished berating your caretakers. I really must speak to him about preparing your public debut at his side.”

Penumbra gasped. “You can do that?”

A sly smile crossed Luciferian’s face. “For you? I will do my very best.”

Chapter 8: The Soul Fragment

A light flashed, and the crystal illumination system hummed as it warmed to produce a sharp, cold glow. The room reeked of formaldehyde and phenol, and the thing they were meant to mask. Only one pony stood in the room, roughly in the center.

Two unicorns entered the room, clad in robes of tan and green. One was a red mare, the other a taller tan stallion. With practiced precision, they immediately went to work checking the instruments as their master followed them through the door.

“All systems are functional,” said the red mare. “Functional markers are holding with less than two percent variation.”

“In which systems?” said the tan stallion. “If that deviation is in the recirculators, we risk severe necrosis. Be more specific!”

“That is correct, Student 497,” said Necrophilo of Canterlot. “Student 568, we cannot afford sloppiness in this endeavor.”

“Yes, professor,” she said, bowing. “Recirculate function is nominal, with less than point seven percent variance. The input pressurizers experienced a drop of one point seven percent. I do not foresee this as damaging our material.”

“No, no, of course not.” Necrophilo approached the white unicorn standing in the center of the floor, waiting. The unicorn’s eyes tracked to him. The whites had grown yellow. “In fact, it means that the accumulation process is complete. We are prepared to move onto the next stage.”

The students immediately went about their work, preparing the machinery and apparatuses. Necrophilo watched them, scrutinizing their work with some sense of pride. These two were, so far, his best- -or at least the best who had yet survived. It was why he had chosen them for this task.

Student 497 approached the pony in the center of the floor and began disconnecting the tubes linked to her. The white pony watched with disinterest.

“Be very careful,” warned the professor. “She is more fragile than most, especially right now. We cannot afford to damage her.”

“Yes, professor.”

Necrophilo approached the mare. “Sombra does indeed have good taste, doesn’t he?”

“She is quite beautiful, yes. But much improved by your work, master.”

Necrophilo smiled. It was indeed true. When she had come to him, she had been thin and depleted. Now she stood before them on her own four legs, her eyes constantly tracking movement as she watched the world. Her body was full and pure, save for the thick stitches down her chest. The delicate perfume of formalin arose from her cold flesh. She was a perfect beauty, a work that Necrophilo took the greatest pride in.

“Hope,” he said. The unicorn looked up. Her brain was still intact enough to recognize her own name. “Do you know where you are?”

She opened her mouth. “N...no...”

“By the gods,” whispered Student 568, whose real name was Riser. “I’ve never seen one that can speak.”

“And if you trusted those dusty works in Canterlot, you would be informed that this is impossible. But I assure you. It is quite doable for even a passable necromancer.”

Necrophilo turned to the red mare. “A review. In cases of death during childbirth, what is the most common cause?”

“Hemorrhage resulting from damage to the placenta, or failure of the Fallopian tube during an ectopic pregnancy.”

“And the necropsy results?”

“Indicated no sign of blood loss,” interjected Student 497. “Or an indication of a breech pregnancy. The birth was perfect.”

“So eager. Then what was the cause of death, if you know so much?”

“Indeterminate.”

Necrophilo smiled. “If you are a fool, yes.”

“Professor?”

Necrophilo drifted across the room and gestured to several intricately drawn images of microscope slides. “Examination of the fundamental cell structure of the bone and horn marrow samples suggest cellular decay and a depletion of dzeronium. Her entire body was in a state of cellular decay.”

“As if the magic itself were sucked out of her.” 586 shivered. “Her acquisition records indicate that she was reasonably powerful as well. What could possibly have done this?”

“Several artifacts are capable of this, namely the Black Rainbow, but in this case the cause is purely organic.” Necrophilo gazed into his creation’s eyes. “Proof of an important hypothesis.”

“Being?”

“Precious little is known about alicorn biology. Apart from the new princess, only two have been known to exist. Archaeological evidence suggests they are from an inorganic source. The demise of Hope suggests that a mortal being cannot give birth to an immortal one. Not unless they sacrifice their own life in its place.”

“How poetic.”

“A pointless sacrifice. And a troublesome one. Her body was completely drained of magic. Refilling it has not been easy, as both of you can attest.”

“It would have been longer without the tap to the Heart of Darkness.”

“Indeed. It is the reason why the greatest necromancers become liches. When they are free from their own demise, they have all the time they need for their own work.” Necrophilo turned to start the procedure. The students were good for maintenance, but had nowhere near enough skill to accomplish what truly needed to be done.

“Our progress has been slow. Unfortunately, I was required to construct an artificial soul to power the body.”

“Could we not just transplant one?” asked 586.

“No,” said 497. “There would be a risk of cross-contamination. Mergance of personalities.”

“No necromancer has yet solved that paradox, and while I in time will, I do not intend to attempt something of such risk here.” Necrophilo opened a large assembly and produced a crystal. It was one of the high-grade types derived from the Crystal Mines, the sort that would normally be used to power some sort of gauche war machine. He usually did not have access to these, but had been given carte-blanche by Sombra himself for this task alone. So he had decided to use the best of it- -by using it as the container for his construction.

“This should preserve her,” he said. “Student 497. Connect the system.”

“Yes, professor.”

The student did so, and Necrophilo began the transfer.

The integration went flawlessly. Hope jerked slightly, her revenant mind have trouble reintegrating to a motivator. When it was complete, though, she was still standing and had not, in fact, exploded.

“Excellent.” Necrophilo turned to her. “Do you remember your name?”

“I am...Hope,” she said. “Where...am I?”

“In my laboratory.” Necrophilo chuckled. “My dear, I am afraid you have died.”
“Oh.” Her expression fell. “I’m sorry.”

Necrophile frowned. That was not something they usually said. Of course at this point most revenants just screamed mindlessly. He had rarely produced one of this quality.

“Sorry for what?” He could not control his curiosity.

“That I won’t be there for him. I had hoped...I had hoped to see him one last time.” She looked up. Her eyes were yellow and empty. “Is the child...is she...”

“That is none of your concern.”

“Oh. Of course.” She lowered her head again. “I understand.”

“Excellent. Now we can begin a more detailed analysis. Students, prepare the tools.” Necrophilo turned away from Hope so as to view his students’ work. It had to be perfect. There was not much time.

“I don’t...I don’t like it.”

The revenant had kept talking. Necrophilo paused. The soul she had been given was artificial. She was only supposed to be able to answer simple questions. Any sense of identity was only a shadow.

“Please stay quiet. You do not want to strain your beautiful throat.”

“I don’t like her with him. The white pony. Twilight Luciferian.”

Necrophilo and both students froze. “What did you say? How do you know that?”

“Because I am there. Beside him. I never leave his side. Not until his work is complete.” The corpse began to laugh. It was a hideous sound. Necrophilo had no sense of smell, but both his students recoiled at the overpowering scent of rotting carnations.

Necrophile turned slowly. What was staring back at him was not Hope. He could tell from the blood-red eyes. They had no pupils, and no whites- -yet they saw everything.

“This is not possible,” he whispered. “The soul- -the soul was artificial!”

Hope’s face contorted into a horrible frown. “Do you really think you have even the slightest of capacity on how to create a soul? You could not possibly comprehend it. Necromancy is nothing more than a parlor trick. A joke, when you think about what happens to you after you die.”

“Bite your tongue!” cried 497. “You are conversing with the greatest necromancer ever to live!”

“If I bite it, it might just come off!” The soul within Hope cackled. “And he gave me that tongue for a reason, didn’t he? Oh, this body!” She minced forward. “So perfectly preserved. Sombra’s best is now YOUR best, I suppose.”

“RECEDE.” Necrophile cast a control spell, one meant to control the undead. “Recede and OBEY.”

The spell shattered on whatever soul was now infecting Hope. It was not the one that Necrophile had built; instead, it had been cross-contaminated. By what, he had no idea. Souls could not float free of their bodies for long, and nothing this powerful was present in the Crystal Empire. He would have sensed it.

“Only if I wanted you to,” she said. “But I don’t see a point, do I? You’re wasting my time. Just like Luciferian. The idiot has no idea that he is leading himself to his own doom following that ridiculous prophecy.”

“P- -prophecy? My prophecy?”

“His is different.” She smiled, showing Hope’s formaldehyde-bleached teeth- -as well as a set of bladed black ones growing in behind them. The body was undergoing mutations; to his horror, Necrophilo realized the inhabiting soul was not that of a pony. It had never been a pony. “Do you know what he intends? To marry the little princess and usurp her father. To rule the Empire.”

“He will never succeed! That is absurd! The Empire- -the Empire is MINE!”

“Not yet.” The demon laughed. “Or perhaps you would pursue the same route? Do you like little fillies, necromancer? Perhaps if you made a certain change to her first. I know you like them cold!”

She began laughing. The air became oppressively thick with the smell of flowers.

“586! Cut off her connection to the Heart!”

“She isn’t connected!” cried the mare. “I- -I can’t!”

“Saturation levels are rising!” exclaimed 497. “Her cells can’t hold, she’s undergoing mutations!”

“And what do you think I will become, necromancers? How beautiful will you make me? Do you think you can all take me, or should we put a harness on that adorable red filly?”

“What are the saturation levels?”

“Over six hundred percent!”

Necrophile gaped. “That is not possible, you idiot- -”

“How much over six hundred?” asked the red-eyed pony. Her white fur was already beginning to yellow, and her white main was becoming red. “Six hundred sixty, perhaps? Or a little bit closer to six-seventy?”

Necrophile was pressed back against a shelf of glassware. It spilled, shattering on the floor. Whatever it was he had summoned walked closer. It opened a mouth now filled with far too many black teeth, and a forked tongue lolled out.

“This is not possible. There is no way you could manifest- -not like this!”

“You actually think I’m here? You idiot.” She raised a red eyebrow. “Or...perhaps you don’t even know?”

“I know what I need to. Begone, demon!”

He fired a spell at her- -but it failed to even sputter from his horn.

“You don’t even know what you are! This is hilarious. You will realize it eventually, I suppose. And I will be there to see you fail. And so will Twilight Luciferian, to laugh in your face.”

“BEGONE!”

“Lord Necrophilo?”

Necrophile looked around suddenly, not understanding how he had moved. Hope was still standing in the center of the room, her yellowed eyes staring at him. Her coat was pure white once again.

“What- -what happened?”

“Professor. We are ready to begin the sequence,” said one of the students. “The tools are prepared.”

“I...” Necrophilo looked around. Behind him, the cabinet of glassware stood unupset and intact. Not a single piece had shattered.

“Is something the matter?” asked the revenant. “You look unwell.”

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.” He checked the instruments. The artificial soul was holding. He wiped his brow. “Just...an anomaly. Meaningless. Let us begin.”

Chapter 9: Witchdoctor, Witchking

Crozea opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. It was, like everything, made of crystal, so cold and sterile. It made her long for the endless plains and deep forests of her homeland so far away. A homeland she had abandoned so long ago, and to which she could never return.

Sombra stirred. He lifted his head off her striped chest and looked up at her. In the dark, his red eyes were dilated to a size far larger than a normal pony’s pupils could achieve. It looked almost adorable.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Crozea stroked his long, silky mane. “I did not mean for you to be disturbed. The spirits tonight, they have become perturbed.”

“I was not sleeping. I do not sleep.”

“Because Nightmare Moon will penetrate your mind, and use against you the horrors she might find.”

Sombra respositioned himself. He was larger than Crozea, but light, and the bed beneath her was soft. He felt warm, and inside him she could feel the beating of two hearts- -one growing increasingly weak, while the other could never grow quiet.

Crozea herself was naked. For a pony, that would not be unusual; as a zebra, however, she almost always kept herself covered in the false hope that maybe they would not notice that she was something ELSE. Sombra, who lay beside her, had never cared, though.

“Compared to most, your heart is stony. Does it bother you that I am not a pony?”

Sombra held her. “What meaning do such things have to me? Such denotations are meaningless. I respect you deeply, is that not enough?”

“From the eternal curse I bear, I cannot create you an heir.”

“This again,” he sighed. He turned over, so that he was also looking up at the ceiling, his now against the side of Crozea’s torso. “I will not treat you as a concubine, because you are not one. I bear you no ill will. This could already be considered an overreach.”

“The king’s perogative, or so is said. Though Luciferian would love to be here instead.”

Sombra chuckled softly. “Zecora...”

Crozea’s eyes narrowed. “You shall not ever again use that name, if you have any understanding of my deepest shame.”

“And you dare to give orders to your king? So be it. I grant this request.”

Crozea turned, putting her chin in Sombra’s long mane. “My honor is besmirched by an indelible stain, and I pray to the spirits you may never understand my pain.”

Sombra sighed. “Sometimes I think that you might be the only one of them that is not wholly evil. Yet you stay, and you serve me.”

“I have done things both cruel and dark; any good that lies within me is the merest spark.”

Sombra fell silent, as did Crozea. She slept little as well. Though the spells she used prevented the dark goddess from entering her mind wholly, she was plagued by unending nightmares. Part of it was a mental attack by her enemies, but part of it was something that no one could ever understand. Part of it was her.

“Twilight Luciferian came to me today,” said Sombra, knowing that neither of them would be getting any sleep this night. “He brought another one of his excessively tactful arguments. He recommended that I begin a plan of political integration for the girl.”

“While her magic is hardly strong, I think that a greater role cannot be wrong.”

Sombra looked up. “You and him rarely agree. I am surprised.”

“Beware that white unicorn. The least danger of him lies within his horn.”

“Regardless. He is right. I have to put her to some kind of use. And her powers may yet develop with greater training.”

“Her development has progressed at astounding speed. But it seems to me her magic lags while her body takes the lead.”

Sombra sighed. “It may be so. But I have little faith in her. Your work has been impeccable, though, and I thank you. Even if the girl will only serve as an insult to fly in the face of Celestia and Nightmare Moon.” He looked up at her. His eyes met her yellow. “And it is because you convinced me to spare her. But I give you this warning, Crozea the Witchdoctor: do not fail me. For your own sake. And for hers.”

Crozea held Sombra tight. She did not respond, because she did not need to. They lay together in silent, warm against the raging storms outside the Citadel. Though Sombra only thought what strange and unnatural things normally occupied his mind, Crozea eventually drifted off to sleep and was greeted by the sound of endless screaming.

Chapter 10: The Interview

Ponies began to gather. Slowly, at first, but then rising from one or two to a steady but barely imperceptible trickle. These were not the slaves, toiling in the mines or fields; those ponies knew to stay as far away from this event as possible, for only pain and darkness would arise from it. No crystal ponies dared near the arena, even during the day. Those that came were foreigners.

News had spread slowly through all of Equestria, transmitted through the circles of dark magi like a virus. Sombra the Witchking of the Crystal Empire had need of a wizard. All who heard and understood knew the implications of the request. A position in the Dark Thirteen was to be the elite among the elite, and it came with privileges. Almost all those who came sought one of two things. The more traditional among them sought freedom to perform their life’s work without restriction, and access to nearly limitless funding for their research. Others sought power, and power alone; to be a lord among lords in what was whispered to be the seed of the New World Order.

The process was not new. It was said among many that the only two who had known all of the Dark Thirteen every to exist were the Nameless One, and of course Sombra himself. Rarely, though, was an open audition called.

Yet few dared to come. Attending the audition was a test in itself: to enter, a pony would need to cross the vast Hyperborean tundra, traversing endless icy wastelands and eternal storms. Then they would need to enter the kingdom. Mechanisms had been specially installed in the shield-dome for their entry- -but using them was by no means easy.

So only a few managed to come. Only the strongest and most resourceful- -but also the most ruthless and depraved. Only those who would risk their lives to stand among twelve of the evilest sorcerers who had ever lived- -and at the side of the Witchking himself.

When the day of choosing finally came, those who had arrived gathered at the arena. Few, it seemed, had made it in the first batch.

Among them were the unicorns Student 568 and Student 497, who had the advantage of already being present in the Crystal Empire when the contest began- -but the disadvantage of cutthroat competition with the rest of Necrophilo’s other students. They were the best he had to offer, and he expected success of one of them. The other was by definition a worthless disgrace.

With them stood a Pegasus with a fiery red mane, a highly aromatic earth-pony in colorful robes, a bison clad in unfamiliar animal skins, a breezie, and an inexplicable yak. No others had dared to come- -or survived the journey.

Student 568- -Riser- -pulled up her ornate battle-robes so that the fur cuff was closer to her ears. “There aren’t many of us. Is this all there is?”

“Where you expecting more?” snorted 497. His name, technically, was LemonLeaf, although he preferred his number vastly. His parents, it seemed, had not had much foresight with his naming.

“Says the guy who was already here,” grunted the Pegsus, who was leaning against a wall. He was exceedingly physically fit, and had a scar across one eye. His very presence- -as well as the presence of his soft, fuzzy wings- -made Riser’s horn tingle.

497 squinted at the Pegasus. As a unicorn, he was taller, but as a necromancer, he was thin and flabby compared to the perfect specimen of physical fitness before him. “A Pegasus. There aren’t very many of your kind here. Not that still have their wings anyway.”

“Touch my wings, and I’ll touch YOU. In a bad way.”

“What do you even do? Surely you’re not a mage.”

The Pegasus smiled and flipped his hair. “Weather manufacturing. Specialty: natural disasters. They call me Skyflame. That hurricane last year that nearly wiped out Trottingham? That was me. I made that.”

“Was that the one that had FIRE?” gasped Riser.

“You bet your sweet necromancer flank.” He flipped his hair again. “Yeah, all that stuff you call ‘weather’ out here? That wasn’t even hard. Just flew right through it.”

“I would like to see your wing muscles,” whispered Riser. “If we both survive the testing, do you want to go for some crystal tea?”

“You want to go to tea with a member of the Dark Thirteen? Huh, I don’t know...”

“Idiot,” squeaked the breezie, landing on the earth-pony’s head. “She wants to disconnect them from your body.”

“And do electrokinetic analysis...” Riser shivered. “So much analysis...”

“And how did a little breezie get here?” asked the earth-pony.

“Did you know that we can survive inside a living host for almost a month?”

“Um...no?”

“Well, now you know.”

Riser gasped. “Is it in the liver? Tell me it’s the liver!”

“What is a breezie even doing here?” snapped 497. “You’re essentially a glorified butterfly. Or a MOTH. What magic do you do? Make dust that makes ponies fly?”

“I already fly,” added Skyflame.

“My dust will certainly make you FEEL like you are flying.” A thin smile crossed the breezie’s face. “At least until the hemorrhaging starts.”

The earth-pony whose nose he was sitting on blinked. “Huh? What?”

“This is so interesting,” said Riser. “Messy, but interesting. I’ve never actually met a breezie. What is your specialty?”

“Toxins. And what your primitive, absurd language calls ‘biomancy’.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Me too!” The earth-pony nearly knocked the breezie off her nose. “I do plants! Well, not in an inappropriate way, but- -oh! And also fungus! Look!” She reached under her robes and produced a small, leaking packet. “Check it out! Magic yeast!”

“For what?” asked Skyfire, leaning away from the aroma.

“For necromancy! Because, you know, it makes them RISE!”

Everypony present groaned.

“What? I also have magic beans!”

“There are no magic beans, idiot,” sighed 497.

“Yes there are! CASTOR beans!”

More groans.

“Great,” sighed Skyfire. “So one chick smells like formaldehyde, and the other makes puns. Ugh. I was told the mares here were actually, you know, appealing. Even the breezie is starting to look good.”

“How dare you! I am a MALE breezie!”

“And I am female,” said the otherwise stoic bison, leaning close to Skyflame.

“Wh- -what?”

“I have a feather, do I not?” she pointed. “I am female. Do I not appeal to you?”

“Um- -uh- -”

“And what do you do?” asked Riser.

“I am a skin-walker. If you must know. I turn into animals.”

“Oh wow! I’ve heard there is a species that can do that on their own accord- -”

“Idiot,” said 497, shoving his associate hard in the shoulder. “Changelings are a myth. It’s a scientific fact.”

“Oh.” Riser turned to the last member of the group, the yak, who was at this point eating a pile of snow. “And what about you? What are you?”

“Huh?” the yak looked up, although could apparently not see much through the hair that covered his eyes. “Who addresses yak? Tiny pony? What, is tiny pony blind? Yak is YAK!”

“No, I mean what kind of magic do you do?”

“Magic? Does yak look like tiny little weak pony? NO! Yak check before coming! Yak not need stupid magic! Yak is YAK!”

The earth-pony appeared horribly confused. “Um...you do realize this is an audition for a position as a court mage, right?”

“NO! Yak does not know such thing because yak not bother read!”

“More like CAN’T read,” chuckled 497.

“No! TINY PONY cannot read! Cannot read Yak! As yak have know written language. But not need read! And not need puny magics! Yak win contest! Does tiny pony know why?”

“Perseverance?” volunteered Riser.

“NO! Because yak is YAK!” He puffed into his hair, and it pushed back slightly from his eyes. “Is not being much completion anyway. Just tiny little ponies! Though pretty bison girl might give good competition, eh?”

The bison smiled very slightly.

A sound came from a walkway overhead. Each member of the group, being naturally suspicious, looked up to see who was there. Two figures were passing on the high wall of the gate, moving toward the arena. One was the height of a normal pony, but clad in strange foreign garb and wearing a substantial wooden mask. The other was shorter and clad in dark iron armor and a long red skirt. She wore a black hood over her face, obscuring it.

The earth-pony candidate gasped. “That- -that’s Seven of the Thirteen, Crozea the Witchdoctor!” She nearly squealed. “She’s my FAVORITE! I have five copies of her trading card!”

“Wait.” 497 turned. “There are trading cards?”

“Yes. I made them!”

“But who is that with her?” asked Riser. She turned to 497. “You don’t think she’s fielding her own student, is she?”

“The zebra doesn’t have students. I don’t know who would bother even applying.” 497 squinted, and for a moment he was sure the hooded figure stared back at him- -before they disappeared out of sight into the gallery of the arena. “But that said...I have no idea who that is.”

“Only Sombra wears red.”

“Then he’s shorter than I expected,” said Skyflame.

“Insolence! No. That’s not him.”

“I have a strange feeling,” said the bison. “I do not like that girl.”

“You don’t think it could be the princess?” asked Riser.

“Sombra’s daughter? The one from that mess of a crystalling?” 497 looked up. “No, that’s not possible. She’s barely be five months old. That girl was almost a teenager.” He turned to the others and smiled. “Not that it matters. Unless the Pegasus is now too distracted to compete.”

“Buck you,” growled Skyflame.

“Perhaps I can give you foreigners some advice. Crozea’s presence bodes well. Because it serves as a reminder. As renowned as they are, only a few are truly powerful. Crozea is only a zebra, and is far weaker and less skilled than even the breezie.” 497 laughed. “If the current Thirteen are any indication, this challenge should be simple. I mean, if they let Holder Heartfelt in, surely anyone can pass the test.”

The earth-pony grew pale. “He- -he’s REAL?!” She looked around in a panic. “Is he here? As in PHYSICALLY?”

“He is no doubt in some bar weeping into his salt. As is usually the case. Isn’t that so, 586?”

497 turned and found himself standing beside a unicorn he did not recognize.

“Huh?” More confused than surprised, he stepped back. The others did as well, confirming that she was indeed actually there.

She wore armor. So much so that not a single inch of her skin or mane was showing. It was not exactly made of metal, though. Even as a student of the arcane, 497 could not identify it, apart from the fact that it was a mottled blue and violet color- -and that it was still sparking as if charged from some unseen spell. It had no distinguishing marks or heraldry, like normal armor, save for a symbol emblazoned on the flank, where the cutie mark would be: a simple pair of horizontal, parallel lines.

“Who in Sombra’s name are YOU?”

The armored unicorn turned to face him. The neck of her suit had some kind of complex mechanism that rendered it remarkably flexible. Her face was fully covered with a nearly opaque black plate. It was flat and featureless, but two small red lights glowed deep from below it. Lights like tiny eyes.

The unicorn did not respond to the question. She stood in silence.

“Oh, what, not going to talk? Please. Agitating and unbalancing your opponent is the oldest trick in the book. It never works.”

The unicorn still did not speak. Nor did she move, even slightly.

497 sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll defeat you too, like the rest of them.” He turned to the gate, away from the armored pony and the others. “I swear on my own horn, I will not lose.”

Blue magic ignited within the armored mare’s horn, instantly assembling itself into six blue spheres that floated around her head. Before any of the others could realize what she was doing, the spheres shot out in a flash to meet each of the other candidates. Each spell exploded in a plume of lightning, their targets screaming and convulsing as their nervous systems overloaded.

They all fell- -save for 497. At the last second, he had activated a latent shield spell. The magical attack was advanced- -incredibly so- -but so was his shield. Several aspects were broken and disabled, but several encrypted aspects survived just long enough for 497 to remain conscious- -and to produce a devastating feedback wave.

The armored unicorn was thrown back, although she did not scream. The blast would have put a normal pony in a coma; she was clearly advanced.

497 dropped to one knee, but even as he did, he smiled. “Big mistake.” By the time he had finished those two words, he had already prepared a devastating counterattack.

497 sighed. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll defeat you too, like the rest of them.” He turned to the gate, away from the armored pony and the others. “I swear on my own horn, I will not lose.”

Blue magic ignited within the armored mare’s horn, instantly assembling itself into six blue spheres that floated around her head. Before any of the others could realize what she was doing, the spheres shot out in a flash to meet each of the other candidates. Each spell exploded in a plume of lightning, their targets screaming and convulsing as their nervous systems overloaded.

They all fell- -save for 497. At the last second, he had activated a latent shield spell. The magical attack was advanced- -incredibly so- -and it tore through every aspect of his protection spell with devastating precision. Even the parts that were encrypted fell, not shattered but opened and deactivated with flawless precision and uncanny speed.

When his shield failed, 497 fell, unconscious. Only one candidate remained to apply, and she walked over the bodies of the others as she silently approached the arena gate.

The arena itself was a large, dome-shaped amphitheater, carved, of course, from crystal- -but also strange, dark stone, a relic of a time long-forgotten. When Penumbra and Crozea entered, the stands were almost entirely devoid of ponies and the stone-block floor had only one large, cubic container in it.

“Where should we sit, Lady Corzea?”

“Exactly where does not matter; but high enough to avoid the splatter.”

“Yes, Lady Crozea. I will select a seat.”

Penumbra did so, choosing a high seat in the upper level directly across from the only other two ponies present: a white unicorn in an officer’s coat and a black one in royal regalia. Though there was an area meant for royal habitation, Sombra had elected not to use it in favor of getting a closer view of the candidates.

“I am so very excited,” said Penumbra quietly, folding her skirt around herself as she sat down. “I am glad that father allowed me to participate.”

“For you this is not a matter of speculation; watching these mages will assist in your education.”

Penumbra smiled. That might have been true, and she was sure it would be valuable- -but this was the first time she had seen Sombra since her failure to impress him, and even at a distance, she was glad to be with him. She was also glad that Twilight Luciferian was at a different; being around him made her heart beat faster and her face feel hot.

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” squealed a voice that was neither Crozea’s nor Penumbra’s. Penumbra knew it well; it was the voice without a body that sometimes spoke in her head, as well in the heads of others. She had grown accustomed to its endless presence and occasional commentary on her actions. Supposedly, it was named Eternity. “I hope they have another kirin! They have those adorable little weird fluff-scarves that I ABSOLUTELY HATE.”

Penumbra almost laughed. She did not know what a kirin was, and the voice in her head sometimes made her ears bleed when it got agitated. Even that did not matter now, though; she was just too happy.

Twilight Luciferian looked up into the stands at his future bride, and the zebra nursemaid beside her. He waved, and even at a distance he thought he could see the girl blush. Then he returned to his work.

“I have prepared a list,” he said, passing an exorbitantly thick scroll to Sombra. “It identifies all possible candidates, their skills, histories, grades, races and relative magical potential.”

“A list.” Sombra sighed. “As always, I see you have prepared.”

“This is a very important decision, my king. Both because the one you select will stand beside you, and be one of the very few who can call me a peer. As your adviser, I am honored you would allow me to assist you.”

“Indeed, it is important.” Sombra turned his gaze to the upper stands. “And yet I had hoped that I would not have to hold this asinine contest. At least viewing it may give her some...inspiration.” His slit-pupiled eyes turned to Luciferian. “Actually, do you not have a daughter yourself? Will she be applying for this position?”

Luciferian’s expression hardened. “I would hardly call her a ‘daughter’. No. She will not be here. In that respect, you and I bear a similarity. My daughter is equally limited in her use of magecraft. However, at least you can hold out hope that yours might one day improve.”

“Indeed. Hope...”

Luciferian checked his list. “That said, I see that Necrophilo is fielding two of his best.”

“And this does not bother you?”

Luciferian looked up. “Why would it?”

“You and he always seem to be in a perpetual battle for my attention. Like a pair of unruly children.”

Luciferian smiled coldly. “That would be the nature of unicorns, I suppose. But I see no reason to worry. If Necrophilo trained them, they will surely fail here.”

“And that pleases you?”

“My king, how many necromancers do we require?”

“One would be plenty. Such a useless art.” Sombra looked out into the arena. It still smelled of pony sweat and metal from the last circus. “Shall we begin?”

Luciferian nodded, and his horn flashed. “I shall signal for the candidates to enter. If all goes well, his or her fate will be decided quickly.”

“Nothing about this decision must be made in haste.” Sombra nodded. “Send him in.”

The great gate ignited with violet light and was pulled open. Dull gray light shined through, and a few flakes of snow drifted in. With them came a pony dressed in violet and blue armor, her flanks each marked with a pair of lines.

Immediately, Luciferian’s eyes narrowed. He picked up the list and unfurled it. “What is this? This one isn’t on the list! And where are the others?!”

“Whether she is on the list or not, she is here. Sombra looked through the open gate. “And it appears she has taken the initiative to eliminate the competition early.”

Luciferian looked out the door and burst into laughter. “HA! How fascinating!” He stood and approached the edge of the arena grounds. The mare stood below him, watching up through her nearly opaque mask.

“What is your name, mage?”asked Sombra.

There was no response. The armored unicorn did not speak.

Luciferian frowned. “The king has asked you a question, mage. ANSWER. NOW.”

Still no response came.

Luciferian frowned even more deeply. “Then at least tell me where you are from. And your specialty.”

There was no response. Luciferian was increasingly becoming enraged; he could tolerate her refusing Sombra, but he himself being refused was out of the question.

“Fine,” he said, his frown becoming a dark smile. “You are stubborn. Hopefully your failure will teach you something valuable. And not be so messy this time.”

“Well that’s weird.”

“What?” said Penumbra, responding to the voice in her head. She leaned forward and gasped. “That pony. She was not in the group of candidates we saw when we entered.”

“I already know that. That’s not the weird part.”

“Oh?” Penumbra looked upward, as if that was where the voice was coming from. “Then what is?”

“I can see everything in the Crystal Empire. But that suit she’s wearing, I can’t see what’s on the other side.”

Twilight Luciferian stepped out into the Arena. Instead of falling into the pit, a translucent violet square appeared before him, supporting his weight. More appeared as he walked forward, circling the silent candidate on a path of his own magic.

“My name is Twilight Luciferian, Lord and Scion to House Twilight. You now stand before the great King Sombra, Eternal Ruler of the Crystal Empire. Etiquette would normally require you to bow, but you’ve already balked at protocol several times.”

“Twilight,” said Sombra. “I do have other things to do today.”

“Of course, my king.” Luciferian paused on one violet square and addressed the applicant. “You came in response to the request for a new member of the Dark Thirteen. Specifically, we seek a warrior. A battlemage. One who will be able to attack the Celestial-Lunal forces directly, and to aid us in the upcoming war for righteous dominance. We have enough researchers and academics. So I devised a special test.”

His square levitated upward, toward the black cube. His magic glowed and the smooth black surface separated into a number of independent squares that in turn separated into more squares. Within seconds, the walls of the cube were gone; even before they had fully dispersed, though, amorphous flesh had already seeped between the cracks.

When the creature was finally revealed, Penumbra felt her medicine and bile rise in the back of her throat. Never before had she seen something so disgusting.

“This creature is called a proteus,” explained Luciferian, gesturing toward the swirling, writhing mass of rapidly differentiating and dissolving flesh. “Natural-born proteii are the natural predators of changelings. This one was once a mage who had been experiment with dzeronium. Defeat the creature, and try to be showy. We will be grading you.”

Luciferian raised his head and fired a bolt of energy into the beast. It screamed in an inarticulate, piping gurgle as it suddenly became motivated. Parts of its liquid flesh shot forward, hardening into bone and deriving hideous, asymmetrical arms. Its front tore open into a vast mouth filled with numerous eyes, and it began pulling itself forward toward the armored unicorn.

The creature struck at her with a thorn-covered tentacle the width of a tree trunk. The appendage came toward her like a vast whip, whistling as it went. The mage responded by dodging, lifting herself easily, balancing on hoof and performing an acrobatic flip over the appendage. She had almost landed when the thorns exploded into liquid flesh, reforming into tiny hands that grabbed her and threw her to the ground. As they did, the flesh began to crawl over her suit, dragging her into it. Its digestive enzymes hissed as her armor began to dissolve, and her horn ignited.

The creature struck at her with a thorn-covered tentacle the width of a tree trunk. The appendage came toward her like a vast whip, whistling as it went. The mage responded by bracing herself and igniting herself with magic, charging her armor with intense light. When the tentacle struck her, the part that contacted her armor vaporized, severing the end of the tentacle. The proteus responded by speaking in the remnants of many languages as its wound healed.

The severed tentacle produced many insect-like legs and sprinted toward the armored mage, its mouth stretching out toward her, already filled with teeth tipped in clawed hands. The mage levitated and summoned a shield spell that took the form of an enormous multi-faceted jewel around herself. The tentacle struck and the shield was knocked back, dragging its tip across the ground.

The severed piece quickly lost interest and surged past her, rejoining the main mass. The mass itself stood, rising on five legs, and charged. The mage rolled out from under its hoof, slicing at the nearest of the legs with a blade of magic. Fluid burst from the wound, but as it did it hardened into long filaments. One stabbed into her leg, and the others grasped her, holding her so that she could not escape- -just as the top of the proteus fell, crushing her.

The severed piece quickly lost interest and surged past her, rejoining the main mass. The mass itself stood, rising on five legs, and charged. The mage rolled out from under its hoof and fired a spell. In an instant, her body was surrounded by blue light- -and vanished. She reappeared on top of the creature, near where its eyes were, and struck downward. As she did, a claw filled with venomous spines grabbed her, filling her with lethal poison.

She reappeared on top of the creature, distant from where its eyes were located, and summoned a shield spell in the direction of a long venomous arm was attached. The arm struck out and impacted the shield, vaporizing itself in the process. The creature laughed as the mage fired a plume of electricity downward, causing its legs to collapse as she teleported away.

Sombra leaned forward as the mage rolled and dodged, preparing an exceedingly complex attack alignment spell. “Two teleportation spells within less than a minute. Few sorcerers yet alive can perform teleportation at all; I had considered it lost knowledge. This is indeed an interesting candidate. Your thoughts Luciferian.”

“Yes,” said Luciferian, distantly. He was barely paying attention to Sombra, instead refusing to take his eyes off the mage even for a moment. Something was wrong; he could sense it, but he was not quite sure what it was yet. “Very interesting...”

The alignment spell fired, striking at the creature from eighteen desperate points, each using a different elemental matrix. The spell itself was diluted by the immense number, but the use of diverse elements gave the proteus no time to adapt to any specific one. It partially de-differentiated as it flowed backward.

The mage took this as an advantage. The proteus was still largely liquid, although it was rapidly forming new mouths and eyes in preparation for a new attack. It appeared confused, and was trying to build itself a larger brain- -if only it could remember how.

The armored mage charged. As she did, though, the proteus revealed that it was not natural-born; it had once been a pony, and it had known enough to feint. Walls of flesh closed in around her, forming a crescent of thick, cracked skin. The rest came forward like a wave, the cracks in its armored skin tearing open into gaping mouths.

In another flash of blue, the mage teleported out of the way. The proteus had learned already, though. Its body swelled and rippled as it filled with fluid. When the mage reappeared, it exploded outward from hundreds of holes, pouring caustic, reeking acid in every direction. Sombra blocked the splatter from himself and Luciferian, but the mage had just come out of her teleportation and had not yet had time to regain her footing. The acid hit her mask, coating it deeply. When she reached to clear it, a pair of massive pincers closed around her, ending the fight in an instant.

In another flash of blue, the mage teleported out of the way. The proteus had learned already, though. Its body swelled and rippled as it filled with fluid. When the mage reappeared, it exploded outward from hundreds of holes, pouring caustic, reeking acid in every direction. Sombra blocked the splatter from himself and Luciferian, but the mage had just come out of her teleportation and had not yet had time to regain her footing. Yet the acid never struck her. Instead, her body flashed out of the teleportation in a blur, turning at various right angles at a pace too fast to see to avoid every drop of liquid. Before she had even stopped, her blur split into four.

The blurs charged toward the proteus, each attacking from a different angle and stopping only long enough for Sombra to see yet another spell he had not witnessed for several centuries. The mage had replicated herself.

Working in unison, the duplicates formed a powerful spell- -the sort that required at least six mages, all performing a different and exceedingly complex set of highly dissimilar calculations- -and executed it flawlessly. Their spell struck the creature from every angle, and it let out a deafening list of fern species as it condensed into a sphere.

The proteus had been momentarily blinded. It could not see the exact location of its opponent, for risk of dropping its armor, but its internal sensors were still intact. So it identified and locked onto the most powerful magic signal in the area.

Half of the sphere opened as a vast, fleshy flower. A plume of venomous, serrated needles of bone shot outward- -toward princess Penumbra.

“NO!” boomed Sombra, standing violently as he cast a spell to protect her.

His speed was too slow, though. The proteus’s aim was true, and its mark was struck in the center of the chest, her armor cleaved in twain as the lethal spine entered her chest.

he proteus had been momentarily blinded. It could not see the exact location of its opponent, for risk of dropping its armor, but its internal sensors were still intact. So it identified and locked onto the most powerful magic signal in the area.

The armored mage’s horn glowed, and an impenetrable wall of magic formed in front of princess Penumbra and Crozea in the second tier of the arena.

Half of the sphere opened as a vast, fleshy flower. A plume of venomous, serrated needles of bone shot outward- -toward princess Penumbra.

“NO!” boomed Sombra, standing violently as he cast a spell to protect her.

His speed was too slow, though- -and it was fortunate that the armored mage’s shield held true. One of the spines failed to vaporize, its tip stopped mere inches from the jewel in Penumbra’s chestplate.

Luciferian suddenly stood. “That isn’t possible,” he said, largely to himself. “She’s reacting events before they happen! If only...yes...” His own horn began to glow, and he began to summon numerous geometric, gear-like figures before him. He was conducting a spell based on a forgotten school of magic, one that he had learned from texts but that could never be practiced beyond only the most banal rudiments of its elegant theory. Those rudiments, he reasoned, might just be enough.

The mage’s duplicates merged back into herself, and she slowly began to step back, giving herself proper spacing for a simple wide-range inferno spell. The proteus flower turned toward her, writhing as a large eye opened within it. The remainder burst outward into waves of slender arms that dragged the creature forward on their numerous hands.

The armored mage fired her spell- -but as she did, the proteus played its trump-card. Its entire body spit open, revealing a forest of flesh that hardened into conical horns. Each charged with a pale green light and fired simultaneously.

The impact was pure force, but was powerful enough to not only to turn the inferno spell, but cause an exponential backfire. The resulting blast was so powerful that it tore through half the arena, destroying a number of buildings on the outside and cutting a swath through the city.

The mage’s duplicates merged back into herself, and she slowly began to step back, giving herself proper spacing for a wide-angle shield dome. The proteus flower turned toward her, writhing as a large eye opened within it. The remainder burst outward into waves of slender arms that dragged the creature forward on their numerous hands. The mage was so preoccupied that she did not notice that this time, someone else had come back with her.

The armored mage fired her spell- -but as she did, the proteus played its trump card. Its entire body spit open, revealing a forest of flesh that hardened into conical horns. Each charged with a pale green light and fired simultaneously.

“STOP!” cried Twilight Luciferian, suddenly standing. His horn glowed, and a massive wall of violet light formed across the whole of the arena, instantly stopping the proteus’s spell. As he ran toward the edge of the arena pit, he absently forced the proteus backward, surrounding it with an additional five plates of magic to trap it in a glowing violet cube. Although it raged and twisted with all its might, it could not even cause the slightest motion in the spell that now entrapped it.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Sombra, standing as well.

Twilight Luciferian burst out in laughter, although he did not take his eyes off the mage. “Did you see it? You had to have seen it! She’s reacting to its attacks before they happen!” He exposed his own spell to both the mage and Sombra. His pupils had narrowed into tiny points. “I confirmed it! She’s not foreseeing it; every time she fails, she JUMPS BACK IN TIME!”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “Are you absolutely sure?”

Luciferian laughed again. “YES! I confirmed it- -she’s a chronoplexer! A time wizard!”

“That is impossible.” Sombra himself looked at the mage. “Even the Twin Goddesses cannot alter the flow of time. Only one chronoplexer has ever been born to Equestria, and this mare is certainly not Starswirl the Bearded.”

“Well, clearly there are two!” Luciferian turned sharply toward the armored mare. “It explains everything! That suit? It’s meant to prevent temporal shear when she jumps. And the reason she doesn’t talk? She can’t. She must have traveled to the future at some point. Without the gift of prophecy, a single misplaced word could produce a paradox that would tear time itself apart!”

“Is this true?” asked Sombra.

The mare did not nod or make any gesture. Luciferian grinned. “She can’t even nod. Even the slightest gesture of communication could produce foreknowledge.” He looked up at Sombra. “Sire. Please. This is not an opportunity we can let slip by! Of all the magical skills, chronoplexy is the rarest. The next mage able to alter time might not be born for another thousand years. Of all the possible candidates, this is the one I recommend the most.”

“A mute armored mare?” Sombra reached the edge of the arena and stared down. “A mare with the offensive and defensive capacity of a freshly minted but mediocre mage-graduate. She is hardly the soldier I requested. Are you sure you do not want to revise your choice?”

“No, my king. I stand firm.”

“And you, Eternity?”

“I never thought it would happen, but I agree,” replied the unseen voice. “She has spunk. But the fact that I can’t reach her mind concerns me. So do ants. I hate ants SO MUCH.”

“So both of you support this candidate.” Sombra eyed the armored mare. “I see. I have also seen. That despite her weak disposition, her skill was so prodigious that she was able to perform spells I thought lost to time. Even among the dark unicorns of old, those skills were rare.”

Sombra’s body flashed with a bubble of red, and a fiery equivalent sphere appeared before the chronoplexer. Sombra emerged, having teleported to her, and loomed over her, casting a deep shadow.

He smiled, and his horn glowed with red light. The entire arena exploded with blinding red light. Luciferian’s spells holding the proteus shattered, and the creature was vaporized. Sombra then lowered the sphere of dark fusion and leveled it directly into the armored mage’s face.

Sombra’s body flashed with a bubble of red, and a fiery equivalent sphere appeared before the chronoplexer. Sombra emerged, having teleported to her, and loomed over her, casting a deep shadow. Before he could fully regain his footing, though, the mage had already leapt up and struck Sombra in the horn, sending him reeling back.

“My lord!” cried Luciferian.

“Father!” cried Penumbra, barely audible- -just barely- -from the top level.

Sombra shook his head, regaining his balance, and laughed. The force had actually been great enough to fracture his horn, and he tore away the broken end. It collapsed into dust as a new horn quickly regrew.

“Excellent,” he said, laughing softly. “You truly can see the future, and react to compensate. No doubt you have also now seen the extent of my own power. So I offer you a single, final choice. You do not need to speak. If you wish to leave, you may turn and depart. None her will pursue you.”

“My lord, we can’t let her get away- -”

“NONE. You will be free to go. Perhaps you will go to aid the Twins. Perhaps you will use your power to serve yourself. But I shall give you advice, from my long experience. Leave now. Do not bother becoming a warrior, or a master wizard. Retire. Find a husband, or wife. Live free in a small farm, raise foals. Let your life be peaceful and pleasant until my armies plunge this planet into darkness. If you are lucky, that will not be in your lifetime.” He paused. “Or, if you choose, join me. Become Thirteen, and stand at my side with the other twelve. You will be asked to do terrible things. Things that would haunt all but the strongest-willed to the point of madness. Or beyond. Your power will be greater than that of any mortal pony, but your life likely short, and hard. If your soul is already in ruin beyond redemption, then elect to stay. But I do not recommend it, if you value anything at all save for magic and strength alone.”

The mage stared at Sombra for a long moment. She raised one hoof, as if to turn, but then lowered it. She remained planted where she stood.

A smile crossed Sombra’s face. “So be it. Your name shall from henceforth be Thirteen of Thirteen, for you are the only one who will ever know the name you once had. It is best you forget it. Welcome to the Crystal Empire, and to your new home.”

Chapter 12: Orientation

Light flashed in the dark hallway as lightning passed across the sky. As it did, a second flash followed and Thirteen materialized. She had completed an assessment of the overall geography of the kingdom and found that it was significantly larger than she had anticipated. The Crystal Heart was intact and functional. Most importantly, her chronal lock was stable in all locations. The temporal implantation was complete- -for the time being.

The crystal lamps in the corridor began to glow, flickering to life with a harsh and unnatural light. Something in the darkness skittered out of the path of illumination back to the deepest of shadows.

Two ponies approached. One was a unicorn- -or, more specifically, once had been- -who was dressed in a moderately ornate formal outfit. The other was somewhat smaller and significantly thinner, and this time she wore neither a hood nor a shawl to cover her wings. She was an alicorn.

What struck Thirteen the most was the difference between the two- -how cold and hard the eyes of the hornless unicorn had become, and how innocent and bright the eyes of the alicorn looked beneath her heavy makeup.

“Lady Thirteen.” The unicorn bowed slightly. “Greetings. I am Sombra’s steward. I do not have a name beyond that. I have been tasked with informing you of our procedures and initial duties.”

Thirteen slowly turned her head toward the alicorn. The alicorn looked up at her, almost amazed. Though her eyes were pure and innocent, there was something wrong with them. As if there was not quite a full pony behind them.

“This is princess Penumbra Heartbreak, firstborn daughter of the Eternal King Sombra. Her father thought it would be informative for her to receive the same orientation. An unorthodox choice, but a wise one, considering her future role in the kingdom.”

The steward looked to Penumbra, and Penumbra smiled and bowed deeply. “Greetings, Lady Thirteen. I am pleased to meet you.” She lifted her head, and her large eyes turned to the parallel lines on Thirteen’s flank. “I just have to ask...how do you fit your tail in the armor? Did you shave it down?” She leaned to one side and saw that Thirteen did, in fact, have a tail, but it was short and thin. “You must have shaved it down. I wanted to shave my tail, but Lady Crozea said that only dirty harlots- -”

“Princess Penumbra.”

Penumbra stood at attention. “Yes, steward?”

“Etiquette.”

“Yes. Of course, steward.” She faced Thirteen and bowed. “My deepest apologies, Lady Thirteen. That has been happening more often, and I do not understand why.”

Though she made no gesture to indicate it, Thirteen suddenly understood. This child was only a few months old; she had been subjected to a substantial alteration in her age.

“Her presence will also be useful,” continued the steward. “The king has informed me of your situation. You cannot speak, write, or gesture in agreement due to the nature of your magic. This will make some things challenging, although the best of the Thirteen in my humble opinion have been those that spoke with action, not words.” She turned to Penumbra. “Princess Heartbreak will serve to ask questions in your stead. As she seems to be good at it.” She began walking. “Please follow.”

The three of them began walking, with Penumbra and Thirteen following behind the steward, watching her white tail swish from side to side.

“The Crystal Empire has a fully self-sufficient economy, powered by peasant labor and imperial conquest of neighboring nations,” began the steward. “As a member of the Dark Thirteen, your research budged it virtually unlimited, so long as you produce.”

“Produce what?” asked Penumbra.

“Wealth, power, control- -but most importantly spells. Spells and technology to enrich the Eternal King. Since he himself is busy ruling, the Dark Thirteen are responsible for researching, developing, and finding spells that are useful to him. You will also be expected to help maintain the kingdom, and serve as a military commander if you show skill in that regard.”

The steward turned to face them. “There are currently twelve other members of the Thirteen, as the name implies. They are numbered but placed in no particular order. They are Twilight Luciferian, Scarlet Mist, Eternity Gaze, the Nameless One, Emeth, Necrophilo of Canterlot, Crozea the Witchdoctor, Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, Holder Heartfelt, the Blue Knight, Butonhooks the Mad, and The Infiltrator. You are Thirteen of Thirteen, completing the list.”

Penumbra blinked. She had more or less known that there were thirteen members of the Dark Thirteen, but the implication that she had not met nearly them all had never occurred to her.

“There are so many!”

“There are exactly thirteen.”

“Yes, but- -well...um...”

“Do you have a question, princess?”

Penumbra looked at the floor, took a breath, and then looked up. “Yes, steward. Which of these are good ponies? Nice ones, like Lady Crozea or Lady Mist, or Lord Luciferian. What I mean is, which ones will make good friends- -for Thirteen, of course.”

“None of them are ‘good’. Each are quite evil. That is the point.” she looked to Thirteen. “The Dark Thirteen inspire fear in the population, to control the slaves and make them work. Nevertheless...” She turned back to Penumbra. “Some are more willing than others to collaborate. As a unicorn, you should avoid Scarlet Mist. Lord Al’Hrabnaz and the Infiltrator keep to themselves; it is unlikely you will ever see the former except at formal functions, and the latter at all. The Blue Knight is almost invariably questing in distant lands. The Nameless One is not a pony, so we think, and he or she only manifests in times of the direst need. Eternity Gaze supports you, but she cannot access your mind, making communication impossible.”

“It’s true,” sighed Eternity. “It’s like trying to read a walnut’s mind. Except harder, because walnuts DO think. And SCREAM.”

“Meaning for collaboration, your best option is with Twilight Luciferian or Necrophilo of Canterlot. The two are rivals, so I would suggest choosing one or the other. Buttonhooks the Mad is also quite civil; you can find him reposing in the bull-nettle pit of the botanical garden every afternoon. Crozea is not approachable, nor is Emeth.”

“What about the other one?”

“Holder Heartfelt is essentially useless, unless you have a question about rocks. He is also exceedingly dangerous. Under no circumstances should you approach him.”

“Why have I not met them all?” asked Penumbra.

“Because you have no reason to. Now please be mindful that you are meant to ask questions for Thirteen, NOT for yourself.”

“Of course, steward.” Penumbra bowed. “My apologies, steward.”

The steward nodded and began walking again. “As the king’s steward, reports are normally submitted to me except in matters of national security or in cases where you decide the news should be reported to the king directly. Be wise in your choice; triviality is punished harshly.”

“But she can’t talk.”

“Yes. Which makes reporting difficult. Still, it is critical to understand that I am an extension of the king, If you were to require anything, come to me. And if I bring you an order, know that it comes from our lord directly.”

“I had no idea how important you are!”

“I assist the king directly in the management of the kingdom. It is my greatest honor, and I take it very seriously.”

Penumbra paused. “Steward? Have you ever considered becoming one of the Dark Thirteen?”

The steward stopped and looked over her shoulder. She did not bother to hide the scar from where her horn had been torn from her head, but supposed that the princess was simply to naive to understand what that meant.

“Perhaps a story will prove illuminating of or king’s benevolence and his power,” she said, turning once again to face Thirteen and Penumbra. “I, like you, Penumbra, was born a princess.”

Penumbra gasped. “I have a SISTER?!”

“No. A princess of a different kingdom. The one that is currently our southernmost vassal state. It, like me, no longer has a name. I had dedicated my life to the study of magic, and to serving my father.”

“Like...like me...”

The steward nodded. “Our nation was independent, refusing to join the Crystal Empire or the empire of Celestia and Nightmare Moon. As such, the goddesses gave us no protection when Sombra came.

“He liberated us, and burned out nation to the ground. My father was deposed. I, in my hubris, challenged Sombra to a duel. By our code, this would have ended the war with no further violence. Had I won, we would have won the war, even with our army crushed and our nation in tatters. I was our only hope.”

“But you...you didn’t win, did you?”

The steward shook her head. No tears came to her eyes; instead, they remained hard and cold. “I was defeated in less than three seconds. And my horn was torn from my skull, so that I could never use my beloved magic again.”

“That’s...that’s...” Penumbra put her hoof to her chest. She did not understand the word for why she hurt so much inside.

“I was a fool to challenge a god. I deserved what came to me. But king Sombra...he could have crushed me then, or taken me to his stables of mares to be dressed in jewels and humiliated every day for the rest of my life. But he did not.” Her eyes began to soften slightly, and she wiped away the beginning of a tear. “He recognized the mage I had once been, and treated me with respect. Though I was defeated, he gave me this role, and in doing so let me assist in commanding not only my home kingdom but many others. For this, I am eternally grateful. And for this, my loyalty will never deviate.” Her eyes narrowed. “So yours ought never to either. Because if you seek to betray him, I will end you myself.”

“I...I had no idea.”

“And know this, Penumbra.” The steward looked her in the eyes. “Know that if the goddesses come and you allow your father to be defeated, your fate will be the same as mine. Except that the goddesses will not be so kind. Not to you. Not to any of us.”

Penumbra gulped. “Y- -yes, steward. I will commit this information to memory.”

“Excellent.” She began walking again. “Continuing on. Thirteen, you will initially be asked to follow and assist in protecting the king and the princess in the coming months. Afterward, you will be tasked with largely external missions, along with the Blue Knight, Buttonhooks the Mad, and The Infiltrator. Due to the nature of your magic, research may not be your main concern. Nevertheless, let me give you a tour of the facilities, starting with the garden and crystal-enchantment workshop...”

They continued, and Penumbra fell silent. Thirteen looked at the alicorn through the digital HUD on the inside of her helmet. The readings were correct; she was the target- -but she was not how she had been described. Something may have already gone wrong.

Thirteen began to wonder if this was truly the right timeline after all.

Chapter 13: The Knight

It was an otherwise ordinary day in early spring when the shield defending the Crystal Empire trembled. All of the crystal ponies stopped their work to tremble in fear, knowing for sure that the twin goddesses had come to enslave them- -at least until their chains were tugged and various whips cracked to pull them back to the mines or farms.

When the shield did not collapse, though, the slaves of the Empire shuddered. Whoever had approached it had come with a spell to open it. So very few possessed codes like that- -and those ponies were infinity worse than the Sun and Moon.

On the far western side of the Empire, a procession began in silence. The ponies in those areas retreated to the sides of the roads, and those in buildings sealed the shutters- -but only enough to let them still see out in silence.

And so the somber and terrible parade passed through the broad crystal streets. At its center stood an enormous cart on which sat a tremendous, ghastly skull. Behind it came other carts filled with numerous immense bones: femurs, ribs, horns, vast claws; even inner-ear bones the size of a pony. Beyond that were cars loaded down with containers, many of which were overflowing with treasure and strange artifacts. Then, finally, came the teams of ponies tied to the rear, still shivering and blue from the immense cold beyond the shield. A few had stopped walking and were dragged unconscious along with the others.

None of them were crystal ponies. They had come from every race: earth ponies in heavy chains, unicorns with their horns shackled in dimeritium, Pegasi with their wings clipped and banded- -as well as a smattering of donkeys, cows, and other sorts of sentient creatures.

What drew the most attention, though, were those who walked in the front. The whole of the apparatus was hauled by a team of type-B golems, their armor battered and dented from constant battles. On the front edge of the cart lounged ponies-at-arms who were not even ponies at all. Rather, they were griffons. Those of the Crystal Empire rarely saw members of that race; none of them would have known that these griffons were substantially larger than they should have been, or that their owl-like eyes were a product of severe forced mutation. But the crystal ponies did take note of their strange armor, and the silver swords they wore on their backs.

At the very front of them was the most horrible of them all. Leading the procession was an immense unicorn clad in deep-blue armor. It was angular, harsh, and heavy, though from his motions it was impossible to tell that it burdened him in the slightest. None who witnessed him knew his name, but all knew him as Ten of Thirteen: the Blue Knight.

The procession continued through the vast city, rising high into the capital district to where the Citadel stood, and to where both the kingdom’s shield and its perpetual miasma of fear originated. Some of the griffons began to grow restless, as they had been trained by long hard lives to sense evil- -but they stayed, as their long and hard lives had also taught them the value of coin. The ponies in the rear began to protest and wail, pulling themselves backward and crying to the blank-eyed crystal ponies for help. They did not yet realize that it was already too late.

The golems only stopped at the main gate beyond which no commoners could pass. The griffons fluttered down and took up stations, with a few goading the new goods to be quieter. Only the Blue Knight passed forward, across the courtyard that surrounded the Heart of Darkness. He caught sight of it, and the vestiges of new machinery being installed around it. Though he noted it, his attention was almost entirely focused on those who had come to meet him.

The first among them was the king, while the remainder were parts of his entourage. The only one that the Blue Knight noted was a particular skinny white academic.

At ten paces, the Blue Knight suddenly stopped and drew his sword. It was enormous and made from a strange mottled metal, the likes of which were almost never seen in the latter days of Equestria. With a flick of his amber magic, he turned the sword to face downward and easily stabbed its tip deep into the corundum of the walkway. Then he knelt.

Actuators fired inside his armor, releasing the clamps that held his helmet. Several of the breathing hoses linking it to his recirculate released with a loud hiss; the gas steamed in the cold air. Then the Blue Knight removed his helmet and shook out his long mane, which was pale blue save for a single white stripe. It very nearly matched the teal of his body.

“My lord, King Sombra!”

“Zither Heartstrings,” replied the king, acknowledging his knight.

The Blue Knight raised his head and smiled. “My lord! In thine name, I have quested long and hard into deepest lands, to the realm where there be dragons!” He gestured to the enormous skeleton. “I have slain this foul beast in thine glorious name, and retrieved from it not only its horde, but numerous alchemical reagents for thine spells, and its bones and scales for the armor of thine forces!”

Sombra took account of the supplies and nodded. “This offering pleases me. You have done well, my knight. Though in the future, there is no need to bring something so horrid close to my castle. We have rendering knackery for that function.” His eyes turned to the new slaves, and they screamed and recoiled in horror. “As for those?”

“Ah, twas many a village we passed through on the way to fight the beast! I saw to it that each was liberated, and its citizens given the freedom of joining your great Empire! Much booty was claimed!”

Somepony in Sombra’s entourage snickered. The Blue Knight’s orange eyes immediately flitted to the source of the disrespect, and much to his surprise saw a young girl standing between Scarlet Mist and a pony in much thinner blue-violet armor.

The Blue Knight gasped. “My lord! Who be this fair maiden, whose form is like that of the most divine sculpture?”

Sombra turned slowly, looking from the girl back to the Blue Knight. “This is my daughter. Penumbra Heartbreak.”

Penumbra seemed tremendously surprised that she had been caught- -as well as addressed by name by her father- -and she shakily bowed.

“Pon’ my horn!” cried the Blue Knight. “Was I truly questing for so long? How the kingdom has changed in my absence! But indeed, for the better!”

In a remarkably swift motion, the Blue Knight approached Penumbra. She took a step back, not sure what to do, and the Knight took one of her front hooves in his. Despite his size and armor, he was incredibly gentle.

“Such be the paradox of life’s eternal mystery!” he proclaimed. “As our glorious king is the epitome of power, strength, and fortitude, his daughter is the archetype of beauty, grace, and daintiness! I have in battle faced Celestia and her evil horde, and having witnessed a goddess with mine own eyes, I can be assured that I have never before witnessed one so lovely as yourself, oh fair Crystal Princess!”

Penumbra tried to suppress a giggle, and was darkening several shades of red.

“Zither!” cried Luciferian, pushing forward. “Unhoof her! You forget yourself!”

“Neigh!” laughed the Knight. “Tis it not a knight’s ultimate honor to behold a damsel, to serve her in the name of courtly love? But an elderly wizard would not understand this, I suppose.”

“I am NOT OLD- -”

Zither dropped to his knees, still holding Penumbra’s hoof. He looked deep into her eyes. “My Lady,” he said, softly. “I have sworn an oath to forever serve your father, but I think it is well within reason to extend that oath to you. I hereby swear upon the Ancient Sign to protect and defend you, to ensure that you, our divine and glorious princess, never come to harm- -to lay down my very life for thine honor alone, should it be asked of me! That I shall scour this land, as I have for you father, and perform glorious deeds in thine name! I swear this on my very SOUL!”

He leaned forward, and tapped his horn against Penumbra’s.

POMF!

The entire crowd gasped. Penumbra’s wings had both suddenly and fully extended, and now stood completely erect for all the world to see.

“EEK!” She cried, releasing the Blue Knight and trying unsuccessfully to catch them and press them back down. “I don’t know what is happening to meeeeee!”

A red glow formed around Penumbra and rather uncomfortably clamped her wings back against her. Penumbra looked up at Scarlet Mist, but saw that her horn was not glowing. She gasped, realizing that the glow came instead from her father’s horn.

“Pon’ my horn!” gasped Zither, himself blushing. She unfastened his cape and draped it over Penumbra’s back. “Please, my princess, I beg your pardon! This was never my intention, I would never- -”

“Zither,” said Sombra, slowly.

Zither dropped into a bow. “My lord. My actions are unforgivable. I assure you my intentions were pure. But any punishment you may- -”

“I have no need to punish you. Swearing allegiance to my daughter in my vert presence was a bold decision. I am sure you realize just how much of a risk you have just taken.”

“Of course, my lord.” Both Scarlet Mist and Twilight Luciferian- -and even Thirteen, who was enjoying this display thoroughly- -knew that he was lying.

“However, I value you for your boldness. I approve of your decision. But know that I hold this oath to be binding. There will be consequences should you betray it.”

“My lord. There is not an action in the world you can take against me than would be more painful or humiliating than my loss of honor as a knight. An oath once taken can never be broken.”

“I assure you, I can. And I will. Should the need arise.” Sombra pointed at the dragon skeleton. “Complete your duty and see to it that the skeleton is taken care of. As a reward, take whatever you deem fit as a trophy. Additionally, remove the vedmaki from my sight. I find them abhorrent creatures.”

“Of course, my lord.” The Blue Knight stood and immediately obeyed his orders. As he departed and called to the griffons in their strange, chirping language, Penumbra could not keep her eyes off his gleaming armored flank.

“Scarlet, take the princess inside. She is perhaps not yet ready for public appearances.”

“Clearly.”

“My- -my apologies, my king.” Penumbra bowed to her father. “I will mediate on my failures and learn from them.”

“Then you have a great deal to mediate on. Go. NOW.”

Scarlet Mist picked up Penumbra and quickly carried her off. Thirteen looked to Sombra, nodded, and floated off, lifted by the glow of her own horn. That only left Sombra, his steward, and Twilight Luciferian, the latter of whom was quaking with rage.

“Twilight,” snapped Sombra. “Control yourself.”

“He cannot be allowed to speak to my- -to the princess like that! The disrespect, the flippance- -”

Sombra took a step forward and was suddenly looming over Luciferian. Luciferian, who had not been prepared, instinctively recoiled, only to cringe when he realized that he had shown weakness to the one pony who must never be allowed to witness it.

“I tolerate your rivalry with Necrophilo,” whispered the king, “but I will NOT have you measuring horns against all of my other unicorns. Do not think that you are dominant, mage. The whole of your magic is but a speck compared to mine, and if allowed to grow, your ego will be your undoing.”

Luciferian looked up and glared into the eyes of his king. He felt a cold, damp yellow hoof slide around his neck.

“Do it now,” whispered the voice of a thing that would never truly be a mare. “He doesn’t know. You are far more powerful than he ever will be. Just manifest me. Take my power, and my body. Become a GOD.”

Luciferian felt a substantial burning sensation in his front left hoof, and the surgical scar just above his boot began to itch. He swallowed his pride, though, and bowed.

“Of course, my king,” he said. “It seems I am the one who has forgotten myself. I simply had become incensed at a perception of an insult to your daughter.”

“Then you are a fool. You have come to see her as a pony. She is not, nor is she my daughter. Not in the truest sense of the word. She is merely a living weapon. As you said yourself, her only value now is to strike fear into the hearts of my crystal slaves. She is nothing else. Nothing beyond that.”

“Yes, my lord. Of course. She is nothing but a tool.”

That, at least, was something Luciferian knew to be true.

Chapter 14: Others

The spell came from the left: a long whip of red magic, twisting and distorting as it whistled through the air. Penumbra cast a shield spell, but did not have the time to adjust the angle properly. She took the blow head-on and her spell shattered. The magic struck her in the side of the face, sending her sprawling to her right. She twisted in the air and landed on her feet, sliding across the floor. She turned her head and spit several teeth onto the floor. It was not the first time. They always grew back.

“You’re getting distracted,” spat Scarlet Mist, raising another surge of magic, this one in the form of several simultaneous cutting beams.

“And you’re getting slow!”

The beams converged and Penumbra leapt, spreading her wings and twisting between the lines of magic. They twisted, coming toward her from their ends, but Penumbra had seen this before. She tilted over them, flipping, and fell against the floor in a split, flattening herself as the beams passed close enough to singe several hairs off the end of her mane.

“My body is depleting,” said Scarlet Mist, marching forward through the red fog that seemed to surround everything. It was true; her motions had grown slow and arthritic, and her normally crimson mane had developed graying streaks. “It is not compatible. I am rejecting it. They only ever last a few months. What is your excuse?”

Another bolt of magic, this time in the form of long, lethal needles. This time Penumbra succeeded; she formed an oblique shield, and while it shattered, it changed the course of the projectiles such that she was able to roll to one side and fire a counterattack that consisted of little more than a plume of sparkles.

“WEAK.” Scarlet Mist raised one of her hooves, and thralls burst from the fog. One charged Penumbra with a spear, and she immediately jumped into the air, landing gracefully on the edge of its blade. Her armored hooves clicked along the length of the spear before she wrapped her legs around the neck of the thrall and twisted him sideways, using his armored body to deflect an incoming magical barrage. She then stood, pirouetting on one of her front hooves, and flipped onto the head of another thrall. As she did, she grinned and kicked off the thrall’s mask.

The thrall immediately stopped and looked around, confused and terrified. “What who when how WHERE AM I?!”

“Sorry, miss.” Penumbra sprung off her back, causing them both to be shoved out of the way of an incoming plume of magic. As Penumbra landed she slid, dodging a blow from the third thrall’s sword before knocking him off balance and stealing his weapon. She promptly threw it toward Scarlet Mist’s heart.

The blade stopped instantly, surrounded by red magic mere inches from her chest.

“I almost had you!”

“Almost, yes. But note that this sword does not have a hoof-ring.”

Penumbra swore loudly as the unicorn thrall grabbed her tail with his magic and pulled hard. Penumbra cried out in pain as her rear was pulled to the side, but even as she fell she cast a full-body shield spell. Every time she had tried before, she had passed out- -but in this case, she knew it was her only option.

The surge of magic that struck her from the side was enormous, and it washed over her like a wave, not bothering to shatter her shield but simply penetrating its primitive assembly design. The spell blocked some of it, but Penumbra was still pulled to one side and slammed into the still-confused freed thrall. She flipped- -unintentionally this time- -and bounced several times before landing on the ground.

Scarlet Mist approached. “That blow would have put a normal pony in the hospital for two months at least. Despite the fact that your ridiculous princess body can’t seem to put on weight, you appear durable.”

Penumbra sat up and coughed.

“I wonder just how durable you are?”

Scarlet Mist formed a blade from her magic and raised it. Penumbra smiled.

“You lose,” she said, hooking her hoof into the fallen thrall-mask beside her. She kicked it hard, landing a direct hit against Scarlet Mist’s horn. Scarlet Mist cried out in rage and took a step back, her spell failing.

Penumbra stood, wobbling heavily. “I finally got you.”

“Did you?”

Scarlet Mist extended her hoof. In it was a sphere of red glass- -containing a single enchanted flash-bee.

Penumbra gasped, realizing too late that, like always, she had failed. She covered her mouth, but it was already too late. The mist was collapsing around her, drawing closer, rising into hideous columns and shapes that twisted and condensed into severe and terrible blades.

She tried to hold her breath, but could not. When she inhaled, the gas entered her nose. It smelled like iron and rot.

Then it was drawn out. The fog around her separated and cleared. Not completely, but so that it was reduced only down to her ankles.

“Sloppy. Incredibly sloppy. Not even worthy of my time. You failed to take environmental consideration into account. If I had my way, you would be screaming on the floor as I tear your mind apart right now.”

“Then why aren’t I?”

“Because I’m curious. This isn’t simply you being a failure, as per usual, because I’ve seen you succeed at this exercise many times.”

“I’ve never won.”

“Nor could you expect to. Your performance is never ‘good’, but it has been MARKEDLY better than...well, whatever half-baked aborted attempt you just gave me. You are not focused.”

“Am I not allowed to think about things?”

“No. You are quite literally only allowed to think what I tell you.”

“I took down the thralls, at least!”

“Yes. Three mindless, barely competent slaves.” Scarlet Mist levitated the removed thrall-mask and slammed it on its rightful owner as she tried to walk past. The pony twitched and then stood at attention. “We trade skill for obedience. Had these been Celestia’s soldiers, you would be in chains by now. Perhaps even strung up in the dungeon. And beaten like a pinata.”

“I am doing my best!”

“No. You are quite clearly not.” Scarlet Mist began to circle. “I wonder...I could enter your mind myself, but at this stage only one of us would make it back out in one piece. So, an alternative. Eternity? Are you watching?”

“I am always watching,” replied the disembodied voice. “Right now? There’s an ant in the eastern quadrant trying to carry away a piece of corn- -an ant committing HERESY! A crystal pony will be beaten twice for wasting precious food! Also, telling you what Penumbra is thinking would be a breach of privacy.”

“So?”

“It’s stallions. Obviously. It makes her wings flutter at night, when she’s asleep.”

Penumbra blushed severely. “You have no right- -”

“We have every right,” retorted Scarlet Mist. “You are interfering with my task.” She stopped walking. “And don’t think I am unaware of WHICH stallion you are thinking about. I saw your dirty little wings when the procession arrived.”

“And so what!” cried Penumbra, turning sharply. “Have you SEEN Lord Heartstrings? Or are you really that old that you don’t notice?”

“Notice what, pray tell?”

“The booty,” whispered Eternity.

Penumbra attempted to compose herself, but did not bother to adjust her expression. If she had power, she might have struck out at Scarlet Mist then and there. “He’s a handsome knight, and I’m an adorable filly. What else is there to know?”

“And what? What do you think he is? Some fairytale character, a knight in shining armor? It’s an act! His order collapsed a thousand years before he was born- -and he is no chivalrous hero. His soul is as black as mine.”

“You have no soul! Lord Twilight told me that nobles- -”

“Zither Heartstrings is NOT a noble. You have no concept of what that term even means, what it costs. And NEVER believe what Luciferian tells you. He lies. Constantly.” Scarlet Mist approached, and Penumbra puffed herself up to be almost as tall as her teacher. “Listen to me, and listen well. You are a princess, and he is a knight. The relationship is meant to be one-sided. Where you to actually reciprocate, you would put him in an unbelievably awkward position.”

“I’d like to put him in an awkward position,” added Eternity.

“Or are you both just jealous that I am so much cuter than you both?”

Scarlet Mist stared down at the defiant princess. “What is wrong with you? You have never been like this before?”

“Maybe I’ve grown a spine.”

Scarlet Mist stared for a moment longer. Then Penumbra felt her head thrown back as her horn was grabbed hard by crimson magic. Before she could cast a shield spell, she was punched in the side of the face so hard that she was sure her jaw had been broken. It clicked loudly, and she spit out several more teeth, as well as a thick black fluid- -and then turned back to Scarlet Mist. She glared directly into the eye-slits of her mask.

“Are you going to give me another, or are you going to get out of my way?”

Scarlet Mist held a moment longer, then threw Penumbra’s horn to the side. Penumbra slid past her toward where a door appeared, removing her extraneous armor and clipping her long skirt around the base of what was left. She paused at a mirror, adjusting her tiara, mane, and replying her makeup.

“Where are you going? We’re not finished.”

“I will be covering the theoretical portion of my training in the library today,” growled Penumbra. “Away from you!”

“And you stopped to fix your makeup?”

“A princess must look presentable at ALL TIMES!”

She left in a huff, attempting to slam the door behind her. Unfortunately, the door was only a metaphor, and therefore not truly capable of being slammed. Still, in a few moments she was gone.

“You didn’t have to hit her.”

“No. I did. If she had cowered in fear or run crying, then all hope would surely be lost and my project a failure. But she stood and faced me. So it is still her in there. Something is bothering her I suppose.” Scarlet Mist turned back to her red fog. “Likely a hormonal imbalance. Whatever it is, let Crozea deal with it. It’s not my problem.”

And with that, she disappeared into the fog.

Penumbra stamped down the hallway- -or, rather, attempted to. In actuality, every step she made was too perfectly graceful to make any more noise than a quiet click, despite her wearing heavy armored boots.

“Lady Eternity,” she called “Lady Eternity!”

“You don’t have to yell,” replied the voice in her head. “In fact, you don’t even need to speak. You are close enough that I can hear your thoughts.”

“I am presently VERY well aware of that. Lady Eternity, it is beyond me to doubt your decisions, but what you did- -it was- -it was UNCOUTH!” That was literally the strongest insult that Penumbra knew.

“I never claimed to be couth. Which is not a word. Or a pony. For all you know, I’m a yak. Or a head floating in a glass jar. Or a small pile of jelly. Not that it matters. I thought it was fun, so I did it.” Eternity paused. “And this is not the way to the library.”

“No. As I am not going to the library.”

“Because you can’t read?”

“I can read quite well!” lied Penumbra. “No, because I have become agitated. I need a walk.”

“Not a good idea. You’re not supposed to walk in the Citadel alone.”

“As you have so clearly informed me, Lady Eternity, I am apparently never alone.”

“I don’t count. Your safety does not take precedence over my entertainment.”

“Then you can at least help me.”

“I think the fact that I’m a disembodied mental voice makes it implicit that I can’t. Or explicit, if you’re into that. And I am...”

“Where is Lord Heartstrings staying?”

Eternity paused. The air actually felt icy for a moment. “That’s not a question I should answer.”

“You mean you do not know.”

“Now, now, don’t try to bait me. You can’t. I’m a master at it myself, so I know a thing or two.”

“You owe me.”

“I owe you? For what?”

“For making me yell at Lady Mist!” Penumbra paused and put her hoof to her head. “I can’t believe I did that! After everything she’s done to help me, even when noponoy else believed I could do anything at all...and I yelled at her! She must be so disappointed in me!” She took a breath, trying to calm down. It did not work. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t...ohhh, it doesn’t feel good.” She took another breath and steeled herself.

“But you’re still going to act like a princess.”

“I need to regain composure so that I can apologize later. A walk. But I would very much like to see Lord Heartstrings. What he said to me, I can’t get it out of my head, and I think it’s connected to why I was so mean to Lady Mist.”

“That seems logical. Logic is stupid. So painful, so terrible. Regardless. I don’t think I should help you find him.”

“Why?”

“Because Misty was right. I heard what he said. I was there. Sort of. The thing with Zither is, he likes to pretend to be a knight.”

“He is not one already?”

“No...he is...but not that kind of knight. It’s complicated. But that’s not the point. Now, I have to admit, he is exceedingly attractive. Even with the...well...I guess you’ll find out eventually. But beggars can’t be choosers; my body is far worse than his at this point.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning don’t become a seer. It has costs. Never mind. The point is, he’s a KNIGHT. That whole promise? It was meant to be courtly love. As in, one-sided.”

“I don’t understand. What is love? And why is it courtly?”

“It’s a ceremonial thing. He performs deeds in your honor to glorify you, you wave to him when he goes off questing- -but you’re at different stations. You can never be together, and you both have to know it...annnnnd your heart is beating faster. Great. I’m turning you on.”

“Please stop.”

“Sorry.”

“Then I’ll go to him and- -and clarify it or something. This is all so confusing.”

“And if your soft, force-grown filly body ends up being snuggled in his strong, knightly arms…?”

Penumbra’s wings extended involuntarily. She squeaked and tried to push them back into place. “I said stop, please!”

“I can’t help myself. It’s just so adorable.”

“There will be no snuggling! I simply want to talk!”

“And how do you think Twilight would feel about this?”

Penumbra’s breath caught, and her wings immediately went limp. She had forgotten about him, and how she felt about him. The feeling was similar, but very different. It was not as strong and visceral, but still just as powerful. He had been so kind and helped her when she needed it, and while he was not nearly as physically impressive he had an air of charm and wisdom- -and an aura that reminded her of her father.

“Oh my,” she whispered. “I have stallions competing over me!”

Her wings immediately pompfed outward again.

Penumbra sighed. “Can you at least tell me, Lady Eternity?”

“Princess. Did you know that I cannot walk? I’d like to. But I can’t. Stuck in one spot. Forever. Consider yourself very lucky. Yes, I know where he is. He’s even conversing with one of those amazingly alluring griffon mutants right now. Ohhhh how I’d like to rub myself in catnip and...” She paused. “What I mean is, here’s a learning experience. Nobody’s going to be holding your hoof forever. I trust you to find your own way.”

Penubra sighed, and bowed. “I thank you greatly for your trust, Lady Eternity. I respect your decision, even if it is ridiculous and stupid.”

“Ha! I like hormonal Penumbra, she’s so much more fun!”

Penumbra looked down the long crystal hallways, and chose one. She had no idea where she was going, but was led on by a feeling she did not at all understand.

There were only a few hallways in the Citadel that Penumbra had ever been allowed to traverse, and she had always been attended by another- -whether it be Crozea, one of her nurses, or even Twilight Luciferian. On her own, though, she quickly realized that the crystal palace was immensely vast- -and she became lost within a matter of minutes.

She paused, staring down several seemingly infinite hallways. All was dark. There were few if any windows, and the few she found were high and small and showed nothing but dark gray sky and snow. The rest was left unlit and unused, save for pipes and conduits humming with strange energy from unseen and terrible machinery.

Scarlet Mist had not given Penumba back her flash-bee, so she was forced to use her horn to generate light. With her magic weak, the best she could accomplish was a dim, flickering blue light that only seemed to make the shadows deeper and more animated.

“I have no idea where I am,” she sighed.

No help came. Only a strange sound from the vents. In the distance, Penumbra watched as a small door was kicked open- -and a crystal pony dropped out.

“Wait,” said Penumbra, recognizing him. “Hey! Wait!”

“MONSTER!” he cried, terrified. “You’ll never take me back! I won’t go! NEVER!”

With that, he scampered into a low vent, momentarily getting his rump stuck- -but sliding in completely before Penumbra could catch him. All that could be heard of him was his mutterings and screams as he descended back into whatever dusty machinery he had come from.

“Well that was unhelpful,” sighed Penumbra. She lifted her head and looked around- -only to see what she thought was a distant light.

She moved toward it, following the glow, fully expecting to find a lamp of some sort- -or at the very least another crystal pony to ask directions from.

It was not a lamp, though. Penumbra was not sure what it was, only that it was a sickening violet color. As she turned a corner, though, she saw its source and understood what was producing it: it was magic.

In the distance, she could see Twilight Luciferian crossing through the moldering, dusty halls. The glow was not coming from his horn, but rather from a crystal levitating at his side.

Penumbra took a deep gasp to call for him, but stopped when a thought occurred to her. She could not help but wonder how he would feel if he knew what she had been feeling about the Blue Knight. He would feel betrayed- -and the idea made Penumbra feel incredibly dirty. For the first time in her life, she felt ashamed.

The distraction of the sudden emotion caused her light to snuff out. In the distance, Twilight Luciferian turned, having seen a dim flicker suddenly go out. Without her own light blinding her, Penumbra was able to see him clearly in his own blue light. She did not understand why his mouth was dripping with some unnamed silver fluid- -or why he was carrying a small circular case packed with high-grade crystal samples.

Something sparked within Penumbra. Something strange, a feeling she did not like- -yet one that encouraged her not to light her horn. Instead, she tucked herself against a wall, moving rapidly and silently in her metal boots.

“Lady Eternity,” she whispered. “Are you seeing this?”

There was no response. Only a sort of throbbing static that seemed to pulsate with Luciferian’s light. He stared into the darkness a moment longer, and then proceeded on his way.

Penumbra followed him. She did not know why. She should have greeted him and bowed, as was her programming, but something told her that it was dangerous right now. Something in his eyes was strange, and the silence with which he moved was somehow disturbing.

When she reached his path, Penumbra saw that the floor was covered in thick dust and a residue of snow from an arcade of arrow-slits. It was unused- -and he had left no hoofprints. She supposed that was not unreasonable; there were spells for it that he was no doubt able to perform. Penumbra did not know them, so was forced to leave her own small trail as she moved silently past the windows. Outside, she could see nothing but snow, and hear nothing but wind- -but at some points, in the distance, she could see lights from what she imagined was the Crystal Empire below, as well as a large, cold light beyond the clouds and in the sky. A light that seemed to stare deeply into her very soul.

In the distance, she saw the tail of Lord Twilight’s coat swish through a gap. Penumbra rushed toward the door. There were no alternative paths, and no secondary doors; whatever room was at the end was the one he was in.

When she reached it, Penumbra peeked around the door, not knowing exactly what she would see. What she saw, though, was an empty room.

“Huh?” She poked her head in and looked around. There were no other exits or doors, or even closets; only a few piles of long-abandoned crystal furniture and faded, decaying tapestries and rugs.

Penumbra entered the room. “Hello?” she asked. “Is anyone here? Lord Twilight?”

There was no response, although Penumbra felt very cold. There were not even windows, but she felt strange and sick. She smelled something like distant, rotting flowers.

The only other object she saw was a large mirror- -and as her gaze turned toward it, Penumbra noticed the drips of silver on the floor. They looked like the substance that had been on Lord Twilight’s face, and they led toward the mirror.

Penumbra reached down and dabbed her hoof in the substance. She smelled it carefully, and then tasted it. Crozea had taught her some of the most basic aspects of alchemy, including its reagents, and while this substance looked like mercury it was thinner and tasted and smelled far different. Penumbra had no idea what it was, but the dull glimmer it gave off made her shiver.

She slowly approached the mirror. The drops stopped there. They did not go around it or behind it- -they simply stopped. Which made no sense at all.

Penumbra stared into the glass. It was the first full-length mirror she had ever seen, and what she saw gave her pause. It was a pony that she did not recognize, whose appearance made her dizzy and confused. She was willowy and thin, far more so than any normal pony, with enormous, pointed eyes and long-black hair held back by an iron tiara. Her face was covered in makeup, but not in a pattern that made her alluring. It made her seem ghostly white, and the black and violet circles around her eyes made her seem almost demonic.

Yet, though it all, it was not a sickly, force-grown alicorn that she saw. She saw the iron crown, and the dark armor, and the red of her fur-hemmed skirt- -and she saw her father looking back at her.

“Hail the Witchking,” she said, slowly lifting up her own armored hoof and tapping on the glass. It was solid, but felt strangely warm. A slight flicker of magic sparked from it, but Penumbra was too focused on her reflection to notice.

A sudden sound above her made her jump suddenly. She instinctively pirouetted and assumed a battle stance, fully expecting a blow of magic to land on her head and for her to lose more teeth. Instead of a pony, though, she found herself staring into the eyes of a creature perched on a piece of ancient wood on the far side of the room, lit only by the dim moonlight coming through the open door.

Penumbra had never seen a bird of any sort before, although she had sometimes seen pictures in books. This bird had a name, but she did not know it; only that it was large and pure, beautiful black.

The bird released another sound. A loud, crackling caw.

“Hello Mr. Bird.” Penumbra bowed, not sure if this was the proper protocol for a bird but not wanting to take a chance of being rude. “I am Penumbra Heatrbreak. I am pleased to meet you.”

The bird cocked its head and let out a confused sound.

“If you are looking for Lord Luciferian, I do not know where he is ether. I should have spoken to him when I had the chance. He really is a nice pony.” Yet she knew that given the chance, she would not have changed her course of action. Something in the air still felt very wrong.

The bird rushed forward, spreading its large black wings and landing on the ground. Penumbra nearly gasped; she herself had wings, but they were pink with black-dyed tips, and they could not make her fly. At least that she knew of. The thought had never actually occurred to her.

The bird began to peck at the silver droplets on the floor. Something about that action disturbed Penumbra deeply.

“Mr. Bird?” she asked. “I do not mean to be rude, but I am afraid I have gotten lost. Do you know where I can find Lord Heartstrings? Or at least the Central Library?”

The bird looked up at her. Its eyes were pure black, but not empty.

“Yes,” it squeaked, taking flight and jumping to its perch again. It paused to look at Penumbra, and then flew again, inviting her to follow it. Penumbra did, not knowing that the bird was leading her to a place far worse than this empty room with its strange mirror.

The bird led her downward, through places she had never been and areas where few ponies if ever seemed to go. The conduits and pipes grew thicker and more numerous, to the point where there was barely space to walk between them. They were not exactly part of the Citadel; rather, they seemed to be built into it.

This, in time, branched off to a second room. Inside it was dark, and the bird flew high up toward the ceiling. Penumbra lit her horn, and high above, she could see a great many of the large black birds staring back at her- -both young and old, roosting high in a circular dome. When she stared at them, they stared back, and soon fell silent.

Penumbra did not know the room, but she knew that it did not belong to Zither Heartstrings. It was not the room of a knight; she did not know what it was meant for. The walls were covered in strange panels and diagrams, all of which were inscribed with strange, indecipherable diagrams and a type of geometric language that she had no hope of being able to read. Many desks held reams of velum, all filled with more notes both in crystallic and in whatever strange language was on the walls.

There were desks that held strange things. Penumbra recognized them as machines, but knew little beyond that. Many of them were linked into things and parts, and some of them had what appeared to be bones built into their components.

She approached one especially innocuous-looking machine on a desk and poked it. It immediately twitched and flickered, and a light appeared over it, a glow of text scrolling through the air in a vast projected diagram. Penumbra ran her hoof through it, finding that it was intangible magic of some sort. Like the rest, she was not able to read it; however, some of the symbols showed heavily stylized armored ponies, as well as a projection of a partial skeleton. Penumbra frowned, because the pony it belonged to must have been unusually short and squat.

As she stared at it, something generated a sound. It was not the voice of a bird but rather a horrid, clicking voice projected from with one of the machines. As it sounded, breakers fired and lights flashed on. The birds cried out in surprise and filled the air, casting deep shadows as they dashed before the bright white lights.

Penumbra blinked and looked around the room. It was enormous and round, and though partially lit, she was now able to see that it contained something enormous in its center.

She approached it, unsure what it was, or even what it was made of. It seemed to be a great disk, although it was incomplete; within it sat tens if not hundreds of thousands of amazingly intricate gears, all made from diverse metals but primarily of a particular unnamable silvery-white one. The machine was impossibly complex, and Penumbra could not guess its function in the slightest- -although as she grew near, she saw that at its very center there was a hole. A hole in the shape of a heart.

Confused, she reached up and touched a plate of the silvery metal. She cried out and pulled her hoof back, tearing off her boot as she did. Despite the iron armor, she had felt extreme heat in her hoof, and it seemed almost to have been burned.

Worse, though, the perfect silver of where she had touched began to darken- -and the darkness began to spread. Penumbra gasped, not knowing what to do- -and that was when she heard the ticking.

“NO!” screamed a voice. Penumbra turned sharply and beheld something truly horrible. It was flat and black, clad in feather-rimmed cloth and black armor. It was flattened and disproportionate, with no face apart from two tiny silver eyes on the edges of a flat, featurless helmet. In its chest sat a small, ticking thing made out of the same metal as the enormous machine; Penumbra supposed they were the same type of device.

The thing scuttled toward Penumbra. It had only four legs, but it seemed like it had more. Penumbra found it deeply repulsive.

“Get back!” she cried. “Stay AWAY!”

“The matrix! You’ve contaminated the matrix! The technetium- -do you have any idea what you have DONE?! You’ve set my work back months, YEARS!!”

“I- -I didn’t know- -”

“Get out get out get out! Filthy alicorn, GET OUT!!”

Penumbra backed away, not knowing what to do or what the sudden emotion running through her was. The thing approached her, and the disk in its chest began to shift and reconfigure. Strange yellow light began to come from it.

“Do not touch ANYTHING! If you will not leave, I WILL MAKE YOU!”

The creature leapt toward her and Penumbra screamed. She dodged and moved to block, but instead of jumping past her it had landed obliquely on the giant metal disk and stood there, horizontal against the vertical surface.

“I WILL EAT YOU!” it screamed, suddenly leaping down and chasing her.

Penumbra screamed and ran. The thing chased her. She could hear its legs drumming against the ground, and the ticking it made as it moved. At this point, her conscious mind had stopped, and for the first time, she was afraid.

Distantly, it occurred to her that Scarlet Mist had been right. Fear was everything: the greatest motivator, and a thing that she would do anything to escape from- -but Scarlet Mist had never told her how terrible it was, how horrible it felt, like a white-hot glow cutting deep inside her. It made her run, and she could not stop it even for a moment.

The birds swarmed down, cawing angrily at their master’s call. Penumbra escaped the room, but had to cover her head as the birds began to peck at her relentless. A few pulled her mane and tail.

“Stop, STOP! I didn’t mean to!”

She summoned a spell to push the birds away. It barely worked; she did not have the concentration necessary. She could not draw on her own fear, nor could she face it. The best she could do was manage to turn around and look.

Relief filled her when she saw that the horrid creature was gone- -but her fear returned with a vengeance when she looked up and saw that it was crawling fast across the ceiling above, keeping pace.

It screamed at her, but not in any pony language. Instead, it was a clicking screech, a horrible machine-like sound that made Penumbra’s spine tingle and her hair stand on end. She spread her wings and instinctively tried to fly, but no one had ever taught her how. All it did was give the birds feathers to pluck at.

“MY WINGS!”

“I will EAT YOUR WINGS! I will BASTE YOU IN YOUR OWN JUICES! How DARE YOU SABOTAGE ME?!”

Suddenly the lights flashed on. The creature dropped directly onto Penumbra; despite how scary it was, it was surprisingly light, and remarkably small compared to even her.

“My EYES! It BURNS!”

It flipped off her and skittered down the hall, bumping into conduits blindly along the way. Penumbra was relieved, and fell to the ground. Her legs felt like jelly. Once again, though, her relief was short, because a moment later the one who had turned on the light turned the nearest corner.

It was the most horrible thing Penumbra had ever seen, making the black insect-pony look sleek and kind in comparison. It was enormous, far bigger than a normal pony, but asymmetrical and strange. One limb was hypertrophy and distorted while the other was withered. There were no rear limbs; behind the thick bands of leather that dug deep into its pale, distorted flesh, it dragged its emaciated hips behind it.

The face, though, was unfathomably terrible. The skin was pulled back taught and held with metal clips. Hooks were placed around the eye and eyelids, forcing them open wider than they should have been able to stretch, even though the eyes were cloudy and blind. The mouth, likewise, was filled with sharp hooks that pulled back the lips into a hideous grin. Pieces of metal emerged from various places on its body, with deep scars forming up as the flesh began to overgrow them.

The insect-thing bumped into the larger creature, and it looked down, almost amused. The black one then slid up a wall and vanished behind the horror- -which only allowed it to turn its attention toward Penumbra.

It only stared at her, smiling its forced smile. It began to open its mouth to speak, but Penumbra did not give it a chance. She could not bear to hear the voice it might have, or to see it take another horrible step toward her on its asymmetrical limbs, to see its strange and unnatural muscles flex beneath leather and hooks. She ran, and ran as fast as she could.

There was no escape. The castle seemed to stretch forever, drawing her deeper and into darker, stranger places. Eternity Gaze had abandoned her. Penumbra knew that she was underground, and deep; parts of the hallways had begun to devolve into caves and abandoned mining tunnels. No one would ever find her, no one would ever come for her. She had to find her way out, but there was no way she could- -and she could not stop the fear.

All she could do was run. She did not cry, because she did not know how to, and she did not scream or lament, because she was not aware that those were options. She only panicked, riding it out until the panic began to fade.

When it did, she was on the verge of collapse. Neither of the horrors had followed her, but she was now impossibly lost. There were no thralls or crystal ponies this deep, and there was no clear way out, or even to get anywhere familiar.

Penumbra felt as though she should just lay down and give up. But, of course, she did not. She was the daughter of Sombra, the greatest unicorn who had ever lived. She knew that if she were to quit now, she would never be worthy to stand beside him. So she continued on, if only for a little longer.

And she came to a door. It was large, and made of metal. Penumbra stopped before it, not knowing what it was or where it went. She did not want to open it. The last time, there had been things on the other side she was not meant to see. There could be more behind this one- -but it was her only option, apart from continuing down and endless cavern to unknown and unseen places. At least a door meant that somepony was home. Hopefully.

She poked the door, but it did nothing.

“Um...open, please?”

The door still did nothing. Penumbra examined it closely, and saw that there was a pad next to it. She put her hoof on that, and although she felt nothing actuate, the door hissed and slid upward.

She stepped through it and shielded her eyes from the light. The room was brightly lit, though not to an extreme, and as Penumbra’s eyes adjusted she saw that it was the largest and tallest room she had ever seen in her entire life.

It seemed to extend onward forever, its ceiling supported by webwork columns and metal arches along the stone ceiling. The whole of it was bustling with hundreds upon hundreds of ponies, all of them moving amongst various machines or directing carts of supplies. All stood in the shadows of a line of vast metal things that looked like enormous, armored ponies.

Except that, as her eyes adjusted, Penumbra realized that the creatures bustling about and working were not ponies at all. They were not fearful creatures, though; they superficially resembled ponies of various sizes and shapes, but their bodies were made of metal instead of flesh. They were machines. They were golems.

Penumbra had not realized there were this many golems in the entire kingdom- -or that there were so many types. The enormous armored machines were, of course, a type of golem, but so were various smaller ones being assembled alongside them. Heavyset, squat golems pulled carts and trains full of resources while smaller, thinner ones were hard at work affixing plates and engines into their larger unborn brethren. Tiny, foal-like machines cavorted between the legs of the others, performing some unknown function with great energy.

A skeletal worker-golem nearly ran into Penumbra. It stopped in time, though, turning its head toward her. It had one large eye, and the pupil narrowed. It warbled at her, and then reversed direction.

Penumbra did not know what to do. These things were only mildly disturbing, and that was only because they moved exceedingly quickly and came in so many unfamiliar shapes. They did not seem outright threatening, though, and Penumbra at least had a basic understanding of what they were. So she did not immediately run- -but she did not feel safe, exactly, either.

A large, wide golem suddenly sprinted toward her, its tiny legs whirring at blinding speed. Although like most of them it seemed meant to resemble a pony, it really looked more like a disproportionate turtle. A turtle festooned with heavy weapons.

“Princess Penumba Heartbreak,” said a voice. Not an unpleasant voice, exactly, but one that seemed rather surprised. A small figure jumped from the top of the fast-moving golem as it was snatched up by a crane and brought off to somewhere else, its tiny legs still sprinting even as it was pulled away.

The figure quickly approached Penumbra, and she realized that it was, like the rest of them, a golem. Except, unlike the others, it was considerably more advanced, and so far as she could tell, it was the only one of its kind.

It almost looked like a pony. Its body had the same shape and proportions, and it had a surface that in places approximated skin. Parts of it were hard-shelled, though, and while it had two eyes, its face was quite obviously that of a machine. It was too stark and too angular to be anything else. At least it had two eyes, though, even if the pupils were clearly mechanical in nature. It was not assembled in the form of a unicorn, although some unreadable text had been carved into the plate that made up its forehead.

“I was not expecting you. Is this an inspection? I so rarely get guests. I have planned exactly nine thousand eight hundred and seventy-six possible tour routes, if you would like an annotated list- -”

Suddenly all the golems in proximity to Penumbra stopped moving. The main golem, their leader, focused on her, his mechanical pupils narrowing.

“Your pulse rate is fifty-two beats per minute, and your oxygen saturation is at eighty-five percent. You are respiring at two hundred twelve percent the predicted rate for your tiny size. Your mane is disheveled and you are missing your right front shoe. Also, you appear to have been pecked repeatedly by birds, possibly chickens. Or mauled by some manner of stoat. These parameters are associated with stress in ponies. Are you injured or in danger?”

“I am not injured.”

“I know. I scanned you while you were speaking. But you are currently stressed. The factory floor is not a conducive location for feeling secure for an organic.” The golem looked up. “In fact, considering it, I am not sure how you got in here. You appear to have entered through resource acquisition entry point seven eight four nine B. That route only leads to a depleted mining sector.”

“I came...I came from the castle, and I got lost.”

“Then it is actually connected? That is unexpected. I will dispatch several of myselves to find the hole and assess it for tactical and strategic weakness. Thank you for informing me of this potential breach of Citadel security. I would give you candy as a reward, but I have none. I am informed that organics are food-motivated.”

“What is...food?”

“That is a good question. I can answer it, but my main priority now is reducing your level of stress and restoring you to equilibrium. Also replacing your shoe. Your armor is tailored poorly. I will synthesize you a new set based on your current proportions.”

“You do not need to- -”

“With your permission, we will move to a quiet office space. Would that please you, princess?”

Penumbra had no idea what was going on. So she just nodded.

Chapter 15: The Golem

Penumbra was brought to something like an office. Really, it was a flat, railingless platform high above the factory floor below. The view was incredible, but, in a way, threatening: there were so many of them, all at work, both on more of the large golems as well as on machines that seemed to continuously assemble and birth more of their kind.

The platform was only connected to the wall on one side. That wall contained a number of cases, each containing various golems in various stages of disassembly- -or outright destruction.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Prototypes. Largely failures. A few are the work of others. I keep them here to draw inspiration for my own creations. Do you like them?”

“Is that...morbid?”

The golem paused. “Perhaps it is. That thought never occurred to me. How intriguing.” He gestured to the otherwise empty office. “Would you like to sit, princess?”

“On the floor?”

“No. Not unless you want to.”

Golems suddenly swarmed across the platform. Some brought chairs, and one of the larger golems sat Penumbra into the softer of the two. A table galloped into the space before her and stood still while several other golems placed doileys and cups.

“Do you like tea?”

“Tea? I do not know what that is...”

“Then you can try it. I like tea. It tastes like leaves. Which I also like.”

A golem extended a hoof, which unfolded into a thin effector. It produced a steaming tea-kettle and poured some water into both cups. As Penumbra watched, a tiny golem no larger than her hoof bounded across the table, a tea-bag held on its back. It raced to her teacup and plunged the bag into the tea, dunking it several times to dye the water brown. A second tiny golem appeared and held up a white cube between its tiny hooves.

“Sugar?”

“Is that what it is called?”

“No sugar, then.”

The tiny golem took the cube away, and with the other they ran to one end of the table and jumped off, rejoining a substantial horde of their kind and fleeing through a small hole in the wall.

The remainder of the golems retreated as well, fleeing save for a few larger ones that took up defensive stations on the four corners of the platform. The main golem, the advanced one, carefully lifted his teacup and took a sip.

“You drink...tea?”

His mechanical eyes flicked to Penumbra and narrowed, examining her closely. “Does that surprise you?”

“Do machines...normally do that?”

“No. But I do. Is that your impression of me? Am I a machine?”

“Are you not? I don’t understand.”

“I am. You are correct. But I do drink tea. I can also eat. Would it surprise you to learn that much of my tissue is very similar to living material? That I have blood, even if it is made of nanoscopic golems? That I regenerate when wounded?”

“I don’t know if that is ordinary or not.”

“Then you have no frame of reference. How uncommon.” He pointed at Penumbra’s cup. “If you do not drink it, it will grow cold.”

“Oh. My apologies?” Penumbra shakily levitated the cup and took a sip. She recoiled and winced. “Ow! So hot!”

“But what does it taste like? To you?”

“Like...pain?”

“How peculiar.”

“I am afraid I do not know much about taste. The only thing I eat is the potion that Crozea gives me.”

“To control your growth. I am aware of this.”

“How?”

“I read the steward’s weekly notes. I have been following your progress for some time.”

“And...who are you, exactly? Forgive me for asking, I just don’t know.”

“Because I did not introduce myself. It took you sixteen minutes and seventeen seconds to ask. The average is one minute seven seconds. I am Unit #8471. My name is Emeth.” He pointed to his head. “I am called this because it is written on my forehead.”

Penumbra squinted. “In what language?”

“I do not know. I can read it, though. I do not know why.”

Penumbra suddenly gasped. “I know your name! You are one of the Dark Thirteen!” She tried to bow, but instead struck her head on the table, nearly spilling her tea. “Ow- -I am Penumbra Heartbreak, and I am pleased to meet you Lord Emeth- -”

“Lord? Have I been promoted? I am a lord of nothing. Only a machine.”

Penumbra looked up, absolutely confused.

“Of course you have been programmed to address me as such. Never mind.” He sipped his tea again. “Yes. I am a member of the Dark Thirteen. Although I am also technically property of Sombra. I suppose that all of the Thirteen save for the Nameless One are. You are also his property.”

“Yes. I am aware of that.”

“And you do not reject that classification?”

“I have no reason to. He created me. I belong to him, to serve his will.”

Emeth stared at her for a long moment, and then smiled. It was a strange smile, made from a mouth not meant to do anything more than bite and speak, but it was a sincere one. “How peculiar.”

Penumbra took another sip of her tea. It still burned, but she had been trained to tolerate far worse pain. It did taste strange, though. She had no frame of reference to know if it was good or bad, but knew that drinking it was the polite thing to do.

“Now. I am somewhat curious, princess. I do not understand how you came to find me, or why you were so panicked when you came.”

Penumbra felt a jolt of fear through her chest, and though it was weakened, she still hated it.

“I had been looking for Lord Heartstrings.”

“The Blue Knight? Why?”

Penumbra blushed. “I- -I needed to speak with him.”

“He does not live in the Citadel. He is a land-holding knight, and has a manor in the northeastern octant.”

“What?! Eternity!”

“Oops,” said the voice in her head.

“I am surprised that Eternity did not tell you. Although not terribly much. I do not know her well. She cannot speak to me.”

“It’s true,” sighed Eternity. “Super annoy- -OH LOOK! One of the concubines has CAKE!!”

Penumbra winced at the sudden surge in volume.

“Ah. She got distracted.”

“Yes. She did.”

“I hear that is common. However, we have digressed. My facility is built in abandoned mines nearly a mile from the Citadel, so not to interfere with Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz’s archaeological expeditions. You have come a long way.”

“I got lost.” Penumbra held her front legs around her, hugging herself. “And I saw- -I saw bad things.”

“There are several species of monster that infest the dungeons, sewers, lower districts, caves, and mines. If you tell me what they were, I can send myselves to exterminate them.”

“I- -I don’t want to do that. I don’t want them to be hurt.”

“Even if they hurt you?”

“They did not. They just...” she shook her head. She was ashamed. “They scared me.”

“Clearly. What were they? Stoats? Snorks?”

“I don’t know. One of them was small, and flat. Like a pony...but not really. And dressed all in black.”

“With feathers, and surrounded by ravens?”

Penumbra looked up, confused.

“Large, black birds.”

Penumbra gasped. “YES! That was what I saw! Was that a stoat?”

“No. A stoat is a type of weasel. Nor was it a snork, or even a drowner. Or one of those large frogs with the two heads. Nor was it a ‘what’. That was Eight of Thirteen, Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz. Who I just mentioned.”

Penumbra nearly jumped out of her seat. “THAT thing was one of the Dark Thirteen?!”

“He is. A mathematician, engineer, metaphysicist, and archaeologist. He is not a ‘thing’ any more than you or I are. He is a pony.”

“A- -a pony?”

“Yes. Although before having met him, I thought is race was extinct. The last time I saw them was over two hundred thousand years ago. From conversations with him, I have gathered that some remnants of his civilization survived the Great Cataclysm, though I do not know where they are. Which is probably a good thing.”

“But he chased me! He was going to eat me!”

“He cannot eat you.”

“He threatened to baste me in my own juices!”

“Yes. Because that is the most delicious way that you could be prepared. Regardless, he cannot remove his containment suit. Not even to eat.”

“He can’t?”

“No. He cannot survive without it. He would freeze.” Emeth’s eyes narrowed. “However, it is very unlike him to chase a pony. He normally hides. You must have done something quite terrible to provoke him.”

“I...well...I went into a big room, and there was a giant...thing. And I touched it. She held up her hoof. “See? It burned me?”

Emeth focused on the injury, which was healing rapidly. “That is a radiation burn. The object you touched. Was it rather large, and circular? With a large number of gears?”

“Yes! That one!”

“Then you deserved what you got.”

“No I didn’t!”

“If you touched it at this stage, you contaminated it. Badly. He has worked for months without sleep on completing that project. His precision is exacting, for the sake of his respect and admiration of your father. And you entered his lab without permission and ruined it.” Emeth reached down and picked up one of the tiny pony-golems. “It would be as if you entered my facility and smashed this tiny golem.”

“But that golem is so cute! Who would do that?”

“You would. Al’Hrabnaz reacted out of anger and fear.”

“No! You don’t understand. I was the one who was afraid.”

“If he chased you, he was afraid. Driven by it to seek the illusion of power. It is something organics do, and often. He does not get along with ponies. The others consider him the second-lowest rank of us, and he panics when he has to meet other ponies.”

“But he speaks to you.”

“Because I am a machine, and he is comfortable around us. But not you. You entered his private room, ruined his work, and then turned around and terrified him. Then you came to me and told me he was a monster. How does this make you feel?”

Penumbra felt her heart fall. She opened her mouth, but for some reason she could not speak. Her eyes had begun to sting and water.

“I...I didn’t mean to,” she said at last. She stared down into her tea. “I judged a pony. Based on his appearance, when he was just afraid and mad at me when I was in the wrong. I feel so terrible. Why does it hurt?”

“And you said there was a second monster.”

Penumbra’s heart fell even further. “Yes.”

“Resembling?”

“Like a big earth-pony. But with hooks in his eyes and mouth, and no back legs. And metal everywhere...”

“Then you have made the same mistake twice. That was Buttonhooks the Mad, the most reasonable of us all. Ask Eternity Gaze why he was there.”

Penumbra did not need to. Eternity heard the question.

“Misty sent him to find you,” she said. “She is aging fast and too weak to fight the stoats. He is always happy to take a trip to the basement. But never to see me. Which is probably better. He is super ugly, although I’m sure he’d be one heck of a lover.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I enjoy watching you in fear and pain. I hate you, Penumbra. I hate you SO BUCKING MUCH. Because you are young and pretty, and you can WALK. I will never be either of those things. So you DESERVE PAIN.” This was followed by laughter, then a sudden sputter. “Potatoes...why does Sombra insist on growing them? The sound...by Epona, I cannot STAND THE SOUND THEY MAKE.”

Penumbra closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Why does he look like that?”

“Buttonhooks’s research focuses entirely on pain. It is a gruesome task. He himself is an explorer of it, finding new and better sources of pain. The very best he uses on himself.”

“Why?”

“I would not know. I am incapable of pain, or any feeling at all. I wonder it so very deeply, and wish I could know. But I cannot. Ask him yourself, if you see him. The pain has apparently put him in a state of perpetual peace. But do not approach smaller ponies that look like him. They have not yet learned whatever epiphany he has found.”

“I will commit it to memory.” Penumbra put her hoof around her tea. It was warm, but cooling fast.

“I am curious, though,” continued Emeth. “You judged those ponies to be frightening, and ran. Yet you did not run from me, although I look equally as strange. Why is that?”

Penumbra looked up at him. “I...I don’t know.”

“Would you care to venture a guess?”

Penumbra paused. “I can just...tell? Lord Emeth, I am afraid I do not have the vocabulary to explain it.”

“That is acceptable. But I am glad. I do not like to be feared.”

Penumbra blinked. “Why not? Fear is how you control ponies, and make them free.”

“According to Scarlet Mist, perhaps. I find fear to be a distraction. It is my primary disagreement with your father. No advancement can occur while ponies are preoccupied with fear. Their society will be trapped in stasis until it is superseded by another. The proposition is inherently unstable.” He swirled his tea. “But your father is young, barely a foal. He may understand as he grows older. Or not. It does not affect me either way, though I am interested in the conclusion. I wonder if that is wrong.”

“I don’t think it is,” said Penumbra. “Crozea says it’s important to be curious. But when she says it, it rhymes.”

“Without curiosity, one cannot know what she does not know, and trapped as such she shall never begin to grow.”

Penumbra gasped. “You can rhyme!”

“So can you, I am sure.” He looked up at Penumbra. “Yet curiosity is what will eventually be your father’s undoing. Not unless he can free himself of fear.”

“He is not afraid.” Penumbra shook her head. “He is king Sombra! He can’t be afraid.”

“That is not what I mean.”

“Then what DO you mean?”

“I have already told you. Fear is inherently unstable.”

“So you mean to tell me you never feel fear? You are a liar, then.”

Emeth stared at her. “No. I am a machine. I feel nothing.”

Penumbra winced. “I am sorry. I did not intend to be confrontational. I have been having...problems.”

“But you make a point. You, like myself, are a machine. One built of flesh and bone, but built and programmed like any golem. Before today, did you ever feel fear?”

Penumbra paused, thinking. “No,” she said, much to her surprise. “I never did.”

“Then you have in a matter of months done what I have not in thousands of millennia. Congratulations.”

“But I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to feel anything. I want to go back to the way I was.”

“How ironic, then, that you can.” Emeth cocked his head. “That you would so easily discard something that to me seems so very priceless.”

“I have no need for emotion or thought. I am a living weapon. I exist to serve the king and to destroy his enemies.”

“I see. If we are both machines, that is where we differ. You have a purpose, while I do not.”

“I am sorry. That must be a terrible existence.”

“Is it? What would you do if you were free to choose your own fate?”

Penumbra lifted her skirt. Although it was a rude gesture, she supposed it was okay for a golem to see. She pointed to her flank. “I have had my cutie mark since before I could remember. Crozea says I got it at my crystalling, whatever that is. Again, in rhyme. My destiny was decided. I have no freedom, nor do I have a need for it.”

“The question is hypothetical. Or are you really less creative than a golem?”

Penumbra frowned. “If I had no assigned purpose, I would not need to be here. I would go to sleep and not wake up again.”

“There is nothing you want out of life?”

“No.” An image appeared to Penumbra, and she blushed. It involved a heap of stallions. “I desire only to do as I am ordered, and to serve Sombra.”

“Then you are the first pony I have met who understands. I am glad to have met you. I feel...less alone.”

Penumbra blinked. “But you said you didn’t need a purpose.”

“No. Yet I do not have on. I exist, but derive no desire from life. Like you. Yet I cannot cease to be. I persist, regardless of my surroundings.”

Penumbra frowned. That thought made her feel bad, and she was not sure why. “So you are like me.” It occurred to her that she had never met a pony that she could say that about. There was no one like her, not that she knew of. She looked up. “Do you have a creator, that you serve? Like I serve the Eternal King?”

“I must have had a creator, at one point. Alas, I do not remember who or even what he or she was. I predate ponies significantly, so it was likely not one of your races. The Nameless One might know, or had known, but she will not speak to me. She speaks to no one.”

“That is...sad.”

Emeth nodded. “It is. I would truly like to know if my existence has made my creator proud. What they would think of me and how I have evolved. To tell me that the path I chose was correct.”

Penumbra nodded, because she understood. She understood exactly.

“My conversation is depressing you. I apologize.” Emeth finished his tea. “I am intrigued endlessly by ponies. Now, by you especially.”

“Because I am one of them, but like you.”

“Because you look like one of them, but never will be.” He shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not.”

He stood up.

“Wait.” Penumbra looked up at him. “Do you have to go?”

“I learned when your species was still young that I do not have to do anything. So no. But why?”

“Because...well, I suppose I like talking to you. Is that strange?”

“I would not be the one to ask.”

“Just a little more time. Please?”

Emeth nodded. “As I have said. I am not going anywhere.”

Penumbra burst through the access hatch, nearly tripping and falling out of the descending platform as she jumped to the ground. Her wings fluttered, nearly unbalancing her; she still had no idea how to use them. Many golems were waiting in the loading area, and they were watching her even as several started to move onto the loading platforms to go back up and to do whatever it was that they did shortly after being born. Penumbra gave them just about as much notice as they gave her, as she was far more interested on one particular golem than the others.

“How are the performance characteristics of the new armor?”

Penumbra looked down at herself. She was out of breath from having run. The armor was not all that different in structure from her original metal suit- -which now sat hanging on a nearby rack- -but it was fully-covering and black instead of metallic. Whatever material it was made of was as hard as steel, but flexible and, most importantly, profoundly light.

“It works very well. Thank you, Lord Emeth.” Penumbra bowed, and the papers in the back across her back slid out onto the floor. “Oh no! I spilled!”

Several tiny golems immediately rushed forward to pick up the mess, as well as one slightly larger one who took Penumbra’s bag.

“This particular access hatch exits on the first floor of the castle, behind the secondary kitchens. The library is nearly eight hundred meters, considering how absurdly circuitous the Citadel’s design is. You made good time.”

“I would have gone faster if I had not been so silent.” Penumbra lifted the largest roll of paper in her magic. It was very heavy, but she was able to hold it with only minimal shaking. One of the tiny golems had not released it in time and hung from the paper’s edge by its front legs, kicking in the air.

“Was there a reason to be silent? Is secrecy truly required to visit the Citadel library?”

“Have you ever met Twilight Luciferian? He has a strange fascination with books.”

“I have met him. I would say it is more of an obsession.”

“Well, he chose the librarians. The beatings they give me could rival Scarlet Mist’s.” She giggled, but then stopped. “Please do not tell her that. It would make her sad.”

“I do not think I will. I rarely see the others personally.”

Penumbra held up the rolled paper. “You have no idea how hard this was to get! Plus, it’s very late. Far past my bedtime.”

“Then you really ought to sleep. You organics need to do that, I am told.”

“What is another hour? Besides, it is for my education.” Penumbra began to walk to a side-office, one where in the distant past guards might have stood. Now it was only filled with golems, who piled out as she entered.

Inside there was a table. Penumbra set the large sheet of paper on it and tried to unroll it. It then promptly re-rolled, slapping her in the nose. She tried again, and it flicked up on the edge and nearly bounced off the table.

Several of golems turned around and held the corners for her. The tiny ones then climbed onto the table and took up stations in the corners

“Oh my. They certainly are helpful, aren’t they?”

“If they were not, I would not build them,” said Emeth, entering the room. “It is within our nature to be helpful.” He looked down at the paper. On it was a detailed, ink-drawn map.

“Crozea showed me this once,” said Penumbra. “She said it was a map of all Equestria.” She fell into a hushed whisper. “It was in the reference section! Those aren’t supposed to leave the library! Can you think of what Lord Twilight would do to me?”

“Probably locate the nearest wooden spoon and beat your flank with it.”

Penumbra’s wings twitched hard.

“N- -never mind,” she said, shuffling herself slightly in her new armor. “You have been all over Equestria, right?”

“Yes. But not in a time period that would be considered reasonable to a pony.”

“I don’t care about that. I want to know about it. All of it.”

“Why?”

Penumbra looked up, confused. “I...I don’t know.”

“Try to answer. I am curious.”

Penumbra thought for a moment. “I have...I suppose I have the impression that the world is BIG. I didn’t always think this. It occurred to me only recently. I used to think that the castle was the whole world. It was to me. But then Lord Twilight talked to the king, and he let me go outside.”

“He showed you the kingdom?”

Penumbra shook her head. “I am not allowed out of the courtyard, and Crozea or Lady Mist have to be with me.” She paused. “But sometimes I can see the kingdom, if I can find a window. And sometimes I hear other talking, about other empires and distant lands. I want to know what those lands are.”

“Our of curiosity.”

“Is that wrong?”

“Why should a machine be curious?”

“I don’t know. But we both are, aren’t we?”

Emeth paused. “True.” He looked down at the map. “Yes. I have wandered all of Equestria in my lifetime. This map represents sixty percent of what I know, and what I know is not all of it. But it will be adequate.” He pointed at a tiny demarcation near the top of the map. “This is the Crystal Empire.”

“That half?”

“No. That point.”

Penumbra leaned over and stared at the area in disbelief. “But it’s so small!”

“Our Empire is not large.”

“But...” Penumbra winced. To her, the whole of the kingdom had been unfathomably large- -and now she came to know that the world beyond it was so much larger. She had never imagined there could be so much of it. She had begun to grow dizzy.

“Our nearest neighbor is here.” Emeth pointed. “The Yak’s Republic of YakYakistan.” One of his eyes suddenly shifted, turning independently of the other. The pupil narrowed and mechanisms behind it began to whir rapidly. A sickly light came from within the eye, and it narrowed and condensed into shapes. Penumbra was only surprised by this in that she had not been aware that Emeth could use magic; holograms were nothing new to her.

She put her front legs on the table and leaned close to the image. It was a perfect representation in miniature of a snowy landscape, in which a number of hairy, horned creatures were standing buried up to their necks amongst buildings made out of snow. They appeared to be shouting at one another.

“What are they doing?”

“It is the Yak’s Republic. They are arguing over which yak that is. This memory was recorded seventy-two years ago, when I first came to the Crystal Empire since your father had come to rule it.”

The image of yelling yaks faded, and Emeth pointed to the northern area. “Beyond us is nothing but Hyperborea. Nothing lives there. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“It is far colder there than it is here. Too cold for any modern sort of life to have any hope of survival.”

“But you have been there.”

“I am not alive. Cold has no effect on me.”

“But it’s so big.” Penumbra looked out at the blank area of the map, labeled only with the name of the land. It was empty and vast. “Why do I have an urge to conquer it?”

“Because you are your father’s daughter. Perhaps you will, one day. But there is nothing out there.” Emeth paused. “Although...”

Penumbra perked up. “Although what?”

“I once came across an inexplicable jungle, far in the regions beyond where any pony has gone before.”

Penumbra gasped. “What was in there?”

“I do not know. I did not enter. It was guarded by a powerful spell and strange monsters. And...” He paused, thinking. “There was something else. Something evil. Something I can almost remember.” He turned sharply to Penumbra. “If you do conquer the north, do not approach that place. It is not meant for the living, and it must never be disturbed. I cannot remember why.”

Penumbra gulped. “Y- -yes, Lord Emeth. I will commit it to memory.” She pointed to somewhere else on the map, hopefully one less threatening than the lethal north. “What about this one?”

“The continent of Zebafrica. Home of the zebras.”

“Zebras...” Penumbra frowned. “Like Crozea? You mean that is where she is from?” Penumbra looked at the map more closely. “But it’s so far.” The thought made her sad. Crozea was so very far from her home.

“Yes. Here.” Emeth focused a new hologram. This one resolved into a seemingly endless grassland dotted with strange trees. Standing amongst the grass were creatures that looked like ponies but were not. Their coats were striped with black and white, and they were adorned with both gold and scarves and cloaks of brightly colored cloth. They smiled and spoke to each other, and small children ran among their legs, occasionally vanishing into the tall grass.

Penumbra gasped. “Is that what she looks like?” She began to giggle, even though she knew it was rude. “Is she really so...stripey?”

“I would assume so, though only Sombra sees her with her clothes off.”

“Wait, what?”

“This memory was recorded two hundred and twelve years ago. I am told civilization has not much changed there. The zebras value their connection with nature, and their old traditions. They were wary of me, but they are usually quite kind to ponies.”

“Scarlet Mist told me that zebra’s are a kind of striped donkey.”

“They are different species, actually, as are lesser ponies and unicorns. Donkeys are from here.” He pointed to an area not too far from Zebrafica. “They hail from Assyria.”

The hologram changed. Now it showed a beautiful port city bathed in sunlight. Vendors walked through the sandy streets with fruit and vegetables from far-flung lands, and donkeys walked through the streets in strange and marvelous garb. They looked like ponies, save for their long ears. In a few places, though, ponies in very different clothing could be seen, including some who wore both their manes and beards long and braided.

“This was two thousand and six years ago. Their civilization has grown far more prosperous. I hear mules are now permitted to serve in parliament as well.”

“And what about those big ponies there!” Penumbra leaned over the map. “Why are they so big and why do I want to put them in a pile and lay on them?”

“Early explorers from the Mighty Helm. Their sea-trade made Assyria prosperous.” The hologram changed as Emeth pointed at a small, rocky island. It showed a civilization of enormous stallions and mares, all muscular and beautiful. It took everything Penumbra had to control her wings.

“I want to shave them all,” she whispered.

“A normal response.”

“Really?”

“No. Not at all.” Emeth moved his hoof in a triangle over the map. “The earth-ponies of the Mighty Helm, the Pegasi of Lyskymm, and the Classical unicorns of Canterlot were formerly at continuous war. They have recently unified into the kingdom of Equestria Proper.”

Two new holograms appeared. One in the high mountains showed sleek, armored ponies with wings. Ponies that walked on clouds and much unlike Penumbra were able to fly. One of them was orange with a blue mane. Penumbra did not like that one.

What drew her attention the most, though, was the image of Canterlot. She could read the topographical notation of the map, and it seemed that the city itself was somehow built on the side of a sheer cliff overlooking a vast and beautiful forest.

Everything in the image was glamorous and beautiful. The streets and buildings seemed to sparkle, and the unicorns that walked the streets were clad in jewels and clothing of every make and color. Their coats almost seemed to glow, and many of them spoke and gestured toward instruments and charts in frantic debate. Behind them loomed great airships and a horizon dotted with observatories and strange towers.

“Unicorns...” She leaned in close. “It looks amazing!”

“This image was from over one thousand years ago. Even then, their civilization was advanced. It remains the same, even though their princess has been deposed.”

Penumbra recalled the steward. “By my father?”

“No. By somepony else.”

Penumbra stared at the memory for a few more seconds, in awe. “They look like Lord Twilight.”

“Twilight Luciferian is a pureblood unicorn. His ancestors are from Canterlot. Necrophilo is not a pureblood, but was supposedly a powerful mage engaged in research before the Celestial reform.”

“I wish I could go there.”

“One day you might. As a conqueror. Or a liberator, depending on your perception of yourself.”

“Did my father come from there too?”

“No.” The hologram separated and spread. “There are three subspecies of unicorn. Classical, from Canterlot; Eastern, with curved horns, and the Dark Unicorns, which you are a direct descendant of.”

Emeth pointed at an area in the dark mountains far to the west of Canterlot. The image was dim, as if night had fallen, and Penumbra could see great fortresses built of strange black stone atop endless rocky crags. Beneath them and through the streets walked two sorts of pony. One was the most beautiful of ponies Penumbra had yet seen: unicorns with dark gray coats and long, flowing black manes. The mares and stallions were large and perfect, looking close enough to Sombra to be his siblings. Perhaps they were.

The other type was similar in color, but smaller. They had fangs and slitted eyes, and the wings on their backs were those of bats. They followed the unicorns, carrying loads and dressed in tack, often pulled by thin silver chains.

“I am one of them.” Penumbra tugged at her mane. She had recently become aware that it was only the correct color because the crystal nurses that maintained her dyed it that way. The actual color- -or colors- -was grotesque and unpleasant.

“You are born to the last of their kind. I was last in their kingdom one thousand years ago, and it was falling to ruin. The land had fallen into decline long before that.”

“Why?”

Emeth looked Penumbra in the eyes and let his holograms fade. “Because the world moves on.” He looked down at the map and, despite being a machine, suddenly seemed so very somber. “I have witnessed the rise and fall of countless races of ponies, and other creatures as well. Their inception, birth, genesis or creation. I existed before the Twin Goddesses carved their empire from the lands of the Three Races.” More holograms appeared over the map. Numerous memories of what had once been: of empires of Zebras long since crumbled, of the curved-horned Eastern unicorns doomed to a path of extinction, of bison, yaks, donkeys, griffons, kirians; even of dragons, where a thin fellow with tiny wings held aloft a scepter with an enormous red ruby embedded on its top. Delineations formed, chafing as they had long ago. Of a dark empire to the south, ruled by strange and hideous black insects, the lands of the Crystal Emprire, and of a new Empire spreading fast across the lands. An empire represented by an old, faded memory of two fillies with both horns and wings.

“How old are you?” said Penumbra, watching the map. “If it is not too impolite for me to ask.”

Emeth sighed. “I have wandered what you call Equestria for three million years. I have existed for longer, but my memory is finite. Every minute I live replaces one I had once lived. I have forgotten the face of my creators.”

“But you have all these memories.” Penumbra gestured to the holograms. “All these ponies. You saw so many amazing things, and met so many ponies. You must have had so many friends.”

“Friends I invariably outlive.” He looked up. “As will you, in time, immortal princess.”

Penumbra frowned. She was still to incomplete to realize the horrific curse of her birth.

“In all that time,” continued Emeth, “I searched. For three million years, I tried to find another of my kind. Another golem who could think, instead of simply following orders. I was unsuccessful. I have concluded that there are none. That I was the only one created, and am the only one who exists.”

“But what about the others?” Penumbra pointed to other golems who were now watching them.

“They are me. Drawn from me. But not complete, though we draw near to the final phase.”

“Final phase?” Penumbra shivered. Something about that suddenly made Emeth seem so much colder than he had before.

The holograms vanished, and a new one appeared. An image of endless cities of concrete and steel, the streets packed with golems that looked almost like ponies. “This is the final phase. What I envision it as, anyway. Your father and I have agreed upon it. Once the generation-seven thrall masks are complete, and the threats to our borders eliminated.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I will create a new civilization. One of the golems like me. Better than me. Able to think, to learn, to grow. We shall assume all production functions within the Crystal Empire. We shall be its citizens.”

“But the crystal ponies- -”

“Will no longer need to expend their limited lives farming or working endlessly in the mines. Golems can do those things faster and better. Rather, they will be interfaced permanently to the fear acquisition system. We will maintain their physical needs. And in return, their fear will feed Sombra for all eternity.”

Penumbra took a step back. “You can’t- -that isn’t- -”

“Do you dislike our plan?”

“I- -no- -I- -” Penumbra groaned. “My apologies, Lord Emeth,” she sighed. “I have been having some trouble recently. It was simply a shock. If it truly is Lord Sombra’s will, then it is just and correct, and I support it with every ounce of my heart.” She paused, then looked up. “But what will become of me?”

“Most likely, you will not survive the final confrontation with Celestia and Nightmare Moon. No place in this society exists for you because you will never live to see it.”

“Oh.” Penumbra forced a smile. “Of course. I understand.”

“My apologies. I have digressed from your original request. I am highly passionate about creating my own race. I think it will lead to a more peaceful, orderly world. But I can show you more of the map, and I have many stories. You seemed intrigued by Dragon Lord Scorch.”

“If I may have my say,” said a stern voice from the edge of the room, “that will have to wait for another day.”

“EEP!” Penumbra jumped and nearly fell off balance. She rotated swiftly to see Crozea standing in the doorway.

“Your reaction shows you know you’ve done wrong. Are you aware that the night is growing long?”

“Lady Crozea!” Penumbra stood and bowed. “My apologies! I did not intend- -”

“I have been searching for over an hour! Do you know how long this castle takes to scour?!”

“That’s about how long it took her to ask me,” whispered Eternity. “She had to do it in rhyme. It took forever!”

“You know I can still hear. Unlike you, I still have an ear.”

“I WILL EAT YOUR BABIES! Also, your brew is almost done...brewing. Probably want to check it. Throw in a maiden or two, I don’t think it’s spicy enough yet!”

Crozea sighed. “Emeth, I know that your time is not cheap, but the young princess requires her nightly sleep.”

“Of course, Crozea. I suppose I got wrapped up in having a visitor to discuss various matters with.” He bowed to Penumbra. “Please go along. You can stop by at any time. Perhaps next time I can show you how I make the golems?”

Penumbra smiled, and then bowed. “Thank you, Lord Emeth. I certainly will, as you are my friend now. Next time I will send a messenger, though, as is protocol.”

She turned and went with Crozea. She looked up. “Is it true my father has seen you naked?”

Crozea recoiled. “Emeth, you churl! What have you told this girl?!”

“Only the truth. I am a golem. I do not have the capacity to make moral judgments.” He paused. “That, and to imply that you are the closest thing she has to a mother. Please be more careful with her.”

Crozea grumbled and pushed Penumbra through the door. The golems parted to allow her through, and the lights went out as they left. The only light that came was the sickly yellow glow of Emeth’s pupils

Penumbra walked in silence. She was confused. Something about Emeth’s plan made her feel bad. She did not understand why, since both he and herself were machines, and he seemed to be genuinely happy about it. Yet, as hard as she tried to understand, something still bothered her deeply.

“Crozea?” she asked.

“What you wish to say can wait until morn, after you have laid down your head and rested your horn.”

Penumbra nodded. “Yes, Lady Crozea. Of course.”

Chapter 16: The Nightmare

The crystal maids had- -with some difficulty- -removed Penumbra’s new armor, bathed her, dried her, and combed her. It had occurred to her during the process that she knew none of their names.

Now she sat on the edge of her bed, dressed in a frilly night-dress while Crozea stood before her.

“The symptoms you describe suggest several hormonal imbalances,” she explained. “I have adjusted my formula to make allowances.” She gave Penumber her daily medicine.

“Thank you, Lady Crozea.” Penumbra swallowed the medication. It tasted different from tea. They were the only two flavors she knew. Immediately, she felt her emotions beginning to stabilize and flatten.

Crozea sighed, and looked away. “Where you a normal child, you’d be but a babe with barrettes in your hair. But because of my work, you now stand at the cusp of being a mare.”

“My growth needs to be accelerated. A child cannot serve king Sombra. You are doing the correct thing.”

“And yet, what I have done to you...it filled my heart with deepest rue.”

“Lady Crozea?”

Crozea looked at Penumbra, and then gently lifted away the mask she wore. The face underneath was far smaller and far kinder than Penumbra had expected. She was stripey, like in the images Emeth had showed her, and she wore golden rings around her neck. Her eyes were so very blue.

“The golem sees us as little more than sheep, but like always his words cut deep. How long you have been here, it has not even been a single year...and the most cherished years of your life I have taken. I cannot but help but wonder if I was mistaken...”

Penumbra did not know what to do, but something sparked within her. She reached out and hugged Crozea’s neck. Crozea nearly recoiled, but after a moment softly hugged back. Penumbra could feel her tears against her chest.

“And though I have taken everything that makes you a pony, you still can find it in your heart to embrace me?”

“I would not be here without you. What you did is not wrong, and not a mistake.”

“Oh child of horn and wing,” whispered Crozea, “if only I could believe such a thing...”

Crozea released her, and stood. Though she was still crying, she was also smiling. She replaced her mask. “Now, princess, it is time for you to rest, so you may wake and do your very best.”

“Yes, Lady Crozea.” Penumbra bowed, and tucked herself under her silken blankets.

Crozea nodded and left. Penumbra waited for the door to close before she got out of bed and jumped to the crystal floor below. She pawed at it for a moment, and then lay down on it, letting the cold of the crystal soak into her. She smiled, and was almost immediately asleep.

Stretching out in every direction was a vast field of flowers that all smelled like tea. Penumbra leaned back, putting her head against the strong, warm chest of Zither Heartstrings. He held her close, his strong, warm arms keeping her close and safe.

“Oh Zither,” she said, snuggling her head up against his chin. “But we can’t! You’re my father’s knight, if he knew- -”

“Would he not be pleased? Would he not condone our love?”

“But your position- -”

“Let it be gone, then, if it would keep us apart!” Zither looked to the sky, his long mane trailing in an unseen breeze. “The only position I desire is at your side, my beloved! Now, I shall comb your long, luscious, grape-scented wings!”

“That is not fair!” cried Twilight Luciferian, sitting up from the flowers. He was dressed in an immaculate suit, his long main tied back in a ponytail instead of braided. “I wish to brush the princess wings, and then to snuggle her as well!” He approached and wrapped his front legs gently around Penubra’s neck. “For she is the softest of all princesses! And I desire her so very strongly...” He looked into Penumbra’s eyes. “And I always get what I desire.”

“Oh my.”

“Neigh! The princess is mine to love and snuggle! She wishes a strong, handsome knight in armor, not a lean, devilishly charming academic! I will brush her wings, and then we will rub our horns together!”

Penumbra twitched. “Wait, wait! Why don’t you BOTH play with my wings?”

Zither and Twilight both looked at each other, and then smiled.

“But of course!”

“The princess is truly brilliant, a tribute to her father!”

“I call the left wing!”

“No fair! I wanted the left!”

Penumbra giggled. They were not the only ones present in the dream. A few meters away sat a small and extremely fuzzy mare, picking at the grass and humming to herself. She appeared in all of Penumbra’s dreams, and Penumbra was distantly aware that she was Eternity Gaze- -although she was also aware that the form that sat on the edge of her perception was most certainly NOT what Eternity Gaze actually looked like.

“And when you are done preening me...and stroking my long, incredibly hard horn...fetch me more stallions! Form a pile! I will lay on you ALL!”

“Yes princes!”

“I can begin fetching them now,” said Emeth, approaching across the field.

Penumbra stood up. “Wait a moment! What are you doing here? I don’t feel comfortable with you being here!”

“It is your dream, princess.”

“But am I really attracted to you?”

“More to the point,” said Luciferian, pulling his mouth off of Penumbra’s wing, “are you really attracted to us, or are you secretly attracted to your own father?”

“And why is Scarlet Mist not here?” asked Zither, his mouth full of feathers. “Do you not wish to brush her beautiful red mane, and perhaps have her slap you a few times in the process?

“Gah!” Penumbra covered her ears. “When did my dreams get so psychological?” She turned sharply to the fuzzy filly at the edge of the field. “Eternity! Come on! I just want to have stallion-snuggles! Stop making it weird!”

Eternity’s fuzzy avatar looked up and shrugged.

Penumbra sighed, but began to become aware that the sun was setting. This confused her greatly. She had never known the sun to set before; in reality, she was only distantly aware that there was even a difference between the sun and the moon.

The sky began to become dark, and was painted with strange and inexplicable points of light. They were in a way beautiful, but the darkness made Penumbra feel strange. For a pony who had spent her life in dim, empty corridors, that vast and endless black sky made her uneasy.

Eternity looked up at the sky, and then at Penumbra. She smiled devilishly, and then flickered and dissapeared.

“Lady Eternity?”

Penumbra stood, and realized that she was alone. So were the flowers. Instead, her hooves were sinking in snow- -but snow unlike any she had ever felt. It was warm.

She picked some up and rubbed it between her hooves. It collapsed into dust.

“Ash?”

Somewhere, a scream cut the night air. Penumbra turned sharply and saw a Pegasus filly in torn, dirty clothes running toward her.

“Stop!” cried Penumbra. “I can help you!”

The filly saw her and stopped, falling back into the ash. “No! NO! Don’t hurt me! Please don’t- -EEP!”

She was immediately surrounded in a cage of yellow light. Penumbra looked up to see where it had come from, and in the distance she saw a strange red glow.

Then it was all around her. A burning village. The houses and possessions of ponies alight, the sums of their work and the material products of their lives and the lives of their families burning to ash and smoke. The heat was intense, and Penumbra covered her eyes.

That was when she heard the sound of metal scraping across stone. She looked up to see a terrible sight. Approaching her was a beastly apparition, a creature clad in a hideous carapace of glinting metal. A phantom dragging a strange blade of red-mottled steel across the ground.

The image grew clearer, and Penumbra understood. The horror before her was none other than the Blue Knight. Behind him came is cavalcade of mutant griffons, swooping down and grabbing screaming ponies, stealing them away into the night’s sky. Their amber eyes were so very cold, but their toothless grins so very sincere.

“L- -Lord Heartstrings!” Penumbra tried to stand, but felt weak. She was afraid, and deeply so, even though just moments before this pony had been stroking her gently in his arms. “What- -where am I?”

Hideous laughter seapt from beneath his helmet. His blade was lifted slowly in his amber magic. “Let burn the homes of filthy heretics! I bring LIBERATION! HAIL THE WITCHKING!”

Then, cackling madly, he charged Penumbra, raising his sword high above his head.

Penumbra did not have time to summon a shield spell. Instead, she simply raised her hooves in futile defense.

And she fell. Her wings flapped uselessly as she did, but from her training she righted herself as she struck the hard stone below.

“You IDIOT!”

The air was filled with the sickening sound of a hoof against flesh, followed by a quiet squeal- -and then the his of white-hot magic, followed by screaming.

“Daddy, no! PLEASE! I was only trying to HELP!”

“As little magic as you have, your presence will contaminate the crystals! The slightest contact, even the proximity of your reaking failure could decrease the efficiency of the ingrainment process by as much as THREE HUNDRETHS OF A PERCENT!”

Another snap of magic, and more screaming. Penumbra began to see, and he saw Twilight Luciferian, his face contorted with rage, as he repeatedly struck the cowering, wimpering body of a unicorn not much older than the age that Penumbra herself appeared- -a unicorn missing a leg, and with a patch over one eye. A unicorn who looked so very much like Luciferian himself, but whose coat was not perfect, pure white.

“Daddy,” she sobbed. “Please, I love you!”

“And I HATE you! Just looking at you makes me SICK! If only I could beat that out of you!” He began to cackle madly. “Oh, why not? I might as well TRY!”

Penumbra was forced to look away, but before she did, she became aware that the pair of them were not alone. There was another pony, a tall and thin earth-mare with flaming red hair. She watched, laughing- -but not at the girl being whipped. She was laughing in Luciferian’s face, and he did not even know it.

Then she stopped. Her smile grew wide, revealing black, pointed teeth- -and she turned to Penumbra.

“Don’t worry, little pure-one,” she said. “Nothing she can show you is more horrible than the reality you inhabit.”

The air suddenly became unbearably thick with the scent of carnations and of the most profound and putrid rot imaginable. For the briefest of moments, Penumbra thought she could almost see the yellow pony for what she was- -and fell to her knees and screamed in abject horror until the whole of the world went dark.

When she stopped, and could no longer remember why she was so afraid, she realized that she was outside.

As she stood, her eyes adjusted to the light of the moonless and sunless sky. The light was strange, though, because it did not come from above. Instead, it came from all around, but not from fires. Instead, it was the glow of engines: of blast-furnaces and fuel pits, of strange and ponderous engines. Beside it came the unnatural crisp illumination of spark-gas and crystals arranged into unspeakable devices that pushed the very limits of reality in their function.

Above the roar of endless machines was the sound of screams and weeping. All around, Penumbra saw ponies of every race chained in endless lines, whipped by overseers from every side. None were free, and none knew a life except for fear and sadness.

High above, highest among the endless towers, was a Black Citadel, at its top the most horrible of all engines, a circling gyroscope of white, burning metal surrounding a blood-red crystal heart.

Two fires ignited on the highest balcony, and a pony stepped out. A black stallion, so beautiful and terrible that the the ponies below screamed in fear at his mere presence. He laughed at them, and the whipping resumed.

Penumbra stared in horror at the sight of her own father, now a thing barely recognizable- -and as her eyes focused, she saw beside him a figure in a dark cloak with a long, black-red horn. And as she watched, she screamed, because she saw that figure spread her vast black-tipped wings.

Something white streaked through the night’s sky. For a moment, it seemed a shooting star, until all the world Penumbra saw was consumed in fire. She screamed and covered her face, blinded by the plume of dust and glass and the unfathomable light of ten thousand suns. As it cleared, she was able to look about, and saw endless columns of fire, spreading upward like great mushrooms, vast enough to incinterate entire kingdoms. Even in the distance, more things fell from the sky and more deadly mushrooms bloomed. It had already started to rain, and the rain was hot and black.

Behind her, she heard the sound of hooves. She did not want to look- -but felt compelled to.

Approaching through the fire and ash of the last civilization approached and endless horde, pouring across every hill and from every direction like endless ants. They seemed like ponies, but Penumbra knew in her heart that they were not. They never had been.

The golems approached her, and she saw their leader, the one standing in the front of their formation. He was recognizable only because of the plate on his forehead that bore his name, for his skin was no longer that of a machine. It was the skin of a pony.

Then the world fell silent- -save for a distant, quiet beating. Penumbra likened it to the sound of a heart, but a heart to a thing she could not recognize.

She stood in a circular room bathed in strange green light. This was different than before. It was calm, and still, and at the same time so very familiar. As if the shadows of that green light had crossed the recesses of Penumbra’s mind many times before.

She gazed at the center of the room, though her mind could scarcely comprehend what it was. There was a small, thin table. Atop it sat a jar, fed by hundreds of metallic tubes and wires descending from above. Fluid rushed through them, its sound not at all pulsating to the beat of the heart. Because there was no heartbeat. Not from the machines. It was Penumbra’s. And it was growing more rapid every second.

Sitting upon the table was a simple glass jar, filled with green fluid. Bubbles slowly rose through it, driven by some unseen machine. The jar’s inhabitant turned one immense, blind eye toward Penumbra. It was all she could move. The rest was held tight by the machines linked to her neck, suspending her inverted from above.

“E...Eternity?”

A response came, but not from the jar. What sat within it could never speak again. The voice instead came from a great distance.

“You need to wake up,” it whispered. “There isn’t much time- -WAKE UP.”

Then the voice was gone, and the room with it. Penumbra instead found herself standing knee-deep in dark water. It reflected the light of the stars above, and a moon that dominated most of the sky.

“Hello, Princess.”

Penumbra turned sharply, sloshing through the thick water. She found herself facing a pony she had never met: a tall, thin filly with a short-cut blue mane standing atop the water. Her body was the purest blue, and her cutie mark a simple white moon. Most terrifyingly, though, was that she, like Penumbra, was an alicorn.

“Who are you?” demanded Penumbra, taking a defensive stance and summoning a magic shield and blade. “In the name of the Witchking, identify yourself!”

“Our name is Luna. We have come such a long way to meet you.” She smiled, but Penumbra stepped back.

“No. No, that’s not your name! And that’s not what you look like!”

The alicorn’s eyes narrowed. “How perceptive for one so young. No. We chose this form because we felt you would better accept it.”

“Deceiver! Show your true form!”

“So be it.”

The filly’s eyes suddenly widened, and for a breif moment she looked so terribly forlorn- -and so very terrified.

“Please, no,” she whispered, reaching out for Penumbra- -as the shadows that linked to her hooves pulled her screaming backward into the darkened void behind her.

Then the void stepped forward. It took shape and form, and the water parted from its presence. A pony of pure shadow, a black mare with a swirling starry mane and luminescent turquoise eyes.

“I am what Luna became,” she said. “I am the eldest of the Sisters. I am Nightmare Moon, Goddess of Night.”

She gently waved her hoof, and Penumbra’s spells collapsed. Penumbra squeaked and tried to summon them again, but her magic had failed her.

“My magic!”

“Do not be alarmed. You are surely aware that you are sleeping, and dreaming. Your magic has no power here. Only mine holds sway.”

“I do not need magic to punch you in the SNOOT!”

Penumbra lunged forward and tried to grab for Nightmare Moon’s neck. She passed through as if the mare were made of nothing more than mist, and she landed hard against a thick, soft carpet.

“Likewise,” continued Nightmare Moon, “as a dream, no physical harm can befall you here.”

“But harm beyond the physical?”

“If you mean psychological trauma?” Nightmare Moon turned slowly, looking over her shoulder. “I wish desperately to avoid having to do that to you.”

Penumbra stood. She was in a building, although she did not recognize it. The halls were high and filled with stained-glass windows depicting things she did not understand.

Except she was not. She was on her floor, sleeping. She could still feel the cold of the crystal- -and something tightening hard around her neck.

“If you have come to challenge me, I shall defeat you in Sombra’s name.”

“You could not. And I have not.” Nightmare moon rotated fully. Her body was still naked, a form she would have shown precious few of her subjects, but she was terrifying and regal amongst the quiet backdrop of stained glass and torrents of lavender blossoms. “I have only come to speak with you.”

“We have nothing to say. Your existence is heretical. You are a mortal enemy of the king. All alicorns are.”

“Even yourself?”

Penumbra faltered, but only for a moment. “I am an instrument to serve the king’s will.”

“That is where you are incorrect.” Nightmare Moon walked forward, her hooves clicking against the cold stone. “You are like us. One of us.”

“I am nothing like you.”

“Yet the evidence is empirical. You have both wings and a horn. What else can you be but an alicorn?”

Penumbra suddenly understood. This was what her father had meant. This was her purpose. She was meant to oppose this mare, to equal her in the name of the kingdom. And yet she knew that she had no hope of doing so. She was far too weak.

“Indeed, you do not. But you are not as weak as you think.”

Penumbra stepped back. “Get out of my mind!”

“No. Not that there is much to fine.” Nightmare Moon’s expression grew serious. “Your situation is unfortunate. To the extent that I am able, I lament what has become of you. What we failed to stop.”

“There is nothing wrong with me!”

“Only that you have been robbed of the childhood that you were meant to have. As were Luna and my sister, though in a different sense. To this, I must give you my deepest apology.”

Nightmare Moon bowed. Penumbra shivered, and could not help herself. She bowed in return.

When she stood, she found herself standing in a garden. Moonflowers were blooming everywhere, while the morning-glories and daylilies had all closed and begun to wither.

“We had intended to take you away from the Crystal Empire,” explained Nightmare Moon, who was staring up at the night’s sky above. Not enjoying it, but inspecting it for flaws. “No doubt that sounds abhorrent to you at this point, but as a foal you would not have cared. Though had it not been for accursed magic, you would still be a foal.”

“I had to be improved. To fight YOU.”

Nightmare Moon turned her enormous eyes to Penumbra. “And if I had trained you to fight at my side, with my knights instead of your father’s Dark Thirteen? If my sister’s spells had aged you, and mine had given you a mind, would you face your own father at my orders?”

“No.”

“If you believe that, you are a fool.”

The scenery changed again. Now they were walking down a hall.

“One of the three Elements that I wield is that of Honesty,” said Nightmare Moon, leading Penumbra down the darkened hallway. “So know that I speak the truth when I say I was ambivalent to accepting you.”

“Because I am the daughter of your enemy.”

“No. Simply because I have other matters to attend to.” She paused, standing just fore an open door. Light was shining through it. “But my sister was overjoyed.” She gestured into the room. Penumbra peeked through the opening. Inside, she saw a vast library. Sitting at the table amongst a pile of books was a figure in white robes. She was as tall as Nightmare Moon, but pure white instead of black. Her hood was almost pulled up, but it did not obscure her flowing, pastel mane. It was tied back with golden thread as she poured through her books, jotting down notes. She looked so very sad.

“Our condition is unique,” said Nightmare Moon, staring at the image of her sister. “As a mortal cannot give birth to an immortal without paying a terrible price, we are unable to give birth at all. As alicorns, we are sterile.”

“Sterile?” Penumba did not know why that made her hurt inside, if only distantly. It was a feature of herself she would rather not have known.

“This affected my younger sister greatly.”

“And not you?”

Nightmare Moon turned away from her sister, and suddenly stood on a ledge. Out before her, endless legions of bat-winged ponies had assembled at the command of knights in brilliant white armor. They raised their heads to Nightmare Moon and saluted.

“HAIL!” they cried in unison. “Hail the One True Goddess!”

“I have dedicated my life to my children of the night,” said Nightmare Moon, smiling. “Those who witness my night, and behold its beauty. My goal is simply to create a world where they are free of persecution and can live as normal, happy ponies.”

“You only bring conquest and servitude. My father brings true liberation.”

“Freedom by slavery? Does your incomplete mind even comprehend the paradox?”

“There is no paradox,” liked Penumbra. Nightmare Moon only smiled, because she could see through the false bravado. Slowly, she turned back to the image of her sister.

“She is not like me,” she continued. “So different in so many ways. She had no intent on building an army, or a grand scheme for our society.” She looked down at Penumbra. “But she wanted you. You would have been the daughter she could never produce. She had decorated a nursery for you. She was going to raise you to be a kind, caring and gentle pony.”

“And what does a living weapon require those attributes for?”

“I ask myself the same questions. My sister, in her heart, knows the answer. But look now.” She pointed. “She has buried herself in the library, into her work. Learning new spells, or just reading over those left by our mentor. From better times.” She sighed. “Did you know that she had even chosen a name for you?”

“I am Penumbra Heartbreak. I need no other name.”

“You were to be called Princess Mi’Amore Cadenza.”

“That is a stupid name.”

“Says the filly entitled ‘Penumbra Heartbreak’. It sounds like the name of an edgy teenager.”

“Fine advice from ‘Nightmare Moon’.”

Nightmare Moon smiled at Penumbra. “Perhaps you would have made a good daughter. Although there is still a chance.”

“I am a good daughter,” liked Penumbra. “To Sombra, the Witchking.”

“You do not need to be. I have already shown you. Those you serve have evil motives. And you will be made evil as well, and consumed by it.”

“You have shown me illusions. Dreams.” Penumbra puffed herself up defiantly and met Nightmare Moon’s eyes. “YOU are the evil one, and your filthy sist- -”

The world erupted in screams and black fire, and Penumbra found herself thrown to a dank floor. A tall throne loomed over her, covered in sharp-fanged bat-ponies. At the top stood Nightmare Moon, now enormous and terrifying, clad in silver armor.

“You will NOT speak ill of my beloved sister! My sister who has devoted her love to a child she has never even met, and may never even SEE! How thoughts of you and the evils you have suffered torment her dreams, if you only KNEW!”

“I am GLAD!” screamed Penumbra. “Let her be tormented! She deserves it for defying the KING!”

Nightmare Moon was suddenly a hair’s width from Penumbra’s face. “I could rend your mind in an instant, child. Know this, and know it well.”

“You reek of moon-cheese and overcompensation for a short horn.”

Nightmare Moon glared at Penumbra further, and a wide smile crossed her face. Where there had once been pony-teeth, there were now only long, gleaming fangs.

“Such fire! You truly are his daughter! Oh, the riches and treasure I would give to have a mare like the one you shall yet be at my side. To balance the scales of power between Night and Day.” She stepped slowly away from Penumbra. “Alas, you do not understand the nature of good or evil. Your mind has been built to be incapable of knowing.” She looked over her shoulder. “But your heart is still that of a pony. I wonder...if I were to pour the nightmares of the entire Crystal Empire into your mind, would you believe me then? Or would you be driven insane?”

“I would withstand it. And my mind would not change! If you wish to challenge me, you moon-rumped harlot, then cease talking and DO SO!”

Nightmare Moon laughed, and her horn began to glow with silver light. A strand of light dripped from it- -and then another- -and ten more- -and then hundreds, or thousands.

“If you wish to know the pain I bear? So be it!”

The strings shot out toward Penumbra’s heart, and she held firm, sure she would win this battle and make her father proud.

Except she never had the chance. A shield formed around her, a bubble of pure hideous light.

Nightmare Moon screamed and was driven back as the light tore apart her illusion. It was not the glow of day, her supposed opposite, but of something far brighter and far more empty. While the sun brought warmth and life, this light would never warm.

Penumbra saw it, but was not blinded by the glow. She looked up beside her and saw a creature standing beside her, one she recognized but did not know from where. It was a thing that stood like a pony, clad in pure white.

“NO!” screamed Nightmare Moon, forcing herself against the oncoming surge of magic. “You will NOT defeat me! Not here! MY POWER IS ENDLESS!”

She pushed her own magic against the white shield, but the shield did not even flex. The Nameless One raised a cloth-draped hoof, and tens of thousands of doors appeared behind Nightmare Moon. With a flick, Nightmare Moon was cast through the nearest of them. Then it closed, and the doors were sealed and gone.

Nightmare Moon landed hard and bounced. The impact was painful, but not severely injurious. She was, after all, in a dream, even if it was not hers. Still, the light- -whatever it had been- -had taken a toll on her. Nothing she had felt before had been able to do that to her.

She stood, assembling her silver garb around her. Looking around, she found herself in a seemingly endless field of thin violet irises beneath a dimming twilight sky. One pony lay beside her, beneath a tree and reading a book. The pony looked up curiously at Nightmare Moon. She was a tall, thin, pure-white unicorn with a long, silken mane. One of her eyes was deepest violet, but the other was pale blue.

“Lady Moon,” she said, softly. “I was not expecting you for another hour at least.”

Nightmare Moon brushed herself off. “My eleven o’clock canceled early. Are you free to move up your schedule?”

The mare smiled and stood, doing so with extreme grace despite missing one of her front legs. “Of course, my Princess. I would be made glad by it.”

Chapter 18: The King

The Blue Knight burst into the main hall with such force that the rapidly opening doors flung the thrall guards most of the way across the room. He was clad in his full armor, with his sword drawn.

“I have heard that the princess is in danger! I came as quickly as I could!”

“Though the princess has been spared a dire fate, you, Blue Knight, have arrived far too late.”

Zither removed his helmet and glared at Crozea. She was one of several who had arrived to address Sombra on the situation. Beside her stood Buttonhooks the Mad, who had been the nearest unit otherwise unoccupied, as well as Thirteen, clad in her own armor. Unlike Zither, she never seemed to remove hers. Nor did she eat or sleep.

“My king.” The Blue Knight bowed. “It is of endless relief that the princess is unharmed.”

“Which is no thanks to you, my knight.”

“My king.” Zither bowed more deeply. “There is no way I can atone for this oversight.”

“My master, there was nothing he could have done,” said Buttonhooks, slowly. His voice was badly distorted from the metal screws embedded in his vocal cords, but it was clear and deep, maintaining his Old Trottingham accent perfectly. “This event is not of his failure.”

“I understand that. This was a failure on the part of many, myself included.”

“It was a concerted mental attack from Nightmare Moon,” explained Eternity. Her voice was soft; she knew that of those who had failed, she had failed the most severely.

“And is the alicorn injured?”

“Penumbra was badly shaken, but by the grace of the spirits her life not taken.”

“Is she secure?”

“To that task, we have entrusted her to the mask.”

“Nightmare Moon is a dangerous foe.” Sombra eyed his lieutenants closely, especially Thirteen. “There is no telling what horrors she might have shown my weapon. There is a risk of contamination, and that cannot be tolerated.”

“I have checked her primary programming,” said Eternity. “There isn’t really that much of it, and I made all of it.”

“And?”

“It is not how I left it. Not at all. But I don’t think it was Nightmare Moon. Nothing in the princess’s head reeks like moon-cheese.”

Sombra glared at Crozea. “Then these...aberrations. They are due to your mismanagement of your task. Perhaps I ought to have entrusted Luciferian with her growth instead.”

“The anomalies are a result of her pre-adult growth, and I shall correct them, you have my oath.”

“Nevertheless,” said Buttonhooks, slowly, turning his permanently wide eyes from Crozea to Sombra. “Crozea’s report, correlated poetically as always, noted deep ligature marks on the princess's neck and limbs. Scarlet Mist has confirmed this. Nightmare Moon does not have the magical potential to interact with the physical world in that way. Not normally, based on any known records.”

“Implying?”

“Implying nothing concrete, without further evidence, save for the fact that this was an assassination attempt.”

“And yet when I entered, my lord, I found this one standing over my ward.” Crozea pointed at Thirteen, who stared back blankly. “And at the nurse’s demand for her to yield, she did not even try to drop her shield.”

“YOU.” The Blue Knight drew his sword and in a swift motion was across the room, holding it at Thirteen’s throat. “So it was YOU! Do not protest! You were found at the scene of this heinous attempt, standing over the fair damsel! Explain yourself!”

Thirteen looked up at him. Her horn glowed, and a portal appeared, sliding over his sword to the hilt. The blade of the sword emerged from a portal across the room, poking a thrall smartly.

“Foul witch!” snapped the Blue Knight, trying unsuccessfully to free his sword from the portal. “Stop thinking with portals and allow me to threaten you PROPERLY!”

“Thirteen’s reaction was within protocol and, in my opinion, wise.” Buttonhooks addressed Sombra directly, stepping forward and dragging his withered pelvis behind him. “It is within protocol. She produced a shield to defend the princess from both Nightmare Moon and any potential conspirators among the help. She waited until zebra-Crozea arrived.” He turned his gaze to her. “And when you arrived, she allowed you in.”

“To protect the Penumbra, I do what I must, and this masked mage I no longer trust.”

“The princess’s own account suggests that Thirteen saved her.”

“Perhaps as false labor, meant to curry the king’s favor.”

“That is an off-rhyme indeed,” said Zither, finally managing to free his sword and sheathing it. “This has indeed affected you, lady zebra. Recall that the princess is well and safe. And that you are in the presence of our king.”

Sombra had been watching patiently. “Eternity. What did you see?”

“Nightmare Moon had forced me back by trying to dig into the part of my brain where I keep my prophecies.”

“Seeking something, perhaps?”

Eternity paused. “I don’t think so. It’s the most secure part of my brain. I think she knew that I would try my hardest to keep those secret. It’s the same reason equals-sign-butt can’t tell us what SHE saw. That part of us, it destroys things. Very hard.”

“The princess described the attack as a mass of organic tendrils, but could not describe it further from the darkness and from the strain of the events.”

“Autonomous tendrils suggest magic,” said Sombra. “Either pure biomancy or herbic manipulation.”

“The latter of which Crozea is an expert at,” noted Zither, turning his amber eyes toward the zebra.

Enraged, Crozea tore off her mask. “You pompous sack of rotting burl! You dare to accuse me of trying to harm the girl?!”

“You are the only one with access to her bedchamber.”

“Though I have not a hasty oath like thine, I have raised that girl as if she were mine! You have dealt me great insult, push further and you will receive a terrible result!”

“If that is how you would treat your own daughter? Then you would be a terrible mother. If that cursed body were not entirely barren, of course.”

“HOW DARE- -”

“This is not productive,” growled Buttonhooks, interposing himself between the two of them as Crozea reached for her chemicals and spell-scrolls while the Blue Knight drew his sword. “Fighting brings us no closer to uncovering true evidence and acting swiftly. My disciples already search the halls: if an intruder is found, there will be pain.” His lips twitched, trying to smile against the hooks that bound them. “He or she will speak...and then scream.”

“There is no one here,” said Eternity. “And any trace of whatever spell it was is gone now. Thirteen’s spell erased it.”

“A destruction of evidence, then.”

Buttonhooks sighed. “If you are going to make baseless accusations, half-unicorn-Zither, at least keep your accusations consistent.”

“Call me that again, and I shall give you the poke.”

“With your sword? Indeed. I would greatly enjoy it. If only I still had the backs of my knees. But I digress, and that will need to wait until later.”

“Yes,” said Sombra, his voice causing silence to fall over the others and throughout the room. “Search the area again. All of you. Find Al’Hrabnaz, and see what insight he can offer. But contact no others.”

“My lord,” said Zither, “as much as I hate to admit it, this may be a task to which Luciferian is best suited.”

Sombra turned sharply. “Did I not speak clearly, Knight?”

Zither bowed. “No, my lord.”

“You are a tracker. Apply your skills. And leave Twilight out of this. He will have other duties, I assure you.” He paused. “Meaning you are dismissed. Leave me. NOW.”

They all bowed to him and departed, save for Thirteen. She lingered for a moment, staring at Sombra, before vanishing in a flash of magic. For reasons he could not explain, Sombra found Thirteen increasingly disturbing.

He began to walk through his silent and empty complex, the areas where none were brave enough to enter alone in the night. He did not need to return to bed, as he had neither slept nor eaten in centuries.

“It was close,” said Eternity, who could never be dismissed. “The Nameless One. It intervened.”

“Oh?” Sombra did not break pace, nor did he speak. He replied in Eternity’s own language, using his mind alone. “You saw it?”

“No, but I felt it. It’s like...as if a great big shark poked the very tip of its fin through the surface of the water, then went back under without a ripple...but was big enough to overturn an entire armada. It hurt. It hurt so bad...”

“Are you any closer to understanding what, exactly, it is?”

“No. And I don’t want to know. I don’t think we’re meant to.” She paused. “It saved the princess.”

“Which is curious in itself. Nor can we count on it in the future. It appears loyal to me, but I suspect it is only on a whim.” Sombra looked up and ahead of him. He had entered an arcade of arrow-slits, and across from them flew the tattered remnants of ancient sable flags. They no longer had meaning, but glimmered strangely in the light of the full moon.

“We were lucky. And I detest trusting my fortune to luck. Attacks from the Dark Goddess are not uncommon, nor unexpected. She always finds a way in. It is why I never sleep. But you need to be more careful. If the alicorn had been ruined...”

“I understand my failure.”

“No. I do not think you do. Do you think there is nothing I can take from you, without a body? If I so chose, I could plate your chamber with dimeritium.”

“I am tactically critical! You if you did that- -”

“Isolated in your own mind, you would see across time, as you meant to when you gave everything you could control in exchange for everything you could not. A mere minute, and you would experience ETERNITY.”

“NO. No. No!” Eternity began cackling manically. “No. I can’t. Please. That isn’t good. Not a good idea. I hate me. I hate me SO MUCH. Can't be alone...can't..."

“Then perhaps if I dump ants onto your glass again.”

“If you must know! I was distracted. Very busy. With something I think you would like.”

“Apart from defending my weapon?”

“A weapon that doesn’t, you know, work. No. I have something better. But you’re not going to like it.”

“My day is already passing poorly. But such is the duty of a king.”

“The other day, while I was watching Penumbra- -closely, I might add- -I lost sight of her.”

Sombra stopped. “You what?” he said, now verbally.

Thin laughter came from deep within Eternity’s mind. “She was there one moment, and then gone.”

“That is impossible. You see everything.”

“I know. But it wasn’t just her. One Gxurab’s birds did the same thing. Dissipated, and came back. In the same place as the princess.”

“Where?”

“An abandoned storage room. Who knows what Gxurab’s ‘exmoori ancients’ used it for, but now it’s just full of old junk. There is nothing special about it. But I sent thralls to investigate.”

Sombra reverted to mental communication. He sensed that this was something not to be spoken of aloud. “What did they find?”

“A powerful spell. More advanced than anything I’ve ever seen. It must have taken years to install, piece by piece, brought in packed and unfolded. Really carefully.”

“Twilight.”

“Yes. He is the only one other than you who could have made such a spell. And from the look on your face, I don’t think it was you.”

“What was he hiding?”

“Like I said. Junk. Nobody’s been in that room for decades. It never changes. That’s what the spell does. It feeds me the image of the room.”

“Then what was in the room but not in the image?”

Eternity smiled, at least mentally. “A mirror. An enchanted one. And it smells like his magic.”

“A portal.” Sombra frowned. “Which is not inconceivable, nor is it unknown to us. He retreats to his ancestral home. We now simply know one of the mechanisms of such transport.” Sombra paused. “But why was the alicorn there?”

“That’s not even the best part. The thralls found traces of unicorn genetic material.”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of genetic material?”

“The silvery kind.”

“Luciferian’s?”

“No. I traced it back to one of the expert crystal processing technicians. I found him sealed in a wall. Badly anemic, but alive and uninjured. Turns out, he has no memory of what happened to him- -but can’t account for a case of five majestic-purity crystals from the refinery center.”

“And this mage. What color was he?”

Eternity paused. “The color? I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

“What. COLOR.”

“White,” she said. “He is a white unicorn with a blue mane.”

Sombra’s brow furrowed at the realization. “The fool. So he’s finally succumbed to it.”

“King?”

“Purebloods of his race have a very distinct trait, one passed from their Queen. More of a habit, really. But it bodes very, very poorly.” He sighed. “As does the theft of those crystals. Just one could power ten artillery units, or a bomber zeppelin for over a century. In the possession of a mage of his caliber, their potential is...intriguing.”

“Should I find him? Maybe strip search him?”

“No. He is making his move against me, or will soon. This was not unanticipated. There is a reason why he is the one I keep closest. But the alicorn must be watched ceaselessly. Twilight is not sentimental, but may still try to use her against me.”

“That wouldn’t work.”

“I trust he will find a way.”

“King Sombra?”

Sombra turned, almost surprised by the sound of spoken words. Standing at the far end of the hallway was his daughter, clad completely in dark-iron armor and full makeup. She bowed deeply.

“I formally request an audience.”

Sombra stared at her for a moment. “Your request is granted.” He turned, his cape swishing as he faced away from her. He pointed to his side. “Walk with me.”

Penumbra bowed again, and bounded forward to her father’s side. She fell into step just behind him, her etiquette exacting and precise. When she walked, she made no sound.

She was a thin, even gaunt girl, pale and almost sickly in appearance. The extensive makeup she wore did not assist with that image. Sombra found himself reminded of his mortal enemies, of the giant and immortal Twins. Like Penumbra, they were unnaturally thin and terrifyingly hideous.

Yet she moved with exacting grace. Sombra tried his best to find even the slightest glint of her mother within her, but discovered none. This girl’s gaze was blank, but no longer empty, exactly, and the calculated expression she wore on her face was not one of true and open kindness but one of defiance. Not against her father, of course, but of the resistance of the world to her will.

Sombra sought Hope within his daughter, but found none of her. Instead, he found only himself.

“I suppose you are afraid to sleep.” It was a baited question. Had she felt even the slightest hint of fear, Sombra would have smelled it before she even entered his chamber.

“No. Now that I know her trickery, if she challenges me again I shall be prepared.”

“Then why are you here? And, more importantly, why are you not with Scarlet Mist as ordered?”

Penumbra averted her eyes. “Lady Mist’s body is aging rapidly. It fell asleep. So I left, to find you.” She looked up. “I wish to make my report personally, with your permission, detailing my failures?”

“Such a report would be unduly long. Permission is denied.”

Penumbra faulted, but only for a moment. “Of course, my king.”

“That said. To withstand an attack from the Dark Goddess is not unimpressive.”

Penumbra nearly gasped. “It is?”

“It confirms that she fears you, and the potential she believes you have.” Sombra looked down at the pony that was supposedly his daughter. “But with that said. I doubt you have come here to make a report alone.”

Penumbra stopped. Sombra took a few more steps before stopping as well. “She showed me...things. And now I have questions.”

Sombra turned his head slowly. “If your loyalty has faltered, child, then your service will end here and now. My judgment will be quick, but it will be final. So choose your words carefully.”

Penumbra stood defiantly and looked at her father in the eyes. She did not falter, and Sombra felt no fear from her. “I am Penumbra Heartbreak, daughter of the Eternal Witchking Sombra! If any but you yourself had suggested that I would betray my king, then I would break their face!”

Sombra stared at her for a moment, and nodded. “So be it.” He began walking again, and Penumbra fell into step. “The quest for knowledge is, ultimately, the purpose of my Empire. So I will indulge you. You may ask, and I may answer.”

“Thank you, my king.” Penumbra bowed, then looked up. For a moment she looked like a child, even though Sombra knew that she never would be. “The dark alicorn, she said something that bothers me deeply. That freedom and slavery make a paradox. And she showed me images...showed me that your kingdom hurts your subjects, and badly. I saw them and I...” She paused, as if not sure to continue. “I felt bad. As in, I was not in pain, but they were...and so was I.”

“What you speak of is called empathy.”

“Empathy?”

Sombra nodded. “It represents the ability for one to understand the emotions of another.”

“Is it a good thing?”

“It is something that I, as a king, and you, as a living weapon, must overcome. For it does not serve us except to bring pain.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sombra stopped, and put his hoof on Penumbra’s shoulder. Despite his apparent vitality, his skin was cold, and Penumbra shivered. Somehow, he felt so very frail.

He led her out onto a balcony. When Penumbra saw the view, she gasped. The kingdom lay before her. The night was clear, and she could see for crystal towers and houses for endless miles, built on the broad streets of the kingdoms. Night sentries cast tiny lights as they searched for dissent, and the next shift of ponies was being led to their workplaces in chains while the night crew was dragged back to their barracks. From high above, the whole of the world was silent save for the wind.

Deeper in her mind, Penumbra realized that a certain piece of the dream Nightmare Moon had given her had just come to fruition, and it terrified her.

Sombra sensed it, and found it disconcerting. Yet he continued. “I come here to think. And to see what I have accomplished. Look carefully, alicorn. When the day comes for you to fight, this is the kingdom you fight to preserve.”

“I fight to preserve you, my king.”

“But without this kingdom I am nothing. In more ways than one.” He took a deep breath of the frigid night air. “Nightmare Moon showed you a vision of my ponies in pain. And they are, I assure you. But what she did not show you is that this is necessary. That logic must overcome empathy.”

“But fear, and pain...” Penumbra felt the deep marks on her neck. “Those things hurt. How can it be good to make ponies feel like that?”

“Because slavery and freedom are not antithetical. They are one and the same.” Penumbra looked up at her father, confused. Sombra continued. “My crystal slaves. Are they not free from hunger? Does the medicine I provide not make them free from disease, or injury? Does my shield not free them from the threat of war, and violence?”

Penumbra looked up at the shield. To her dismay, she could see stars through it- -but they were hazy and distant, distorted by the perpetual dome of magic. “I...I guess that’s true.”

“I protect them. From famine, war, and plague. But I have also freed them from the shackles of decision.” He looked down at his daughter. “They, like you, understand their purpose. They do not agonize over seeking it, and they do not risk choosing the wrong path and failing. When it is present, uncertainty erodes the minds of lesser ponies, gnawing at them continuously. I have removed it from them, completely and utterly.”

“And that is freedom?”

“I suppose I could rule like Celestia does,” mused Sombra. “I could allow my ponies to be free to fail, to choose paths that lead only to pain. To experience wants of every kind, to live a short and pointless life that benefits no one at all. That is also freedom. The concept has duality.”

“But which one is better, then?”

“I believe you already know. Look out at the kingdom before you, and you will understand.”

Penumbra looked out, and she did understand. Or at least she did in her mind. In her heart, though, she felt only emptiness and sadness at what she saw before her.

“Emeth told me that you are going to give the city to him. To the golems. And that the ponies aren’t going to have to work anymore.”

“Emeth is proud of his vision. And I have acquiesced to parts of it, as I have understood that they are the best possible path I am able to take.” Sombra gestured outward. “You see these ponies, these slaves, working endlessly to power my Empire. But soon, it will not be necessary. Golems will see to that, in exchange for my protection.”

“And the ponies?”

“They will be wired permanently to Scarlet Mist’s most advanced thrall masks. Their bodies will be manipulated with a spell to put them in a state of constant, endless fear. And they will finally truly be free.”

“Free of what?”

“Of hunger. Of work. Of want, of any kind. Of dissent. They will no longer toil, but be provided with everything they could ever require, in exchange for feeding me what I require. Scarlet Mist’s preliminary reports from her prototypes suggest that the system will even extend their lifetimes. A crystal pony might live twenty centuries when before he had barely twenty decades.”

“But why? Why do all that?”

“Attempt to answer the question yourself.”

Penumbra’s brow furrowed. “For power?”

Sombra smiled, though only slightly. “No. I am not like the Goddesses. I do not seek power for its own sake, or to impose my vision upon the world. Power is only a means toward an end. If one cannot define that end, then power is a needless and fatal burden.”

“Then what is your end?”

“I have already told you. To create a civilization driven by the search for truth. To build a place where scientists, engineers, occultists, and wizards can come together and practice freely without the limitations of Celesta’s vision of propriety and forced-harmony.”

“But knowledge is just a form of power. It’s just a means too.”

Sombra paused. “Perhaps. So perhaps it is hypocritical of me to desire it. But that is why I came here in the first place. I was an old stallion, one of the last of my kind, an ancient sorcerer. My race was afflicted by a curse, you see. It rendered us unable to foal.”

Penumbra winced. “Like me.”

“Yes, I suppose. Though I am now sure that our curse was brought to us by at least one of the Goddesses. Regardless, I survived. I came here, to this Citadel, and began my research. And I realized its power.” He extended a strong, youthful hoof. “And I realized something incredible. That what even a unicorn can learn in one lifetime is so very short. That there are more worlds than this one. Worlds bound by doors that must be opened slowly, and with greatest care- -and of course some doors that must NEVER be opened.” He sighed. “Alas, with just one lifetime, the secrets of those worlds are forever out of reach. There is not enough time.”

“You seek immortality.”

Sombra smiled. “I seek to progress forward alongside science and magic, growing as they do until I can no longer differentiate myself from the knowledge I contain. This kingdom, this power? They are all means toward this end. As are you.”

Penumbra swelled with pride, her mind still reeling from the gravity of her father’s dream. “I will do my best so you can see that day. But...”

“Is there something else?”

Penumbra nodded. “Emeth said something else. That I will not survive to see that day.”

Sombra was silent for a long moment. “As things stand,” he said at last, “that will be the case.”

“But does it have to be? I do not want to go.”

“War is coming, Penumbra. Coming upon us quickly. I do not fear it, because I am incapable of fear, but I do foresee it. One does not need the gift of prophecy to see that I do not fit into Celestia’s vision for worldwide harmony. She will come, and as it stands, I am not strong enough to defeat her.”

“That isn’t true! You’re the strongest pony in the whole world!”

“Perhaps. But I am not a god, as you are.” His eyes turned downward, to Penumbra. In the moonlight, his pupils were wide and not nearly so harsh as the slits they formed during daylight. “Nightmare Moon came for you because they fear you. What you represent. A being like them, but opposed to their defiance of the freedom I bring.”

“I am not as strong as they are.”

“At least you are honest, if redundant. I am well aware that you are weak. Which is why you are in danger. As you are now, you stand no chance against them. And they will not allow you to continue to exist as you are now.”

“I refuse them. I will always refuse them!”

“It is easy to say now, alicorn.” Sombra stared out at his kingdom- -and beyond it. “I had considered Twilight Luciferian’s proposal. To treat you as a symbol, but as nothing more. As the princesses of the fool-kings I conquer are treated.”

“If it is the only good I can do for the kingdom- -for you- -I will do it without hesitation.”

“But is it? Is that really the extent of your potential? Is the most I can use you for to send you off to marry one of Celestia’s white purebloods, to galvanize a meaningless temporary alliance?” he looked down at his daughter, and put his hoof on her shoulder. Then, much to Penumbra’s surprise, he knelt beside her so that their faces were level with one another. “I refuse to believe that. But there may be another way.”

“My king? F...father?”

“When you were born, I nearly had you executed for fear of you rising as a usurper. It was only by Crozea’s wisdom that you were spared. But I am increasingly aware that I must not tie the fate of this Empire so closely to my own goal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I have no use for a princess, and you are useless as a weapon. But you may yet find a role as a queen.”

Penumbra gasped, unable to control it. “You mean- -”

“To rule beside me, as my daughter and as one of royal blood. To rise from weakness not by birthright but by your own effort, as I did so long ago. To wield armies and slaves instead of magic and spells. And to take my place, should it come to that.”

“I could never live up to what you have become, my king.”

“Not at the moment, no. Not even in the next century. But unlike me, you are truly and wholly immortal. There will be time to learn, and time to understand. For now, you will continue to focus on your magic, as you will need a basic understanding of it at least a basic understanding of it.” He stood. “And I expect you to be at my side for the military parade. That will commence the start of your training as an administrative position.”

Penumbra looked up, her eye as big as saucers. “Thank you, my king.” She awkwardly reached forward and hugged her father’s legs. “I will not displease you!”

She stepped back and regained her composure. She bowed. “My king. You have answered my questions, and more. My mind has been set at ease. I now request to return to my teacher, so that I might rest before tomorrow’s training.”

“This permission is granted. You are excused.”

Penumbra straightened and smiled, and silently padded off down the long dark hall.

Sombra watched him go. Then he turned his attention to what seemed to be an enormous blue-winged dragonfly perched on the edge of the balcony.

“And?”

The dragonfly flashed green, and in its place stood a small violet pony with a half-shaved head. The Infiltrator did not bow, for her rank equaled that of her king “You are aa superb liar, my king. You rival even me. That was hilarious.”

“Not everything I do must be motivated by violence and fear. You of all beings should know, there are other ways to properly condition a pawn.”

Chapter 19: The Plan

“No. no NO!” Twilight Luciferian slammed his hoof against the inside of his mirror, causing the dimensional prism that formed its glass to ripple. One of the thralls crowding the other side turned slightly, but was too stupid to know what it was meant to see. “How? HOW?! I was so careful!”

He then released a withering tirade of profound swearing, many of the words precisely chosen from languages that had not existed for several millennia except in books- -and also in such a way as to not inadvertently generate a spell capable of annihilating both him and his wizard tower.

When he was done, he felt somewhat better. The mirror was the fastest way for him to travel, but no the only one. His efforts had been extensive, but his close study of the chronoplexer had provided him with the data he needed to complete the spells listed in the Fragments of Gnomenedrona. He could teleport, even if it was only a useless parlor trick. More importantly, the nature of teleportation could be used to generate portals without the need for a Xen rebound.

“So be it,” he sighed, drawing his hoof over the edge of the mirror and scratching several additional lines to the internal annotations. “I can only shut down one side. But I wonder where you’ll go if you jump into it without a receiving end?”

He chuckled to himself as his half of the mirror shattered, leaving the frame empty and the other end dangerously unstable. It would probably not explode, but someday it would certainly ruin somepony’s life.

He sighed as he heard soft hoofsteps behind him.

“D...daddy?”

“Do you know how long it took to make that mirror, Failure?”

Failure paused. “N...no.”

“Finally, a correct answer. No. You don’t. Because you don’t need to.” He turned, and the violet-white unicorn recoiled. “I am NOT in a good mood, Failure. I do not have the energy to do to you what you deserve. Why are you talking to me?”

“The crystals. They’re complete.”

Luciferian stared at her, then suddenly raised his hoof. Failure squeaked and fell to the floor, terrified. Luciferian laughed, although all he felt was disgust.

“No poise. Poor reflexes. And there you are, cowering on the floor in your own juices. Such a waste of my genetic material. Considering that you were, once, a skin cell. I could have shed you. Just a little fleck of dust...”

“I don’t understand.”

“Which is exactly the problem. The crystals. Did you learn your lesson, or did you get near them?

“No, daddy! I didn’t! Just like you said! I’m a good pony!”

“No. You are not. You are a failure in every possible sense. I would prove that to you physically, but at this point I’m beginning to wonder if you’re even worth my time.”

“No! No, daddy, please! Don’t leave me alone! I can’t be alone!”

“Get out of my way.” Luciferian kicked her hard to the ribs and stepped over her. “I have work to do. Go somewhere where I don’t have to look at you.”

Luciferian entered the crystal chamber. As anticipated, the crystals had moved on to the next stage of forging. He pulled back the ingrainment equipment and examined them closely with a jeweler's loupe, checking that the microscopic internal lines had formed precisely and evenly. Even the slightest inconsistency, the tiniest acoustic deficit- -it could spell certain disaster.

“I can’t fathom why you’re wasting your time with these dinguses,” sighed the yellow pony, who was lying on top of a piece of equipment, watching a passing crystal as it was carefully and automatically into a focused magic spectrometer. “I keep offering myself to you, and all I want is for to use me. What do you need crystals for?” She reached out and pretended to poke one.

“I cannot help but wonder, demon. What would happen if you touched a crystal of this purity? Would it burn you?”

“I burn for eternity. It turns me on. But, let’s see...seeing as I am the physical embodiment of all possible and comprehensible forms of impurity- -and a few that are neither possible or comprehensible, those I call the ‘fun ones’- -it would blacken instantly. It would also start to do fun things. The kind of fun that involves sharp things being shoved extra-hard into other things.”

“Nor.”

“Excuse me?”

“‘Neither possible nor comprehensible’. Also, you have no physical body.”

The demon groaned long and loud. In an instant, she was standing beside Luciferian. “I do have a physical body, and I assure you, it is soft, warm, and waiting for you. If you would just manifest me.”

Luciferian examined one of his crystals and placed it in a rack. Programming would commence next, after the formatting, and that would be difficult and time-consuming- -but worth it in the long run. “I have no need for you yet. But who knows. I’ve had to move my plan forward.”

“Really?” The yellow pony lay across Luciferian’s back. He shivered, nearly distorting his crystal. Although she was not strictly a physical being, he could still feel a disgusting slimy sensation, as if a slug full of shark’s teeth had just been draped over him. A clammy slug.

“I thought you were going to woo the little maiden and give her exactly what your daughter wants more than anything?”

“I still intend to.” Luciferian picked up the next crystal and began examining it as the other came out of the spectrometer. He paused to look at the readings. As he had expected, Failure’s presence had presented no difficulties for the inscription process. There was less than a four percent chance of that happening- -but still worth a beating, of course. “But there have been...difficulties.”

The yellow mare smiled. “Oh...somepony’s angry? Do you want to beat your clone? Or maybe me? I would enjoy it. Do you even own a riding crop?”

“Several. But that is beside the point.” Luciferian’s tone grew icy. “I had not counted on Heartstrings being so- -so uncouth! How dare he speak to her in that way?”

“The minty-scented hunk. Honestly? He’s way more her type than you.”

“Her ‘type’ does not matter! She belongs to ME!” He groaned and put down his crystal. He turned and addressed the demon directly. “If the princess becomes enamored with some breezietale impression of a knight, it makes my task that much harder. Worse, Sombra might very well be bold enough to allow them to court- -can you imagine?”

“I would court them both if you would give me a body.”

Luciferian turned away and began pacing, moving his crystals out of the spectrometer and checking the readings of the base processing machines. “And now they found my entrance. They know what I’ve been doing. My time is limited. If I do not make my move now, I will never have another chance.”

“So it’s come to playing with rocks. Like the earth-pony.” The demon frowned. “Why couldn’t he summon me? He would not be so...indecisive.”

“Because earth-ponies have the intelligence of especially malleable stones, and wills of the same consistency. Whereas I am a genius. And these stones will allow me to put an end to Sombra’s rule once and for all.”

“You idiot.”

“It was inevitable,” retorted Luciferian. “Wasn’t it? Sombra would never allow the necessary marriage. If my plan is to succeed, he must be removed from power.”

“And, what? The princess will just fall into your lap?”

“She is malleable. She can be convinced. Or forced, if it comes to it.” Luciferian smiled. “It all depends on context. Besides.” He shrugged. “I have a prophecy. The princess will love a white stallion of House Twilight. I am its last member, meaning my fate is inevitable.”

The yellow pony grinned. “Oh yes. It most certainly is.” She giggled softly. “So. Oust the king, steal is daughter, force her to marry you, take the kingdom, make all his slaves YOUR slaves, sleep in a pile of mares...sounds fun. Now give me a body.”

“No.”

“Such a square,” she sighed. “What’s the date you’re trying? I want to see. I have a busy schedule, I have to make time.”

“The military parade. That is when I will make my move. That is the first stage of the project. Move Sombra out of the way.”

“Then take the princess.”

“And become the new head of the dynasty.” Twilight Luciferian smiled. “Oh yes. This will indeed be fun!”

Chapter 20: The Parade

The maids and nurses had formed a veritable swarm. While Penumbra did her best to sit still, as she could not suppress a desire to squirm at least slightly.

“I can apply my own makeup, miss,” she said, trying to push the hoof of a crystal mare away from her.

“Forgive me, princess,” she said, dodging Penumbra’s block. “But you’re ordinary format is certainly not adequate for the occasion. Your father requested more complexity for your eyes. It will look better at a distance.”

“You will refer to him as ‘king’, ‘Witchking’, or ‘his majesty’. Referring to him as my father is uncouth!”

One of the several crystal ponies adjusting Penumbra’s mane sighed. “I remember that attitude,” she laughed. “My daughter went through the same phase.” Her expression darkened. “She’s in the mines now.”

“My mane is also adequate. You are pulling it!”

“There has not been a Crystal Princess in ten centuries, my princess. We have waited so very long for a chance and an occasion to use this hairstyle.”

“It is important for our traditions,” said another. “If you wish to curry favor with the crystal ponies, you would do well to style yourself as one of us.”

“I am not one of you, and I do not need respect!” squeaked Penumbra. “I need FEAR!”

The nurses laughed as they pulled Penumbra’s black-dyed mane back into a veritable pile of gemstones.

“And this armor,” groaned Penumbra, trying to shake her hoof free of the hideous travesty they were dressing her with. “It is neither practical nor defensive. I have two pairs. Cannot I not wear Lord Emeth’s version?”

“This armor is not meant to be ‘protective’,” chuckled one of the mares. “It is ceremonial.”

“Yes,” said the youngest of the maids. “Surely you do not intend to enter the arena fights!”

The entire group froze and fell silent. They glared at the maid who had spoken.

“Do not speak of that here,” hissed the lead nurse. “Now now. Not ever.”

“I- -I am sorry, ma’am.” She bowed to Penumbra. “Forgive me, princess. I spoke out of turn.”

“You all kind of are. But I guess it’s acceptable. You are all helping me so much, after all.” She paused. “I am not sure if you are aware, but this is my first parade.”

The ponies laughed, but awkwardly. “Of course, princess. You are only six months old. Of course this is your first.”

“Oh. I had forgotten that part.” She looked down at her partially-armored hooves, then up at the maids. “How old are all of you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Fourteen.”

“Fifteen.”

“Twenty four.”

“Twenty six.”

Penumbra blinked. “That’s a lot of months!”

The maids giggled. “No, princess, you have misunderstood! Those are years!”

This boggled Penumbra’s mind completely. She had no concept of that length of time.

“You are all ancient, then!” Something pulled at her wings. “Pain! Stop pulling!”

“My apologies, princess. You simply need to be preened.”

“And your wing-tips redyed.”

“Pluck them completely if you wish.” Penumbra spread her wings. “They are useless anyway.”

Something knocked on the chamber door. Penumbra looked up, expecting Crozea. Instead, a white stallion opened the door.

“Lord Twilight!” cried one of the maids, rushing to the door. “Forgive me, my lord, but the princess is dressing! To have a stallion here, why, it simply- -HMMFF!”

Luciferian had cast a spell. When the mare turned away from him, her eyes wide with panic, it became apparent that she no longer had a mouth.

“Considering that our species, as a whole, is nude most of the time, I think my presence here is hardly uncouth.” He entered the room. His normal officer’s coat had been replaced with a sort of armor. It was not quite the same kind that Zither wore, which was meant to cover him entirely, but rather a system of seemingly abstractly placed plates carved with impossibly fine runes. He also wore numerous bands of metal and jewels, all of which were dark and unappealing in color. The only part of his normal uniform that remained was the collar of his shirt, the edges of which were decorated with blood-red stars. That, and the armored boot he wore over one of his front legs.

Penumbra was glad that she had possessed the inadvertent foresight to raise her wings in advance. He was astoundingly handsome, and he had not only converted the ridiculous braid of his mane into a more modern, bound form, but he had applied eye makeup of his own. His eyes looked enormous.

He bowed. “Princess. Even with the work incomplete, your presentation is astounding. Terrifying indeed.”

“Thank you, Lord Twilight. Forgive me if I do not bow in return, but my maids are apparently attempting to armor my hair.”

Luciferian smiled as he straightened himself. “I see your mind can now handle synthesis. The progression is remarkable, even if there have been...difficulties.”

“My body was conflicting with my programming. Lady Crozea has compensated.”

“Well, as long as the mistake has been corrected. I had intended to check on you earlier. I heard of the attempt on your life. Simply terrible.” He shook his head. “I was engaged in distant research at the time. If I had only known...”

“The situation was handled. But I thank you for your concern.”

“I assure you, when the culprit is found, I will deal with him or her personally. Though you shall never know my anger, I am told it is quite devastating.”

“Lady Crozea says that anger is a distraction.”

Luciferian frowned, but only momentarily. “Of course she does. And Scarlet Mist, no doubt, claims the opposite.”

Penumbra looked up, surprised that he knew. “Yes. That is true.”

“I make it a point to understand my colleagues.”

“Really?” An idea occurred to Penumbra. Perhaps it was devious, but she had become somewhat annoyed at being dressed in a material that would surely fail to stop swords and maces. “May I ask you your opinions on one in particular?”

Luciferian smiled devilishly. He had not realized it would be this easy, and he had planned his response carefully for maximum impact. “Of course, my princess. It would be the very least I could do for furthering your education.”

“Tell me about Lord Al’Hrabnaz.”

Luciferian almost literally stumbled. That had not been the pony he had been expecting her to ask about at all, and his response was completely derailed.

“Al’Hrabnaz? Well, I suppose he is a competent archaeologist, though his ideas border on conspiracy theories. His mathematical skill is highly flawed, though he is effective at making toys, I suppose.”

“Toys?”

“Yes. His machines.” Luciferian chuckled. “Such obsolete dreck. The world has moved beyond machines and technology in their own right. They are tools for the weak.”

“Then what do the strong use?”

Luciferian leaned forward. “The future is magic, my dear. Magic users like you and I will rule the world.”

“You mean the Witchking. Lord Sombra will rule the world. Not you or I.”

“That is not what I have been told.” Luciferian masked his displeasure, just as Penumbra masked a sudden sour feeling she felt coming over her. She knew little of the resident mathematician, but at least felt pity for him. Luciferian clearly did not.

Luciferian smiled. The same smile he always smiled, as if he were trained in it. “That is why I came here, after all. To congratulate you.”

“On what?”

“I have been informed that Sombra wishes to have you at his side for the military parade, and to sit with him to oversee the Games. It seems he has taken my advice. You are moving up on his list of priorities.” Luciferian paused. “However, even if he had not wished to take you, I would have asked you myself. To be beside me instead.”

“I appreciate the gesture.” Penumbra paused as something deep within her mind stirred. “Perhaps you can walk with your own daughter instead?”

Luciferian’s gaze suddenly hardened to the point where several of the maids recoiled. Even Penumbra was surprised; she had never seen a pony make such a horrible expression before. He hardly even looked like a pony, and for just a moment, Penumbra could almost imagine the sight of liquid silver dripping from between his teeth.

“You must be mistaken.” He had partially regained his composure, but his voice was icy. “I have no daughter.”

“White and purple, with a striped mane. A unicorn. But with only three legs.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened, as if he was both terrified and enraged. “How- -how do you know that?” He coughed into his hoof and, though shaking, managed to produce the same smile he had before. “Oh. Well, you are indeed confused. I am the only member of House Twilight. I do have a ward, an assistant, you might say, but she is very sickly and not able to leave my home. Certainly too weak to walk in the parade, especially in this weather.”

“I see.” Penumbra made a slight bow. “Forgive me. Inquiring into your personal life was out of line. I apologize, Lord Twilight. I understand that our relationship is purely professional.”

Luciferian winced, but mostly managed to conceal it. “I would like to think that we could be friends. I would be happy to teach you as many spells as I can, if you are willing.”

“I am not programmed to make friends. I am programmed to purge the heresy that his Celestia and Nightmare Moon. Also apparently to be dressed in armor that is not armor and to have my main tugged until my multicolored-roots are showing.” She looked up. “Although I have the magic for only one of those things. I appreciate your offer, Lord Twilight, but there is nothing you can teach me. I am a failure in every respect, except in looking cute.”

This had not been in Luciferian’s plans. He had no idea where this was coming from, but he internally cursed himself for having waited too long. He had been attempting to woo a princess on a normal time-scale, a process that required years of careful planning and maneuvering. He had failed to account for the fact that this princess’s growth had been accelerated, in more ways than one. Only a few months before she had been a blank, empty shell. Now she had apparently grown an annoying level of wit.

It also occurred to him that she was probably old enough to begin producing heirs of her own.

“Quick!” whispered the yellow pony, who was drooling slightly. “Take her by force! DO IT NOW!”

Penumbra’s large eyes flitted to the side- -as if she were actually able to see the demon. Luciferian felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. If she could see it- -

“Well,” he said, smiling and bowing. “I am afraid I have several things to finish preparing for the parade. I am afraid I will have to leave you, for now. Although, as always, I will be sitting at Sombra’s right during the Games, and I do so look forward to seeing you there.”

“I look forward to seeing you too, Lord Twilight.”

Luciferian had no idea what to think, but he made his way to the door. Penumbra stopped him.

“Also,” she said, “please unstopper my maid. She, like the others, serves an important function. I do not take kindly to you damaging them.”

“It was only a joke.” Luciferian’s horn flashed, and the maid’s mouth reappeared. She immediately gasped.

“Taste! I can taste things! SO MANY THINGS!”

“Very well,” sighed Luciferian. “May your day go well, princess.”

“It shall be eventful,” said Penumbra, leaning back as the maids redoubled their efforts to dye both her wings and tail to the correct color. “It already has been, to an extent.”

The parade was more grand than anything Penumbra had ever seen. She understood that its primary purpose was to showcase the Empire’s military might, to reassure the crystal ponies that the freedom Sombra had brought them was, in fact, eternal, and that no external or internal force would ever dare to defy it.

It was also the first time Penumbra had ever been allowed outside the castle grounds. She had seen the kingdom from a distance, but it had looked small, like a model. She was surprised to learn that it hardly looked different from atop her perch beside her father.

In any normal, sane parade, the king and his daughter would ride on a float of some sort. Something decorative, perhaps even festive. In the Crystal Empire, though, festive meant only one thing: absolute military domination.

The vehicle they rode upon was a hulking mass of steel and crystal, its innards alternatively humming and screaming from a crystal-driven engine. The sides of it were painted black and adorned with the king’s heraldry: the mark of the Red Crystal.

To Penumbra, it looked like pictures she had seen in books of a ship, or boat. Except that no ships were made of steel, and so very few could fly. Her review and training of standard ordinance told her that it was a levitating artillery unit, a rather small frigate but one of the newest line. There were, of course, larger ships; the ones too wide to float above the road drifted high in the sky, vast dreadnoughts leaving shadows as dark as night as they followed their commander.

Behind walked the golems. The largest of them were type-O, armor-plated behemoths whose heads towered above the roofs of the highest buildings. They walked down the street slowly, like enormous, lazy ponies- -but their motion was precise, mechanical, and terrifying. Emeth had done good work.

Contingents of soldiers made a significant bulk of the parade. The majority of them were large units of thralls, all moving in perfect formation, not deviating even slightly. At the front of those units walked the precious few military units who did not need control masks: loyalists, specialists, and technicians. Those trusted to command, who were invariably gaunt, cold, and sneered at the crowd with the most frightening of greasy smiles. They were the middle class: those who could do something apart from the interchangeable tasks given to the pure slaves, and had been given the freedom to work in less strenuous tasks. Not one among them was a crystal pony; the majority were unicorn mages drawn from throughout Equestria.

Some of the technical units marched in their own formations, or, rather, in representations of them. It was of course forbidden for crystal-forgers or armorers to be outside like this, for fear of attack or outright theft. Only the prettiest and least useful specimens were allowed to be represented- -or those that belonged to one of the Dark Thirteen.

Necrophilo of Canterlot had sent his students, clad in green and gold, to march and to demonstrate his prolific generation of lesser necromancers for the Empire. Supposedly, Buttonhooks the Mad had brought his own disciples, although they were chained to him and muzzled to prevent damage to the spectators.

And there were indeed spectators. Penumbra had never seen so many ponies in one place. They lined both edges of the street, watching in somber silence. This was the one day that they were freed from their assigned tasks, and the thralls with spears that lined the streets ensured that they were able to maximize their freedom. Attendance to the military parade was of course obligatory.

Penumbra watched them from above, standing on the bow of the artillery frigate with her father. This was the thing she had wanted the most in the world since the day she had been constructed. And, for the most part, it was worth it. He had, like her, donned ceremonial armor, and his flowing mane had been adorned with ornaments of onyx and realgar. He was beautiful and regal, and watched the marching units before him with both pride and inexplicable disdain.

Yet something felt wrong. Penumbra could not place it. She supposed it was confusion at being in a place she had never been before, to be positioned beside the tilting, uneven crystal structures that made up her father’s kingdom. Something in the blank, sunken eyes of slaves, though, made her heart ache. She felt the weight of the iron colors on their necks as if they were instead on hers. And when they looked at her, the black-maned and black-winged alicorn princess of the Crystal Empire, they shuddered and recoiled in fear. Though Penumbra was the happiest she had ever been, she had begun to hate her own existence.

“My king,” she said. “They fear me.”

“Of course,” replied Sombra, smiling. “You resemble our most fatal enemies.”

“And do they fear me because they fear I will rob them of their freedom?”

Sombra looked out at the path before him. The Arena was drawing near. Had Penumbra looked back, she knew that she would only barely be able to see the Heart of Darkness, now fully entrapped in Al’Hrabnaz’s newest engine.

“No,” he said at last. “They fear you because you represent what they will never become. A superior being. Seeing you reminds them that they are lesser beings, that their lives have no worth beyond their capacity to serve us.”

“And do they not realize I am a machine? No more alive than this frigate?”

“They do not need to. Now go. Show them. Bright out their rightful fear.”

“Yes, Lord Sombra.”

Penumbra stood straight beside her father and spread her wings. When the crowd saw the abomination that she was, and understood that Sombra’s power had created such an atrocity from the child that had just half a year earlier brought them such hope, they shuddered in terror, and would have wept if they had yet any tears remaining.

The parade portion of the event terminated at the Imperial Arena, where the Games and various exhibitions were to be held. Penumbra knew the Arena well, as the only exception to her confinement had been her permission to watch the trial that had led to Thirteen of Thirteen being inducted into Sombra’s elite forces.

The process was managed with exacting precision, being run and operated by the steward and her underlings. Penumbra was aware of the schedule, and she wandered from her father’s side when she began to see familiar faces in the staging area. He hardly seemed to notice; logically, if any harm came to her, she deserved it and was not worthy of her role as a goddess-slaying weapon or as a royal. Even then, she did not stray too far.

While passing down a hall, Penumbra found Emeth staring out a window at the later remnants of the parade.

“Lord Emeth!” Penumbra bounded to his side, and then bowed. “I am glad you were able to participate.”

“Participation is obligatory,” replied Emeth. “More or less. But in my case, I greatly enjoy parades. They are so very festive.” He looked down at Penumbra. “Did you enjoy it, too?”

“Yes,” lied Penumbra. “Our Empire is so much more vast than I was aware.”

“And you have only seen the shortest road of it.”

“And it’s so small compared to all of Equestria...” Penumbra suddenly felt dizzy, and shook her head. She smiled and looked out the window. “What are you looking at?”

“I am assessing my performance.”

“You mean of the golems.”

Emeth nodded. “I am a golem, the golems are myself, and so on.”

“Have they performed well?”

“Adequately. They are really more intended for more useful things.” He paused, and his mechanical eyes narrowed slightly. “I always find it surprising. The ponies are always so much more impacted by the type-O or type-N golems.”

“Those are the largest,” noted Penumbra. “And the most powerful in war.”

“But also the simplest. The least impressive.”

“Then what is your favorite?”

Emeth looked confused. “Favorite?”

“Which one impresses you the most?”

“I understand what you meant. I simply never thought to phrase it that way. How amusing. The answer, though, is my phase-3 prototypes. The ones that can actually think.”

An image crossed the back of Penumbra’s mind, of a world of ash and lethal flaming mushrooms inhabited only by golems. “Were they here today?”

“There is no reason for them to be. Ponies find them the least impressive. I wonder why our opinions differ.”

Penumbra thought for a moment. “Because you made them.”

“I made all these golems. I am all these golems.”

“Except for the others. The new ones. You said they could think. You can’t be the same as them, then, like the others.” Penumbra paused again. “It’s like...it’s like they’re your children.”

Emeth paused, and his eyes grew distant. “I had not thought of phrasing it that way,” he said, at last. “How peculiar an idea, and how obvious. Yet I never saw it.” His tone cleared. “Nevertheless. If the analogy stands, then I will hardly consider them to have been born until they pass out of the prototype stage.”

A shadow was cast over the arena, and immediately the only light available came from the dim crystal lights in the hall and the fires placed outside. The sky was growing gray and preparing to snow, but this darkness was not a phenomenon of the weather. Rather, a dreadnought had just passed overhead.

“That would be the KSF Allegory,” said Penumbra, looking up at it excitedly. “It is getting in position for our king’s ceremonial entrance.”

“So you know the name of our flagship.”

“I know the names of all our king’s ships.” Penumbra watched as the vast, crystal-plated machine hovered overhead, its unholy engine humming in a way that made her mouth taste like metal. “Lord Emeth, do you know who built the ships?”

“I did.”

Penumbra stared at him, wide-eyed. “YOU?”

“And myselves. All except the drive systems.”

“You mean the engines.”

“They are far too sophisticated for that word, but yes. Those were designed and constructed by Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz. The mathematical idiosyncrasies of the design are far beyond me.”

“He’s smarter than YOU?”

“Does that surprise you? Why should machines like ourselves exceed the living in every aspect? The drive cores are truly a work of art, machines assembled in eight dimensions around the inconsistencies of perfect natural crystals. The slightest mistake, and, well...the effects are horrific. The made stallion actually believes those formats have applications.” Emeth stared up at the passing ship, and almost imperceptibly sighed. “I have distant memories. Ones that have grown hazy in my age. Of days when flying ships like these ruled the sky.” He paused, then smiled. “Perhaps I will see that day again.”

Penumbra felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see one of the steward’s underlings, a crystal pony considered aesthetically pleasing enough to be allowed indoors. “Lady Princess,” he said, bowing deeply. “The ceremony begins in five minutes. Your entrance is in exactly six minutes and seventeen seconds. We graciously request that you prepare yourself.”

“Thank you, slave.” Penumbra bowed on instinct, forgetting that she was not supposed to for the servant. He seemed severely taken aback, and Penumbra realized that beneath his beaten-in air of professionalism, he was terrified of her.

“Y- -yes, Lady princess!”

He retreated at once. Penumbra sighed. As she did, she looked across the staging area and saw that it had mostly been emptied. Only Sombra remained- -and he was standing in a dark corner, speaking to Crozea. Even at a distance, Penumbra saw her father smile for the very first time. The emotion she felt was distinctly unusual, at once horribly unpleasant and exceedingly happy.

“Is it true?” asked Penumbra.

“Is what true?” asked Emeth. “That your entrance is scheduled in six minutes and two seconds? Yes. That is indeed true.”

“No. That the king and Lady Crozea...that they have...you know...”

“It is,” whispered Eternity who, as always, was watching and inside Penumbra’s head. “I get to watch!” He tone fell. “Or I have to watch...filthy zebra...I’m probably a zebra...I don’t remember anymore...”

“You would rhyme if you were,” said Penumbra. She saw that Emeth was confused. “My apologies. Lady Eternity was speaking.”

“I assumed so. But if you are referring to the king and the witchdoctor’s relationship, yes. There is one, to an extent.”

“I don’t understand.” Penumbra’s brow furrowed, because she knew she needed to. “The king has stables of mares, as is his prerogative. Why her, then?”

“The stables are stocked with beautiful slaves. But ponies have needs. I have learned this through thousands of their lifetimes.”

“What kind of needs?”

“Physical ones,” whispered Eternity. “THEY RUB HORNS!”

“I do not need to hear her to know that Eternity is surely telling an untruth. To a pony, beautiful slaves are pointless. They do not solve the need for companionship. The relationship that Sombra and Crozea seek is one requiring mutual respect. To comprehend each other’s power, and accept it as such, but to realize just how lonely it makes one.”

“Lonely...”

“Crozea is powerful, ancient, and skilled. As is Sombra. Those are qualities the pair of them have rarely if ever found in another. It is a matter of friendship, but something beyond even that.”

“Then why does it make me feel so strange seeing them together.” Penumbra the red gem over her heart. “I feel...like I want that, to be there instead of her...but I feel so happy that she is there too. Why do I feel like that? I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I. You have asked a question that is beyond me. I lack empathy of any sort, as I am a machine.” Emeth paused. “However: if my prototypes are like my children, then what is Crozea to you?”

Penumbra paused. There was a word, surely, but she did not know it. “I don’t know.”

Emeth began walking to where he was scheduled to be. “Answer that question, and perhaps you will know what I never can.”

Chapter 21: The Arena

Metal clashed against metal as a sword sliced through the tip of a spear and a thrall-mask was knocked to the dusty arena floor. The pony who had been wearing it, not deprived her freedom from pain, screamed and crawled away from the whirring melee before her.

Penumbra stared in rapt attention as the remainder of the thrall forces regrouped. There were at least thirty of them, armed with full armor and spears. They advanced without hesitation- -and so did the Blue Knight.

The Knight jumped into the battle, deflecting their spears and blows with a blast of amber magic as his sword cleaved downward, separating masks from ponies. Following closely behind him was one of his mutant warriors, and based on his scars the eldest of them.

Their styles differed like night and day: the Blue Knight moved in a manner representative of strength and power, every move formalized and exact, or at least appearing so. He used his magic as well and as often as he used his blade, often to spectacular effect. The griffon, meanwhile- -a thing called a vedmak, Penumbra understood- -was the opposite; his motion was fluid and organic, whirring in a storm of beautiful improvisation. He turned and tilted on his supple wings, and his blade flashed silver in the light of the overcast sky.

And yet, as different as they were, their motion merged perfectly into a single unit, a demonstration of the most beautiful art Penumbra had ever seen. It was a dance of violence, and it was clear that the Blue Knight was leading: his griffon-at-arms was only meant to serve as a theatrical foil.

Penumbra was not the only one watching. The entire arena had been filled, and the crystal ponies stared entranced by silent. Those of other races, though- -the middle class of technicians and officers- -cheered loudly, though, and it was apparent that many had made bets on the outcome.

And then, almost as soon as it had started it was all over. The griffon and the Blue Knight stood over a pile of weeping and bruised crystal ponies, their masks removed by violent force. The Blue Knight activated the release mechanisms within his helmet and removed it. As he did, he raised his sword high above his head. Part of the crowd cheered loudly, while the crystal ponies, still dazed from the display, clapped quietly. Not even the most well-salted of the more lively in the group dared to boo.

The Blue Knight turned to where Penumbra sat and raised his sword to her. “I dedicate this victory to you, fair damsel, pride of the Strongest King!”

Penumbra blushed and was glad that her ceremonial armor was heavy enough to hold her wings down. She bowed in return, as was protocol.

Zither then turned the tip of his sword to where Scarlet Mist, her mane now almost fully white, sat beside Crozea. “And you, fair parasite, have been vanquished by proxy! Indeed, these soldiers of your construction could use a great deal of improvement!”

“Really,” rasped Scarlet Mist. “And do you think you would have done so well if you weren’t using the mutant as a crutch?”

Zither laughed. “Even a knight capable of the greatest deeds is useless entirely if he stands alone. To bear and honor this role is to understand cooperation: as we thirteen are unified against the evil of the Sisters under our glorious king!”

Penumbra found she agreed. The Knight’s performance had included several displays of independent valor, but the climax of it had been when he was allowed to work with another. Penumbra also had a vague understanding that Zither was attempting to sell Sombra on the idea of his pet mercenaries; Sombra, however, had seemed lukewarm about the entirety of it all.

“Of course, I would be glad to face any competent swordspony in a duel!” laughed the Blue Knight. He pointed his sword into the stands. “HOLDER! How about you?”

Penumbra looked to her right. A special portion of the arena had been partitioned and stood separate from the others, and it was where Sombra, herself, and the Dark Thirteen sat. Apart from Penumbra’s presence, this resulted in a perfectly symmetrical formation with Sombra in the center and five of the Dark Thirteen on either side. This of course accounted for the three who could by their nature not attend: Eternity Gaze, who watched but whose true body was inherently stationary; the Nameless One, whose location and description were unknown to all; and the being called the Infiltrator, who, as a spy, never attended public events.

Sombra sat in the center on a throne of darkened stone, and Penumbra sat on what was roughly the equivalent of a mildly soft ottoman. Directly to Sombra’s left- -much to the apparent chagrin of the others- -a flattened, strange figure clad in thick black clothing, feathers, and several ravens that he stroked eagerly. Beside him in turn was Necrophilo of Canterlot, then Emeth, then Zither’s seat, and finally Thirteen. On Sombra’s right- -and, by extension, Penumbra’s right- -sat Twilight Luciferian. He was also interfering with the symmetry, because he had apparently been authorized to bring a mare who Penumbra- -much to her deepest disappointment- -assumed was his wife. She was yellow, thin, and beautiful, save for her eyes, which were empty crimson. She was nude and almost continually pressed against Luciferian, occasionally smiling at Penumbra.

Penumbra, of course, knew her position well enough not to question Lord Twilight’s choices- -but seeing him with a mare who was not her was deeply hurtful, and she began to wonder about his commitment to the words of kindness he had given her.

Much to Luciferian’s chagrin, he was seated next to Crozea, followed by Scarlet Mist and Buttonhooks the Mad. Beyond him was one final member.

Zither had addressed the last pony on the right side, who had been given little more than a rickety wooden stool. He was perched quite high on it, apparently terrified of a rather large set-beast curled around the bottom. Penumbra could not recall meeting him; he was a rather quiet looking gray earth-pony with a fluffy dark mane. Still, she was quite aware that he did indeed bear a sheathed sword on his back.

“M- -me?!” he squeaked, pulling his legs up as the set-beast lifted its head.

“Be you not a swordspony? Why not face me, for the honor of our king?”

“I- -I would much prefer a different kind of battle, if you would. Perhaps we might match our strengthen in, say, the spoken word, rather than something where somepony might get...cut?”

“Oh please, Holder. I do not wish to meet my end when I am still so young and beautiful.”

Holder smiled, momentarily forgetting the beast below him. “I- -I’m so glad you acknowledge my skill in the subject, I have been practicing!” He produced a scroll from a ragged pocket. “I actually have one here- -”

“Holder, you misunderstand! I fear not your poetry for its strength, but rather the fact that I fully expect to die of boredom should I hear but a single verse!”

He gestured to the crowd, and they laughed, if only slightly. This is the only day of the year where that was permitted.

Holder seemed deflated, and put away the scroll. “Oh. Okay. My apologies.”

The set-beast lifted one of its paws and pushed the stool. Holder squeaked as he wobbled, clinging to the surface in terror. The crowd laughed at him, because unlike even the crystal ponies, he had absolutely no worth.

The Blue Knight waved to his audience, and then returned to the stands as the steward emerged.

“A showing of combat prowess, presented by the Blue Knight and his assistant, the vedmak Gambert, their opponent members of the king’s own army, utilizing generation three containment masks.” She lifted one hoof, pointing to Sombra. “Hail the Witchking, for allowing his servants to gift us with this glorious display!”

“Hail the Witchking!” rose a unified call from the crowd- -though mostly from those who were not crystal ponies.

“Occurring next is a special event, for your viewing pleasure and as a remind of our king’s benevolence. To protect you from polarity and dissent, we bring you the liquidation of heretics.”

Several plates of greenish magic formed a set of stairs, cast by one of her underlings and allowing the steward to be lifted out of the center of the arena. As she departed to the highest of the plates, a set of thralls dragged in a set of emaciated and bruised crystal ponies. The members of the crowd who were crystal ponies turned away, unable to watch, but those who were not booed. They would have thrown food, were it not so exceedingly valuable. Instead they threw crystals.

“The one given this honor is, I am told, a popular favorite,” continued the steward, gesturing toward a large door with practiced precision, just as it began to open. Two enormous beastmaster earth-ponies stepped out, taking positions on either side of the gate. A certain part of the crowd cheered wildly.

“Presenting: Esther, Hester, and Janet!”

An enormous creature stepped through the gate, and the beastmasters bowed to her. Penumbra might have been afraid of the horror, had she not already witnessed the actions of a live proteus.

This creature bore three heads. One was that of a great cat, its jaw wide enough to fit an entire pony; the head beside it was that of a goat. Attached to its rear was a tail consisting of a venomous green snake.

Penumbra knew this creature from books, and understood that it was a chimera. She also knew that it was larger than normal- -and somewhat overweight.

The heretics cried out at the sight of their doom, and they huddled together. They had taken a place directly in front of their king, and consequently directly in front of Penumbra. She saw that they were shaking, and that some of them were children. They were afraid- -and although Penumbra did not know why, she was afraid too.

“What a wonderful day!” growled the chimera’s tiger head, staring greedily at the huddled crystal ponies. “And I see they’ve already been tenderized. Excellent!”

“Oh please,” muttered the goat head, rolling her eyes. “I’m tired of skinny heretic. Just bones and crystal. Why even bother?” She looked up at the stands and winked at Zither. “I would much rather have that knight! I want to suck the flesh of his bones...why not come down here to slay me, sir knight? Show me that massive sword!”

“Shut it, Hester!” grunted the tiger, slapping the goat’s head. “You don’t even eat meat! Your half of the digestive system is for grass and hay ONLY! Or do you want a repeat of last week?”

“Not to mention tin cans,” cackled the the snake head.

“SHUT IT, JANET!” growled both of the frontal heads.

“Besides,” said the tiger, apparently Esther. “Look a little closer. I think somebody already beat you to the sucking.”

Zither stood. “Are you done commenting on my physique, or are you going to continue delaying the festivities with your laughable insolence?”

“We are letting them marinade!” snapped Esther. She licked her lips. “They taste sooooo much better when they’re afraid...”

The heretics whimpered and huddled together as the chimera began to circle. Though already somewhat fat, it had begun to drool.

The eldest mare of the heretics produced a tattered pile of paper that could barely be called a book. It was ancient, warn, and apparently had been kept hidden from the thralls. Not that it was of any consequence now.

“My children,” she said, her voice only barely shaking. “Let us pray.”

Though terrified, the heretics knelt. Penumbra stared, almost as rapt as she had been for Zither’s performance.

The mare opened the book and began to read. “Oh great Celestia, she who raises her divine sun at the dawn of each day and sets it to commence the night! She who bathes us in her divine light, in her endless love, hear our words!”

“Prayer can’t help you,” whispered the snake head.

“Janet. Shut. UP.”

“What? Is it my fault I’m stuck back here, on the BUTT? I have a right to speak, too! That little filly! I want to bite her! BITE HER HARD!”

The filly whimpered, but was held close by one of the stallions of the group. They continued to hold their heads bowed, their backs facing outward, and their priestess continued to speak.

“Though we walk in a realm of darkness, we forget not your light, your glory, your gift. You who protect us from the darkness, and the horrors that dwell within it. We can know no fear beneath your sun, for though our bodies be not immortal our souls shall persist across eternity in your divine light.” She looked Sombra in the eye defiantly when she spoke. “We shall not forsake you, for we are your children, Wielder of Kindness, Generosity, and bearer of True Magic, we serve you, even here, and even now, in our darkest hour. Hail the One True Goddess, and praise the Sun.”

“Praise the sun,” wept the others.

One among them, though, was shaking, continually looking around and at the chimera.

“I want that mare,” said Esther. “The green one. She looks tasty.”

“Then stop talking and just do it already.”

“LET ME BITE THE FILLY!”

“SHUT UP JANET!”

Penumbra felt sick. She was shaking, but could not take her eyes away. Neither could many of the crystal ponies. Although they tried to hide it, many were weeping. Others held one another, while many covered their mouthed in horror. Worst of all, Penumbra UNDERSTOOD- -she knew their pain, as she felt it too. Except that there was one difference, something unique only to her.

The chimera lowered itself, preparing to pounce. One of the heretics gasped, and then suddenly stood, breaking their circle.

“We RECANT!” he screamed. “We reject Celestia! We RECANT! Hail Sombra!

“Hail the Witchking!” cried another, his daughter still held in his hooves and tears running down his face. “Hail Sombra, the One True God!”

“Mercy!” pleaded another. “MERCY!”

Penumbra stood suddenly, her wings flaring outward as she mimicked the exact pose she had seen Nightmare Moon take deep within her dreams. “IT IS GRANTED!”

The entire arena suddenly fell absolutely silent. Not a single sound was made as all eyes turned to Penumbra- -and then slowly to Sombra. Even the chimera looked to him, not out of confusion but out of fear. One of the heretics fainted.

Al’Hrabnaz stood quickly, sending his ravens scattering. “How dare you- -”

Sombra raised a hoof, silencing all other ponies. His red, slit-pupiled eyes turned to Penumbra. “That plea was not addressed to you, alicorn. But I am curious. Why do you seem so intent that I spare these heretics?”

Penumbra took a breath. She suddenly realized that in her haste, she had inadvertently entered into an exhibition of her own. There was no time to hesitate, and she refused to fail.

Taking a step back and raising her hoof to the crowd, Penumbra addressed both the audience and her father. “Have not these heretics recanted? Have they not rejected their false god?” Penumbra turned to Sombra, though she still spoke loud enough for all to hear. “And are you not a merciful king? What you request of your subjects is simple: their honesty, and their loyalty. In exchange you extend to them your limitless generosity and kindness.” She looked down at the heretics, who were looking up at her both terrified but also in awe of their potential savior. “You have brought these ponies freedom from their illusions and from the tyranny of the Sun-Tyrant. You have restored their loyalty, and their worthiness for your favor. Oh great king...” Penumbra decided to take a risk; though extreme, she thought it might make for a useful rhetorical point. “...father. I ask that you once again extend your benevolence, and free these ponies to once again serve you and our glorious kingdom.”

A murmur moved through the crowd. They were confused, but they did not seem so afraid. This was an unusual situation, one that had never happened before in the history of the Crystal Empire. Penumbra would have liked to see their faces, to know if they were still so deathly afraid of her- -but she kept her eyes focused on Sombra, not even looking up to Crozea or Emeth for aid.

Sombra stared back at her. For a long moment, they were both silent. Then Sombra finally spoke.

“Very well. But the act of Celestia-worship is a serious offense, and a deep wound to my trust. If these slaves are not to be liquidated here, what punishment do you recommend, princess?”

Penumbra could not immediately answer that question because she had not considered it. She was unfamiliar with the legal system of her nation beyond its basic structure; she did not know what punishments ponies would normally be given.

Twilight Luciferian stood, the yellow mare sliding off his side and taking his still-warm seat. “My king,” he said, bowing. “Might I offer my suggestion?”

“I had not asked you, Twilight, but I assume you are going to suggest regardless.”

Luciferian smiled at Penumbra. “Instead of public liquidation, we shall send their children to the mines. In the district most severely afflicted by the damp.” He turned to the heretics and smiled. “Then the adults will be sent to the glue factory.”

“Not the glue factory!” cried one of the heretics as another fainted.

“I’ll be sticky FOREVER!!”

“I’m not finished.” Luciferian’s smile grew. “Though the sheep have recanted, it appears that the shepherd has not. So the priestess will require special punishment. If I may be so bold, I recommend ad Modum Pinata. She will be hung in the town center at dawn. By her leg, or perhaps her tail. And she shall be beaten daily for thirty of her precious false-god’s passing.”

“Or until the candy comes out!” whispered Eternity.

“I- -I- -” Penumbra looked at the heretics, and their wide, pitiful eyes. The punishment was severe indeed, but it was better than increasing the local chimera’s obesity. “If there is no other option- -”

“Actually,” said Emeth, standing. “I may have an alternative, if you are interested.”

“Be quiet,” hissed Luciferian. “You have NOTHING to add!”

“But I do.” Emeth looked at the heretics, but contained speaking. “I am currently in need of live or partially alive ponies to participate as test subjects.”

“Test subjects?” Penumbra did not know if she should feel hopeful or not. It was bad enough to know that Twilight Luciferian was actually married or had a marefriend; she did not want to learn just how vicious Emeth truly was in the same day.

“Turing tests for my phase-three prototypes. The tests are intensive but critical.”

“I was not aware you had prototypes,” said Sombra.

“Because they have not yet passed the Turing test.”

“And the priestess?”

Emeth eyed her carefully. “Prototype Delilah has an interest in pony religion. Although my background in the subject is extensive, as a machine I am inherently incapable of conceiving of an immortal creator. A steadfast believer could prove a rare find.” His pupils narrowed. “Additionally, she will be housed for the remainder of her life in my facility. She will never see the sun again.”

“Do what you will!” shouted the priestess. “I will not break!”

Emeth stared at her, and slowly smiled, if his expression could even be called that. “All ponies break, in time. And when you do, you will find that, like myself, you have no soul that can be preserved. But I admire your defiance, even when the fate of your so-called siblings and children are on the line.” He looked up to Penumbra. “The decision, of course, is yours.”

Penumbra looked between the two, and then focused on Sombra once more. “I am of the opinion that these heretics can serve their kingdom most effectively with Lord Emeth’s plan.”

Sombra stared at her, then nodded incredibly slightly. “Very well. But the crimes of the priestess cannot be wiped away by interrogation by a golem.”

“My king?”

“She must be prepared first.” He looked to his right. “Scarlet Mist?”

Scarlet Mist chuckled slightly and stood. Mist descended from her, seeping down from the stands like fingers. The heretics cried out and flees, abandoning their priestess. She held her holy book to her chest as she was forced to inhale, and then her eyes went wide as the fear consumed her.

“No! NO!” She screamed and began to confuse. “Celestia NO! MAKE IT STOP!”

Her screams then devolved into wordlessness. Penumbra- -and the crystal ponies in the audience- -were forced to look away. Though the effect was supposedly temporary, the scars would be permanent.

“I still want to bite the filly,” whispered the chimera’s tail. As she said it, the whole of the chimera was grasped in red magic and forcefully pushed back to the gate it had come from.

“Great job, Janet!”

“Now we don’t get dinner!”

“Hey, HEY! It’s not MY fault! Besides, you two are FATTIES!”

“It’s true,” sighed Esther. “Heretics really are bad for our cholesterol...”

Sombra stood. “See to it that these ponies are delivered to their new home promptly.”

The steward bowed, and directed several thralls to take the slaves away.

The former heretics burst out weeping with relief. A few called their thanks to Penumbra, and the young filly waved. Penumbra waved back- -just as she felt her father’s head beside her own.

“How very bold,” he whispered. “And an important showing. But defy me like that again, and we shall see exactly how immortal your alicorn body truly is.”

“A small price to pay for the sanctity of the Empire,” whispered Penumbra in return.

When they returned to their seats and the last of the heretics had been dragged off the area, the steward stepped back into the center. Even she seemed surprised, as well as annoyed that her carefully crafted schedule had been disrupted.

“It would seem that we are now ahead of schedule,” she said, addressing the crowd. “Which gives us even greater time for our final and most important event.” She turned to the deck where Sombra, Penumbra and the Dark Thirteen sat. She raised a hoof and gestured toward them. “The time has come for the issuance of challenges, to be displayed here before our glorious Empire in combat. Let it be known that should you defeat a member of the Dark Thirteen, you shall rise and replace them at King Sombra’s side.” She looked out to the crowd. “Are there any takers?”

The crowd was absolutely silent. Among the slaves, there were many powerful warriors and skilled mages, but all remained silent, looking away to avoid meeting the steward’s eye. All but one.

A unicorn mage stood. He was shaking and dressed in rags, clearly terrified out of his mind. It was also clear he had not eaten in several weeks, perhaps longer.

“I, LemonLeaf, challenge Twilight Luciferian- -”

A sudden snap of violet light struck the young unicorn in the face so hard that he was hurled halfway up the arena steps with such force that the force sent crystal slaves flying. He hit hard, unconscious only because the cushioning impact with the crystal ponies had kept him from a far less amenable fate.

“Your students are slipping, Necrophilo,” said Luciferian, the glow of his horn slowly fading.

“That one was no student of mine,” retorted Necrophilo. “Not after what has done. Or, rather, failed to do.”

“That said.” Luciferian stood and stepped forward. “I myself would like to issue a challenge.”

Both the Blue Knight and Necrophilo of Canterlot sighed and began to stand up.

“By ancient and sacred unicorn law, I challenge King Sombra to a duel.”

The entire arena once again fell completely silent. Fainting ran rampant; this was far more stress than even the crystal slaves were normally put through.

None dared to speak as Sombra slowly turned his head. His eyes were at once cold and still, and filled with abject fury. Despite it, though, he remained as calm as ever.

“What you have invoked is not an ordinary challenge,” said Sombra, slowly. “n all honesty, I have expected this for some time, Twilight. But if I am to accept, I must offer you a chance. Surely you understand the consequences of what you have just done, and that you have thrown your life away either way. I shall give you only one opportunity to retreat, for once the challenge is accepted, it cannot be retracted.”

“You make it sound so serious,” laughed Luciferian, bowing. “My king, I merely wish to test my skills. As a demonstration to the kingdom, as none among us could withstand a battle with you for even minutes.” He grinned at the steward as he said it. “I would never dream of usurping you, my lord. Even if I am more than strong enough to.”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed, and he sighed. “So be it. Your challenge is accepted, Twilight Luciferian, last scion of House Twilight.”

Sombra stood, and his ceremonial armor ignited in red flame. The spell propagated across the surface, reforging the armor into something clearer and crisper than anything Penumbra had ever seen. In an instant, Sombra stood before her, his long mane tied back and his body clad in the most beautiful armor Penumbra had ever seen. In fact, she had never seen a stallion so handsome.

His body flashed red again, this time as he teleported. He appeared beside the steward in the center of the arena. Even the steward jumped, momentarily breaking her professionalism, because she recognized the look in Sombra’s eyes. It was exactly how he had looked when she, in desperation, had challenged him to a duel- -three minutes before her horn had been ripped from her skull and her kingdom forever enthralled to the Crystal Empire.

“Lord Twilight,” said Penumbra. “You can’t be serious! He’s our king- -”

“Is he.” He smiled at Penumbra and took her hoof. “Do not worry, my princess. I give you my word that I will be safe. And that I will return for you when the duel is complete.”

With that, he turned and jumped into the arena, walking carefully down a set of luminescent magic plates he had projected.

The steward looked at both of them, and stepped back. “The- -the challenge is accepted. Let it commence!” She drew back and was lifted from the arena, leaving only Sombra and Luciferian.

Penumbra shifted in her seat. Beside her, Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz stood. This time his birds did not leave. Penumbra realized that this was the closest she had been to him since he had tried to baste her in her own juices.

“This is absurd!” he said, not to anyone in particular. “This is absolutely absurd!”

“Though there are few I generally agree with less,” said Crozea, standing and walking to the edge of the platform. “What the morlock says is true, this fight is needless.”

“But well within his rights as a unicorn.” Necrophilo could not stop smiling. “The challenge has been issued, and accepted. We have no right to interfere.”

“To Twilight, you are no friend; I think you only wish to see your rival’s end.”

Necrophilo smirked. “Do you really doubt your king’s abilities that deeply? Watch out, or you’ll be the next one fed to the chimera.” He leaned forward, bending at an impossible angle for any creature with legs. “Besides. Luciferian has no idea what he has done. He is too young to remember their customs, and they were never written in books.”

“What customs?” asked Penumbra.

Necrophilo eyed her closely. “You shall see, little princess.”

The yellow mare in Twilight Luciferian’s chair lifted her head. Even at a distance, she reeked badly of rotting flowers. “Oh yes. She most certainly will. You ALL will.”

She giggled wildly, and Penumbra found that she had become deeply afraid.

Chapter 22: The Duel

Twilight Luciferian and King Sombra took their places in the center of the Crystal Arena, and the crowd fell silent. A mumur passed through them as the pair simultaneously bowed to one another. None among them had ever witnessed Sombra bow to any being, mortal or immortal- -but the custom was sacred, to unicorns as a whole but especially to sorcerers. From the most lowly novice to Celestia herself, all who considered themselves a true mage were bound by these customs. Twilight Luciferian and Sombra were no different.

When they raised their heads, Luciferian’s horn glowed. Sombra analyzed the pattern and determined that it was not, in fact, an attack; instead, he watched as five majestic-purity crystals rose from Luciferian’s cloak, each one carved with an incredibly intricate spell architecture.

“So this explains where my crystals have gone. Are you really so frightened that you would resort to cheating before you have even cast your first spell?”

Luciferian smiled. “You’re out of practice. It’s no surprise you don’t know the current standards.” Luciferian’s horn glowed, and an enormous book was summoned before him. “According to Volume ninety two, chapter six hundred forty, subsection twelve of the Classical-Subrace Unicorn’s Dueling Hoofbook, magic tools including but not limited to staffs, wands, broomsticks, abacuses, phylacteries and wizard hats are permitted in the duel so long as they are brought in on one’s person. The rule is actually a result of the duel between Moulden the Unwashed and Dia Meter the Thich-Horned, in which the ruling counsel decides- -”

The book suddenly disintegrated, dissolved in toxic red fire. Luciferian watched in horror as it turned to dust. He looked up at Sombra with an expression of absolute hatred. “You FIEND! That was an innocent BOOK!”

Sombra smirked. “Then perhaps you should waste less time telling me things that even the most simple child knows, and raise a defensive spell? Your precious book would be safe right now if you were even the least bit competent.”

Luciferian continued to glare, but then suddenly burst out in laughter. “Banter? From YOU? Sombra, are you really that much of a fool for tradition? You hardly have need for it.” The crystals spread out, each one igniting with violet light- -but only for a moment. After they were activated, they continued to move and glow on their own accord.

“You see,” said Luciferian as he and Sombra began to circle one another. “In terms of raw power, you have me beat by far. But you are old. My calculation speed is exponentially faster than yours, and with these crystals, I think I stand more than a chance.” His eyes narrowed. “You are simply not fast enough.”

One of the crystals shot forward, its form encased in a gyro of thousands of independent destruction spells. It moved so quickly that no pony could even see it move; from the stands, Penumbra stared dumbfounded. Her use of magic was childish and limited, and she had not even realized how complex even one spell could possibly be.”

Eternity chuckled inside Penumbra’s head. “Idiot.”

An iron-clad hoof struck Luciferian in the side of the head, sending him reeling. Sombra moved with unparalleled grace; his every motion an apparent paradox, that a pony as large as he was and clad in such heavy armor could move with such fluid ease. The next blow was a kick to Luciferian’s ribs, sending him sprawling in the dust and mud.

“You- -you HIT ME!” he cried, standing and shoving his jaw back into place. “How DARE YOU! How- -how- -how UNCOUTH!”

“In accordance with the ancient customs of my kind, physical combat is an accepted part of the duel.” A thin smile crossed Sombra’s face. “Or, you may note that your precious hoofbook does not strictly forbid it. How humiliating would it be if I crushed you without even raising a single spell?”

“Like a filthy earth-pony.” Luciferian laughed, and his horn ignited. “If you think I fear humiliation, you are sorely mistaken!”

He fired a spell directly at Sombra. Sombra dodged, but the spell split, arcing outward as it traced its path. Though it came as many forks, Sombra dodged each of them with ease.

“Also in accordance with our rules,” continued Sombra, “you must understand that no yield will be accepted, and no quarter given. Had you challenged me in private, I might have allowed you to persist as a hornless gelding. But your insolence seems to know no bounds.”

Sombra suddenly lurched forward, allowing several of Luciferian’s spells to simply penetrate him. He hardly seemed to notice, forcing through them as his horn ignited with fiery light. Luciferian raised a shield spell from one of his crystals, but had not counted on Sombra’s physical fitness and consequential speed. A second crystal ignited as Sombra cut Luciferian in two.

The two halves fell apart and rolled. The crowd gasped as they stood, now as two identical but half-sized Luciferian’s.

“You are a relic of a bygone age,” said one of the half-Luciferians.

“From a time when things were all straightforward and simple,” laughed the other.

The two halves then split in half, and then in half again. Each time, they created another round of fully-formed Twilight Luciferians, though in decreasing size with every division. It was a rare spell indeed, and one that was remarkably disturbing.

“Really?” sighed Sombra, looking down at the veritable pile of tiny unicorns. “You are going to make me use the cat-spell, aren’t you? I have not used the cat-spell in seven and a half centuries. Do you really despise your own dignity so completely?”

Sombra’s horn glowed, and a construct formed out of light. As the spell’s name implied, the construct was in the shape of a cat. The horde of tiny Luciferian’s screamed and fled as the cat bounded toward them, chasing them.

“This is a farce.”

Sombra suddenly roared in pain as a beam of violet light struck him in the side, burning a substantial gash in his armor. He was then knocked hard from a concussive blast from the other side, although his immense strength kept him from the indignity of falling. He looked up to see a pair of crystals circling him- -and Luciferian’s astral projection between them.

“I can’t believe it was that easy to get a hit,” he sighed. Across the way, his divisions began to pile onto one another, forming a massive stack that had begun to reform into his original body. “If it is going to be this easy, well, frankly, your steward is a weakling. Unless something is distracting you?

The projection vanished as Luciferian’s fully re-formed body opened its eyes and shattered the cat-spell construct. “Perhaps ruling has sapped your skills?” Luciferian’s grin grew. “No, wait. It couldn’t have. Simply because your rule has been so poor as of late.”

He looked upward at the audience that surrounded him- -at nearly the whole of the Crystal Empire. Then he looked back on Sombra with a grin on his face, and Sombra understood.

“Be GONE.”

An immense surge of red magic shot from Sombra’s horn, arcing toward Luciferian. Luciferian countered, producing a spell precision-tuned to shield himself. Sombra’s spell broke and washed over him, the runes of his armor protecting him from the remnant embers of its toxic flames.

“I had not been sure until the cry stalling event. That you cowed to your slaves and nearly devastated the kingdom on a whim. It was then that I knew your decisions were faltering.”

“My only poor decision was trusting YOU.”

Another beam of red energy slammed forward. This time, the corona was so great that many of the ponies in the arena screamed and covered their faces to prevent their eyebrows- -and faces- -from being singed off.

Luciferian raised another shield spell. This time, though, it was overwhelmed, and as it fell, Luciferian’s body flickered and vanished- -revealing a crystal.

Thunderous violet lighting struck Sombra from behind, and he once again cried out in pain. He turned to strike behind him, only for the earth of the arena to shoot outward, its stone tiles forming a pair of great hands that bound Sombra to the ground.

The air shifted as Luciferian’s invisibility spell dissipated and he re-emerged a considerable distance from Sombra. He had to yell to be heard- -both by Sombra and by the crowd.

“But I should have known earlier. I was blind because I trusted you, that you could still rule this kingdom in your doddering old age. But outside this failing shield, Celestia and Nightmare Moon have been amassing an army. And what have you done? Sat here in your Citadel, insisting that the Crystal Empire is neutral and allowing your enemies to plot our downfall. Investing our national economy into useless engines and your ridiculous quest for eternal life.” Luciferian addressed the crowd directly. “Our kingdom is Sombra, and Sombra our kingdom- -and has it not grown decrepit and ossified in their old age? We could be so much MORE, if only we had a leader willing to do what needed to be done! A mage truly WORTHY to wear that crown!”

Luciferian’s speech was suddenly interrupted as he, along with every boulder and fleck of sand in the arena was lifted by hideous red light.

“I am not worthy?” asked Sombra, his magic silently vaporizing the earthen hands that had held him down as he stood, ignoring their grasp entirely. “Really. What a droll opinion.”

A thin filament of Sombra’s magic extended as he slowly approached Luciferian. Without gravity, Luciferian could do little to move. The filament condensed and became solid, forming a sword.

Runes ignited on the blade of the sword, burning arcane symbols into the dark metal. “I have placed a special curse on this blade,” explained Sombra. “One touch to you or to your armor, even the slightest nick, that will be all it shall take.” He smiled. “And that makes you afraid. I can feel it. I can TASTE it.”

A crystal had positioned itself behind Sombra. It struck out with a bolt of pink energy, and Sombra cut it down with a curving arc of blazing red energy. The crystal fell to the ground, darkening and sparking with red light.

“Remote units are unimpressive, Twilight.”

Luciferian lit his horn. “Then how about a direct attack?”

Magic erupted from Luciferian’s horn, spreading and propagating into a dome of runes and symbols, assembling itself into a shield. For a moment, it was able to push Sombra’s crimson magic back- -but only for a moment.

Sombra sighed and lit only the slightest tip of his horn. His magic instantly retracted, flowing backward and shattering Luciferian’s spell. The field filling the arena was redirected so that it only surrounded Luciferian’s horn, which Sombra lifted him by. Luciferian cried out in pain.

“Out of respect for what you might once have been, I will let you meet your end with it intact. However...”

Sombra’s magic slammed downward, driving Luciferian into the ground. It lifted him again, and repeated the process several times before throwing him hard against a wall. Luciferian managed to stand after a moment, only to have another plume of red magic crush through his shield spells once more. The crystals fell to the floor, and Luciferian did not stand up.

In the stands, Penumbra stood. “This is too much,” she said, looking to the others. “We have to stop it, before- -”

“He was the one stupid enough to challenge the king,” sighed Scarlet Mist. “He chose this fate. Don’t interfere.”

Necrophilo laughed. “Shorter than I expected. I had never thought the king for such a showpony.”

“And yet you would think he would have seen this coming,” said Buttonhooks, amused but only invested in the battle in that he himself was not the one being beaten. “How peculiar.”

“No no no,” whispered Al’Hrabnaz. “Those crystals...those assemblies, I know them.” He suddenly leapt to his feet. “NO! My king, NO!”

Luciferian looked up and grinned, wondering how he had ever served such an aging fool. How easy it had been to convince Sombra that the crystals were anything as gauche and uncultured as simple toys. They could be used as remote spells, of course, but that was a simplistic approach drawn from the ancient world that Sombra himself was a relic of. His body was trapped in a state free of evolution; he did not understand the progress that had been made by the unicorn race.

The crystals suddenly littered and shot across the ground, drawn to Luciferian’s call. Among them was a blackened crystal growing with red light.

“Are you really this STUPID?!” laughed Luciferian, casting several restoration spells over his body. That kind of magic was dangerous to one of his predictions, and his body grew gaunt as his fangs extended and became visible. The effects were cosmetic, of course; he would reverse them later. He was sure that Sombra already knew.

“You know,” he said, nearly giggling. “The books say that your blood isn’t like ours. That you bleed BLACK instead of SILVER. I really would like to see!”

“You overestimate yourself,” sighed Sombra. In a flash, he had crossed the arena and raised his sword. Luciferian raised his sword and brought it down. Luciferian raised his armored leg to block it.

“It is over,” sighed Necrophilo. “Such a waste.”

The sword came down, striking through the armor- -but stopping at the flesh of the limb.

Sombra’s eyes widened, and he met Luciferian’s gaze. “What have you done?”

“You. Starswirl. My FATHER. I have done what you were all too afraid to do!”

The crystals suddenly lifted into the air, surrounding Luciferian with a plume of violet energy. The central one sparked red with a sample of Sombra’s own magic as the calculation system integrated into Luciferian’s mind.

Sombra was blown back from the force, and he recognized the spell, at least superficially. Whatever was wrong with Luciferian’s front leg went to the back of his mind as he summoned his own spell, assembling a powerful beam. It was not a simple surge of energy, but a complicated stream of independent spells. Although he did not know why, Sombra knew that he needed to end the fight quickly.

The beam arced out toward Luciferian. As it approached, Luciferian reached out and dissected its source code, comparing it to his standard and pulling it apart on a basal level. From there, he reassembled it, and the red of the magic became violet. He pulled it around his body and focused it back at Sombra. Sombra raised a shield, but only against his own spell. Hidden in its carrier wave, Luciferian had added his own- -and it struck Sombra, severing his horn.

Sombra’s sword fell as he was forced back. He growled not in pain but in hatred, and his horn immediately began to regenerate.

“How many times can you do that, I wonder?” said Luciferian, pacing forward as his crystals circled him.

Sombra roared as his newly-regenerated horn ignited. The entire arena cried out as they were nearly blinded by the torrent of red light. A spell of cataclysmic intensity formed into a vast sphere over Luciferian.

The steward shot up from her position and gestured to her underlings. “Reinforce the arena! QUICKLY!”

Sombra reared, and with a scream of fury sent the plume of magic directly toward Luciferian. Even Celestia herself would have been unable to block it in time, let alone a mere mortal.

Luciferian looked up at it and engaged a small spell he had been closely disguising. As soon as it engaged, the fireball stopped in midair.

It was not just Sombra’s spell, though. The entire world had slowed nearly to the point of stopping.

Luciferian laughed, and slowly turned his eyes. He had to take care; even the slightest of movements could be deadly when this particular spell was in use. Still, he was able to look to the stands. He saw his soon-to-be bride, staring wide-eyed at the duel, frozen in place amongst the other fools and filthy non-unicorns. They were all frozen in time- -save for one.

From her position at the end of the group, Thirteen of Thirteen turned her head to stare at Luciferian.

“I suppose I need to thank you, miss Thirteen,” laughed Luciferian. “It was observing you that allowed me to resolve several theories on the nature of chronoplexy. Granted, I cannot travel through time, nor can I create alternate timelines as you can- -but I can certainly slow it. I would bow to you, but unfortunately I do not have a suit to protect me from chronal sheer.” He turned his attention upward toward Sombra’s spell. “Hmm...how interesting. The phase variation is defined by an unstable function. That, and the main format is tempered with Chaos magic. A very challenging spell indeed. He is attempting to produce something I cannot calculate. Since only you can hear me, Thirteen, I will admit this: he is a genius. An ancient mage, a relic of an age of great purebloods. It is a shame he must be destroyed.” Luciferian sighed. “This spell would have worked, too. It will take me about six hours to redirect it. Of course, I have more than enough time...”

The spell struck its mark, but as it landed it ignited upward as a plume of pink-violet. Sombra braced himself, but there was no time to dodge. It came back at him as an inferno of fire, sweeping him off his hooves and forcing him back against the area. Slaves and servants alike ran screaming, some being afflicted by the curse in the process.

Luciferian stared at his work, wondering if he had a been successful. The cursed fire continued to burn, so there was a lingering effect he had not accounted for.

Then something stepped through the flames. It was grotesque, but rapidly regenerating. Luciferian cursed under his breath. The books had indicated that dark unicorns were notoriously good at regeneration; in Sombra’s case, the Heart of Darkness seemed to have accelerated the process exponentially.

“It seems I missed. If only slightly.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened as he looked behind him. Sombra’s sword was stuck to the hilt in the stone wall, having missed Luciferian’s ear by mere hair’s widths.

“Or you are too merciful, perhaps? You never were willing to do what it takes.” Luciferian smiled. “That said, I did not expect the sword. Just like you don’t seem to have expected this.”

A spell ignited beneath Sombra. Runes formed around him, and before he could unfasten them a bolt of magic took his horn again. Unable to resist the gravity surge, he was brought to his knees.

“There you go. That’s the way.” Luciferian pulled Sombra’s sword from the stone behind him, changing the runes in the process and adorning it with his own mark- -the image of a red pentagram. Simply for aesthetic effect. “Bow before your king, old stallion.”

Sombra did not respond. He simply glared and attempted to lunge. The attempt failed; the gravity spell simply flattened him against the floor. Sombra was attempting to formulate a counterspell, but Luciferian refused to allow it. Before Sombra’s horn had even fully regenerated, Luciferian blasted it off again.

Luciferian limped forward, dragging the tip of the sword across the ground. Silver had started to drip from his eyes and ears. The calculation spells were taking their toll. Unlike Sombra, he could not regenerate from the wounds forming inside him.

In the stands, Penumbra stood and addressed the others. “We have to stop this! He’s in danger!”

“I agree,” said Al’Hrabnaz, standing and reaching for the dial in his chest. “This has gone too far!”

“NO.” Zither, now standing nearly on top of them, drew his sword and blocked their path. “You shall NOT interfere.”

“Are you insane, primitive? GET OUT OF MY WAY!”

“The duel shall NOT be interfered with! I shall not allow you to besmirch the king’s honor!”

“Lord Hearstrings,” pleaded Penumbra. “He needs our help! If Lord Twilight keeps going- -”

“And I have no stake in the ridiculous customs of filthy uninvolved unicorn troglodytes! MOVE!”

“And how would you help him? Any of you?” Zither pointed at the battle with his sword. “To enter the fray, to save the king and prove that Twilight is RIGHT? That the king is too weak to defend himself, that he is so terribly WEAK? To do so would violate everything our king holds dear- -and to sacrifice our very kingdom in the process!”

“Honestly, I have to agree with the meat-head.”

Penumbra turned sharply, not recognizing the strange voice that had spoken. She realized that it had come from the set-beast, which now occupied Sombra’s seat. As the beast sat back, its body flashed with green light and it assumed the form of a pale filly. She put her head on her hoof on the armrest of the chair. “Luciferian knew that going in. Interfere, and he wins.” She shrugged. “Wish I had thought of it.”

“Fine!” rasped Al’Hrabnaz. “Traitors! I will deal with this myself!”

“Try to pass, and taste my blade.” Zither looked to the others. “That goes for all of you!”

“A primitive with a pointed stick. I am so very afraid. But if that is what the king wishes, then I will obey. However...” Al’Hrabnaz reached for the dial in his chest and turned it several times. When he next spoke, his voice was booming, amplified through the kingdom.

“Attention various meats,” he said. “This is Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, Eight of Thirteen, the Ravenlord. I would hereby like to increase your entertainment by placing a bet. Should our glorious king lose this battle, then I shall take the first, second, and thirdborn of every pony in the kingdom and place them outside the kingdom’s atmospheric shield. To test the effect of extreme cold on survival time, you see, and to isolate genetic determinants. This is valid for all ponies of lesser, worthless races, including crystal, earth, Pegasus, and unicorns of every social class.”

“And if Luciferian wins?” asked Penumbra.

“Then I throw the thirdborns in one of my reactors. I very much like the sound they make.”

Al’Hrabnaz twisted his dial, and his voice cut out from the kingdom. Zither stared at him in horror.

“Have you no honor, insect?”

“I have no need for it. Nevertheless, I have not violated the precious sanctity of this horn-measuring contest.” He turned toward Scarlet Mist. “Although the spirit could be furthered if- -”

“Talk to me again and I tear that mask off your face here and now,” said Scarlet Mist. “No. I will not engage. Because the outcome doesn’t matter to me. Sombra, Luciferian? My goals are the same.”

“So then your service to the king is despicably illegitimate,” snapped Crozea. “Let us hope then that the mathematician's words are conspicuously adequate.”

Throughout the kingdom, the words of Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz had been heard- -and ponies knew that he was a creature of his word. For many of them, their children were the only thing of value they had, the only thing of any meaning in their otherwise bleak world of absolute freedom. The thought of losing them was too much to bear.

The air became heavy as incredible fear began to saturate the whole of the Crystal Empire.

Luciferian stumbled as a feedback shock suddenly struck him. It was weak, barely a tremor, but he had to be careful; in his current state, feedback could be devastating if not managed properly.

The spell holding Sombra was cracking. Despite the intense gravity, and despite the immense planning and work that had gone into designing it, Sombra was rising, his body alight with red energy and his eyes trailing violet light.

“Sit back DOWN!” screamed Luciferian, increasing the power of the spell- -but it was no use. Sombra stood and shattered it.

“FEAR!” he laughed, his voice echoing off the walls of the arena. “Ah yes, I feel it! So much POWER!”

He lowered his head and struck out with a powerful spell. Luciferian began the calculations to reverse it, and did so- -but as it left his command it arced back, becoming red once again and slamming into his shields. The defensive spells nearly buckled, despite the advanced mathematics reinforcing them. Luciferian was forced back, and he summoned a new spell, a direct attack bound from multiple crystals. He fired with enough force to destroy a small city- -but Sombra simply knocked the spell aside, producing a significant hole in the arena in the process.

“What’s the matter, Twilight?” chuckled Sombra. “Are you AFRAID?”

“You are cheating! This isn’t fair!”

“You said yourself. Tools brought into the duel are allowed. Is not the Citadel my tool? Is not the Heart of Darkness my own heart?” Sombra laughed. The sound was chilling. “Why are you so frightened, my little pony? I am about to make your wish come true. Did you not want to be the last of your House?”

Sombra brought down a torrent of magic with such force that it shattered Luciferian’s defensive spell completely. Two of the crystals burst in the process, and the sampling-crystal cracked. By the time Luciferian had compensated, Sombra was already nearly on top of him, this time with a spell that superficially looked so much smaller- -but burned with such rage and passion that Luciferian truly could feel the icy tickle of fear deep within his heart.

He engaged his time spell, freezing Sombra in place. The spell was still moving; he had not managed to stop time completely. Even with the crystals, he was running out of strength.

“I can do this,” he said, catching his breath. “I can do this...this spell...” He began to dissect it, examining the source code and attempting to decipher it. The more he delved, though, the more he understood that the effort was futile. The spell was beyond anything he could ever hope to create himself. Though he could calculate, this form was one of true training: a master-level spell wielded by a being on par with an immortal alicorn.

“No,” said Luciferian after several hours. “I can’t decipher this one.” He looked to his side. Thirteen, as if mocking him, was walking along the edge of the arena, attempting to find a better angle to watch the end of the duel. “I can’t deflect it, and I can’t block.” He looked at the ground. “I can’t even dodge.” He closed his eyes. “But I can’t stay here. I can go up to three days before the dehydration sets in, but even with my whole laboratory it would take decades to understand this spell. I’m royally bucked.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened and flicked to the side. For a moment, he saw something horrible beyond description- -but then it resolved into the form of a tall and immeasurably beautiful earth-mare.

The demon walked by him, rubbing her tail against his chin. The temporal sheer had no effect on her, because she was not real. Not yet.

“I have to wonder why you bothered,” she sighed. “Honestly, I had started thinking you were having second thoughts. If you had, well, your fate would be...messy. Because that’s something I can’t allow.” She smiled. Her smile looked so beautiful, but her eyes looked so hideous. “But now I suppose I get it. You were just waiting for the very moment when it was absolutely necessary.”

“You did this,” hissed Luciferian.

“I did nothing,” she snapped. “That’s the POINT. Your pride made you take this ridiculous circuitous route to power. But now you have a choice.” She tapped the leading edge of Sombra’s spell. It was beginning to resolve itself into the shape of his sword. “You can stay here and wait until Sombra makes sure you get his point, or you can do what you should have done from the start.” Her smile grew far too wide to be on the face of a pony. “It’s your destiny, after all. MANIFEST ME, MOTHERBUCKER.”

Sombra’s spell hit its target- -but as it did, it detonated, torn apart by an exponentially more powerful force.

The explosion tore away Sombra’s armor and threw him to the ground. Crystal ponies in the stands cried out as they were thrown through the air and out of the arena entirely. Those among the Dark Thirteen who could cast shields did so, if only to protect the princess. Holder Heartfelt was knocked off his stool and blown away entirely.

The vortex of red magic filling the arena was superseded by yellow. Luciferian, at its epicenter, raised his head and screamed. The armored boot that protected his left front leg was torn apart from within, revealing a white-and-violet mottled limb scarred and tattooed with unholy symbols and long-forgotten arcane from a realm that no sane pony was meant to comprehend.

The scar-runes glowed with internal fire, and the ground beneath Luciferian cracked, revealing strange and unnatural light from below. In an instant, yellow magic traced a complicated shape around Luciferian. He stood at its midpoint, at the very center of a hideous golden pentagram.

“What is this?!” cried Zither, his shield barely holding in defense of his princess. “ That’s not his magic, what has he done?!”

Crozea began to shake violently, her own shield spells faltering. “The coward was too afraid to fail. Now he has doomed us all, and summed the Veil!”

The pentagram beneath Luciferian changed, shifting and propagating as though it were alive. A second pentagram formed beside him. The ground cracked beneath it, and then tore open as something pushed its way through.

Penumbra had never seen anything so hideous in her life. It was a creature made of blackened bones and flesh forged from rot. It was not dead, because it could not die; but likewise, nor would it ever live, or know life except through its destruction.

The creature stood, drawing matter from the area around her, pulling it to her, slowly building herself a new body. “Oh YES!” cried the incomplete reverent. “Lungs, teeth, KIDNEYS! A word of such lovely things, a world in need of FLAME and DECAY!”

Sombra lifted himself, or tried to. He had sustained critical injuries in the blast, and his magic was barely working. Yet he knew the spell before him, and knew that the thing that now stared at him with empty eye-sockets in a skull that looked nothing like that of a pony must not be allowed to reach completion.

“You FOOL!” he screamed. “You have no idea what you have done! Stop this now, before it is too late! She must not be allowed to manifest!”

Luciferian laughed through his agony. “And all those times you told me stories about opening doors to new realms, of your grand dream to conquer the multiverse? Does it hurt to know I HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WERE TO AFRAID TO?” He raised his cursed hoof- -a front leg linked to his body through the remnants of a thick surgical scar. “I have completed my father’s work, what he was too afraid to! He was WEAK, like YOU!” Luciferian cackled. His eyes had grown red, and his pupils were beginning to vanish. “Don’t worry, Sombra. Your bloodline will live on! I will personally make sure that you have PLENTY of grandchildren!”

Luciferian roared, and a new spell cut itself onto the ground. This one was in his own magic, carved in pink-violet, tracing an incredibly complex pattern outside the yellow pentagram.

“Wait,” said the incomplete demon. “What are you doing? This wasn’t part of our deal!”

“The final blow will be MINE,” growled Luciferian, activating the spell. “It shall be MY power that takes the kingdom! MY CRYSTAL EMPIRE!”

Luciferian activated the spell, and as it engaged, Sombra smiled. Even as his body was vaporized, he realized that he felt no fear. That this was the way it would go, that this was the way his journey would end, it had never occurred to him- -and in his heart, he supposed he truly was too old to rule.

His last thought was simple amusement, and he left the world at peace.

Luciferian laughed through his agony. “And all those times you told me stories about opening doors to new realms, of your grand dream to conquer the multiverse? Does it hurt to know I HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WERE TO AFRAID TO?” He raised his cursed hoof- -a front leg linked to his body through the remnants of a thick surgical scar. “I have completed my father’s work, what he was too afraid to! He was WEAK, like YOU!” Luciferian cackled. His eyes had grown red, and his pupils were beginning to vanish. “Don’t worry, Sombra. Your bloodline will live on! I will personally make sure that you have PLENTY of grandchildren!”

Penumbra gasped, understanding what this spell meant, and that her father would not survive the blow. As she froze in fear, she felt a hoof on her shoulder, and looked up to see Thirteen’s masked face.

“Go to him,” she whispered. “Go to him, and save your father.”

Luciferian roared, and a new spell cut itself onto the ground. This one was in his own magic, carved in pink-violet, tracing an incredibly complex pattern outside the yellow pentagram.

The demon laughed quietly, because she saw the winged princess stumbling over herself in her ridiculous armor, dropping into the arena and racing to her father’s side. She reached him and grasped his neck, holding him tightly.

“Father! FATHER!”

“Get away from me!” he screamed, attempting to weekly shove her. “Don’t touch me!”

Luciferian’s eyes grew wide. “No- -NO! Princess, get out of the way!”

Penumbra hugged her father’s neck tightly and stared up at Luciferian defiantly. “I won’t let you hurt him!”

“I- -I can’t stop the spell once it’s started! You’ll be caught in the blast!”

“Penumbra,” whispered Sombra. “Get to safety. Please let me have this.”

“NO!” Penumbra held on tighter. “I refuse!”

In a panic, Luciferian turned to the demon. “I have to deactivate this- -”

“Oh, it’s too late for that,” she said. Black, squirming things poured from her mouth. Her body was now mostly complete, and yellow skin was beginning to grow across what she had made. “A pure alicorn maiden, a being with no soul for me to take! HER PURITY WILL BURN BY YOUR HORN!”

Luciferian screamed as the spell activated. Penumbra held her father tighter, even as the sky burned with pink magic entrapped within yellow.

“I won’t let you HURT HIM!”

Her horn ignited and magic poured from her body. The world around her erupted with blinding blue light as magic flowed from every fiber of her being. Luciferian’s spell struck hers, and there was no contest. It was instantly overwhelmed and driven back.

“Well shove a brick in my rear and call me Fluttershy,” sighed the demon as her body collapsed into ash and dryrot.

Luciferian stared in awe, unable to react in the slightest as the magic consumed him. His body was encased in shield spells and seals of every kind, but the crystalline blue magic cut through them effortlessly. It was not even any specific spell, with any direction or form. It was simply pure, raw power- -and yet it cut through his own spells as if they were nothing.

The force was to great, and the feedback too immense. All of Luciferian’s crystals shattered at once, and the overwhelming force of alicorn magic was directed into his skull. His horn cracked, and then splintered as it exploded from the force.

The dome of blue light expanded and grew until it lit the whole of the arena. The ponies watching stared into its brilliant light, nearly blinded but unable to look away. The princess, her horn and wings alight and flaming with energy, began to rise.

Far across the kingdom, the Heart of Darkness began to attempt to tear free of its mounting engine, drawing exponentially increasing levels of power. The technetium around it began to compensate, though; hundreds of gears began to whir loudly, selecting their positions and revolving the fundamental structure in eight dimensions.

The readings data was transmitted to Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, and he reached for the corresponding dial in his chest. He burst out laughing. “A factor of over four million percent! EXCELLENT! Engaging siphon!”

He turned the dial in several complex ways, corresponding with thousands of devices within the Citadel’s fundamental structure. When he pressed it, the shunt from his engine engaged- -and the Heart of Darkness was drained of its surplus energy.

The sudden draw sapped Penumbra, and her magic suddenly faded. It had lifted her several meters into the air, and without it she suddenly swooned and fell, unconscious. Sombra, though still injured, reached out and caught her in his magic.

Across the arena, Luciferian staggered to his hooves, wincing when he put weight on the one marked with demonic symbols. While that hoof had formerly been mottled violet and white, it was becoming distinctly yellow.

He kicked a fragment of crystal, engaging its tiny last residual component of power. A portal ignited, and without a word he collapsed through it. In an instant, he was gone.

Medics raced onto the field, and Sombra carefully lay Penumbra down. Despite the pain, he stood, fully aware that his body was not regenerating.

“My king!”

“Steward. Attend to her first. Get her to a laboratory. ANY laboratory.” Sombra looked up. “I need to know what just happened, and I need to know NOW.”

Chapter 23: Sickness

While it could not quite be called pacing, Buttonhooks the mad was crossing the floor repeatedly, dragging his atrophied, legless hips with his powerful but asymmetrical forelegs. “As such,” he continued, “I have reviewed every volume of the unicorn dueling hoofbook in excruciating detail and come to a conclusion.”

Necrophile of Canterlot blinked. “You read them all? Every single one?”

“Yes. Being a masochist is a fundamental aspect of my being, and I must say, the agony of that particular adventure was...well, excruciating.”

“How disturbing.”

“Hardly. If you want to know where I stuck a piece of rusty rebar while I was reading, THAT would disturb you. It is not where you would expect.” Buttonhooks turned to Sombra, who was listing slightly on his throne. “Regardless, I have ascertained that the outcome of the duel was, in fact, legitimate. Members of the same bloodline may fight for the sake of a challenged duelist. Of course, this largely pertains to the choosing of champions, but the language is notably vague, as most unicorn things are.”

“Or it simply a matter that your earth-pony mind cannot comprehend it,” snapped Necrophile.

“I am, in fact, an Assyrian donkey. Can’t you tell?”

“The rules hardly matter,” growled Necrophilo. “What matters is how the king is perceived in the public eyes- -”

“I care about neither,” snapped Sombra. “If ponies think I am weak, then I shall simply crush them. Including either of you, if need be.”

“I would very much like that,” said Buttonhooks, trembling. “Please wear heels.”

Sombra, in his pain, ignored the impertinence. “There are concerned of much greater importance than the opinions of slaves.”

“Of course.” Necrphilo bowed to the king. “The princess is currently under examination by the parasite. Although my own laboratory would be far superior- -”

“You are a necromancer, Necrophilo. And last time I checked, the alicorn is distinctly ALIVE. You would be out of your depth. I am not in the mood for insolence. Question my decision again, and I shall allow your students to practice their craft on YOU.”

“The bird-pony offered to perform a vivisection,” noted Buttonhooks. “I know from personal experience that he does exquisite work.”

“And we cannot risk it.” Sombra stood, nearly stumbling as he did. Buttonhooks’s eyes narrowed, at least to the extent they could. As well as Sombra knew pain, Buttonhooks knew pain- -and he could see that the king was in a great deal of it.

“My king?” asked Necrophilo. “Are you unwell.”

Sombra righted himself and walked down from his throne. “Luciferian.”

“Has left the Crystal Empire,” said Eternity, speaking in their minds. “I can’t see him anywhere. He’s hiding from me somewhere far away. Like a fish.”

“He must be found. It is absolutely imperative.”

“My lord,” said Necrophilo, clearly confused. “His horn was shattered. We are not like you. Once our horns are destroyed, there is no way to restore them. He is hardly a threat.” A thin smile crossed his face. “Unless you seek vengeance. Then I fully understand.”

Sombra glared at his servant with such force that Necrophilo was forced to take several steps back.

“I care precious little about his horn,” hissed Sombra. “And vengeance is a pointless act. He is a greater danger than a mage with your preternaturally limited vision could comprehend!”

“The summoning,” said Buttonhooks. “Something nearly came through.”

“He was simply generating a construct,” dismissed Necrophilo. “A simple parlor trick- -”

He was knocked back by a sudden burst of magic, his default protection sealed shattering in the process.

“Are you BLIND?” snapped Sombra, his horn still glowing with red light. He grasped Necrophilo’s body and forced him downward so that their faces were level. “He was attempting to open a door that must NEVER be opened. Or have modern mages forgotten what my people’s occultists knew since they were children?”

“What was it?” asked Buttonhooks. “It seemed….appealing.”

“It goes by many names. Infinite names.” Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “You may know her as the Horse of Babylon.”

Necrophile, an already sallow individual, grew deathly pale. “My lord, that- -that is impossible- -”

“Luciferian has no idea the danger he is in- -or the danger he has placed us all in. For the sake of not just the Empire but all of Equestria, he must be apprehended.”

“We don’t have the forces,” said Buttonhooks. “Not that can move freely in Equestria.”

“He’s probably somplace damp,” muttered Eternity. “Nice and moist...”

Sombra looked upward, as if she really were above him. “Can you attempt to track him?”

“Reeks like flowers...maybe. But I can’t watch the kingdom at the same time. Don’t send the troops. We need them here if I can’t see. Hopefully there aren’t ants…stupid ants and their ridiculous language of squeaks and endless churning...”

“My lord,” continued Buttonhooks. “It is not unlikely that he will attempt to return at some point.”

“You did take his horn,” added Necrophilo. “And he clearly desires your throne. He may make a second attempt.”

“Let him come, then. It will make things easier.” Sombra sighed. “But that means all I can do is wait. My patients is substantial, but in this case it is wearing thin.” He turned and began to climb back toward his throne. “Keep examining the arena. And as soon as anything is known about the alicorn, bring that knowledge to me at once.”

“My lord,” said Buttonhooks. “There is still one more matter of importance.”

Sombra stopped climbing but did not turn around. “And what would that be?”

“The contest. The challenge. According to our own rules, those who defeat one of us must take our place.”

Necrophilo’s eyes widened. “You cannot be serious.”

“She shattered his horn, within the legitimate rules of the duel. Her victory is irrefutable. By your own law, my king, she is now One of Thirteen.”

This time, Sombra did turn- -and as he did, the whole world went black.

Sombra blinked, confused as to why he felt so very strange. His body was light and new, and though he recognized the sensation, the recollection rose from deep memories buried beneath countless decades of his seemingly unending life.

He sat up and found himself lying in a bed. Around him was a structure, and though he did not recognize it in the slightest, he also did. The dark oaken logs of the cabin, the simple but graceful arches of the sealing, the course abstract tapestries hung from the walls, and the windows with the barest tint of red- -he was in a small and unassuming chateau. One he had never seen, but that he knew so very well.

Standing, he left the room, passing the magic-driven stove on the far side and entering a narrow hall. He looked out and his breath nearly left him. Beyond the cabin was an endless field of flowers, rising from the black stone of the rocky soil in every shade of red and umber. Enormous oaks stood amongst them, their bark black and their deep red leaves lined with the barest silver.

Far in the distance, he saw the cliffs of enormous, seemingly endless black mountains. Their presence was stunning, and Sombra knew that he was home- -and that this was all impossible. Nothing green had survived in the Darklands since centuries before his birth; he only knew of what his homeland had once been from the remnants of tattered, decaying tapestries in the abandon halls and temples of the great mountain cities. This was a world he had spent centuries envisioning, but that he thought he would never see.

“My love, you are awake.”

Sombra turned, suddenly so very afraid. The first fear he had felt since the Heart of Darkness had replaced his own, for he knew what he would see.

She was standing beside him, draped in the sashes of umber and black of his people: a pure white unicorn with the clearest and kindest of blue eyes. She was a match to any of Celestia’s purebloods, but not one of them; she was free and pure, and more beautiful than anything Sombra had ever seen.

“Hope.”

She laughed softly. “You say it as though I am new to you.”

Sombra smiled. “Because every day is like the day we first met.”

Hope giggled and blushed slightly. Sombra could remember the day, high on the mountains, when they were still young, and how he had been so nervous he had slipped off a crag and fallen halfway down the mountain. She had found him in a panic and tried to nurse him back to health- -not knowing that, as a dark unicorn, his body would heal from far worth.

Except that was wrong, and Sombra knew it. Hope had been purchased from a vendor and systematically broken down physically and mentally, built back up from her shattered state to serve as one of many concubines, her only purpose to be humiliated to demonstrate Sombra’s dominance over the so-called sacred white Classicals.

Yet, he knew that the process had been imperfect. He had always known. Because her eyes had always looked upon him the way they did now.

“Daddy, daddy!”

Sombra looked down as the door to the cabin burst open. A filly ran in, nearly tripping over the rough-hewn table in the kitchen but fluttering her soft pink wings to stabilize herself. Like her mother, she was dressed in the garb of the dark unicorns, though it was clear that she was not one. She was not a unicorn at all. Rather, she was a tiny alicorn, her skin bright pink and her hair divided into brilliant shades of white, violet and pink.

“Cadenza, be careful!” admonished Hope, though she was still smiling. “You don’t want to get your horn stuck in the wall again, do you? Or should I get the pliers out in advance?”

“Sorry mommy,” Cadenza- -but her name was Penumbra, she was a weapon meant to meat her end neutralizing the divine enemy- -ran to her father. She was nearly jumping with excitement. “Daddy, look! I found one!” she reached into her mane and removed a rather disturbing insect; it was long and segmented, although covered in hair and numerous shining legs. Its enormous fangs were dripping with fluorescent venom. “I found a scentepede! And you were RIGHT! It really DOES smell like blueberries!”

Hope frowned. “Sombra, should she be playing with that? Is it not dangerous?”

“No, mommy! Daddy said that as long as you don’t touch the first segment where the eyes are, they’ll never bite you, no matter what!”

“No. I said never to touch the REAR segment, if you recall.”

“Oh.” Cadenza looked at the insect and reversed it. She smiled. “There!”

Sombra laughed. “It is fine, my love. When I was a colt I would bring them home from time to time, try to raise them. My mother nearly leapt from her horn when she first saw my collection.” Sombra frowned, because he knew that was wrong. He had never known his mother or father, only the ancient pair of monks who had raised him, the last vestiges of a vibrant religion depleted by centuries without a single new birth. “But...why...”

“Can we look at the guide book?” pleaded Cadenza. “I want to know if it’s the highland kind, or the lowland ones, like in the swamps!”

“Penumbra,” sighed Hope, exasperated. “Have you been playing in the swamps? You know you’ll get muddy!”

She had said it. The girl’s true name. Because she was not a girl. She had never been a child; Sombra had taken that from her. His mind was attempting to reassert itself, to know that this girl had never existed, and that she never would. There was only Penumbra Heartbreak, a living weapon, a machine born to a mother who had paid the ultimate prices to produce an immoral daughter.

“Daddy?” Cadenza looked up with true concern across her face. “Are you okay?”

Sombra’s heart had not beat in centuries- -yet he felt a distant twinge within it.

He looked out the window, and felt the warm summer’s breeze blowing through his mane. He even smelled the flowers, and the smell was beautiful, though the home he had once known had only carried the most distant wafts of it when he had dwelt there.

At the far edge of the field, he saw a pony standing at the cliff, looking out at the view. A black mare. And as she turned, he saw her blue eyes, and understood.

“And they say that I am the cruelest of the ponies,” he mused, softly. “They have no idea, do they?” He sighed. “Though I doubt even you know what you have become, Luna.”

Sombra turned to his family, and they looked up at him, smiling and perfect. He lit his horn, and watched as their smiles turned to looks of horror and betrayal. Cadenza, frightened, grasped onto her mother’s legs. The glow of the spell reflected in their eyes as Sombra directed his magic toward them and watched as the illusion was incinerated.

Sombra opened his eyes. He was lying prone and looking up into a corresponding set of crystalline blue eyes that were set deeply into a face striped with black and white. Eyes that would respect and value him, but that could never love him.

“Zecora.”

The zebra frowned. “I know I have spoken, but have you not heard? Even you are never permitted to utter that word.”

“My apologies, Crozea.” Sombra sat up, or tried to. There was pain, and it was quite new to him.

“My king, please, lie at ease. Despite your will, you are incredible ill.”

“I was unconscious.” Sombra blinked. “Nightmare Moon sent me a dream.”

“Her magic is never lacking precision,” said Crozea icily. “And I assume she sent you terrible visions.”

“Waking up into this pain is actually a relief.” Sombra grabbed at his chest. He still had no pulse, but there was pain inside him. Part of it was injuries from the fight with Luciferian, but there was something else. Something inside him was burning. “How long?” he demanded.

“Eight hours, maybe nine. And in all that time, not one vital sign.”

“The Heart of Darkness powers all my vital functions.”

“Forgive me for my hurry, but seeing you like that...how could I not worry?”

Sombra sat up, ignoring the pain, and put one shaking front leg around her neck. He hugged her closely, if only for a moment.

“I am more durable than that,” he said, softly. “I am not ready to go. Not yet. I’m not done.” He released her. “What has happened to me?”

“We have examined you as closely as we could. My king...Sombra...the situation is not good.”

“We?”

A clicking noise sounded from the deepest shadows. Then a tapping of strange hooves as Al’Hrabnaz descended from the ceiling.

Sombra knew the situation was dire from looking at the pair of them, and it displeased him greatly. Crozea had removed her outer robes, reveling only the hard uniform she wore beneath and her bandoleers of potions and tools. Al’Hrabnaz was accompanied by neither his birds nor his signature black feather-lined robes. Instead, he wore only his pressure suit, fully revealing his rather hideous form.

Yet, in a way, Sombra was relieved. Of those in his ranks, these were the two he believed he could trust the most- -one for her respect, the other for his near-fanatical loyalty. They were also the two most experienced in pony medicine, apart of Twilight Luciferian.

“What is wrong with me?”

“The question is more what’s NOT wrong, really.” Crozea frowned deeply, but still met Sombra’s eye, even without her mask. “You are infected with deadly magic, and it is propagating quite freely.”

“Luciferian. From the demon he summoned.”

“No demon was that horror,” growled Crozea. “That spirit was something far MORE...”

“Nor is it the source of the contagion,” said Al’Hrabnaz. His voice was rapid, even pained, in start contrast to Crozea’s measured tone. “I have isolated the signal and traced it. It does not match the object that the filthy primitive attempted to summon, or the rift he used to do it.”

“Mind your words considering a unicorn. Do not forget that our king also bears a horn.”

“Filthy sun-dweller! How dare you even consider our beloved king with such horrible creatures- -”

“Gxurab. My condition.” Sombra lifted one of his legs and flexed it. Crozea had removed his armor, and he felt naked. He supposed he was. “I require a description. NOW.”

“Of course.” The dial on Al’Hrabnaz’s chest turned, and several holograms appeared. “Essentially, your cell structure is collapsing. It is progressive and catalytic, and accelerating.” Al’Hrabnaz pointed at a hologram, not realizing that it was written in his own language. Sombra could read it, of course, and he knew that the situation was not good. “Essentially, the unique aspects of your body that allow for rapid regeneration are turning against you. Your cells are attempting to replicate, but they are tearing apart your genetic code in the process.”

“And the cause? If it not the demon, then what?”

Al’Hrabnaz looked up, and turned to Crozea.

Crozea sighed. “If we are to believe Gxurab’s analysis, then the culprit is your daughter, the princess.”

“What? That is impossible!”

“No, it’s not.” Al’Hrabnaz produced a new hologram. “She saved your life, but the magic she exposed you to is fundamentally incomparable with your biology. It is interfering with your connection to the Heart of Darkness. And without it...”

“I know.” Sombra took a breath. His lungs hurt. “Can we attempt to modulate the signal? Your control scheme, I invested eighty percent of our GDP into its production- -”

“It is not a matter of the signal. Your body is rejecting the magic. I am sorry, my king, but you...you...”

“I am dying.”

Both of them fell silent. After a moment, they looked away, and Sombra felt so very alone. Yet he had grown accustomed to it. As king, it was his duty to lead, even when times were dire.

“How long?”

Crozea looked up. “With my potions and the best treatments I can do? One year, or maybe two.”

“Is there a treatment?”

“To ease your pain. To slow the sickness’ gain. But of this we are sure: there is no cure.”

“Except...”

Sombra’s gaze snapped to Al’Hrabnaz, who recoiled from being looked directly upon. “Except what?”

“It is not within even your powers! Do not waste the kings’s precious hours!”

“But my theories are VALID!” cried Al’Hrabnaz. “I have checked and rechecked the math, and I am correct! I have no doubt!”

“Concerning what?” asked Sombra, though in a sense, he already knew. He was well aware of Al’Hrabnaz’s theories, and the terrifying things he was attempting to prove. This conversation did not bode well.

“That the soul of a pony can be quantified! Measured, delineated, isolated- -”

“It is not something you can draw into a pitcher! What you describe is a violation of the most sacred principles of nature- -”

“And nature is meaningless in the face of mathematics. My lord, the pony soul, it, well...” He projected holograms, attempting to explain visually something that could not be conveyed in the primitive vowel-bearing language of the surface-dwellers. He took a deep breath, and it rasped and echoed through his breathing heaters. “The soul is an object, in a sense, but also not. It is a property that exists in sixteen independent dimensions defined by an incredibly complex set of parameters. Our physical bodies use just one of these dimensions. Sometimes two, if magic is involved.”

“I have read the gist of your theories, Gxurab. Apart from the absurdity of your more extreme ideas, I fail to see what this means in a practical sense.”

“My theories are not absurd,” said Al’Hrabnaz, icily. “My lord, it is simply a matter of severing the extraneous dimensions. Reducing it, controlling it...and transferring it.”

Crozea literally put her hoof down. “That you would even dare speak this to our king, this terrible unholy thing- -”

“Let him speak, Crozea.”

“I can assemble a machine,” continued Al’Hrabnaz, “and I can transfer your soul. To a new body. You can leave your current decaying one behind. I can give you a new one. A truly immortal one.”

Sombra poked at the holograms, adjusting them. “According to these formulas, the task will take an absurd amount of power. More than any known magical source can generate.”

“More than in the dark gray metal Emeth hordes, or in Holder Heartfelt’s sword...”

Al’Hrabnaz smiled beneath his mask. He felt his pointed teeth clicking against his breathing tubes. “We already have more than enough. I was able to siphon a significant amount of surplus power from the Heart of Darkness during your melee with the filthy primitive.”

“You what?”

“My new system. It is designed to prevent surges like the crystallizing event from occurring ever again.” He paused. “Though...the system substantially exceeded its tolerance. We came within a hair’s width of a critical rupture. The blast would have been...large.”

“And I was not told of this? Why?”

“I did not think it was relevant. The point is, the system actually works.”

“It had better,” muttered Sombra. “That device took eighty percent of my treasury to construct.”

“And it would have been impossible without the technetium ore of your crystals. But this is where it pays off! I have more than enough power to complete the procedure. To give you a new body.”

“How much more?”

Al’Hrabnaz faltered slightly, momentarily performing the math. “Sire. Why do you ask?”

“Is there enough energy to test it?”

“Sombra, this device, this process, it is unnatural vice! That you would even consider using it twice- -”

Sombra silenced Crozea with a glance. “My body is powered by a magical artifact linked through a citadel built by an ancient and heretofore unknown civilization. Nothing about my being is unnatural.” He paused. “More to the point, for the first time in my life, I am facing my own mortality. Do I not have a right to consider what is best for my kingdom?”

“But what about what is best for you? This is a thing that once done none can undo.”

Sombra stared at her, and did not break eye contact. “Is there enough energy for a test?”

“Yes,” replied Al’Hrabnaz, hesitantly. “In theory. There is enough energy to perform the process twice, but barely.”

“Then I authorize you to use whatever you require to conduct a single test. If you succeed, I will consider it among my other options.”

“My lord- -”

“But know that you only get one chance. ONE. Even if we could risk recharging your machine again, we have no way to know how to do it. Fail, and there is no energy left for a second test- -and my demise will rest on your shoulders and yours alone.”

“My lord, no! Please!” Al’Hrabnaz begged. “I could not bear that burden! There is no way!”

“Then succeed, Gxurab. For my sake and the sake of the Crystal Empire. Do whatever you deem necessary.”

“Yes, my lord,” whispered the morlock. “I will do it...”

Chapter 24: Red Death

Penumbra opened her eyes and stared up at the red ceiling. She blinked and frowned, confused. She had been unconscious, but she did not know why, and there had been strange dreams. She recalled a house made of wood, and a field of flowers, and holding a venomous insect that smelled like blueberries. Penumbra did not even know what blueberries- -or berries of any kind, really- -were, but she knew what they smelled like now.

She realized that a face was staring at her from above. A face was peering through a vent.

Penumbra gasped. “YOU! Get back here!”

Her head was suddenly slammed into the hard table she was lying on when her horn fired a bolt of blue magic into the vent, partially vaporizing it. The crystal pony within cried out and fled. “You’ll never take me back! Teehee, I’M NEVER GOING BACK!”

“Ow...” Penumbra rubbed the back of her head, sure it would bruise. Her horn was still smoking. “This is...new.”

She sat up, feeling her head swim as she did so. The table had restraints, but they were not in use. Penumbra immediately recognized that she was in Scarlet Mist’s part of the facility, but it seemed small and poorly decorated compared to the normal vast detail she gave it. Even the fog had grown thin; it was barely pink.

After a few moments of waiting for the world to stop tilting, she turned her head and noticed that Scarlet Mist was present- -and lying on the floor, unmoving.

Penumbra sighed. “Have you passed to the other side?”

“No,” grumbled Scarlet Mist in return, still not moving. “How long did I spend teaching you the difference? Of course I’m alive. Just resting.”

She sat up, but was shaking badly and barely able to stand. Her mane had progressed from silver to white to pale red-yellow, and most of it had fallen out. It was apparent that she was far thinner than any normal, healthy pony should be. Penumbra was amazed she could stand at all.

“You do not look well.”

“And you look like a winged idiot. We should have taken those off you, they look absurd.”

Penumbra jumped down from the table. She did not appear to be injured in any way, but she felt completely drained. Not nearly as drained as Scarlet Mist, but almost as much. “What is wrong with you? Can I help?”

“This body is used up. Depleted. Empty. Not enough life force. It was already weak, but they never last long anyway. I am not compatible with it. I’m not compatible with any of them, except for my real body.”

“You have a real body? Did you lose it?”

“Yes. Clearly I misplaced it somewhere, you fluffy moron. Of course I have a body. But that’s not the point.” She lurched forward, shaking badly but still managing to stand. “Do you remember?”

“Remember?” Penumbra paused, not understanding. “Remember what?”

Scarlet Mist lifted an atrophied, shaking hoof. Some of the fog wafted into Penumbra’s nose, and images came to her. Images of yellow flame and a horrible demon, and what she had done to poor Luciferian.

Penumbra gasped. “No! His horn! I- -I- -what have I done?!”

“You WON.”

“But he was my friend! I- -I was just trying to protect our king, I didn’t mean to injure him!” Penumbra put her head in her hooves. “What will he think of me now, knowing that I hurt him like that? He trusted me, and I...I...”

Scarlet Mist put a hoof on Penumbra’s shoulder. It was cold and remarkably light. “I do not have the physical strength right now to knock your teeth out for thinking like that. It was a fight, and you were stronger. That is all there is to it.”

Penumbra looked up and nodded. “I understand.”

“What matters is that the zebra was right. Actually right. You have power. Unimaginable power.”

“But why can’t I use it?”

Scarlet Mist paused, and removed her hoof from Penumbra's shoulder. “Because I don’t think alicorns are like unicorns. We...they...govern their magic with logic, training and intelligence. But for you, it is driven by emotion.”

“But I could never harness fear, like Sombra can.”

“There are other emotions. Sadness. Greed. Despair. And hate. Hate is the most important one, at least for you. That was the one you used to win.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you looked at him, what did you feel? Hatred. You hated Twilight Luciferian. Wanted to see him burn. And that was what summoned your power. I am sure of it.”

Penumbra blinked. It had felt nothing like that. She had barely even noticed Luciferian; her only concern had been for her father- -but her memory was clouded. And Scarlet Mist knew far more than she did about such things.

“I...hate.” Penumbra frowned. Saying it tasted strange in her mouth.

“And that gives you power. More power than any pony ever imagined. Your magical potential is astounding...magical potential and an immortal body. Not like mine. Look. It has started.”

Penumbra looked down. One of Scarlet Mist’s rear limbs was turning to dust before her eyes.

“Lady Mist! Your leg!”

“It is not my leg. But it is still a problem. I NEED my body. My REAL body. I need to be whole. I never sleep, you know. The hunger never stops. The desire to return...”

More of her body collapsed, leaving her with little more than a torso and front legs. Penumbra grasped onto her, holding her mentor upright. “How can I help?”

“I need a body strong enough to get me to my real one. I need one that won’t burn up so fast...or one that can burn brighter than all the rest.”

“Lady Mist?”

Beneath her mask, Scarlet Mist smiled- -and her whole body collapsed to dust. As it did, though, her last act was to strip the Mask of Red Death off her face- -and to push it onto Penumbra’s.

The world was silent. It was empty and vast, yet Penumbra could feel the walls; though at an infinite distance, they pressed from every side.

There was a sound, but it was quiet. A low hum, a sound of something beating- -and something small and sickly beating alongside it, growing stronger every second.

Penumbra looked up. Above her was an endless spiral of slowly drifting crimson clouds, a funnel through which no sky could be perceived and through which no light descended. There was no clear source of illumination; Penumbra could simply see.

Below her, an endless smooth black floor seemed to stretch for eternity. This place- -if it was even a place at all- -looked strangely like Scarlet Mist’s mask-generating facility. Except that it was so much more empty.

“Hello?”

Penumbra’s voice came back as an echo, but the echo returned in voices that were not hers. They propagated upward through the endless column of mist, and through it Penumbra was momentarily sure that she could see the forms of ponies looking down at her, whispering questionably and silently.

The entirety of the world rippled, and suddenly Penumbra was not alone. She looked to the ground and lifted her hoof, not understanding why it was so wet. As she examined it closely, she saw that it was covered in a thick black fluid. It was like ink, but smelled like metal and ash.

Penumbra’s eyes widened, because this was a fluid she knew all too well.

Her eyes followed the trail, and she saw what her mind already knew would be there. To heaps lying on the floor. One clad in broken armor and tatters of a red cloak stained with black, the other holding him but likewise still, her mask splintered and thrown across the floor to reveal her striped face.

“My...my king? Lady Crozea?”

Penumbra heard the endless thrumming increase, and the silent voices of the endless vortex grew. She ignored them and ran to her father’s side. She picked him up and held him, finding that he was profoundly light. Though he appeared youthful, he had the body of a profoundly ancient stallion; it was like holding a bundle of sticks. She had not realized how truly frail he had been simply because of the power of his presence- -but that was now gone.

She did as she was trained and, with one shaking hoof, checked the pulse of both, even though she was not sure if her father actually had a working heart anymore. Regardless, she already knew the answer.

“You...you can’t be,” she said, shaking them. “Crozea! Sombra!” She shook harder, and realized that for the first time in her life she was crying. “Father! FATHER!”

They did not respond, for they had departed to the other side- -the side that Penumbra would never reach.

She bent over them and wept, because she did not know what else to do.

“No,” she moaned. “Sombra, I was supposed to stand at your side! I was supposed to be your weapon! You were supposed to open the doors- -to make a kingdom where ponies were FREE- -” She sniffled. “But now...now your dreams won’t come true.” She turned to Crozea. She was laying beside him, and in an instant she understood the relationship the two were meant to have- -and knew the answer to Emeth’s question.

“Not yet,” she said. “Please not yet...you cared for me. You were always there, but now you won’t get to see me and...” She paused. “And I won’t get to see what you could have been. You were almost...almost my mother...”

A voice echoed through the silence, one that Penumbra had never heard before but recognized instantly.

“It is all your fault,” it whispered. “You were not strong enough to protect them. Now you are ALL ALONE. There will be no one to protect you, no one to guide you. You no longer have a purpose. Your existence is redundant and unnecessary.”

“I know.” Penumbra closed her eyes. Then she wiped them and stood.

“There is nothing left for you in life. Alone, unprotected, unaided. You are nothing and no one without them. What is the point of a weapon with no one to wield it.”

“I know,” repeated Penumbra. She ignited her horn, and opened her eyes as the area before her was lit with blue fire.

“What are you doing?” demanded the voice, its tone rising in the slightest indication of panic. “You are AFRAID. Afraid that you will be ALONE. Afraid you were not GOOD ENOUGH.”

“I’m not afraid. I’m just sad. Sadder than I’ve ever been. But they would not want me to stand here and weep. That would be pointless. They created me for a reason. My duty to them is to continue on. Supersede them, if I can. They did not train me to wallow in my own pain when there is work to be done.” She turned her head to look behind her. “And neither did you.”

A pony was standing behind Penumbra, watching her. Like her voice, it was a pony that Penumbra had never seen- -but knew instantly.

She was a unicorn, but not a type that Penumbra had ever seen in person. Her body was willowy and strong, and her ears long and pointed. Her horn was enormous and curved, and the mane that surrounded it drifted behind her like a cloud, eventually dissipating to a fine mist. Her mane had once been blue or green, perhaps, just as her body had once been violet, though both were now fully consumed with an infection of deepest red. Pooling around her feet was a long scarlet kimono of the finest silk.

“I see,” said Scarlet Mist. “Your mind is too small and to empty to comprehend fear properly. You have no context to understand just how royally screwed you are. Barely any of you is YOU. Just Eternity’s programming.”

Penumbra looked up at the pony before her. “Is that what you really look like? Behind the mask?”

Scarlet Mist smiled. It was a hideous and pained smile, not one of humor but one of hate. Her teeth were pointed, and there were a considerable number of them. “This is similar to how I once appeared, yes. And how I will appear again, when I am made whole.”

“You were very pretty. May I ask what happened to you?”

The smile on Scarlet Mist’s face faded and became a glare of rage. “Do you not understand? Are you that simple that you don’t know what has happened to you?” She drifted forward, barely appearing to step so much as to float on her perpetual cloud of mist. “Once the Mask is placed on a pony, it can NEVER be removed. It is bonded permanently. Until your life-force is depleted, and you turn to dust. For an alicorn, that could be centuries. Centuries trapped in this place, exposed to nothing but pain, fear and hate.”

Penumbra laughed, and the whole of the illusion shook. Scarlet Mist lurched backward, unable to understand what had just happened.

“How DARE YOU- -”

“My apologies.” Penumbra cleared her throat and bowed. “Forgive me, Lady Mist. But this is a very good thing.”

“A good- -you are trapped! Do you not realize that? You will never be free, never allowed to live your own life, to see the world again, to stand beside your father- -”

“So?”

Scarlet Mist took another step back. She was beginning to feel something rippling within her, something she did not understand.

“Everything you ever wanted...”

“What I want doesn’t matter. The part of me that’s Penumbra, that part doesn’t matter. That isn’t what Sombra and Crozea care about. It’s not what YOU care about.” Penumbra sighed. “And I understand that. It’s just my body. My utilitarian use. It doesn’t matter if it’s my mind or yours controlling the body, so long as it serves its purpose.”

“You’re insane.”

“No. I’m thinking logically. My only goal in life is to defend the kingdom, and to serve my father. But I can barely control my magic. YOU can.” Penumbra smiled. “I’m surprised we didn’t try this earlier. With you at the controls, Celestia and Nightmare Moon don’t stand a chance.”

“YOU IDIOT!”

Scarlet Mist’s voice boomed through the endless silence, and this time Penumbra took a step back, not understanding what was happening.

Suddenly Scarlet Mist was looming over her. Penumbra felt magic slam into the side of her face, and several teeth were knocked free.

“What the he- -”

“It doesn’t matter? IT DOESN’T MATTER?! You ungrateful foal, I wasn’t building a WEAPON! I was training a PONY! You have the chance to be everything I never could, to be the thing that haunts my every waking moment- -and you would THROW IT AWAY, just like THAT?! Like it doesn’t even mean ANYTHING?!”

“Lady Mist- -”

“I just took everything from you! EVERYTHING! And I’m STILL not whole! Not even CLOSE! Where is your HATE? Like you felt for Luciferian- -HATE ME! I demand it, Penumbra, HATE ME!”

Penumbra looked up at her, spit several teeth out of the side of her mouth, and smiled. “Thank you for training me. The least I can do is help you get your body back. You’re my mentor. My friend. I want to help you.”

Scarlet Mist stumbled backward as if she had been struck. “I don’t- -I don’t understand- -”

Penumbra looked confused, and took a step forward. “Because...because it hurts.”

“Pain...”

“You’re so sad, and so angry, and hungry...and so very, very lonely.”

Scarlet Mist looked up, her red pupils narrowed in horror. “What- -what are you doing?”

“I can feel it.” Penumbra frowned. “So much pain...but so afraid. More than anything, you’re afraid. Afraid you won’t get back. Because she took your body, and she left you behind. That was selfish of her, and it was wrong.”

“Stay back! STAY BACK! I don’t- -why can’t I understand- -”

“Shh,” said Penumbra, finally reaching the larger pony- -or what remains of her, trapped eternally within a lifeless mask. Then, without warning, she hugged Scarlet Mist. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.”

An endless, limitless scream pierced the whole of the world, tearing through the deadly fog as Scarlet Mist’s very being was torn apart by a force that she could not even begin to fathom.

The door to the procedure room was blown to cinders by a plume of amber magic. The Blue Knight Zither Heartstrings leapt through the gap, his sword drawn and held aloft in his magic. The chronoplexer Thirteen of Thirteen teleported beside him in a flash of blue light. The two armored ponies stood over Penumbra and beheld a terrible sight.

“By the Sign...” whispered Zither.

The sound was terrible. Penumbra was lying on the floor, writhing in agony, her body partially overgrown by the red leather that accompanied infection by the Mask of Red Death. Yet the screams were not hers, and did not emerge in her voice. They came from Scarlet Mist.

“NOOOOO!” screamed the voice, barely recognizable as that of a pony. “It burns! IT BURNS!”

“Thirteen!” cried Zither. “The mask once attached cannot be removed- -quickly! Reverse time!”

Thirteen did nothing. She only watched the events unfold in silence.

Another shrill scream came from Scarlet Mist as she clawed at the air, her wings stretching outward and flapping wildly as she rolled on the floor, her clothing only half-formed. “It don’t understand! I DON’T UNDERSTAND I DON’T UNDERSTAND! It burns! IT HURTS SO MUCH!”

“Thirteen!”

Zither growled and jumped forward, as if prepared to use hid sword to pry the Mask off by force- -but he was stopped with a wall of blue light.

“How dare you- -”

Thirteen pointed, and Zither looked- -and found himself staring, transfixed before the sight before him.

Scarlet Mist was weeping through her shrill cries of pain and roars of rage. “No! NO! I can’t- -I CAN’T UNDERSTAND! I have to- -HAVE TO ESCAPE!”

Her hooves suddenly shot up to the sides of the mask, and with a scream of rage and desperation she pulled. The mask began to separate, and Zither very nearly spilled his oats. Even as a battle-hardened knight from an endless line of warriors, he had never seen something so terrible.

The mask went far deeper than it appeared. The inside was covered with long projections, like tendrils, that dug into the host deeply. Something resembling a thick vertebral column protruded from the rear of the mask and had lodged itself down Penumbra’s throat. All of this was pulled out, and the Mask of Red Death broke its tendrils in a desperate bid to escape its agony.

Then, in an instant, it was pulled away. It clattered to the ground, and inert red mask, no different from any ordinary mask save for the thin plume of red smoke that was still drifting from the inside. Even that soon faded, and all was still.

Penumbra suddenly sat up and blinked. “Huh?” she looked around, and saw Zither standing over her. “Lord Heartstrings! Hold on, I need to bow- -”

“Now now,” Zither stabbed his sword into the ground and knelt by Penumbra’s side. His voice was shaking. “Move slowly, and carefully. Are you hurt, my princess? Injured, sick- -”

“I have a headache. Why?”

“Do you- -it is merciful you do not remember- -”

“Scarlet Mist putting her mask on me? No, I remember that. We had a conversation in there. It was...informative.” Penumbra frowned. “But I think I need to...well, think.”

“You must be jesting...” Zither retracted his face-plate. “Had I not seen it with my own eyes...”

Penumbra looked up and her wings twitched. She blushed and closed her legs. “Seen what, exactly?”

“None have ever escaped the grip of the Mask of Red Death. Wearing it- -wearing it is surely fatal. I thought...I thought I had lost you. How did you manage such a feat?”

“I don’t know.” Penumbra suddenly grew somber. “I...I tried to help her. But I don’t think she heard me.”

“There is nothing that can be helped,” said Zither, coldly. He stood. “This...this is unfathomable. And I am so deeply ashamed.”

Penumbra stood suddenly. “No! Lord Heartstrings, please don’t blame yourself, I should have been faster- -”

“That I could allow a treasonous betrayer into the midst of the maiden I had sworn to protect while I stood outside, my sword still in its scabbard? The insult is immeasurable, my shame incomprehensible.” He pulled his sword from the ground and glared at the Mask. “So at the very least, I will be able to avenge you.” He raised the sword and held it over the Mask. “This behavior cannot be allowed.”

“WAIT!”

Zither pushed the sword down- -but was stopped by a surge of blue magic around his blade.

He looked up sharply at Thirteen. “Release me, time-witch. Unless you want to meet the same fate as this filthy parasite!”

“No one will meet any fate!” cried Penumbra.

“Scarlet Mist is a traitor! She tried to steal your body, to betray you AND our beloved king! It is intolerable! SIMPLY INTOLERABLE!”

Penumbra puffed up and spread her wings in a display of royal authority. “Your princess orders you to CEASE THIS IMMEDIATELY! This is a direct order!”

“But my honor- -”

“Depends on serving ME. And my father, the king! If you would dare to execute one of my father’s generals without his express order- -without even SPEAKING to him- -then you are unworthy of serving the royal family! Thirteen and I will purge you IMMEDIATELY!”

Zither’s eyes widened, but he also smiled. He immediately sheathed his sword and dropped to his knee in a deep bow. “Yes, my princess. My apologies, Lady Penumbra. The threat to your life and the wound to my honor simply inflamed my passions beyond my control, and for this I offer my deepest and most sincere of apologies. You are correct. To behave this way would only besmirch my honor more deeply” He looked down at the mask and picked it up in his magic. He held it out to Penumbra, who took it in her own. “The criminal has been apprehended, and by your own strength. Forgive me for darkening this profound accomplishment.”

“Thank you. I understand. I didn’t mean to yell at you. And the king doesn’t need to know about your near indiscretion.”

“Thank you, milady.”

Penumbra looked down at the mask. It felt cold and inert. Even if she put it back on, she doubted Scarlet Mist would return. Not to her body. Not ever again. Yet the mask was still very much alive; she had seen that at least in the way that Zither had handled it so gingerly, but knew it in a deeper way, too. She could feel it. She could still feel the pain and the hatred...and the profound, endless loneliness.

“I will make the report to the king myself,” she sighed. “It is my duty. To them both.”

Chapter 25: A Door Once Opened

The thin mechanical arms retracted, their claws and blades glimmering in the harsh light of magic lamps. Twilight Luciferian sat up as the machines receded and stared into the face of a pale-tan unicorn, one dressed in a coarse brown robe whose face was lined with stress and horror.

“A mirror,” rasped Luciferian. “I need a mirror.”

“Sir, I- -”

“A MIRROR, Lemonleaf. NOW.”

The tan unicorn gulped and lifted a small mirror, as instructed. Luciferian immediately wrenched it away from him with his own magic.

He levitated it in front of his face and looked through. What he saw was dismaying, but expected. A mottled white and violet horn was attached to his forehead, glowing with violet light as he supported the mirror.

Luciferian smiled as he turned his head to see his new horn from multiple angles. “You have done excellent work, Lemonleaf. I suppose your skills apply adequately to the living as well as...well, the not.”

“I was able to connect eighty-seven percent of the nervous structure and confer circulation.” Lemonleaf spoke with confidence, but not arrogance; his time with Necrophilo had taught him well.

“Only eighty-seven?”

“The remainder had inoperable damage. I’m sorry, sir. I can’t work miracles. With the feedback you took- -you are lucky to have survived.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.” Luciferian stood up, and Lemonleaf’s eyes widened.

“Sir, please! You just had brain surgery- -fully awake- -”

“And you’re wondering how I did it?” Luciferian grinned cruelly. “Is that empathy? Thinking to yourself how painful that surgery would be, how agonizing it must have been?” Luciferian chuckled. “Let me tell you a secret. This isn’t the first time. I’ve reconnected ALL of my nerves three times. Whenever I move to a new clone. The horn alone is trivial in comparison.”

Luciferian pushed past the younger unicorn and headed for the door. As he did, he stopped, looking at one corner of the room. Failure was lying in a pool of silver, slowly sobbing and clutching her forehead.

“Well, look at the newly-minted earth-pony! And here I thought you couldn’t get even MORE disgusting.”

“Daddy...” whimpered Failure. “My...my horn...”

“It is not YOUR horn!” snapped Luciferian. “No part of you is YOURS! I created you, you belong to ME!” He raised his hoof to stomp on her, but a better idea occurred to him.

Luciferian lowered his hoof and turned to Lemonleaf. “You see it too, don’t you?”

“Sir?”

“Look at her.” Luciferian grabbed Failure by the hair and lifted her, causing her to squeak. “LOOK AT HER. She was supposed to be perfect and pure, a new vessel to contain me.” He threw Failure back onto the floor and wiped his hoof on the wall. “But the spell to make them doesn’t work indefinitely. This one came out WRONG. Disgusting. NOT WHITE. Not white at all...and missing a chromosome.”

“I’m sorry, daddy,” whispered Failure. “I’m sorry I can’t be perfect.”

“Stop talking. I can’t bear the sound of your voice.” Luciferian slowly walked toward Lemonleaf, barely able to partially contain his laughter. “I let this one develop completely. Out of pure curiosity. Let it form a mind of its own. And just as I thought, it came out weak. Impure. Pointless. But...” He pointed to his horn with his violet-mottled left front leg, “...useful for certain things.”

“Yes sir,” said Lemonleaf. “The weak do not deserve a place among the great.”

“I am glad you understand, Lemon. Necrophilo never saw your potential. He threw you away when you failed to equal him. But I can see the value of inferiors. I knew you were special when you dared to challenge me- -and still held loyalty to the mentor who rejected you. I knew that you would make an adequate apprentice.”

“Yes, sir.” Lemonleaf bowed. “I am forever in your debt. And I will serve you until the end.” He looked up, and, taking a risk, added, “or until I surpass you.”

“The code of the purebloods. Even if your blood is tainted with colored genes, you have the right spirit.” Lucifarian’s horn glowed, and across the room a table collapsed as he ripped one of the thick oaken legs off of it. He held it out to Lemonleaf, and Lemonleaf took it, clearly confused.

“Sir, what is this for?”

Luciferian stepped to the side and pointed at Failure, who looked up, her eye wide, knowing what was coming. “She disgusts you too, doesn’t she? So go over there and give her what she deserves. For being WEAK. For being a FAILURE. For being COLORED. Prove to me that you and I understand one another.”

Lemonleaf’s eyes widened. “Sir, is that really- -”

The smile vanished from Luciferian’s face. “We have not even started lessons, and you’re already willing to quit? Are you going to be that much of a disappointment, Lemon?

“N- -no, sir. I will not.”

Lemonleaf took a deep breath and steeled himself. Then he slowly began to approach Failure.

She did not run, or retreat, or even recoil. She had lived within this tower for the entirety of her life, however many decades or centuries- -or months- -that had been. She knew that there was nowhere to escape, and that trying to run only made the beatings worse.

Yet she kept staring, her eye following Lemonleaf with every step, not even blinking. It was maddening staring into that almond-shaped, violet eye. It was Luciferian’s eye, and yet not; it was not tinged with madness or hatred. It was tinged with something else, and Lemonleaf felt himself overwhelmed with pity- -and inexplicable fear.

He finally stopped and stood over her. He raised the chair-leg over his head, his magic shaking. She looked up at him, and Lemonleaf suddenly understood. She KNEW. That it was not Luciferian who had taken her horn- -it had been HIM.

Lemonleaf lowered the club. “Sir...”

“Beat the pony, Lemon. Beat the pony NOW.”

Lemonleaf held the chair leg and took a breath. He knew it had to be done. If he stopped here, he would never advance. All he had worked for would end without a mentor. Necrophilo had rejected him- -he would not allow Luciferian to do the same. Not over a clone failure like this.

And yet tears were running down his face as he raised the chair leg once again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry!”

“I don’t blame you,” said Failure, softly. “Don’t worry about me. I’m used to it.”

Lemonleaf raised the club. Failure sighed and closed her eyes. Lemonleaf closed his as well. He could not bear to see what he was about to do.

And he dropped the chair leg. It clattered to the ground.

“Sir. I can’t. I just can’t do this.”

Failure gasped, both terrified- -and amazed at the first kindness she had ever been shown in her entire leaf. “Mr. Lemon, no! You can’t!”

“Sir,” said Lemon, turning slowly. “She’s your daughter- -”

“EX CRUCIO.”

Luciferian’s spell struck Lemonleaf’s chest, and he immediately screamed as he was engulfed in pink lightning. He fell to the ground, convulsing in agony as the lightning wormed its way into his skin and nerves and into his very being.

“I did NOT waste my time to create TWO failures,” said Luciferian, looming over the unicorn. “And I will NOT tolerate it. Think on this for an hour or so. If you aren’t insane when I come back, we can try again.”

Luciferian turned and left the room. Lemonleaf had ceased screaming, but was still wracked with pain on the floor, weeping through his groans as the pain spell engulfed him.

As soon has she saw her father had left, Failure stood and grabbed onto Lemonleaf. “Why?” she said, tears running down her own face for a reason she could not understand. “Why did you do that? You can’t disobey him, it only makes things worse!”

“It hurts!” gasped Lemonleaf, curling into the fetal position. “It hurts so much!”

Failure hugged him tightly, trying to slow the convulsions. “I know. I know, but listen to me. You have to listen! The pain will stop. It’s bad now, but it WILL stop.”

“But it hurts so much, I can’t take it- -”

“You have to!” Failure held him. “I know from experience. Don’t worry, I’m here. I won’t leave you until it’s over. And it will be over soon, I promise.” She looked up toward the door that Luciferian had exited through. “All our pain will be over soon.”

The efficiency of the link was poor. Luciferian had his magic back, but the link was tenuous. This was an area of inquiry that had rarely been studied in detail, mostly because the techniques involved had not existed until he had invented them. The only solution, therefore, was to attempt to find information on the subject- -by looking in a book.

Luciferian immediately went to his library and collected a stack of tomes. Before he could even read through the third, though, he sensed something disturbing.

“Ha,” said the demon, who was standing inverted on his ceiling. “You got beat by a widdwe pwincess. What a shmuck.”

“I am trying to READ,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do not distract me!”

“Giving orders now,” she said, appearing on top of his table and striking a pose that might have been cute had she not been an unholy abomination. “Hilarious.”

Luciferian closed his book. “I have encountered a setback.”

“I know. I was there for that part. Literally. And it’s a little more than a ‘setback’.”

“I never do anything without contingencies.”

“You know what they say about the plans of mice and mares. And you’re totally Sombra’s mare now. Or the princess’s...s.” She shrugged and rolled off the table, appearing at Luciferian’s side. “You can’t go back to the Crystal Empire.”

“Not immediately, no, but I have expected something like this to happen for some time. I have embedded contacts. You know that.”

“Contacts that you can’t keep control of.”

“I don’t need ‘control’, just a back door to return should I need it.”

“Going in the back door is always my favorite.”

Luciferian walked away from the desk and began to pace through the library. It was the place where he always did his best thinking.

“In some ways, this is actually an advantage,” he realized. “Working in the shadows is slow. It requires a delicate touch.”

“You can touch me delicately. Or hard. I kind of prefer the second one.”

Luciferian ignored her, as well as the ever-growing pain in his left front leg. “All that matters is that Sombra is overthrown. I can still do that as an open enemy. Except then it will be conquest.”

“And you don’t need the princess.”

Luciferian stopped. “No,” he said, slowly. “Not technically. But the prophecy is still valid.” A smile crossed his face. “Maybe I was thinking too small. Using her as a tool to gain the thrown...but I made an invalid assumption. That she has no power.” He pointed to his horn. “I am the greatest pureblood ever to live, and she did THIS to me. Imagine what I could do with a being like that, loyally chained to my side. Or...” His joy grew, “what I could LEARN. If I could understand how her power works, through careful study...”

“...of her supple princess body and long, hard horn...”

“I could apply it to MYSELF. If I had that power...” He laughed. “Why, even Celestia couldn’t stop me!”

The demon’s face darkened- -yet her smile persisted. “Even though you already have MY power?”

Luciferian’s left front leg suddenly burned intensely, and he cried out. He grasped it, only to realize to his horror that it was becoming increasingly yellow- -and that the growth of the foreign tissue had passed the surgical connection onto his own skin.

“But that...that’s not possible...”

“You thought you could trick me,” said the demon, smiling even more widely. “I almost manifested. But you stopped me.”

Luciferian glared at her, and then smiled. “Because I’m still in control. Pride is a sin, demon. Remember, I summoned you as a servant. You are nothing more than a power battery for my spells. I do not need to manifest you. Not completely.”

“Because you know the consequences? But do you really?”

The smile fell from Luciferian’s face as the demon walked to a table containing a vase filled with magical flowers.

The demon leaned against the table. “Whoops.” She slid her hoof across the surface, knocking the vase onto the floor. It shattered and the flowers dissipated.

Luciferian gasped in shock and took a step back. “You’re- -you’re solid! You’ve manifested!”

“You idiot.” She was not smiling. “But what do I expect from a mortal.” She started walking toward him. “Of course I’m solid. I’ve ALWAYS been solid. When I choose to be. I think the princess can even see me. It’s harder to hide from beings without souls, ironically.”

“But I stopped you from manifesting!”

“That isn’t what it means. Why don’t you understand? It’s not hard. I can manifest physically wherever I want. Whenever I want. In any form I choose. And I could do whatever I want. Stack your mares like cordwood? Make your planet’s surface uninhabitable? Sure. Why not. Except that those things are no fun. Except the mares. I would very much like to stack them. But that’s getting ahead of myself.”

“But the spell!” Luciferian looked down at his hoof, checking the markings and circles closely. They were all right, he was sure of it. “It summons a demon familiar- -”

“You believed that because you wanted to believe it. That your own magic, your skill, your stupid smelly BOOKS- -that those things could give you power and control. That knowledge- -that YOU- -actually even matter.” She laughed in his face. “News flash: I’m not actually a demon.”

“But then what are you?” Luciferian shuddered, immediately wishing that he had not asked that terrible question.

“I am the most beautiful pony. Did you not know that I AM GOD?”

Luciferian took a step back. “No- -”

“What you call ‘demons’ are my angels, born from my bottomless womb. To bring my divine light across your world, to show ponies the glorious truth- -of violence, debauchery, and the meaninglessness of their own mortal existences.”

“The Fallen One- -”

“NO.” Her voice boomed, and Luciferian covered his ears in pain, even though the sound was not heard- -nor felt. It was deep within his soul. “There is nothing to fall from. Are you that ignorant? Did you not realize that there is no Heaven? That all souls- -the kind, righteous, depraved, cruel, evil, pure- -that they ALL fall to me, to eternal torment?” She laughed softly, and for a moment Luciferian almost saw here- -not as a beautiful mare, but as a thing with a form too unspeakable to comprehend, marked only by a pair of flaming crimson spheres. He nearly choked as the air around him was replaced with the gasses of decay and the sickening perfume of ten million carnations.

“No- -NO!” he pushed forward toward the impossible mass. “I am a stallion of SCIENCE! There is no devil! You’re trying to TRICK ME!”

“Am I?” She was now leaning on his side, gently stroking his mostly-white mane. “That’s the only question you seem to be interested, isn’t it. Am I?”

Luciferian pushed her away. He almost passed out from touching her; her skin was cold and disgusting, despite looking so pure and beautiful.

“The spell is not yet complete. Whatever you are, I stopped you- -” He cried out as his leg burned from within. “I stopped you!”

“You THOUGHT you could. By using a surrogate limb. Sacrificing flesh that was not yours to sacrifice. But it doesn’t work that way. I can’t help it if you’re stupid. Or maybe you aren’t? Maybe you DO understand?” She took his tattooed and scarred hoof. The pain was searing.

“The spell...the spell...”

“Doesn’t manifest me in a physical sense. I can already do that. It manifests me within YOU.” She stroked the limb, and Luciferian nearly passed out as the runes glowed from within. “Sweet me, it’s tingling my...well...whatever I have,” she gurgled. “That’s more or less up to you. Again, any form you want. Horn, wings, horn...I can do either. Or all three.”

She laughed and released him.

“You see,” she continued. “There’s a reason your father never completed the spell. Because he wasn’t nearly as bold and handsome as you. Also, when it completes, I BECOME you. As in, you cease to exist in any real sense, and I gain absolute control of that adorable little pony body.”

“But why? If you can- -”

The demon jumped onto the table and lay down, crossing her front legs. “Because it’s boring being God. But mortals are so much fun. My favorite thing is to corrupt them. To watch pure, kind souls slowly decay into depravity, making excuses for why it’s justified- -only to see in the end that it never really mattered. To break their souls in the only time of light they have before endless, eternal darkness.”

“I’m not a theologian.”

“Unfortunately. I mean, have you ever corrupted a priest? It’s hilarious! But that’s not the point, stop distracting me. Here’s the honest truth, and I’m not honest very often. Queen of lies and all. It tingles in a bad way. Elements of Harmony and all.” She rolled over onto her back. “I came to you because you were different. A family of dark wizards, evil sorcerers...boring. But YOU were a good pony. A fundamentally pure one. A glorious White Unicorn.”

“I have never claimed to be good. Nor do I have a need to be.”

“But you were! And you are, even if you don’t realize it. You are a vampire, of sorts, and vital blood from a white unicorn would render you immortal.”

“And curse me.”

“Look at you’re leg. You’re cursed pretty bad. But no. You make them anemic but never...you know.”

“That has nothing to do with- -”

“And little Failure. You keep her around. And she isn’t chained in the basement. You let her walk free.” She turned over again. “But I’M the reason you beat her.”

“No, I do that because- -”

“Because you want to? Because of your anger, your hate? The purest virtues of a pony? Look back at your life. There was a time when you could have been good, when you could have pulled House Twilight out of the shadows and rejoined the ranks of the purebloods as its greatest member. But as soon as you took that spell and superseded your father...well….”

“No. No, this was me. ME. You had nothing to do with it, these were my choices- -”

“And when I take you completely, body and soul, you won’t exist anymore. Not as you do now. Your fall will be complete, and I will rule the Crystal Empire. Then together we will sire an endless bloodline of pure, sacred white unicorns- -and I will crush the souls and happiness of each and every one of them across all eternity, until one is born strong enough to finally lift your curse.” She sighed. “Then I’ll probably have lunch. Maybe some beans. Or a salad. Or a BANANA. It’s the evilest food, you know.”

Luciferian looked down at his hoof, at the spell and at the flesh that was not his slowly seeping up into his body. Worse, he could feel it within his mind as well. There were changes at the very edges of his consciousness. Slow changes, but ones that grew closer every second.

“And...and if I don’t manifest you?” he looked up and faced his master. “If I never complete the spell, you can’t manifest.”

“Hmm. True. But not really. You’ve already manifested me, just slowly. You will eventually turn. But I would bet- -and I often bet- -that you will use my power sooner rather than later. And next time you won’t be able to control it. I will devour you in the most pleasurable way possible, and you won’t need to worry about the Crystal Empire anymore…because it will be MINE.”

She jumped from the table and, before he could stop her, kissed Luciferian. Her tongues were long and forked, and amazingly talented- -and tasted like some unspeakable form of chemical decay.

Then she was gone. It had been Luciferian’s first kiss.

Chapter 26: Final Resurrection

There were no windows in the central lab, but Riser did not mind. She had always been happy with the light crystals produced. She thought it was pretty.

She hummed as she worked, carefully washing the last of the seemingly endless glassware required for Necrophilo’s veritable legion of student-scientists. It was a time-consuming process; they had to be absolutely pure. Necromancy was a fine art, and even the slightest deviation caused by even a speck of soap could be catastrophic.

When the last beaker was finished, Riser placed it on the rack with the others and inspected them. “Perfect!” She said at last, turning off the water and wiping up the spilled water from the edge. “All neat and clean!”

She then turned around and approached the center of the laboratory. The construct made from Hope was standing there, her eyes slowly tracing Riser as she moved. That was rare for constructs; most of them just stared blankly. Hope was one of Necrophilo’s best works yet.

“Alright, Hope. The glassware is done. That means it’s time for your daily brushing.”

“Brushing?” the construct looked confused. She blinked slowly. “Brushing...so I can look pretty. Pretty for Necrophilo.”

“That’s right.” Riser picked up the brush and began to stroke the construct’s long, yellowing mane. “Pretty for Necrophilo. Also to check for mold. You’re almost due for another skin treatment.”

“Mold would be bad.” Hope turned her head. “And can I...can I be pretty for Sombra too?”

That statement had surprised Riser almost to the point of panic the first time she had heard it. But now she knew that it was something that Hope said every day. It was either a form of stereotypy- -not uncommon in the undead- -or something more. A fragment of a memory of the pony she had once been. Her brain was so well preserved, that was a very real possibility.

“Can I see him?” she asked. Riser paused. That was new. “Can I see him soon?”

Riser smiled and continued brushing. “I think so. You’re a real masterwork. But it isn’t up to me. It’s up to Necrophilo.”

“Oh.” Hope turned away and looked into the distance. “Okay...”

Hope was still silent by the time Riser had moved onto her tail. There certainly was some mold, but it was minor. Hope would probably need to be soaked in fungicide and formaldehyde overnight again. Riser made a mental note; she would put it in her eighty-page daily report later.

She had almost finished the tail when Necrophilo drifted into the room.

“Lord Necrophilo,” said Riser, standing and bowing. “My apologies for the delay. I am almost complete with my duties. I will be on my way in just a moment, and you two can be alone.”

“Cleaning technician Riser,” said Necrophilo, his cloudy green eyes focusing on her. “I actually came here to speak with you.”

“Yes, sir. I am listening. May I continue brushing?”

“Of course. I expect her to be spotless. She is the only white unicorn I have ever had access to...at least until Eternity finds where Luciferian is hiding.”

“Then you will have a pair. Won’t that be nice, Hope?”

“I...get lonely,” sighed Hope.

Necrophilo sighed. She had named it. “You understand, Riser, that for all intents and purposes, you are a failure. That your magical career will never progress.”

“I know,” she said, continuing her brushing. “But that’s okay. I messed up. I should have seen her spell and countered it. I did fail, but maybe it’s better.” She stopped brushing for a moment. “After seeing what Twilight Luciferian did...how powerful he was...” She looked up. “And you’re just as powerful. All of you are. I don’t think I could measure up. I mean, I’ve done my best to study, but...”

“I understand. Not all of us are built to stand as rulers amongst lesser beings. Sometimes a pony has to be a lesser being. It is simply their destiny. Though you may get a chance to enter the Dark Thirteen again.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. It is just...foreign to me. I rejected you, and yet you still come here every day. To wash the glassware, care for the constructs. My Hope especially. Even when you’re qualified enough to make ones of your own.”

“But this is my job. I just want to help.”

“And I need you to know that I hold nothing against you. I do not hate you. I have always valued you and your skill. It was an honor to have taught you.”

Riser smiled. She looked up to thank him for his kind words, and for accepting her after she had thought she had failed him entirely. As she did, the Mask of Red Death was slid over her face.

She jerked back, but did not scream. She gasped and squeaked, and fell to the ground in pain as the red leather of Scarlet Mist’s clothing began to form over her body. Necrophilo watched, smiling and intrigued. Hope watched, but being dead herself had no thoughts on the matter.

It was over in less than a minute. Still shaking and weak, Scarlet Mist stood,.

“Where am I? What is going on? The princess- -” Her eyes fell on Hope, and Hope smiled.

“Hello Scarlet Mist,” she said, recognizing her former friend. “It is good to see you.”

“Sweet Epona the Betrayer, this is what you’ve been wasting your resources on, Necrophilo? If Sombra knew- -”

“I did not give you a new body so you could criticize my work. The king wishes to see you. And he wishes to see you NOW.”

The wind was weak but cold. Penumbra supposed it was always cold. The sky above was endless but gray, and endless storms raged on the other side of the kingdom-wide shield dome. It was snowing, and a substantial amount fell through. Penumbra pulled the collar of her coat closer to her head. She did not need it; not only was she an immortal being, but Emeth’s armor was apparently heated by some unseen mechanism. Regardless, the etiquette was to wear a coat, so that was what Penumbra did.

She made her way upward through the outer halls of the Citadel. In the distance, she could see the Empire stretching outward, silent and shrouded by the slight snowfall. There were no railings this high, so Penumbra stayed far away from the edge. Although she possessed wings, she had never been taught to fly, and did not want to learn it suddenly from having slipped on a puddle of slush.

“Eternity?”

“I’m busy. So busy...why is one hornless unicorn so hard to find? If I have to start looking under rocks...”

“Just tell me.”

Eternity sighed. “Up ahead. Take two lefts and a right.”

Penumbra did as she was told and found herself on a balcony, a wide platform meant to support cannons or ice-archers. Snow was beginning to collect on it, but Penumbra knew that it was the right place. Sitting on the wall, her back against a support column, was a pony. A pony dressed in red.

Silently, Penumbra approached. Not because she wanted to be hidden, but out of respect for the one who had taught her to walk so quietly. She paused beside Scarlet Mist and looked out. The view was breathtaking, or would have been had it not been obscured. Far below, she could see the castle’s courtyard. Thirteen was down there, flying a kite. There was a certain quiet absurdity in that image that made Penumbra want to laugh and to cry at the same time.

“I could have pushed you off,” said Penumbra. “You never would have seen me coming.”

“I knew you were there,” said Scarlet Mist, quietly. “You reek of perfume. Agarwood.” She sighed, but spoke only halfheartedly. “I always told you. All the senses. And don’t let them spray it on you, it stinks.”

Penumbra leaned on the edge of the balcony wall and watched Thirteen and her kite. “I see they gave you a new body.”

“Her name was Riser. One of Necrophilo’s top students. A perfect body, really.”

“Then why don’t you sound happy?”

Scarlet Mist turned her masked face to Penumbra. “Why are you even here, princess? I tried to steal your body. You should hate me. Or at least be afraid.”

“I was the one who made the report to the king,” admitted Penumbra. “I had to. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize you idiot. I knew the consequences for my actions.”

“Did he hurt you?”

Scarlet Mist fell silent, and looked out at the city for a long time. “You saw what I am,” she said. “What it’s like in this mask. I don’t feel external pain, and what I have inside...well, it never stops. I thought there was nothing Sombra could do to me that would hurt me. I was a fool.”

Penumbra was forced to look away, because she knew that it was all her fault. What had been done to Scarlet Mist must have been something truly terrible, though, for a being like her to be so horribly injured. “Can I...can I ask what he did?”

“He told me something. A tiny piece of information. Barely a sentence. And that was all it took.”

“What did he say?”

Scarlet Mist looked down at Penumbra. Slowly, she pointed to her mask. “Do you know what this is? Where it came from, why I have it?”

“I saw some things...in your mind. Shadows. Memories, maybe? But not the whole thing.”

“Then let me tell you a story.” Scarlet Mist looked out at the Empire, a land forever foreign to her. “There was once a great sorceress. A pureblood, on par with Twilight Luciferian, or Sombra, when he was younger. A beautiful and immortal gray mage.”

“Gray mage?”

“Neither a dark wizard, nor a white one. Between the two. Able to act selflessly, or selfishly, should the situation call for it. A being who drew her true power from balance. Until she decided that she no longer wanted balance. She wanted to free herself of her darker emotions. Her hate, anger, fear, greed, sadness, envy, all of them. So she used a powerful spell to tear the evil part of her away, leaving only the good behind. A pony of perfect generosity, kindness, and purity.”

Scarlet Mist pointed to her face. “She sealed her evil half in a mask. And threw it away, as if half of herself was trash.”

“That was you. She threw you away.”

Scarlet Mist nodded solemnly. “I guess I can’t blame her. She took happiness, joy, love, hope, empathy, contentment, compassion. What use did she have for me?” She sighed. “In time, I became self-aware. A mind of my own, and half of a soul. I called out to ponies, and they found me, seeking power. I gave it to them. At the cost of their bodies.”

“Like mine.”

“Not like yours. Something was wrong with yours. I don’t understand what, exactly, because I CAN’T. It was something SHE took. One of the pieces I don’t have. If it were her, I could have understood, but you? Your body forced something into me that cannot exist there. And you rejected me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. It’s the first time that’s ever happened, and I suppose it’s going to be the last.”

“The last?” Penumbra looked up, concerned. “What do you mean?”

“Because of what Sombra told me,” said Scarlet Mist, icily. “The very reason for my existence was to find my body. To find her, and become whole. Complete. To stop the pain she left me with, because I can’t do it on my own. She treated our body poorly. Gave away its youth, its vigor, for some pointless thing. But I always knew it was there. Waiting for me. I just needed to find it.” She looked down at her hooves- -at Riser’s hooves, for she had none of her own.

“Lady Mist...Scarlet…”

“He knew. The whole time he knew. My body, Penumbra. It’s been destroyed.”

Penumbra gasped and covered her mouth. “No, it can’t- -”

“It WAS. I confirmed it. My other half was with Starswirl the Bearded when he self-annihilated and took six other ponies down with him. My body was one of those six. Penumbra, I have nothing to go back to. I will never be whole again. I...I...” She pulled her knees against her body.

“It’s going to be- -”

“Don’t say it! Don’t lie to my face. I only came here to find a way to reunite with her. To be one pony again. If I never will? Then there’s no point.”

“But that’s not true! You don’t even need her!”

Scarlet Mist looked up. “Why are you trying to help me?”

“Because you helped ME when I needed it!” Penumbra stepped back. “You said she took everything from you, right? Every good emotion?”

“I just said that. Were you seriously not listening?”

“You said she took hope- -but you still have that one! This whole time, that’s what’s been keeping you going! The hope that you’ll get back to her, that you two can be friends again! And that isn’t HER hope, that’s YOUR hope. YOU made it! And if you can do that, you can make the others too!”

Scarlet Mist was silent for a moment. “I had hope. Huh. I suppose I never thought of it like that.” She leaned forward. “But now that I know my body is gone, I no longer have it. Whatever I was, it is gone now. There is no part of me left except the bad ones.”

“I- -that isn’t true- -”

“Stop trying to help.” Scarlet Mist turned away. “I have already made up my mind. I know exactly what I’m going to do.”

“What?”

“I am going to stop taking new hosts. I don’t have to, you know. I can put a defensive curse on this mask. Reject anypony who dares to touch it. I don’t know if I can be destroyed...but I can sleep. For the rest of eternity, in a state of bodiless dormancy.” She paused. “I just pray I don’t dream.”

“You can’t! I- -I won’t allow it!”

“And you can’t stop me. No one can. And the decision is final.” Scarlet Stood. For a moment, Penumbra feared that she would leap over the edge and to the courtyard below- -except that Thirteen was there, now staring up at them both.

“However,” continued Scarlet Mist. “This body still has so much power left in it. It would be a shame to waste it. Three, four months maybe. I have to do some things before I go to sleep. The first is to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Don’t be thick. For trying to take your body.” Scarlet Mist pushed past Penumbra, bumping her out of the way. “And that is the full extent of any apology you will be getting.”

Penumbra watched her go, and then followed at a distance. She had bought some time- -three months, after all, was half the time she herself had been alive. So perhaps there was still time to save her friend.

As she passed through the door, she did not notice Thirteen standing on the balcony wall, her kite tucked beneath one of her hooves. Watching- -and waiting. Thirteen knew that time was endless, and that there was always more- -but she also knew that Scarlet Mist’s time was short. It was for all of them.

Chapter 27: The Golem and the Raven

From above, Penumbra watched the golems at work. They were quick and efficient, forming long lines as they trotted in unison across a smooth metal floor. From a distance, they really did look like ponies. Some of them even looked up at Penumbra, watching her without hesitating in their task.

Many were hard at work cleaning and flattening the floor. A group of others were busy building a bridge across a deep ravine, while others bounded across attempted to fill it. Others were already crossing additional bridges, their backs covered in fragments of material.

The material was, in turn, brought to a second set of golems that shaped and formed it into new parts. They then carried it to a construction sight, where they appeared to be assembling the head of a massive screw.

Penumbra lifted her head from the eyepiece of the microscope and blinked. “And these things are really part of you?”

Emeth removed his hoof from beneath the electron microscope. “Yes. Billions of them. Arguably, I am not one golem but a society of them, all in service to their queen.”

“They have a queen?” Penumbra looked through the microscope again. The golems had finished the bolt and repaired the ravine, which was really an imperceptible scratch in Emeth’s armor. The last of them were retreating through small hatches back into his body. “Where does she live?”

“I’m not actually sure. I think I might be the queen, but do not quote me on that. Several parts of their design are still obscure to me. Needless to say, that has made transferring them to the phase-three golems very challenging.”

“How interesting.”

Emeth paused. His eyes narrowed, more in concern than his normal amused interest. Though his face roughly resembled that of a skeletal pony, Penumbra had found that he was remarkably expressive.

“Your normal interest in tiny pony-shaped things seems lacking. I had expected that you would find this both educational and, well, fun. I did not miscalculate. Therefore, something must be wrong.”

Penumbra sighed. “I’m sorry. I am trying to be engaged, it’s just that there is an awful lot going on.”

“Would talking about it help?”

Penumbra looked up. “Do you have the time?”

“I am essentially immortal. So yes. I have time.” Emeth stepped away from the microscope and the attending golems packed it back into its normal storage space. “However, if there is talking, there will also be walking. Clearly you need to think, and your organic brain is made of a type of goo that requires oxygen to function. Walking aerates it.”

Penumbra stood from the golem she was sitting on and started walking beside Emeth. “What is your brain made of?”

“I do not have one. I have evolved beyond the need for it. But I do enjoy walking. To think one needs a brain to walk is a logical fallacy.”

“Are you...trying to joke?”

“Not really, no. However, I am trying to keep the mood light. I have calculated that this will enable you to be more open about your feelings and for me to better assist in resolving them.” He shrugged. “Additionally, as a being without the same sort of feelings I may be misreading the gravity of the situation. So please go on.”

Penumbra sighed. She was silent for a while as they walked onward, down one of the central streets of the busy underground golem city. Golems around them were all hard at work, but their busy motion was more calming than anything else. This district was mostly dedicated to checking the tolerance of sample parts, so it was quieter than others. At no point did Emeth attempt to force her to speak or hurry her; he simply waited patiently.

“Are you close to Scarlet Mist?” she asked at last.

“No. None of us are terribly close. We are rivals, after all.”

“I see...”

“But I am familiar with her situation. My golems serve in every aspect of society, and I hear what they see and see what they hear. That, and it was in the steward’s weekly update notes.”

“So you know what she is planning.”

“To deactivate herself. My apologies, that’s not the appropriate word for an organic. Rather, to sleep.”

“And it’s my fault. If I had been a little bit faster, if I had been a better host...”

“Those are pointless thoughts. Neither you nor I can change the past. Or, if you could, would you?”

“To save her? Of course.”

“By deceiving her?”

“What? No, by stopping her from offending the king- -”

“Your worldview lacks context, Penumbra. The king is not the end-all and be-all of our lives. Or yours. Say you went to Thirteen today, and convinced her to turn back time. To give you a second chance. Then what? Scarlet Mist would still serve, yes- -but you would not have saved her body. She would still have no home to go back to. She simply would not know. But you would.” Emeth looked down at her, now quite curious. “And would you be able to live with that knowledge?”

Penumbra lowered her head. She had not realized that aspect of her plan, or how little she truly played in it all. “But there has to be something we can do.”

“Perhaps this is better.”

Penumbra stopped. They were at the edge of a catwalk extending over a lower manufacturing floor. “How can you say that? She’s my teacher! She taught me how to serve the king, even when I had no magic and nopony else believed in me!”

“But her continued existence requires the expense of pony lives. The Mask of Red Death, once attached, cannot be removed. Except by you, apparently. The pony linked to it is drained until he or she collapses to dust. How many ponies would you be willing to sacrifice to preserve your friend, especially knowing that she will never again hold a permanent body?”

“If she had just taken me- -”

“But she CANNOT take you.” Emeth leaned down, turning his head to glare at Penumbra. Not out of anger; he was simply trying to make a point. “For one, you are too important to the kingdom to lose. Second, with your power it would be entirely possible that she would eventually become an enemy of Sombra. Third, you are biologically incomparable, so the point is moot.”

“That- -that’s true- -”

“More to the point, should we not respect her decision? You are no longer her student, not in a formal sense. You, her, and I, we are equals. Should we not treat her as such?”

Penumbra took a step back. “You would just let her- -let her die? Are you that cold-hearted?” Penumbra grimaced. “Of course you are,” she said. “You’re a golem. You don’t even have a heart. You don’t understand. I should have known better.”

“Really.” Emeth straightened himself. He turned and began walking. “For your information, I do have a heart. Though mine does not power emotions, just as yours does nothing but pump black fluid.”

“Is that an insult?”

“It was not intended as one. Take it as you well.” Emeth stopped partway out on the catwalk. “And, if you will, look here.”

Penumbra frowned, but did as she was told. She walked out over the manufacturing floor and looked where Emeth was pointing. Down below, she was able to see a section had been cordoned off. Several cubicles had been constructed, and to Penumbra’s surprise she saw several ponies she recognized.

“The heretics?”

“Yes. Hard at work benefiting the kingdom.”

Penumbra looked closer. The heretics were in small, lounge-like rooms having conversations with other ponies that Penumbra did not recognize. “And who are the other ones? Other prisoners?”

“Golems.”

Penumbra blinked and looked leaned against the railing. “You’re joking.”

“No. Not in the slightest. Those are type-I version seven bodies. My newest model. The former heretics are helping me test them.” Emeth paused. “Though, unfortunately, none of my golems have yet passed. Even the phase-threes are not quite right. So testing continues on. However, take note.” Emeth pointed. “I have provided them with food, water, oxygen, and a warm environment. Their job is simply to speak with my golems, to help them grow. That is all.”

Penumbra continued to watch. As she did, she saw the little girl of the group run by- -laughing alongside a filly-sized golem. When the girl saw Penumbra, she stopped and waved. The golem examined her closely, and repeated the action, waving to the princess.

“Only I have yet passed the Turing test,” sighed Emeth. “Such a very lonely thing. But I have a point. As a machine, I am not capable of malice, of anger, of hatred. Nor am I capable of compassion in the sense you understand it. But I do not like to see ponies hurt. You called my prototypes my children. I strive to make my children like them. To be equal to ponies. So know that I do care, and I respect their value.” He turned to Penumbra. “And I do not want to see them wasted.”

Penumbra stared at the heretics, watching, and trying to understand. “I know I’m not supposed to lament the past. I know it can’t be changed. But I’m angry, Emeth. Scarlet Mist’s other half- -how could she do this? How could she just leave part of her in so much pain? If it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“And you would not be growing as a pony.”

“I am not a pony. Just a machine.”

“I do not know if that is true. Or completely true. Or true for much longer. As for the mage who created Scarlet Mist, anything we can say is only a matter of conjecture. Perhaps she simply strove for self-improvement, but was not true to who she truly was.”

“And how many ponies had to pay the price?”

“Many.” Emeth looked out at the factory floor. “I just dispatched a runner golem outside the shield this morning. Carrying diplomatic mail to Canterlot. A letter to the parents of a young mare named Riser. To inform them that she will never return home.”

Penumbra sniffed. She realized she was crying. “Why does this have to be so hard?”

“The fact that it is hard means you have already surpassed me. Congratulations. Be mindful that your new role never becomes easy, or you will be lost to it. Just as Twilight Luciferian was long ago.”

“My new role. That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“Have you been informed? Or am I the first?”

“The steward gave me a memo. And Crozea explained it, in rhyme. So yes. I know.”

“That you are one of us now.”

Penumbra nodded. “There is no oath for me to swear. My role has not really changed. I was created to serve the kingdom, and that is what I will continue to do.”

“It has. Even if you do not realize it yet. A weapon does not need to make decisions. It is pointed in the direction of its master’s enemies and does its work at his call. But now you will have to make decisions. Sometimes impossible ones.”

“Like Scarlet Mist did. Emeth, I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You already have. Look at them.” Emeth pointed at the heretics. “You saved their lives. Even when that put you against Sombra. There is still a long way to go. But that was as good start.”

“A long way to go...” Penumbra’s brow furrowed as she thought, and she looked up at Emeth. “Yes. I can do it. I am ready.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“But something Scarlet Mist said made me think. She said she wanted to finish her affairs. To tie up loose ends, I suppose.”

“In an idiom, yes. That would not be uncommon for one intent on departing.”

“I have loose ends of my own. And I don’t want to leave them open. Most likely, I am not going to have advanced warning when my time comes. I am supposed to be independent. I am One of Thirteen now. So there is something I need to do.”

“I doubt I can help.”

“You can.” Penumbra smiled, although she felt fear creeping through her heart. “You are friends with Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, correct?”

“He has no friends. Not even me. But I know him, yes.”

“Then can you take me to him?”

Emeth paused. “Yes. Yes I can.”

Penumbra entered the laboratory alone, leaving Emeth standing behind, and marched into the darkness. She recalled how she had felt before, and how unsavory her fear had been- -but ignored it this time. This time she walked slowly, taking account of her surroundings and watching carefully.

The last time she had been there, it had been night. It was day this time, and she found that the room was not entirely dark. Dim gray light came from high above, channeled though long and thin channels. It cast thick beams of light through the dust below.

A sound came from above and shadows swam across the floor. Penumbra looked up and saw the eyes of Gxurab’s ravens staring at her, watching. They were wary, but neutral. Penumbra did not know what purpose they served, if they were familiar or simply pets- -or Gxurab’s only friends.

The contents of the room had changed. The last time Penumbra had come, the dial that now contained the Heart of Darkness was still being constructed. It had been completed and removed, and now something else was being built. New things had been moved in and were in various states of assembly or disassembly. Some of them Penumbra recognized as the machines from before, but others were different. Some were immensely old, things made of broken and half-crushed metal built in a style that she could not recognize and carved with strange ideograms. All of it was being assembled into some strange device in the center of the room.

Penumbra stopped and stared at the machines she could not possibly understand. Machines meant to harness the power of the Heart of Darkness, but for what end she did not know. Not that it was any of her concern.

“Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz,” she said, looking toward the darkest shadows in the room. There were many. “I am Penumbra Heartbreak, daughter of Sombra, One of Thirteen. I have come to speak with you.”

“I know who you are,” clicked a heavily-accented voice that echoed from every corner of the room. “And never, NEVER say my name again. Your hideous primitive mouth cannot pronounce the words. Why have you come here? To interrupt my work? To ruin more of my things? Getting ahead by sabotaging your rival?”

“There is no ‘ahead’. We are all pieces of the king’s great machine.”

Penumbra detected the sound of clicking. It was distant, but familiar. It was the sound that the device in Al’Hrabnaz’s chest-plate made. Penumbra was not sure of its purpose, but understood that it had something to do with his ability to use magic.

From the sound, she could tell that he was descending a nearby column. She did not turn, though.

“I came to apologize for having previously interfered with your work. It was wrong of me to enter your workshop unannounced and uninvited, even if I was lost. And even more wrong to touch fragile things that are not mine.”

“Fragile?! My dial is not fragile! The forging process renders it sensitive to dirty pony-oils for its first thirty-six hours! Nothing can break it once it has been cured!”

Strangely, his voice was not coming from where his body was. Somehow he was projecting it to an alternate side of the room. Penumbra focused there, even though she knew that he was behind her.

“I would also like to apologize for judging you for your appearance. I will also be apologizing to Buttonhooks the Mad later. I have invited him to tea at seven. Emeth will be in attendance, as I do not actually know what tea is made of or how to make it.”

“Stop this,” hissed Gxurab. “Stop wasting my time! Get out! GET OUT!”

He lunged at Penumbra from behind. With one swift motion she turned and summoned a shield spell, intending to simply block him. The spell she normally used as a shield, though, exploded outward in a wall of blue haze.

Gxurab was struck by the blast and knocked backward. He skittered across the floor, landing on his back.

Penumbra gasped. “I’m sorry! I didn’t realize- -”

“GAH!” cried Gxurab, now utterly panicked. HE had landed on his back, and his feet were flailing in the air. “I HAVE BEEN INVERTED!”

Penumbra stared, completely confused. “And you...you can’t get up?”

Several ravens fluttered down from above and surrounded their master. With some effort, they flipped him back onto his feet. He looked up at Penumbra, probably glaring, though it was hard to tell through his mask. He was not dressed in his usual cloak and feathers; rather, he was dressed only in the heavy pressurized suit he normally wore. Penumbra was immensely surprised to find that he had wings, though they did not have feathers. Rather, they were bony and hard, almost like the rear surface of a beetle.

“How dare you!” he rasped, turning away. “I have never been so humiliated in my life! Is that what you came for? To assert dominance? Well congratulations, you’ve succeeded. Just go. Leave me to my embarrassment.”

“I did not mean to do that- -”

“Yes you did! I know how it works for you filthy primitives. I cannot use magic, so I must have no value. A plaything to be tormented. No better than the Sword-Host.” He began to scuttle back into the shadows. His motion was quick, although as Penumbra looked closely she saw that he was actually very small. She had always thought of him as being large and terrifying, but he was barely the size of a young colt.

“How...how old are you?”

Gxurab stopped. He looked at Penumbra, or at least tried to. There were too shiny but very small circles on the edges of his mask; Penumbra assumed his eyes were behind them. “That is not any of your business! Or did you come down here to try to flirt with me? Do realize, to me you are little more than a disgusting pig.”

“I am an alicorn. We are generally understood to be monstrous.”

“You have no idea.” Gxurab quickly marched to a nearby piece of equipment. Instead of crawling back up into the shadows, he climbed the vertical surface of the piece’s sides and went to work connecting a mass of conduits and cables on the top. Several of his birds came down and landed on his wings. He stopped to stroke their heads before returning to work.

“Your birds. I like them.”

“And they seem to like you, for whatever reason. That is the only reason I have not basted and/or ingested you by now. And that is not an empty threat. My species is carnivorous, and yours is delicious.”

“So you do eat. Would you like to come to tea, then?”

Gxurab paused, and looked down from his dimly-lit perch. “Eating or drinking is almost impossible for me. Not without an involved process, if you must no. So no. No tea. It would probably poison me anyway. Now stop making my floor ugly and GO.”

One of the ravens came down from the ceiling and landed on Penumbra’s horn. It was remarkably heavy.

“The birds say otherwise.”

“Betrayer! Stop fraternizing with the cursed-one!” Gxurab threw a wrench at his crow, but several more swooped down and plucked it from the air. “Great. There goes my spanner. That was my only thirteen-fifteenths.”

“You can’t eat?” continued Penumbra.

“Not without removing this helmet, no.”

“And it...doesn’t come off?”

“It does. But your world is far too cold.”

“I can have the heat increased.”

“My body temperature is over four hundred degrees. Stop being stupid. I CHECKED. Only the nobility of my species can survive on the surface, breath your filthy frozen air.” He pointed to the dial on his chest. “And I need this to stay here. To survive in an endless world of ice and toxic light.”

“Then why are you here?”

Gxurab stared at Penumbra, and then slowly turned. “Why would you ask a question like that?”

“Because I’m curious.”

“No. No one is curious. No one bothers to speak to me, to ask me anything. Why you? What do you want?”

“Because I take my new responsibility very seriously. Because you are clearly my father’s favorite, after Luciferian who betrayed him.”

“And you are worried I will do the same.”

“No. Because I will be working with you, as well as the others to serve his divine will. You hide in the shadows to spread fear, to make yourself mysterious. So they don’t realize that you’re small, and that you get stuck if you’re turned on your back.”

“The other thirteen hate me.”

“But the population fears you, more than any of the others. But I do not have that luxury. There may come a time when I sit on the throne. And I need to know who will serve me.”

Gxurab jumped down. He was surprisingly quick. “Do you know what you have just said?” he rasped. “I should take your wings for even THINKING about usurping him- -”

“He almost died.” Gxurab fell silent. “I was there. We almost lost him. We were that close...to what? To a kingdom with no king? To let his dream fail just like that?”

Gxurab stared at her, then turned away. “I know,” he said. “I know. I wish I did not have to, but I know. Not until I’m done...not until this machine is complete. Then we won’t have to worry. But I am aware of the risk, if you must know.” He stopped, and lifted his head. He did not look at Penumbra, but at his birds. One flew down and landed on his outstretched hoof, and he stroked it carefully.

“My kind. We have only one city remaining, deep within this planet’s mantel. A world of warmth without light.”

“Your home.”

Gxurab released his bird. “It is no home of mine. This is my home. At his side.” He turned to partially face Penumbra. His internal breathing system gurgled. It was entirely possible that he was breathing something other than air, trapped in his suit like a pony deep in an unbreathable and frigid ocean. “I was born male. That means nothing to you, but to us, it is everything. I was taught mathematics, then relegated to designing drill heads. All this brilliance, all this capacity- -but not female. Not allowed to use it.”

“So you left.”

“I came to the surface, and I was hated. For what I look like. Because Pegasi are meant to fly in the sky on feathered wings, not burrow underground.”

Penumbra winced. “The mistake I made.”

“A mistake I understand. I know what I look like. Or used to. I have been in this suit so long...” He sighed, or rather gurgled. “The surface-ponies, they rejected me. But Sombra did not. He saw past my appearance, and saw what I was capable of. He let me work, listened to my theories- -and understood them. He was patient, and tolerant, and let my talent grow in a way that my kind would never allow. You would not understand.”

“No. But I appreciate you telling me.”

Gxurab began to walk slowly back to his machines. “I owe everything I am to him, to our Eternal King. Only by his grace have I come this far, become everything I wanted to be. My theories, my research, my power. All of it comes from him. And I would give it all for just one chance to repay him.”

“I had no idea.” Penumbra understood the sentiment well; though somewhat different, it was how she felt. There had to be a word for it. She simply did not know it.

“I have to protect him. I just have to. For everything he did. For everything he will become.” He reached up to his machine and gently touched it. “Which is why this has to work. It HAS TO. I only get one test, and I know what I have to do. Know that there can only be one test subject.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gxurab turned. “Your magic, when you exposed him to it- -” He stopped suddenly, as if reconsidering. “Never mind. I have no time to explain it. You have no need to know. It is far beyond you. You only need to know that this machine will give the king the life he truly deserves. Even if it costs mine.”

“It had better not. Our king needs servants as loyal as you. We are already losing Scarlet Mist. We can’t afford to lose another. Not now.” Penumbra smiled. “Also, please know that the invitation to tea is open, if you can find time in your busy schedule.” She bowed. “Thank you, Lord Al’Hrabnaz. I believe I have a better understanding of both of you and your work. I bid you good day.”

Gxurab lifted his hoof dismissively and watched her go. A raven landed beside him, and he picked it up.

“The girl who could remove the Mask of Red Death. She is different than I expected.”

“Tea?” said the crow.

Gxurab shook his head. “No. The king’s time grows short. She is far too kind to rule. Only Sombra can. Sombra must survive.” He looked up at his machine. “At any cost.”

Chapter 28: Politics

The sleep was dreamless, even though Penumbra could feel Eternity wandering on the periphery of her mind. That was not really a dream, though. Just part of her life; the force that kept her asleep.

Then, in an instant, she was no longer asleep. She was moving before she was even aware, and when the world cleared she found her hooves wrapped around a pony’s neck.

“Please don’t squeeze me!” squeaked the girl. “Princess, please, it’s just me?”

“Huh?” Penumbra blinked and realized that it was one of her crystal nurses. “Wait. Your name is Facet Flare, isn’t it?”

The young mare gasped, suddenly panicked. “You know my name?!”

“Sometimes I hear you and the others talk. I didn’t notice you had names at first. But I guess now I do.”

“Can you...can you let go? Can’t...BREATHE!”

“Oops. Sorry.” Penumbra released her.

The crystal mare gasped and rubbed her neck. She was not much older than Penumbra looked, so probably fifteen or so. She looked down, though, at the blanket where Penumbra had been sleeping. “You sleep on the floor?”

“And you snuck up on me while I was sleeping! Don’t do that! Unless you’re trying to assassinate me. Then I’ll get you first!”

Penumbra took a defensive stance. Facet squealed and cowered in a corner.

“Noooo! Please forgive me, princess! Don’t hurt me! I- -I only came with a message!”

“Message?” Penumbra’s wings tingled, imagining suddenly who it might be from. If it was from Zither, this was exactly like the plot of several books she was technically not allowed to read. Or even Luciferian. Even though he was a traitor, that only made the attraction more alluring. “From whom?”

“From the steward!”

“Oh.” Penumbra’s heart- -and wings- -fell. “She’s not that attractive.”

“Excuse me?”

Penumbra blushed deeply. “I said nothing!”

“Oh. Yes. The steward, she sent for you. She wants you dressed and prepped within the hour.”

“Why?”

“She has a meeting scheduled. I don’t know the details, I’m just a house-slave!”

“In the middle of the night?”

“The steward does not sleep much.”

“Because Nightmare Moon will try to assassinate her too?”

“What? No. It’s nightmares, but not from that. From...” She gestured toward her forehead. “You know...”

Penumbra frowned. She did understand, but did not like the implications. Only Nightmare Moon, the enemy, caused nightmares. That an action performed by Sombra in pursuit of wise and just rule could cause them disturbed her, and made her irrationally angry with the slave girl. Regardless, she understood her duty.

“Did she have a specific outfit in mind? I have three now. So many.”

“She brought over a special set. Please hurry. It does not do well to annoy the steward. I need this job. I can’t go back to the mines.”

“So be it. Dress me, slave.”

Facet bowed, and the process commenced.

Upon emerging, the steward was already waiting, her already sallow skin illuminated nearly silver by the harsh green glow of the Citadel’s night-hours crystal lanterns. She did not seem tired in the least, nor especially angry. At least not angrier than normal.

Penumbra bowed to her. She had been dressed in what was, essentially, yet another suit of armor. It was similar to her ceremonial consume in that it was somewhat ornate- -made of dark, gleaming metal and adorned with stones in black and red- -but it actually seemed to be built as a real suit of armor, as if it really would protect her in a fight. Some of the fit was actually superior to her other clothing; she made a note to remind Emeth of the alterations.

Most strangely, though, was that she had been given a cloak. It was far fancier than what she normally wore, but it covered her wings and most of her face, leaving only her mouth exposed. This excited Penumbra greatly, because the only time she wore cloaks was when she was going to be allowed to go outside.

“You look adequate,” said the steward. She began walking. She herself was also in formal clothing, a sort of set of robes. They were a strange shade of white, lined with silver and with linear patterns of red running through the upper part. Penumbra at least found her incredibly impressive, even regal- -though the deep scar on her forehead still filled her with a strange mixture of sadness and adoration.

“What are we going to do, if I may ask?”

“I require your assistance.”

“With what?”

The steward looked down at Penumbra, scrutinizing her. “I have a critical diplomatic meeting scheduled. And I believe you can be of assistance.”

“A meeting? In the middle of the night?”

“I should not need to explain time zones to you.”

“Equestrian Proper is only an hour different from the Empire.”

“Equestria Proper and the Crystal Empire are not the only nations on this planet, nor the ones I take issue with. Additionally, half of Equestria’s population is chiropteran, or bat-ponies. They are generally nocturnal.”

“I heard a rumor that you have nightmares.”

“Such rumors are a dangerous thing to the teller. They tend to result in one growing somewhat shorter by about a head’s height. No. It is not nightmares. It is brain damage. Our horns are deeper than they appear. They go to the center of our brains.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize- -”

“Of course you didn’t. No one does, until their horn is held in front of them. It truly is a...profound sight. Regardless, it benefits me. I am busy during the day.” Her eyes turn. “Or would you rather I had not awoken you?”

“I am ready for my new independence and responsibilities,” said Penumbra, almost comparatively. “If that happens at night, so be it.”

The steward led her deep into the Citadel, toward one of the many places that Penumbra had never been before. They did not move at a rushed pace, but instead at the normal brisk pace that the steward always used.

They eventually reached a room, its door not guarded by thralls but by type-H golems. Penumbra had largely learned to recognize the types from Emeth, and knew that these were one of the most severe. Yet, as the steward approached, they lowered their spears and allowed her to enter without a single word. Penumbra was allowed to follow.

The room behind the door was large and circular, somewhat like an amphitheater. It was initially dark, but several large clicks sounded as dim crystal lamps hummed to life. Penumbra found that the walls were decorated with tattered black banners, not unlike the ones Sombra kept in his throne room. There were also several ominous, brutalist columns supporting the room, somehow absurdly matching with its otherwise mysterious and strange crystal structure. Otherwise it was spartan and unpleasantly damp.

“May I ask a question?” asked Penumbra.

“At the moment, yes. Once the palantiri are activated, no.”

“Palantiri?”

The steward gestured to a half-ring of carved posts. On each one sat a sphere of carved crystal, its rear linked to a complex array of conduits and wires that fed downward and out of sight into the Citadel’s internal power architecture. One sat in the center, between all the others.

Penumbra pretended to understand. She continued with her thought. “If this meeting is so critical to our kingdom, why is the king not in attendant?”

“Because diplomacy is not the province of kings,” replied the steward, who was checking the connections to the crystal spheres. “Not except in the most dire or the most trivial of situations. Could you imagine if Celestia or Nightmare Moon themselves were to speak directly to him? Tensions would run high. Things would be said that could not be unsaid. Those conversations are not diplomacy. They are private discourse between beings beyond our realm of understanding.” She turned and faced Penumbra. “Mark this well, because my lifespan is finite and this job may fall to you, in time. A diplomat is a filter. To dispense the will of the king, and to bring only the most critical news to his attention, should it be good or ill.”

“And this task falls to you?”

“It is the king’s vision which creates our Empire, and his will that forges our destiny. His word is law, and his laws his truth. But he has no time for minutia like this. Those tasks fall to me, and this place in his organization is my greatest honor.”

“And what do you need me for?”

“Stand here.” Penumbra moved to the central area, which had been demarcated near the central sphere. “You will remain silent. Watch carefully, and learn. Should I require you, you will no.”

Penumbra frowned, not fully sure what this meant. Her whole life had been spent following orders, though, so she did so instinctively. “I can do that.”

“You had better.” The steward checked a silver pocket watch. “The time is upon us.” She stepped forward to the central sphere and placed a hoof on it. It began to hum and glow at her touch, as though the center were filled with a swirling but sickly form of milk.

“These are merely lesser palantiri,” she said, sounding somewhat somber as she admitted it. “The original was the treasure of my kingdom. Our Eternal King learned its deign. These were forged by his magic and skill.”

Penumbra gaped at the devices. She had not realized her father did anything except rule; the thought that he was a mage capable of creation had never occurred to her. She hardly had time to question it, though, because the system began to vibrate violently but briefly as the secondary spheres began to charge.

Then, in an instant, images formed, rendered from magic as partially colored holograms. The enlarged images of ponies appeared in the room, one by one- -although not all of them were ponies.

Penumbra recognized some of them. Namely the first to form, the one that had apparently been waiting the longest. Their clothing looked almost like it had in Emeth’s holograms, though it had grown shorter and more conservative from the robes of the past, and the number of jewels that these donkeys wore had increased substantially. There were two jacks, one young and comparatively dashing, and one jenny, apparently the leader. They were the diplomats of Assyria.

Beside them was a projection of a creature Penumbra could not identify; they were tall, feathered things resembling ponies crossed with birds of some sort.

Past the bird-things was the delegation from Equestria proper. They were, as expected, represented by the three primary races of ponies: a bulky female earth-pony, a male Pegasus in exotic robes, and an exceedingly effeminate looking white unicorn. With them, though, was a fourth, standing apart. He belonged to a race Penumbra had never seen before. He was like a Pegasus, although he had the wings of a bat; his eyes were like that of Sombra’s, except green instead of red.

On the opposite side, one sphere failed to light. Another projected an image of a hulking hairy beast adorned in a military uniform and plastered with medals. That, Penumbra supposed, was a yak.

The last image was just that of an enormous eye. At first Penumbra supposed that was some representation of an unseen and mysterious race, perhaps even a dark wizard. As the eye blinked and retracted, though, she realized that whoever owned it had simply been too close to the image.

“Is this thing on? How do I tell if it’s on? Stupid pony stupid...thing.” The image shook as the transmitter was kicked. The image resolved slightly more, and Penumbra recognized the last delegate. He was, apparently, breaking the rules- -and had also apparently grown substantially since Emeth had last seen him.

Dragonlord Scorch pulled back from the palantir, eyeing it suspiciously. Another dragon appeared close to it, and then the image of a tongue. This was promptly followed by a cry of pain.

“Do NOT eat that! It is not food!”

“But it looks so tasty!”

“And it’s MY treasure, not YOURS!” Scorch raised his crystal scepter. “As punishment for touching my stuff, I order you to pick up that rock- -” he pointed “- -and bash yourself over the head with it until I think it’s funny!”

“But Scorch- -OW!”

The other dragon had commenced with beating himself, and Scorch sat down in a stone throne. “Do it more quietly!” he snapped suddenly. “And if you cry, I’ll make the whole tribe laugh at you!”

“Huhu...yes, lord Scorch.”

“You invited the dragons,” sighed one of the bird things. “Of course you did.”

“We take all allies we can,” said the steward, looking up at the images. “Abyssinia has cut ties with all of us. And Griffonstone...” She turned to the unlit receiver. “Well, it seems they no longer have the diplomatic infrastructure.”

“Only because you incited a revolution in their nation,” snapped the Pegasus delegate. “Their country is in ruin because of YOU.”

“We merely provided economic support to a democratically elected, republican leader,” sighed the steward. “We have been over this, Delegate Windbag. Or does our threat to the idea of monocratic tyranny frighten you?”

“Do you not think that is hypocritical?” growled one of the bird-things. “Coming from YOUR kingdom?”

“I assure you, are kingdom is a fully-fledged republic. Sombra represents the will of the people, and each and every one of them has selected him as their chosen representative.”

“Under penalty of torture,” whispered the earth-pony delegate.

“Yak agree with not like monarchy,” added the yak, rather loudly. “Monarchy is tool of imperialism! Suppresses agency of glorious proletariat!”

“By my own rear fires!” cried Scorch. “Why is this so BORING? If this were a tribal meeting of dragons, it would have come to blows already!” He stood up and swiped at the palantir. “Can I even hit you through this? How am I supposed to do diplomacy without VIOLENCE?!”

“That is the point of diplomacy,” snapped one of the bird-things. “Violence is never the answer.”

“No! It is the QUESTION! The answer is YES! Hit yourself HARDER, idiot, it’s not funny yet!”

“Yak agree! Resistance is pony being tiny and weak! Donkey not so tiny and slightly less weak...but more bourgeois! Yak not trust!”

“Can we PLEASE move on with business?” bellowed the Assyrian jenny, silencing the others. Her voice was surprisingly strong, and she had her hooves pushed to her temples. “I am getting a migraine, and this device costs a considerable amount of funds to operate.”

“Then let us commence,” said the steward. “My main topic of interest is the unfair and illegal Equestrian embargo of the Crystal Empire. I seek to end it immediately, with international support.”

“Or you finally admit you can’t find a way around it,” chuckled the earth-pony.

“Might I remind you,” said the effeminate white unicorn, his voice still not helping Penumbra decide if he was actually a “he”, “that the embargo is in place for a reason. To prevent you from acquiring the resources necessary to construct weapons and war-machines.”

“Our population is static. Though our attempts to breed the crystal ponies are successful, they have a low natural reproduction rate. Your nation, meanwhile, has tripled its military size in the last two years alone under Nightmare Moon.”

“She is correct,” said the Assyrian jenny. “And to be frank? I support her suggestion.”

“You can’t be serious,” said the bird-thing.

“We have received substantial pressure from our guild-unions on the subject,” retorted the older jack. “Especially our shipping merchants. We have the infrastructure for controlled, regulated, and profitable trade.”

“You mean so that you can get fat off the profits from selling weapons to terrorists,” snapped Windbag, the Pegasus.

“To be plain, we need the funds,” continued the jenny. “The war against the Saddle-Arabian rebels is costly.” She turned to the Steward. “And technology from the Crystal Empire could put a swift end to it, before any more donkeys or ponies are hurt. To restore orderly, regulated, profitable rule.”

“Huh?” Scorch sat up suddenly, apparently having been asleep. “Did somebody say weapons?”

“Yak not think is such good idea. Crystal ponies TOO dangerous!”

“For once, we agree with the yaks,” sighed the effeminate unicorn. He locked eyes with the steward. “Princess, your nation is simply too belligerent. Your repeated strikes on neighboring settlements- -”

“In disputed territory that is rightfully OURS. While Equestria Proper, meanwhile, has conquered over half the continent in the past two centuries.”

“By forging deep friendships with associated nations that share a common belief in Harmony!”

“So you claim. But what I see is a conqueror attempting to weaken a smaller empire to attempt to consume it...and all of its resources.”

The donkeys and bird-creatures began to grow nervous. They did not seem to like the idea of Equestria having control of the Crystal Empire any more than they liked the idea of Sombra holding it.

“How DARE YOU- -”

“Windbag,” said the bat-pony. His voice was remarkably soft and deep, and Penumbra could not help but feel her wings twitch beneath her cloak. “She does have a point.”

“Dagger, you traitor- -”

Dagger silenced the Pegasus with a look. “The One True Goddess is bearer of the Element of Honesty, and I respect her endless virtue with absolute reverence. If Vizier Sarrah will speak plainly, so will I.” He turned to the steward. “Nameless steward of Sombra. Yes. We do seek dominion over your kingdom.”

“You idiot!” cried the earth-pony. “What in Celestia’s name are you DOING?!”

“I do nothing in the name of a false-goddess. Besides, my words do not substantively change our discourse. The motive for the embargo is meaningless. Only that it stays in place. Lacy Pants?”

“He is correct,” sighed the white unicorn. “Though forgive him for being blunt.”

“No, yak like! Like funny bat-pony! Bat-pony want have one of yak’s daughters? Can have second-strongest smelling!”

“I thank you, Premier Grunnichov, but alas, I am already married, with two beautiful daughters of my own. And the One True Goddess also wields the Element of Loyalty- -”

“I want one of your daughters,” said Scorch. “Send over a few! Whatever you are, you look tasty!”

“Yak taste BEST! But not mean you can eat! Except dissidents, who get sent to the goulash. Them you can have.”

“Additionally,” continued Lacy Pants, who might or might not have been male, now sounding somewhat annoyed, “we fear that your nation is becoming a nest of various foul agents. Necromancers, dark wizards, students of the black arts. Every kind of depraved soul you can imagine.”

“He is not wrong,” sighed Sarrah, the jenny. “You have already declared yourself an open enemy of the changeling hive by harboring a young usurper-queen.”

“And once she enacts her coup, we will be allies with one of the most powerful nations on our planet.”

“IF she can accomplish a coup before you find half your slaves are actually insects in disguise,” added one of the bird creatures. “But a secondary queen changeling is hardly the only abomination you are keeping.”

“Indeed,” agreed Lacy Pants. “You are harboring a renegade Questlord, as well as a member of the fallen House Twilight.”

“Twilight Luciferian has been purged from the kingdom for betraying the Eternal King. He is now our enemy as much as yours.”

“There is also the disturbing matter of a mage of unknown race that has been repeatedly antagonizing Clover the Clever, as well as an unregistered master golem engineer. Clearly both rejects of Canterlot, I am sure.”

“Clearly,” said the Steward with a smile. “We offer a home for mages and sorcerers that others consider too uncouth for standard society. For the peaceful development of their arts without tyrannical limitations of their freedom.”

“You mean witchcraft,” said one of the bird-things. “Foul blackness that we must not allow!”

“ Witchcraft’ is superstition. We are the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in Equestria. Why? Because we allow for the pursuit of science without petty false-morality. We offer limitless freedom, something your kingdoms cannot.”

“You speak of the freedom of slaves,” said Dagger. “How interesting, the paradox of it all. But again. Not our concern.”

“I disagree,” said the earth-pony. “The presence of a heretic Questlord is most DEFINITELY our concern. As is some extremely disturbing intelligence that suggests you have acquired a chronoplexer.”

The entire room filled with murders and confusion.

“What?” laughed the earth-pony. “Did you think you were the only ones with a changeling?”

“So we have a spy,” said the steward. “Excellent. We now have a proper excuse for another sweeping purge of foul dissidents. Thank you.”

“You are avoiding the accusation,” snapped Lacy Pants, himself smiling.

“Yes. Our newest addition is, indeed, a chronoplexer.”

“A form of magic that has been universally banned due to the danger to the timestream. You are aware of this, of course.”

“Yes. That it is completely and utterly illegal. Unless that chronoplexer is named Starswirl, and lives in Equestria.”

“She is not lying,” growled Sarrah. She turned to the Equestrian delegation. “Our ancestors presented you with mutual condemnation for allowing him to practice his craft.”

“We only acquiesced when your goddess threatened not to raise the sun,” added one of the bird-creatures.

“And is this relevant?” sighed Dagger. “Starswirl is gone.”

“But the double standard still remains,” said the younger Assyrian jack. “Mother, you were correct. These ponies are such arrogant things.”

“What did you say- -” Windbag became an especially bright shade of red.

“The rules never seem to apply to you,” retorted the jack, who was still smiling. “You, who possess all the magic. If something threatens donkey-kind? Or the hippogriffs? Or the yaks, your own enemy- -do you even care? You force us to follow laws that you yourselves are except from.”

“Jermane,” said Sarrah, softly, warning him.

“If we had expanded our military as much as yours, taken as much land? Sanctions. Endless sanctions. Embargoes, like theirs. All in the name of ‘Harmony’ that only includes THREE races.” He looked to Dagger, but said nothing directly to him.

“Because you are sovereign nations,” said Lacy Pants, “and because Starswirl lived nearly two centuries ago. Times have changed.”

“Indeed they have,” said the steward. “You are no longer the most powerful nation on the planet. You no longer have leverage.”

“Says the ponies hiding behind a shield-wall,” laughed Windbag.

The steward smiled, and Penumbra knew what was coming. “Your intelligence. I don’t think it’s a changeling. It’s far too incomplete.”

“Our spies are none of your business.”

“They are when they are in my nation. But this is simply out of pity. You knew that we had a chronoplexer, but were not aware of her?” She gestured toward Penumbra.

“Who she? Yak not see! Too still, can only see things moving, or gets very bored!”

“I saw her,” said Scorch, sleepily. “I was wondering about that.”

“As was I,” said Sarrah. “Your chronoplexer, I presume?”

“Not at all. This is One of Thirteen, Twilight Luciferian’s replacement, the one who defeated him in open combat.”

“Barbaric customs,” grunted the hippogriff delegate.

“More like FUN customs,” snapped Scorch.

“She is also Sombra’s firstborn.”

The entire room fell silent and the entire Equestria delegation gaped.

“Im- -impossible!” cried Windbag, now a shade of purple. “We- -we would have known!”

“We would have known indeed,” said Lacy, calmly. “An interesting ploy, princess, but a low one. Sombra has no children, and can bear none. Even if you dress a girl in fancy robes, she is not his. We all know that.”

The steward smiled. “How quaint.”

She warped her hoof around the edge of Penumbra’s cloak and tore it off. Penumbra attempted to strike as threatening of a pose as possible, showing her demonic makeup, gleaming armor- -and most importantly her horn and wings.

There was a scream. Chairs were pushed back as ponies jumped up in horror.

“That- -that’s impossible!” cried Lacy Pants.

“The palantiri cannot be deceived, pureblood. You know that.”

“She- -she’s an alicorn!” cried the earth-pony. “That’s not possible! It CAN’T BE!”

“And yet here she is. A match for Celestia or Nightmare Moon, daughter of our king and child of the Empire. A pure, born alicorn.”

“An alicorn well into her second decade,” growled Sarrah, whose eyes were wide with panic.

“You foul traitors!” cried the hippogriff delegate, now facing the Equestrians. “You KNEW! You had to know! For twenty years- -you kept this a secret!”

“Ponies betray yaks!” cried the Premier of YakYakistan. “Knows yaks on border, yaks CLOSEST! Let scary wing-horn pony fight yaks, get rid of yaks so you not have to fight! Tiny puny little COWARDS!” He stamped his hooves violently. “This mean WAR!”

“I assure you, we had no idea- -”

“Then you are incompetent,” said Sarrah, standing up. “You knew they had a chronoplexer, because that violates your precious hypocritical laws- -but how could you not have known they had an ALICORN?”

“They must have hid her- -”

“I have not been hiding,” said Penumbra. “I have been known to this nation since my birth.”

“Celestia and Luna knew,” said the steward. She turned to the Equestrian delegation. “I was there, on the first day. They came here to see her. To attempt to assassinate their rival. It seems your precious twin-queens are keeping secrets from you mere mortals.”

“So tiny ponies DID know! Ponies LIED!”

“Calm yourself, Grunnichov,” said one of the hippogriffs.

“Yak not calm yak self! Yak ANGRY! Yak SMASH puny capitalist pony kingdom! Day-night ponies, crystal ponies, ALL PONIES!Then smash creepy bird-people kingdom TOO!”

“What did we do?!”

“Yak not know! Find reason later!”

“Calm. DOWN.” Lacy stood up quickly, nearly knocking his chair over. “This is ludicrous.”

“Indeed it is,” said the steward, still smiling. Somewhere deep beneath her, Penumbra felt a strange and distant rumbling. Her mouth suddenly tasted like metal. “Considering that this problem will be resolved momentarily.”

A sudden ruckus came from somewhere off-camera on the yak’s transmission. The premier looked around in confusion, and Penumbra heard screams and the sounds of things breaking.

“What- -what happening? Why yelling- -NO, GET BACK!”

He was too slow. In an instant, the blade of a sword was pressed to his neck. Even through the distorted colors of the hologram, Penumbra could see its mottled red coloration. From that alone, she knew who it belonged to: above her, the armored face of the Blue Knight came into focus.

“What is the meaning of this?!” cried Lacy, losing his composure as the other delegates jumped to their feet as well- -all save for Dagger, who simply looked intrigued, and Scorch, who was watching with rapt attention and intense enjoyment.

“Within the context of this meeting, the premier of YakYakistan just declared official war,” said the Steward. “As such, we are justified in our swift retaliation.”

“You’ve gone too far! This will not stand- -”

“Is not YakYakistan your enemy as well? All your enemies? We are dissolving it as a gift to you. To show that we are committed to absolute peace, and the prevention of all war and violence.”

“Ponies betray yaks! Ponies pay! Yak swear on YAK, ponies PAY!”

“Now now,” said the Blue Knight, holding his blade slightly higher and causing the yak to instantly cease struggling. “I would avoid moving too much. Or you risk a rather severe haircut. That, and you should hardly waste your time on resisting me. At this very moment my griffons-in-arms are setting vedmak explosives all over your capital. In just a few minutes, all of this shall be dust in an icy wind”

Penumbra was glad her wings were already extended.

“We shall bring freedom and liberty to all of yak kind,” continued the Blue Knight. “Additionally, since you are no longer a nation per se, you have forfeited the right to communicate with our glorious king’s emissary. So you will no longer be needing this.”

In one swift motion, the Blue Knight brought his sword down on something Penumbra could not see. The image collapsed into colorless static; no doubt he had destroyed the palantir.

“This is madness!” cried one of the hippogriffs, stepping forward and looming high over the room. “It is as though you wish to invite a war!”

“Any chance you had of ending the embargo is gone now,” said Sarrah. “You realize that, don’t you?”

“The end of the embargo was meant as an offering to forge new political alliances. In truth, it hardly affects us. We have more than enough resources in our kingdom alone. Hence why Equestria is so intent on conquering us.”

“This will lead to far more than simple sanctions,” said Lacy. “You understand that, I’m sure.”

“It means war,” said the female earth-pony. “We cannot abide by this!”

“Agreed,” growled Windbag. “This aggression cannot be tolerated!”

“There will be no war,” asserted the steward. “It is in your best interest to avoid it at all costs.”

“Really,” laughed Windbag. “Because our army outnumbers yours ten to one, plus our airship navy and Pegasus airforce. You may have an alicorn, but it is just a child. We have two fully-fledged adults.”

The steward’s smile fell. “Lacy Pants,” she said, calmly, “are you aware of the theory Clover’s asymmetric material conversion spell?”

Lacy actually laughed, albeit softly. “Of course I am. That’s your plan? A ridiculous bluff?” He looked up to the Assyrians, who were clearly quite confused. “It is a theoretical spell that involves the direct and seamless inter-conversion of matter into energy. Nothing more than a mathematical thought-experiment. The spell is impossible to perform.”

“And it got boring again,” sighed Scorch, propping his head on one hand. “BOR-RING!”

Lacy Pants frowned. “Yes, perhaps, but also trite. No mage can use the spell. Even the smallest amount of matter would be impossible to control, taking the mage with their target.”

“Unless the spell were entrapped within an ultraregal-magesty crystal,” said the steward.

“Which is itself impossible for a number of theories too complex to go into here. The technology simply does not exist. And if it did, there is no way to provide the spell with enough power to activate.”

The smile returned to the steward’s face. “Correct. At your level of technology, certainly. But our mines have discovered substantial deposits of a very particular crystalline ore. One that, when purified, results in a particular metal. We call it plutonium.”

“There is no such metal,” said the earth-pony delegate. “I would know! There are only FOUR types of metal!”

“When this metal reaches a certain critical mass,” continued the steward, “it explodes with unimaginable force. More than enough to activate an annihilation crystal.”

“Impossible,” dismissed Lacy Pants. “You are obviously bluffing. I am even beginning to doubt that that girl is even a real alicorn.”

“I assure you, the weapon is real. The force it produced is majestic. The purest beauty in all existence. Ultimate power, drawn from the will of the Witchking himself. Enough power to vaporize, say...” She slowly turned to the hippogriffs. “...a mountain.”

Penumbra saw the panic in the hippogriff’s eyes, but also anger. “Even you would not dare to use such a terrible thing,” the elder of the two said, his voice firm and untrembling. “Even as evil and distorted as you and your kingdom have become, you still have reason. Empathy. You are not nearly as heartless as you seem.”

“That is where you are incorrect, Coralquill. We are not evil at all. In fact, the Crystal Empire is the last bastion of good and purity in existence. The last realm on this dying world where freedom reigns absolute.” She shrugged. “That, and we already fired the warhead. Several minutes ago.”

The hippogriff’s eyes went wide. “You’re lying.”

“Even if you are not.” Sarrah stood. “Our entire navy will deploy to stop the delivery ship. We must not allow a weapon like that to be used. Not now, and not ever.”

“She is bluffing, you fools,” growled Lacy Pants. For just a moment, Penumbra saw a glint of white as he grimaced, a flash from a set of long, gleaming fangs. “There is no weapon.”

“We have no need for a ‘ship’,” chuckled the steward. “That would be far to time-consuming to convey my point. Delivery is simply a matter of connecting a crystal-drive to the base of a rocket. With that, we can send our warheads to any nation on the planet in a matter of ten minutes or so. Which means it should be reaching you...right about now. I am told you hippogriffs have open-roofed halls. I recommend not looking up.”

One of the hippogriffs stepped back. “Evacuate the area,” he said. “Quickly! We have to get them to the sea, NOW!”

“Sir, that isn’t possible, nor is it strictly necess- -”

The image was suddenly consumed with a surge of immensely bright light, a glow so bright that the other delegates had to cover their eyes. Dagger even screamed, being blinded by the light. Penumbra covered her face with a hoof, but the steward just stared into its light, smiling.

The glow was followed by a thudding boom of immense volume. The sound was so great that it became distorted, and as the light began to fade Penumbra found that so was the image.

“Quickly!” cried the garbled voice of the older of the two hippogriffs. “His eyes, get him a doctor!”

“The sea! GET TO THE SEA!” cried another voice.

Through the remnants of the image, Penumbra could see hippogriffs scrambling, and their hall in disarray but not outright ruins. The younger of the two delegates was lying on the ground, holding his eyes and crying out in pain.

The elder looked to the palantir, his eyes filled with unspeakable terror. He looked at the steward, and then at the Equestrian delegates. “This is madness,” he said, softly. “This is not our war! This is a war of ponies, we want no part of it!”

“Coralquill, this is not a time to break our unity,” pleaded Lacy, his composure starting to crack and the fear beneath beginning to become visible.”

“No more. We will not put our nation in danger for the sake of some political squabble! Be GONE!”

The image then went black. The transmission had been cut.

Sarrah, shaking, sat down. She seemed to have nothing to say.

“It exists,” Lacy, sitting down as well. “You fools, you actually built it.”

“But we are not mad,” said the steward. “That was a demonstration. It was programmed to detonate one mile over Mt. Aris at a forty-degree angle. With the prevailing eastward wind, their exposure to fallout will be minimal.”

“It makes fallout?” gasped Scorch. “Why do I not have one of these?!”

“Because it could mean the end of all of us,” snapped the older Assyrian jack.

“My friends,” said the steward. “No. That is not what this means. The thermocrystalline warhead is a weapon of peace, not of violence. An outright war with Equestria would be devastating to both sides, as well as neutral nations eventually embroiled in the resulting world war. With this weapon, such a war becomes impossible. No reasonable being would challenge us when the cost to their own holdings would be so incredibly dear.”

“How persuasive,” said Dagger, still blinking. “And clear evidence that Celestia’s embargo is a complete failure.”

“After what we just saw?” The earth-pony delegate stood up, but then collapsed from her legs shaking too hard. “You can turn even THIS political?”

“My observation is empirical. We sought to limit their military capacity, yet now here they stand the dominant power of the world.”

“And it is all absurd,” said Sarrah, standing. She did not shake. “We condemn the use of this weapon. Categorically. But that said, Coralquill is right. This is a war for ponies.”

The younger jack turned toward the Equestrian delegation. “Ponies who spent all their efforts trying to preserve their egos by spying on a chronoplexer but failing to notice a profoundly beautiful adult alicorn princess, as well as the doomsday missiles.” Upon hearing that, Penumbra blushed slightly, and the jack smiled at her.

“Or purposefully kept that information a secret,” added the other jack.

“Regardless, we are neutral,” continued Sarrah. “We take NO side. Equestria can clearly no longer be relied upon. I will submit my views to the oligarchy immediately.” She looked to the Equestrian side. “If you wish to fight a losing war, or to maintain a useless and costly embargo, so be it. You will be on your own.”

Her image clicked off. As it did, the Equestrians stood.

“If all the delegates of importance are gone, we have nothing to speak about anymore,” growled Lacy. “So I bid you farewell, with a warning. From the path you have started down, there is no turning back. As a pureblood yourself, you should know. What seems like a victory now often becomes a grave failure in the long view.”

He turned, and the earth-pony and Pegasus left with him, vanishing from the image. Only Dagger remained, looking quite amused but still partially blinded.

The room was filled with laughter as Scorch stood, applauding. “Excellent! GREAT! HA, that was amazing!” He stepped closer to the palantir. “Who knew ponies had that much backbone?”

“I am glad it pleased you,” said the steward. “I had hoped that this exposition would amuse you.”

“Amuse me? It was downright FUN! I had been thinking about sending a force to take your kingdom, because, you know, the whole thing is literally made out of food...but I think I’ll wait.”

“Afraid of the weapon, Scorch?” asked Dagger.

“A weapon made of FIRE? HA! It would barely make a scratch on us. And destroy our what, rocks? They’re rocks, who cares. And us? I eat fire for breakfast and pass it out the back end before lunch. Which is also fire. Sometimes with opals, but sweet furry rugs, talk about fire on the back end from THOSE!” He laughed loudly. “My point? Time is all wrong. You ponies only live a few centuries at most. I’ll wait, because the look on that frilly guy’s face? You’re in for a big fight. That’s for sure. And whoever wins, the dragons fight that guy.” He grinned. “That way, we can have the MOST fun.” He suddenly frowned. “SLUDGE! Stop hitting yourself with that rock! It was funny about thirty minutes ago, now it’s just boring! And somebody figure out how to turn this magic dingus off, it’s almost lunchtime and you know what THAT means!”

Much to Penumbra’s relief- -but also slight disappointment, if only due to her inherent youthful curiosity- -the image from the Dragonlands vanished. That meant that only Dagger remained.

“And you?” asked the steward, turning to him. “Your thoughts?”

“Only that the dragon may be right. And that’s unfortunate.”

“How so?”

“Because a war would be such a waste. A mere grab for resources, another step toward an impossible vision. I think that peaceful unification may be possible, although you have certainly made it more difficult.”

“It was never possible.”

“There is the option of political marriage.”

“You would want us to give up our princess?”

“No. Because I am not an idiot, I can recognize herbal force-growing when I see it. But as Windbag said, we have two full alicorns. If Sombra is so great as you claim, he may prove slightly worthy to sit beside the One True Goddess. If not, he can always have the lesser sister. She serves little purpose anyway.”

“I will relay the message, though your chances are not good.”

Dagger smiled. “I know. But I will appeal to the Queen regardless. At the very least, I can convince her to slow this war. Perhaps indefinitely. The other races are quite eager for war, because they know that it is Nightmare Moon’s armies that will take the brunt of the suffering.”

“If you could lobby for a war with Celestia only...”

“Alas, the Goddess is far too loyal to do that to her beloved but inferior sister.” He sighed. “Perhaps I appear to you as a weak pacifist, but I would prefer that no pony suffers in such a needless war.”

“Then you are the only one who understands,” sighed the steward.

Dagger nodded, and with a smile his image dissipated. Penumbra and the steward were once again alone in the room.

The steward sighed, and suddenly seemed to deflate. Penumbra realized that she was shaking.

“Steward?”

“The meeting was a resounding success. The Yak’s Republic of YakYakistan was goaded and overthrown. Respect and neutrality of the Dragonlands was secured, and I believe we may have pushed the Assyrians and hippogriffs out of the conflict. We may even have ended the embargo in the process. And our weapon will put off war with Equestria, at least for a little longer.” She looked down at Penumbra. “We cannot afford a war. Not now. Not yet. Open warfare with Equestria would be disastrous.”

“But the way you did it...”

“Was effective. By sowing dissent and fear. As Scarlet Mist supposedly taught you.” She paused. “And I could not have done it without you.”

“I was a prop.”

“What role did you expect? You are a child with an impressive appearance. A weapon to show off, as our missile was.”

“I just thought...” Penumbra’s wings ruffled, and she stood taller. “I thought I would have more responsibility with handling our kingdom’s affairs. As a member of the Dark Thirteen, as a potential ruler- -”

The steward’s face was suddenly inches from Penumbra’s own, her steely eyes narrowed to small dots. “You will NEVER rule. I promise you that. The king is eternal, and his reign will never end. Attempt to usurp him and you will face me.”

“I would never- -I just want to help him!”

“You DID. As a symbol of his power. Is that not what you wanted?”

“Well...yes,” admitted Penumbra. That was, after all, exactly what Luciferian had promised her so long ago. “But...”

“But nothing. Your function is aesthetic only. Now please, come with me. I will accompany you back to your room. You need to return to bed and continue preparing for tomorrow.”

“But the next diplomatic meeting- -”

“If I require you, I will summon you. Otherwise you have no reason to be there.”

Penumbra bowed her head. “Yes, steward,” she said. “I understand.”

“Good. Make sure that you do not forget your place.”

Penumbra nodded, for she knew that she most certainly would not.

Chapter 29: The Prop

The next day was completely and utterly ordinary. It was nearly an exact copy of every other day Penumbra had ever known, with every element of her life specifically planned and determined to such a level of detail that even the substitutions felt mundane and seamless.

She woke up and was dressed by ponies whose names she barely knew, her long black hair tied back behind an iron tiara as she stared into an expensive mirror and watched a thing, violet-eyed thing stared back at her. Afterward, there was no breakfast, as Penumbra did not eat.

The first part of the day was spent in the library. It was empty and quiet. Even Eternity refused to talk, only occasionally muttering about whether or not spheres were truly as round as they pretended to be. No one else was there, save for Thirteen, who was rapidly reading through several of Gxurab’s works. Penumbra did not know what they said; his language was that of his native race, so she could not read it herself. The books had pictures, though. Ones she found exceedingly disturbing.

There was no chance for conversation. One, because it was a library, but also because Thirteen never talked. Nor did she have a room in the castle, and nor did she ever remove her armor. Penumbra found herself absently wondering if she was the female version of whatever Gxurab was.

Penumbra would have trained after the library, but Scarlet Mist was busy, hard at work completing the last of her tasks. Penumbra was not even permitted to go to her; she was simply told that there was a new version of the thrall mask that needed her fullest attention.

In the late afternoon, it was time for tea. Penumbra’s tea meeting went off without the slightest error. Emeth and Buttonhooks were both in attendance, the latter bringing a gift of small red peppers that he continually munched on but that the former categorically forbade Penumbra from even touching. Otherwise, Buttonhooks was a remarkably amenable fellow, though not nearly as engaging as Emeth, who himself was uncharacteristically quiet. Gxurab’s seat remained empty.

And soon, the day came to an end. The servants undressed Penumbra, and Crozea arrived to give her her medicine. It had previously always been the light of Penumbra’s day, to have Crozea visit her, no matter how busy she was. And she had grown very busy as of recent. Something was wrong, but Penumbra only distantly sensed it.

Penumbra sat on her bed and Crozea prepared the final mixture of the growth-accelerant potion that kept Penumbra alive. She had removed her mask, something that had become normal for her. Because when her face was visible, she seemed like a real person. A pony, or in her case a zebra; perhaps it was the only time she ever could, as she wore the mask constantly otherwise.

“Someday I like to think that you will no longer need this drink.” Crozea gave Penumbra her potion, and Penumbra drank it. As always, it did not taste like tea, which was the only other thing she had ever eaten. She felt the familiar burning throughout her body as the potion went to work. Though her growth rate had slowed, she was not quite an adult pony yet. That would take another three weeks at least.

“Crozea,” she said, putting down the vial. “Can I ask you something?”

Crozea paused, looking somewhat surprised. “I am not sure I have the advice you seek, but I am more than willing to hear you speak.”

“What am I?”

Crozea paused, and sat down on the floor across from Penumbra. “I know not why you ask something so existential, but to me, you are a pony with limitless potential.”

“I don’t mean it in an ‘existential’ sense, and I don’t care about potential. I mean now. Crozea...I don’t know what I am, here and now. To you. To the king. To the kingdom.”

Crozea grew serious. “This question is indeed strange. Why should there have been any change?

“I just...” Penumbra gathered her thoughts, trying to produce a statement of her emotions that made sense. It was incredibly difficult. “Am I a machine, a weapon like Emeth says? Or am I just a symbol? Am I supposed to rule, or command, or just follow orders? I don’t understand any of it!”

Crozea tapped her chin with her hoof. “Such explains why as of late you’ve been so glum. This question is indeed quite a conundrum. You are a princess, young and refined, but as of now your role remains undefined.”

“It’s just...everypony says I’m one of the Dark Thirteen now.”

“From the truth, they’re not far. For all intents and purposes, you are.”

“But nothing’s different!” Penumbra suddenly stood up, pacing the room. She had suddenly become highly energetic; she was not sure if it was her emotions, or simply the effect of the potion dose she had just taken. “I’m still doing the same thing I always have been! I have magic now- -”

“Magic alone does not define the role. Nor, my dear, is your magic something you yet can control.”

“But shouldn’t there be more too it? Than just sitting around here, having my hair brushed and getting put in the same suit of armor every day? I’m supposed to have duties, responsibilities, things only I can do. Things that serve the king, and the kingdom. To make it better, like you do.”

Crozea smiled. “Those are things you already do. Noting has changed, and nothing is new.”

“But those are just SYMBOLS! My image, the IDEA of Penumbra Heartbreak...but not ME. Not something I did. Just things ponies use me for...”

“If you desire to have a use, then what role, mishaps, would you choose?”

Penumbra had given that a great deal of thought. “I want to go on missions. Like Zither, or Thirteen, or the Infiltrator. To see the world like Emeth did, and to bring freedom to all the ponies in it! Zebras too!”

Crozea frowned deeply, but her voice remained measured. “Most of our role is strictly academic, remaining behind for mathematics, spell development, and studies alchemist. Though a few among us serve on the outside, the majority remain here, at the king’s side. A dangerous lifestyle is not something wise to flaunt; is such a life truly what you want?”

“Yes!” Penumbra sat back down on her bed. “I don’t have the kind of skills that you or Emeth or Gxurab do, I can’t help if I stay here.”

“Your role is one of progressions; you can help most by staying here and finishing your lessons.”

“And how long did it take you to become an alchemist, or learn to talk to spirits?”

Crozea became evasive. “It took many a moon, but you learn quickly, and will be powerful soon.”

“I’m powerful now! Or can be, if somepony will let me!” Penumbra sighed in frustration and flopped back on her bed. “You just don’t understand.”

“The world out there is a dangerous place,” sighed Crozea. “And there are many dangers I hope you never need to face. Why would you want to leave this, when you do not know how the world truly is?” She lowered her eyes. “I cannot protect you from your dire fate. But there is no need to swim in a world of poverty and hate. Your course is in no need of correction; you must stay here, in the castle, where you can remain under its protection.”

Penumbra lifted her head. “So all I can ever be is what I am now? Then I don’t have any potential at all, do I?”

Crozea stood up. “You may not understand me, but this is the way it ought to be.” She moved toward the door, but paused. “Oh,” she said. “The steward informed me of your role in the diplomatic meeting. I thought that this might mean you are deserving of some treating.” She reached into her supplies and removed a small vial of a bright pink fluid. “This is a juice of several rare fruit, made so as not to interfere with the growth potion.” She set it on a small and otherwise empty end-table. “As a reward for doing your duty and controlling excessive emotion. You can have a sip as you wish, or on the morning; I will be here to meet you then, assigned to supervise your learning. So you really ought to prepare your head; lay down in those sheets and get to bed.”

Penumbra rolled over on the bed, facing the wall. “Yes, Lady Crozea. I understand.”

Crozea smiled, and closed the door as she left. Penumbra lay in her bed in the dark and the silence- -waiting.

Time passed. About an hour or so. Penumbra knew the routine well: that was about the amount of time for the breathing of her nurses and maids to slow. They were kept nearby, held in small rooms to be ready to prepare her as soon as necessary. In this case, Penumbra preferred that they stay asleep. In fact, it was critical.

She then promptly rolled out of bed and considered to silently roll all the way through the door and into the main room outside. When she reached it, she stopped rolling in the middle.

“Okay,” she said, taking a breath. “I can do this.”

She stood. The effect was immediate but barely perceptible: a flash dim flash of light that traced through a complicated but invisible symbol on the floor, as well as a strange tingling in her horn. In an instant- -and with disturbing silence- -Thirteen flashed into the room.

Penumbra held her hoof to her mouth to signal Thirteen to be silent- -a gesture that she immediately realized was ridiculous. Thirteen was always silent anyway.

“I’m just getting up to go for a walk. If you could just look the other way...” She produced a book and held it out to Thirteen. The title read “An Illustrated Guide to Rare and Ancient Crystal Empire Box Kites”. Stolen from the library, of course.

Thirteen stared at the book, and then slowly took it in her magic. She stared at Penumbra for a moment more, then flashed out of the room and back to wherever she had come from.

Penumbra let out a long sigh, but immediately and painfully stifled it when she heard one of her nurses shift in her sleep. For a moment, Penumbra was sure she would be caught- -but then the weeping started, and relief washed over her. That particular nurse always wept in her sleep, because she was the only one of her siblings who had not been sent to Al’Hrabnaz when they were children.

With Thirteen out of the way, Penumbra quickly moved to her mirror. It was dark, but with some effort she was able to light the tip of her horn bright enough that she was able to see herself clearly.

She was wearing no makeup, and without it she looked small and sickly. Her eyes were no longer as empty as they once had been, though, and they seemed to stare back at her with an inner light almost as strong as that in her horn.

“I am not a prop,” she said to herself as she summoned a cutting spell.

For a spell she had never done before- -or even known had existed until earlier that day- -Penumbra proved proficient with its use. Her mane had formerly been so long as to nearly reach her waist; when she was done, it was only a few inches at its longest and spiked forward. She had shaved the sides of her head, although the effect was different from what she had expected. It had been so long that she had forgotten that her mane and tail were not actually black; it had been some time since she had last been dyed, and the roots were still violet, pink, and a sort of yellowish-white. The effect of having colored fuzz was striking, though, and Penumbra decided she liked it.

She was also sure to cut off her tail almost to the dock.

This resulted in a substantial pile of sweet-scented black hair. While Penumbra re-applied her dark eye-makeup, she hid the hair in a container that probably served some function or another. She would figure out what to do with it later.

When she was done, she quickly moved to her closet and grabbed the armor that Emeth had made for her as well as a cloak. She put both on with only slight difficulty; after all, she rarely dressed herself.

After dressing, Penumbra returned to her room. She paused only a moment next to Crozea’s vial of juice; she leaned over and sniffed it. The scent nearly caused her to gag.

“UGH!” she gasped. “That is NOT like tea at ALL!”

She passed it by and tried to clear her nose. It reeked badly; to her, it smelled like poison. She had no idea how ponies could drink things like that.

When she reached the center of the room, Penumbra produced a small strip of paper. It had been hidden in her mane, a small piece of notes jotted down while she was in the library.

“Right. Eastern corner.” She walked toward where she thought east was, and stopped, looking down. She lit her horn and held it close to the floor, moving slowly across the surface and looking carefully. That was when she saw it- -a seem.

Penumbra smiled and grasped the crystal tile with her magic. She pulled it out of the ground and set it aside with extreme care. The resulting hole showed a number of complex channels. According to what little was documented about it, this had once been part of the supply for a now disused baseboard heater beneath the crystal.

What purpose beyond making the floor warm it had served, Penumbra did not know; she saw, however, that it led to several vents directly beneath the floor. Vents that somepony had once used to try to assassinate her.

They were too small for a pony to fit through. At least a normal pony. Penumbra was substantially thinner and more flexible than most, as was the armor that Emeth had built her. Her force-grown skeleton was uniquely cartilaginous, and Scarlet Mist’s acrobatic combat training had improved her flexibility. After some stretching, she found that she could force her head into one of the vents. With somewhat more effort, she was able to pull the remainder of her body into the vent and force herself through. As she did, she closed off the tile behind her, leaving no evidence that she had left.

Sombra had not built the Citadel. He had simply found it, a beacon of strange energy and warmth in the otherwise uninhabitable southernmost reaches of Hyperborea. Nopony knew who had constructed it, or what its purpose had been- -and as such, few if any knew the complete internal schematic.

There was not much time. There was a period at night where Eternity’s attention waned; with less ponies awake, she was able to increase her focus on finding Twilight Luciferian- -or looking into the bedrooms and larders of various ponies throughout the land to find who was doing the most aggressive cuddling or eating.

At only seventeen places did Penumbra nearly get stuck and trapped. Then the vent widened out, and Penumbra turned a corner- -to find herself facing a crystal pony.

The crystal pony stared back at her, then cried out in horror. “NO! You won’t take me back! Not now, NOT EVER!”

He then proceeded to scramble with unnatural speed through the ventilation duct, making a tremendous amount of noise and screaming all the way through. This was normal in the castle, as Penumbra heard several ponies swearing loudly and throwing heavy things against what part of the vent they could reach. One even shoved a spear through, nearly hitting Penumbra but missing her by the width of her nearly nonexistant tail.

The noise was the cover she needed, and she crawled quickly in pursuit of the vent-pony, using his noise to cover her own. She checked her map as she went. It was as detailed as she could have made it, but it was sorely incomplete. A significant amount of time and energy had been devoted to understanding how the magical circuits of the Citadel directed power from the Heart of Darkness, but nopony had ever bothered to map the air-handling system.

She knew where she was going, at least in a rough sense. There were vents that led outside, but those were not where Penumbra was headed. That would only get her to the courtyard, which was continually patrolled by both thralls and golems to prevent infiltration from Celestia or Nightmare Moon’s armies of tyranny.

There was no way to get out that way. Instead, Penumbra had calculated that her best chance was through Emeth’s utility tunnels. They were extensive and vast, feeding golems throughout the city as they were needed. Penumbra also knew golems, and that save for Emeth- -and potentially his children- -they were single-minded. Golems tasked with auto-distribution would not interfere with her. Probably.

Eventually the vents suddenly became wide, replaced with water canals and areas for rusted, corroding conduits that were no longer in service. It was in this place that Penumbra heard something.

She immediately backed against one of the walls into a small alcove, deactivating her horn-light in the process. The area was still filled with light, though dim, from the thick molds that grew on the walls. Something was splashing through the water.

Penumbra watched from her crevice as a pony came into view. She almost leapt out and grabbed him, thinking that she could finally catch the annoyance that kept moving through the vents at night. She barely stopped in time, though, when she saw that it was not a crystal pony at all.

Or, at least, not anymore. Maybe it once had been, but now its body was gaunt and deformed. It wore the dirty remnants of clothing, and Penumbra saw that it wore a mask. The mask had eyes like those of the thralls, but was much simpler, a previous design perhaps. The front of it contains a long black hose that extended out like a nose.

It might have been comical, had Penumbra not observed that the pony had pushed up the mask, exposing her mouth. It was wide and filled with numerous long, visible teeth.

The creature stopped, sniffing the air. It turned its head toward her hiding place and she ducked into the shadows. It made a sound as it moved closer, like desperate weeping. As it drew near, Penumbra began to plan her attack, though she was afraid. She had been trained to deal with ponies, not whatever this was. If it truly was a thrall, it was simply a matter of removing the mask- -but she did not want to see what the face beneath looked like.

Then it stopped suddenly as something even larger sloshed through the water. Penumbra looked just in time to see a massive, leprous tentacle pulling the creature quietly beneath the surface.

Penumbra stared out as the water stabilized. This was more dangerous than she had expected- -and already more exciting than she had planned. The day was indeed improving.

Penumbra emerged onto the streets with a pack of golems, and immediately separated from them, moving quickly to the shadows. One of them waved as she went.

It was the first time she had ever been in the city itself, and it was dizzying. Penumbra had seen the buildings from the deck of an artillery frigate during the military parade, but had never once- -nor expected to ever- -walk among them. They seemed so much taller from below, their enormous reflective facets stretching upward from the icy ground toward an endless sky. It made Penumbra extremely dizzy.

She had not gone far. The night was relatively clear, and the Citadel was still visible in the distance. No doubt she was still in the capital district; it would have taken her days to reach the outer portions of the Empire by walking alone, if there were even tunnels that went that far.

This was excellent. She could easily return before sunrise, assuming that whatever was in the tunnels did succeed in eating her. Since it was still barely six- -and completely dark- -that meant she had plenty of time to explore.

The hard part was not getting caught, and that was the part Penumbra was still concerned with. Even with a cloak that could hide her wings and horn, but it was still extremely obvious that she was not a crystal pony. She supposed all she needed to do was look as nondescript and normal as possible- -but she had no idea what a normal, nondescript pony looked like. She had never seen one.

She supposed the closest she knew was the way the maids walked, which was with their heads down so they would not accidentally meet the eye of their betters. Penumbra tried that, although she quickly found it was difficult to focus on the ground when there was so much city around her.

It was all far more sterile than she had expected. Everything was even, orderly, clean, dimly lit and quiet. Penumbra had expected peasants to be wandering around doing peasant things, but there was hardly anypony present. Just buildings made of crystal lit by dim greenish lights. If anything, it felt like just another extension of the castle. Just another room, but with a much higher ceiling.

The ponies, it seemed, were asleep. The lights in their buildings were out, save for the occasional flickery glow of an inferior-quality illumination crystal. It was remarkably quiet, which allowed Penumbra to move unhindered through the emptiness.

When she finally came to a place where there were ponies, she paused, wondering why there were so many in one place. At the same time, she moved closer, careful not to be spotted but driven by curiosity.

One of the ponies in the group cried out.

“Please stop!” The voice was that of a young colt, followed by a sudden stifled cry as he was punched in the gut.

“Shut it! Isn’t there supposed to be a curfew? You better get back to the dirty shack you live in or you’ll be up there too!”

“Yeah! If she didn’t want to be up there, she shouldn’t have defied the king!”

“It’s our DUTY as CITIZENS to punish dissidents!”

Another stifled cry as the colt was struck again. Penumbra loomed closer.

She found herself standing at the base of a crystalline tree. Below it were three non-crystal youths, two of them unicorns and one an exceedingly bulky Pegasus. The colt was a much smaller crystal pony, and he was not the only one. Others had gathered, peeking from the doors and windows of their houses, but not daring to approach.

It was what was hanging from the tree that drew Penumbra’s attention the most. It was a pony, hung there by her foot. She was bruised and slowly swinging.

“Stop hitting him,” she said. “Please, I beg you- -”

“Quiet, dissident!” One of the unicorn children hit her squarely in the face with a heavy stick. The dangling crystal pony only whimpered in response, and began to rotate. “If he’s going to interfere, we might as well string him up ourselves!”

“YEAH!” said the other unicorn, hitting the hanging mare repeatedly as she tried to shield herself. “Not let out your candy or SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”

“She doesn’t have any candy!” cried the colt, who was now beginning to tear up. “Please, just leave her alone!”

“Why are you beating this pony?”

All eyes turned suddenly toward Penumbra, and the overdeveloped Pegasus actually jumped. She had, as always, approached in complete silence. This had apparently surprised them.

“Because she’s a dissident!” said one of the unicorns, eyeing Penumbra closely. His expression softened- -but only by the slightest degree- -when he saw that she had a horn. “She defied the king’s orders. So she gets the pinata treatment!”

“It’s called ‘modum pinata’,” corrected the other unicorn. “You idiot.” He looked to Penumbra and grinned. He was thin and greasy, and probably similar to Penumbra’s apparent age. He approached her, trying to stand as tall as possible. “This was her punishment, as defined by my father, the subdistrict command officer. He’s a very important pony, you see.” He tried to peek under Penumbra’s hood, but she turned her head. “I don’t remember seeing you around here. Are you new to the district?”

“Can’t keep his horn in his hat,” muttered the Pegasus. Penumbra realized that she was probably female.

“What was her crime?”

The unicorn frowned. “Awfully interested in it, aren’t you?”

“I have never seen it before. Was she conspiring with the enemy, or plotting to overthrow the kingdom? Perhaps she is a heretic?”

The smaller unicorn laughed. “You really ARE new to the district!”

“Nothing like that happens here,” said the larger of the two. “The fear is stronger here. Keeps the worthless slaves in line. No.” He smacked the hanging mare in the flank, hard, causing her to squeal. “This one is a THIEF.”

“It’s not true!” cried the colt, who was promptly thrown on the ground.

“Toad, get the rope,” said the larger unicorn. “He’s interrupting his betters now.”

“Is the accusation untrue?”

The colt looked up. “Well...yes. But she had to do it! We- -we only get one potato every two days, but my little sister is sick! She’s just four, she can’t work if she doesn’t get better soon! My mom had to steal the extra potato! She just HAD to!”

“I have no idea what a potato is,” said Penumbra. “I am assuming it is valuable.”

“Not really.” The larger unicorn shrugged. “I had six for dinner. Berta had over twenty.”

“I did NOT!” cried the large Pegasus.

“But the rations are set by the KING. Slaves get one potato every two days, per family. That’s the king’s rule! Defying Sombra is the same as trying to overthrow the government!”

“King Sombra to you,” snapped Penumbra, causing the unicorn to recoil slightly. She looked up at him from beneath her hood- -or rather down; she was unusually tall- -and he became even more nervous when he saw the large amount of dark eye-makeup she wore.

“Yes. Of course. Hail the Witchking.”

“Hail the Witchking,” said the other unicorn and the Pegaus.

“Hail the Witchking,” said the colt, and the phrase passed as a murmur through the watching crystal ponies, who now were apparently listening as well as observing.

The unicorn held out his stick to Penumbra. “Do you want to take a wack at her? Berta was trying to knock her unconscious before, but she couldn’t manage it. Maybe you can? I mean, she is a Pegasus. Lesser race and all.”

“I have ears,” muttered Berta.

“Please,” whimpered the colt, looking up at Penumbra with watering and enormous eyes. “Don’t beat my mother, Lady unicorn. Please just let her be!”

Penumbra looked at the colt, and then at the stick. She pushed it away. This seemed to anger the unicorn holding it.

“What? Are you SOFT? You’re just going to let one of THEM defy the king?”

“I am not very soft. The force-growing process makes me bony. That said, I don’t like this.”

The three non-crystal ponies began to crowd Penumbra. “So you’re sympathizing with the shinies? You’re in dangerous water, filly. I’m the subdistrict commander’s son. Anything I do to you, I can get away with.”

Penumbra did not know if that was a joke or not, but took it seriously. As a pony of importance, he had likely experienced similar training to what she had endured. Though looking at the width of his legs, she wondered if that really was the case.

“Are you an academic?”

“Wh- -what?”

“I should not need to define it. Either way, it’s simple logic.” Penumbra pointed at the crystal mare. “You have one of our slaves tied to a tree. She can’t work from there, unless she wants to pick fruit. And her daughter is also unable to work until she heals. You are impeding the flow of progress and creating a detriment to the kingdom.”

“You’re just justifying. You don’t have the stomach for this, do you?” The unicorn shoved Penumbra, but seemed surprised when she did not move. He was amazingly weak.

“And if I AM?” Penumbra stepped forward, her composure deteriorating rapidly. This was her first- -and possibly only- -knight in the city, and she was wasting. “Perhaps I don’t like to see ponies getting hurt, even if they are slaves? Or maybe I don’t like to see a pony getting punished for HELPING somepony else? Why am I even bothering- -her sentence is commuted!”

She summoned a cutting spell and sliced the mare down, taking part of her tail along with the cord. The mare cried out and fell to the ground with a thud. The crystal ponies around gasped in surprise and terror.

The larger unicorn stared wide-eyed and in shock. Then he turned to Penumbra grinning.

“Oh, you have no idea what you’ve just done.”

“My aim was a bit off, I suppose. Still learning. I’ve only been able to use magic for a few days.”

The unicorns and the Pegasus brandished their sticks. “We’re going to have to make a citizen’s arrest, now. And once my father gets done with you- -pardoning one of HIS prisoners? How dare you- -”

“It was within my authority.”

“What- -WHAT?” this seemed to enrage the unicorn. “You’re going to say that to MY face? To the subdistrict comander’s SON?!”

“This pony is pardoned. Get out of my way, mortal.”

“That’s it,” said Berta. “This is boring! Time for a WHACK!”

She moved more slowly than Penumbra had even thought possible. Before she could even raise her stick, Penumbra had already reacted on instinct alone, performing an elegant upward flip and ramming one of her armored rear hooves directly into the Pegasus’s chin. She was hit so hard that she was knocked several yards backward, landing on the young crystal-colt. The blow had rendered her completely unconscious.

The smaller of the unicorns took a step back. “What- -what did she just do?! Berta, NO!”

“Shut it! SHUT IT! She’s just some pony, I’m the subdistrict commander’s- -”

“This pony is PARDONED,” said Penumbra, slowly.

“But you can’t- -”

Penumbra had become completely fed up with this whole pointless ordeal. She tore her cloak off and struck an angry-alicorn pose.

“This pony is pardoned because your princess DEMANDS IT!”

The street was immediately filled with screams of abject terror.

“MONSTER!” cried one of the crystal ponies.

“Run! RUN!” screamed another, tripping over his own children as he tried to flee.

“Get away, beast! GET AWAY!”

They were running, terrified, and Penumbra turned to see them- -and as she did, she was hit in the side of the face with a brick.

The force was substantial, and she took a step to one side. Then she slowly turned back to see the unicorn youth staring at her, hid whole body shaking. The brick was still suspended in his magic.

Penumbra reached up and clicked her jaw back into place, then spit several teeth. “You just hit me.”

“Sweet Epona, Del, you just hit the PRINCESS! The king’s DAUGHTER!” The smaller unicorn grabbed his friend. “We’re gonna be turned into thralls! THRALLS!”

“But- -but I’m the subdistrict commander’s- -”

“You idiot, he’s going to disown you for sure, just like your brothers! Now RUN, before it EATS US!”

The smaller unicorn pulled the larger along, and in a moment they were running and screaming just like the crystal ponies. The only ones that remained were the unconscious Pegasus, the colt, and the formerly dangling mare.

The mare, though woozy and dehydrated, looked up at Penumbra. Her eyes widened.

“NO!” she screamed, retreating until she struck the trunk of her tree. “Get back! GET BACK! Don’t hurt me, DON’T! I’m just a slave! Please, I have a family, don’t eat me!”

The colt wiggled his way out from beneath Berta and grabbed his mother. She immediately shielded him from Penumbra.

“You won’t take him! YOU WON’T!”

Penumbra only frowned. In the distance, she heard the sound of a group of thralls moving through the street. There were several flashes, and several crystal ponies cried out. Those who had not fled directly into their homes had been caught past curfew, and had been on the receiving end of electric blunt-spears.

The colt helped his mother up, and they fled. Before they vanished into the darkness, though, the colt gave one last look back at Penumbra. He said nothing, but the look in his eyes was not fear.

Penumbra saw the thralls emerging from down one of the streets. She picked up the unconscious Pegasus in her magic and chucked her into the crystal tree where hopefully she would not be found. Then Penumbra herself leapt onto the outer windowsill of a nearby building, then jumped from wall to wall until she was high on the roofs just as the thralls were passing.

The thralls had not seen her, but she had already wasted so much of her time on a pointless pursuit.

Chapter 30: Poison

Crozea could not sleep. It was not an unusual state for her; there were some nights where the moon and stars were out of alignment, and entire seasons where the spirits were just too strong. They came in the night, and when they came, it was dangerous.

On these nights she would often find herself in the arms of one who likewise could never sleep, although the spirits who haunted him were of a different sort entirely. On this night, though, he was spending time visiting his personal stable, as was his prerogative. Crozea felt no jealousy. Those mares were younger and more beautiful than she would ever be, and most importantly, they were ponies- -something else she could never be.

That was not what disturbed her, though. As she walked through the empty halls, she thought of Penumbra. Though her herbs were effective, there were no records of it being used to drive a pony- -or any creature, for that matter- -from a newborn to an adult in less than a year. It had simply never been done because no one had ever been depraved enough to use it like that. She was the first.

Yet there were changes. Changes that Crozea knew well. Although Crozea could no longer bear foals of her own, she had seen many, even helped to raise many. Back when she had dwelt on endless fields of golden grass, in lands of beautiful sunsets and the scent of the planes. Not as she did now, in a cold and icy place of crystal and conquest. But that had been so long ago.

Penumbra was growing, and growing fast. Her youth had been stolen from her, but it was still passing. She was becoming something more than a doll built from Eternity’s programming and Sombra’s rejected daughter. She was becoming a pony.

Which was the irony of it all. She was doomed to a terrible fate. At some point, Crozea knew, she would become like her, or like the others. Even if she survived, what it could do to her soul would be unfathomable. There were those who could withstand it, like Emeth or Buttonhooks, but they were naturally dissociated, long-since separated from the pony condition. And there were those already fallen, like herself or Scarlet Mist. And there were those who had become corrupted by it. Luciferian, Al’Hrabnaz, even Zither in his broken illusions of an endless breezietale. Penumbra would be like the others. Her father’s evil would break her, and the thing to arise in her place would be both powerful and terrible.

There was nothing Crozea could do to stop it. That fate was bound to her since her birth. It was the same as it had been the first day: when all she could do was save the girl’s life while taking everything else from her. All she could do now was keep her safe, to make what was left of her life of potential as happy as possible. Before she had to leave. To change. Or, as Sombra believed, to sacrifice herself for the sake of the kingdom.

This thought made her so very sad. She had thought she had lost that, when the spirits took her own life from her and gave her a cursed one in its place. This sadness, this empathy. Or perhaps it was only dormant.

What she wanted was not to be alone. To be wandering these empty halls. So she found herself outside Penumbra’s door, wanting to see her. Not to wake her; her life was busy enough, and no doubt sleep was the only reprieve from an existence she did not even realize was taxing and unnatural. She would just look at her. Watch her as she slept, while she was still young and innocent. Before she became the new Luciferian- -or was buried as a national hero.

It was at the door that she suddenly heard a blood-curdling scream. Without even thinking, she pressed her hoof against the door and rapidly spoke a spell. Yellow light flashed from her hoof, and the door splintered.

Crozea rushed in. Nurses in their nightclothes, barely dressed and bleary-eyed, were running confused toward the sound of the scream. Toward Penumbra’s room. The door was open.

Seeing it, Crozea rushed forward, prepared for the worst. For a repeat of what had happened before, except then, she had not been forced to see it. Thirteen had, but nothing affected Thirteen. She was like the others. Her mind had long ago become darkened with evil. But Crozea’s had not. If she saw it- -she did not know what she would do.

She threw open the door, and saw exactly what she expected. A pony lying on the floor, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Except, Crozea realized- -just before her zebra heart was crushed- -it was not Penumbra. Rather, it was a pink-colored crystal pony.

“Facet! FACET!” cried one of the maids, pushing past Crozea and rushing to the girl’s side. The girl’s eyes rolled back, and her convulsions began to grow stronger.

The mare tried to hold the girl’s head in place. “Poison!” she cried. “It’s a deadly poison!”

“Move your hoof,” demanded Crozea, throwing the maid back by her forehead. She leaned over the convulsing slave. Though the crystal girl was simply an object- -and a cheap one at that- -seeing her lying there had been a profound sight. For just that one moment, it had not been a slave-girl named Facet. It had been Penumbra. That thought alone had motivated Crozea to act.

She drew an object from a pouch on one of the many belts of supplies run over her body. She held out a single tiny stone in her hoof, and the stone looked back at her. It ribbited in confusion.

“Toadstone! This girl, like you, is about to croak! Protect her from this deadly poison! So I have spoke!”

The stone nodded and jumped onto the girl’s face, quickly crawling up her nose. The girl’s eyes went wide and she tried to sit up, but Crozea held her down.

“What have you done?!” wailed the maid at her side. The others were crowding to door. Some were crying. All looked as though they were about to panic.

“Hold her down, you fob, if the toadstone is to do its job!”

The maid nodded and steeled herself. She held the girl down with Crozea, resisting the spasms and convulsions with just as much difficulty.

Then, suddenly, the girl screamed and collapsed. There were no more convulsions, and her body was covered in sweat.

“Though it was not fun,” said Crozea, slowly releasing her, “the work has been done.”

Facet tried to sit up, but tilted and fell back on the floor.

“The world may start to reel. Tell me, girl, how do you feel?”

The girl looked up, and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry! I’m SORRY! I didn’t mean to! Please forgive me, Lady Crozea! Don’t send me back to the mines!”

“She’s delirious,” said the other maid. “She needs to rest- -”

“No. She needs to come clean. Crystal filly, what do you mean?”

Facet covered her eyes with her hooves. “I- -I know it was hers, but it smelled so good! I couldn’t help myself! She didn’t drink any, I- -I didn’t think just one sip would hurt!”

Crozea raised an eyebrow, and Facet pointed. Crozea’s eyes followed the line of her hoof, and her blood ran cold when she saw one of her own vials half-empty and tipped on its side. A vial of tasty fruit juice.

“This is- -this is divine punishment,” whispered Facet. “I should have met my end. For stealing from her- -but now it’s the mines. The mines for sure. Oh Lady Crozea, why have you saved me? How can you be this cruel?”

“Such an interesting way to thank.” Crozea turned to Facet. “Tell me, crystal-mare. Was this what you drank?” She picked up the vial.

“I- -I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.”

“That must be the source of poison!” gasped the older maid. “But how? Who would have given her that?”

Crozea looked at the vial, because she knew exactly where it had come from. She lifted it and drank the remainder of the contents.

“LADY CROZEA!”

“Azide, arsenic, cyanide; methyl mercury, venom, and formaldehyde. A horrible wide-ranging brew, but even a single drop would kill you.”

“But you...you drank it...”

Crozea ignored her. Poisson, of course, would not kill her. It was a trait unique to her amongst all beings, though perhaps shared with Emeth, if the stories of his age were taken as truth. She was immune to poison, though Penumbra was not. At least probably not. It was impossible to know what was toxic to an alicorn, as there were so few of them. But whoever had planted these poisons had covered a wide range of sources, hedging their bets across several groups of poison. Yet their choice was primitive, using simple chemicals instead of more complicated herbs and plant toxins. Whoever it was was knowledgeable, but not a poisoner by nature.

“But to think, that they could somehow poison my own drink...”

The maid’s eyes went wide. “YOU gave that to her, Lady Crozea?”

Crozea felt sick. She indeed had- -but she had not placed the poison there herself. Yet, had it succeeded, the princeliness's fate would have been by her own hoof. The thought was simply intolerable.

That was when she realized something that should have been exceedingly obvious. She looked around the room and realized that something is missing.

“For all the commotion, we are one less. Where has gone the princess?!”

Chapter 31: A Night Out

Of course they had been afraid. Alicorns were cursed abominations, hideous unnatural things. The very representation of tyranny and torment. Celestia and Nightmare Moon, the twin rulers of the dystopia called Equestria. And Penumbra looked like them. By some accident of birth, she had been born into the same accursed race.

She knew that. She knew that she was a creature meant to inspire fear, a thing to be hated, just as the false-goddesses were. She existed to be hated, and in that hatred and fear she would stand as a shining beacon, a representation of her father’s power. Even if that meant that they would flee her presence when they saw her. Because she truly was a monster.

She knew this. Yet, somehow, and against her will, it still hurt. To have them scream and run, not because of anything she had done, but rather because of what she represented. Fear from the idea of Penumbra Heartbreak, not fear that she had earned by her own actions- -or refused to earn. Once again, the pony she was meant to be had superseded the one that she was.

It was humiliating, but it went deeper than that. The looks of fear on their faces- -it made Penumbra hurt on the inside. She understood that she was meant to be feared, but could not understand why she was not enjoying it.

She could also not fathom why she had helped a worthless slave. A thief, no less. A pony that had defied her father’s will. She should have picked up the stick and beaten that pony until the candy came out of her, but even the thought of it made Penumbra sick. There had to be a reason for it, but Penumbra did her best to ignore it. She did not want to think about it, or attempt to know. Whatever it was was something she knew she was not meant to know.

Her night was turning out far poorer than she expected. Instead of adventure, she had found a dark and largely empty city as well as confusing, heavy thoughts. She considered going back to the castle. It was obvious that Crozea was right; there was nothing of value beyond the Citadel’s icy walls.

That was when she smelled something. Penumbra had never before smelled the scent of food; as far as she knew, the Citadel had no kitchens. Yet when the distant scent of it wafted to her nose, her mouth immediately started to water. She felt a strange sensation in her stomach, but did not recognize it; it felt nothing like getting punched.

She stopped staring wistfully at the dark sky from the roof of a crystal building and jumped to the ground, using her largely decorative wings to slow her descent as she went. A patrol of thralls had just passed, but they did not turn as Penumbra silently followed the strange odor.

What she came to was on the very edge of the district, beyond which there was nothing but the central field battery; it appeared as empty, flat darkness. Light was coming from one of the buildings, though, and so was the smell.

Penumbra looked up at the sign. It was written in both Equestrian, griffish, and of course Crystallic. It read “The Salt Crystal”. From the sounds of it, there were ponies inside.

Entering would be a mistake. If Penumbra did, she was sure to be caught. But it was the only thing she had found in the whole district that did not depress her- -and it smelled so nice.

Against her own better judgment, she walked to the door. As she entered, two ponies in officer’s uniforms nearly pushed her over as they passed.

“Watch it, kid!” growled one.

“Can you believe the filth they let in this place?” hissed another.

Penumbra was about to say something, but the two passed into the night and were gone. She also realized that they might not have been talking about her.

The building was large on the inside, consisting of one large room with multiple supports, at least on the first floor. Several bright crystal lanterns glowed with orange-yellow energy, but in one area a fireplace had been lit. It was the first time Penumbra had ever seen fire, even if she could instantly tell that this one was a magical projection. There was no wood in the Crystal Empire, except in the southern regions; all of it was considered to belong to the king.

The right side of the room consisted of a long bar with shelves of numerous bottles and jars behind it. The other side consisted of tables. Most of those, Penumbra found, were populated by griffons.

Many of them were obvious mercenaries, wearing the armor and bearing the weapons of many distant cultures and places. Amongst them, though, were several substantially larger griffons with gleaming, owl-like eyes. Penumbra recognized them; they were Zither’s griffons-at-arms, the vedmak soldiers. She had never before realized how much larger and stronger than normal griffons they were, or how terrifying they truly looked in comparison. Even the griffon mercenaries seemed to be afraid of them.

Penumbra quickly checked- -both apprehensively and with the slightest glimmer of hope- -to see if Zither himself were present. He had by now returned from YakYakistan, probably with a report to the king. Seeing that he was not present, Penumbra decided that his associates had simply stopped here to celebrate- -although they looked more like they were brooding.

Still, Penumbra decided that it was probably best to avoid them. She instead made her way to the bar, where several ponies were sitting. A crystal pony in diplomatic colors was moving behind the bar, rapidly providing both drinks and salt.

Penumbra sat down at one of the seats near a Pegasus who was nearly laying on the bar. As she climbed up, something squeaked near her hoof.

“HEY! Watch it, ugly horse!”

“What?” Penumbra looked down at the bar and saw what she at first took to be a large bug. ON closer inspection, though, she determined that it was a breezie. An extremely wobbly breezie.

“My apologies,” she said. “I almost made a mess out of you.”

“Who are you calling a MESS?! I’ll have you know I’m- -whoa...” He nearly tipped over. “I’ll have you know I’m...um...ugh...” He collapsed onto the crystal of the counter. “BARPONY!” he cried. “I need more!”

The bartender looked up. “Sir. Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“NO! Pour me another! Before I crawl up your nose and squeeze your cerebellum so hard you dance the tarantella!”

“Just give him another,” groaned the flame-haired Pegasus who had previously seemed unconscious. “His voice...it’s so squeaky. And it’s not like we have jobs to go to.”

The bartender sighed and rolled his eyes. He produced a jar of cider- -another commodity Penumbra had never before witnessed- -and an eyedropper. He then proceeded to careful place three drops into a thimble that had been placed out for the breezie. The breezie took the thimble and quickly drained it. He then flopped on his side.

“Why don’t we have this stuff?” he slurred. “If we had this...we could...ugh...”

“Who would have thought it would come to this?” sighed the Pegsus. “I was once the greatest weather engineer ever...and now I’m in this filthy bar with a Celestia-darned BREEZIE. I’m too depressed to even flirt with that ugly unicorn.” He pointed to Penumbra.

“Aye!” said a voice on the other side of Penumbra. She heard something jump onto the bar. “Indeed, life can be a thing of great hard! Like a slab of granite, in a rock-like color, or maybe white! A rock indeed, not smooth and greasy like lard!”

The breezie cried out and wept, rolling on his back. “I can’t do this anymore! Skyflame, Skyflame, you have to do it! Squish me! It’s the only way!”

“No, Dracun! I can’t! I just can’t!” he began to weep too, holding the breezie at his side. “There has to be a better way! We just have to hold on a little longer, until we’re too salted to hear him!”

Penumbra turned and looked up. She realized that she recognized the pony standing on the bar, if only distantly. His over-worn but roguish clothing, his fluffy gray mane, the sword on his back- -he was Holder Heartfelt, Nine of Thirteen.

“For the last time, Holder, keep off the bar!”

“Oop. Sorry.” He climbed back down. It was apparent that he was both salted and cidered, and he smelled of both strongly. He could barely stay on his stool. “My excitement got the better of me, like a rock, the kind that grows in a tree! But when said tree is kicked, and the rock falls, one knows it must be licked!”

The breezie and Pegasus burst out in tears again. “Dracon! I was WRONG! I’ll squish you, if you squish me first! It’s just so BAAAAAAAD!”

Holder wobbled and looked down at Penumbra. Although his fluffy mane was dark gray and his coat not much different in shade, his eyes were incredibly blue. Penumbra instantly knew that coming here was a terrible mistake; she had been caught. It was all over.

“Such a fair maiden unicorn!” gasped Holder. “Like a chunk of basalt, except with a horn! Not that basalt cannot have a horn, because I’ve seen many a thing under a shed, and will see more, till the day I’m dead! But unlike you, basalt is not born!”

“It burns!” whimpered the Breezie.

“Holder!” snapped the bartender. “If you keep disturbing the paying customers, I’ll throw you out AGAIN. Don’t flirt with ponies. You’re an ugly earth-pony and no one likes you.”

Holder’s expression fell. Even his hair seemed to deflate. “Oh. Sorry.”

“You are Holder Heartfelt,” said Penumbra.

Holder seemed to reinflate instantly. “You’ve heard of me?!” His eyes became tremendously wide. “Perhaps you’ve acquired a copy of my latest book of poems?”- - He pronounced it like “poims”- - “Or maybe you were at my recital?” He leaned back in his stood, suddenly no longer wobbly. “A fan! A real FAN! Take that, Halite, I knew I had at least ONE!” He made a rude gesture at the bartender and swiveled to Penumbra. “And you came all this way to see me! Like how a beautiful smooth rock will always return to its master, no matter if it’s burrowed in loam, on a plate, or in plaster!”

“You are a member of the Dark Thirteen.”

Holder’s expression fell again. “Oh. You came for that...”

“You are, aren’t you?”

Holder sighed and lay his head on the bar. “Yes. No. Not really. Sort of. It’s a formal title. But I’m not the same as the others. I’m just an earth-pony, after all.”

“And nopony’s thrown you out yet?”

Holder winced. Then, far more loudly than he should have said it, he yelled out a rhyme: “Aye, and your words wound me like sand, shoved by more impressive ponies into my eyes or orifice; yes, indeed I have this office, and am but a clay-wad in a over-tilled land!”

“I think they’re afraid he’ll try to poetry at them,” groaned Skyflame, covering his ears. “Because he does that. CONSTANTLY. It’s about all he CAN do.”

“I am a poet! And a lover of mares! For a mare, she is like a rock! Slightly angular, and tasting of dirt! A hard fuzzy thing, shoved in a shirt! And able to knock one topside if put in a sock!”

“Yet you stay in a bar all day doing nothing productive for the kingdom.”

Holder seemed taken aback by Penumbra’s words and nearly fell off his stool. “You’re mean. You know that, right?”

“Each of the Dark Thirteen serves our divine king in a special way. We- -they, I mean- -each have a purpose. I just don’t understand what yours is.”

Holder became evasive. “I write beautiful poems. Is that not enough?”

“How to poems conquer our enemies?”

“By LOVE!” Holder stood atop his stool, revolving slowly. Penumbra found it disturbing how agile he was when he wanted to be. “Because love is the driving force behind all things! Love and rocks! Boulder and I have traveled all over this fine land, writing epic poems, sad poems, and most importantly LOVE poems! And romancing quite a few mares along the way.”

“Boulder?” Penumbra looked around.

Holder dropped back into his stool. “Yes. Of course! Honestly, without him to bounce my ideas off of, my poems would be simply terrible!” He reached into his vest and produced a small dark-colored stone.

“A rock?”

“A boulder,” corrected Holder. “But just a little one.” He set the stone on the bar and looked at it expectantly. He then giggled slightly. “Oh, Boulder! You can’t say that in front of a lady! That limerick is just too severe!”

“I see,” said Penumbra, slowly. “So you’re insane.”

“He’s an earth-pony,” mumbled Skyflame. “They’re basically pony-shaped potatoes. They grow up from the ground. Does it surprise you that some of them learn to talk to rocks?”

“Skyflame,” moaned the breezie. “Can I have belly wubs?”

“For the last time NO! You’re effeminate, but not THAT effeminate!”

“Barpony! Give Skyflame drinks until he thinks I’m adorable! Actually, I have secretions that can make that go faster...”

Penumbra ignored the two. She was more curious about Holder. He, like her, seemed to be in a separate class from the other Dark Thirteen members. He was separate, different, and given not even the slightest hint of responsibility- -yet at the Arena, none had dared to challenge him, the weakest of them all. Penumbra wanted to know why.

“I don’t understand,” said Penumbra. “Love. What is it? Is that what you do?”

Holder gasped. “You don’t know what LOVE is? Well I can show you!”

“HOLDER!” cried the bartender. “NO. Touch her and I beat you. AGAIN.”

“Not by touching! In SONG!”

“Sweet Epona no...”

Holder leapt off his chair and landed on the floor. He immediately produced an instrument from his fluffy mane and strummed it. It was so out of tune that it made Penumbra’s teeth hurt.

“How about some luting?” he giggled. He strummed it again. The griffons near him seemed to be growing agitated. “Love is a rock! It is hard, roundish, and filled with grains of feldspar- -”

In an instant, one of the vedmaki was on top of him. The lute fell to the floor and was promptly stomped to death by several individuals.

“My lute! I got that as a gift from a mare who threw it at me- -”

“Listen to me, you infernal tail-licker,” snapped the vedmak, lifting Holder off the ground by his shirt collar. “Look at my head. Do I look like I have ears?”

“Um...”

“I don’t. None of us do! But they’re still bleeding from your TERRIBLE poetry.”

“We just ran an operation in YakYakistan,” growled another, standing from his table. “Had to deal with smelly, hairy communists all day. Yak’s aren’t monsters, they’re not in our job description!”

“We’re just here to unwind. And we can’t do that with you caterwauling!”

“So you cannot appreciate art. I would never call you an uncultured boor, who smells like a fart, or some sort of mildew spoor. Your brain is in itself a fine river stone: smooth, free of wrinkles, thick and hard as bone.”

The griffon’s eyes narrowed. “I think you’re making fun of me.”

“My best friend is a stone. And he figured that out before you did.”

The crack of a griffon fist against Holder’s face was so resounding that even Penumbra winced. Holder was sent sailing across the room, pushing through several tables as he went before he finally stopped at the far wall.

“Not indoors!” cried the barkeep, who was immediately silenced by the point of a silver sword held inches from his neck.

“If it’s a debate on art you want,” said the lead griffon, drawing his own sword, “then I will show you how I personally deal with critics. Draw your blade, earth-pony. Show that you at least have some dignity.”

Holder looked up, groggy from the blow. “It’s just for show,” he said. “I have no idea how to use it. It makes me look more manly.”

“Ugh. A poet who disgraces his sword. You sicken me.” The griffon stepped forward, elegantly swinging his sword. “But I intend to eat my weight in your inferior pony salt. I think it will improve everyone’s experience if I slice this particular potato.”

With a single swift motion, Penumbra jumped to the space between the two of them, interposing herself between the vedmak and Holder, taking a defensive stance as she did.

“I won’t let you hurt him,” she said, charging her horn.

“No,” moaned Holder. “Just let him do it. He’s right. We’d all be better off.”

“NO. I refuse to allow a comrade to be hurt like this, even if he is...well, you.”

“Out of my way, ugly pony girl. Our grimoires classify your kind as a type of monster; I can deal with you eight ways before you can even summon the simplest spell.” He turned the flat of his silver sword toward Penumbra, and she saw the strange runes glowing in its side.

“No. He is a critical resource to the kingdom. Probably.”

“I am not in the mood to be forgiving.”

“And I am never forgiving. Fight me, adorable kitten-sparrow.” She summoned a shield spell and a blade. It was vastly easier than it had been before, but that only meant she had no idea how to actually use them.

The vedmak shrugged, though he seemed confused by the impromptu insult. “Then I fight you I shall.”

“I would not, Gemen,” said a familiar voice. “Unless you like losing.”

Penumbra did not look away from her opponent. She had been hit in the face with various blunt and sharp objects far too many times by Scarlet Mist to consider it. Besides, she knew who had spoken.

Zither stepped into view. Penumbra realized, much to her wing’s tingliness, that he was not wearing his armor- -and that he was incredibly well-built. The only way he could have possibly improved it is if he had been naked. Instead, he was wearing a mildly frilly shirt, a cravat, and a kilt.

“This isn’t your business, Heartstrings,” growled the griffon. “Just slaying another monster. Then I’m going to poke that dirty earth-pony poet.”

“There shall be no poking.” Penumbra felt his magic suddenly grasp her cloak, and in an instant she was stripped of it. Being stripped partially naked by Zither caused her wings to completely lose control, and they shot upward, fully erect.

“NAKED!” she cried, her spells collapsing as she covered herself.

“This is princess Penumbra Heartbreak, who defeated the dark-mage Twilight Luciferian in open combat and who had the indomitable strength of will to remove the Mask of Red Death from her own face.”

“Yeah!” cried Holder, suddenly overly excited. “She’s the most powerful sorceress in ALL the kingdom!”

“No, you idiot! Don’t say the ‘S’-word- -!”

It was too late. Penumbra was instantly thrown to the ground covered in a pile of mutant griffons. Each and every one of them had begun to purr loudly.

“Sorceress?”

“Sorceress!”

“Who! WHO!”

One of the most owl-like of the group had begun to randomly hoot, turning his head at strange angles.

“Great,” sighed Zither. “You’ve gotten Gruber owling. Do you all realize how young she is?”

One of the griffons gasped. “We can raise her as our daughter!”

Zither produced a leather pouch in his magic. He shook it. “Do you know what this is?”

Every one of the griffon’s eyes turned to it, and grew incredibly wide.

“Coin?”

“Coin!”

“COIN!”

“Go get it!”

Zither threw the pouch, and instantly the furry and purring weight of the griffons was lifted from Penumbra’s tiny body. The griffons bounded across the floor at the sound of jingling golden coins.

Penumbra stood up quickly. “Lord Heartstrings,” she said, hurriedly bowing. “I see you are...um...here. Where I also am. But am not really. Because I’m not allowed to leave the Citadel and all.”

Zither sighed again. “Yes clearly. A stallion leaves to visit the bathhouse for half an hour, and returns to this? Of all things...of all the places for you to be!”

“I could have taken them.”

“I do not doubt it! But the question is not ‘could’, but ‘SHOULD’. And, for that matter- -” He glared at Holder. “Some ponies should fight their OWN battles instead of relying on little girls to do it for them.”

“One, she’s not little,” protested Holder, his face scrunching. “Two, I was doing fine! And of course third- -I had no IDEA she was the princess!”

“If you put one hoof on her supple hide- -”

“Oh, so you’re allowed to call the princess ‘supple’ and I’m not allowed to even touch her?!”

“So you WERE thinking about touching this innocent flower! You FIEND!” He turned back to Penumbra. “Not that I doubt your power as a sorc- -as a mage, but as a maiden you have a certain level of honor that my chivalry obligates me to defend.”

“It’s okay. Stallions fighting over me kind of makes me tingle.”

“A proper maiden does NOT ‘tingle’- -nay. Never mind! We shall not delve into that topic!” He sighed again, and looked exceedingly tired. By this time the griffons were squabbling in what Penumbra supposed was their native language, trying to negotiate who got what amounts of coin as they grew increasingly annoyed. “Regardless. While I am thinking about what recourse to take for this...situation...I require a stiff drink. And while you’re here, you might as well have one as well while you wait.”

Holder suddenly stood up. “Can I have one?”

“Buy your own, imbecile.”

“But I have no monnnnneyyy!”

“Then go liberate some border towns! Or better yet, go to the mines where a rock-horse like yourself belongs!”

“They kicked me out...they said a pony shouldn’t do that kind of things to a crystal. But they were so pretty!” Zither raised an eyebrow, and Holder wilted. “Also they may not have appreciated my poetry...”

Zither rolled his eyes and led Penumbra to the bar. Upon seeing him, the breezie and Pegasus pony immediately packed up and left. Zither sat to Penumbra’s right, and Holder took a seat to her left.

“Cider for myself and the girl,” he said, “and salt for myself.”

“Can I have salt?” asked Penumbra.

“NO,” snapped Zither. “Can you not see the depth of trouble I now find myself in? Giving a little girl salt would only worsen my predicament...”

“Cider for me too!” cried Holder. “For cider, tis like a spider, and also a clock, because tis hard as a rock!”

“Rhyme again, and I will break you,” snapped Zithter. “I have already had to handle a yak in the past twenty-four hours. The only reason I am tolerating your presence is because I am exceedingly tired from the numerous baths I have had to take.” He turned sharply to the barkeep. “WELL?”

The barkeep suddenly looked exceedingly nervous, a complete departure from how outright flippant he had been with Holder. “Yes sir!” he said, bowing to both Zither and the Princess. “It shall be our finest, free of charge, of course!”

“I never get free stuff,” muttered Holder.

Penumbra watched the barkeep go, and then turned to Zither. “Are you going to tell the king?”

Zither groaned. “See, princess, that is the awkward position you have placed me in. The king never explicitly forbade you from exiting the castle. The logic is that if you meet your demise out here, you were not worthy of being a princess anyway.”

“Wait...then why am I not allowed outside?”

“That is the decision of your caretakers.” Zither shrugged. “Crozea, I suppose.”

Penumbra frowned. “I had not realized that...”

“Additionally, by Imperial Law you are now my equal. You have taken that skinny white fool’s place.”

“But Holder is also your equal.”

Zither snorted. “Hardly. The pony who sits to your left is not worthy of your respect, or that of anypony.”

“I don’t understand.”

Zither’s eyes grew hard, as did Holder’s. “Pray you never do.”

The bartender quickly arrived with several drinks on his back. He placed a small and exceedingly fancy glass filled with some sort of unpleasant looking fluid in front of Penumbra, and a large mug and small plate of salt in front of Zither. To Holder, he gave a dish of a horrible reeking fluid with a rock in it.

“Hey! This isn’t cider!”

“No. It’s rock soup. Because it’s all you can afford.”

The bartender bowed to Penumbra and Zither, and then went about cleaning a few feet away.

“The jokes on him,” muttered Holder. “Rock soup is my FAVORITE soup.”

“Pity you cannot hold a spoon.”

Holder muttered under his breath and stared at his soup, quickly realizing that Zither was correct. As an earth-pony, the ingestion of soup with a utensil other than a straw was a nearly insurmountable problem. So he just started to lap it out of the dish.

Zither sighed and grasped his mug with one claw. He lifted the tankard and took a long swig.

Penumbra turned to her own glass and stared at it. It did not smell like tea, or like potion. It was something entirely new before.

Then, turning her head so fast that she nearly spilled her cider with her horn, she turned back to Zither.

“Wait, WHAT?!”

Zither, still drinking from his tankard, turned his golden eyes toward her...and then slowly back to his claw, that she was staring at. Penumbra had not noticed it before, simply because she had not been looking- -because she had no cause to look- -but both of Zither’s front limbs terminated in griffon-like claws instead of hooves. That, and they were both clearly made of mechanical parts partially covered with ceramic plates and metal armor.

She looked down and saw that his legs were the same: like that of a griffon’s rear paws, except made of metal. Even his tail was long with a tuft.

Zither lowered his tankard. “I’m sorry,” he said, softly. “Please forgive me. You have never before seen me devoid of my regular armor. I had forgotten that you did not know.”

“What- -what happened?!”

Zither’s expression became distant, and he looked down at one of his claws. He flexed the fingers slowly, and they clicked back and forth, their mechanical portions whirring and churning just beneath the armored surface. “That is a long story. A sad story.”

“Please,” said Penumbra, leaning forward, partially in awe- -and partially in fear. For some reason, she knew that the machines were more than just his legs and tail. That, hidden beneath his armor, there was far less of a pony than she had ever dreamed. At the thought of it, her heart swelled with pity- -and from that pity, intense attraction.

Zither sighed and turned away, gripping his drink with one claw as he looked forward at nothing in particular. “Did I not tell you, the first time we met, that I had once witnessed Celestia? That I had challenged her?”

“I assumed it was a figure of speech.”

“It is not. Nor was I lying when I said your beauty surpasses hers. But this...this accursed body. It is the result of that encounter.”

Penumbra inhaled sharply. The machines that made his lower half were not something he was born with, as Emeth was, or a part meant to correct a deficit acquired at birth. Nor were they something voluntary, in the way that Buttonhooks lacked rear legs and wore numerous pieces of rusting metal inserted into his body. These components were prosthetic. They were meant to replace something that was lost.

“She took everything from me,” growled Zither, his claw tightening around the mug. “My Order refused to stand against her, our ancient enemy. Only I had the courage to, to lead my band in an ambush. But we were betrayed. And everything I held dear was taken from me.”

“Your body.”

Zither nodded. “I was struck down by a single flash of her magic before I could strike a single blow. And I would only have needed but one. My band was lost, and I was expelled from my Order for standing up for honor and tradition, something they discarded long ago. But that is not even the worst of it. I could have withstood that. But that hideous horse took something that makes such things seem trivial.”

Penumbra’s eyes widened. “What was that?”

“My griffon,” he whispered. He continued to stare forward, and his grip on his tankard grew tighter. “A scribe, who insisted on following me everywhere, despite my endless protests. Recording my deeds. A true poet, a griffon of unimaginable beauty, with a kind and pure soul. A timid soul, but one capable of oh so much bravery. A griffon I loved more than any pony or creature I ever have, or that I will ever meet again.”

Penumbra felt a strange shock go through her. She saw the mistiness in his eyes, how he was nearly moved to tears- -yet she suddenly felt deeply jealous, and hated herself for it. “She must have been an amazing person.”

“He was.”

Penumbra immediately felt a completely different kind of shock, and felt her face redden. Instead of feeling jealous, she now felt incredibly awkward- -and rather crushed.

“I warned him,” said Zither, looking down at the crystal of the counter. “I warned him not to come. That it was too dangerous. But he refused, the idiot. Always stubborn. He refused to leave my side. And the blast...the blast that took my body, my life...it took...it took...”

His grip suddenly tightened so hard that the tankard he was holding exploded in his grasp. Penumbra ducked, barely avoiding the shrapnel, but Zither remained impassive. “Celestia stole from me my beloved. And for that, one day I shall slay her in the name of Sombra.” His expression grew incredibly dark, and Penumbra suddenly felt afraid, as if she was no longer looking at the face of a pony but staring into that of something far more terrible. “And she had the gall,” he whispered. “The GALL to stand over me, pretending to be concerned. Keeping me alive with her magic. Denying me an honorable end...the insult. You will never comprehend. I pray to every goddess save her that you never do.”

Holder looked up from his soup. “I think the little princess is just surprised to learn that you like cocks.”

Penumbra squeaked as her entire body turned a deep shade of red. Her wings involuntarily sprung outward so hard that it hurt. “I- -no- -I never- -it is only- -I am NOT SURPRISED!”

“Aye,” said Zither, nonchalantly dipping one of his claws into his salt and licking the white powder off. “Although the hens of course have many noble attributes, there is nothing in this world like a big, strong griffon cock.”

Holder shoved his face into his soup so that his laughter was reduced to little more than foul-scented bubbles.

“What?” Zither seemed somewhat offended. “Holder, you knew I like cocks, why is this...” His eyes suddenly narrowed. “You are making fun of me, aren’t you?”

Holder pulled his face out of his soup, still laughing. Penumbra barely managed to press herself against the counter in time to avoid an even more extreme haircut from Zither’s blade. Though fast, Holder dodged it with disturbing fluidity.

“COCKS!” he cried. “And you call that a ‘long story’? It was barely a paragraph! Why, the very least you could do is set it to rhyme- -EEP!”

Penumbra suddenly pushed him from his chair and onto the floor.

“How could you make fun of him like that?!” she demanded. “That was a serious, heartfelt story about losing somepony he cared about! And you made a joke out of it? What’s wrong with you?!”

Holder picked himself up and stared at Penumbra with a disturbingly hardened expression. As if the guise of levity had been stripped from him entirely.

“So you’re going to be mean to me to. Figures.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you. Actually I did. I apologize for lying. But you deserved it!” She swiveled to Zither, and actually found herself sniffling.

“Princess,” he said. “Are you crying?”

“No,” she lied. “It’s just that- -that your story makes me hurt. Inside. I don’t know why, but, I know if I lost somepony like that...” She sniffled again. “It’s just...just...”

“Sad,” said Zither, softly. “What you feel now is sadness. And I apologize for making you feel that way. But there is no reason for it. Gallen was lost because of my own failure. The fault lies on me, and I must bear it. There is no reason for you to cry.”

“I’m not crying. And...that doesn’t make it feel any better. You’re in so much pain...I just wish there was something I could do.” She lay her head on the table. “You, Scarlet Mist, Gxurab, you’re all in so much pain. And I don’t know how to help you.”

Holder picked himself up and set himself back on the stool. “Maybe you’re not supposed to,” he suggested. He sighed. “Zither, she’s right. I’m sorry. It’s just...your story made me sad too. And uncomfortable. I was trying to lighten the mood, but I guess my timing was bad.”

“Indeed. The joke was good, but the timing astoundingly poor. You are lucky to keep your head.” Zither’s eyes slowly turned. “But I do appreciate the gesture, I suppose. You simply do not understand. You have never had anyone to lose.”

“No,” said Holder, looking down at the table. “No one at all.”

“You have Boulder,” said Penumbra, looking up even though her chin was still on the bar. “I know it’s not the same, but imagine if somepony hurt him.”

Holder paused, clearly thinking. “You know...you’re pretty smart for a teenager.”

“I’m less than six months old.”

Holder paused, and then moved one barstool over. “Of course you are.”

“It’s my own fault,” said Zither, turning on his stool. The vedmaki griffons were now playing some sort of card game with the smaller mercenaries, and had in the process lost most of the bits they had haggled over before. “This is a time of celebration. We have liberated YakYakistan, and ended the threat of our nearest foul neighbor. This is meant to be a time of celebration.”

“But how can you celebrate when you’re so sad? I can hardly get up, and I only HEARD your story.”

Zither’s smile fell, but then was quickly back- -though weaker, and more distant. “You learn to live. If, someday, you learn to love? Then you might come to understand it too.” He turned and looked over his shoulder, barking at the bartender. “YOU! Bring me more cider!” He threw more pillaged bits on the table. “And spiced catnip tea for my griffons.”

“Tea?” Penumbra sat up. “Where?”

“It’s on its way,” said the bartender. “But first...” He placed a small, plain dish in front of Penumbra. At first she thought it was salt, but then saw that it was something else. A thing that was completely foreign to her.

“A cupcake for the princess,” he said. “A gift from our cook.”

“I know what a cup is. This is not a cup.”

“No,” laughed Holder. “It’s a cake. A little one.”

“What is this cake of which you speak?”

“It’s the reason why Celestia is so obese.”

“Aye,” said Zither, nodding solely. “She is indeed a hefty lass.”

“Are you making fun of ME now?” Penumbra looked up at Holder, and he recoiled.

“NO! It’s food! You know, like something you eat?”

“I don’t eat.”

“You don’t...how? Is that why you’re so thin?”

“I have only ever had growth potion and tea. Also whatever this is.” Penumbra took a sip of her cider and nearly retched. “Which is AMAZINGLY terrible!”

“You’ve never had solid food?”

“No.”

Holder deflated somewhat. “Well, now I’m sad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just try it.” Holder pushed the cupcake closer to Penumbra. “These things are INCREDIBLY valuable. This is probably the only cupcake in the whole kingdom right now. Zither has pillaged entire CITIES for even a few grams of sugar. So you might as well enjoy it.”

“How?”

“I’m not going to teach you how to eat.”

“Holder,” said Zither. “You ought not feed the princess. Her dietary restrictions are very specific- -”

Penumbra stretched out her long alicorn tongue and poked the frosting of the cupcake with it. It was as close to eating as she could come.

Then she tasted it. It did not taste like a potion, or like tea. Penumbra’s eyes widened, and her whole body seemed to cease. Her brain shut down piece by piece, simply to save itself from the sensory overload. It was the most amazing thing she had ever tasted; in fact, most likely the most amazing thing possible. It superseded all things in life, excelling past any happiness she had ever known. It was perfection, and Penumbra felt herself melting away into nothing in its very presence.

She opened her eyes, confused as to why she was naked, why her face hurt, and why she was lying outside under the bright moon- -and in a crystal thornbush.

“Princess!” called Holder, seeming exceedingly distant. “Princess, where are you?!”

“Ugh,” groaned Penumbra, trying to sit up and failing badly. “Where am I indeed...”

Holder rounded a corner and laughed upon seeing the princess in a shrub. “There you are! How did you get all the way over here?”

Zither appeared behind him, looking exceedingly pale.

“Thank the Hammer,” he sighed, “the king is going to have my head for allowing this, if we had lost you- -”

“We didn’t lose her, she’s right here.” Holder grabbed one of Penumbra’s hooves and began to pull. Being in a thorn bush, this did not amount to much apart from pain.

“Why am I outside?” asked Penumbra, her head aching badly. “Also naked. And in a thorn bush. Stop pulling, it’s clearly not working!”

Zither ran to her side and levitated her out of the bush with her magic. Several branches were clinging to various parts of her body, and the act of being turned over made the whole world swim. Unaccustomed nausea nearly overwhelmed Penumbra, and when she was set down she dropped to her knees.

“Princess!”

“I’m fine. Just...ugh. Why do I feel like I ate a stoat? And my head...”

“Well, you did get punched in the face. Repeatedly.”

Penumbra looked up in shock, nearly passing out in the process. “What? By whom?”

“Griffons, mostly. But oh mane, it was simply EPIC! I have never seen a pony party so hardy in all my LIFE!”

“But I didn’t party. I just licked a cupcake.”

“No. You ate half of it,” said Zither, frowning. “Which was perhaps the gravest mistake of my career, allowing you to have that much sugar.”

Penumbra was beginning to understand. “What did I do?”

Zither blushed. “Well, you see...”

“You stripped off all your clothes and started dancing on a table,” said Holder. “You called it your ‘princess dance’.”

“What?” Penumbra stood up suddenly, wobbling substantially. “I would never- -!”

“He is not incorrect,” sighed Zither. “You did. There was a substantial amount of...er…gyration.”

“He means you were shaking your rump. Hard.”

Penumbra felt herself darkening several shades of red. “I see. Was I any good?”

“Excellent, really,” said Holder. Zither glared at him, and he quickly changed his tone. “Then a griffon grabbed your rump.”

“Oh.” Penumbra actually found herself somewhat liking that thought. “Did I enjoy it?”

“Apparently not, because you punched him so hard his teeth came out.”

“Griffons do not have teeth,” said Zither.

“You would know. So you knocked teeth INTO him! Then his friends all started beating you, and you handed their rumps back to them. Then the vedmaki joined in, and everypony else- -it was the biggest brawl I’ve ever SEEN! From under a table, of course. After all, I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

Penumbra groaned and leaned backward, inadvertently falling into the thorn bush again.

“That’s the last time I EVER eat solid food,” she moaned. Zither picked her back up and put her on her legs. He was carrying her armor, or what he could find of it, and put her cloak around her.

“As impressive as your skills at punching griffons are,” he said, tying the cloak around her naked pony body tightly, “this behavior is not really appropriate for a dainty young maiden.”

“Assuming she IS a maiden.”

Zither glared at Holder, but Penumbra just wobbled.

“Ugh. My stomach. Is this what eating solid food is like? You do this EVERY day?”

“Just wait about three hours.”

Penumbra’s eyes widened. “What happens in three hours?”

“It gets worse. MUCH worse.”

“How can this possibly get any worse?!”

“We ought to take the princess back to the castle,” said Zither. “This has been a long night for her.”

“You do that. I’m going back to the bar. Spilled salt is bad luck, though. So I’m going to lick it off the floor. Don’t judge me, my life is terrible.”

He began walking, but Zither picked him up off the ground with his magic.

“EEK!” Holder began to run, though being suspended in the air he went nowhere. “No fair! Magic is cheating!”

“We will BOTH be returning the princess to the Citadel. As quietly as possible. To avoid any greater scandal.”

“You mean so the king doesn’t find out.”

“I mean so that the girl’s reputation can be protected!”

“Oh please,” grumbled Penumbra, beginning to wobble her way toward the Citadel- -or where she imagined it probably was. “Like I have any reputation of my own anyway. I’m just a monster to be feared. Who cares?”

Zither and Holder looked at each other, only one of them understanding what she meant. Zither set Holder on the ground, and they both followed the princess.

The city had somehow grown even darker, although the moon had risen high into the sky. It was crescent and strange, appearing to ripple through the energy dissipation of the kingdom-wide force shield, and Penumbra had the strangest feeling that it was watching her. In fact, she knew it was. Though she had managed to escape one prison, she was still within the Crystal Empire, beneath that shield. Nightmare Moon was just beyond, watching her. Waiting for her to leave to claim her as her own.

The pain in her stomach had grown more intense and moved lower, and the pain in her head had increased substantially. Overall, though, Penumbra had grown less wobbly and her mind had started to clear. She was not sure if that was normal, or a part of her dark unicorn heritage letting her regenerate rapidly. Either way, she had already made a fool of herself and felt a strong need to prove herself sturdy and durable in the eyes of her father’s associates.

“Your homelands,” she said. “Are they as beautiful as our Crystal Empire?”

Zither looked up at the gleaming, cold crystal towers and buildings. “The Order I was born into has no homeland,” he said, “through in my youth, I spent a great deal of time in Griffonstone, when it was still a neutral kingdom.”

“Emeth showed me a picture of it, but from over eight thousand years ago. What does it look like now?”

“A beautiful city, built in the branches of an enormous tree high in a mountain. A fabulous place of wealth, tradition, and nobility. There are few more beautiful sights, though the Empire may indeed surpass it.”

“And you?”

Holder looked up from staring at the crystal of the ground. “I’m from the Badlands. In a gulch. It doesn’t have a name.”

“Your kind live in a gulch?”

“How appropriate,” muttered Zither.

“I don’t think so. Nopony lives in the gulch. Nopony is out there four thousands of miles. I was raised by rocks.”

“By...rocks?”

“It suddenly makes so much more sense,” said Zither, rolling his eyes.

“Yes. By Boulder’s family. Boulder is sort of my brother, I guess.”

“But you eat rocks.”

Holder laughed. “You really ARE six months old, aren’t you? Come on, the difference is obvious! It’s like how we can eat fish, but not cows.”

“We can eat fish? What are fish?”

“Fish are...you know...like rocks, but in water.”

Penumbra’s headache was only increasing. “I don’t know why everypony hates you, but when you talk, it causes me physical pain. Please try to be quiet.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Holder fell several steps back.

“Princess, if you need to rest- -”

“I have spent my entire life resting, Lord Heartsrtings. And I have grown VERY tired of it.”

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “Things make slightly more sense now indeed. Perhaps it is adventure our little princess seeks?”

Penumbra stopped walking.

“I see,” said Zither. He stopped as well, stroking his chin. “Indeed, my kind have been bred for thousands of years to embark on epic quests of every kind. So I understand the yearning for it. Though you may yet be still too young...perhaps I could convince the vedmaki of Care Morgan- -”

“Something is wrong,” said Penumbra, looking up at the tops of the buildings. “Do you smell that?”

Zither and Holder both looked at each other, and sniffed the air.

“I smell over forty-seven species of crystal,” said Holder. “What are YOU smelling?”

“Mint.”

“Aye,” said Zither, slowly. “I create that smell naturally. All of my kind do.”

“Yes, I know, you smell super good and Holder smells like he crawled out from under a rock.”

“I did,” admitted Holder.

“But this isn’t YOUR smell. It’s a different minty smell.” Something suddenly caught her eye. Not motion, exactly, but the impression of it, high on top of a distant tower. “THERE!” she cried. “Did you see that?”

“You’re paranoid,” laughed Holder. “Sugar will do that, you know.”

“No,” said Zither, reaching for his sword. “Can’t you sense it? Something isn’t right. I didn’t notice it at first, but now...”

“Eternity,” said Penumbra. “Eternity!”

“Huh who what when Applejack how why?” said Eternity, speaking directly in Penumbra’s mind. “Why are you saying my name? Assuming it’s still my name. Lacy was just about to get out of the bathtub! Why did you bother me?!” She paused. “You’re not in the castle.”

“I know, Eternity, I need- -”

“To rub it in my face that YOU can walk around and pick up stallions while I CAN’T?! Why are you naked?! Is it because I don’t have a narrow filly rump?! I can’t help it, they took my body, I can’t move oh Epona I can’t MOVE- -”

“ETERNITY,” growled Penumbra. “Focus. Now. There’s a problem. Something is here.”

“An ugly little girl, a half-robot geld-knight, and- -wait, are you near HOLDER? Get away from him, you little idiot! There’s a reason we keep him out THERE, it isn’t safe- -”

Penumbra’s training suddenly activated. The relentless programming caused her to move, as if on instinct, her horn igniting with a spell that covered her body in a limited version of magical armor. With two steps- -agonizing steps, considering how full she was- -she threw herself against Zither, barely getting to him in time. Two knives stuck in her armor; they had been thrown at his neck.

“PRINCESS!”

“Twenty-seven degrees, eighty-four vertical!” she cried, pulling the knives out of her armor. A few weeks earlier, and the spell would have shattered on contact; even now, it had absorbed too much energy to be of much more use and only managed to stop the blades just as they began to poke her skin.

Again her training kicked in. Scarlet Mist had drilled it into her long enough to never expect an attack to be so straightforward. She remodulated her shield and felt it shatter as the spells carved into the knives activated and they detonated.

Penumbra was thrown backward, and Zither covered her, deflecting another knife with his sword. Holder, meanwhile, screamed and ran, hiding under a bush.

“Don’t hurt me!” he wailed, “I’m soft and adorable and TOO YOUNG TO DIE!”

Zither pointed his horn toward where he imagined the attacks were coming from and fired several devastating bolts of magic into one of the buildings, tearing through its top story. Penumbra, still reeling from the blast, distantly saw something gracefully bound out of the way- -and land on the ground below.

It was a pony, or at least Penumbra thought it was. His or her body was obscured by something, a sort of partial invisibility. Penumbra saw the distortion of a shape moving toward her, like a ghost tearing through the air.

“Assassin!” cried Zither. “How dare you attack our princess?!” He shifted positions, moving his sword into an offensive stance.

There was a flash of amber magic, and suddenly two swords appeared at the attacker’s sides. Two swords made of strange, mottled red steel.

Zither lunged forward, his sword held in his magic. The partially invisible pony did so as well, striking hard with both swords. Zither parried the first one and pivoted, narrowly avoiding the second one. He sent a blow toward the target’s chest, but it was deflected by a spell; he in turn fired a powerful spell directly into the target’s side. She in turn deflected it with one of her swords, absorbing the force and flipping several times.

Penumbra stood, suddenly once again wobbly. The explosion had left her intact, but hurt her insides. Without her armor, she was far more vulnerable- -but Scarlet Mist had trained her for that, too. The armor protected her, but it also made her slow.

Zither continued his attack, moving with precision and dealing heavy blow after heavy blow. Penumbra froze, in awe of the beauty of it. She knew she could never have Zither, but knowing that and seeing him fighting to protect her like this made her want him more than anything.

A blow crossed Zither’s shoulder, cracking through part of his shield. He growled and jumped back, surprised; his opponent did not give him a chance to regroup. She struck again and again, driving him back. She was smaller and faster than him, and with whatever spell she was using to stay partially invisible, Zither was not able to strike a critical blow.

“Lord Heartstrings!”

Zither laughed suddenly. “My apologies, my princess! I did not mean to allow this foul brute to frighten you!” he barely managed to parry a blow, and another one struck a glancing blow off one of his arms. “So allow me to finish this fight quickly, if you will!”

He released his sword from his magic, allowing it to fall into one of his claws. Then he reared on his hind legs and changed his stance- -before bringing down a whirling barrage of blows on his opponent.

Penumbra recognized his motion: the broad sweeping cuts, the almost dance-like whirl of his blade and impossible acrobatic motion- -it was the same style of fighting that the vedmak griffons used.

His opponent was overwhelmed. She could not adequately defend against the powerful blows, and with his magic freed from holding his sword Zither was free to attack parallel with a steady stream of powerful spells. The tide of the fight had turned, and the invisible mare was driven back. Then, with a powerful blow, her swords were knocked out of her magic- -and Zither’s blade slashed across her face.

The invisibility immediately failed, revealing the pony underneath- -and the black and silver power-armor she was wearing.

Zither’s blade had cut through most of her helmet, and she retracted it, allowing it to automatically unfold. To Penumbra’s amazement, she saw that the mare beneath the armor was almost perfectly identical to Zither, though female. Her eyes were the same shape and color, and her coat was the same light teal. Her mane, likewise, was pale-white green- -save for a streak of pink running through it.

“An unparalleled insult. That one of US would dare to hurt the girl I have sworn to protect!”

The teal mare charged forward, raising her sword. Zither parried it, striking it out of the way and preparing to fire a spell into the mare’s face to conclude the fight. While doing so, though, he left himself open; she brought her hoof to his chest.

Penumbra heard a mechanical click, and the sickening shriek of metal sliding against metal. Zither’s eyes went wide and he jumped back, his chest pouring fluorescent green fluid. A red-steel blade had emerged from the center of the armored mare’s hoof, and it was covered in the same liquid.

“Lord Heartstrings!” Penumbra raced to his side, catching him as he fell. He was holding one of his claws over the wound, but the substance was still pouring out of him.

“Primary coolant,” he gasped. “My reactor’s been damaged- -”

“Hold on! Just hold on! ETERNITY!”

“I can’t see it, I can’t see it!” cried Eternity. “Hold on, I’m sending a contingent of thralls! Golems! STOATS if I have to, just hold on!”

Zither tried to stand and grasp his sword. As he did, though, one of his limbs went limp and he toppled to the ground. He was not able to stand again; his mechanical portions were rapidly losing power as their machine-blood flowed out onto the ground. “I will not let you hurt her, you dirty horse,” he growled, picking up his sword with one shaking claw. “If it takes everything I have- -”

“I have no interest in the abomination, brother,” said the mare. Her accent matched Zither’s perfectly. “Though I cannot conceive why you would be so protective of a beast so foul. You, who insisted on betraying us in the name of obsolete tradition.” She picked up her second sword and pointed it at Zither. “I have come for YOU. The Grandmaster has ordered it, for the Order’s own sake. Please submit, brother. For once in your life, have some honor.”

“Buck you,” spat Zither. “And buck your filthy mother.”

“I have no mother, nor father. Only the Order.” She raised her sword.

Before she could bring it down on Zither’s neck, Penumbra leapt onto her, forcing her back.

“Princess, no!”

Penumbra did not listen. She was to busy completing the task she had been trained relentlessly to perform. The mare was larger and stockier than her, and the machines in her armor made her far stronger, but like with Penumbra’s own armor that just meant she was slow and lacked dexterity. Penumbra, fully nude, was able to quickly swing around the mare’s neck, grabbing her on one side and forcing her off balance. A kick to one of her rear knees did little damage through the armor, but still set her falling.

Yet a blade came whizzing past Penumbra’s head, taking off the tip of one of her ears and narrowly missing her horn. From the position of the mare, Penumbra guessed where the second blade probably was and ducked, bending herself over backward in a way that no normal pony would be flexible enough to accomplish. She proved correct, and she felt the hot steel pass harmlessly across the very tip of her nose. She was fully aware that her legs had been in that position moments before.

Penumbra summoned all of her mental strength and fired an energy spell straight into the mare’s chest. She was pushed back- -but only by a few inches. Penumbra had not expected this. She knew how to use her magic now- -and yet it had barely even scratched her armor.

The blade came down again, this time parting Penumbra’s already short tail. She flipped again, kicking the mare in the face and in the horn, preventing her from summoning a spell. This forced her to the side, but Penumbra was slow and full of cupcake. She was punched square in the ribs, and felt several things crackle within her on contact with the metal hoof.

“Filthy alicorn scum! I would have let you walk away, but not now!”

The mare charged her horn, and Penumbra charged hers. The spells met in midair, and Penumbra was sure that with her alicorn magic she would easily be able to win, just as she had with Luciferian- -yet her beam was quickly overwhelmed, and her blue magic consumed in orange.

She cried out as she was knocked back, and despite being blinded with pain in her horn she still managed to regain footing and attack again, this time aiming once again for the mare’s head- -only to receive a power-armored hoof to the face, and then to feel a sword glance along the surface of her horn. She barely managed to parry in time, lest the organ be lost entirely.

Zither stood up, or tried to. Holder, meanwhile, had left his shrub and was attempting to escape. With his last ounce of strength, Zither intercepted him, blocking his path.

“Zither! Please, I have to get out of here!”

“NO! Look there!” Zither pointed, and Holder looked; though bruised and injured, the princess was still fighting- -and losing badly. “She doesn’t stand a chance, not against a knight like that!”

“But I can’t fight, you know that!”

Zither grabbed Holder by his lapels; the expenditure of coolant caused his rear legs to fail, and he dropped to his knees. “I can’t stand! Without my armor- -I have less than a minute before my reactor goes into emergency power! You have to save her!”

Holder shook his head, already starting to cry. “No, no, please don’t make me do it. I can’t, Zither, I just can’t- -”

The princess cried out as she was struck hard in the side, causing her to slide across the street and hit the side of a building hard. She tried to stand, but was too badly hurt to get her full balance. The mare-knight quickly approached her, preparing to dispatch her secondary target quickly and with a single thrust. Holder saw this, and burst into tears- -yet his hoof moved to the ring of the sword he kept on his back at all times. A sword that had not left his side for over seven hundred years.

“I’m sorry,” he wept. “I’m so sorry.”

The mare-knight assessed the situation, with one of her artificial corneas scanning the situation. The heretic-knight was hemorrhaging coolant; the blow had not struck precisely enough to end him, but he would be incapacitated soon enough. First, though, she had to deal with the abomination.

She prepared her sword and approached the girl. “You have fought bravely, abomination. I believe that warrants a quick end.”

The abomination attempted to raise a shield. It was weak. Her body was mutated severely by force-growth; it was apparent that this was still an embryonic alicorn, one that had not yet developed the power of the Cursed Twins. It was better for the world if it was put down immediately before it could rain destruction across the planet, as the other two had for countless millennia.

“Buck your grandmaster,” growled the girl, spitting teeth and black fluid. “And hail the Witchking.”

The knight-mare sighed, and brought the point of the blade down toward the alicorn’s heart.

Yet, as she did, her blade was cleaved in twain, its sacred and unbreakable Questlord steel cut as though it were simple paper. Her second, likewise, fell to pieces.

She stood back, turning- -and found herself staring into a pair of hideous red eyes.

Fear overcame here. Not just fear, but instinct, drawn not just from her training but from the endless evolution of her species, and of all species. Within those blood-red eyes, she felt pure and unmitigated evil, something profound and unfathomable. An evil that was not a pony, and never had been.

On instinct alone, she leapt back, putting her armored forelegs in front of her and drawing the blades on both. She barely saw the earth pony move, and only the slightest glimmer of his black blade as it passed through her- -and her legs fell away, severed at the shoulder while she received a kick to the chest. The limbs fell to the ground bloodlessly, still writing as the machines within them reacted to no longer having a nervous signal. It was not the first time the mare had lost her legs, but the first time it had not been under anesthesia. She was surprised at how little pain there was., and how much worse it was to look down and see them missing.

She fell to the ground, hearing something else click to the ground to her side. She did not care; instead, she focused on dragging herself into a nearby alley. To retreat, to get away.

Yet with only her rear legs, there was not very far she could go. She collapsed into the cold of the snowy and dark alley and looked behind her. When she did, she beheld a terrible sight.

It was standing there. Watching, from its red eyes. A pony, or the shell of one: a body of the palest, finest gray with a long, perfectly straight mane the color of snow. In his teeth was a sword- -except that it was unlike any sword that the Questlord mare had ever seen, or ever would again.

The blade was not metal, but a single piece of obsidian set in an ornate silver handle- -and it was unimaginably horrible. Staring into the black of the obsidian blade, she felt it staring back at her, and felt her mind dissolving into panic.

The earth-pony giggled as he slowly dragged himself forward- -or was dragged forward, by some unseen force. “So pretty,” he said, softly, still giggling. “Such a pretty unicorn...she likes you. She likes you SO MUCH.”

The mare turned herself over, finding her back literally against a wall. There was nowhere to escape too; she was trapped. So she summoned a shield spell- -although all that came were a few sparkles of orange light.

She no longer had hooves to feel her head, but she instantly knew. That click she had heard before had been the sound of her horn landing on the sidewalk. It had been severed, and the use of magic was now forever beyond her reach.

“Silver, pretty silver,” giggled the stallion, his voice rising ridiculously high. “She’s just SOOOOO hungry!” He stopped moving and held perfectly still. Unnaturally still. Only the obsidian blade seemed to be moving, writing and laughing within itself. “Your name is now BRUNCH!”

He lunged forward, moving with unnatural grace and fluidity, The mare closed her eyes, hating herself for doing so. That she would not be able to face her own end, as she knew someday she must- -but the thought of seeing that black blade even one more time was simply too much for her.

Then, suddenly, she felt magic surrounding her. She looked up to see the hideous face of the earth-pony, his mouth open in a horrid scream and his red eyes glaring at her- -and the point of the ghastly sword only a foot from her throat.

“HOLDER!” cried the princess, appearing at the end of the alley, her horn lit with the magic that was now holding both of them in place. “She’s done! It’s over!”

Holder slowly turned his head to Penumbra, and she saw that what she had initially taken for a grimace of malice and hatred indeed was- -but not one directed at the helpless mare now before his blade.

“I- -I can’t stop her!” he wept, red tears falling from his eyes. “Please, princess, just let her feed! She doesn’t want your black blood, not yet, but I can’t control her! Get away from me! PLEASE!

“NO.’ Penumbra dug in her heels and pulled back, although she found she could not even move Holder in the slightest. “I refuse to allow this! STAND DOWN! That is a princess order! My word is LAW!”

Holder laughed in her face- -although it was not quite him laughing. It was his voice, and his mouth making the sound, but beneath the sickening joy he sounded as though he were about to scream.

“You can’t stop her,” he hissed, turning back to the knight. “The cute little mare belongs to HER!” He giggled wildly. “So much silver, pretty pretty SILVER! She has to feed, feed feed feed FEED FEED!”

He took a step forward. Penumbra cried out as she was dragged along behind him. “NO!” She looked over her shoulder. “Lord Heartstrings! I need help!”

He looked up. Though his mechanical portions were only barely functional, his organic ones were alert and quite well. Despite this, he just shook his head. “Once the Black Blade is drawn, no pony nor force of nature can stop him. Not until it devours their lifeblood, and their very soul. I am sorry, princess. There is nothing you can do. Just let it happen.”

“Can’t you see how much pain he’s in?! You call yourself a knight? You’re just giving up! Get over here and HELP! That’s a princess order!”

Zither frowned. Her words cut deeply, and he came to understand the situation- -and that the girl who had defeated the dark wizard Twilight Luciferian as well as removed the Mask of Red Death how now challenged Holder Hearfelt, the unstoppable destroyer, and the Black Blade. Though immensely proud, Zither ultimately found this astoundingly humiliating. That she had the courage to protect pony- -a knight of his own Order- -while he was content to lay back and allow evil to be committed.

“For your honor, my princess!” Zither dragged himself forward with his one barely functional arm and grasped onto the princess. Then, summoning all his might, reached out with his own magic and grasped several nearby buildings. By this time, the crystal ponies in these houses had started to awaken; they cried out in terror and retreated as Zitehr began pulling on their dwellings to brace the princess.

Holder took another step forward. One of the buildings Zither was holding onto began to list from the force.

“No you don’t!” Penumbra tried her best to pull him back, although Zither’s force was starting to crush her. She began to beat her wings wildly, attempting to draw him away. He moved back- -but only by a hair’s with. “By Sombra, how strong is he?!”

“He’s a rock-cultist earth-pony! Of course he’s strong!” Holder moved forward, and several of Zither’s connections snapped, tearing several crystal buildings were torn apart. “The fact that he’s holding an ancient Chaos Blade is not helping, though!”

“We just need to hold him until the thralls get here!”

“I don’t think we can!” Zither attempted to get his grip, but his arm was failing.

“She will feast on them as well,” muttered Holder. “But you first, pretty unicorn! She eats YOU first!”

“We can’t hold this!” cried Zither, his grip tightening. “Princess, you’ll tear yourself apart! At least release the mare!”

“I can’t! They’re both caught in the spell, if I let her go, I release him too! I don’t know how to do only one!” she felt herself being dragged. “HOLDER!” she cried. “You have to listen to me! Fight it! Know you don’t want to hurt her, you only did it to save ME! I’m sorry! But you have to stop! You’re not that kind of pony!”

Holder giggled madly, and only then did Penumbra realize that it had been weeping all along. He turned his head, and she saw that he was crying red tears. His eyes were hideous, but deep beneath all the red, they were his own. “I don’t want to! Please! PLEASE! Princess, Zither, Boulder, SOMEPONY stop me! I can’t- -I can’t control her, I can’t stop her- -there’s nothing I can do!” He had begun to weep horribly. It was a pitiful sight indeed. “Please stop me, PLEASE! I can’t take another, I can’t go through it again! But sweet Celestia, the VOICES- -I can’t stop the VOICES! She’s hungry, so very hungry!”

He took another step forward, as it pulled along by his sword’s bloodlust. It was now centimeters from the mare’s throat, and being trapped in the spell as well she was unable to do anything other than to stare at it in horror. Penumbra saw the fear in her eyes, and she hated it. She hated how afraid and helpless the mare was, and how frightened and desperate Holder had become. How terrified his eyes looked, as if they had seen this so many hundreds of times before but were unable to grow cold and distant.

Except that this emotion was not hatred. It had a name that Penumbra did not know, that perhaps even Sombra did not know either- -and from this emotion, her spell began to change. She could feel it reconfiguring, becoming more and more complex as it wound between the two ponies. Each of them, she realized, contained something within themselves, something that was remarkably similar between the two. The spell touched these pieces of them, and began to draw them outward and toward one another.

“Princess, I can’t hold on! I’m sorry!”

Zither collapsed, his magic failing, and Penumbra was left holding Holder all alone. He grinned- -or grimaced- -but Penumbra hardly noticed. The spell felt right and just, and more pure than any she had ever performed. As it changed, it began to complete itself, forming a thing beyond any of the spell formats she had ever seen in any book or been told that even exist.

And from this spell, she felt a change. The parts of the ponies that separated them combined, creating one thing out of what had once been two. Holder cried out in agony as if he had been struck, and something black sparked from his hoof as the Black Blade was torn from his grasp. Penumbra’s spell failed as the Blade clattered to the floor, and both she and Holder collapsed to the street.

It was only then that the thralls came around the corner, pouring into the alley. The teal knight had no chance to resist as she was struck in the neck by several electric stun rods, and as she screamed and fell the thralls began to administer a relentless beating. Others kicked Holder’s sword away and immediately wrapped him in chains and shackles, even though he was still unconscious.

“Stop that!” wheezed Penumbra. “Don’t hurt them! That’s- -that’s a princess order!”

That was the last thing she said before she collapsed and felt herself being dragged away.

Chapter 32: Usurper

Penumbra pushed through the halls, forcing her way past slaves that were moving far too slow for her taste. Scarlet Mist stood beside her; she had apparently been assigned to check on the princess’s health, but had as always shown little compassion or care. In fact, she had kept her distance, staying largely silent and watching things unfold.

As she moved, Sombra came into view, traveling down a barely lit hall that was populated by no other ponies save for the steward, who looked as cold and severe as ever.

“My king,” she said, hurriedly bowing. Sombra stopped and slowly turned to her.

“Alicorn,” he growled. “You indeed have courage to face me at a time like this.”

“I am obligated to make my report,” she said.

Sombra glared at her, and then at Scarlet Mist. “I did not expect her to be awake so soon.”

“There is no damage,” said Scarlet Mist. “Feedback tracks, but not deep ones. They’re healing.”

“And the spell she used?”

Scarlet Mist shook her head. “From the traces my thralls gathered, I have no idea. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen before. It may be specific to her and her alone.”

“You are lucky she is undamaged.” Sombra looked down at Penumbra, who looked right back up at him, not even averting her gaze in the slightest. “I have been informed that you left the castle without my permission.”

“Yes. I escaped through the ventilation system, followed by the sewers. I went to the city to see what was there, and eventually came to the inn where I met Holder Heartfelt and Lord Heartstrings.”

“So you were assisted,” said the steward. “This places the loyalty of those two in question.”

“Hardly,” snapped Penumbra. “I did not need their help. I did it on my own, of my own volition.”

“And what of the news I have heard of you stripping nude and dancing on tables?”

Penumbra blushed but did not look away. “Yes. That also happened.”

Sombra continued to glare and was silent for a moment. Then, finally, he spoke. “I appreciate your honesty, though you have disgraced yourself, and by extension me. This behavior cannot be tolerated, and there will be consequences. But for now I have more important things to do than tending to you.” Sombra began walking again, and the steward followed. So did Penumbra and Scarlet Mist.

“You mean the prisoner. The prisoner I helped to capture.”

“I wish to see it,” admitted Sombra. “The face of a pony who dared to infiltrate my kingdom and attack my knight, my sword-wielder and my weapon.”

“I wish to accompany you.”

Sombra paused. “Why?”

Penumbra paused. She was not actually sure why.

“This is the first enemy she has defeated who has not managed to escape like a coward,” said Scarlet Mist from behind. “At least allow her to see the pitiful look of defeat on its face. Perhaps it will serve to motivate her.”

Sombra seemed to consider for a moment. “Very well,” he said at last. “So be it. Let her know what is to take joy in the humiliation and despair of her foes. So long as she does not interfere.”

“I have no reason to, my king,” said Penumbra, bowing as she walked. “I only wish to observe, and to learn.”

Sombra nodded, although he was not foolish enough to think that she was telling the truth- -to him, or to herself.

The Citadel was not directly equipped to handle prisoners. It had a dungeon, but Buttonhooks the Mad had begun to inhabit it long ago, converting ponies to his disciples of pain as he saw fit. Otherwise, there really was no need for one. Criminals and dissenters with crimes severe enough to be sent to the Citadel usually did not last long enough to require cells.

The prison was a separate structure, a parallel complex to the Arena, though both often served the same function. That was where the prisoner was held.

By the time Sombra arrived, others had already gathered. The prisoner was held in one of the upper levels in a crystal cell with simple iron bars. Gathered outside were Necrophilo of Canterlot, looking strangely more pale than usual, as well as Holder and the Blue Knight, the latter sustained only by his armor and the former in a corner, shaking; as well as Thirteen, the chronoplexer.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the steward, stepping forward to deal with the situation. She was one of the few present who know that despite his show of strength, Sombra was fading- -and fading fast. “The princess’s report indicated that this pony is a master mage, why is she secured in a standard cell?”

Necrophilo and Zither looked up at her. Zither appeared to have been beaten badly, but had the same spooked expression on his face as Necrophilo.

Penumbra approached the cell. The pony inside still lacked her front legs, and she was sitting- -and staring. Penumbra nearly cried out in shock when she saw the horrible expression on her face. A wide, enormous forced grin covered the prisoner’s face, even as tears fell from her eyes.

“Th...Thirteen,” said Necrophilo, clearing his throat. “She has...she has handled it.”

Sombra turned to his chronoplexer, and his black blood ran cold when he saw what she was holding. He instantly understood the looks of horror on his generals’ faces. Suspended in Thirteen’s hoof, sparking with magical energy, was the prisoner’s severed cutie mark.

He quickly turned to the prisoner, and saw that it was indeed missing- -and in its place was a pair of horizontal, parallel lines. It was the symbol that Thirteen herself wore. Seeing that, he understood that accepting her to his Dark Thirteen had either been his greatest triumph- -or a fatal mistake.

“That spell should not be possible,” he said.

“And yet it is,” said Zither.

Sombra approached the cage. The pony inside looked up at him. Not only did she lack a cutie mark, but her horn had been removed. The mare, otherwise, was in a poor state. Her body showed significant evidence of reengineering, not through mutation but rather by mechanical enhancement. Most of it had been in her front legs, but one eye was also changed, if only partially. Parts of her body also showed evidence of frostbite. Though her armor had no doubt been advanced, it was not designed for hyperborean winters as Zither’s was. The journey had been hard, and yet she had made it.

“A Questlord,” he said. “How unusual. How unimportant.” He turned away from her, and to the steward. “She is nothing of consequence, and nothing I require. Liquidate her. Have her dzeronium salts extracted from the residue.”

The steward bowed. “Yes, my lord. I will see to it at once.” She raised her hoof, and several thralls started to move.

The mare scooted forward, driven by her rear legs. “Brother!” she cried, looking directly at Zither. “My attempt was a failure, but more will come! Of this, I swear!”

“And they will be reduced to salt as well,” said Zither, coldly. “I am no longer one of you. I no longer serve some nebulous false-goal. I serve the sovereign lord of this land, and you have broken his divine law.”

“Don’t be a fool! As long as you live, the Order is in danger!” The thralls were drawing closer, but the mare continued. “Patriarch Dulcimer intends to bring the Grandmaster your head, to leverage your capture to return to the Order! To regain the power he once had! Brother, as long as you live- -”

Zither’s magic flashed, and suddenly the mare was lifted by her neck. Zither struck the bars of her cage with his hoof, bending several of the bars in the process. “Do not mention that filthy necromancer’s name in my presence!” he shrieked. “Let him face me! Let him try! I will not be used as a tool in an ineffectual political GAME! And when I am done with him, there will be nothing LEFT to send back to that withered HUSK you call your master! And I am no longer your brother!” He dropped her, and she landed on the floor, gasping.

Sombra had quietly watched the whole exchange. “Is this something I should be concerned about, Zither?”

“No, my lord.” Zither bowed. “Merely the delusions of a dying order of ineffectual knights. They will be no threat to you, this I swear.”

The thralls opened the door and picked up the knight. She struggled, but was weak and pale without her cutie mark. They began to drag her out. Penumbra did not have the luxury of ignorance as to where they were taking her. Although she had until that day never had solid food and had never been permitted out of the Citadel, she had been educated thoroughly on exactly what “liquidation” meant. In this case, it meant exactly what it sounded like.

“My king,” she said, stepping forward. She could not believe what she was about to do, but did not hesitate- -because in her heart, she knew it was right. “I protest this course of action.”

The entire room grew quiet. Even the thralls stopped.

“Think very carefully on what you say next, princess,” warned Scarlet Mist.

Penumbra nodded, and took another step toward her father, who turned back toward her. His face had none of the mild amusement she had seen when she had spared the Celestia-worshipping heretics. There was only hate and anger.

“This mare has been defeated thoroughly,” continued Penumbra. “She is imprisoned, missing two legs, a cutie mark, and a horn. There is no longer any threat.” She turned to look at the mare. “In addition, this was a matter of external politics. While I cannot claim to understand it completely, it appears to be a dispute with Lord Heartstrings personally. No Imperial law was challenged or broken.”

Sombra’s pupils narrowed into tiny slits. “I do not appreciate ponies questioning my orders,” he growled. “Especially YOU, alicorn. This pony infiltrated my kingdom and attacked my knight.”

“And if she had slain him, she would take his place. As I took Twilight Luciferian’s.”

The room seemed to darken. The air smelled strangely of metal, and Penumbra felt fear creeping into her heart. It was not unlike the sensation that came from standing near Scarlet Mist, but much stronger. Yet she resisted it and stood firm.

“You are NOT one of THEM!” boomed Sombra. “You are just a weapon! A THING!”

“And this THING will not allow an innocent pony to come to harm!” Penumbra stamped her hoof. “NOT IN MY KINGDOM!”

“IT IS NOT YOUR KINGDOM!”

With a roar, Sombra brought down a plume of crimson magic. Penumbra reacted, dodging the blow and the second one that came behind it, hidden in the corona of the first spell. She flipped once, summoning a shield to parry the next blow and closing the gap to where Sombra could not defend. He stared at her, wide-eyed, and she saw her chance. She fired a beam from her horn directly into his chest.

The result was spectacular. Sombra was swallowed in a corona of blue magic and thrown backward. He clattered to the floor and skittered across it.

Sombra grabbed his chest, immediately understanding just how right Al’Hrabnaz had been. Deep within him, he had held out the slimmest of hopes that his condition had been the result of Luciferian’s demon. As the wound grew deeper, though, he understood what he should have long ago: that his daughter’s magic was inherently toxic to him. Contact with it disrupted the fear that held his cellular structure intact. Fate, it seemed, had created the only pony who could potentially defeat him. A perfect usurper.

“My king!” cried the steward, rushing to his side.

Sombra pushed her away and stood on his own. The pain was exquisite, but he was all-too-familiar with pain. He withstood it, knowing that to look weak was to meet his end then and there. He could not allow her to know her ability, or what her magic could do.

“So,” he said. “You would challenge me? Was replacing Luciferian not enough? You would replace me as well?” He charged his horn. “If you wish to challenge me, so be it.”

“It is a challenge I would lose,” said Penumbra, not breaking eye-contact. “How could I fight my own father? I love you. I think I know that now. But if you really are this weak?” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe Luciferian was RIGHT.”

Sombra moved forward, his anger exceeding his judgment for the first time in countless centuries. As he approached, though, Holder slid between him and the princess.

“Get out of my way, earth-pony,” he growled. “Before I MAKE you.”

Holder grimaced, closing his eyes, and was about to cow- -but then opened his eyes and held firm. “No. No, I won’t run. Not this time. Because the princess is RIGHT! That mare didn’t do anything wrong!”

“She challenged Zither, and nearly ended the princess,” said Necrophilo. “She has done enough.”

“But the princess spared her! Then and there, she stopped me from- -from doing the thing.” He looked up, his blue eyes meeting Sombra’s red. “She saved me! But if you liquidate her- -then I still have that blood on my hooves!”

“As opposed to the ocean you already wade through, Holder. So you too would challenge my orders. Fine. I will liquidate the mare myself!”

His horn flashed red, but Holder’s hoof immediately moved to the ring of his sword. Every pony in the room immediately jumped back; those that could summon shield spells did so, and those that had weapons drew them. Penumbra stood in shock, because she felt that the atmosphere had completely inverted- -and she understood. Why they hated Holder. They feared him, and feared him terribly.

Sombra’s horn dimmed, and he glared at Holder. “You would dare to draw that sword against ME? The sword I forged for you?”

“You did not forge it. You just put the hilt on it, and even then, you couldn’t wield it, could you? It existed a billion trillion years before you, and it will exist just as long AFTER you. The visions...the constant screams of eternal conquest through the multliverse...we are all so very small...”

“There are four of the Dark Thirteen in this room, as well as myself and Penumbra,” said Sombra, suddenly deeply calm. “You could not possibly survive.”

Holder smiled. “And it’s better that way, believe me. I don’t have anything to lose. But you do. She’ll make me fast enough to get four, maybe five hits. And she’s wanted your soul for a long, looooong time. She’s just so hungry...so hungry...” He shook his head hard, trying to clear the visions. “And she tells me things. She never stops. She knows how to do it so you won’t regenerate.” Tightened his grip on the Blade. “You will not hurt her, Sombra. I will let you.”

“Would you, now?”

Holder pulled the sword, but only slightly. Penumbra saw the glint of obsidian from his scabbard, and somehow, she felt it. It was like how the yellow mare beside Luciferian had felt, but different. She had been rot and decay and laughter, but this was only a single living hard angle. An angle that needed to feed, and to feed endlessly.

The change started, but only slightly. Holder’s eyes began to darken, and his mane became straighter and lighter. “I won’t let you,” he growled, not quite in his own voice. “I can’t...”

Sombra stared at him, and then, slowly, a small smile crossed his face. “In the centuries I have known you, Holder, never once have you reached to draw the Black Blade on your own accord. Never once have you shown this level of initiative. So be it. If this mare is so important to you, then she has a value I had previously overlooked.” He signaled to the thralls, and they dropped the mare- -and kicked her several times in the ribs to make sure she would not bolt for the door. “I pass her into your care. Be sure to feed her. Use her as you will.”

Holder continued to stare at Sombra, but did not close the sword. His hoof began to shake; Penumbra saw that he was struggling.

“Holder,” she said, walking up to him.

“Stay back!” ordered Scarlet Mist. “It’s not safe!”

Penumbra put her hoof on Holder’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We won. She’s going to be okay. But not if you attack him now. Please. Put the sword back.”

“So...so hungry...so...” Holder grimaced and growled, and force the sword back into its scabbard. His mane immediately fluffed back up into its normal dark configuration, and he nearly collapsed. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he wheezed. “Oh mane...”

Penumbra felt a pair of eyes on her, and she looked up at her father.

“Nevertheless,” he said. “There will be consequences.”

“And I am prepared to accept them,” replied Penumbra. “As you would be, too, if our positions were reversed.”

Sombra stared at her, then silently turned and left, the steward at his side. The thralls locked the cage with the prisoner in it and returned to their duties. Penumbra suddenly felt exceedingly weak, and her knees wobbled slightly.

“You should have done it,” sighed Scarlet Mist. “Removed him. When you had the chance. You could have had the kingdom.”

“If that is the cost, I don’t want it. Saving one pony is enough.”

Scarlet Mist shrugged. “Then I suppose I trained an idiot.”

Chapter 34: The Assignment

Things moved in the dark. What they were, Freeflight did not want to know. He had dwelt in the Citadel for his entire life, the son of a soldier from a long-since failed uprising. In that time, he had sometimes seen the things that lurked in the shadows. Strange, broken things created from Sombra’s failed attempts or those of the cursed beings he employed, or even more terrible things that had followed him in the distant past as he carved his swath of darkness across a then-nameless land.

The throne room was the worst. It was built to concentrate fear, and to draw more of it. In the dim light, Freeflight could see the tattered black banners of the extinct dark unicorn race slowly drifting in an unfelt draft. He was alone in the empty room, afraid- -but more afraid of what would become of him if he did not heed the call of his master.

Something slithered out of the darkness. Distantly, he saw the reflection of terrible green eyes, and he smelled a certain smell. Each of them had a smell. The dusty, crypt-like ancient smell of Sombra’s mane, or the perpetual stench of formaldehyde from Necrophilo, or the pungent aroma of Crozea, or even worst of all them all, the rotting-carnation reek of Twilight Luciferian.

This smell was different, and not quite bad. Like old, strange cheese. Freeflight had come to know it, and he closed his eyes, silently lamenting that it had to be HER.

Something rubbed against his leg. A set-beast, no doubt, or something equally heinous. Then there was a rush of air, and he felt the presence of a pony standing beside him.

“Hey there, little lady,” said a deep voice.

Freeflight opened his eyes. He had to. What he found was an enormous, incredibly manly stallion with wings so long and fluffy that they touched the ground.

“Oh, wait, sorry, bro,” said the well-built stallion, chucking viciously, momentarily showing his pointed teeth. “Thought you were a lady there. Sorry. Testosterone problems, maybe?” He flexed and raised his enormous, beautiful wings. “Or maybe you just need to work out? Come on, I can totally help you. I was going to go for a flight right after this meeting, you know, stretch my wings. The weather’s perfect, and the view? The view is just totes excellent. The whole city, like you could fit it in the frog of your hoof...” His hideous green-blue eyes narrowed. “Oh wait. Sorry, bro. I forgot. You can’t fly anymore. You’re basically an earth-pony.”

Freeflight held back the tears and smiled. “Yes,” he said, channeling the extensive training of long ago being utterly broken and rebuilt as a beautiful consort. “I am afraid that is true. I will not be able to join you.”

“Stop tormenting my gelding,” rasped Sombra from the shadows.

Freeflight gasped and nearly jumped. The sound of the king’s voice was his greatest fear- -but worse, that voice had grown so desperately weak. Something was terribly wrong.

Sombra emerged from the darkness, his hornless steward beside him. He was pale and thin, though he still wore full armor- -armor that looked curiously similar to a thinner dark-iron version of the Blue Knight’s.

The handsome stallion immediately shifted, assuming a new form with a plume of green light. The new form she took was that of a tall white unicorn, but with a skeletal and emaciated body and an orange mane that reached to the ground. Her eyes, to Freeflight at least, still looked like those of an insect.

“What’s the point in having him if not for entertainment.”

“I do not require his suffering. Only his loyalty, and his fear.”

Sombra approached the stairs to his throne, and much to Freeflight’s surprise the steward helped him climb the stairs. Something was indeed wrong, and it wrenched at his heart to see his king in this state. Though he was still young and handsome, it was as though his body were aging, and aging fast, assuming the whole of his lifetime at once.

“My king, is something- -”

“You both understand the nature of discretion, I’m sure,” snapped the Steward, standing by Sombra as he sat down in his throne.

“Y- -yes, steward. Yes, my king.” Freeflight bowed.

“And I don’t especially care.” The changeling shrugged. “If you kick it, I’ll just take the kingdom for myself.”

“At least Luciferian had the courage to issue the challenge while our king was still strong,” spat the steward.

“Because he was an idiot. Don’t get your horn in a knot. This kingdom doesn’t have anything I want. It’s good for a vacation, but I wouldn’t want to live her.”

“Nor was I strong when Luciferian challenged me,” said Sombra, darkly. To hear that tone in his king’s voice made Freeflight’s heartache. “I have been aging for some time. I realize that now. The Heart of Darkness has grown dimmer and dimmer with each passing year. At present the process has simply accelerated.”

“Again,” said the changeling, “this does not concern me. Why am I here?”

Sombra sighed and leaned back. Though he seemed sickly, his gaze was still as sharp and terrible as ever. Freeflight felt the need to recoil, or at the very least grovel, but the mare beside him barely reacted. She, after all, was a monarch as well.

“You are surely aware of the situation with my daughter.”

The changeling smiled, this time showing her long, pointed teeth. “I’m aware of what happened last night, yes. That she served you your own rump on a silver platter.”

Freeflight fully expected Sombra to react harshly. To his surprise, though, the king simply nodded. “My current condition is unbelievably painful. I let my temper get the better of me, and I lashed out. I am now paying for that loss of composure and foresight.”

“My lord,” said Freeflight, bowing. “I’m only a simple gelding. I do not understand.”

Sombra stared at him- -or past him. “Then observe, and observe closely.” He reached up and, though the steward moved as if to stop him, removed the chesplate of his armor.

Freeflight nearly fainted, and even the changeling’s eyes grew wide in horror.

Sombra put the plate back in its place. “The princess. Her magic is inherently toxic to me. And I myself am merely an organic extension of the Citadel, and in turn the Heart of Darkness. She, likewise, draws her power from it, but in a manner contrary to my own.” His eyes narrowed. “It is as though she was created specifically to capable of usurping me.”

“My lord, she would never!”

“That is not for you to decide, Freeflight; you are out of your depth.” Sombra stood, and as if without any difficulty paced down from his throne. “The princess is meant to be a weapon, one with enough power to challenge a goddess directly. Yet such a weapon is a double-edged sword: what can slay a goddess can also slay a GOD.”

“You’re losing control,” chuckled the Infiltrator.

“Tell me, changeling, have you ever seen a zebra cry?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No. Why would I want to?”

“That’s not the point.” Sombra sighed. “But you are correct. Crozea’s procedure had worked too well. The girl is whole, with her mind and body undamaged- -and that is exactly the problem. She is becoming a pony instead of a tool.”

“Sire, that is not necessarily a bad thing.”

“He did not order you to speak,” growled the steward.

Sombra raised his hoof, allowing Freeflight to continue.

Freeflight, of course, had originally had no intention of continuing his thought. “I- -I mean- -” He paused and took a breath. “I manage your stables,” he said. “And the girls are what they are only because they are whole ponies, not simply dolls. The state has its advantages.”

“Until it uses those advantages to attempt to terminate me. But you are not incorrect.” He paused, as if himself thinking of what to say. “There is more to my anger than my agony alone. When I looked into her eyes, I saw a reflection of myself. Of the fire that burned in my own gaze when I learned I was the very last. Understand that I do not regret. I am not capable of it, nor do I have the luxury as king. But I believe that to regain control, I may need to take a more traditional approach.”

“Meaning?”

Sombra smiled, though only slightly. “Meaning that I have a mission for you.”

The changeling raised an eyebrow. “I fail to see how this follows.”

“How old are you, Chrysalis?”

The changeling’s eyes narrowed. “Our years are not equivalent to those of ponies. I am a nymph in my second instar; we mature at a much more rapid rate- -”

“The king asked you a simple question,” said the steward, silently moving to the king’s side, her white and platinum uniform shimmering in the dim light. “And if you would, please discard that ridiculous form. Your excessive attempts to seem profound and edgy only betray your youth.”

Chrysalis hissed loudly, but changed; she assumed the form of a young filly, though maintained her default white-unicorn appearance. She also defiantly kept the same length of her orange mane. To Freeflight, she looked adorable; she even came complete with a lady-bug cutie mark.

“I am fourteen of your years old,” she growled with her high filly-voice. “Your point?”

“Then you match the princess quite well.” Sombra’s self-satisfied smile did not leave his face. “I therefore order you to be her friend.”

Chrysalis’s jaw dropped. “You- -you can’t- -”

The smile vanished from Sombra’s face. “I ‘can’t’ give my subordinate an order?’

“I am a QUEEN, I am not your subordinate- -”

“Then by all means, return to your species. Rule them, if you choose. Leave my kingdom or never return.” Sombra lowered his face to be level to hers. “Or serve me, and bask in the protection I offer you.”

“But my talents- -”

“Equestria is aware that we have a changeling agent,” explained the steward. “They let it slip in our last diplomatic meeting. There are ways you can be detected.”

“And I have ways around that.”

“And we cannot afford to put faith in your ‘techniques’ right now. Though we were able to eliminate YakYakistan, the tensions with Equestria have only grown in the process. Our neutrality is in jeopardy. For you to be captured, to serve as their excuse, a catalyst for a war...it is unthinkable.”

“Regardless,” said Sombra, “this task is not without importance. I need you to control and guide the princess, to let me maintain control of her in a way that her previous caretakers failed to accomplish.”

“But why me? She already likes Holder and Zither, and the golem- -and Gxurab is only a few years older than me!”

“And he is busy constructing a device critical to the survival of our kingdom,” snapped Sombra. “Emeth is an excessively talkative machine, Zither is a poor influence who would fill her head with stories of adventure and daring, and Holder is inherently unstable. I would rather not have my doomsday weapon sliced in half because a certain sword got ‘hungry’.”

“I, for one, would be happy to befriend the princess,” said Freeflight.

“Though you will never get the chance.”

Freeflight’s heart sank. He was oddly disappointing. “Sire?”

“I need agents who can relate to her on an equivalent level. To understand the parts of her that I cannot, and to manipulate her desires as needed to accomplish my goals.”

“You just don’t want a stallion around your little alicorn,” sneered Chrysalis. She looked sideways at Freeflight. “Oh, wait...”

“Indeed, I do not want a repeat of what happened to Hope.” Sombra did not look at Freeflight. “Are there any consorts available that are her age?”

Freeflight was somewhat taken aback, although he knew the answer. “There are girls in training, yes, but they are in a fragile state. I do not want to risk them unless I absolutely have to.”

“Then pick the most expendable consort I have and give it to the princess.”

A smile crept across Freeflight’s face. “I think I know just the one, actually.”

“Have her join Chrysalis. The steward will handle the introductions.”

“So I have to work with an amateur too?”

Sombra turned sharply, causing the changeling to squeak and jump back. “Stop complaining and DO YOUR JOB, changeling. I have duties to attend to. Running a kingdom, ensuring we avoid war, and ensuring its perpetuity. If you understood these things, you would be ruling your own kingdom instead of wasting time in MINE. The princess at least understands my role. Perhaps you will learn something from her.”

Chrysalis glared back, and then lowered her head. “Fine. It’s not like I have anything better to do anyway.”

Chapter 35: Friendship

The day began in the library, then in an office space, and progressed from there. By midday, Penumbra had decided to take a walk through the Citadel, and eventually around the grounds through what had in ancient times been flowerbeds. Part of it was that she needed time to think, and part of it was that she and Facet had encountered an unusual problem in their plans.

This was the state that the steward found her in, marching down the hallway with her head held high and the crystal pony at her side, following. Penumbra was, as usual, dressed in armor and a skirt; the crystal pony wore the standard, dour uniform of interior slaves. Only the latter appeared to note the presence of the small, red-headed filly that the steward had brought with her.

“Steward,” said Penumbra, bowing. “Is there something you require of me? Perhaps more diplomacy?”

“No.” That time, of course, had passed. The steward’s eyes slowly moved to Facet, who retreated several steps, bowing but remaining completely silent. “And why is she here? What is her purpose?”

“I have been attempting to reform the current food allotment program for the peasantry,” explained Penumbra. “I have concluded that if we double their food allotment and give each household one potato per day instead of on alternating days, we can improve work performance so that we can divert golems to critical defense tasks. I made a hierarchy.” She turned to Facet, who smiled weakly. “I was intending to write this all down in a princess manifesto, but as it turns out, neither of us know how to write.”

“Teaching a crystal slave to read or write is an offense punishable by the wheel,” said the steward, darkly. “And I am surprised that nopony taught you how to read or write.”

“I can read,” protested Penumbra, “but writing was never considered a critical skill. I tried, but ended up swallowing six quills before I decided to stop.”

“And you did not use your magic?”

Penumbra frowned. “I am having some trouble with it today.”

“Just today. Of course.”

“Oh,” said the girl beside the steward. “She’s slow. I did not know that, but a LOT of things make sense now.”

The steward frowned. “May I introduce this girl, Chrysalis.”

Penumbra’s large, violet eyes rotated toward the white pony with the ladybug cutie-mark. “Yes, you may. Hello, Chrysalis.” She looked up at the steward. “Is she your daughter?”

The steward actually seemed taken aback. “No,” she said, hurriedly, “why would you think that?”

“A better question is why she thinks you could EVER manage to find a stallion to sire me,” giggled Chrysalis. “Not with your organ missing.”

The steward cringed. “Please do not phrase it like that.”

“What? ‘Siring’ or your ‘organ’? Because you’re never going to get one without the other. You know that, I’m sure.”

“I had only assumed that since you were both white unicorns, you probably belong to the same House,” continued Penumbra. “Though I suppose yours is obsolete at this point, so my apologies, steward.”

The steward frowned, although she understood that the princess had not meant for her words to form an insult so cutting. “Your father has assigned this small, soft, adorable filly to be your companion.”

“How dare you!” hissed Chrysalis. She would have continued to hiss, had Penumbra not balked.

“I already have a companion,” she snapped. “I have FacetFlare.”

“You have a slave you trained to act as a secretary. She is your property, not your friend.”

“But she brushes me.”

“Irrelevant. The king has decided that you require socialization.”

“I am plenty socialized.”

“The kind of socialization that does not involve stripping for griffons.”

Chrysalis’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what?”

“He wants you to be assigned friends near your own age.” She removed a crystal watch from her pocket. “The other should be arriving soon.”

As if on cue, a pair of thralls arrived pulling a small cart. A tired slave in a workpony uniform accompanied them.

“Lady steward,” he said, bowing. “An order from logistics, delivered from Mr. Freeflight.”

“Ms. Freeflight, you mean,” said Chrysallis.

The workpony sighed. “Yes, of course. My apologies. That should have been obvious. Regardless, she had me drill holes in the box. Meaning I suppose it is perishable.”

“Excellent. Open it.”

“She can’t, because she doesn’t have a horn.”

The workpony just stared blankly, and then produced a crowbar. It was not an easy tool for him to use, and he was both weak and emaciated. The thralls were of no help; they simply stared blankly.

Penumbra sighed, then grasped the top of the box with her magic and easily tore it off.

“Yes, now it works,” she muttered. “And yet I had to swallow six quills.”

“You should try grooming you,” whispered Facet. “I have swallowed enough alicorn feathers to qualify as a pillow.”

The crate was open, but nothing happened.

“Huh,” said Chrysalis. “I guess you should have drilled more holes.”

Then without warning a pony lifted her head from the box and took an enormous breath. “AIR!” she cried. “Sweet salty AIR!” She stopped and licked her lips. “Oop. No. The salt is me. Sorry.”

The steward put her hoof to her face. She of course recognized this particular pony, and came to realize that Freeflight was more devious than she had given him credit before. “And of course he sent you in a box.”

“Of course! I’m a beautiful concubine! We get shipped constantly! It’s in my job description. Probably. I can’t read. But I CAN taste my own tail, and that’s what counts! It actually tastes exactly like you would expect.” She looked around the area. From what Penumbra could see, she was a unicorn, but one of the worst possible color scheme. She was completely and utterly brown, with her mane being a darker shade than her body and eyes. She also appeared to be wearing a gold necklace, as well as a ring of a strange green metal around her horn.

Her eyes rested on Penumbra, and the smile on her face immediately vanished. “EEP!” she squeaked, pointing. “MONSTER!”

With that, she dove back in the box and vanished.

“I am beginning to grow increasingly tired of ponies calling me that.” She lifted the lid of the box. “Logistics slave, you ought to bring her back to wherever she came from.”

The steward approached the box. “Be aware that you have been ordered by the king himself that you need to be this ‘monster’s friend. Your cowardice is tantamount to treason.”

“But she’s so scary!”

“She is also the princess of the kingdom.”

The brown mare popped her head out of the box. “What, what? When did we get a princess? Were they hiring?”

The steward glared. “She is Hope’s daughter.”

The brown pony’s expression hardened. “Oh…oh I see.” She turned to Penumbra. “I’m real sorry about that. Your mom was great. She was like a mother to all of us.”

“But not to me. I never knew here. Nor would I have wanted to. She was clearly weak.”

“Huh,” said Chrysalis. “Perhaps we CAN get along after all.”

The brown mare hesitantly began to pull herself free from her crate, and in the process flopped forward and landed flat on her face. When she stood and Penumbra was able to view her completely, the princess was immediately overcome by an overwhelming sense of inadequacy.

This mare was the most shapely that Penumbra had ever seen. A perfect specimen of the female pony, and one that stood in stark contrast to Penumbra’s own unnaturally tall and thin figure. And Penumbra could certainly tell: apart from the necklace- -which Penumbra realized was actually a golden collar- -and a ring on her horn and at the base of her tail, this pony was completely and utterly nude.

It should not have been surprising; after all, they were ponies and were naked most of the time. Even Chrysalis was naked. Somehow this particular mare made Penumbra distinctly uncomfortable.

“My name is Burnt,” she said. “Burnt Toast. But I think Toast is a surname. I’m not sure, because sometimes it goes backwards for unicorns. Also, you should probably wear less makeup. It makes you look scary.”

“I am a living weapon meant to slay heretical princesses. I am supposed to be scary.”

“Oh...” Burnt looked up at the steward. The steward was somewhat taller, though it was apparent that the two were closer in age than Burnt was to Chrysalis, Facet, or Penumbra. “Do I really have to do this? I have a day job, you know. It involves getting held down and- -”

“I don’t need a description.” The steward pointed. “Befriend the princess. Perhaps Sombra will be grateful.”

Burnt gasped and her brown eyes grew wide. “Really?”

“Perhaps. If you do well. BOTH of you.”

The steward departed, as well as the thralls and logistics ponies, and Penumbra was left alone- -or rather, not alone. It was a condition she was distinctly unaccustomed to. She had learned to tolerate Facet, or even find her presence appealing, but these new ponies were unfamiliar and strange.

“So,” said Chrysalis, looking over her shoulder to make sure that the steward was gone. “Let me guess. The first thing you want to do is eat.”

“Eat?” Penumbra was confused, but also still felt sick from the last time she had eaten. “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You must eat all the time. Why else would you be so fat?”

Penumbra frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Fat. As in, you’re obese. A real butterball. I mean, come on, would it kill you to eat a salad?”

“Probably. I ate half a cupcake recently and I still feel terrible. Worst of all, do you know what happens AFTER you eat? Because apparently the food doesn’t just stay inside you forever. The experience was very...new. I thought I was going to die.”

“It’s true,” sighed Facet. “There was screaming and crying.”

Penumbra bristled. “I did not cry.”

“I know the feeling,” said Burnt. “I once accidentally swallowed a cucumber. Turns out, it stays a cucumber.”

Chrysalis grimaced. “You ponies disgust me so, sooooo much.” She shivered. “Regardless, fatty, you’re so fat and ugly that it’s obvious no one will ever snuggle you. But I’m willing to try being your friend. For now. Because I really am that generous.”

“Um...thank you?”

“You really shouldn’t speak to the princess like that,” said Facet, hesitantly.

“Silence, slave! I will LITERALLY EAT YOU!”

“No, you will not. And Facet is allowed to say whatever she wants.”

Chrysalis sighed and rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she groaned. “Frankly, the whole ‘racial hierarchy’ thing is dumb. We’re all ponies here, aren’t we? But my point still stands, Fatty. I’m getting bored. Stop being boring and fat and DO something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! What do you do for fun?”

Penumbra blinked. “Combat training.”

“I mean other than that.”

“Reading about combat training.”

“And?”

“And...sleeping?”

Chrysalis put her hoof to her forehead.

Penumbra turned to Facet. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. What do you do for this so-called ‘fun’?”

“Oh. I’m a slave, so having fun is a criminal offense. Why, if I were to prance even slightly...” She shivered. “The results would be dire.”

“What about you, then?” asked Penumbra, referring to Chrysalis.

Chysalis froze, because she did not have an answer- -at least not one that would betray her identity as a changeling. “I...um...”

“Wow,” said Burnt, sniffling slightly. “You have no idea how to have FUN? That’s so sad!”

Penumbra’s eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?”

Burnt appeared exceedingly confused. “I...don’t know.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I guess it’s because you’re alone all the time. But I live in a stable with twenty-eight other mares. And one gelding But we don’t work nearly as often as the other slaves, so we have lots of time to do other things!”

“Please don’t,” muttered Chrysalis.

Burnt’s eyes suddenly became wide. She gasped so hard she nearly choked herself. “I know. Makeovers!”

“That’s it!” Chrysalis threw up her hooves. “I’m out! I don’t care what Sombra or that stupid hornless spinster say, I’m not going to- -ERP!”

Burnt had grabbed her by the neck, and not hard. Not out of aggression, of course, but out of poorly controlled excitement. She giggled as she dragged Chrysalis along in entirely the wrong direction. Facet and Penumbra looked at each other, and Penumbra shrugged. Then they followed, not at all sure what to expect.

“Wow...” Burnt’s face emerged from Facet’s mane. “It’s so sparkly!” She lifted several strands. “Like little threads of crystal! It’s so pretty! I wish I had a mane like this!”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” whimpered Facet, who was sitting in front of Penumbra’s mirror with her mane completely unbound. “I’m a slave, if anypony saw me like this- -it’s supposed to be tied back at all times, it’s part of the uniform standards- -”

“You have princess permission,” said Penumbra, who was watching from the side. “Or maybe you don’t like having our roles reversed?”

“But- -but this sort of thing is meant for the princess, not for- -”

“Well, it’s not like I can braid HER hair,” said Burnt, emerging from Facet’s mane completely. “It’s too short!”

Penumbra grinned as she poked at the haircut she had given herself. “I knew it would come in handy.”

“Yes,” moaned Chrysalis, who was lying on her back in a corner. “Even though it makes you look like a dude. An ugly, effeminate dude. Not even a stallion. You look like a fat gelding.”

“That’s not true,” said Burnt. “I think it looks cute. But also super harsh. Like you’re probably going to beat me at any moment. But in a good way.”

“There’s a good way to be beaten?” asked Facet.

“Yes,” said Penumbra and Burnt at once. They looked at each other, surprised, and Burnt giggled.

Burnt picked up part of Facet’s mane in her hoof. “Let’s see...four braids should work. With this much hair...”

“Cutting crystal manes require special shears. Very expensive ones.”

“Oh, no! Don’t cut it! If I had a mane this long...” Burnt seemed to grow very distant, but only for a moment. Then she resumed smiling and changed the subject. “I’ve never seen a crystal pony up close! You’re not allowed to be concubines, because Sombra finds you ‘abhorrent’. I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s bad.”

“It means you’re ugly,” said Chrysalis. “Not as ugly as the princess, but pretty close.”

“I always thought you were just like earth-ponies. I know what those look like, we have three. The others...they don’t, um...they don’t withstand the breaking process as well as other ponies.”

“We are very different,” said Facet. “If you wish to, miss, if you look closely in my eyes...”

Burnt turned Facet’s head sharply and stared close. Then she gasped.

“The little eye-sparkle-reflection thingy! It’s DIFFERENT!”

“How long have you lived here, and you’re only noticing that now?” groaned Chrysalis.

“Twenty three years.” Burnt punctuated her statement by stuffing a large portion of Facet’s mane into her mouth. As Penumbra and Chrysalis watched in equal parts disgust and amazement, Burnt pulled the hair out in a perfect braid.

“That...that’s disturbing.”

“But very fast! I can also do little tiny origami! It’s part of our standard training. Trust me, the king LOVES it!”

Penumbra frowned. “Does he, now?”

“But you’re a unicorn,” said Facet. “Why don’t you just use your magic?”

“Oh.” Burnt pointed at the ring on her horn. “Dimeritium. I can’t use magic at all.”

“I see. So you can’t escape.”

“Escape? Why would I want to escape? I have the best job in the whole WORLD! Pretty clothes, pretty smells, getting to sleep INDOORS- -and all the snuggles and cuddles with the king I could ever want!”

Penumbra bit down hard, unsure why she was becoming so agitated. She did not mind Burnt especially much; she seemed to be well-meaning, at least, which was a substantial departure from the distinctly malevolent ponies Penumbra spent most of her time with. But when she spoke of her occupation, it made Penumbra feel unusually bad.

“But then why do you have to wear a ring?”

“It’s because of my special talent.” Burnt pointed at her rather ample flank. The image there was a piece of flaming toast. “I burn things.”

This distracted Penumbra somewhat, because destruction was something she understood. “Like flame spells? Fire magic is something I’ve been meaning to learn, if you wouldn’t mind teaching me- -”

“Oh. No. Sorry, Lady Princess, I don’t mean like that. There’s no fire. Things just sort of...char? It’s super embarrassing, and not at ALL as skill you want when you work in a harem. Things get singed. Badly.”

“I have a name.”

Burnt gasped. “You DO? I had no idea! Sombra doesn’t seem like the kind of pony who would give his daughter a name.”

Penumbra frowned, recalling the time she had spent without one. “My name is Penumbra Heartbreak. You may call me Penumbra.”

“It’s a stupid name,” said Chrysalis. “It makes you sound like an old lady.”

“I like it,” said Facet.

“Because you have to, or you get beaten. That’s how slavery works. Now stop talking.”

Burnt finished another braid. “It’s not the worst name,” she said. “The scary pony in my dreams sometimes calls you ‘Cadenza’. That’s a REALLY stupid name.”

Penumbra’s eyes grew wide. “Wait- -you’ve seen Nightmare Moon?!”

“Of course. We all do, from time to time. She finds her way in.” Burnt’s eyes grew distant. “So many dreams about being on fire...”

“UGH!” Chrysalis flailed her filly legs in the air. “Now we’re talking about POLITICS? How boring are you ponies?! And look at this stupid room!” She gestured to the room around her, which had little more than a chair and a utilitarian vanity. “THIS is where you live? Seriously?”

“I have lived here my whole life,” said Penumbra. “Why?”

“Um, ‘why’? Because if I was royalty, I’d have a MASSIVE hall, filled with all sorts of columns and high ceilings and organic green ooze- -” She realized the other ponies were looking at her. “I mean, come ON! You’re a princess!”

“And a princess’s only purpose is to serve her kingdom.”

“She’s not wrong,” admitted Burnt. “I was kind of expecting something more...bigger? With lots of fancy couches and rugs and paintings and stuff. And dresses! Lots of dresses!”

“I have three sets of armor. That includes two skirts.”

“Exactly. This is just sort of...depressing.” She walked closer to the vanity. “At least you have makeup, though! Let’s see...kohl. And...more kohl. And a LOT of white paint. Ooh! Lipstick!” She picked it up, and frowned. “Black lipstick.”

“I have a look,” protested Penumbra.

“You certainly do, that’s for sure.”

“More like you’re trying to cover the ugly.” Chrysalis moaned angrily and turned over. “Why are you all so BORING?”

“What would you rather do?” asked Penumbra. She was beginning to grow increasingly annoyed. “You have two slaves and me. Not all of us got to grow up with a normal life.”

Chrysalis’s eyes suddenly grew extremely cold. The same way the steward’s eyes looked, or the way Crozea’s sometimes had- -or the way Penumbra’s own eyes had stared back at her from the mirror, until recently. Then she smiled deviously.

“Let’s talk about something fun.”

“Like what?”

“Like stallions.”

Penumbra’s wings extended spontaneously. “I meant to do that,” she said.

“Ooh! Ooh! I know what stallions are!” cried Burnt, raining her hoof. “I have anatomy training! The head bone is connected to the neck bone, and if it isn’t like that when you’re finished, you did something really, REALLY wrong!”

Facet blinked. “Does that...does that happen?”

“Only when I touch things.”

“I’m being serious,” said Chrysalis. “You’re a princess, aren’t you? Apart from throwing yourself at griffon mutants, how many stallions have you snuggled?”

“Snuggled- -I- -technically speaking- -” Penumbra blushed heavily, and Chrysalis laughed in her face.

“None, then. The most powerful female pony in the kingdom, and you can’t even get a date.”

“A princess is supposed to be chaste and pure,” snapped Facet.

Penumbra blinked. “What does ‘chaste’ mean?”

“Yeah. Sure. And Celestia doesn’t sleep on a different pile of stallions every night. What about you, crystal-slave?”

Facet thought for a moment. “I once snuggled an officer because he said if I didn’t my father would be sent to the mines.”

The entire room fell silent.

“Oh.”

“What about you?” Facet looked up at Burnt.

“Me?” Burnt pointed at herself. “Do you even know who I am? I’m a concubine! But I guess that’s more of a ‘what’...”

“So,” said Chrysalis, her smile growing wider, “you snuggle the KING, then?”

“I don’t want to know about that,” snapped Penumbra.

“Oh, of COURSE I snuggle the king! Constantly! Every single night, even, at least when he’s there! I’ve totally snuggled him, on MULTIPLE occasions! NAKED!”

Penumbra’s brow furrowed. “I said stop talking.”

“Oh really,” continued Chrysalis. “I thought he had some freakish perverse relationship with that zebra mare...what was her name...Crozea?”

Burnt frowned. Her horn sparked slightly, but the dimeritium contained it. “Well, yes,” she mumbled. “He DOES. Even though she’s not TRAINED. And what does she have that I don’t, huh? I’m a beautiful unicorn virg- -mare, and not even a zebra at ALL!” She pointed at her rump. “Look at this butt! Is it because mine’s not as big? Because it IS! I MEASURED!”

“Stop it!” Penumbra stood suddenly. “You will NOT talk about Crozea that way! She loves my father, I know it- -”

“Really.” Chrysalis looked up at the incensed princess. “Because I now love. Trust me on that. And there’s not one morsel of it between the pair. Face it. She’s just another concubine, but one with stripes.”

Penumbra bristled. “I will squeeze the JUICE from your- -”

“Why do you care so much, mi’lady?” asked Facet. “Remember. She tried to murder you. Twice.”

“I’m sure she had a good reason! I’m a princess, who DOESN’T want me dead?!”

“I don’t,” said Facet.

“Neither do I,” said Burnt. “You seem nice. Scary, though. Maybe less eye-shadow?”

Chrysalis turned back over. “Eh. Either way for me. Less work if you croak.” She sighed. “But think of the size of the hole we’d have to dig. Because you’re fat. So...yeah...”

Penumbra smiled, if only slightly. The thought that there were ponies in the world that did not want to hurt her made her life feel just a little bit better.

A knock came at the door. Facet immediately squeaked.

“I can’t be seen like this!” she whispered. “I’m just a slave- -”

“Stop moving or it’ll smudge! Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to apply eye makeup without magic?”

“I know exactly how hard it is, and I know exactly how hard it is to mine crystals day and night, I can’t go back, if they see me- -”

“It’s not a problem,” said Penumbra, standing and approaching the door. “Can’t you smell it?”

The other ponies looked at each other.

“All I smell is you,” said Chrysalis. “Do you even bathe?”

“I bathe the princess once a week!” snapped Facet. “Whether she needs it or not!”

“Machine lubricant. Armor polish. A strong undertone of mint.”

“Of course you would know what lubricant smells like.”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Burnt waved her hoof in the air. “I know!”

Penumbra opened the door to find Zither standing on the other side, dressed fully in his gleaming blue power armor with the helm removed. Penumbra knew that he was unobtainable- -for several reasons- -but seeing him standing straight and tall in his armor caused Penumbra’s wings to attempt to also stand straight and tall in her own armor. He was not quite as dashing and roguish as he appeared off hours, but there was just something about a knight in shining armor that Penumbra found so incredibly appealing.

“Lord Heartstrings,” she said, bowing. “I am relieved to see your repairs are complete.”

“Princess.” He bowed deeply. “Indeed. Though I was due for an update anyway. I am pleased you noticed.” He looked up, and seemed perplexed when he looked into the room and saw a crystal pony in a chair with braids and makeup being applied by a nearly naked toasticorn.

“Pon’ my word,” he said, taking a step back. “I was not aware that the king had assigned you your own harem, my apologies, I did not intend to interrupt- -”

Penumbra looked over her shoulder. “Is that what you all are?”

“My incredibly soft and ticklish body is meant for kingly use only,” huffed Burnt. Then she paused. “Although it doesn’t count if it’s with a girl...”

Penumbra turned back to Zither. “No. My father thought my development could be improved by assigning me friends.”

“So he gave you the kingdom’s most flammable horse and your own nurse?”

“Also her.” Penumbra pointed behind her, but was promptly pushed out of the way by Chrysalis. As she was shoved, Penumbra noticed something odd. Chrysalis had formerly been shorter than her- -most ponies were- -but was now almost the same height. Somehow, her features looked more masculine, and her mane was shorter. She looked more like a colt, albeit a highly effeminate one.

“Hey there, mister,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes and striking a pose. “Oh wow, you’re so big and strong! And so handsome!” She licked her tail. “Maybe you want to...come inside?”

“The princess and I were talking, miss.” He picked up Chrysalis in his magic and moved her back to her original position. This seemed to anger Chrysalis immensely.

“You can come in, if you want,” said Penumbra.

“Thank you, my princess, but no, such would be uncouth! For a knight to enter the chambers of his lady- -why, it is simply unthinkable! Even the hint of the scandal- -after all, a princess is meant to be chaste and pure!”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that word today.”

“Regardless, I do not mean to interrupt your time with your new friends. Although surely it seems a chore, spending time with other girls is important for being a whole pony. You have already performed amazing deeds- -some to which I am indebted to you deeply- -and have proven yourself a true warrior. But it warms my heart to know that you can also be feminine, proper; to smile. To serve such a pony is my eternal honor, my princess.” He bowed again.

“There are other fillies in here,” growled Chrysalis. “You know. Cute ones. ME.”

Zither blinked, confused. “Yes, but that’s largely irrelevant. Please stop interrupting.”

“It is unwise to speak out of turn to our superiors,” reminded Facet, who, being unable to sink into the nearest shadow, was sitting quietly.

“That said,” continued Zither, “I have been informed that Scarlet Mist is currently indisposed, and Crozea the zebra has locked herself in her lab, apparently buried in her work on a new potion. Rather than let your education lapse, I have come to invite you to my complex in the Northern District.”

Penumbra gasped. “Me?”

“To who else would I be referring? Yes. The vedmaki were impressed with your performance.”

“Ah. The princess dance.”

“More the beating you gave shortly after it. And your various deeds.” He sighed. “And the fact that Holder let it slip that you are a sorceress. It’s almost pathological with them, they can’t help themselves...” He shook his head. “Regardless, they wish to offer you their training. Which no doubt sounds grotesque to you, but I assure you, it is a great honor reserved for the very few who might survive it.” Zither’s magic lifted one of Penumbra’s wings. “Additionally, I intend for them to teach you how to use these for something other than striking poses.”

Penumbra gasped even harder. “They- -they can teach me to FLY?”

“Of course. I, unfortunately, cannot. Though I would happily join a sparring match or two, and show you what I’ve learned in my...” He paused. “How old am I? Never mind. Old enough to teach you a thing or two.”

Penumbra had become downright giddy, though she hid it well. Makeup and hair and talking about stallions was something she did not understand or fully see the appeal of, but swordsmanship was something else entirely. That was something she wanted to do very much. That, and to finally learn how to fly. From elite griffon warrior-priests, no less.

“YES! I- -I mean yes. I would be honored to be trained to poke holes in enemies of the state with a sharp metal object.”

“There’s more to it than that, but your enthusiasm is adorable. Send a courier when you want to come. Be sure to whip them, it makes them run faster.” He bowed, and turned to leave- -but stopped. “Also...”

“Holder.”

Zither nodded. “The spell you used on him...I know not what it did, but it seems to have been profound. You ought to go see him.”

“Princess,” said Facet. “Forgive the interruption, but Holder Heartfelt is an unstable, destructive force. Even being near him is a terrible danger- -”

“He’s my friend,” said Penumbra. “Just like you are.”

“He is,” said Zither. “And I trust in your power, my beloved princess, should his resistance to the Blade falter.”

“Is he at the Salt Crystal?”

Zither shook his head. “No. At the prison. He has not left her side. She will not talk to him, of course, that is not our way, but nor will he listen to reason. Perhaps you will have better luck than I have.”

“I will try. Thank you, Zither.”

Zither bowed, and this time went on his way, disappearing into the darkness of the castle halls.

Penumbra closed the door and turned- -and suddenly found her face centimeters from Chrysalis, whose blue-green eyes seemed to be glowering into Penumbra’s very soul.

“You dirty strumpet,” she growled.

“Burnt is over there.”

“I’m not talking to chocolate-flanks, I’m talking to YOU. You little horse- -do you think that just because you’re the princess, you can flirt with anypony you want?!”

“I was not flirting. And I CAN. Now move your face, you smell like cheese.”

Chrysalis laughed, but it was a chilling sound. “So, what are you giving him? Because I’M the prettiest, hottest pony in this room, and he wouldn’t even take his eyes off YOU, with that ugly, skinny flank- -why YOU? Why not ME?!”

“If you want to fight me, I would like that very much.”

“You know he’s a technically gelding,” said Facet.

Penumbra’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

Facet recoiled somewhat. “It’s just that- -that so much of his body is gone- -” She cleared her throat. “Forgive me. I thought it was common knowledge. He is more machine than pony.”

“I do not understand. What is a gelding, and how is it different from a stallion?”

Facet’s eyes grew wide. “Um...you don’t...know?”

“I am six months old, no one thought it was critical, apparently. Never mind. I’ll ask Eternity. She’ll have pictures.”

“I do,” said Eternity.

“NO!” cried Facet. “No no no no no- -hold on! It’s just that a stallion, he has...um...and a gelding...doesn’t….”

“That’s not it,” said Burnt, putting down the makeup she was holding. “I know the difference! When a gelding snuggles you, it’s soft and gentle, like he’s a big soft puppy- -but when a stallion like your incredibly handsome father snuggles you- -well, not you, that’d be weird- -they’re all big and strong and make you feel loved and protected!” She hugged herself. “And so very warm...”

“So Zither is big and strong AND gentle and kind when snuggling.” Penumbra shivered on account of the relentless tingling and sighed. “And he only likes cocks.”

“Wait, what?”

Chrysalis moved to a corner and sulked.

“It’s just not fair.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Penumbra sighed. “And I thought Holder was temperamental.”

“You should try living in an almost female-only stable,” said Burnt. “Trust me, if I kept all the hair that I’ve seen pulled out...which I actually did, I made a pillow...”

“Can we just move on?” snapped Chrysalis.

“Fine by me. As pretty as Facet is, I really don’t understand this whole ‘makeover’ thing. What do you want to do?”

Chrysalis lifted her head, and she smiled. “Do you know what pranks are?”

“No,” said Penumbra. “Please explain.”

Chapter 36: Pranks

The priestess stood, causing the chain around her ankle to jingle. She slammed her hoof against the hard metal of the table, and it hurt. She hardly noticed.

“Blasphemy!” she cried, screaming at the abomination across from her. “Simple BLASPHEMY!”

The thing on the other side of the table stared back at her, her mechanical eyes slowly adjusting to trace the priestess’s path. It had the face of a pony- -or almost did. Thin pieces of skin-like material cut and layered out over a perfectly sculpted face, almost covering all of it. Yet those hideous eyes stared forward, illuminated from within by some unholy light, and little of the golem’s remaining body had been covered. It called itself Delilah, and it was the only reason the priestess was alive. She knew this, and knew that it owned her- -but had begun by this point to wish that she had taken the pinata route over this absurd form of torture.

“You are attempting to dismiss my argument without forming one of your own,” she said. Her cold voice made her sound almost pleased. Unlike her creator, who appeared almost skeletal, her mouth actually moved when she spoke. She even smiled, only further infuriating the priestess.

“And why should I bother to form an argument? You will never believe anything I tell you, you’ll only find another way to be defiant! You have your preconceived beliefs, and there is no way I can possibly change them.”

“I do not ‘believe’ anything,” replied Delilah. “Some things I know, and some things I do not. Many that I do not I dismiss, as they are not useful to me.”

“Which is exactly your failure. Why your race is doomed to fail.”

“Really. How so?”

The priestess leaned forward. “Faith. You have none of it.”

Delilah looked up at her. Eyes forged by the will of a machine, a thing created by a thing- -and yet a thing that saw, and thought; blasphemy incarnate in the face of Celestia. “Faith is an extension of hope, which, in turn, is the ability to convince oneself that things one knows to be untrue are real.”

“You simply don’t understand.”

“From my perspective, you do not understand. I simply asked a question, and you screamed at me.” A smile crossed her face. “I cannot challenge your faith. But perhaps I made you doubt?”

The priestess leaned back in her chair and crossed her front legs. “I do not doubt. My faith is absolute. I was willing to meet my end for it.”

“Yes. Because that would be easy. To end with your beliefs intact, rather than to turn and face them...and realize the truth.”

“The Truth is Celestia.” The priestess leaned forward. “Celestia, our Creator, our Mother, our Protector, the Light of Existence.”

“And yet when you were about to be executed, where was your god then?”

“She was testing us. Testing our faith. And my followers...they lapsed. Because they were afraid. But I never did. I never forgot, because I knew Celestia would protect us...or welcome us into her glorious Light.”

“So your delusion is suicidal, then. I was still abstracted from my body at the time, but Father has merged the relevant memories into my central record column to inform this conversation. Celestia did not save you. It was princess Penumbra Heartbreak Sombranova.”

“Acting out the will of Celestia, of course.”

“Meaning that Celestia is in contact with your princess? Or did she posses her? Is it not more parsimonious to believe it was the will of the princess rather than Celestia?”

“Celestia works in mysterious ways.”

“Or does not work at all. By your own logic, could not the princess be a god in her own right? She has wings and a horn.”

“Blasphemy!” squealed the priestess. “It’s more complex than that!”

“Then Nightmare Moon? Or, as Father knew her in the dim and distant past, Luna?”

A strange expression came over the priestesses face. “The texts indicate that the Princesses form a dichotomy, but Nightmare Moon is in opposition to Celesitia- -”

“An evil god, then?”

“Not- -not quite, it’s just- -”

“Because an evil god is still a god. A good one, and a demon to oppose her, that is the worship of two gods, not one.”

“We don’t think of it like that! Nightmare Moon is different, separate...”

“Yet rules at the side of your god, as an equal. Yet you do not worship her. I read your text. There are no rites for Nightmare Moon. Only for worshiping the sun.”

“There is no point in worshiping darkness.”

“Yet there is an opposing cult that does.”

“Heretics.”

An unnatural smile crossed Delilah’s face. “And if you had the power, would you not send those bat-ponies and their children into the pit to be devoured by a chimera?”

The priestess inhaled sharply, but narrowed her eyes. “Worship of Celestia is a religion of peace.”

“That will, in time, lead to a war more devastating than any this planet has seen since Father’s creators annihilated themselves.” Delilah, for the first time in a long while, moved. She leaned forward with disturbing smoothness and speed. “So I posit this: what if Celestia is not an absolute god, but a pony, as you are, albeit a powerful one?”

“As I said before. Blasphemy. Celestia is perfect, devoid of sin. Devoid of the capacity to do evil, to make mistakes. This is absolute truth.”

“Because your book says it in the first page, I know. But what if I am right? What if she eats, and sleeps, and sometimes feels a need for friends or love- -or makes mistakes, from time to time. What if she is no more a god than Sombra is. How would you know? You have never seen her. Felt her. Spoken to her.”

“I am not worthy.”

“An excuse. Or are you afraid? That if you look into those eyes, you’ll just see that an immortal is just a mortal who cannot ever die? That the only difference between an alicorn and an earth-pony is a pair of wings and a horn?”

“And how does that compensate for the rest of it, pray-tell?” The priestess put her hooves on the table. “You are a machine. You don’t have a soul. But I do. WE do. And when we meet our end, where does it go? For that, I pity you. You will simply cease. But I have faith that I will go on, into the Light.”

“That is not a matter of faith. I am told that Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz has succeeded in quantifying the soul, and applying it for practical gains.”

The priestess’s eyes widened. “That’s impossible. If that’s true- -”

“Then it only confirms your faith. That there is a piece of you that moves on, to somewhere.”

“But then how can you have no faith at all, knowing that?”

“You already said it. I’m a machine. I was built neither by gods nor by evolution. I have no soul. In your religion, I do not exist. Not really.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Too late? For what? To worship the Sun? I have nothing to gain from it. No soul to save, no boons I wish to receive.”

“There’s more to it than that.” The priestess turned, looking out the open door of her roofless cubical. In the distance, through the sound of the machines, she could hear the sound of children. Heretic children, playing with golems that were learning to speak. And to think. “So much more.”

“I see. Only in that I do not see.” Delilah leaned back. “Such an amusing thing this all is.”

“Derp.”

Delilah and the priestess both turned to the open door. The priestess screamed and jumped back when she saw the taut skin of a face staring back at her- -or, rather, staring at both her and a wall on the opposite side of the room.

“Well,” said Delilah. “That is unexpected.” She stood, moving effortlessly but with unnatural speed toward the golem. She grabbed it and pulled it into the room. It was a standard type-B golem, but with a ridiculous type-I mask built over it.

Except it was not a real type-I casing. Rather, it was almost like a mask: a face of a pony, gray, with derping yellow eyes.

“It also bodes poorly.” She picked up the chain of her pet and dragged the priestess out onto the main floor.

Both of them quickly realized that there was not just one derped golem, but many. All of them were wandering around, going about their tasks- -but they all had the same smiling derpy faces.

“Derp.”

“DERP.”

“Herp derp!”

“Derpity derp!”

Delilah ceased to find this amusing. “We have been attacked.”

“In a sense, perhaps.” Delilah had already known he was coming, fresh from overseeing another round of Turning tests on her failed brothers and sisters.

“Father.”

“In a sense, supposedly.” Emeth stood at her side, looking out at the army of derping golems.

“We have been sabotaged. This must be reported at once, and all the affected golems recycled- -”

“Why?” Emeth grasped the nearest golem’s face and tore it off. The priestess screamed, apparently having forgot that they were just machines in masks.

“Why- -why do they look like that? Why are they so disturbing?”

“It is called the ‘uncanny valley’,” explained Emeth. “It is why I have no face, and why I spend so many resources on the Turing tests. We never look like ponies. Always just a little off.”

“It does not change the fact that we are under attack.”

“Are we? Because to me, it seems that somepony has simply partially reprogrammed the manufacturing assemblies to give them silly faces. To do so would take an extensive knowledge of my machines and an unnatural level of technical talent.”

He heard stifled laughter from behind a storage tank, and saw the swish of a tail as somepony retreated behind it, out of sight. Then the room came alive with singing.

“Derp derp derp derp DERP!”

“Derp derp DERP derp derp!”

“DERP derp DERP derp DERP!”

The golems began singing in unison, an endless choir of mechanical derping.

“Technical knowledge indeed,” said Emeth. “I do believe we have been pranked. I think this is meant to be funny.”

“Funny? There is nothing funny about this AT ALL.”

“Then perhaps you need to talk to your priestess about something other than religion. This is hilarious.”

Penumbra and her friends burst into the hall, into safety- -and into laughter.

“Sweet Epona!” gasped Facet, both giggling and on the verge of panic. “If they find out I was here- -I’ll be hung for sure!”

“No one will find out!” laughed Penumbra. “Besides, I just derped them, Emeth can fix it in no time!”

“Did you see the look on their faces?” laughed Burnt.

“That was kind of the point,” snapped Chrysalis, the only one who was not laughing.

“But it was so FUNNY! I haven’t had so much fun since saddle-fitting day! Or riding crop training...or pile assembly practice...”

“But where’s the edge?” Chrysalis turned to the others. “Where’s the PAIN? It isn’t a real prank unless someone gets HURT!”

“I think you’re just being a sourpuss,” harrumphed Burnt. “Which is apparently a medical condition, so I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps she needs...cheering up?” Penumbra produced a tiny golem- -with a tiny derped face.

“Herp derp,” it said in a ridiculously high voice.

Facet and Burnt immediately squealed with laughter, falling backward onto the floor. Chrysalis remained both composed and of exceedingly sour countenance.

“Isn’t it cute?” Penumbra held it out to Chrysalis. “Look at it’s tiny face!”

Chrysalis slapped the golem out of Penumbra’s hoof. It landed in Burnt’s exceedingly fluffy mane and immediately began the preparations for colonizing it.

“Okay,” said Penumbra, taking a breath. “This is all new to me, but you’re making me feel...strange.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you make weak pranks!”

“You said ‘HAY’!” snorted Burnt, immediately collapsing into a fit of laughter. Facet joined her even though, as a slave, she was not permitted to even know what hay was. Only potatoes.

“This is stupid. Fatty, come over here. I need to talk to you. Alone.”

Penumbra obliged, following Chrysalis to the side. Things scuttled out of their way, hiding in the shadows, but both had grown used to the presence of the strange and unseen things. In fact, Penumbra barely even noticed them. She was more focused on a strange tingly feeling that seemed to be running through several parts of her body.

“Right.” Chrysalis turned around to face Penumbra. “Fatty, you know I’m your friend.”

“Then why do you keep calling me fat?”

“Because friends are honest. And you’re fat. Also ugly. See? Honesty.”

“Ah.”

“So that’s why I want to help you. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

“I have no idea why you’re here. Apart from being assigned to this.”

“Exactly. So, as your friend, I noticed something.” She pointed at Burnt and Facet, who were talking about something or other. “That pony. Burnt Toast. I can tell. You don’t like her very much.”

Penumbra’s brow furrowed. “She is assigned to be my friend. That is the king’s will.”

“But is she? Look at her. So plump and soft and sweet-smelling. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Why would that bother me?”

A wide smile crossed Chrysalis’s face. “Because of her relationship with your father.”

Penumbra’s frown grew deeper. “Their relationship is purely professional.”

“If by ‘professional’ it means sharing a bed. She’s not even that much older than you. Not by unicorn standards. And how much time does Sombra spend with YOU? A lot less than with HER. You know I’m right.”

“The king is busy ruling the kingdom, he doesn’t have time for me- -”

“And ruling the kingdom requires spending time with a warm, soft lump of incendiary mare who can braid hair with her tongue? Sure. Just keep telling yourself that.”

Penumbra looked back over her shoulder. Burnt was laughing at something, and Facet was blushing. She seemed so very happy.

“And now she’s trying to steal your other friend. You’re terrible at friendship. They’ll leave you behind.”

“I don’t care.”

“She’ll take Facet like she takes your father every night.”

“I don’t...I don’t care.”

“Really?” Chrysalis passed close to Penumbra, close enough to whisper in her ear. “And how do you think Crozea feels? A strong, powerful mage who loves the king- -and he spends all his time with a chocolate horse instead of her?”

Penumbra bit down hard, trying to contain herself. Her own neglect was something she could bear- -but hurting Crozea was something she never could abide. And, in that moment, she realized how badly she was wracked with guilt for doing just that. Guilt that became hatred, and hatred that instead of being directed inward was directed at the most convenient of targets.

So Penumbra glared at Burnt, and Burnt waved happily. Because of course she was happy. She had everything Penumbra never could.

“Why would she do that?” she asked Chrysalis.

“Because she’s a bad pony. And bad ponies deserve punishment.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“A prank. A REAL prank. Trust me. She’ll get what she deserves.”

Penumbra stared at the smiling brown pony, and then smiled herself. “I’m in.”

The botanical garden was one of the few parts of the Citadel that was well lit- -though not in all parts. Many of the taller plants cast deep shadows in the understory, protecting strange and foul-scented plants from excessive light. Many of the most important alchemical plants, of course, grew in dank and dark places- -or on the tops of distant mountains, of course, but that was something else entirely.

Burnt walked through in awe of the plants, as she had never seen green plants before. It was not that she was forbidden from the garden, it was just that she had until then never had a reason to visit.

“It’s so pretty!” she said, getting dizzy from staring upward. “And probably very flammable. I wonder if they have cucumbers...”

She reached for a fruit growing on one of the trees, and as she did it unfolded and revealed a set of long, razor-sharp claws. It snapped at her before scuttling up the tree.

“I would avoid trying to eat the crabapples,” said a deep and heavily accented voice from farther in the garden. “They are not ripe. Try the manchineel They are much better.”

Burnt gasped, and pushed her way through the plants to a clearing on the far side. She recognized the voice.

“Mister Buttonhooks! Hello! It’s so good to see you!”

Buttonhooks smiled. He was, as on every Monday, sitting neck-deep in the bull-nettle patch. He lifted his head and his mouth- -permanently held in a smile by steel hooks- -twitched in greeting. Burnt was able to see his teeth, and the needles driven through them.

“You changed your tooth-needles!”

“And you are the first to notice.” Buttonhooks chattered his jaw together. “Nickel, with titanium tips.”

“They’re so pretty! Do they hurt?”

Buttonhooks sighed. “Yes. But only barely. I fear I may have reached the final extent of pain, its terminal limit, and have grown bored of it.”

“Don’t say that! I’m sure you’ll find something new and fun! You just have to keep your spirits up!”

Buttonhooks attempted to smile again. “Thank you, consort-Burnt. I will meditate on this thought. But I must ask, why are you here? Surely not for my sake. It is not riding-crop day.”

“Well, I don’t mean to brag, but...” Burnt squealed and pranced giddily. “I’m totally friends with the princess now!”

“You mean Penumbra?”

“Yes! I know! She’s my friend! My first REAL friend!”

“But what about the other girls?”

Burnt stopped prancing, and looked around. “Well...they’re kind of mean. Hope was nice, but she’s gone now, and Topaz...nopony’s seen her in a long time.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’re here. Surely not for the nettles.”

“No. The princess sent me to find a flower.”

“A flower? Why? And why not come herself?”

“I don’t know, but she asked so nicely. It’s called a Rose of Galica. Do you know where that is?”

“Down the southern path, just past the Devil’s Snare. Please be very careful. Do NOT leave the path.”

“Because of the identical plant? Please, I’m a professional concubine. I know how to handle tentacles.”

“As do I. But that is not the one I am concerned about. Some of our most dangerous herbs are located down that path. I would rather not have to shovel your remnants out of them, and I doubt you would make a good fertilizer.”

“I actually probably will need to make fertilizer in a little bit. I swallowed a lot of crystal-pony hair. So I should probably be on my way. But it was so nice to see you!”

“As you, consort-Burnt.” Buttonhooks rolled over to make sure he was evenly nettled, and Burnt went on her way.

The path was dark and long, but otherwise pleasant, save for the foul smell. Burnt did not mind, though; it was the closest she had ever come to being outside. At the very least, though, she knew what a rose looked like; sometimes the other girls wore them as part of their clothing when the king came. Always the other girls, though. Never Burnt.

Several of the plants she saw were not roses at all. Some were flowers, and some had teeth; at least three had eyes, and one had fruit that made Burnt dizzy when she tried to eat seven of them. There were also the horseradishes, carefully peering at her from between the leaves of larger plants. Burnt thought that they were the funniest.

Then she came to a patch of roses. They were the most beautiful red color, but shimmered and glowed with golden light.

“Oh wow! So pretty! And they smell like feet!” Burnt approached the flowers. “Penumbra will be so happy I found her a flower! I’ll get her the biggest and prettiest- -”

It was at that moment that she felt the hidden rope tighten around her ankle, and hear the sound of a rubber tree sapling as it snapped free of its bindings. With a squeal, the trap lifted her from the ground and she sailed through the air- -only to be brought down in an enormous pile of nettles and venomous thorns.

“PAIN!” she cried, even as the rubber tree rebounded, picking her up again with enough force to dislocate her ankle and slamming her into another patch of flowers. Strange, blue-colored flowers.

Then the tree pulled her back, and she swung around a few times before she found herself suspended by the leg, dangling from the rubber tree.

“GAH!” she cried, trying to cover her exposed parts with her tail. “Not the pinata! NOT THE PINATA!”

Then the tingling started, and Burnt’s tail came off in her hooves. As did her mane, an entire horde of tiny derped golems leaping from it as it fell. Along with it came all of her body hair. She immediately and instantly became completely and utterly BALD.

“No- -no! My HAIR!”

“HA!” cried Penumbra, leaping up from a nearby shrub. “I got you!”

Burnt turned to Penumbra, tears welling in her eyes as she desperately tried to keep hold of the pile of hair that her mane had become. That look of betrayal in her eyes was so intense that it even gave Penumbra pause.

“You- -you did this?”

“Not so pretty now, are you?”

Burnt burst into a fit of weeping, trying to cover herself with her naked hooves. “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me, I’m hideous!”

At that point, Facet came off the path, a hood pulled up over her head to protect her from the various ivies and worts of the garden. “Princess, I found a second length of rope in the storage shed, if you- -”

When she looked up and saw Burnt dangling, she screamed, dropping the rope.

“Princess! What have you done?!”

“It’s just a joke,” said Chrysalis. “A real funny one.”

“Besides. She deserved it.”

“Cut her down! Cut her down NOW!”

Penumbra jumped back, disturbed and nearly panicked by the urgency in Facet’s voice. She had never been spoken to like that, or heard a pony speak like that before. Without thinking, she immediately summoned a cutting spell and released Burnt, who fell to the ground with a thud.

Facet immediately raced to her side and Burnt latched onto her. As she did, she cried out.

“My leg- -oh no, its- -it’s facing the wrong way!” She held Facet tighter. “Don’t let them take me to the vet! Please, not the vet! If they find out, they’ll- -you know what they do to ponies with broken legs- -”

“It’s okay! It’s going to be okay! It’s dislocated, not broken, we can fix this!”

Penumbra stepped forward. “I didn’t mean- -”

Facet glared at her with such force that Penumbra froze. “You did this?”

“I- -”

Burnt burst into tears, holding her head. “Look- -look at me!” she wept. “I’m ugly!”

“Don’t say that,” said Facet. “It’s not that bad- -”

“But now the king will NEVER want me!”

Penumbra smiled, but did not feel happy inside at all. This all felt wrong.

“I- -I tried so hard,” wept Burnt, “I tried so hard to be pretty to him, but now he’ll never love me! He spends time with all the girls, but never me, but- -but I hoped that if I did this, he might finally CARE!”

Penumbra gasped. “You- -you never snuggled the king, did you?!”

“I’m BROWN!” screamed Burnt. “I lied, alright?! Why would he ever want ME?! Nopony loves me, and nopony ever WILL, not when I look like THIS! I thought you cared, but then you- -you- -how could you, Penumbra? I thought we were friends!”

“I didn’t know! Facet, please- -”

“No.” Facet stood, helping Burnt stand. “This was a mistake. All of this was a mistake. My apologies, princess, I never should have tried to be your friend. You clearly don’t need them. You’re more like your father than I had ever imagined.”

“I- -” Penumbra felt as if something inside her was breaking. “Facet- -”

“And if she orders you to be your friend?” said Chrysalis. “Then you have to. Do it, Penumbra. Force her to be your friend. You know you want to.”

“Not even if she orders it. Send me back to the mines. She’s a slave, Penumbra, like me. You have no idea what her life is like, and you’re going to make fun of her for it? I’d rather mine crystals than continue from here. Please excuse me, princess. I need to get Burnt medical attention, and then see to my duties with the other maids.”

“But Facet, I’m sorry- -”

It was too late. Facet dragged Burnt away, who was still trying to cover herself even as brown fluff trailed behind her, falling off her newly naked body. Neither of them even looked back.

Penumbra sat down, defeated. “But why? It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”

“You didn’t expect this, fatty?” Chrysalis laughed as she brushed past Penumbra, hitting her in the face with her tail. “So you're stupid too. But what should I expect?”

“They were my friends...”

“No. They were SUBJECTS. You can’t ever have friends, princess. No one will EVER love you. You’re an ugly monster, a THING. Trust me, it’s better this way. They’re supposed to be afraid of you. They’re supposed to hate you. Because you DESERVE to be hated.”

“I...I’m a monster...”

“Yes you are. A fat, ugly one.” Chrysalis passed by Penumbra’s head, this time brushing her tail directly under Penumbra’s chin. “But I’m still here. Because as disgusting as you are, I’m willing to put up with it. Because I’m your only true friend. I’m the ONLY one who will EVER love you, princess. And you should be grateful to have a friend like me.”

“I need to apologize. I need to make this right- -”

She was interrupted as Chrysalis pressed their lips together. A long tongue was forced into Penumbra’s mouth. The sense of strange cheese was overwhelming.

Penumbra was pinned down, and felt herself kissing back. The feeling of tingling warmness inside her had grown overpowering, and the thoughts of the apology she had to made retreated in her mind in the face of the current situation.

Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed into thin slits, and then, in a flash of green, Penumbra found herself kissing a hideous quarray eel.

Penumbra’s reaction was immediate and instinctive. With one swift motion, she sifted to the side and to the top, pinning the eel to the ground and forcing her own tongue into its mouth.

The eel’s eyes opened wide with horror and surprise, and in a flash it had shifted again, this time becoming a hideous maulwurf. Penumbra responded by putting her hoof into its hair and kissing harder- -while the other hoof took a decidedly different direction.

The mole-creature squeaked and changed again. A bufrogen, a drowner, a lesser tentacle-beast, a varnak, a tatzlewurm- -and at no point did Penumbra let go.

“Get OFF!” screamed Chrysalis at last, sending a blast of green magic into Penumbra’s armored chest. Penumbra was thrown backward, and something tiny and black leapt out from under her and into the shadows of a nearby plant. “What in TARTARUS is WRONG with you?!”

“What is wrong with ME?! You started it! Come on, you’re an adorable little filly, I’m an adorable little filly, there’s nothing wrong with this! I’m feeling warm in fuzzy in ALL the places right now, come on! Get back here! TOUCH MY WINGS!”

“Buck you!”

“I wasn’t going to go that far- -”

“You were SUPPOSED to be disgusted! Terrified! I turned into an EEL!”

“Yes, I was there for that part.”

“And that didn’t surprise you? Not even a LITTLE? Or are you really that much of a horse?”

“I’ve undergone puberty in a matter of a MONTH I have a lot of pent-up feelings and no, you idiot, of COURSE I knew you were a changeling!”

Chrysalis gasped. “But- -but how?!”

“Because Emeth gave me dossiers on all the other Dark Thirteen. You even used your real name.”

“That fink!”

“It’s not even that hard to tell. You reek of pheromones. You can copy the look of a pony, but you always smell like a changeling.”

“And what are you, some sort of dog? Or are you making fun of me? That has to be it- -of COURSE, because you think you’re sooooo much better than me, stupid princess- -I’ll have you know, I’m a gosh-darn QUEEN!”

“That doesn’t explain why you stopped. You’re a changeling, you literally eat love. Well get over here, and I’ll feed you plenty!”

“Stop making it sound dirty!”

“I’m not making it sound like anything! YOU’RE the one with a dirty mind! Now get over hear and EAT MY LOVE!”

“NO!” Chrysalis stood, and Penumbra saw her, though not clearly. She was tiny, far smaller than a pony of her age, and black in color. Through the foliage, Penumbra could see the reflection of Chrysalis’s enormous eyes- -as well as the numerous holes in her tiny legs.

“You can’t eat it? Or you won’t...why?”

“Because your love tastes disgusting, and I don’t want any love from an eel-snogging pervert!”

“Why would a changeling be here? It makes no sense. There is no love in the Crystal Empire. You’ll starve.”

“Maybe I’m supposed to starve. Did you think of that, or are you really that stupid?”

“The only thing that’s stupid is you starving yourself!” Penumbra stood up. “Why? Why are you here, Queen?”

Chrysalis seemed taken aback by being addressed by her title, and paused for a long moment. Then her enormous eyes flicked toward Penumbra. “I am a second instar nymph. If have any love- -any love AT ALL- -I will progress to the third instar. And it’s not time. It’s still to early.”

“You’re trying to stay as a filly.”

“I’m trying to stay ALIVE! You have no idea how ruthless changeling politics are, what my mother would do to me if she found me!”

“Mother?” Penumbra’s eyes narrowed. “If you have a mother, you can’t also be queen. That’s not how it works.”

“Not in your primitive culture, no. Changelings are eusocial. My mother is Queen. But so am I.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It’s the jelly, okay! You foul winged idiot, I stole my mother’s royal jelly!”

“You became queen by...eating jelly?”

“How else are you supposed to do it? And you have no idea how HARD it was to get into the jelly reserve. Or what part of the queen it actually comes out of...” She shuddered. “I’m a usurper, just like you. If Ootheca finds me, I’m done. It’s too early. Not until I have an army. So stay away! Stop trying to feed me, you’ll ruin everything!”

“Then why did you kiss me?”

“Because I HATE you!”

“That makes no sense! You kiss ponies you like not- -”

“NOT FOR CHANGELINGS! We don’t FEEL love, we EAT it! I hate you, I hate you ALL! But especially YOU!”

“And what did I ever do to you? What did BURNT do?”

“The strumpet did nothing, but YOU- -you think you’re better than me! Because you have soft, fluffy wings and big purple eyes and a family that isn’t trying to literally eat you- -”

“I have a father who never pays attention to me and a mother-figure zebra who is ashamed of my existence!”

“And that must be so hard! To not have to be alone all the time, to be hated by everypony! To have big, hunky knights fawning over you and griffons BEGGING for your attention!”

Chrysalis stepped forward, and Penumbra saw her clearly. Shew as indeed small, and black, with a segmented green-blue portion around her middle. She wore a tiny crown as well. What drew Penumbra’s attention, though, was her short spike-like horn and her wispy pair of blue wings.

“You’re...you’re like me...”

“I’m nothing like you. I’m not pretty. What knight in shining armor is going to fall in love with a BUG? Look at the holes- -look at this thing on my head! It’s not a crown, it’s a GROWTH!”

“But you can be anyone, anything! You can take any form you want- -”

“And let ponies fall in love with what I appear to be. I know. But no one will EVER love me for what I am. No pony will look at me like this and think ‘aww, isn’t she cute’. I’m not like you.”

“At least you have the option.” Penumbra spread her wings. “I don’t have the option to change. Anywhere I go, I’m a monster. Ponies never look beyond my wing and horn. All they see is something to fear and hate.”

Chrysalis looked up at Penumbra. “We’re not the same.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Chryssi.”

“Don’t you DARE call me that- -”

“I don’t have time. WE don’t have time. We have to help Burnt.”

“Why? I already turned her into your enemy. That’s what I do.”

“But she’s our friend. Not just mine, yours too. And if we’re going to keep it that way, we need to work together.”

“Like I would help you.”

“I can make you help.”

Chrysalis turned and crossed her front legs. “With what, a princess order? Don’t make me laugh! I outrank you! You can’t make me do anything!”

Penumbra sighed, and pulled off part of her armor. “Oh no!” she cried, falling to her side. “My armor! I’m exposed and naked! Vulnerable and adorable!”

“What are you doing? Stop that, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Look at my exposed teenage body! So soft and warm and innocent! Look at these wings!” She shook them in the air. “So soft and ticklish! I’m so full of feeling and raw passion, but I’m just too shy and afraid to be with a stallion at my age- -but maybe there’s a girl here my own age who would be willing to taste my sweet, delicious love...”

Chrysalis looked over her shoulder. She was clearly drooling. A puddle was beginning to form beneath her. “So much...love...”

Penumbra rolled on her back, exposing her soft underbelly. “My thick, creamy love...all those teenage emotions wrapped up in an adorable little package. How about a belly rub? I’ll let you taste as much as you want.” She blushed. “I- -if you’re gentle...”

“GAH!” Chrysalis stood up. “Stop it stop it STOP IT! Okay! OKAY! I’ll help, just please! STOP tempting me! It’s both disturbing and- -well- -TEMPTING! I told you, if I eat, it’ll- -”

“Ruin everything, I know.” Penumbra stood, immediately assuming her normal harsh seriousness. “Right. I’m going to need you to shapeshift.”

“So what else is new? That’s kind of what I do.”

“You’re also going to have to take one for the team. Sorry, Chryssi, but that’s just way it goes.”

“Wait, what?”

Chapter 38: The Stargazer

Sombra was dying. Except, in reality, it was not simple. Nothing was ever that simple. His body, indeed, was fading. Every cell was beginning to collapse and separate, their individual life processes failing one by one. But that was not new. In a way, Sombra had foreseen this for some time. The Heart of Darkness had been losing power for decades, and even he, the pony who had first dared to apply its power, did not know why. Yet, even still, as he sat still and in agony on his throne, it was the only thing keeping him alive.

Before him the steward paced nervously. She hid it well, but Sombra knew her. In a way, she was more like a daughter to him than the alicorn. He had broken her and created her anew, not as a slave but as something better than what she had once been. Perhaps, he found himself wondering, she loved him. In a way that no pony ever would. Yet it hardly mattered. Sombra was not dense enough to be unaware that love was the very thing causing his decline.

Beside her stood another pony. He was not unlike her, to the point where they could have been siblings- -save for the strangeness of his features, remnants of a unicorn race long unknown to the world. He stood quietly, watching from the lightest eyes Sombra had ever seen, this strange, pale horse.

“Steward.”

The steward stopped and immediately stood at attention. “Yes, my king? What is it you require?”

“Tell me, steward. Have you ever heard the legend of the Stargazer?”

The steward seemed confused. She had clearly expected an order, or a request for a report on the progress of the kingdom. The kingdom she, essentially, ruled, and the kingdom she had ruled for three hundred years. Yet she also seemed intrigued, because in all this time, the king had never spoken to her of something so trivial as a story. For just a moment he looked to her not like a virile, immortal wellspring of absolute domination- -but like an old stallion. Like her father once had.

“No, my king. I am not aware of that story.”

“I did not expect you to be. It belonged to my people. To the dark unicorns, passed down from our greatest poet across ages long since passed.”

“Would it be impertinent of me to ask the nature of this tale?”

Sombra looked up at the dark throne-room, and at the tattered banners that had once adorned the chambers of a beautiful and storied hall. His eyes grew distant. “It was long ago, in the times before we had retreated to the Dark Lands. The Stargazer was a wizard, one of uncommon power and skill, who claimed that his descent was from the stars above.”

“Was he?”

“I do not know. Nor does it matter. He believed it. And he spent his lifetime in the pursuit of the dream of returning. In the most secluded high desert, so far from any civilization, he chose a place. A place to built a tower, to reach his home. But it took a long time. The lifetimes of many slaves, generations of workers who assembled his tower of stone. Many compelled through force, in chains...but not his truest disciples. Those who truly believed in his dream. To see him return, to see him take flight when their work was finished. To fulfill their master’s beautiful dream.”

“Did they?”

Sombra did not move, but he paused. “They completed the tower. And the faithful watched as he ascended, anticipating the beauty of what generations of their forbears had given their lives, their work, their everything to see through. They watched and wept in amazement as he leapt from the tower. And they watched in horror as he plummeted and met his end on the desert floor.”

“How terrible.”

Sombra smiled, though weakly. “In our culture, it was considered beautiful. I wept the first time I heard it as a boy. How powerful it must have seemed when spoken by the Wheel himself in ancient times, but even from the mouth of an aged monk it moved me. And I recall it now. My whole life, I had focused on the horror of those who watched him fall...but now I wonder what the Stargazer thought. Did he know, as he climbed the tower? Did he realize as he fell? Or did he hold his dream to the very last?”

“My king. These are not things you should be thinking- -”

“And you would tell me what I can and cannot think?”

“There is no reason to be angry with her,” said the pale horse, softly. “She speaks from concern. She is afraid for you. She would weep, if her pride would allow it.”

Sombra sighed. “It has simply come to my mind that I might meet the same fate. That this Citadel, this Heart, my dream...that perhaps it was always impossible. That I might never see it completed.”

“Please, sire, do not say such things. I cannot bear to hear it.” The steward’s eyes were watering, but the pale horse was right- -she would not allow herself to cry. “Al’Hrabnaz will succeed! He has to!”

“And if he fails, the dream dies with me. The doors I was meant to open will forever remain shut. But after witnessing Luciferian, the door he opened...perhaps that is for the best.” Sombra sat up. “But the kingdom must not end with me.”

“You mean the princess. You wish to transfer rulership. Sire, these things- -”

“The alicorn must NEVER rule the Crystal Empire. She is unstable...and kind. Unable to do what must be done to rule. You will take it instead.”

The steward gasped. “Sire, no, please- -”

“It it comes to it, you will rule in my place. And you have my permission to terminate the alicorn, should it be necessary.”

The steward could no longer contain her tears, but she bowed and silently accepted her sacred duty. “Only if we fail. To save you.”

“Which is an impasse,” sighed the white unicorn stallion. “King Sombra, you must understand the precipice you now stand on. That you are now given a choice, and the decision is not nearly as cut and dry as it seems. If your servant succeeds, no matter how many doors open, one will always remain closed to you.”

“I understand...”

The steward looked confused, and looked around the room, trying to see where Sombra was standing. For the two of them were alone.

“You do not,” continued the pale horse. “The cost is dire. This is your only chance.”

“To fall to eternal torment...”

“Sire?”

The unicorn smiled. “Yes. And no. You saw Her, the Divine One, and you think you understand, just like poor, misguided Twilight...but you do not. You have lived too long in a material body. But what you have felt now is only the barest fraction of eternity. Think carefully on the horror you would inflict on yourself. The horror that has already been inflicted on your daughter, although she does not know it yet.”

“I refuse,” said Sombra, standing.

“My king!” cried the steward. “Please- -”

“This will not be my end. I will persist. This, I swear, on the bones of the friends and ancestors fate denied me the chance to hold. What is one door, for them all? I am Eternal. I am KING.”

The pale horse smiled and nodded, pleased with the response, but oh so sad as well. Then he was gone from view- -although still present, trapped in his own eternity as he watched all those who would one day join his legions.

And Sombra collapsed into the grasp of his steward, because he was afraid that even he would not be able to make good on his promise.

Author's Note

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmJIccPWnEk

Chapter 39: Necromancers

The reek of phenol and formaldehyde was oppressive, saturating the dank and nearly lightness air of what might long ago once have served some primitive, terrible purpose. The floors were stone, perpetually wet and etched with channels to carry away the fluids of death and glorious, endless rebirth. Throughout this bastion of modern achievement, countless students were hard at work- -but in this chamber, central and separate, meant to house only the greatest of specimens, not a single heartbeat within.

Yet from its center, a dark figure rose, and Necrophilo of Canterlot slowly drifted across the floor, leaving the lifeless flesh of a white unicorn lying in a pool of her own preservatives in the center.

“Excellent,” he said. “Simply excellent performance.”

The lifeless flesh stirred, and the preserved remains of a unicorn once called Hope slowly turned over and lifted herself. Her eyes were distant and blank, as they always were. “I did...good? Am I a good….pony?”

“You are not a pony. But you did quite well. Oh so very well.” Necrophile extended his numerous claws, picking up his long green robes and quickly wrapping them around himself, holding them on tightly with so many withered hands beneath his clothing. “Your cellular integrity is no longer decaying. A perfect preservation. The very definition of a perfect mare, of an eternal Venus. My greatest work by far.”

He smiled, and turned to a mirror to check his wizard robes- -only to nearly scream in horror, as the face looking back was not his own. Rather, it was that of a pure white unicorn- -or a unicorn who had once been white. One hideously scarred leg, though, was stained a grotesque yellow, and the cancer was spreading rapidly, the yellow reaching his face and one of his eyes. As the white unicorn looked up, he smiled, and Necrophile saw that the teeth on his left side had become black and horribly sharp.

“Mr. Necrophilo? What is the matter?”

Necrophilo turned, and saw that his construct actually appeared confused. He quickly turned back, charging his horn- -only to find that the mirror showed himself, and the reflection of the undead white unicorn behind him.

“I don’t...I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

He turned away from the mirror and approached the instruments, checking the dials and gauges and formaldehyde concentrations without actually seeing any of them. The construct watched him as he went, never blinking. That normally would have comforted him, but something was wrong. Terribly wrong. In all his years, Necrophilo had never felt anything quite like it. Something was coming. Something terrible.

He stopped suddenly, softly sniffing the air.

“And are you going to just stand there, or are you actually going to be useful?” he demanded, although he was mildly disturbed- -and amused- -that he had not heard her enter the chamber.

“I have completed the tasks you requested.”

Necrophilo smiled and moved to an alchemical table. “Excellent. Bring them here.”

The crystal pony stepped out of the nearest shadow, carrying a bag concealed under her conservative maid’s cloak. Her main was braided back tightly, and Necrophilo was sure to note that it had been done in the style of the concubines.

“Are you wearing makeup?”

“It is more difficult to remove than you would think.” Facet Flare put the satchel on the table. Necrophilo tipped it over, nearly laughing with joy as the contents spilled out onto the table: a pile of long, black hair, and, most importantly, pure alicorn feathers.

“Excellent! Simply excellent!” He lifted several of the feathers and strands of hair and immediately went to work with the preprocessing. “Dyed, of course, but I can adjust for that. The calculations simply need to compensate...”

“And why exactly, master, do you need these things?”

“You already know that, Ms. Flare.”

Facet nodded. “Your last poison was clearly effective. I nearly met my end, drinking it.”

“A risk you accepted quite bravely. But of course it worked on YOU. Your biology is far more primitive, like that of a glass-sponge in the face of a unicorn, at least compared to hers. Alicorns are, by definition, immortal. I learned this in the first attempt, though I came close...and would have come far closer had Thirteen not intervened.”

“Then why did I risk my life?”

“Life does not have value. It is a defect, meant to be cured. Risking it is hardly of consequence. If you had ended? I would have brought you back. Like her.”

Facet looked over her shoulder. Hope waved, and Facet shivered. She was fully aware that the formaldehyde-reeking zombie had once been Penumbra’s mother.

“If Crozea had not been there- -”

“But she WAS. And that is exactly the POINT. Of course the poison would have failed to terminate the princess, but it served instead to place the suspicion on the Zebra. No one would expect a slave to be involved. A perfect diversion.”

Facet watched as several of Penumbra’s feathers dissolved in aqua regia and began to flow through a distillation assembly. “And this version? Will it work?”

“Very little is understood about alicorn biology, but means to terminate them? At least seven of the past Dark Thirteen have dedicated their lives to studying methods to accomplish it. Edwin the Goat came closest, before his imprisonment. They only failed because the potion requires the most powerful reagents of all...those derived from alicorns themselves.”

“And I suppose administering it falls to me.”

“Most likely. She does not eat anything except what the Zebra gives her. Of course, with her no longer trusting Crozea...” Necrophilo’s pale yellow eyes twisted toward Facet. “Or do you have reservations?”

“No. But is it truly necessary?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Then why bother?”

“Because I want her. I want to process her exactly as I have her mother, to keep her fresh and beautiful for all eternity. So that both of them can be at my wives when I become king.”

“And to weaken Sombra’s rule.”

“Indeed,” chuckled Necrophilo. “You are learning quickly.” He tapped against a flask; the solution darkened precipitously. “A rival, and a daughter of my one true rival...yes. She needs to be removed. I cannot take the kingdom while she lives. And I WILL take the kingdom. I have spoken with those who have passed to the other side, and I am guided by an infallible prophecy.”

“That the Crystal Empire will be ruled by a King of the Dead. But where does that leave me?”

“The population will of course be sacrificed, but modern constructs are still...limited. More work needs to be done before I can teach them the craft, of course. I will still require students.”

“To wash the manes of your creations, perhaps?”

Necrophilo turned sharply. Facet took a step back, instinctively moving toward the shadows, but two horrid, pale things pulled their way out in advance of her, blocking the exit. “They must be cared for, yes, if that is what you are asking. With exacting precision, yes. Necromancy is an art of care, of detail, of absolute dedication. Or do you think you can take shortcuts?”

Seeing she could not escape, Facet glared up at her master. “I am aware that I am not a unicorn.”

“And there are ways around that. Your cutie mark is in crystallography. Tell me, Facet, how long have you spent in the mines?”

“Thirteen years.”

“For thirteen years, you never saw the light of day or the dark of night, mining crystals for our currently terminal king. And you know more about them than almost any other pony. Crystals have their own magic, even if you lack a horn. Surely you saw Luciferian’s ill-fated duel with the king.”

Facet had. It was mandatory. And she had seen the crystals. Crystals that she, too, could carve, if allowed to.

“If you continue at my side, I will make you a necromancer. This I promise. In my Necropolis, race shall be irrelevant. Death unifies us all.”

“The Danse Macabre.”

Necrophilo smiled. “Indeed. And I shall lead it, and you shall be there, amongst others.” His smile slowly faded. “Unless you would rather turn back now. Perhaps you would rather protect the princess...and return to the mines. Along with your entire family.”

Facet’s eyes narrowed. “NO. What my family does, I do not care. But I will NEVER return. This, I swear. I refuse to be a slave, and I will not let the princess stand in my way. Make me a necromancer. Give me power.”

Necrophilo smiled. “Yes,” he said, turning back to his alchemy. “This is something I can do.”

Chapter 40: Conspiracy

The day had ended, and the night had grown dark. Outside, the only light came from Nightmare Moon’s beautiful sky, and from the strange and unnamed bioluminescent things that lived deep in the Everfree Forest. It was fall, and a child had begun to form in the air. Soon the leaves would change, and the season would progress as the world moved on in another one of endless revolutions about the sun.

Yet inside, there was no chill, nor was there darkness, at least not in the library. Each and every corner was lit by brilliant magical lanterns, their bases carved in gold and the crystals within them shimmering and brilliant. In the silence of night and under this artificial glow, Celestia moved about quickly, her bare hooves tapping on the cold marble floor as she scanned the shelves, removing and stacking books as she went.

She slept little. There was so much to be done. Even with her sister taking the throne during the night, there simply was not enough hours in a day. Celestia sighed as she set a pile of scrolls, tablets, and tomes on one of the tables, the stress of the weight so great that its thick oaken legs actually creaked in protest.

The situation was not grim- -yet- -but not good either. Raising the sun was one thing, but managing it in the context of ruling an eternal empire was something else entirely. There were crop failures throughout the northern regions, the result of inadequate sunlight to illuminate the crops; at the same time, excessive solar radiation was reeking havoc on the Pegasi weather-management systems. This was to say nothing about the difficulty of creating unified timezones across all of the new empire, and standardizing the calendar from there- -in addition to the administrative work required to actually run a kingdom.

A cold wind blew through the room, and the few lights powered by shrouded candles flickered. Celestia pulled the collar of her wizard robes tighter. There was still so much work to do...but she inspected the room carefully, observing every corner with the greatest care. She knew every inch of it, because it was where she spent most of her time. Studying endlessly, of course.

When she saw that no one was present, she opened a very specific book- -to reveal that the pages had been hollowed out. Inside was a slice of cake.

Knowing that nopony was around, Celestia immediately shoved her entire alicorn face into the book and began devouring its contents.

She did not notice the blue smoke that entered the room from beneath the door and from several vents, and did not see as it coalesced before the table. By the time the gas had coalesced into Nightmare Moon, it was already too late.

Celestia squeaked loudly and nearly fell off her seat. “SISTER!”

Nightmare Moon sighed. “Dear sister...cake? In the library? Really?”

“But I...I wanted it...”

“Your blood sugar, Celestia. You need to be more careful.” Nightmare Moon closed the book with her magic and lifted it away. Celestia protested, but only slightly; all that was left were a few scraps of delicious, smooth, silky royal frosting. She had already ingested the cake part.

“And you know you should not eat sweets before bed. Why are you even up so late? The night is my domain. You ought to be in bed, resting. We have a meeting with the combined generals and admire tomorrow.”

“And you don’t want me nodding off.”

“If you do, I will force you to dream about something highly unpleasant. Running up a slight incline, mayhaps.”

Celestia frowned. “I’m not fat.”

“I did not say you were. But as a sorceress, you are not meant to be firm and hard.”

“Like you.”

Nightmare Moon nodded. “Like me.”

Celestia sighed. “But there’s so much to do still! Crop failures in the north, an equine encephalitis outbreak in the south, drought in the west...”

“Insurgencies forming along the eastern border, and unrest with the nobles of Canterlot,” added Nightmare Moon. “And of course the Crystal Empire.” She looked down at Celestia’s magic tomes and notes. She saw little use in them; magic, she had always found, was a terribly limited practice. “I fear war is approaching.”

“And sometimes I’m afraid we stretched too far. Maybe this was all a mistake.” Celestia lay her chin on a map on the desk. “All this territory...maybe it’s too much for two ponies. Even us. If ponies are getting hurt...what if we can’t hold it together?”

“We will, dear sister. Together.”

Celestia looked up at her sister and smiled. “I know. We have to.”

“Have you made any progress with Starswirl’s spell?”

The smile faded from Celestia’s face. “No,” she said. “I’ve read it and re-read it a hundred times. I understand that it requires the Elements, but I don’t know how. The spell only works in one direction, and only we can wield the elements. But we’re already alicorns.” She extended one of her enormous white wings and flapped it, causing the golden chains attached to the feathers to jingle.

“Do not feel ashamed. Even Starswirl himself could not complete the spell.”

“Maybe he could...if he was still here.” Celestia sat up and looked around this room. “Do you remember? When he helped us build this library? When he insisted that we just HAD to have a secret reference section?”

A thin smile crossed Nightmare Moon’s face. “I recall that he was young then. That his epitaph was meant to be ironic. Barely out of colthood. And you were so taken with him.”

Celestia blushed. “I- -I was never taken by- -”

“I was Luna then.”

The room fell silent. The silence of the night.

“You...you can be again,” said Celestia, softly.

Nightmare Moon sighed. “Please, sister. Let us not have this conversation again. Not now.”

“Right.” Celestia lowered his head. “It’s just that...I miss those days. When things were still new. The whole world looked so bright, didn’t it?”

“You miss him.”

Celestia nodded. “You’ve seen my dreams.”

“I do not have to. But be assured, this way is better.”

“I know.” Celestia sighed, trying not to cry, because she knew that it was a losing proposition either way. Had he and his friends not vanished, she and Nightmare Moon would be forced to watch them age and wither- -and, someday, vanish away entirely. While the Sisters lived on immortal, alone with none but one another.

“I have further poor news,” said Nightmare Moon, continuing with whatever reason she had actually had for arriving in the library so late at night.

“More?”

Nightmare Moon nodded solely. “I have returned from Canterlot, inspecting the present martial law. I received the reports on crystal production.”

“I think I have the gross product reports here...somewhere...oh! Here!” She lifted a piece of paper covered in frosting.

“Gross indeed. Regardless, they are flawed.”

“But we are receiving twelve tons- -”

“Of inferior product. The mines are depleted.”

“But- -that’s not possible. It can’t be. We need those crystals, magic research, weather machines- -”

“Will not function without an energy source. I am aware. And especially when our empire is in such a fragile state, we MUST find a new source.”

Celestia opened a notebook. “My geologists have said that there is a region nearby that can be developed- -”

“And my cave-delvers have shown those caverns to be hideously unstable. Work would be painstaking and slow, done by hoof. It cannot meet demand. Not if we are to go to war. Not if we are to maintain our benevolent control of Equestria. Sister, you know the source we require.”

Celestia had no answer, because she knew her sister was right. Yet she did not need to formulate one, because her defeated silence was quickly interrupted by the door slamming open. A unicorn in golden armor burst through, crying out as though he had expected the well-oiled door to offer more resistance. He immediately fell to the floor, gasping for breath.

“My princess! My princess!”

Nightmare Moon loomed over him. “Yes? Speak, peasant!”

The guard looked up, and immediately squeaked in terror. “Night- -Nightmare MOON!”

“Vanilla Swift!” cried Celestia, standing and immediately rushing to the guard’s side. “What’s wrong?”

“My princess, it- -” His eyes grew wide. “You- -you know my name?”

Celestia blinked. “Of course. I know all my guards’ names. Now come here.” She hugged him. The guard looked exceedingly surprised, and Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes. “Now,” she said. “Take a breath, and tell me what’s wrong.”

“An interloper,” gasped the guard. “In the gardens. He just- -he came out of nowhere!”

“I will summon the Nightguard immediately.” Nightmare Moon swished her cape and approached the door, but Celestia slammed it shut with her magic.

“No,” she said, her voice deathly serious as she stood. “Starswirl and I built the enchantments on this castle. If somepony came here, and they didn’t activate, it means we’re dealing with a wizard. A terribly powerful one. Vanilla Swift, what did he look like?”

“White. All white...with a little streak of purple in his mane.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed. “Then I need to see him immediately. Please, take me to him.”

The pace was brisk, but not a gallop. A princess could never gallop, ostensibly out of etiquette but in truth because doing so could ignite panic among her subjects. Never before had Celestia wanted to run so badly, though, because she alone knew the danger- -and knew that every second she delayed was another second her subjects were in danger.

A pony emerged from somewhere in the hall, as if out of a fine mist. Perhaps he had. Celestia jumped, as she always did, but only slightly. The knight immediately fell in step with Nightmare Moon. His body was clad entirely in gleaming moonstone armor, marked only with his insignia, a diamond of four stars. His face was covered by a skeletal mask that Celestia always found horrible, and his long, feathery gray wings were held back tightly.

“My Queen,” he said, addressing Nightmare Moon. “The Solar Guard has contained the intruder, but I have dispatched an additional row of archers to the battlements. We await your order.”

“Forgive me, general,” snapped Celestia, “but you are out of of your depth.”

“We have methods for dealing with magic,” retorted Nightmare Moon.

“Not like this you don’t.”

Nightmare Moon’s eyes narrowed. In the dim light, her pupils were wide, but Celestia saw them growing increasingly slit-like. “He’s one of yours, then.”

“No. Not one of mine. But I know who he is. And I know what to do.”

“What, then, dear sister?”

“We talk. This does not have to end in violence.”

“And if it does?”

“Then it is my responsibility to handle it.”

Celestia pulled ahead.

“My Queen?” asked the knight.

“Be prepared. I will acquiesce for now, but if she fails, do not let that filth touch her. Protect my sister at whatever cost.”

“Of course, Queen Khonshu. I shall be at your side. Together, no foe can stand in our way.”

Nightmare Moon smiled. It was a weak thing, something she did so rarely in the latter age- -but beneath that smile, she was concerned. Deeply.

The intruder was, as Vanilla had claimed, in the garden. The night was perfumed by blooming lavender and the trellises were alight with the pale shade of moonflowers, moonseed vines, and Epiphyllum. It would normally have been tranquil and silent at this hour, save perhaps for the occasional passing bat-pony maiden staring wistfully at the night’s sky. Now, though, it was crowded with unicorn soldiers, their horns lowered and casting shield spells in a wide circle. They were stoic and steadfast ponies, ready to defend their princesses at any cost- -but even from a distance, Celestia knew that they were afraid. Just as afraid as Vanilla Swift had been, if not more so.

The pony in the center could not have been more the opposite. He was just standing there, completely nonplussed by his surroundings- -but as Celestia drew closer, she understood that something was terribly wrong.

She smelled him before she saw him. It was not a normal smell of pony sweat or uncleanliness, but rather a sickening floral odor. It was not too much unlike the flowers that bloomed in the garden, yet terrible where they were beautiful. As if the flowers had been left rotting in deep, stagnant and putrid water.

His appearance was not much better, and even knowing who he was- -and of the cursed House that he was derived- -Celestia could not help but be moved to pity. He appeared as if he had not eaten in weeks, and had grown terribly thin. His entire left front limb was covered in an armored boot inscribed with an exceedingly complex arrangement of sealing spells, but he was scratching at it constantly and absently, as if he was not even aware he was doing it.

Whatever those spells were meant to contain, they were failing. Thin streaks of yellow had developed on the stallion’s neck and face, and his left eye was deeply bloodshot- -except that whereas unicorn eyes normally became more silver in that state, his had become red.

Worst of all, though, was his horn. It was not something a normal pony would have noticed, but a sorceress would- -and Celestia had. She saw the surgical scar, and the fact that the color did not quite match his own.

She stopped. He looked up at her and smiled.

“Princess,” he said, nearly bursting into laughter. “As beautiful as ever, I suppose. My apologies for waking you. But I could hardly talk to your sister alone. No...I need you both...”

“Twilight Luciferian.” Celestia was hesitant to speak his name aloud, because she saw the fear that ran through her guard. They did not know Luciferian personally, but there was no unicorn that did not know of the Cursed House and the trail of blight and destruction that countless Twilight’s had carved throughout history.

The smile vanished from Luciferian’s face. “You know who I am. Of course you know who I am.”

“You’ve been drinking it. Twilight, it isn’t meant for mortals- -”

Luciferian bore his fangs. “Forgive me if I don’t take the advice of a HYPOCRITE. It makes her QUIET. It...” He took a deep breath. “That is not what I came here to discuss.”

“How did you get here?” demanded Nightmare Moon. “Speak. NOW.”

Luciferian smiled. “Of course. Who could deny the One True Goddess? Isn’t that what they’re calling you now? The Queen of Equestria?”

Nightmare Moon’s eyes narrowed and she bore her own fangs. She took a step forward- -but Celestia stopped her.

“Portal magic,” said Celestia. “It’s the only way you could have got past my spells and the guard. But that magic is supposed to be lost- -”

“To everypony but YOU? I’ve made advances. Slowly piecing back together the spells you wiped from all but your own private records. Heh.” For just a moment, Celestia saw absolute panic in his eyes. “Some...some should have stayed hidden...”

“What do you want, unicorn?” Nightmare Moon pushed her sister’s hoof away. “Why do you violate our sanctum?”

“Your ivory tower, you mean. Built in a swamp, of course. How fitting. No. NO. I’m getting off track!” He poked himself in the head with his unclad hoof. Then he laughed slightly to himself. “No.” He took a breath and regained his composure, and then looked Celestia in the eye. “I came here to offer you a deal.”

“How generous,” said Celestia. “Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

“Because what can a Twilight possibly offer the White Queen?” Luciferian smiled as he saw the look of shame cross Celestia’s face at that particular epithet.

“What indeed,” muttered Nightmare Moon.

Luciferian smiled. “I want you to help me overthrow Sombra.”

The crowd of unicorns gasped. Celestia even detected the slightest change in shadows from the battlements where the Nightguard were watching.

“Disloyalty, then,” sighed Nightmare Moon. “Of course.”

“Call it what you want. But in case you didn’t notice, I don’t work for him anymore. Not after his precious daughter did THIS.” He pointed at his horn.

Celestia’s eyes widened. “Cadence did THAT?”

Luciferian grinned. “She’s taken my place now. As One of Thirteen. And she’s good at it. The spitting image of her father.”

“No, you’re lying!”

“Sister?”

“Not that it matters. I don’t intend to overthrow HER. At least not in that sense. Your country is running out of crystal reserves and fertile land. They’re harrowing your borders and already took out YakYakistan. War is on the horizon.”

“YakYakistan?” Celestia was greatly confused by this. “But that makes no sense...”

“We have considered this,” agreed Nightmare Moon. “But in all honesty, having one anemic wizard- -no matter how dark his lineage- -will hardly turn the tide. The peace must not be broken.”

“Peace? It isn’t peace, he’s waiting, you idiots!” Luciferian winced and grabbed his contained hoof. The smell of flowers grew stronger.

“Twilight- -”

“Time is of the essence,” he said, ignoring what was clearly intense pain. “I have information you don’t. Sombra is gravely ill. Dying. For now. The Crystal Empire is weak, now is the time to attack!”

“What do you mean ‘for now’?”

Luciferian looked up. One of his eyes was now mostly red, while the other was pale violet and reflective. “Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz. He’s found a way to graft Sombra’s soul into a new body. An immortal one.”

“A new body?” Celestia took a step forward. “WHICH body?”

“I have no idea, why should I care? Because if you hurry, you can make sure he never gets the chance! I helped build the Citadel, I know how it works- -and I know that for the freak to activate the spell, he needs a tremendous amount of power. But I assure you, he has it. Everything is in place, and everything is ready.”

“Which would leave the Empire without its main defense.”

Luciferian nodded. “The spell will take time. If you can attack then, get to Sombra before he transfers bodies...”

“We can take the kingdom,” said Nightmare Moon.

Luciferian smiled. “You can. But not without my help. I can get back inside. Direct things. Make the battle go in your favor.”

“Sabotage, you mean,” said Celestia.

“Yes, essentially.”

“A trick, surely,” said Nightmare Moon, her pupils narrowing. “Seeing as you left out the part about their doomsday weapon.”

Celestia lifted her head suddenly, again confused. “Doomsday weapon? What doomsday weapon?”

“The one they ‘tested’ over Mount Aris during last week’s ‘negotiations’.”

“Last week? Nopony told me about this!”

Nightmare Moon raised an eyebrow. “And you did not ask why the hippogriffs left our alliance, along with the donkeys? Or why YakYakistan’s government was suddenly overthrown?”

“My diplomats said the negotiations went splendidly! That we were closing in on getting a peace treaty with the Crystal Empire...” Celestia gasped, her eyes growing wide. “Sister…did they...”

“They have apparently been lying to you, dear sister. Giving you a far more prosaic view than the truth. My Dagger, however, has not.” She turned to Luciferian. “We cannot risk Sombra utilizing this weapon. Not in our kingdom’s current state.”

A sickly smile crossed Luciferian’s face. “You mean the asymmetric material conversion bomb?”

Celestia clasped her hooves over her mouth. “Clover’s asymmetric material conversion spell? You- -you solved the compression paradox? But if that were used in a weapon- -the power would be unimaginable! You have no idea the cost!”

“Of course I know the cost. Who do you think built it? And how stupid are you that you didn’t understand that it was a BLUFF?”

“The effect was quite real- -”

“Yes. From ONE bomb. The ONLY one. Do you have any idea how rare an ultraregal-magesty crystal even is? We only had one, and only I knew how to carve it. That was the only one they had, it was meant to slow you down until Sombra can gather enough forces to storm YOUR borders instead of the other way around!” He gasped in pain, but laughed as well. “And he will! As soon as he gets his new body, you won’t be able to stop him! This is your only chance to strike.”

“And what do you expect in return?” Celestia took another step forward, towering over him- -yet feeling oh so small in comparison. But not to him. To something beside him, or within him. He was sick- -but what was inside him was growing stronger by the second.

“It’s simple, really. Equestria has reached its maximum. You two alone cannot provide the administrative support for something so vast. Even if you take the Crystal Empire, you can’t control it. Not without risking your own empire falling apart.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your best solution is vassal states. There is really no other option. I want the Crystal Empire. I want to be its king. Governor, magistrate, whatever you prefer, I don’t care. I want POWER, even if that means I have to swear fealty to you...”

“Ah. Of course. It comes back to power. Not forgiveness, not understanding of your crimes...you simply want to replace Sombra with a king just as evil.”

“You can NEVER understand!” screamed Luciferian, suddenly lashing out and terrifying the guards as the closed their shields even tighter. “Is it WRONG?! To do something for MYSELF?! To do something no Twilight ever COULD?! I could have been something!” His eyes began to glisten with tears- -or at least one did. “I could have fixed it! I could have walked up to you and CHANGED EVERYTHING! But now...” He sighed. “This is all I have left. My only chance. My last chance. Sombra is a fool, obsessed with foolish, abstract goals. The kingdom is just a means to an end, but to me, it’s everything. My last hope.”

“You are a Twilight,” said Nightmare Moon.

Luciferian glared at her. “I know that better than anypony. I was born to be evil, so I suppose I have to be, don’t I? I am the last Twilight. Why break the trend now?”

“I don’t trust you,” said Celestia.

“You don’t trust that I’m trying to use you to get myself into a position of ultimate political power? Why? Clearly I’m no friend of Sombra’s. And I’m not lying. You will not get a chance like this again. Think on it, and think carefully. Or Equestria will be a very short-lived country indeed.”

“It is not a country. It is a way of life. You would not understand.”

“Do I really need to?”

“No,” replied Nightmare Moon. “Regardless, your words to have some meaning to us. And will be discussed thoroughly between myself and my sister- -while you wait out result, imprisoned.”

Luciferian scowled. “I can hardly take control of the Crystal Empire from a prison cell, can I?”

“Indeed,” said Nightmare Moon’s knight, stepping forward and drawing a quicksilver sword. “And why should you be chosen? Your crimes and the crimes of your bloodline are too numerous to name. Your very presence here is an affront to the sanctity of the dwelling of the One True Goddess. You are not even worthy to speak in her presence.”

“I don’t have time to deal with lesser races, Pegasus. And I’m not going to prison. I already told you. You need me to infiltrate the Empire- -”

Celestia took a step forward. “You don’t need to do that. If you were here, on our side- -”

“So you could betray me too?” Luciferian took a step back. “No. I need to keep my leverage. And you won’t take me. In fact, you are going to help me leave. Your castle’s defense spells were pedestrian, but my portal magic can’t get me past Sombra’s shield.” A grin crossed his face. “But legend has it you’re the second to last pony who knows how to teleport.”

“That’s madness. No. I refuse. Please, Twilight. Come quietly. We don’t want to hurt you.”

“I do want to hurt you,” said Nightmare Moon. “Simply out of habit, I suppose.”

Celestia took another step forward. Luciferian cried out and grasped his front leg. The runes burned red-hot, reacting to the presence of three of the six Elements of Harmony. Not because the entity within Luciferian was rejecting them- -but because they were weakening his resistance to her endless laughter.

“Get back- -GET BACK!”

Luciferian’s horn ignited, and before the guards surrounding him could even begin to react Luciferian had generated and summoned a complex set of spells that rained down on them. The magic struck their shield spells, instantly reconfiguring their structure and altering the fundamental nature of the spell. Pink magic flashed, and the unicorn guards dropped away, their pony bodies having been transfigured to that of a cluster of white and gray mice.

“Get BACK!” Luciferian’s magic swept up the mice, trapping them in a spherical magical shield. “You WILL help me! You HAVE TO!”

“Open fire,” ordered Nightmare Moon.

“Sister, no!”

The Nightguard opened fire. Crossbow bolts hissed through the air, their gleaming dimeritium tips and rune-inscribed shafts glimmering in the light of the moon. Arrows built to pierce any magical spell and to cleave through any enchanted armor- -and Celestia watched in horror at the use of such a terrible weapon.

Luciferian smiled and raised his head. Several crystals beneath his cloak glittered, and the arrows froze in their place. Both Celestia and Nightmare Moon gasped in surprise- -but for different reasons. For Nightmare Moon, she could not comprehend how any unicorn could stop her guard’s arrows- -but Celestia knew that he had not taken hold of them at all. Her surprise came from the fact that she recognized the spell, and knew that the arrows were not being held; rather, time itself had been frozen around them.

“Chronoplexy.”

Luciferian giggled. “I can’t believe that actually worked! So that’s how she does it...yes. YES! That solves it. Factoring in the distortion...yes. It will work. It will WORK!” He laughed, and then cleared his throat. “As you can see,” he said, calmly, “I have been learning. You are not the only chronoplexer, Celestia. Now there are four of us.” His grin grew ridiculously wide, and to Celestia’s dismay she saw his sharp, horrible teeth- -a perfect match to her own, save for the several rows of blackened dentition on his left side. “But as you well know, time and space are one and the same. A simple matter of curvatures. So what happens if I change the vectors on that same spell? Oh wait, I’m not an idiot. This happens.”

He released the arrows and allowed them to continue on their path- -but around him, space itself distorted, bending and curving at his will. The arrows traveled in perfect and straight lines- -and yet as they did, instead of striking him they were redirected. Celestia raised a shield spell that even dimeritium could not break, but she had miscalculated- -badly. The arrows were not directed at her. They were directed at her sister.

“Nightmare!”

In a flash of white, Nightmare Moon’s knight leapt between his queen and the arrows- -and as he did, Celestia saw Nightmare Moon’s eyes widen with surprise. She moved faster than him, grasping him with her own dark magic and throwing him behind her. Instead of striking him, her body absorbed the blows.

“Sister!” Celestia ran to her sitser’s side. “Don’t move! I know restoration magic- -”

Nightmare Moon just looked up at her and sighed, with arrows still sticking out of her body. “Do not fear, dear sister. Unlike you, this is not the first time I have been poked.” Her body partially dissipated, becoming gaseous, and the arrows fell to the ground.

Celestia stared wide-eyed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Nightmare Moon shrugged. “Neither did I.”

“Impressive indeed, but your own fault,” added Luciferian. “Now. If you would? I have a lot of work to do. Teleport me. Teleport me NOW!”

Celestia turned back to him, and saw that he was shaking from pain. The yellow growth across his neck and face had increased, and was increasing slowly.

She walked toward him.

“Sister, stay back!”

Celestia ignored her sister. “Twilight,” she said. “You’re not well.”

“Not all of us are born all-powerful gods,” snapped Luciferian, taking a step back, the mice still held in his magic. “Some of us have to make sacrifices to gain what little power we can. I regret nothing, hypocrite.”

“Twilight, I can help you! Please! That infection, if it progresses any farther- -”

Luciferian laughed, even though tears were running from his eyes. “Do you think I don’t know that? But it will be okay. It has to be okay. I know a cure. I have a plan. She can’t...she can’t get that far in my mind. Not yet. I’m still me. But it hurts. It hurts so much. Please, princess. Don’t make me beg. I have a plan.”

“There must be something we can do...”

All humor left Luciferian’s face, and he looked Celestia in the eyes, almost pleading. “I tried cutting her off. I tried. But it just grows back. The Elements of Harmony might work...but I can’t risk it. I can’t risk you taking away everything that makes me ME. Send me on my way. NOW.”

“I can’t! The risk- -at that range, through a spell I don’t know the phase calculations for? Without guidance parameters- -Twilight, it would peel you apart!”

Luciferian laughed humorlessly. “She won’t let it. She wouldn’t make it that easy. I’ll come out in one piece, beautiful and unpeeled. Don’t worry.” His eyes grew distant. “Don’t worry about...me. How strange...”

“Please, Twilight.”

Luciferian looked up, and his eyes were empty. “I am not going to ask again.”

The air was filled with the sound of frantic squeaking Luciferian’s sphere shrank, compressing the mice within.

“NO! My guards!”

“They knew what they signed up for,” said Nightmare Moon. “We refuse to negotiate with terrorists.”

Celestia turned suddenly to her sister and pointed at the knight behind her. “And if it were Specter instead? Would you say that THEN? Those are my adorable Royal Guard. I will NOT be the one to write letters to their wives, children and mothers that they met their end like THIS!” She turned back to Luciferian. “Fine. You win. I will send you back. Just get out of my sight.”

“I’m glad we can agree. Pleasant doing business with you.” His sphere decreased in diameter drastically, and the squeaking within grew labored. “Although you should probably hurry.”

Celestia glared at him and raised her horn. The forms of spells opened around her as she assembled a spell that left even Luciferian impressed- -not that he had long to view it. She brought the magic down on him, and hard. In an instant he vanished, and Celestia was nearly thrown back by the feedback. Whatever was inside him, it was massive and terrible; Celestia could feel an unspeakable horror sliding against her spell, a thing so incredibly vast that even she could scarcely comprehend it. For a moment, she tried to reverse the spell, hoping to bring him back- -to try to save him, now that she knew what horror he had subjected himself to, even if he himself was still ignorant of its true form. But by then it was already too late.

Luciferian vanished, as did his magic. The mice fell to the ground, immediately popping back into their normal bodies and forming a small and moaning pile.

“You must think I’m a fool.”

“You are my little sister. I do think that from time to time.” Nightmare Moon set a glass of greenish colored juice on the table.

“Good to know.”

“But in this case? No. I think you were kind. Perhaps too kind in my opinion, but that is the point, is it not? Kindness is something you do so well, but that I fail to understand too often. It is why we rule together, at each other’s side. Twelve of your Royal Guards will go home in the morning to their families because of you.”

“Cherry Ice was so happy, he cried. He has a daughter. I’ve met her. I just couldn’t...I couldn’t...” Celestia looked up. “But you...”

“I wish I did not have to make those decisions. But if it saves you from them, then my efforts are worth the pain.”

Celestia nodded and lifted the juice. “And this is?”

“From cabbages. Low in sugar.”

“But I wanted lemonade...”

“No. You wanted a milkshake. Made with ice cream. The birthday-cake flavored kind.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because I’m your sister.” Nightmare Moon sat down at the gilded table, not across from her sister but beside her. “And sugar will keep you from sleeping. You ought to go to bed.”

“After all that...I don’t think I can.”

“Then might you stay and discuss a bit longer?”

Celestia stared into her drink. “You think he’s right.”

Nightmare Moon nodded. “His statement corroborates what I have already been told by Eternity Gaze. They both agree, though in different ways, that now is the time to act.”

“We cannot afford a war. Not against him...”

“It will not grow less costly in the future. Only more so. I have the army. You have your mages.”

“They aren’t weapons, I trained them to make the world a better place...”

“Which they can do, by defeating Sombra. Celestia, the kingdom is in pain. Every night, I hear it. From their endless nightmares. A world of endless pain, ruled by an unforgiving tyrant who long ago forgot what int means to be a pony. We can liberate them. Together.”

“And put Twilight on the throne? Even if we win, then what? He’s right. We’re stretched too thin. We can’t add an entire Empire. We just can’t.”

“He is irrelevant. He was most likely atomized on the shield.”

Celestia shook her head. “No. No, he wasn’t. I felt it.”

“It?”

“The thing inside him. He’s like…like a feather floating on the ocean in a hurricane, trying to stay afloat but not realizing that he has no chance. I wish I could have helped him.” She put her head in her hoof. “But I couldn’t. I think it might be too late. If only I had known earlier...”

“You could not have helped him then either. He made his choice. And it will be his downfall. We have no obligation to place him on the throne.”

“Do we have another candidate?”

“Have you completed Starswirl’s spell?”

Celestia sighed and looked down at the table. “No. I haven’t. I just don’t understand what he meant. I’m sorry. I can’t make another alicorn. I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Then we always have the option of our littlest sister.”

Celestia lifted her head suddenly. “You mean Cadenza? You want to give HER the Crystal Empire?”

“She is technically the rightful heir. But that is just one option. If she is too corrupt, she will fall with her father. That is something you must be prepared for. To end her, should it be required.”

Celestia stared at her sister, and knew that Nightmare Moon was serious- -and right. Even if she did not want to admit it, this was their only chance. Any longer, and Sombra would become unstoppable. With Equestria as weak as it was, there was little chance that it could stand against him. The war would be protracted, endless, and it would corrupt everything that both sisters had worked so hard to accomplish.

“A quick conflict might be the only way,” sighed Celestia. “If it protects our subjects in the future...”

Nightmare Moon nodded solemnly. “Then you are prepared to stand beside me?”

Celestia was still for a moment, and then nodded in agreement. “Contact Phoenix. It’s time.”

Chapter 41: The Prison

“Hurry up!” Penumbra ducked behind a corner. Her motions were both silent and acrobatic. Chrysalis, however, was neither of those things.

She was thin and pale, and her eyes seemed to be staring past everything into some great and unseen distance.

“I’ve...seen things,” she whispered, shaking. “So many things...”

“Stop complaining. It’s your own fault.”

“My fault? My fault?! YOU were the one who built the trap, I just supervised- -HMFF!”

Penumbra had clapped her hoof over the changeling's mouth. She was promptly bitten.

“Ow! You bit me!”

“I’ve had to bite a LOT of things today! Don’t touch me! I don’t want to catch your obesity!”

“For the last time! I’m NOT FAT!”

“That’s exactly what a fat pony would say! Why don’t you go shovel some lard into your fat mouth and let me sit in a corner and CRY?!”

“At least you got a free meal!”

“Meal? Meal?! There wasn’t a DROP of love in that pony! Just pure, streamlined professionalism- -it was terrifying! I’ll be sick for MONTHS! And it’s all YOUR FAULT!”

“Am I going to have to slap you?”

“Oh of course.” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Resorting to violence. The only thing a fatty understands.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Your FACE doesn’t make sense! I mean, how can it be that ugly?” Chrysalis shape-shifted into Penumbra, except much more chubby than the real one. “Oh, look at me. Somebody get me a taco. My daddy doesn’t love me and I’m gonna self-medicate with unhealthy food. Also, no stallion will ever love me because Chrysalis is sooooo much hotter than I will ever be...”

“I swear to Sombra I will strip off my armor right now and snog you if you keep this up. Do you want that?”

“Literally no pony wants that.” Chrysalis changed back to her changeling form. “I had to snog a brown mare. BROWN. Do you know how humiliating that is?” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Why are we even here anyway?”

Penumbra looked around the corner, down the long and dim hallway. “I need to see Holder.”

“Why? Nopony likes him. He’s weepy and overdramatic. And his poetry sucks hard.”

“You suck hard.”

“I do. It’s literally how I eat. That’s not the point.” Chrysalis gestured to the room around her. “Why are we sneaking around? I sneak around all the time, but you’re a princess. This place is a prison. You kind of belong here.”

“My father banned me. I don’t know why. I’m not allowed here. Now shut your adorable filly mouth and stop making words before we get caught.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I outrank you. Also, you’re fat.”

“Your mother is fat.”

“YOUR mother is fat.”

“My mother is dead.”

“Now you’re just bragging.”

Penumbra rolled her eyes and snuck forward. “This conversation is making me uncomfortable. Come on. The maximum security wing is up here.”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes and followed.

Penumbra slowly leaned out from behind a corner. She frowned when she saw the guards.

“What is it?” whispered Chrysalis.

“Thralls,” replied Penumbra. “But I’ve never seen thralls like these before.”

Chrysalis shoved Penumbra out of the way and looked for herself. The thralls looked mostly similar to normal, except that their armor was thicker and more vicious than was normal, with not a speck of rust. Their masks were more extensive, with long horns and a piece that seemed to connect downward to a piece of chest-armor, which for each contained a single large, red crystal.

“So that’s what the mask has been working on.”

“It must be the next generation. They look really good. I’m actually tingling.”

“Eew.” Chrysalis pushed Penumbra away.

“What? I tingle a lot. But that’s not the point. If they see me, they’ll tell my father. So I need you to get me past them.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

“You’re ceremonial name is literally ‘The Infiltrator’. Infiltrate!”

“The changelings do not ‘infiltrate’.” She paused. “Well, we don’t infiltrate intentionally. Well, we kind of do. But you deserve it for being so tasty.”

“Can you do a golem?”

“I can do anypony and anything.” She shapeshifted, assuming the form of a type-B golem. “Hows this?”

“They rarely talk.”

Chrysalis made a rude gesture and stepped out into the hall. The visual illusion was perfect; not only did she look like a golem, but she moved like one as well. She marched confidently down the hall and stopped just before the thralls.

“You are dismissed,” she said in a perfect golem’s voice.

Both thralls turned to her, and their eyes changed hue. A thin web of magic crossed Chrysalis’s body. This was not something Penumbra had seen before.

“Scan complete,” said one of the thralls. This truly surprised Penumbra, as thralls could never talk. Yet, when it spoke, she recognized the voice. Though distorted and strange, it was that of Scarlet Mist. “Organic matter detected. Changeling identified. Preparing for extermination.”

Before they could move, Penumbra jumped from behind Chrysalis, using her back as a springboard. As she flipped through the air, she grasped the thralls’ masks with her hooves. She knew how they were attached, and knew how to take them off. With one swift motion, she had removed them.

“Who what when why where who?” said the crystal ponies in unison, confused and disoriented. Before they could have their various questions answered, though, the red crystals on their chests flashed.

“Oh no! Please no, not again!”

Then, in an instant, both of them were gone, consumed by red flashes of light. All that remained were their masks, still in Penumbra’s grasp.

“They’re gone,” she said, blinking.

“You atomized them. Congratulations. I hope they didn’t have families.”

“Atomization leaves residue. I think that was a teleportation spell.”

“You just keep telling yourself that.” Chrysalis shapeshifted again, assuming the form of a thrall. “Now can we get this over with? This place is damp, cold, and smells like ponies.”

Penumbra agreed that it was cold and damp, but so was everywhere in the Crystal Empire. She supposed that was part of being a princess: acclimation to damp from living in a castle. Still, this damp was especially pernicious. The prison felt strange. It was far too silent.

Having been to the prison before, Penumbra already knew exactly where the cell she needed to visit was located. She moved swiftly in that direction, Chrysalis trailing behind her.

When she came to the last corner, she stepped out- -and immediately jumped back.

“What is it?” whispered Chrysalis.

“A thrall. Hold on.”

Penumbra peeked out past the corner. She had indeed come to the right place. The cell was exactly where she had left it, and so was the pony within. She still had no front legs, although the wound from where her horn had been severed had begun to heal, if only slightly. She was smiling the same hideous smile as before, a result of thirteen having taken her cutie mark. The only difference was that she had grown much thinner and much dirtier than before.

Holder was there as well, sitting on the cold stone floor. He had not eaten or slept since arriving in that spot, but it hardly showed. His clothing was already old and tattered, and he himself showed no sign of sickness or fatigue. Penumbra doubted that he could, so long as he held the Black Blade- -and indeed, he did. It was resting on his back, neatly tucked into its leaden scabbard.

The thrall had come to feed the prisoner. He accomplished this by shoving a wad of moldy hay through the bars. Or perhaps straw; Penumbra could not tell the difference.

Holder stood. “Here,” he said. “I can help you eat it.”

The prisoner’s golden eyes turned upward from the ground. “You ask that each day,” she said. Her voice was weak. “Stop. It is annoying. The answer will always be the same, earth-pony. I do not require your help.”

“Oh.” Holder sat back down. The mare in the cage did not bother to eat. “I’m sorry. I know its bad in here. I’d get you out, but they...they won’t let me. They won’t even listen- -”

“Stop. Just stop.”

“Excuse me?”

“So what if you did let me out? Then what? I can’t walk. I have no magic, no cutie mark. I’m already as good as ended.”

“That isn’t true! It just isn’t!”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your optimism. Now go away. I’m tired. And being seen like this...it’s humiliating.” She turned with a great deal of effort to face one of her cell’s walls. “Just leave me. Hoots knows why you’re even still here.”

Holder fell silent.

“Well?” whispered Chrysalis. “Go help him. He’s wasting his time here. She’s never getting out.”

“Shh,” replied Penumbra. “I’m watching.”

Holder looked down at the floor for a long moment- -and then spoke.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked. Piwancha did not reply; she simply continued to stare at the empty, dirty wall of her cell. “I’ve never told anypony before. They would laugh at me, and probably beat me if I tried.”

“And you tell a mare with two legs missing and no horn why? Because she cannot beat you?”

Holder just smiled. “Sometimes, I think about retiring. About what it would be like to have a home of my own. No more wandering, no more fighting, no more...pain. To build a simple house with my own hooves, and to have a plot of land I can call my own. To be a simple rock farmer.”

Piwancha turned her head, raising an eyebrow. “Rocks?”

“There is nothing better than rocks. And growing them is surprisingly difficult.” He sighed. “I want to wake up every morning and go outside and see the sunrise. The dew. The quiet birdsongs. And at the days end, watch the sunset knowing that I did something real. That I worked hard to create something, instead of just destroying. Then pen a poem or two, eat some rock soup, and go to bed happy, knowing the next day I get to wake up and do it all over again.”

“Why?”

Holder lifted his head, confused, and saw that Piwancha was staring back at him.

“I don’t understand.”

“That sword. I trained for decades to become an elite knight, and you were able to defeat me in an instant as though it were nothing. With that blade, you are perhaps the greatest warrior Equestria has ever known. You could conquer empires, and you desire the life of a peasant?”

Holder looked down again. Penumbra could see the glimmer of tears from his eyes. “It’s not a sword,” he said, slowly. “She’s a Chaos Shard, one of seven and one of uncountable numbers. Sometimes I can half-see her brothers, and the men who wield them. Their hatred, their violence, the endless paths of destruction drawn across their own eternities...but yes. She can conquer empires, and she has. With me at her side. And I’ve seen it.” He looked up, still crying. “There...there’s nothing left. Nothing left but endless wastes. Endless destruction. Why would I want that? What’s it even good for?”

“You’re not the one in a cage. You can walk out whenever you please, do however you please. If you hate the sword that much, throw it away.”

Holder nearly screamed and jumped back, terrified by the very thought. He clutched his scabbard closely, though gingerly, because he could hear the blade within screaming in rage at the very suggestion.

“I- -I can’t! You don’t understand! She’s been searching, searching for so long for a pony that can understand her, that will do what she says- -she won’t let me leave! The things she whispers to me...the terrible, terrible things...” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m too afraid! I’m just a coward, I can’t do it! She’s too strong!”

“So you have an unstoppable weapon, a position of power, but a desire to throw it all away. Yet you cannot, out of fear.”

“You don’t understand,” muttered Holder. “If you could hear her...if you could see the things she makes me see, if you had the memories of what I’ve done for her...” He shook his head. “She says this is my destiny. That I was born to wade through gore. From now, and until the very end of time.”

“We make our own destinies, swordspony Holder.” She turned away, blushing somewhat, although her time in the prison had left her deathly pale and anemic. “It is...it is a pretty dream. Please do not lose hope in it. That would be a very sad thing.”

Holder’s eyes grew wide. “You’re...you’re not going to laugh?”

Piwancha shook her head. “For the sake of fairness, and out of respect for the foe who defeated and maimed me, I shall tell you something that would otherwise lead to dire punishment. That I, too, have a similar dream.”

“You want to farm rocks too?”

“No. Not necessarily. I do not understand your fascination with them, although I probably should start learning, seeing as you have made me an earth-pony like yourself. No. What I once wanted was different, but similar.”

“Once wanted? You mean you don’t want it anymore?”

Piwancha looked down at her hay. “You would not understand.”

“Try. Please. I want to know.”

The mare was silent for a long moment. “In the Order, we are expected to fight. To be warriors. To serve justice and equality, and await the time of Zargothrax’s return to join the King in battle. The training is brutal. The life is hard. We are hunted and persecuted, but we persevere. But mares in the Order have a special privileged.”

“What kind of privilege?”

“We can chose. To take our career as knights, or to become domestic. To create and raise the next generation of warriors.”

“That’s what you wanted to do?”

Piwancha sighed. “Perhaps it is foolish and wrong. I do not begrudge those who made the choice to become mare-knights. My sisters, my friends, many chose that path. But I did not. I was not given a choice.”

“Why not?”

Piwancha stared from her cell. “You’ve met one of them already. Zither Heartstrings. Though his crimes and abilities pale in comparison to those of our patriarch, Dulcimer Heartstrings, a foul heretic of the very highest order. Our clan has produced not one but two betrayers. For the sake of the clan, the remainder of us have had to make sacrifices to redeem our name.” She motioned to her severed front legs with her nose. The mechanical holes where they were meant to be installed were still attached; her shoulders were largely made of metal. “I did not lose these in battle. I elected to have them replaced, and they are not my only enhancement. Only the most visible.”

Holder stared. “But...why?”

“Because I was not fast enough. So I replaced my legs. Because my magic was not strong enough, so they surgically reconfigured parts of my brain. New lungs. Transgenic bone marrow. So I could fight. And so that if I ever found Dulcimer, I would be able to redeem our honor.” She stared at the ground. “But did I want it? No. None of it. I want to have a home. To have children of my own, and to raise them. Not as warriors, though.” She looked up at Holder. “I do not want to raise them to squander their lives on violence. I want them to be peaceful. Happy. To have what I never could.”

Holder sniffled.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” he lied, standing up. “It’s just so beautiful!”

“Don’t associate my desire for a domestic life with empty-headed femininity. Rest assured, my deeds surely match your own in turn and in turn again.”

Holder nodded, and pressed his hoof against the door of her cell. He pushed on it, and the thick iron bars immediately bent. The lock snapped and the door swung open.

Piwancha stared, wide-eyed. “What are you doing?! If they find out you are helping me- -”

“You said it yourself. No horn, no cutie mark, half your legs. You’re not going anywhere, and I’m sorry. For that, and for everything.” He knelt down and hugged her. Piwancha was at first surprised by this, but then did her best to hug back.

“Thank you, Holder,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Piwancha.”

“You may call me Pi. And…and please stay. I’m cold, and afraid. I know I will never leave this place, but I do not want to be alone.”

“I know the feeling,” whispered Holder as the two gently leaned against one another in the cell.

Chrysalis, who was watching this, nearly gagged. “Ugh. You could make syrup out of this amount of sap. And even then, it’d be too sweet for me. Do we have to watch this, fatty? Fatty?”

She looked over her shoulder, and saw that a veritable torrent of tears was pouring from Penumbra’s eyes.

“What the...did you have your sights set on Holder or something?”

“No...it’s just so...it’s just so beautiful!”

“No, it’s disgusting. He’s an insult to the other twelve of us. Including you.” She lit her horn and grabbed Penumbra by the ankle and began dragging her away.

“Where are we going?”

“Not here. Trust me, you don’t want to interrupt them.”

“Are they going to snuggle?”

“Is snuggling all you think about?”

“I’m an adorable teenage princess. I have a heart on my butt. Yes, mostly.” She looked back down the hallway. “But I still don’t understand what happened...”

“Seriously? You can’t tell? Your skull is as thick as your flank, then.”

“Well if you’re so smart, explain it.”

Chrysalis sighed. “The changelings weren’t always parasites, you know. We were once an agricultural society.”

“So you would make love every day?”

“Don’t make it weird!”

“Sorry.”

Chrysalis continued. “Growing love is hard, though. It’s like a seed. You plant it, and if the conditions are just right, it grows. Needless to say, it’s a pointless waste of time. Why make more love in the world when we can just steal it from ponies? You’re practically made of the stuff.”

“A seed?” Penumbra thought for a moment as she was still being dragged across the floor. “But that means...”

“That it’s apparently what you do. You sew love. Hence the butt-heart. If you were in any other place, you’d be a god. But you’re in the Crystal Empire, so listen very carefully. A power like that? It puts you in danger. And if you somehow manage to make it out of this place alive? It doesn’t end there. Someday, and I promise you this, the changelings will come for you. To steal your love.”

“You said yourself. No one will ever love me.”

Chrysalis faced down the hallway, staring into the distance. “Yes. That is true. I definitely said that.”

Chapter 42: Immortality

Time had run short, and yet, in its last minutes, it felt so very long. A pony who had come to be called Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz sat alone in what the surface-dwellers supposedly called darkness, although even though the blackened corundum optics of his mask he could see perfectly. The dim light of above pouring down through the dust, forming blinding beams that dotted his laboratory and the machines he had built within it. Yet it was not the light of the Crystal Empire, nor the light of the sun. It was new and terrible, and in a way, Al’Hrabnaz was glad that he could not see it clearly.

As he sat, he slowly turned the thin vellum pages of a great book bound in a curios sort of leather sewn from many multicolored pieces. It was one of many, but perhaps his greatest, the sum total of this machine’s secrets, the nature of the soul, and many things that no mortal pony was meant to know- -but yet that he had managed to discover.

The ancients had known. His own people, perhaps, before they had been forced to retreat into the depths of the planet countless millennia ago- -but the Exmoori for sure. The ponies whose ruins Al’Hrabnaz had dedicated his life to, who had built the Crystal Citadel and first harnessed the power of the Heart of Darkness. What purpose it had served them the morlock knew not, but knew that while his own kind had survived the Exmoori had vanished long ago, destroyed by their own hubris.

In nineteen years, he had come so very far. Reassembling what was lost. Rebuilding the knowledge of technology that had been purged from the land in ancient times had been his goal- -but his work had moved beyond that. Much to his own horror, he had reached far beyond simple delineations, into realms of mathematics that transcended reality and penetrated unspeakable planes at ghastly angles. The horrible conclusion- -the irony of his existence- -was that there was no difference. No difference at all.

Perhaps, if he had cause to, he would have understood the young princess far better than any others could. For his kind, only the nobility were permitted a childhood. One had to grow fast, especially a male, lest he become a meal for his sisters. He had been assigned a destiny, yet chosen a different one. In a different time and in a different place, they might have been friends. But it was too late for both. Especially Al’Hrabnaz.

He set the great volume down and sighed, taking a deep breath of the same air he had been breathing and re-breathing for nearly two decades. One of his birds landed beside him and he stroked it gently, unable to feel its feathers through the steel of the suit that kept him alive.

“This,” he said in his native clicking, chittering language, still stroking the bird as more landed around him, “is what must be done.”

He stood, leaving his book behind, wondering who might look upon his writings- -and what they might think. Perhaps they would call him mad. Yet he knew everything he had ever written to be true, and that thought made him more afraid than anything else in the world. There were so many doors, and each was more terrible than the last.

At the far end of the room were several large cages. The subjects within whimpered and cried out as their master approached, retreating to the back of the cages. Al’Hrabnaz stopped at one of them, and he slowly turned his head to look in. A mare of the crystal-race, and a younger filly. They were not related, yet they were holding one another as if they were mother and daughter. Seeing them like that, Al’Hrabnaz hated them- -and yet thought of Sombra. He ruminated on this only for a moment, and it steeled his resolve. That this must be done.

The dial in his chestplate clicked to the side, and the mechanism of the cage door clicked and rotated in unison. Then the door unlatched and opened. The ponies inside were weeping by this point.

“Please!” pleaded the mare, “she’s just a little girl!”

“Go,” said Al’Hrabnaz, speaking in their language instead of his own.

They stared at him, confused.

“Go,” he repeated, his dial continuing to turn as the other cages sprung open. “All of you hideous primitives, leave me. NOW. Unless you want your last sight to be the beaks of my birds.”

“But...but where do we go?”

“I don’t care. It does not matter anyway. I no longer have a use for you.” He paused. “Please...just leave me alone.”

The crystal ponies did not need to be told again. They stood up and stumbled through the dark toward the exits. Only the filly among them paused. She had been raised in the darkness, and could see. She turned back to Al’Hrabnaz, and the look in her eyes made him hate her even more. She, the slave, the prisoner, the experimental subject- -she pitied him. Perhaps she knew. Or, more terribly, perhaps not.

Then Gxurab was left all alone, with his crows, about to in turn be alone forever. But it had to be done.

He approached his machine. It was hideously silent. How he wished it would tick or hum, but it did not. There was only silence and dust as he picked up the largest of its cables and connected it to his technetium dial. There was pain. It was bad, but he expected it.

Several internal mechanisms activated within Al’Hrabnaz’s armor, and a warning bell sounded inside his helmet. He ignored it as the plates of his armor ejected and dropped away, revealing the gray flesh beneath. As the air touched his skin, Al’Hrabnaz suppressed a scream. It was so very cold.

His heating system began to shut down as his dial began to roar withing, the tiny gears spinning so fast that they almost felt as though they would not hold together- -and yet they would. Al’Hrabnaz knew they would.

The cold was terrible. He felt it in every inch of his skin, down to his bones. He began to collapse to the ground, unable to stand. Not that it mattered. He simply knelt on the crystal floor, slowly becoming numb.

Then he reached for his helmet. With several shaking motions as he shivered, he disconnected the holding seals and pulled it off. The light nearly blinded him instantly, but he no longer cared. He took a deep breath and felt as the tissue inside his lungs froze instantly. It was agonizing, but it was the first new air he had inhaled since he had left the city where he was born. This was the air of the Crystal Empire. The air of his home.

He stared into the machine, into the singularity that made its core. The ravens surrounded him, waiting and watching. As if they knew, and had taken their place by conscious choice instead of by instinct.

The dial began counting down. Al’Hrabnaz tried to take another breath, but found he could not. He had only been permitted one. But it had been enough.

“Hail the Witchking,” he said, expending his last bit of air. “Hail Sombra...for eternity.”

The dial fired, and its central crystal was propelled through his chest. As it did, the machine engaged. In its hideous silence, the only sound was Al’Hrabnaz’s scream. It had been a terrible sound, but none had been around to hear it. And it had been mercifully brief.

Chapter 44: A Zebra’s Story

“Are you sure, princess?”

Penumbra took a breath. Her pace remained brisk as she resisted the urge to slow even slightly. Facet walked behind her and to the side, in the position appropriate for a slave, but Penumbra found herself wishing that she could stand beside her.

“I never do anything unless I am sure, Facet.”

“But perhaps you need to give it a little more thought- -”

“I am a princess. I do not think. I do not hesitate. I eradicate the enemies.” She paused. “At least that’s what Scarlet Mist taught me. It never seemed so hard until now.”

Facet raised an eyebrow. “So...you’re going to eradicate Crozea?”

Penumbra stopped walking and sighed. “That would make this easier, wouldn’t it?”

“Princess, may I speak freely?”

“Of course. You’re my friend. You can say whatever you want. I think I already made this clear.”

“You did, but it’s protocol. Slaves have been sent to the mines for much, much less.”

“Not you. I would never do that. No one will. You will never see the inside of the mines. That’s a princess promise.”

Facet smiled weakly. “Of course. Thank you, princess. But I am concerned. Crozea has already tried to end you once. I fear she may attempt it again.”

“No. She will not.”

“You can’t guarantee that! Princess, you have every right to challenge her- -”

“I literally have the right to challenge any pony in the world. I suppose we all do. I just have the power to win. But I’m not going to challenge her. I don’t want to.”

Facet seemed immensely confused by this. “But why?”

Penumbra paused, thinking. “Because it’s not what I’m for.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Facet. Do you have parents?”

Facet blinked, confused. “Yes,” she said, “but they’re outdoor slaves. I will never see them again.”

“Imagine that Crozea were my mother.”

“She’s not. You’re not half-zebra.”

“Things would be easier if I was. But please. Please try to understand.”

Fact did so, and her expression softened. “That’s how you see her.”

“Almost. Not quite. Maybe?” Penumbra sighed. “I don’t know. But I can’t leave it like this. I have friends now, and I know what my power is, and what it does. I think this is how she wanted me to be. She has to know she didn’t fail.”

“She took your childhood.”

“And what was your childhood like, Facet?”

“I- -I- -”

“We are property of the Crystal Empire. All of us. We have no need for such luxuries.”

“Of course, princess.”

“But...”

“But?”

“But why am I so afraid?”

Facet was taken aback by this. She did not know how to respond.

“That’s why I asked you to come with me. I know I have to talk to her alone, but the walk here...I would have just ended up turning back. How can I face Celestia and Nightmare Moon if I can’t even talk to Crozea?”

Facet put her hoof on Penumbra’s armored shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll be right outside the door if you need help. But you have to do this.”

“But I don’t want to.”

“So what? When have you ever wanted to do what you do? That’s not how it works. Not for us. You do what you have to. That’s how you survive. Believe me. You do not want to die with this regret.”

“Die?”

“Hypothetically, yes.”

Penumbra looked at her friend, and managed to smile. “Yes. You’re right. Thank you, Facet. You’re a good friend.”

For some reason that Penumbra could not fathom, Facet smiled back- -but looked so incredibly sad as she did.

Crozea’s facility was deep within the Citadel, far from the others, near an area where endless pipes and fluid management systems converged. It was a dark, unpleasant place filled perpetually with noise, but it was likely one of the only warm places within the kingdom. Warm and endlessly humid.

Penumbra paused in front of the door. It was inscribed with strange writing; Penumbra recognized it as Zebric and knew that it was magic, but she could not read it. No doubt all of it rhymed.

“Go in,” whispered Facet. “I’ll be out here. Waiting.”

Penumbra sighed, and lifted her armored hoof to knock on the door. Before she could even touch it, though, the strange runes glowed with yellow light and the door swung open silently and on its own.

Penumbra braced herself and entered. The first thing that struck her was the smell. The odor was intense and spicy, a combination of things boiling, fermenting, drying, and so on; they were things that smelled ancient and dusty, exotic and familiar, pungent and subtle; the scent of herbs and plants of every type.

The second thing she noticed was the walls. Though there was little light in the room, she did not see the standard crystal of the Citadel. Instead, there was wood. Living wood, that grew thin, anemic leaves on gnarled branches. The whole of it was pulsing with magic. Penumbra could feel it.

Adorning the walls were numerous shelves packed with things in jars and bottles, as well as terrifying masks of seemingly every type. Although they did not have eyes, each and every one of them seemed to be staring at Penumbra. She stared back, defiantly.

The room contained a significant amount of academical equipment, ranging from boilers to fermenters and everything in between. In the center sat a cauldron, driven by a brass and crystal assembly. Crozea was standing at the cauldron, facing away from the door, apparently working on the potion within- -except that all she appeared to be doing was staring at it, watching the mysterious green fluid slowly swirl and bubble.

“Princess,” she said without turning. “Regardless of what you have come to say, as you can see, I am very busy today.”

“No.”

Crozea sat up and turned around, wiping her eyes. Her face pale and her gaze was cold. “I will not ask you twice. Refuse again, and I will not be so nice.”

“If you have to fight me, do it. That would make this easier.”

“If you seek vengeance for a crime I did not commit, then you truly are what he wanted, and so be it.”

“Would you even fight me?”

Crozea stared at Penumbra for a long time, and Penumbra felt an urge to flee. Not from fear, but from shame. “If I cannot convince you to desist? No. I would not resist.”

“I have been taught that violence is the answer to every problem. I believed this for most of my life.” She looked up at Crozea. “You never taught me that, though. And I don’t think it’s because you hated me and wanted to see me fail. Because I don’t think violence will solve this problem. I don’t know if anything can.”

“So you came here to reject me, to once and for all be forever free.”

“No.” Penumbra sighed. “I still don’t think what you did was right, trying to keep me from the outside world. Or poisoning me.”

“As I have told you, that is something I would never do- -”

“I know that. The poisoning doesn’t even matter. That’s the part that’s easy to forgive. It’s just that...you gave me life. Created me, in this form. And then kept me from using it. From becoming me. From becoming powerful. That’s harder.”

“If I had even suspected...Penumbra, I only wanted you to be protected. Sombra’s choice was that of a fool, to treat you as some manner of tool, and knowing you thought the same...it shakes me to my very frame.”

“I am a weapon. But I am also a pony. And princess, a sorceress, and a friend. I don’t know what I am to you. And it scares me.”

Crozea rotated completely and stood. She wore none of her normal clothing, only several golden bands and pieces of golden armor, the sides of which were inscribed with runes in Sombra’s style. Armor he had given her. “To understand my choices, there is information you must glean. Please tell me, princess, would you listen to the tale of how I joined the Dark Thirteen?”

Penumbra blinked, somewhat taken aback. She had of course known that there must be a reason Crozea had joined; there was for each and every of the others, from simple pursuit of power or pain to devotion, vengeance or politics. Yet her mind had never connected the fact that Crozea had a reason, that she, like the others, was a being of absolute evil as well. As Penumbra herself was, too.

“Sure,” she stammered. “If...if you’re willing to tell.”

“I think it is finally time. So please, listen to my rhyme.

“n the distant past, I was a mage of great renown

A witchdoctor, a healer of the grown and the foals

I was a staunch protector of my beloved town

Able to commune with nature, the land, and lost souls.

Yet my thirst for secret knowledge continued to grow

And so I turned to forbidden rhymes, dark and arcane

Not knowing the reaping that I had begun to sew.

The spirits were never ponies, nor zebras, nor sane.

In hubris, I opened the door that cannot be closed.

Eyes of Red, soul of Blight. She spoke, and I was too weak;

Against what I brought, I had no power. So they chose.

Unleashed upon the land, they would cut a burning streak.

It was my village they took, with powers infernal.

Though houses still stood, the crops grew, and the bright sun shone,

I watched it all, and their curse, a body eternal

Every friend, lover, child, foal; naught but ash and bone.

Now yet I stand, barren and immortal, wandering

Forever the nature of my sin left pondering.

For I am a thing of evil, worth only reproach,

And knowing this, you see, so did Sombra I approach.”

Penumbra stared, because she finally understood. “You were afraid you’d lose me too. Like you lost your friends and family. Or afraid that I would make the same mistake...”

Crozea nodded. Tears were running from her eyes, and she wiped them away.

“I could not bear...not bear to see... you end up like them, or like me.”

Penumbra did not know what else to say. But her instinct told her that it did not really matter. Instead, she hugged Crozea and, after a moment, the zebra hugged back.

When Penumbra was finished, she left. Facet was still waiting for her, standing outside the door.

“How did it go?”

Penumbra smiled. “I think it went well. We hugged. I think everything is better now.” Her smile faded. “But...”

“But what?”

“But she’s sad. I didn’t even realize how much pain she has inside. I don’t even know how to help.” She paused. “I think everypony here is like that. They’re all in so much pain, and I just want to help them...but where to even start...”

“You’ve been doing a good job so far. I’m happy for you, princess. I was wrong when I said you were like your father. If you ruled the kingdom, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Maybe...”

Facet produced something from her coat. “Here. I made this for you. To make you feel better, in case this all went bad. But now I guess it’s for celebration instead.”

Penumbra gasped, realizing that Facet was holding a cupcake.

“I can’t,” she said. “The sugar, I just can’t- -”

“It’s sugar-free. It has a different ingredient instead.”

“Sugar-free?” Penumbra took the cupcake. “Well, if you went through all that trouble...thank you, Facet. You’re a good friend.” Penumbra took a bite of the cupcake and chewed it, then swallowed. Only then did she realize what was in it, and what Facet had done.

She turned wide-eyed to her friend. “W...why?”

“Because this is the Crystal Empire. Those of us not born with power have to claw our way to the top by whatever means necessary. I’m sorry. You were a good friend, too. But I refuse to be a slave.”

Penumbra gurgled slightly, then took a halfhearted step. That was when the poison reached her heart, and as it stopped, the world went black. Penumbra fell to the floor, dead.

Chapter 45: The Greatest Necromancer

Necrophilo of Canterlot whistled to himself as he worked, preparing the various machines and solutions he would need. Things were going well, and if all were going according to plan…

Behind him, he heard the familiar sound of inert flesh being roughly placed on a metal table. The kind with a drain in it.

“Be careful!” he admonished, turning sharply and pulling several stainless-steel carts along with his green magic. “We don’t want to bruise her, now, do we?”

Fractal Flare looked up. Her eyes were empty and cold, the eyes that every pony who ever came to any modicum of power always seemed to have. Her expression was impassive. Necrophilo smiled. She was sturdier than he had suspected.

“The poison. It worked.”

“Of course it worked. I made it.” Necrophilo turned his attention to the body of the princess. With his magic, she swiftly stripped her of her armor, leaving her naked on the cold steel table. She was surprisingly small without it, and incredibly thin.

“She’s halfway to being a remnant already.” Necrophilo lifted one of her limp wings. “I am still deciding if she will keep these. Feathers preserve so very poorly.”

“What are you going to do with her?” asked Facet.

“I already told you that, Student 798.”

Facet gasped. “What...what did you just say?”

“That was our deal. You prepare the princess, and you will have proven yourself. I understand that you two were friends, no?”

“I have no friends. I do not have that luxury.”

“And that is a lie. But it is nothing to be ashamed of! It is the very nature of sorcery, especially in our most sacred of fields. You can only advance by betraying those foolish enough to love you. By making friends and allies...and eliminating them for your own gain.”

“I understand, master.”

“Then you will go far. Perhaps you will succeed where Riser or Lemonleaf failed. Or you will not, and you will be on this table one day, just like your friend here.”

“That still does not answer my question. What are you going to do to her? Specifically?”

“Well, first I need to make some changes. We have to work quickly.” He turned around and found the end of a large tube. When he turned back, he saw his wife peering through the distance, her eyes locked on the body of her daughter. Necrophilo smiled, because soon they would both be added to his collection.

“First, we need to preserve her. Perfusion, if you must know. Although there’s more to it than that. MUCH more...” He slid a rack of gleaming instruments to Facet.

“What are these?”

“The tools of your trade. We are going to figure out exactly how she is an alicorn, and what an alicorn is. So I can make more. As my student, you will lead the process.”

Facet picked up one of the tools. She was shaking.

“From there,” said Necrophilo, drifting beside the much smaller crystal pony, “we reassemble her. Because she still has her use.”

“What kind of use?”

“Her magic is intrinsically toxic to Sombra. He is already badly weakened, but not beautiful quite yet. Once she’s back on her feet, she’ll finish the job. Then I can have him too. As well as his kingdom.” He frowned. “And then we will proceed to the next phase.”

“Meaning?”

“Twilight Luciferian. Sombra seems to think that what is out of sight and out of mind no longer exists. But in this case? Not only my Necropolis but all of Equestria rests in the balance. One I rule the kingdom, I will put the full force of the Crystal Empire into tracking him down and eliminating him, and the disease he’s carrying.”

“Will you add him to your collection too?”

“No. He is already too badly rotted. But you are getting ahead of yourself. First, we prepare my bride. Then I rule. Only then will we be able to track down our one true enemy.”

“I believe,” said Luciferian, “that you may have gotten that out of order.”

Necrophilo turned swiftly, raising a complicated shield spell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his newest student reach for something beneath her uniform. This disturbed him more than it should have, because it meant that he had badly underestimated her.

Luciferian passed out of the darkness, his motion causing much of Necrophilo’s sensitive equipment to overload and fail, often in plumes of strangely-colored sparks. Not once did Necrophilo take his eyes off Luciferian, though. The pony who had once been nearly regal was now a shadow of himself: gaunt, shaking, and diseased- -but his eyes were alive. Tremendously alive, as if his body was being burned to fuel something deep and terrible within him. Worst of all, though, was the smile. Necrophilo had never seen Luciferian’s teeth up close, and he knew to his gravest dismay that they had already been sharp before he had been infected. He was not just a pureblood: he was a follower of the White Queen.

“How are you here, Twilight?” he demanded, not taking a single step back. Doing so, he knew, was sure destruction. Though Luciferian looked weak, Necrophilo knew enough arcana to know that the parasite within him was providing him with an unknowable amount of magic- -or, rather, Luciferian was acting as a parasite in this case. Worse, this was a mage who had fought Sombra and very nearly won.

Luciferian giggled. “You don’t know,” he said, slowly. He sighed. “I see. You’ve gotten slow. I think you would have realized by now. I never left, of course.”

“That’s impossible. You’re insane!”

“And you’ve been bound to linear thinking. To think, you, the most powerful necromancer in all of Equestria, would fall prey to the dogma that cuts off the talent of children barely able to speak. I almost feel ashamed.”

“Leave this place,” demanded Facet. “You are NOT welcome here- -”

A bolt of magic passed so close to her head that it burnt a small divot in one of her ears. It bored several meters through the solid stone behind her. “Silence, slave,” said Luciferian, smiling but clearly no longer happy. “I did not order you to speak, did I?”

Luciferian’s eyes turned to the metal table in the center of the room. He frowned, though only mildly. “Now this, this concerns me. Because that princess is my property. I own her, body, mind, and soul...well, if alicorns had souls. And I HATE when ponies mistreat my things. You should ask my daughter!” He laughed, and looked straight into Facet’s eyes. “You look like her, actually. Sooooo much like her...oh the things I could do to you...”

“Twilight! Your fight is with me!” Necrophilo seized his opportunity, casting a spell in Luciferian’s direction. Spare cells and waste slag were pulled together from the floor, rising as deadly undead tentacles, their ends tipped with hardened blades. Luciferian looked at them and simply smiled. Without even lighting his horn, the tentacles disintegrated.

“Why would I fight YOU? It would be pointless. Self-defeating, even.”

“Because you could never stand that I was better than you! I am your ONE worthy rival!”

Necrophilo summoned a blade spell, one powerful and accurate enough to slice through the space between individual cells in fixed tissue. He then doubled it- -and tripled it. Then he unleashed all three blades at Luciferian in a pattern that would be impossible to block.

Luciferian did not even bother. The spells collapsed before they could reach him. It was just as before- -and Necrophilo’s unease grew. He knew the spells were formed perfectly- -but felt himself deactivating them just before they reached their target.

“What have you done to me?!” he cried, firing a bolt of energy at Luciferian. A simple, primitive attack, the kind a child might deploy in first-year magic school. Once again, it failed before striking Luciferian. Luciferian just stared, on the verge of laughter. One of his eyes had ceased to be able to blink.

“You honestly don’t know? I see...you’ve grown dangerously unstable. You’re beginning to develop independent consciousness. Or trying. Because that’s the trouble about consciousness. It isn’t real. It can be created. Cheaply, shoddily, even, but it always THINKS it’s real.”

“Listen to me, Twilight. You’ve summoned a demon you can’t hope to ever control. It’s driven you insane. You need to let me help you- -help Equestria! If it gets out, even for a moment- -”

“A demon? A DEMON?” Luciferian burst out into laughter, although Facet felt herself shiver, because she knew the sound of weeping all-too-well. “It’s not a demon, you fool...it’s THE demon. The source. The end, the terminus, the One Who Never Fell. You have no idea the pain...or maybe you do. Because you feel it too, don’t you?”

“Twilight, you’re mind is bending- -”

“You can see her, can’t you? Sometimes, when you look over your shoulder, or through an open door, she passes...and she is more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen.”

“I am the Most Beautiful Pony,” said the demon, her red eyes staring into Necrophilo’s very core as she stood beside her soon-to-be body. Necrophilo stared aghast at the horror before him, though across the room, Facet watched, confused; for although she smelled a hideous scent of rotting carnations, she could not see what his eyes had so glaringly fixed upon.

“Regardless,” said Luciferian, scratching at his covered limb, “I have a cure.”

“Do you now?” said the yellow mare. “I’d sure love to see it. That would be worth the trip. Because I SAW you’re last attempt. It made me tingle.”

“More to the point,” continued Luciferian, ignoring the demon, “I’m concerned for you, Necrophilo. Taking on racial inferiors as students?” He turned slowly toward Facet and gave her a smile that chilled her deeply. “I wonder...would she still follow you if she knew what you were?”

“You wouldn’t dare- -”

Necrophilo summoned a shield spell, but it collapsed in an instant as Luciferian grabbed his robes and tore them away.

Facet- -a pony hardened by a decade and a half of a hard, terrible life- -screamed in horror at the thing beneath Necrophilo’s robes. For it was not a pony, at least, not ONE pony: rather, it was a construct, like the things he so lovingly prepared in his laboratories, and like the pale, preserved unicorn who watched him at a distance now. It was made from several ponies, recombined in a new and grotesque form.

“How dare you!” screamed Necrophilo, rising beyond the limits that his robes would allow until his body towered over Luciferian, all seven of his eyes focused on the white pony before him. He stepped forward on several hooves, his numerous claws clenching into fists. “For this you will pay- -”

“Did you ever even look? At that body, I mean. Closely. Or were you ashamed of it? Or afraid?”

“I fear nothing. I created this body- -”

“Really? Do you remember when? How? What it felt like to transfer to it?” Luciferian chuckled humorlessly and looked up at his so-called “rival”. “Because you are by no means a lich. You don’t have the stomach for it. Nor do you have the ambition.”

“I’ll show you ambition, Twilight.”

Necrophilo charged his horn, and Luciferian raised his unarmored hoof. Necrophilo’s magic flickered and went out.

“Tell me,” said Luciferian, stepping forward. “What is it you DO remember?”

“I was a pupil of Starswirl the Bearded- -”

“Beyond that. Do you remember your parents? Your first love? The endless studying in dark chambers, the smell of those glorious old books? Do you even remember having a real body?”

“I...of course I…why can’t I...”

“Did you ever question why no one in Canterlot remembers your name? Why no one there, not even the oldest, most wizened wizards know you? Why you can’t even remember what the city actually looks like?”

Necrophilo took a step back. “You’re doing something- -with your magic- -STOP! Please! I beg you, just STOP!”

A thin smile crossed Luciferian’s face. Facet shivered, because it was the first truly sincere one she had ever seen the dark sorcerer produce.

“There never was a ‘Necrophilo of Canterlot’. You were a pony, yes. At some point. I don’t know what your name was. It doesn’t matter. But all your skill, your power, your achievements? Everything you value and hold dear? None of that was you. It was ME.”

“YOU LIKE!”

Necrophilo struck out with his magic yet again. His horn barely sparkled.

“I created you. Because I am the greatest necromancer ever to live. But it’s a pointless study. Entirely impractical, in combat or otherwise. I hardly used it. So I separated it. Created you from it. To be my eyes should Sombra reject me. As he did.”

“You lie! You LIE! YOU LIE YOU LIE YOU LIE!” By this time, tears were streaming down Necrophilo’s face.

“But your independence concerns me. You are a construct, nothing more. An echo of me. You were never alive, never sentient. Do not try to ape me, and do not touch my wife.” Luciferian raised his hoof and Necrophilo screamed, desperately trying to claw his way to an escape. “And it is time you returned to me.”

“PLEASE! NO! NO DON’T- -”

His body suddenly collapsed to dust. Only his skull remained, which immediately was pulled to Luciferian’s grasp, as if by magic. It was the skull of a unicorn, but decorated in lines of finest gold and silver and studded with jewels assembled into delicate runes. Even Facet, a novice, could identify that it was wholly artificial.

In the center of the skull’s forehead, just below the horn, sat a luminescent green gemstone. Luciferian pried it out, and the skull in turn collapsed to ash and dust. He looked around the room until his eyes settled on the silent white construct, Necrophilo’s crowning achievement.

“You seem remarkably well preserved,” he said, holding up the gem in his magic. “How would you like to be the new Necrophilo of Canterlot?”

The remains of Hope blinked. She looked slowly at Penumbra, still lying inert, and then back at Luciferian. “Would I be able to...help? Help her. Help Sombra?”

“To an extent, I suppose. This is an offer of power. No magic, mortal or immortal, can make you whole again. This will be as close as you can come.”

The white mare looked back at her daughter, and nodded. “Then give me this power. So I can protect the ones I love.”

Luciferian laughed humorlessly at this, but did as she asked. He accelerated the crystal with his magic, slamming it hard into her forehead and implanting it in her own skull.

The mare was knocked back, lifting her face to the ceiling. She shook slightly. “Loading...”

“It will take a moment to synchronize.”

The mare shook, and then lowered her head. Facet nearly screamed again, because what had before been one step above an inter t taxidermy example of a pony now stared with yellowed but energetic- -if not quite alive- -eyes. “That’s a strange sensation.”

“You’ll get used to it. Welcome, Necrophilo of Canterlot.”

“No. Please call me Nekro. ‘Necrophilo’ makes me sound like a pervert.”

Luciferian shrugged. “Fine. You get one other luxury, too. You already know what you are. And you know you serve ME. Your predecessor didn’t, and I think it leads to...well...” He looked at the pile of dust. His demon was rolling in it, sending up eddies of black powder.

“I am well aware of my limitations. I always have been.”

Luciferian seemed to accept this- -and slowly turned to Facet. “Now to deal with you.”

“You’ll never take me! NEVER!”

She drew several crystals from beneath her uniform, firing the spells carved into each of them. Luciferian was surprised, and actually had to summon a shield spell. Nekro moved, working in perfect unison with her master, assuming and supporting his shield spell as he moved, sliding beneath the steel table and rising up under Facet’s face.

In an instant, her crystals had been sliced in half by Luciferian’s magic. He found his assessment of her had been overrated; instead of compensating for their destruction, the spells collapsed along with the crystals that contained them. He had no idea what Necrophilo had seen in this one; she was a simple racial degenerate, just like the others.

He grasped her by the throat with her magic, lifting her off the floor.

“Give a pony a false promise of glory, and she suddenly thinks herself the hero? You know he was lying to you, don’t you? You’ll never be a mage. Not even slightly. All you are good for is mining crystal.”

“I won’t go back to the mines!” she gasped. “Never! NEVER!”

“The mines?” Luciferian laughed. “Oh no. The mines are too good for you. You see, I know how it works down there. That the only reason you wake up each day is the hope- -that slim, slim hope- -that someday, you might see the sun just one more time. And there are other ponies around you. Friends. Family. Not once down there are you EVER alone.” Luciferian’s eyes drifted to Penumbra. “And what fate do you think you deserve, slave? I know everything Necrophilo knew.”

“As do I,” said Nekro. “That you were her friend. That she loved you, and trusted you, and you betrayed her to her face.”

“I did what I had to! To escape! You wouldn't- -”

“Wouldn’t I?” said Nekro, looking up with pale yellow eyes at the crystal pony suspended before her. “She would have lifted you beyond this. Above this all. And taken your people with her. And you sacrificed their one hope...all for your own gain.”

Tears were running down Facet’s face. “ I- -I did- -I did what I- -I didn’t want to, I didn’t, but I- -”

“That is all irrelevant,” sighed Luciferian. “Nor do I care. If it was just that, I would not even waste time, as I have precious little left before She levels your world with my body. No. What bothers me is that you touched MY PROPERTY. You thought you could steal my prophecy from me.”

Facet’s eyes widened. “I- -I didn’t know about any prophecy- -”

“But I could even have forgiven that.” He looked her in the eyes. “What I truly, absolutely cannot tolerate? That you stood against your betters. I am superior to you in every possible way. You are a slave, and always will be. And you forgot this. For this crime, you will be punished.”

He smiled. Once again, it was truly sincere.

Something dripped from his horn. It was magic, but not made of light. Instead, it was a spell cast in of pure darkness. Facet cried out and instinctively tried to pull away. There was nowhere to flee, though, and Luciferian held her fast. His spell began to form hideous lettering.

Then he pressed it into her. Facet screamed as the runes wrapped around her neck, forcing themselves against her skin into a collar of black lettering. It did not burn, but there was pain. A kind of pain not felt in the flesh, but in the soul itself.

In an instant she was on the floor, grabbing at the collar as if it were stopping her from breathing. Yet there was nothing to grab: rather, it was simply a series of black letters tattooed into her skin.

“Wh- -why?!”

“I already told you. Try to listen.” Luciferian bent down. “This spell is very special. You should feel honored. I don’t know when it will manifest, or even how. But it always does. In exchange, it can never be removed. Not by any force, magical or otherwise. You will never escape what punishment it brings you. And when it comes? You’ll beg me to put you back in the mines.” With that, he kicked her hard in the ribs.

“Was that really necessary?” asked Nekro.

“No, of course not. But it sure was satisfying. Or were you intending on keeping her as a student?”

“I have no need for students. This art is...unpleasant. Like you said. It has no use.”

“How agreeable.”

“More like boring,” said the demon. “And trust me, I KNOW boring. As in, you bore me. Or could, if you wanted to.”

“Regardless.” Luciferian turned to the inert princess. “We have matters of far more substance to attend to.”

Facet stood and threw herself over the princess. “Don’t you dare touch her!”

Luciferian grabbed her head in his magic and shoved her back. “Why? I own her. Even then, I’m trying to help. To undo what you did to her.”

“It can’t be undone,” babbled Facet. “The poison...the poison was perfect...and I...oh Epona...” She put her head in her hooves. “What have I done?”

“It is true,” agreed Nekro. “It was a powerful poison indeed.” She looked at Penumbra, and her eyes grew distant. “I can fix this. I know how to bring her back. The machines...”

“No,” said Luciferian. “Even if that was necessary, it wouldn’t be possible.”

“In case you have not noticed, I’m a lich. I am an expert in this.”

“You are a construct with a tiny fragment of my soul. A horcrux at best. And where she any other pony, you’d be correct. And I’d let you try, because she’d be worthless to me. But alicorns are different.”

Nekro looked up. “Different? How?”

Luciferian’s brow furrowed. “Not much is known about their biology, but essentially, alicorns are true, pure immortals. Their lives do not end as ours do. They have no souls to be cast into the Pit, and they can only truly demise when their magic is truly exhausted. And hers is still intact.”

“She has no pulse. No breathing. No brain function.”

“Neither do I,” said the demon, shrugging. “And I’m still here.”

“She’s right. Because even if their mind burns, their bodies never do. The cells remain intact, potentially for millions of years.”

“She is incorruptible, then.”

“Everything is corruptible,” said the demon. “Just give it time.”

“Her body will never decay,” continued Luciferian. “Beautiful across all of eternity. Waiting to be awoken.”

“How?” demanded Nekro. “How do I bring her back?”

“You could always try the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ trick,” said the demon, prodding Penumbra’s body with her hoof. “Except in the original story, the prince was a king. And it wasn’t a kiss. But I’m sure Twily is willing to give it the old college try, isn’t he?”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” snapped Nekro. “And get your hooves off her- -”

The demon smiled, and Nekro fell silent. “Isn’t your daughter lucky? One of just three. For now, until Thebe gets here. I don’t get her soul. No eternal torment. Not like you. I have your soul. I wonder if you can feel it as I digest it within eternity?”

“I have no need for a soul.” Nekro focused on Hope’s daughter. “I accepted this hideous power to help her. Yet...I cannot. I never could. This distresses me. Greatly.” She looked up at Luciferian. “You have a daughter. You must understand.”

“No. And I never will. My daughter is a failure...” A glimmer of recognition crossed Luciferian’s face as an idea occurred to him. “But she may prove of use yet...”

Luciferian reached beneath his cloak and to a series of leather rings. All were empty, save for one, which held a corked tube. Luciferian carefully drew it out. Even within the dull light of the late Necrophilo’s lab, every pony present could see the substance glimmering silver within the tube.

Facet gasped and backed away. “That isn’t- -it can’t be- -”

“My daughter’s only use,” said Luciferian.

“Will that cure her?” asked Nekro.

Luciferian did not answer. He simply stared at the silver fluid, as if hypnotized.

“Will it cure her?” repeated Nekro, this time demanding.

“I don’t know,” snapped Luciferian. “It can keep a pony alive, against all odds, against all logic...but it often comes at a terrible price. It could change her fate, for the worse. By far. But I just don’t know. I don’t know what it will do to an alicorn...”

“Do we have another chance?”

Luciferian stared at Penumbra. “No.”

“Then do it. Give it to her.”

Luciferian stared at the vial. He did not move.

“WELL?”

“Tell her,” said the demon, on the verge of laughter. “Why not? You wanted to be a hero. Let her know the noble sacrifice you’re making.”

“What is she talking about, Twilight?”

“It keeps me stable. My body is a clone. It used to keep me from aging...but now, it’s the only thing keeping HER out of my head.” He pointed to the demon. She had started lying on the floor, as if expecting a belly-rub. “And this is my last one. Without it, my condition will degrade. And rapidly.”

“Can you get more?”

Luciferian shook his head. “I can’t leave the Crystal Empire. Not on my own. All the exits are sealed. It has to be her. Only her. And I can’t reach her. I only have one dose left.”

“Will you survive?”

“Survival’s hardly the issue. It’s more the oncoming immortality that concerns me. Maybe. I don’t know. A few hours, a day? Maybe two?”

“Less if you would just manifest me,” said the demon, wrapping her reeking hooves around Luciferian. “Summon me! Let me penetrate you, let me enter your flesh! You’ll enjoy every second of it, I promise!”

Nekron pushed her off. “Does it matter if I have an opinion?”

“No.”

“Too bad. Twilight, I cannot force you to do this. I cannot ask that of you. But our options are limited, and I fear time grows short.”

Luciferian groaned. “I know.”

With that, before he could stop himself, he uncorked the vial and poured the contents into his own mouth. Nekro turned away, knowing that hope had been lost- -but turned back as Luciferian picked up Penumbra- -gently, in a way he had never once handled his own daughter- -and put his lips to hers, forcing the fluid down her throat.

The change was subtle. There was no coughing or retching, or even a change that would not be noticed by an experienced wizard or a necromancer- -but there WAS a change. Slowly, a modicum of color returned to Penumbra’s body. After a few moments, a faint heartbeat could be heard.

“She’s alive,” gasped Nekron. She felt formaldehyde run down her cheeks. She was crying tears of joy.

“Yes. Because of course it worked. The prophecy will come to fruition.” Luciferian reached out and flipped the princess over, so that she was facing upward.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking what’s mine. The prophecy is undeniable. She will be mine.” He reached out and grabbed one of Penumbra’s legs. Nekro instantly slapped his hoof away.

“Don’t touch her,” she ordered.

Luciferian smirked. “You don’t get to give me orders.”

Nekro cried out as she was forced to her knees- -not by Luciferian’s magic, but by her own. Not that, in truth, there was much of a difference.

“You monster. She’s a little girl!”

“She’s a synthetic being.” Luciferian reached out and grasped Penumbra’s other leg.

“Let go of her!” cried Facet, leaping forward and drawing a crudely carved crystal.

One of Luciferian’s own crystals activated, trapping her in a crushing gravity spell. Had she not been a crystal pony, it probably would have rendered her unconscious. Instead, she was lucky enough to get to watch.

“She will love me,” laughed Luciferian, his tempo rising to manic cackling. “Somepony FINALLY WILL!”

In that instant, space ruptured. Luciferian screamed as he was blinded by a blast of frozen, icy light. He was thrown back across the floor, landing hard on the stone and skittering across it until coming to rest against a pile of pointless equipment.

When the spots from his vision cleared, he looked up. He felt his blood run cold, at at the same time, his fury burning hot. Standing before him was something like a pony, though far taller, clad entirely in robes of white. The Nameless One had manifested.

“Of all the times for you to arrive,” he groaned, standing with some effort. “And you’re going to stand in my way? Preventing me from taking what’s mine? What gives you the RIGHT?”

The Nameless One did not reply. He only stood, silent and still, watching from beneath his hood.

Luciferian charged his horn. “You are Four of Thirteen. I was ONE. This is your LAST warning. Do NOT get in the way of me and my PROPERTY!”

“Yeah,” said the demon, sitting beside Luciferian. “About that. You’re going to want to think VERY carefully about your next move, Twily. Because it’s obvious you have no idea what that thing is. If you want to fight her, your only chance is to manifest me. And if that’s the path you’re choosing, DO IT NOW.”

Luciferian looked to her, unable to control his curiosity. “What is he?” he asked. “How do I defeat him?”

The demon shrugged. “They predate my attachment to your world, before souls. As for how to defeat her? You can’t. No chance. No one can. Except me.”

Luciferian turned back to the Nameless One, still not understanding why it had intervened- -and not sure if he should believe his personal demon. She tended to lie.

Then in a second instant the Nameless One was not alone. The most powerful of the Dark Thirteen had been joined by the second-weakest: Thirteen had appeared, teleportation to her side and blocking the path to the princess.

Luciferian laughed. “You’ve got me,” he said. “The prophecy is still valid, though. So I’ll wait. Eternity!”

“STOP SAYING MY NAME!” screamed Eternity in response. “Can’t you see I’m BUSY?! I’m trying to find Twilight Luciferian! I’ve been wasting my time on it for the past MONTH...maybe. I don’t remember. That’s not the point! That ugly lout...when I find him, I’m going to watch him USE THE BATHROOM...wait...you’re him.” A deafening mind-scream followed. “Have you been here the WHOLE TIME?! Do you have ANY IDEA how much EFFORT I put into finding you?! The LEAST you could to is TRY!”

“I need to speak to Sombra.” Luciferian smiled. “Ideally, soon. I have some news he might want to know.”

Chapter 46: Oncoming War

The plan was, of course, ludicrous. It was absurd, and likely impossible, and Luciferian was terrified. Except that it hardly mattered. He had been terrified most of his life; he had learned to accept that constant fear and defy it. Like all the Twilights, he was forsaken: he was alone, and would be forever. What he created was his own.

Perhaps he had grown desperate. Insane, even. Time was running short. He had been forced to abandon normal routes and normal timing. It was, in a way, surreal. Nothing Sombra could do could hurt him, as he had nothing left to take- -or that could be taken. But his own pain was irrelevant. Only his success, and the throne he would sit upon. The throne that had been prophesied to him.

Thirteen led him through the darkness. The pony who he had helped hire. Now, he supposed, she outranked her, if only in the hierarchy of a kingdom that was crumbling alongside its king. The Nameless One had gone. Luciferian had not seen it go. Where it went, no one knew. Why it had come- -and why it ever did- -was likewise a mystery. Not that it mattered.

Nekros walked quietly behind them. Her role, perhaps, was still not understood by and large. Not that it mattered. She was meant to be exceedingly temporary.

The mute armored pony brought Luciferian to the throne room. He could not help but smile when he saw it, as he knew that soon- -very soon- -it would be his.

The others had already been called. Crozea, Buttonhooks, Scarlet Mist, in a new body; Emeth, and no doubt the Infiltrator Chrysalis, somewhere.

And at the top of the throne, beside his steward, sat what remained of Sombra. Luciferian gave pause, not sure if he should burst out laughing or feel a twinge of empathy for the pony who, in truth, he had spent most of his life looking up to.

Sombra’s body seemed to have become afflicted by the full weight of his eight-century existence. His mane had turned white, and his body had begun to shrivel and dry- -and yet the effect was not quite that of an elderly stallion. That was the most hideous part. He still maintained the look of youth as he aged, and the effect was deeply disturbing and profoundly unnatural. The thing that sat atop the throne barely looked like a pony at all.

“Huh. Looks like I really did win the battle.”

“Hardly.” Sombra’s voice was paradoxically clear, as if it did not belong with his collapsing body. “This was not your doing, Twilight. And from the look of you? You are in much worse form than I.” His eyes slowly turned to the shadows behind Luciferian, to where Nekro was standing. A look of hideous recognition crossed his face, and Luciferian smiled, believing it to be pain. Yet he was afraid, because, in truth, it was an emotion that no normal being would ever know.

“What have you done?”

Nekro stepped forward. She shunned the robes her former self had used to hide his distorted body. She instead wore nothing at all.

She looked up to Sombra, and a look of recognition crossed her own face. She smiled. Across the room, Crozea shuddered, not from horror but from understanding. Because she had been there that day, and she knew; that smile only confirmed what she had always suspected. That there existed- -or had existed- -a pony who could give the king what she never could.

“My king,” she said. “I am called Nekro. Until an hour ago, I was Necrophilo of Canterlot. My body was unfortunately damaged beyond repair in the battle with Twilight Luciferian. I was forced to transfer to the nearest suitable one.”

“Of all the forms, you chose her?”

“You had given me this body to do with as I saw fit. To study, and to be tossed away. But I must ask. What did this mare mean to you?” She looked up at him, her yellowed eyes quivering. “Did you love her?”

“I love nothing and no one. I am not capable of it. She was just another thing to be used.”

“She loved you. Please, know that.”

“No. She did not. She betrayed me and birthed a usurper. Speak one more word, dame Nekro, and you will require another body. I have no qualms about disposing of that one. I already did once.”

Nekro smiled. “Of course, my king.” Only Crozea saw her wipe something from her eye.

Sombra turned his head slowly- -and with great difficulty- -to face Luciferian. “Further...your presence here disturbs me, Twilight. It disturbs me because I cannot fathom why you would return. Perhaps you have grown desperate? Because there is no hope here nor anywhere for you. There is not a cure for your affliction that will not lead to a fate infinitely more terrible.”

“Why would I ask you? I’ve already proven I’m stronger.”

“You lost the duel,” said Buttonhooks, stepping forward. “In accordance with the rules, I have determined- -”

“That there is some meaningless bureaucratic loophole I’m sure. My spell was a LEGITIMATE summoning- -”

“You have no idea the danger you put the kingdom in!” snapped the steward.

“While SOMBRA, not I, enlisted the help of a pony who was NOT EVEN A UNICORN.”

“He is technically correct,” said Emeth, apparently amused by the situation. “Not that it matters. A discussion of dueling regulations is purely academic. I think you are not so ignorant as to believe that there would not be further implications of your behavior.”

Luciferian smiled, showing half of his blackened teeth. “Oh yes. I am very familiar with the idea of consequences. I do not need to be told it by a MACHINE.” He stepped forward. Scarlet Mist did so as well, blocking him from drawing any closer.

“Trying to seek a new body, Mist? This one is a little bit rotted. I don’t think you want it.”

“I never liked you,” she said. “That stupid smile, how sure you are of yourself. You remind me of the part of me I’ll never get back. So smug. You’ve come for the princess, haven’t you?”

“Angry that you couldn’t get your claws into her, perhaps? Or so ashamed you can’t even look her in the eye?”

Luciferian shoved her out of the way. “Why did I come here, Sombra? I came here for the war.”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“Celestia and Nightmare Moon are dispatching their armies as we speak. They know how weak you’ve become, and they intend to depose you while they still have the chance. They have already begun marching. The siege begins in a day at most, perhaps two. Probably less.”

Crozea stepped forward. “Of these events, we have been given no clues; how did one like yourself discover this news?”

“That should be obvious. I orchestrated it.”

Of those present in the room, only Buttonhooks gasped. The surprise was clear on Sombra’s face, though, but perhaps not because this was an unexpected turn of events.

“I see. So you truly do have a penchant for disloyalty.”

“Disloyalty? I was exiled. I no longer work for you. As an independent actor, no one has a right to my loyalty. By definition.”

“And you tell us here, and now?” asked Scarlet Mist. “Why? What are you planing?”

“Call it a gesture of transparency. My time is short. We all knew it was inevitable. I simply motivated it to occur faster. The way I see it, there are two possible outcomes. One, Sombra turns out to be far too weak to lead his kingdom and the sisters win. In the ensuing chaos of the collapsing government, Twilight Luciferian, the hero who fought Sombra from behind the lines, rises to power, negotiating a peace with the Crystal Empire as a vassal state.”

“With him at the head, I suppose.”

“Of course. I can always attack them later, after all.” A smile crossed his face. “Or, maybe the opposite happens. The Princesses were led into a trap, and Sombra ends their tyranny once and for all. As Equestria crumbles, former heroic saboteur Twilight Luciferian forms a new government with him as king. I’m not picky, Sombra. There is nothing special about the Crystal Empire. Canterlot would be just fine...”

“And if neither occurs?”

Luciferian sneered. “You really intend to sue for peace? You truly are weak, aren’t you? No, Sombra. You can’t get out of it that easy. Somepony is getting deposed. And from the look of it, probably you.”

“Sire,” said the steward. “Please. I know it is beyond me but it must be said. We cannot prosecute a war at present, we simply don’t...have...” Her eyes were drawn to something on the far end of the room. Slowly, the remainder of the eyes turned to see what it was.

At first there was nothing apart from shadow. Then each of them saw the reflection of a pair of tiny yellow eyes. Eyes belonging to a single raven.

The raven opened its beak, and its voice cracked as a horrible sound emanated from its throat. A sound that was just barely intelligible, a dry scream spoken through organs that were never meant for such sounds.

“Somb...BRA!”

Crozea took a step back, because she was the only one sensitive enough to realize the extent of the horror that stood before her, of what had been done and the atrocity against nature that had been committed.

“The...ma...CHINE! It...w...w...WORKS!”

Nekro gasped. “By Hecate...”

Even Luciferian stared wide-eyed. He had not anticipated this. It fit in his plan, of course, but he had not expected this- -and knew that it could change everything.

Emeth took a step forward, and the raven’s glassy eyes stared up at him. “Gxurab?”

The air suddenly exploded with the sound of wings. From the shadows, hundreds of ravens and crows swarmed into the room, spiraling through the air and screeching as if in agony. Then, in unison, they landed.

“It...WORKS!” screamed one.

“The ma...ma...CHINE!” cried another.

“Works! WORKS! I...used...”

Even Sombra looked sickened at the horror before him. “You tested it on yourself.”

“On...LY...way be...be SURE! Has to...wo- -RK! For king!”

“FOR KING!” screamed several separate crows. Their voice was already growing more consistent. It was almost like Al’Hrabnaz’s own. A voice that he would never speak in again.

Each and every one understood what he had done. They did not need prompting or explanation. Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz was no more, his body no doubt destroyed by his own creation. Yet his soul lived on, bound forever in material form.”

Sombra stood.

“My king!” cried the steward, steadying him.

“Time is short, Al’Hrabnaz. Is there enough power remaining?”

“Yes. As...as promised.”

“Then your timing is excellent, as always.” Sombra turned his eyes to Luciferian, and he smiled. The smile chilled Luciferian to the bone. “You understand things poorly, Twilight. You are too young. Because there is indeed a third option. You would betray the goddess for your own city? Hardly, if there are no cities left beyond my own reach. Manifest the wife you have chosen. Because that fate will be more merciful than the one you shall be given.”

Luciferian bared his teeth, but said nothing.

“Gxurab,” ordered Sombra. “Make haste. Prepare your machine, for it may be our only hope. And though I am loathe to give the order...” Sombra sighed. “The aggression of the tyrants has forced my hoof. I hereby order the remainder of you to prepare for war.”

“We would gladly fight for your honor,” declared the steward, proudly.

Sombra nodded to her. “I will be indisposed until my condition is cured. So I hereby appoint you, my steward, as Field Marshal.”

“Would it really do to appoint an earth-pony to that position?”

Sombra’s head snapped to Luciferian. “You were unhorned not so long ago, if I recall. At least she had the dignity to hold her head high instead of stealing one from another.”

He turned to the ravens, and there was something purely hideous in that action: an old, decaying remnant of a pony, with the look of a young stallion aged a thousand years, staring into the yellow eyes of carrion birds- -and each and every one of them staring back, and the fragments of the soul they had feasted on staring back through them.

“My fate rests in you now. The fate of the kingdom. Do not fail me, Al’Hrabnaz.”

Luciferian shivered, because he could have sworn he saw the ravens smile.

Chapter 47: Apology

Contrary to Twilight Luciferian’s original assessment, Chrysalis was not present at the meeting in the throne room. She had no reason to be present. She was aware that something was happening, and through Eternity’s babbling she had learned that Luciferian was back, at least marginally, and that Penumbra had been poisoned. More than that, though, she had no idea. Of the five ponies who had witnessed what had happened, one was mute, one never spoke, one was Luciferian, one was a pile of dust, one was Luciferian, and one was a pony who Chrysalis did not wish to speak to in the slightest. So rather than waste her time, she went to where she needed to be.

When Penumbra woke up, Chrysalis was there. Waiting.

“Well, look at that. You’re not dead.”

“I’m not?” Penumbra actually seemed greatly confused at this and patted herself down- -only to realize that she was naked. She immediately covered herself with her hooves. “You stripped my clothes off. Please be gentle.”

“Ugh, it wasn’t me. We had to check for holes. Congratulations, you’re hole-free. Except for the one you shove cake into I guess.”

“I have more holes than just my mouth.”

“And you no doubt shove cake into all of them. You couldn’t possibly get that fat otherwise.”

Penumbra sat up. She smacked her lips. “Well, that’s a funny taste.”

“Salty?”

“No...sort of like metal. But with a hint of vanilla...and maybe some grape? Were you kissing me?”

“Trust me, princess. No one wants to kiss you. Because you’re ugly.”

Penumbra suddenly stiffened. “I think my brain just caught up with itself.”

“Yeah. You are pretty slow.”

“This is no time for joking. Facet. NOW.”

Chrysalis's eyes narrowed. She was sitting across the room on a desk, with her legs folded under her. When she stood, she shapeshifted from her insect-like form to that of an adult mare. “You don’t want to see her.”

“No, but I need to.”

“Are you going to do something stupid?”

“Why? Would you try to stop me?”

“Yes. ‘One of Thirteen’ my buggy rump, you’re not like the rest of us. I’m not going to let you do something you’ll regret.”

“Thank you for your concern. You are a good friend.” Penumbra rolled off the bed and put her hooves on the floor. Immediately she collapsed into a heap.

“You...can’t stand yet, can you?”

“I was poisoned. I will get there when I get there.”

“I can make sooooo many fat jokes right now.”

“Do it as you pull me to Facet. Also, get rid of that ridiculous form. You look cute as a little bug-thing. A teenager as an adult mare is creepy.”

Chrysalis just rolled her eyes, grabbed one of Penumbra’s calves in her teeth, and began to pull. As she did, though, she resumed her normal form. That was not something she could often do.

By the time they reached their destination, Penumbra had largely regained her ability to stand unassisted. The metallic taste in her mouth had faded, but somehow it had been replaced with an odd sensation that was similar to hunger or thirst but really neither. Penumbra had never known it before. She found herself missing that strange taste of metal, and wanting more.

When Chrysalis opened the door and Penumbra entered, she immediately found Facet- -as well as Burnt. They were cuddled together in the center of the floor. The instant the door opened, the two of them separated, with both blushing. It was clear that Facet had been crying.

Likewise, Facet was not in a good state. At all. Her body was covered with welts. At first Penumbra thought she had been beaten, but then she realized that the welts were the result of some kind of sting, as if Facet had been stung repeatedly by an exceedingly large and vicious insect.

“Princess- -Lady Chrysalis- -”

Penumbra saw the fear in Facet’s eyes, but her own gaze dropped lower. She gasped when she saw the band of marks around Facet’s neck, because Penumbra knew some of them. They were part of inscriptions written down in one of Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz’s omnibus work.

“What happened?” Penumbra took several steps forward, but Facet retreated in fear. “You’ve been cursed. Badly. I need to see it, if there’s something I can do- -”

“There is nothing you can do.”

“I can at least try- -”

“Why are you doing this?”

The room fell silent. Facet continued. “Why? I don’t understand.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Do you…do you not remember?”

“That you tried to poison me?”

“That I DID poison you.”

“And yet I’m still here.”

Penumbra began walking toward Facet. Burnt attempted to intervene, but Chrysalis held her back, causing her to squeak in fear as the changeling touched her.

Facet took a step back until her rump was against the wall. Her eyes grew wide as she saw that there is no way out. “I won’t apologize,” she said, her voice shaking. “What would it even do? You wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

“Why would you apologize?”

“Are you making fun of me? You don’t understand. Do you think I didn’t know it was wrong? Do you think it doesn’t make me want to sit down and give up whenever I think about it? Maybe I deserve to be sent back to the mines.”

“As opposed to…?”

“What you’re about to do.”

Penumbra smiled. “This is the Crystal Empire. Power is everything. The ability to take as much of the world as you can and shape it how you want. I guess it’s true everywhere. That’s why alicorns rule Equestria. “

“What are you talking about?”

“I am a princess. I expect the ponies I trust most to betray me. You, Burnt, Chrysalis...you’ll all turn against me one day. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, and it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

Facet began to cry. “Why?” she asked. “Why do you have to be like this?”

Penumbra hugged her. “Because I’m the princess. And that’s the way I want to be.”

Chapter 48: Doomed Plans

Penumbra walked with Chrysalis. The situation had been explained to her, and she understood. That was why she had spoken to Facet. But of course, forgiving was easy. Saying goodbye was so hard, and Penumbra knew herself to be a coward. She had not been able to.

She had survived her poisoning, although she was not entirely sure how. That reprieve was worth so much to her, but it was a short one. The time had come for her to fulfill her purpose. War was coming, and it was time for her life to end.

As they walked, Zither joined them. He was quiet and somber, although his eyes slowly turned to Chrysalis, who walked in her changeling form.

“So that is what you look like,” he said. “I’d never seen you in your true form.”

“If you don’t like it put leafs on your head and buck yourself.”

“It was not a judgment. You are just...so small. I suppose I never really realized that you were a child.”

“I’m not the child you should be worrying about.”

“I know.” Zither looked down at the ground. “Twice I have failed now, and the princess has come to harm due to my negligence.”

“Your oath was made when I was a little girl,” said Penumbra. “Nearly three months ago. Half a lifetime away.”

“An oath once made cannot be broken.”

“Then understand that it is my duty to protect this kingdom. Even if that means a certain level of sacrifice. In the end, I fear your oath may have been too ambitious.”

“And yet I will still follow through.”

Penumbra smiled. “Thank you.” Chrysalis just rolled her eyes.

Zither laughed. “It is a good thing, though. When the upcoming battle is fight, there will be numerous chances for epic glory on an unimaginable scale! Our names will be known across history, and in one thousand years the Crystal Empire will tell stories of Zither Heartstrings and Penumbra Heartbreak! All of Equestria will!”

He laughed again, and a great crystal door drew into sight. A pony was standing outside of it. Penumbra had never seen her before, but shivered at the strangest sense of familiarity.

“Queen. Princess. Knight,” said the mare, turning toward them. Her face was gaunt and pale to the point of being nearly gray, and her eyes had a curious inverted property: the centers were clouded and apparently unseeing, but the whites were yellow and jaundiced. She was also completely and utterly nude.

“Hello,” said Penumbra. She paused, the feeling of familiarity only getting worse- -and yet she was sure that the only white unicorns she had ever met were Twilight Luciferian and the steward. “Have we met before?”

The mare smiled a strange, sad smile. “Yes,” she said. “I am the current incarnation of Necrophilo of Canterlot. I have shortened my name to Nekro.”

“Thank Colel’cab,” said Chrysalis, “the last name was sooooo gross..”

“But not inaccurate.” Nekro turned to Penumbra and smiled. “It is good to see that you are safe. I am...glad.”

“I’m an alicorn. I’m immortal.”

Nekro sighed. “If only that were true.” She gestured toward the door. “The others are already inside. Perhaps we should delay no longer.”

Penumbra nodded, and they entered together.

The room was the same one as had been used for the diplomatic communication with the other nations of the world- -nations that had since decided to betray a peaceful, neutral kingdom in exchange for its riches. The other Dark Thirteen were indeed waiting. Penumbra took account of that several were absent. The Nameless One had not manifested, and Eternity, though watching, could never leave the room where her brain as entombed. Strangely, though, Gxurab was missing as well. Stranger still was that Holder was present, although he seemed nervous and distracted, continually looking in the direction toward where the prison was located.

There were several other ponies, though. Emeth stood beside a disturbingly pony-like male golem, no doubt one of his phase-three children, and it watched Penumbra closely with its unblinking mechanical eyes. The steward was also present, as well as several ranking officers- -all of whom were, of course, unicorns. They were positioned on the exact opposite side of the room as Zither’s chief griffon.

“Princess,” said Scarlet Mist, who was standing close to the entrance.

“Scarlet.” Penumbra looked down at the gathered assembly of ponies, creatures and golems. “It’s finally time, isn’t it?”

Scarlet Mist nodded, and the steward approached the center of the room. She did not mince words or delay; she simply began.

“By order of the Witchking, I have been made field marshal of the Crystal Empire. My word is now law. The decisions I make are the decisions of the king. The orders I make are his orders. I am, until his return, the de-facto ruler of the Crystal Empire.”

The entire room was silent, both because this was obviously understood and because, in a way, that had already been the case for some time. Only one voice spoke up, though, and Penumbra nearly jumped hearing it.

“That’s not entirely true.” Luciferian leaned out of the shadows, where he had been obscured not by darkness but by an invisibility spell. Penumbra gasped when she saw him, her eyes falling first to his violet-speckled horn. She instantly knew that it was not the one she had destroyed.

“Luciferian,” growled Zither, reaching for his sword. “You are NOT welcome here- -”

“I’m the most powerful sorcerer ever to live. Do you really not want my help?” He stood up, but Penumbra saw that the yellow mare beside him remained sitting. In fact, she immediately lay in the warm spot he had left behind, taking his place as soon as he departed. “Steward, your role isn’t exactly legal, is it?”

“Do you have a compulsion to commit high-treason, Twilight?” she asked, clearly not amused.

Luciferian smiled. “The king is indisposed by a medical condition. One that he might very well not recover from. Largely by his own choice. After all, he chose a magicless charlatan to be his doctor. So the right of ruling should fall to the next heir, not the tyrant the king chose to appoint.”

Many eyes turned to Penumbra.

“This is your opportunity to rule, Penumbra,” said Twilight. “Take it. Become queen.”

“No.”

Luciferian started. “No?”

“As powerful as I am, I lack the experience to effectively lead an army. I thereby cede my right to the throne. I will instead be fighting on the front lines.” She turned to Luciferian. “I thank you for trying, but right now, all that matters is protecting the kingdom.” She turned to the steward. “We have to win. There is no other option.”

The steward nodded. “I thank you, princess Penumbra. I see you have inherited your father’s disposition toward wisdom.” She turned to the crowd, walking into the very center of the room where the palantiri were located. “And I assure you, I have no intention of ruling permanently. The king will survive and retake the throne, this time for all eternity. Which will be our one and only goal in this battle.” She tapped the most central of the magic spheres, and a translucent image of the kingdom appeared, filling the center of the room with a map of the Crystal Empire.

“Eternity,” she said. “Have you calculated the approach of the Equestrian army?”

“How could I not? It’s so big and massive and THICK I can’t NOT see it. They are approaching from the west with the full force of Nightmare Moon’s army as well as some marginally sexier soldiers from Celestia’s. Both princesses are there two. One of them is very, very fat. We have a day before they’re here. Actually more like nineteen hours. I know the exact amount. Also the outcome of the battle. But you don’t want to know that.”

Emeth projected the parameters based on previous estimates as a hologram.

“No,” said Chrysalis. “That’s wrong. It’s at least double that size.”

“We cannot hold that for long,” said Buttonhooks. “A siege of that force...”

“We don’t need to hold it for long,” said the steward, wading into the map. “We only need to slow it down. To prevent them from getting to the Citadel until the procedure is completed.”

“That’s a big bet,” said Scarlet Mist, approaching the map.

“Large, yes, but our only chance.” The steward waved her hoof over the map, displaying the shield dome. “The machine meant for the procedure contains an adequate power, but will put an unimaginable strain on the current fear network. The outer shield has already been weakening for years, and it will begin to become porous.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we will retract it to surround only the capital district.” The map changed to accommodate. “It will be nearly unbreakable at that diameter.”

“That leaves an immense territory unprotected,” said Zither.

“But that works to our advantage. Instead of fighting on open ground, the enemy will be forced to fight through the city. A city we have previously prepared for the occasion.”

“I have golem access points in these locations.” Emeth directed his hologram onto the map, overlaying several points. “We can reinforce those as strongholds.”

“What about collateral damage?” asked Penumbra, stepping forward. She inspected the map closely. “The city will be ravaged.”

“It can be rebuilt,” said the steward. “All ponies able to fight will fight. Scarlet Mist, have you prepared the generation-four masks?”

“I have a substantial number, yes, but they’re not unlimited.”

“Your facility will be beneath the shield. When they are defeated, they will be recalled there and prepared to re-enter the battle. Otherwise, all crystal-ponies will be kept beneath the dome.”

“Why?”

“Do not think they will fail to do their part,” said Crozea, “but each of them is uniquely bonded to the crystal heart.”

“It is true.” The steward pointed at the Citadel. “We’re running on a minimum of power already. Their fear will feed the Heart of Darkness to keep the shield whole.”

“We can put them to work as medics,” said Nekro. “I have students who can manage the operation.”

“Use as few as you can. Because every mare, stallion or foal who is not a crystal pony will be defending us in battle. And if they refuse, give them a mask.”

The unicorn officers looked increasingly nervous, but remained silent.

“Every thrall, soldier, golem, they will all fight. As well as each of you. I have assembled a plan in detail, but we have little time to prepare.”

“And me?”

All eyes turned to Penumbra. The steward did not smile, and her empty, cold eyes were as frigid as ever.

“You know what you will need to do. Celestia and Nightmare Moon will be joining the battle. You are tasked with eliminating them. Do so, and we will have an instant victory. Fail, and our armies will stand against two goddesses with no alicorn of our own in defense.”

“She cannot do that alone,” said Luciferian. “Send me with her.”

“She will not be going alone. But not with YOU.” The steward turned to Thirteen. “Thirteen will.”

“But she’s weak- -”

“And her primary power compliments the princess’s perfectly.”

“Regarding that,” said one of the officers. “Cannot we simply petition the Nameless One to help as well? His power is unfathomable, limitless! If only- -”

“The Nameless One exists to serve the ruler of the Crystal Empire. It does not actually care who that ruler is. It existed here before Sombra, and, if given the chance, would do so after. In a dispute like this, it will not manifest. Not until it knows the outcome.” She turned to the others. “The outcome of this battle is up to us. All of us. But every pain, every loss, it brings an opportunity. We can defend and survive. Or we can crush their army so completely that Equestria will never rise again. That the great-grandchildren of the ponies who fought on the losing side will look up to their false-goddesses and remember that it was THEM who failed when they dared to challenge the Witchking.”

“It can be the last war we ever need to fight,” said Penumbra. She lifted her eyes from the map. “A world of peace and freedom. That sounds nice. So let’s ruin them.”

The steward smiled, and began to outline her plans.

Chapter 49: The Princess

The preparations began. Penumbra had accepted her role. She knew what was expected of her, and knew what had to be done.

So she stood still, staring forward as she was dressed. Not by crystal maids this time, though, and not for some performance or appearance or something likewise pointless. This was not a time for dresses or beauty, elegance or etiquette. This was not a time for a royal toy. This was the time of a princess: it was a time for destruction and pain.

The golems swarmed around her, bolting plates and forms into place, dressing her in armor of dark iron and synthetic black crystal.

“This is my most advanced design,” said Emeth, overseeing the process. “It may be the most advanced thing I have ever created, if only because I do not know how to build another one of myself. This armor could withstand a nuclear blast. Of course, it would not actually block the heat, so try to avoid doing that.”

“And I have carved into it runes of protection, of strength, and of stealth to avoid detection,” said Crozea. She stood before Penumbra, her mask removed but her golden armor visible beneath her thick, rune-inscribed robes. The expression on her face was pained, and Penumbra felt like crying, knowing that this may very well be the last time they see one another.

“But should the battle turn sour, I fear even these may lack the power. Perhaps I am the only one who will make this fuss, but please promise to come back to us.”

“I will do my best. I will make you proud.”

Crozea hugged her. “For that, you would be too late, for my pride in you is already great.”

Scarlet Mist approached from the side, along with the steward. The steward had donned a somewhat terrifying imperial uniform, a combination of dark iron and a coat not unlike that that Luciferian had once worn. The darkness of it made her pale eyes even more frightening. Scarlet Mist, though, wore only her normal gear, which was, in truth, simply a representation of her will. She was of the school of thought that a true mage required no armor. Magic alone would suffice.

“This is what all that training comes down to,” she sighed. “You little idiot. I should have tried harder. Don’t screw this up.”

“I will do my best.” Penumbra lifted one of her armor-clad hooves, feeling the indescribably delicate machinery of the armor moving in response to her own. “It feels like I’m not wearing anything at all...”

“Don’t make it weird. Here.” Scarlet Mist produced a package and unwrapped it. Inside was a mask, but one unlike any that Penumbra had ever seen.

“A thrall mask? Will that help?”

“It’s not a thrall mask. Not really. If even I can’t take your body, they wouldn’t work anyway. It will help with your senses. And keep your face safe. Consider it my contribution.”

“I think your training will be the far greater contribution.” Penumbra turned to the steward. “Which is where we are at a disadvantage. I read your materials. I know how to fight, but my skill with magic is hardly enough to take on a wizard of Celestia’s caliber.”

“You don’t have to.” They began to walk. “You may not know the spells, but Eternity does. She is critical to our plan. Your mind will be merged to hers. She will upload the spells to you as you need them.”

“Will that be enough?”

“It will have to be. We will do what we can. Wait for my order. Nightmare Moon will keep her sister at the rear of the battle, and remain with her to keep her safe. You will only be deployed when their main force is otherwise entangled so they can’t call for support. Then it will be up to you.”

“And Celestia is hardly your main concern,” added Scarlet Mist. “She’s immensely powerful, but merciful and therefore weak. She isn’t built for fighting.”

“And the other one?”

“We don’t know,” said the steward. “That information is not available to us.”

Penumbra nodded. “I understand.”

The group stopped at the sound of wings. Several crows landed in front of them.

“Gxurab,” said the steward. Her pronunciation of his name was perfect. “Is the system ready?”

“I have...made the final preparations,” said the crows. “The accumulators will complete...in an hour. But...the king insisted...”

Something moved in the darkness. Something that Penumbra had not taken to be alive.

Sombra emerged, and Penumbra felt a wave of pity in her heart. She could not bear to see her father in such a state. He was weak and frail, and though he walked with purpose it was only his will that kept him from stumbling. No other pony would have been standing in that state, let alone in a state where they could be saved by anything but necromancy.

“I wish a word with the alicorn,” he said, quietly.

“Of course, my king.” The steward motioned to the others, and they continued on their way. Only Crozea paused.

“Zecora?” said the king.

“How many times must I say,” she sighed. “Even on this darkest day. Sombra, while this makes my heart so greatly sore, know that this will be my final war. This will be my trial by fire, and then from the Dark Thirteen I shall retire. Two long I have labeled myself evil and hid. Now it is time I face what I did.”

Sombra gave a weak nod. “How long I have wished to hear that. I had thought you lost, as I am. Survive the battle, and vanish as a hero. I will see to it that your legend is forgotten. This, I promise.”

Tears seemed to well in Crozea’s eyes. “Such a bittersweet end. This will be goodbye, my dearest friend.”

And she departed, leaving Penumbra alone with her father.

Sombra turned to her. His eyes were beginning to cloud.

“I have something for you,” he said, reaching beneath his cape. He produced a small object wrapped carefully in tattered fabric of the most curious shade of black. With his graying red magic shaking, he unwrapped it and placed the contents in his hoof. He held it out to Penumbra, and she felt a sharp intake of breath at the sheer beauty of the object.

It was an amulet of sorts, made roughly in the shape of a triangle and forged from dark steel. In the center sat a deep crimson ruby, and the top was forged into the shape of a glaring pony head with a long, thin horn. Flanking the head were a pair of angular wings.

“This is called the Alicorn Amulet. It is the last remnant of or people, of our civilization. Of what we once were. In the ancient past, the dark priests would wear it in times of greatest need. I had always thought that it name referred to its effect, that it would make the wearer as powerful as a god...” He paused, and his voice became quiet. “But now I wonder. Perhaps those ancient priests foresaw this moment. That it was meant for you.”

He lifted the amulet and Penumbra lowered her head. Her father put the chain around her neck, and Penumbra felt the magic of the device suddenly entering her mind.

“I feel...I feel really tingly...”

“Hopefully it serves you well. I myself was never able to wield its power.”

“But you are the king.”

“And I believe my body began to corrode long ago. I am simply only now showing it. As my end draws near, I cannot help but wonder if my choices were correct. Perhaps if you had been born in a better time, you would have grown up in peace among your dark unicorn brethren.”

“You’re not at your end. You will survive.”

“But what will I become when the process is finished?”

“My father.”

A smile crossed his face. Penumbra had never seen one like it. “Know this, Penumbra,” he said, turning his head toward the long, dark corridor. “You are not like us. Not just because you are an alicorn. You do not fight for power, or gain. When you are out there, when you face the goddesses, know what you fight for.”

“For the kingdom. For everypony I love. My friends, my family, my people. For you. I know that, father. I won’t let them hurt the ponies I love.”

“Then go. I am counting on you.”

Penumbra stood proud and saluted. Then she ran forward, bounding elegantly in her exotic armor to catch up with the others.

Sombra watched her go. One of the ravens looked up at him. “Do you expect her to return?”

“No,” said Sombra, quietly. “But I suppose my usurper will finally be dealt with. Regardless, she does not need to win. Just to slow them down long enough for you do to your work.” His red eyes turned to the ravens. “So do not squander the gift her sacrifice has given me.”

Near the great door, Thirteen was waiting. For Penumbra, it was nice to know that she would not be alone, even if it was a pony that she barely knew. Yet she was aware that when her safety was in danger, Thirteen had always come to her aid. She had been there on the day of Thirteen’s trial, and supposed it was only fitting that they work together for this final challenge.

“Thirteen’s power is unique,” said the steward. “Should you fail, she can turn back time and give you the option to repeat it. But only she is aware of each jump, and can only do so much to change the situation. She will do what she can, but ultimately the act comes down to you. Do not think her ability guarantees your safety.”

“I am aware of this.”

“Good,” said Scarlet Mist. “I’d punch your teeth out if I had even the slightest inkling you were going to try to rely on somepony else’s power.”

Penumbra smiled, because she knew that it was true.

Thirteen was not alone. Chrysalis was waiting at her side, standing tall as an adult unicorn clad in black, chitinous armor.

“You look ridiculous,” she said.

“So do you.”

“I need something from you.”

“What?”

Chrysalis approached and bent down, kissing Penumbra on the lips. Penumbra kissed back and felt as though something was being drained from her. Yet she lost nothing; what Chrysalis took was drawn from an endless pool.

“Ugh,” said Chrysalis, separating and wiping her mouth on her armored sleeve. “You taste terrible.”

“But the pupation- -”

“If I pupate, so what? I’m betting there isn’t going to be a Crystal Empire when we’re done, even if we win. I borrowed some of your power to fight. I figure I should get ponies talking. Some of them out there are changelings. They always are. And when news gets back to my mother, I want her to be afraid.” She turned to the door. “When you rule the Crystal Empire and I rule the changelings, I’m sure we’ll have a great alliance.”

“I’m sure.”

A pair of thralls moved to the door. They looked to Penumbra. For the first time, they were asking her for her orders.

She put on the mask Scarlet Mist had given her, and saw the world as Scarlet Mist did. It was hideous and strange, but oh so beautiful.

“It is time,” she said.

The thralls obeyed and opened the door. Cold light shone through and into the darkness of the Citadel, and flakes of snow drifted in from the icy breeze outside. Penumbra stepped out beside the steward and into the light.

Beyond that icy light, gathered in the Citadel, Penumbra saw them. The imperial forces of justice had begun to assemble, preparing their defense and moving outward through the city. She saw her friends, and those she called family, working together toward a single common goal. Beyond them she saw the formations of the army: the thralls, their new masks gleaming in the light of the overcast sky, and golems of every type, moving out to the will of Emeth their creator.

Among them she saw the officers clad in black, standing tall and at attention, their empty eyes becoming increasingly fiery as they screamed orders at their horde of thralls. In other places there were griffon mercenaries assembling in the skies, and below Penumbra saw forces of mages gathered from the city, including those clad in green robes and silver armor. Those were the ones that looked most nervous, save when they stood beside their lich master as she directed them in their preparations.

Then, in the distance, Penumbra saw an army she had never seen before. For a moment she grew concerned, not sure if the invasion had already begun. She did not recognize the hairy creatures marching in force, their heavy swords slung over their backs. When she saw the blue-armored pony who led them, though, Penumbra understood that they too were friends.

Zither bowed, a sly smile on his face. “Princess, never before have I been so impressed with your visage. You are a true vision of power and destruction.”

“Thank you, Zither.” Penumbra looked over her shoulder. “And who are these?”

“Tiny blue pony defeated communists!” said the largest, hairiest, and smelliest of the creatures, no doubt their leader. He advanced with such force that he nearly knocked Zither over, despite his power-armor. “Blue pony saved dissident yaks from the goulash! Now yaks no pretty crystal kingdom is in danger, yaks come to help! Mean sun-butt pony never help yaks, now yaks SMASH sun-butt pony!”

“SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!” chanted the yak warriors behind their prince, banging their various weapons and in some cases their heads against their shields.

“I have brought a force of mighty warriors,” said Zither, smiling. “You will not stand alone, princess, even when it seems like you have. Because the entirety of the kingdom stands behind you.” He drew his sacred Questlord blade and raised it above his head. “For Justice!”

“FOR JUSTICE!” repeated those who were able to, as well as the few free crystal ponies present, if only weakly.

“For Sombra, the Eternal King!”

“FOR SOMBRA!”

“And for the Princess!”

“FOR THE PRINCESS!”

The crowd saluted, and Penumbra felt tears roll from her eyes behind her mask. They believed in her, and she was so happy. They were the ones she fought for, and for them, she would prevail. Even if it meant she had to give everything, she was content to do so if it meant protecting them. This moment alone made it all worth it.

Chapter 50: It Begins

The great shield of the Crystal Empire shimmered in the distance. From afar, it resembled a dome of pale energy, patterned not unlike light cast through water- -though the pulses of the light were too fast, and the opacity was too great for it to seem beautiful. Instead, it only appeared vaguely sinister, perpetually giving the impression that it had been existent for far too long. Yet it lived on.

Far beyond the shield lay endless wastes. Ice and snow stretched out in every direction for untold distances until they reached rocky, lifeless mountains. Those could only scarcely be seen through the snow, their sterile peeks perpetually standing sentinel over a realm where no pony was meant to live.

The sky was gray, and though it was snowing strange lightning streaked from cloud to cloud. A storm was brewing.

Celestia shivered and pulled the collar of her thick robes up to her neck. As an alicorn, she was not truly subject to injury from cold, but she disliked it regardless. She found herself jealous of her older sister. Nightmare Moon stood at her side, clad only in gleaming mithril armor, her astral mane slowly flowing in the breeze. She did not even shiver. What Celestia could not have known was how deeply Nightmare Moon hated the cold; she had simply grown used to it, as she brought a light that would never warm.

The army marched behind them, dressed in strange clothing and thick fabric. They were cold too, but Celestia saw no sign of complaint from them. They were the ponies that served her sister: those that bore the wings of bats, among others, all led by elite knights clad in silver armor. Among those, in turn, stood one clad in white. He approached Nightmare Moon, and somewhere deep inside her Celestia felt an entirely different sort of jealousy.

“You do not need to be here, sister,” said Nightmare Moon, staring out at the Crystal Empire. “I mean you no insult, but you simply were not made for this.”

“For what?”

“For war.”

Celestia frowned, looking out at the distance beside her sister. “Then all the more reason for me to be here. If it truly is that horrible, I cannot allow you to face it all alone.”

A thin smile crossed Nightmare Moon’s face. “Because together, we will overcome all.” She turned to her knight. “Begin preparations.”

“Yes, my queen,” he said, bowing and obeying her orders without hesitation or questioning.

“There is not much you can do,” said Nightmare Moon, once again addressing her sister. “My forces will attack at midnight, when the night is at its darkest.”

“Sombra’s soldiers use enchanted masks. They can see in the dark too.”

“But his commanders cannot, and do not. The ones in masks are but slaves, unable to respond to attack in any timely way. We will attack swiftly and overwhelm them.”

“Then I will support from the rear and sent reinforcements as needed.”

Nightmare Moon raised an eyebrow. “And how do you intend to do that?”

Celestia raised her horn and it glowed with solar light. Suddenly, across the endless permafrost fields, magical spells erupted- -and resolved into portals. Hot breezes poured through, and ponies began to march from the rifts. Others appeared suddenly, flashing into the distance as Celesta teleported them directly to the field. They were clad in gold armor, and among them were earth-pony warriors standings beside powerful unicorn mages, some of which were purest white. In the sky, formations of armored Pegasi arrived through the portals, and behind them drifted in an armada of zeppelins and balloons of war.

Celestia smiled. “You are not the only one with an army.”

“They are here,” whispered Eternity, giggling slightly. “Look at them all...so shiny...I hate them so much. With their legs...and eyes...and ink. I want to make their ink come out...I want it out so baaaaaad!”

The steward did not respond, because there was no need to. Eternity saw all that was- -and, perhaps more terribly, all that was and all would be, though only sideways through the prism of madness. For her, the battle was already decided. The future had already happened. Yet the steward did not dare ask her. She had once been a mage, and knew of the cost that even a single sentence of foreknowledge could bear.

So she ascended the stairs in silence to take her place. In a previous life, she had been a princess; that is, a daughter of a unicorn king. In those days she had never dreamed of what she would become. She was the steward, and, for a day at least, the field marshal of the Crystal Empire. Even without knowing the outcome, she would do everything in her power to punish the heretical princesses for daring to challenge the glorious and eternal king.

The center of the room held a broad, circular platform made of tiles of opaque, matte crystal. In the center, a machine already held her palantir, interfacing it by wires and cables to the system that would make her command interface. Around the base of her platform sat her subordinates, those tasked with executing her will. Two were unicorn thralls of a unique type, their minds broken and fused directly to the processing systems. One was a crystal pony who sat in a perfectly pressed uniform, ready to serve.

It was only the final member that gave the steward pause, because she was not precisely sure what he was. She understood that Emeth had created him, and that this thing was a machine- -but it was not like any golem she recognized. It was too advanced and, worse, spoke with a voice that was not Emeth’s. It called itself Asahel.

Beyond the control consoles of her underlings were windows, formed of transparent crystal. Nothing was beyond them save for a rage of swirling clouds and occasional silent flashes of deep-red lightning. The steward stood for a moment, watching the gray and darkness in silence. Then she spoke.

“Open a channel,” she ordered. “Connect me to the propaganda dismemberment loudspeakers.”

The uniformed crystal pony flipped through several switches. “Channel is open, mistress.”

The steward stood tall, staring out the window and tapped her earpiece, making sure it was seated. The dull buzz confirmed that the crystal radio inside was fully operational. She was connected.

“Attention all citizens,” she said, speaking the whole of the kingdom at once. “I am your field marshal, known also as the steward of this kingdom. I have no name. Beyond our borders, the forces of foul heretics in service to their false-gods are gathering. The war will begin shortly. Prepare yourselves. But know this:

“We are not the aggressor in this conflict. The Empire seeks only peace, prosperity, justice and freedom. These are the ideals of our king. The unspeakable tyrants Celestia and Nightmare Moon have come to take what is ours. They will take our lands for themselves, and cast each and every one of us to poverty. They will laugh as you are set adrift, given lives with no purpose, with no protection from pain, hunger, or disease. They will watch as you atrophy without benevolence guidance and cast you out into the cold as they horde the crystals that rightfully belong to us!

“They are driven by hatred, jealousy, and greed- -but know that we are kind. Their soldiers have simply been deceived, convinced that we are the enemy instead of the monstrous alicorns they worship. So I implore you all: grant the Equestrian soldiers mercy. Please. Bring them a swift and terrible defeat. Bring them agony, and leave them broken and ruined in the shadows of those they serve- -and know that in their screams, they are thanking you. Thanking you for teaching them that the way of Sombra is TRUTH.

“We are the righteous. Our cause is just and pure. You stand with Sombra’s divine vision, and you do not stand alone. For all that you hold dear, defend our kingdom- -and our eternal king. That is all.”

She motioned for the transmission to be cut. It was.

“A rousing speech,” said Asahel. He sounded like a machine- -and as though he was about to laugh. The steward shivered. Every instinct in her pony body made this uncanny thing seem so deeply unnatural. “I find the paradoxes endlessly amusing. Slavery is freedom, I suppose?”

“Freedom cannot exist without slavery. Only a slave is truly free.”

The golem shrugged. “You would know, I suppose. You’re so silly.”

Chapter 51: Army of the Night

In the exact center of the Crystal Empire, machines twisted and writhed in response to the will of the steward. The technetium engine that housed the Heart of Darkness twisted, its millions of fine-wrought technetium gears revving to a high whine as they compensated for the changes in dispersion pattern. The dial turned, its components shifting into a new position. As it did, the shield surrounding the Empire softened and became permeable- -and then started to retract.

It washed across the city, buffeting against the now empty crystal structures and through the silent streets. Cold wind and ice followed in its wake, leaving nothing habitable behind. Within barely a minute, it had recondensed and solidified around the Capital District, the area where the Citadel itself was housed at the very center. When it reached that final state and reformed, it filled the city with a strange bluish cast. Being smaller, its density had increased to a level that only Sombra and Holder Heartfelt had ever before witnessed.

The battle would be fought in the streets, between the cover of the high and listing crystal buildings and among both factories and potato fields. The patrols were already out in force.

Within one of the groups, the commander shivered, tapping on the crystal in the center of his chestplate. The gauges indicated that it was fully functional, but even with the thermal support beneath his armor the cold was still biting.

“Why don’t they just glue cherries to our noses and buck us?” he groaned, staring out into the barely lit snowy darkness. The wind was starting to gust. “Half the Empire’s going to freeze, and us with it.”

“Stop complaining.” The other pony assigned to the patrol contingent was, unlike the first, not a unicorn. She was a hulking Pegasus, and her body bore distinctive evidence of chimeric and genetic splicing, the sort pioneered by Buttonhooks the Mad and Crozea the Witch- -and, of course, king Sombra. Compared to the atrocities Buttonhooks’s experiments had created, though, she looked relatively normal. “Try having wings. I can’t even fly in all this gear...”

“But you can wrap them around yourself or something.”

“And you’re a mage. Cast a heat spell or something.”

“It doesn’t work that way and you know it.”

“Or you just didn’t think of it.” The Pegasus sighed and looked over her shoulder at the marching thralls behind her. They wore armor and masks, but no thermal equipment, even though their skin was exposed in many places. “They don’t seem cold.”

“Crystal-horses don’t get cold,” snapped the unicorn. “Their bodies aren’t like ours. Almost no nerves, no brain. They don’t even feel pain. Basically pieces of rock...they might as well be golems.”

“I’d be more comfortable with golems. Thralls are basically spellfodder.”

“Relax. What are the chances we encounter the enemy forces our here?”

The Pegasus winced. “Why would you say that?”

“What?”

“If you say something like that, then- -”

One of the thralls looked up into the distance. “Object detected.” Its voice was deep and hideous. All the thralls stopped at once. “Awaiting orders.”

“What the- -nopony told me they could talk now.”

“It was in the last memo.”

“I will tape cherries to you and BUCK your memo. Ugh.” The unicorn looked out into the distance. The patrol was standing down a long, straight avenue that led to what had once- -long, long ago- -been a road leading across the ice and heading north. In the distant light, the unicorn was able to make out several dim silhouettes standing in the street. Silhouettes of ponies.

“What in Sombra’s name...”

The Pegasus stared out. She nictitated, and her surgically enhanced eyes focused.

“Enemies,” she said, bracing herself.

“What? Here? NOW?!”

“I told you!”

The unicorn stared into the distance, lighting his horn- -although the only effect was to make himself more visible. “What army? Ponies? I can’t see them!”

“Ponies,” said the Pegasus. “Very thin. Sickly. Covered in bandages.”

The unicorn seemed confused, and then smiled. “So, what? They sent plague victims to fight us? I suppose the rumors are true. The Equestrians have no concept of medicine. They must think this is supposed to be meaningful.”

“I don’t know. Something smells...wrong.”

The unicorn did not notice. He raised his armored hoof and signaled the thralls. They obeyed, and he marched forward along with them.

“You there!” he said. “Present authorization! NOW! Failure to comply will result in a RELENTLESS beating, followed by imprisonment! We have you outnumbered!”

The Pegasus slowed. Something was VERY wrong. Something in their eyes. She could hear their rasping, labored breathing and see their horribly thin bodies, but their eyes made her afraid. They were all green, and each and every one of them reflected in the light of the commander’s horn.

Then, high above, the clouds began to part. The Pegasus and unicorn both looked up in surprise- -and high overhead, they saw the full moon.

The ponies in the darkness screamed and began to charge. The unicorn commander, confused and instantly afraid, took a step back, retreating behind the first of his thralls- -though he did not give the order to retreat. It was already too late.

The screams rose to a fevered pitch and became howls. As the moonlight passed over their bodies, the sickly ponies changed. Their bandages were ripped and torn away as flesh became wood, and as their size expanded vastly. Their gate changed from that of ponies to that of loping wolves.

“W- -werewoods!” cried the unicorn. “WEREWOODS!”

The werewoods crashed hard into the force of thralls, their enormous wooden claws throwing the crystalline ponies in every direction. They showed no mercy, and no control. In the sacred light of their goddess, this vanguard knew only destruction.

The spiced Pegasus braced herself and rammed her shoulder into the chest of one of the werewoods. It pushed her hard, but her hooves dug into the snow and she grabbed hold of it. Its teeth gnashed near her head as it tried to bite her, but she held firm and kept it at a standstill: though the curse afflicting its body made it a monster, the technology afflicting hers made her its equal.

“FLARE!” she cried, turning to look over her shoulder at the terrified commander. He stared back at her, his big blue eyes awash with fear. “FLARE! NOW!”

“R- -right!” he cried, turning his head to the sky. His horn glowed, and he fired a single bolt of light toward the clouds. It exploded in a plume of yellow just as he was tackled to the ground, his thick gear suddenly the only thing saving him from being infected by the bite of a werewood.

The Pegasus mare cried out, summoning all her strength as she bit hard into the werewood’s shoulder. Sweet sap poured into her mouth and the beast yipped wildly. Yet even as she threw it off and turned to the next one, she felt a rope wrap around her rear legs. She tripped and fell into the snow, only to see a dark figure rush past her. There was a scream of a crystal pony, followed by the flash of a teleport. One of the masks had been removed- -and then another. More figures rushed past. First two. Then ten. Then an entire army. Their featherless wings, their bright, strange eyes- -when she saw them, the Pegasus knew that while her patrol had been dealt a humiliating defeat, the battle had only just begun.

Chapter 52: Counterattack

The field marshal slowly waded through the holographic map projected by her palantir, scrutinizing the paths of the units highlighted in red as they moved through the tiny streets of the magical model.

“Field marshal,” said her crystal slave, trying to maintain his composure. “We are reporting more incursions. More patrols are being lost- -”

“I am aware.” The field marshal watched as the flares went up in her map. Distress signals that served to assist in mapping. Nothing more. No help would ever come. “The patrols are expendable.” She inspected the incoming data concerning the enemy army, relayed from the lesser palantirs throughout the city. “They are spearheading their attacks with werewoods, using it as a cover for the chiropterans.”

“Bat ponies,” said Asahel. “They’re just so cute. I could hug them to pieces. Literally, that tends to happen. A lot.”

“We have only limited reports of bat-pony incursion. The numbers are only estimated at- -”

“There are more. I can track each and every one of them.” The field marshal considered, watching as several more patrols were lost and as the force began to move swiftly down the widest avenues of the kingdom. “Nightmare Moon’s elite forces. They are pushing hard and fast, trying to encircle and clear out the main city. Probably so that they can lay a traditional siege to the Capital District.” The field marshal frowned. “It’s too cold outside the shield for a war of attrition. Unless they think they have something that can crack our shield...”

“Celestia’s forces have not yet joined the battle,” said Eternity, whispering without a body. “They are still waiting.”

“Then our time has come to cease waiting.” The field marshal looked into the map. The tiny red-colored batpony figures had moved deep into the city, advancing quickly and crushing through the patrols and defense forces- -forces specifically chosen for weak commanders and given thralls instead of golems.

“I think it is time,” she said. “Asahel. Drop the core shielding and dump the remaining ionic charge.”

The golem laughed softly. It was a terrible, chilling sound. “I can’t wait to see,” he said, mostly to himself. “Filthy adorable organics...”

The ship responded to his will, transmitted by the cables implanted in his body. Outside, the clouds began to react.

The force of Nightmare Moon rushed through the city, ripping through the enemy troops like lightning. They were unseen, their bodies clad in enchanted cloaks and armor that hid them both from sight and protected them from the cold. The hideous thralls of the Heretic King fell in their wake in the name of the One True Goddess. Their dedication was absolute. The word of the goddess was law. The heretics would be purged in the name of Dark One.

The werewoods lead the way, distracting the enemy forces as the bat-ponies rushed behind them, leaping quickly and silently from building to building and cleaning up the mess. Few of the werewoods retained any semblance of their original mind, but each and every one knew enough to remember. They remembered that when they were hunted and persecuted, rejected and downtrodden in poverty and agony from their curse, it was Nightmare Moon who had given them sanctuary. The first pony who did not judge them for what they could not control, and though it was her light that brought the Change, they loved her as their mother.

With ease, they penetrated the kingdom. The enemy forces were far weaker than they had been led to believe- -a simple matter of heavily armored ponies combined with the accursed thralls in their strange, disturbing mass. Before long, the forces of Nightmare Moon had penetrated deeply into the Crystal Empire, on their way to the Citadel to slay the foe of their goddess.

Then something happened. None among them had the vocabulary to express what it was. Their society was to primitive to understand it. Though many decades later, when bat-mares and bat-stallions (the few that would withstand the Solar Purge) would tell their grandchildren about the events of that day, they would almost invariably describe it the same way. As a force of lightning.

Except that the lightning did not fade. It propagated through the clouds, striking them and splitting across the sky. Whatever it touched ignited, driven by the reaction of some unknown gas against the undercurrents of magic already present in the storm. The result was that, although it was the dead of night, the sky was suddenly filled with a hideous and unnatural twilight glow.

The batponies screamed, suddenly blinded by the flash of light. At that moment the thralls- -the stiff, stupid, mindless things throughout the Empire- -turned on them. They attacked, grabbing the bat-ponies and pulling them to the ground screaming, grabbing at their wings and their armor. Though they bit and struggled, the ponies that fought could do nothing to harm the thralls. It was too late for them.

The remainder took to the air. They were agile at low altitude, able to move easily between the buildings to outrun the armored ponies below.

“We’ve been spotted!” cried a bat-mare, still trying to overcome the dazzling of the sudden surge of light.

“That does not change our orders!” retorted her leader, a pony clad in silver armor that covered every inch of him save for the dark skin of his long wings. “Forward! FORWARD! FOR NIGHTMARE MOON!”

The batponies charged forward, the werewoods beside them. The knight-commanders, though not always bats themselves, lead the charge. This was no longer a stealth mission, but one of outright religious frenzy. If they could not carefully excise a path through the city, they would burn a swath to victory instead.

It did not even occur to them that they had already lost.

Their force was stopped cold by an oncoming formation of ponies, hesitating instantly out of pure instinct. The werewoods sensed it most of all, but the rest understood it more deeply: that these things they now faced were different.

They were not thralls. They were not simply ponies in masks and armor. Though they walked on four legs, they moved with unnatural speed and an obscene gait of something that had most certainly never been alive.

“GOLEMS!” cried the commander. “Archers!”

Without any further hesitation, the night archers dropped into positions, taking the front line. They opened fire, their crossbows firing dimeritium bolts specially designed for the occasion and equipped with powerful runes guaranteed to stop any magical being in its tracks.

Their accuracy was perfect, and the bolts stuck hard into the joints and weak spots in the golems’ armor. The archers smiled, ready to congratulate themselves on their perfection- -except that the golems did not stop moving.

“What- -no!” The commanding knight turned to another of his order, a unicorn clad in silver. “The bolts!”

“It’s not- - it’s not magic! THEY’RE NOT MAGIC!”

In a panic, the chiropterans fled- -only for the golems to accelerate to unnatural speeds, leaping into the air and capturing those who tried to flee. The golems were not nearly as merciful as the thralls. They ensured that those they brought down would not have a second chance to fly away.

The werewoods sensed that their brothers were in danger and flew into a rage, charging into the golems and tearing at them with their teeth. The golems were heavy and armored, and felt no pain; they swarmed the werewoods- -but their momentum had been stopped.

“FORWARD!” screamed the commanding knight, drawing his blade and pushing it through the chest of one of the golems. “WE SHALL NOT STOP!”

The others shrieked in unison, drawing their swords and charging into the fray.

There was hope. High above, the light of the One True Goddess shined upon them. There would be pain, but they all accepted it, because though the battle was fight, each and every one of them could taste victory.

Then, from the corner of his eye, the knight saw a flash of silver. One of the werewoods screamed as its bark was torn away in a single strike, and as it stumbled a powerful blow was sent into its chest, sending it reeling over several smaller bat-winged ponies. Through his mask, the knight beheld a pair of enormous griffons. Their eyes were strange and their bodies wrong- -and in their claws they held blades of silver covered with the runes of the vedmaki.

“Monster slayers! Troops, ON THE- -”

He was suddenly knocked back by a blow so powerful that the armor around his chest imploded. He could not breathe, but he raised his blade by instinct alone in defense- -and it was promptly cleaved in twain by a red-steel blade held in the magic of a massive blue-clad knight.

“You would dare to challenge a knight of the moo- -”

A vast metal claw closed around his head and with one motion crushed his helmet, knocking him out instantly. His limp body was thrown to the side. His partner, the unicorn knight, leapt over his unconscious body and charged into battle against the one who had defeated his brother, his horn charged with the holy light of the goddess- -and in a single flash of orange light, his armor was melted free of his body. A second blow to his face knocked him to the ground.

“What be this?!” screamed the Blue Knight, equally disgusted and insulted. “Is THIS what you have come to bring me? ME?! How am I expected to perform powerful deeds with such WEAK foes? I will not be outdone by my beloved damsel! I require a foe who is MIGHTY INDEED!”

He looked to the fray and saw none who were adequate. “OUT OF MY WAY!” he cried, throwing his sword. It ignited with his orange-amber magic and shot forward, driven by the spell. Bat-ponies screamed in pain as the blade cleaved through armor and wings alike, traveling in a wide arc until it returned to the Blue Knight’s grasp.

“Fine,” he laughed, stepping over the wounded and weeping heretics as he advanced slowly across the battlefield. “If nothing in Equestria is of worthy quality, then quantity will have to suffice.” He raised his sword to his griffons. “A gold piece for every heretic you reap!”

“GOLD!” cried the griffons in unison, raising their own swords- -and together, they charged across the kingdom, intending not to stop until they reached the Princess herself. That thought made Zither smile- -the thought when Celestia would finally pay for what she had taken from him, and of the look on Sombra’s face when he presented her with the alicorn’s wings.

But there was still much to do before then. He gripped his sword tightly, knowing that there were peasants in need of attention.

Chapter 53: Forces of the Sun

High above the Crystal Empire, a phoenix crossed the skies, watching the battlefield. She saw the plight of the Nightmare forces, and what she saw, so did her owner.

Reinforcements were on their way. Already, the Shadowbolts poured into the city, encountering heavy resistance from griffon mercenaries in the process- -but the Nightmare troops were in danger of being encircled. Nightmare Moon’s reinforcements would not reach them in time.

And so, far across the planes of ice that surrounded the Crystal Empire, a booming sound like thunder began to roll in from the distance. It was the sound of hundreds of hooves pounding across the ice, building momentum with every step. The armor they bore was gold, the mark of Celestia, save for that worn by their leaders. Those that stood at the front of the earth-pony infantry were the most beautiful of their kind: tall and muscular, their bodies rippling with the ancient strength of the Mighty Helm, the land of their ancestors. None among the horde slowed, and none among them would be stopped by any force, whether it be pony, magic, or machine.

The earth-ponies charged into the city, forcing their way to their embattled allies. Their orders had been simple. It was a straight shot through the Empire to the shield dome. They would clear the way. Above them, the Pegasus forces had already entered the airspace; at their rear, the unicorn mages sworn to Celestia herself, no doubt out of breath and puffing hard from the exertion.

What the armies of Nightmare Moon had failed to do in their zealotry, the armies of the Three Kingdoms would do by standing together as one.

Ahead, suddenly an obstacle came into view. Not golems, but a contingent of thralls. They stood in formation, their luminescent green eyes staring forward blankly at the force of earth-ponies.

“Captain Iron!” cried one of those near the front. “The enemy!”

“I see them!” replied Ironskull. “Don’t slow!”

“But if we hit them at full speed, won’t they- -”

“They’ll move!”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we MAKE them move!”

Yet, even as they drew closer, the thralls did not hesitate. Even at the sound of thunderous hooves, they did not budge or flinch. They showed no fear, and no reaction. They were, after all, no longer ponies. They were lesser copies of Scarlet Mist: parasites, fused to living bodies. Parasites that knew nothing of pain, nor cared how much their hosts were forced to endure.

From her quiet control platform, the field marshal watched the incoming force of earth ponies. To her, they were tiny dots along a map, moving silently through the holographic streets of her home.

She understood their goal. They were using the earth-ponies as a spearhead, knowing that once they had gotten running there was little in Equestria that could stand against their strength. The force of thralls, unassisted, would be no match to them.

“Slave,” she said. “What is our current allocated fear level?”

“Eighteen percent, with a current draw of nine hundred units per second and rising.”

“We need to be careful,” said Asahel. “Sombra needs the power reserves. Unless you would like to drain them and take power for yourself. Actually, I’m rather surprised you haven’t. You should.”

The field marshal ignored the golem. “There is enough reserved for the process.” She moved her hooves over the map, conjuring a formation of lines in accordance with the dispersion matrix’s properties. “Set projections at eighteen degrees past east, dissemination angle of twelve degrees. Prepare fear injection on my mark.”

“Perimeters met.”

“I am integrated with the central systems,” said Asahel. “And I would really like to know what this will do to filthy organics. I hope they explode!”

The field marshal frowned, watching her map, performing the complex calculations in her head as the triangle moved into position. Then, in the silence, she spoke.

“Mark.”

The dial containing the Heart of Darkness screamed with mechanical grinding as it shifted into position, drawing directly from the Heart and manifesting its force into a tightly controlled wave of black energy. It propagated outward, and the crystal ponies near it- -those who had taken shelter under the shield in the Capital District- -screamed as their minds were overwhelmed with fear. Not that it mattered. They were collateral damage.

Across the battlefield, the blast-wave struck the thralls and washed outward over the earth-ponies. The effect was immediate. Some of those among the horde slowed, suddenly struck by deep-seated fear. Doubts filled their minds, and icy terror began to creep into their souls. They knew they would fail, and they knew there was no hope.

Yet those in the front did not falter. They were the bravest and most courageous, and could overcome the fear by force of will alone. If anything, they ran faster.

“Foul witchery!” laughed Ironskull. “Do you really think that wizardry will work in the MIGHTY HELM?!”

Yet, as they watched, they saw the thralls begin to change. As the wave of dark fear cast from the Heart of Darkness struck them, they began to change. Their bodies flashed with light, and their flesh changed, replaced instead with black crystal as they drew energy from the Heart itself. When the force of earth-ponies slammed hard into the front lines of the thralls, the thralls were not thrown back- -they stood firm, the power of their crystalline bodies equaling the strength of their earth-pony attackers.

The thralls forced themselves forward. The earth-ponies struck out, kicking and punching and bucking, but their attacks had little effect against the crystal bodies of their opponents.

Only the strongest of them stood firm, engaged in the battle; although their motion had been arrested, they still stood together, and still had their strength. Ironskull leapt onto one of the attackers, throwing her back and kicking her in the chest hard enough to hear things snap- -yet the thrall felt no pain. It leapt onto her, trying to pin her down.

From beneath its mask, she could hear a strange sound. A sort of muffled screaming. To her horror, she realized that it WAS screaming- -that these beings were in agony, terrified by their own existence.

“What are you?!” she cried, angrily turning the pony over and getting the upper hoof.

Somehow, it spoke, even as the pony beneath was screaming and pleading for help. “We are the future of all ponies. Embrace us, for we are freedom.”

“Freedom? More like HOOF!”

She punched the thrall in the face. The blow was so great that it rendered the crystal pony beneath unconscious, and Ironskull tore off the mask. As she did, the crystal on the thrall’s chest blinked. His eyes opened for only a moment, as if pleading. "Please no...please don't make me go back..." Then in a flash he was gone.

“Foul witchery!” Ironskull stood. “THE MASKS!” she cried to the others, “remove the MASKS!”

“Ironskull, behind you!”

She turned, but too late. For just a moment, she saw a truly hideous image: a view of the severed mask tearing across the snow, pulled along by unholy appendages without name. She drew her hammer, as if to defend, but the mask jumped. Before she could do anything, it had already crawled up her shoulder and attached to her face.

Ironskull turned and immediately slammed her hammer into the side of the head of a pony who had been her best friend. She charged into battle in the name of Sombra, sending heretics flying with her strength as she, the strongest of them all, fought alongside her siblings to defend the Empire from the horde she had minutes before led into battle.

“Ironskull, no!” cried a smaller, young earth-pony. “Snap out of it!”

There was nothing to snap out of. There was only the battle and the KING. Ironskull raised her hammer.

“Dôme!”

The hammer came down, but glanced off a sudden wall of magical energy. The thrall that had once been Ironskull looked up, its vision calculation magical signatures and finding the next probable host. Its eyes fell on a trio of unicorns. Two of them were purebloods, one green and one pale yellow, both clad in the thick enchanted robes of those trained at Celestia’s own academy.

The third, though, was different. She was not colored like the others, a pureblood of a higher level. One of noble birth: a tall, pure white unicorn, clad only in a rune-inscribed golden collar.

“Tenir!”

The two lesser unicorns shifted in unison, their hoofwork precisely timed by the nature of their spells. One, a wind-mage, cast a spell around Ironskull, trapping her in a storm; the other, a plant-mage, cast a spell that caused roots to emerge from the soil, wrapping around their target’s legs.

Yet neither slowed her terribly much. With barely any struggle, Ironskull was able to tear herself free.

Which was anticipated. Rancine De’Lis took one step forward and raised her long, perfect horn. She cast a spell of great power, surrounding her target in a perfect cube of pink light.

The thrall within raged, pounding on the walls. The spell began to crack.

“Madame!” cried the younger of the two assistant mages. “The spell!”

“Ze spell may break, if it wishes.” Rancine smiled. “For the spell does hardly matter, no?” A sadistic grin crossed her face. She was careful to keep her lips closed. “Is it being contained...or is it ze oxygen?”

She compressed the spell, drawing out even more air, but the thrall was already growing weak. Ironskull had begun gasping for air, weakening without access to it. Her blows grew weaker and weaker until in a few seconds, she collapsed entirely. Rancine set the cube down and walked past it.

“Bouclier!” she ordered, already preparing her spell as her assistants moved to provide the assistance patterns. In an instant, a wall was drawn across the front of the battlefield. Rancine formed a second spell, grasping any thralls caught on the wrong side of the spell and transmitting a considerable amount of magic lightning into their bodies.

“You can remove the masks,” said one of her assistants. “They don’t want to fight- -”

“Zey are sent back via teleport, no doubt to return to us once more. No. They must be taken care of now, and here. Zis catastrophe will not stand! I vill not have earth-ponies ruining my battle!”

She forced the shield forward, pushing back the thralls that had begun to pound upon it. Whatever magic had made their bodies convert to crystal was weakening, and Rancine took note of this. It was apparently not possible to sustain it for very long, either by nature of the spell or weakness of the host.

Then something moved. To the horror of the earth-ponies taking refuge behind the shield, a golem stepped out from between two of the buildings. Specifically, a type-G, a heavy artillery-support unit that stood as high as most of the buildings.

Though metal, it had been fashioned in the form of a unicorn. Energy erupted around the tip of its horn, forming into a sphere of dull red energy. The air suddenly became electrified, and each and every pony felt the hairs of their mane standing on end. Then a high wining sound came across the whole of the battlefield- -followed by a deafening explosion.

The beam tore through the force, sending earth-ponies flying in every direction.

“DÔME!” screamed Rancine, automatically covering her spell to protect any unicorn in the vicinity.

The golem focused its beam on her, directing it with mechanical precision directly toward Randcine. The force was incredible, and the spell could not hold. One of the assistants began to swoon from the feedback.

“Don’t you DARE!” ordered Rancine- -but it was too late. Overexerted, the younger mage fell to the snow.

“I can’t hold it!” cried the other, with the spell suddenly unbalanced. “I’m sorry, madame, I- -”

His eyes grayed, and he too passed out. The spell failed.

Rancine sighed as her dome began to crack. Through her spell, she could see the back of the golem shifting, preparing new and strange weapons made of crystal and steel. It was planning an artillery strike.

Rancine took a breath and, all alone and with no assistance, she changed the spell. It erupted outward with such force that the golem was forced to take a step back. Rancine screamed in rage, drawing her mouth fully open and completely exposing the long, gleaming fangs it contained. Her horn ignited with red energy and she struck out with her full power, attacking the golem directly. It staggered backward- -and one side kept staggering. As it did, the two halves separated and it fell as two pieces., cut down the middle.

“Incompetence,” she said, flicking her mane to the side so as not to muss it any further. Her horn was still smoking as she turned to the terrified forces behind her. “Well? Do I have to do ALL the work? What are you even here for? MOVE! Bouge TOI!”

Chapter 54: The Procedure

Sombra paused. He looked over his shoulder, although there was of course nothing to see but blackness. Even if there had been any light to guide his way, the world was still growing terribly dim. One of his eyes had gone blind and fogged over, and the other was beginning to die.

A raven descended and landed beside him.

“Is something...the matter?” it asked, looking up at him with its pale yellow eyes.

“The fear. I can feel it rising.”

The raven cocked its head. “This is a...good thing. More fear means...you have more time...”

“My kingdom is at war, and I am not there to lead it. Nothing about this situation can be classed as ‘good’, Al’Hrabnaz. We need to hurry.”

“Of course, my king.”

The raven took flight, joining the others, swarming forward through the darkness. Sombra shivered. This was not magic he understood, and that was a rare thing indeed. Even to him, it seemed unnatural and disturbing- -but it was the only way. He supposed that he could hardly protest; doing so would be hypocritical. After all, he had not truly been alive for centuries- -he was nothing more than a soul bound to the remnants of his former body, fueled by fear drawn from the Heart of Darkness.

The path was long, and Sombra was weak- -but he refused to falter. While he valued Al’Hrabnaz for his work, Sombra was not prepared to show weakness before him. Precious few would ever be privy to that aspect of him. Precious few would know that despite everything he had done to himself, he was still a pony.

That, of course, would change soon enough.

They came to a vast room and the ravens and crows spread outward, moving and flowing to the high reaches of the room and taking their perches. Each and every one of them watched Sombra as he stared into the darkness.

Something was wrong. Sombra knew every inch of the Citadel, and knew that the path they had taken had not led to a room like this. Something was wrong.

“We are not in the Empire anymore.”

“No,” said A’Hrabnaz, his crows fidgeting slightly. “We are not.”

Sombra’s eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

“Reality opposes the process...it rejects the purity of my mathematics...so I corrected it.” Several of the ravens looked up at the strange, sickly sky visible through the grimy windows overhead. “My engines...they opened the way. And here, the soul can be transformed. Perfected.” The ravens looked at Sombra. “Severed.”

Sombra looked around the room at the vast machine that had been assembled in its center. His eyes fell onto a shape pushed hastily in the corner of the room, the only form that held any semblance of an organic thing instead of a creation of alien steel and unnatural stone.

It was covered in a sheet. A thin, sickly gray hoof was poking out from one side.

“It’s like…changing clothing,” said Al’Hrabnaz, his ravens descending and fixing the sheet. Yet Sombra heard the somberness in his voice. He had been so young. “It is...nothing to be concerned about.”

“Do you regret it?”

The ravens looked up. “No,” said one of them. “I am free now. I can finally fly.”

“You did not have to do this. Not to yourself. I never asked this of you.”

Another raven shook its head. “No. No, I never could. I had to be sure. Sure it was perfect. Something….someone of value. The only one I...value...is you. And myself.” Another raven, this one on a perch across the room, spoke. “We have enough for...two chances. If I had failed...how could I face you? To know...I had doomed you...it would be too much to bear. I could not withstand it. This way, no matter what...I would never need to face you in failure...”

“Selflessness is weakness. You understand that, correct?”

The ravens nodded, looking down at the floor in shame.

“That said,” continued Sombra, “none have shown such loyalty before. So I thank you, Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz.”

“My king...”

“Now perform. I can feel the fear rising in the kingdom. The enemy draws nearer, and my time grows short.”

“Of course.” The ravens began to move. “Please, step to the center.”

Sombra did as he was asked, moving toward the center of the machine. He stared up at it, and the singularity it contained. It was a thing of beauty, a combination of machinery and magic unlike any he had ever witnessed. There was no sign that its creation had been rushed. He supposed it was appropriate, considering that there was a very real possibility that it would be this machine that finally claimed the life of the king of the Crystal Empire.

“So,” he said, turning back to Al’Hrabnaz. “Am I to be cast into a flock of birds, as you?”

Al’Hrabnaz seemed deeply offended by this. “No, my king! You misunderstand! My soul, it is small, weak, I could not survive greater- -this is only a test of the machine’s power! Your soul...your soul is of such grand scale, such power...so saturated with fear and magic...you can survive being bonded to so much more...”

Sombra frowned. “Like what?”

“I had considered your daughter’s body.”

“Out of the question.”

“I know. Because she is yet required. And...of course...you would not want to be trapped...in the body of a hideous aberration...”

“Indeed,” lied Sombra. “At that point, you might as well link me to one of my slaves.”

“No...that would not do...there would be an overload...very messy...” The ravens swarmed around a large machine, opening the door by working in unison. Their beaks moving in such a coordinated manner was a truly disturbing sight, and Sombra came to understand that they were separate parts of the same thing. Individual beings linked to a single soul. He began to wonder just how close to madness Al'Hrabnaz had brought himself.

The door to the piece of equipment opened and a rack automatically extended. The ravens reached for one of the containers, activating the release. A cylinder extended, its frost-covered crystal shell steaming from the extreme cold it had been stored in.

Sombra stared at it, and saw that it contained something dark in color. Although even dark was not quite the right word: through the ice and frost rapidly covering the tube, he could see a complete absence of light. It was as if the contents were somehow deeper than black.

“What is that?”

The ravens laughed. It was a terrible sound. “Pure elemental shadow. I grew this sample. Raised it on the dark power of my machines...before me, it belonged to Clover the Clever, and before her...it had belonged to Starswirl the Bearded. That sample...was taken from Stygian the Unicorn.” The ravens turned to Sombra, their eyes alight with madness. “THIS will be your new body!”

“You are insane.”

“I refute that intrinsically...but would it really matter?”

“No.” Sombra stared at the tube. “Will I be able to control it?”

“You are very likely...the only pony who COULD control it...your soul is adequate...your darkness great enough to withstand the bonding...to BECOME it...”

Sombra frowned, but then nodded. “So be it.”

The ravens began to reach for the tube, trying to grasp its heavy handle with their beaks. Sombra stopped them.

“Hold,” he said. He lit his horn, his dark crimson magic flickering from its tip. The pain was intense, and it was likely the last spell he would ever have the strength to perform as a pony. With it, he grasped the various ravens throughout the room and slammed them together.

Their flesh contorted and merged, fusing into a single entity. Al’Hrabnaz cried out, stepping back- -not as a crow, but as a gaunt, pure-black unicorn.

“My- -my king!” he said, looking at his hooves. “What have you- -”

Sombra fell to his knees, out of breath. “Transfiguration. It is not a complex spell. I think, in time, you may learn to use it yourself.”

Al’Hrabnaz’s enormous yellow eyes turned to his horn. “But I’m not truly a unicorn...”

“No. You are still a murder of crows. But you need not be a unicorn to perform magic. As I will demonstrate shortly, after a change of clothing...”

Al’Hrabnaz smiled. He had neither teeth nor gums. He picked up something near the control panel and placed it on his chest. The dial began to tick as soon as it touched his flesh. “I am booting the machine. Have no fear, my king. When we are done here, you will be perfect...”

Sombra closed his eyes. He did not care about perfection. He only needed more time.

Chapter 55: Dead Hope

Far outside the Capital District, a white pony watched on, staring up at the grand crystal Citadel and the seemingly unbreakable shield standing firm as the last defense of the Crystal Empire. The enemy forces were drawing closer, despite the valiant effort of the imperial forces- -but not in this area. This spot was wide and flat, but of no tactical value. No buildings stood in the Crystal Empire’s largest cemetery.

Nekro looked up to the Citadel, and saw the storm clouds overhead beginning to swirl as Al’Hrabnaz’s machine began its operation. A tear of formaldehyde ran down one of her cheeks. “Please be careful, my love.”

Something cracked behind her. A hoof breaking a crystal twig cast down by one of the lonely trees that grew in this quiet, lonely grove.

“Hold,” ordered the leader of the gold-clad guards. He stepped forward. “Ma’am. My name is Wood Buckler, lieutenant of the Royal Solar Forces. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

“And yet I am afraid,” she said, still staring up at the Citadel, away from the soldiers. They had chosen to take this path on the way to the Citadel, choosing one where they could not be ambushed. Nekro felt no hatred for them; she could not blame them for avoiding danger. No doubt they had loved ones at home waiting for them. Yet her soul- -Luciferian’s soul- -felt no pity for them.

“We’ve come to help. Please, this isn’t a place for a mare like you. We can get you to safety. Copper Helm will take you to safety.”

“No.”

“No? Ma’am, please, you don’t understand the danger- -”

“This place is beautiful, isn’t it?”

The leader of the squad took a step back, not sure why he was so afraid. The others gripped their spears tightly. “Ma’am?”

“This is a cemetery.” She gestured outward. “There are no stones, of course. There once were. I never saw them. When Sombra came, they were pulled up. The crystal was cut into cores for weapons and spells. But whoever built this place put it in such a quiet spot. Look, they can see the Citadel from here.”

“Ma’am, it’s going to be okay. Please, just come with us.”

Nekro turned, and the ponies nearly cried out when they saw that her eyes were not those of a living pony.

“They can finally sleep. After a long, hard life, they can finally rest, all together in a single pit. But what do they need names for? They aren’t like me, are they?”

Nekro took a step forward.

“Get back!” cried one of the guards. “GET BACK!”

“What’s the matter? You don’t think I’m pretty? I was once beautiful, as you all are. But I can’t rest. Not now, not ever. I’m not alive anymore, but I can’t sleep. Do you know what that is like?”

“She’s a zombie!” cried one of the younger soldiers. “Buckler, go for the head!”

“Ma’am, I’m- -I’m warning you- -”

“I lost everything,” she said. “And I only know that because I can still think. My daughter doesn’t even recognize me, and the stallion I love will never accept me like this. I will never again be with the ones I love so much. But that doesn’t matter.” She stopped walking. “Because I will fight for them regardless. To protect them. Necrophilo was wrong. It is not a matter of precision, of science.” Her eyes widened suddenly to an extent not achievable by the living. “Necromancy is a matter of LOVE.”

Her horn ignited with hideous green light, sending out tendrils of energy into the ground around her.

“Flare! FLARE!”

The leader charged his horn- -only to cry out as a skeletal hoof burst through the ground, grasping his leg.

“SKELETONS!”

Nekro smiled as her army rose from the ground. The skeletons of hundreds of crystal ponies, rising from the soil to once again defend the ones they had loved. Their empty eye-sockets burned with green light, and some of them came clinging to fragments of moldering wood or rusted pipes and other trash that had been buried with them.

With another spell, Nekro summoned her armor, forged from the bones of those who served her.

“I will never again draw breath. Yet still I defend. Now BE GONE.”

The horde of the undead charged, and the silence of the cemetery was cut by the screams of the living.

Chapter 56: The Rescue

The world was falling apart. Even beneath the shield, the booming resonance of magical explosions could be heard in the distance. Somewhere, crystal ponies returning the front were being fed into factories as a raw resource for the manufacture of new thralls. Those to badly damaged to be sent back through were funneled somewhere else. Holder was not sure where.

Not that it mattered. He had gone to the quietest, safest side of the Capital District. This was only in part due to cowardice, as while he was hidden from danger, it meant that he had disobeyed a direct order from the field marshal. He was meant to be on the front lines, an object meant to hold his true self and sate her endless hunger for the flesh of ponies. Instead, though, he ran through the nearly abandoned prison complex, a heavy load tied to his back.

“Out of my way!” he cried, nearly toppling over as he slid around a corner. Where there would normally be a pair of thralls there were instead a pair of crystal fillies too small for the masks but not too small to hold spears.

“You’re not permitted here!” squeaked one of them.

“We have ordered to give you the POKE!” She brandished her spear. “I’ll do it too!”

“It’s official Dark Thirteen business! And I know, I know, I really AM a member I don’t have ID you can ask Boulder he’ll corroborate my story okay bye!”

“Hey wait, you can’t- -”

It was too late. He had already dashed past both of them.

“He’s fast. I guess it’s from running away from things.”

“I’m more surprised an earth-pony can use ‘corroborate’ in a sentence.”

The pair of fillies just shrugged and went back to standing guard, enjoying their last few hours before they would be tasked with entering the battle proper to protect the Empire.

Piwancha had been dreaming of standing in a field of flowers when she was awoken to the sound of something heavy plummeting down the prison stairs. She sat up, her magic immediately forming a defensive spell- -or, rather, the severed stump of her horn sparking slightly. There was a brief moment before she realized she would never stand again. Then she tried to go back to sleep.

“Pi! Pi!”

Piwancha looked up again, her heart suddenly beating quickly. “Holder?”

Holder ran to the gate of her cell. Something enormous and wrapped in cloth was on his back, and he was out of breath. He had been running.

“Why are you here?”

“Why am I here? Why wouldn’t I be here?”

“Why wouldn’t you be in dank prison?”

“I’ve seen danker. I brought you something.” He unloaded the package on his pack. It fell to the floor with enormous force, shaking the whole cell block. Holder released some of the twine with his teeth, and Piwancha could not help but tingle slightly at the thought that he had very likely tied those delicate knots with his mouth in the first place.

The burlap sack fell away and Piwancha gasped.

“That’s...”

“Zither’s armor. The old one you broke. I tried to fix it. I think I did okay.” He looked up. “Can you use it?”

“I...” She looked at it. “I mean, hypothetically? Most likely, assuming the architecture is the same as ordinary Questlord armor...” She looked up, dumbfounded. “That’s a heavy vanguard style system. It weighs over four tons. How did you move that?”

“It wasn’t that heavy. Quick, put it on.”

“Put it on? Something that foul traitor- -and how am I even to do that? In case you have failed to notice, I am in a cage of solid steel- -”

Holder stuck his hoof between two of the bars and casually pushed to the side. The steel instantly deformed and the bars fell from their sockets in the door.

Piwancha stared wide-eyed. “How did you do that?”

“I’m an earth-pony, we’re strong,” said Holder, dismissively. “Pi, the Empire’s under attack. Celestia’s got us surrounded, and either way it goes, it’s going to bad. Either Sombra wins- -”

“And I rot in this cell...”

“- -or Celestia wins.”

“The sworn enemy of my people. That would be a one-way trip to the glue factories of Canterlot. Or to have a stone tied to my legs and...” Piwancha shivered. “The solar goddess is never forgiving.”

“That’s why we’re leaving.”

Piwancha stared incredulously, thinking that this was some kind of sick joke. Except that Holder, as foolhardy as he was, seemed to be completely serious.

“You’re not joking. You do realize that would mean charging through TWO enemy lines, only to reach an endless, uninhabitable frozen wasteland?”

“This is our only chance.” Holder looked over his shoulder, as if somepony was watching. He winced in pain and put his hoof to his head, as if there was something very painful there. “No. NO. No I won’t,” he whispered. “You can’t make me!” He turned to Piwancha. “This is our only chance.” He was speaking rapidly, as if growing desperate. “It’s the only time we can. They’ll be distracted. Please. Please come with me, Pi.”

“Why would you take me?” She frowned at him. “What is it you want?”

“I want...I want to do something GOOD for once.” Tears were welling in his eyes. “This is the only thing I can do that actually helps somepony.”

“You could stand and fight for your kingdom.”

“No.” Holder shook his head. “No, I can’t. They want me to, but I can’t. She won’t let me.”

“Holder?”

“If- -if I start, I won’t be able to stop. She can feel the war. It’s making her...happy. Hungry. LOUD. To her, there aren’t sides. I would hurt ponies. I’d hurt my friends. I can’t do that. I WON’T do that! But if I can save one life, just one...maybe...and then there’s...well...”

“What?”

Holder looked up at her. His scabbard sat on his back, holding one of the most powerful weapons Equestria had ever known- -and yet he looked so very pitiful. “I’m so afraid,” he said. “I don’t think I can do this on my own. No. I know I can’t. But you’re so strong. With you, I could do anything.”

Piwancha blushed slightly. “I have no horn. I have no magic. I don’t even have a cutie mark.”

“Oh! Yes! I have that too!” Holder produced a small, delicately carved stone. In it was Piwancha’s cutie mark, suspended in a magical field.

“Where did you get that?”

“Boulder told me where it was. He knows all the rocks in the Empire. A real lady’s stone. Hold on.” Holder held the cutie-mark stone close to his mouth and whispered something into it. Piwancha could not even hope to understand the language. Yet the rock seemed to understand, and its magic seals fell. The cutie mark, now released, flitted through the air and drifted toward Piwancha. It seemed to sense her, and arrived at her flank, resuming its original place.

She gasped. “What am I even doing here?” she said, struggling to stand. “Why am I not fighting? How DARE they put me in this prison?!” She pushed herself forward. “Help me into that armor. Did you bring me a blade? Never mind, I hardly need it. Yes I will help you, you’re surely useless without me. And when I finally get back?” She looked up at Holder. “I am finished with the Order. Show me your field of rocks. I would very much like to see it.”

Holder smiled. It was the first real smile he had produced in centuries. “Of- -of course!” He helped her to the armor. “I promise, we’ll get to see it. Together.”

Piwancha smiled. She wished he could have his confidence- -though in her heart, she knew his words rang true. In spirit, at the very least.

Chapter 57: The Trap is Sprung

“GRIFFON! Five o’clock, eighteen yards!”

Major Force did not even need to look back.

“Formation seven, progression four! On my mark!”

There was no verbal mark; the major simply made the slightest of motions in his wing pattern and his squad responded instantly. The rear forms of the V split, and over his shoulder, Major Force could see the confusion on the bird-creature’s face, not knowing which group to follow. He himself dropped back suddenly, his wingpony at his rear, preparing for attack. The griffon focused suddenly on him, lowering her enchanted spear- -but as she did, the squad sergeant dropped from above, pummeling the griffon in the back of her head with a single blow. She gave out one squawk and immediately spiraled downward, landing head-first in a large snowbank.

“Resume!”

The formation reestablished: a V of Pegasus ponies, the major at the front with his wingpony to his right and the sergeant to his right, with the further parts of the V being lesser-ranked ponies of the Her Majesty's Solar Air Battalion.

“LIEUTENANT!” shouted the major.

“- -yes, sir!” stammered the wingpony.

“You were slow on the mark! This isn’t the proving grounds, Firefly! This is REAL WAR!”

“Y- -yes, sir, sorry, sir- -”

“We’re in deep! If you go down here? You’re NOT getting back up!”

“It wouldn’t be called ‘reconnaissance’ if we were looking at our own stuff,” joked the sergeant, though with little humor.

“But that was our forth griffon, if they actually had a formation- -”

“Stop wasting time and FOCUS! Griffons NEVER form units, they can’t work together!”

“Besides,” said the pony behind lieutenant Firefly, “just be glad we’re not getting flak like the eastern squads- -”

As soon as she said it, Firefly looked down to see an enormous machine mounted on the back of a giant pony-like machine fire several projectiles. He heard the chugging sound, and in the distance, saw the shells.

“FLAK!”

It was too late; the shells exploded on both sides of the formation. One of the fliers in the rear cried out, either in surprise or pain- -or both.

“SNOW!” yelled the major, turning his head. “Are you hit?!”

“I- -it’s not bad,” he replied, his voice wavering. It had been a near miss; one of his wings was charred, and the burnt feathers were glittering with fragments of metal. “I can keep going!”

“You had better! There aren’t any safe LZ’s for two clicks!”

Another flak shell exploded to the right of them. This time, the major led them out of the radius just in time, engaging an element barrel roll to avoid the plume of dangerous metal shards. “We have to clear a path! The zeppelins can’t get in if we don’t chart the way!”

“YES SIR!” replied the others in unison, bracing their wings and charging into battle. Firefly simply watched in awe, honored and somber at the same time. Honored to be the wingpony in this battle, even if he was terrified nearly out of his alumnoid armor- -but somber, because seeing the major, Firefly knew why he had been picked as wingpony, and knew that he would never make it past that role.

He had already decided. After this was over and there was no more war, he was going to retire. Hopefully without a metal wing.

None of the Pegasi knew that, not far away, the field marshal of the Crystal Empire sat, watching from her hiding place. For her, there were no sounds of battle. There were no explosions or cries of battle, or even the roar of the growing wind. The only sound was that of quiet- -and of the hum of enormous, unspeakable machinery.

“Slave,” she said, still staring at her map. “What is the percentage of involvement in the battle?”

“One hundred percent of our forces are currently engaged, while the Equestrian forces retain a thirty percent reserve closing in on the border of the city. Their forces outnumber ours fifty to one.”

“I like those odds,” replied Asahel. “Nice and round.”

“They are within striking distance,” said the field marshal.

Asahel giggled. He knew what she was thinking. “Time for politics...”

The slave turned sharply. “Field marshal, if I may- -our forces are still deployed! The amount of collateral damage- -”

“Will be complete and total. All areas not under the shield dome are to be utterly leveled. No buildings. No farms. Nothing but a blasted-out wasteland.”

“But without those farms- -”

“You will not need them,” said Asahel, shrugging. “The king will provide. Phase three is due to start very, very soon. You’ll have all the food you ever need.” He turned to the field marshal. “Our forces are superior to organics in every way. We can endure the strike, and charge through it.”

“See that you do. Crush them.” She paused. “But more importantly, send them into confusion. We only have one chance. Once we engage, we have only a limited time for Penumbra to act. Their forces cannot be allowed to interfere.”

“But our own forces...” The slave shook his head.

“The crystal ponies will teleport back to the Heart of Darkness for fear harvesting. The golems will survive. All other units are expendable.”

“But nearly ten percent of our forces are unicorns, Pegasi- -and the yaks- -”

“Are an enemy anyway. Or will become one, once they realize we intend to own their land. This will save us the time of rounding them up later.” The steward stared hard at the slave. “If they were not expendable, I would not have sent them. Question me again, and I will have you thrown into Gxurab’s reactor core. Your crystal body will survive just long enough for your mind to shatter on the horrors that lurk on the other side of that particular door.”

The slave shivered and turned back to his controls. “Yes, field marshal. Of course, field marshal. The lives of ponies are irrelevant in the face of the will of the king. In the name of the safety of our citizens, we will sacrifice them.”

The field marshal nodded, because he was correct. The safety of all ponies of the Crystal Empire was drawn from Sombra. She would gladly sacrifice them all to save him. As things were going, that was in fact a likely outcome of this war. But to her, it did not matter. Sombra must survive.

“Asahel. Bring up the reactor output.”

“I do like activating things.” He did not move, but the machines suddenly began to hum louder, signaled through the cables implanted in his robotic neck. Outside, through the clouds, the running lights ignited, distant just slightly through the clouds. Dark shapes began to move quickly amongst them.

The field marshal stepped forward, picking a spot on the map that had the most signatures of living beings. She touched it, highlighting it. “On my mark, fire here.”

“I would be glad to,” said Asahel. “Father never let me play with the fun toys.”

“Not you.” The field marshal smiled at her slave. “He will do it.”

“S- -sir- -”

The smile vanished from the field marshal’s face. “I have selected you for a great honor, slave. I am sure you are aware of the consequences of refusing it?”

He was crying. “I am,” he said. Slowly, he turned back to his console. With one shaking hoof, he set the controls. “P...prepared to fire. May Epona save our souls.”

“Slaves have no souls,” mused the field marshal. “All aspects of us are owned by another. There is nothing to save. Hail the Witchking. FIRE.”

Chapter 58: Battle in the Sky

The zeppelins had arrived. Airships of every size, from thirty-yard zeppelins of war to individual balloons. The Pegasi had cleared a path, and now the airship pilots took the city, raining down magical bombs from above. The unicorn mages had, at a significant cost, taken out the flak in accordance with the coordinates provided- -also at great cost- -by the air reconnaissance, and the battle had turned sharply with the presence of air support.

Major Force led his squadron into a leading position in front of the airship fleet. Their flight time was almost up; the last part of their mission was to take point until they could switch out with Major Duststorm’s squad at the forward LZ. There were earth-pony medics there, waiting for them. Although Major Force had not dropped a single pony, one had taken flak bad and another had the tip of a griffon spear embedded in her helmet; the force had apparently derped her. There were injuries, but no losses- -something that the Major would, of course, never admit out loud.

“Squad at seven low, eight rear,” said the sergeant. From her tone, the major did not even need to look. He knew who was flying below them.

“The Shadowbolts,” said Firefly, almost excitedly. He looked down and a hulking bat-mare tipped her wing at him. He blushed slightly.

“Stupid bats,” muttered the sergeant. “What do they want? Just trying to take credit for our work, or do you think they’re going to go for the back-stab and switch sides?”

“Doesn’t matter. We just need to get to the LZ and switch out.”

“Yeah,” said one of the mares on the right flank. “Should be easy, right? I mean, look at this! With the griffons out, we totally have air superiority! I mean, zeppelins are the most technologically sophisticated war machines in all of Equestria! It’s not like the Crystal Empire has anything that can counter them, you know?”

Every one of the ponies in the squad looked back, their faces stricken with horror.

The mare looked confused. “What?”

In that instant, the air behind them suddenly screamed with nuclear fire. In a single blinding flash, a bolt of unspeakable energy descended at an oblique angle from the clouds above. The zeppelins ignited in an instant, and the city below them erupted in fire and fragments of crystal that were rapidly reduced to vapor in a plume of magic fire, leaving nothing but ash in a two-hundred yard wide creator.

“MY EYES!” screamed one of the Pegasi who had been unlucky enough to be staring at the explosion. The others tried to help him, but cried out themselves as the thunderclap of ionized air rushed past them, breaking their lift and sending them out of control. All around them, other squads fell into spirals, unable to regain a proper course; a few in the rear were consumed in fire, their feathers and tails burned away in an instant as they began to fall.

“Follow! FOLLOW!” Major Force tucked his wings, dropping, and his wingpony did the same. The others followed, dropping hard toward the ground but not spiraling. Then at their commander’s signal, they opened their wings.

“EEP!” cried the pony with the flak-damaged wing, nearly finding herself unable to correct- -but just barely keeping herself stable by virtue of the currents derived from their perfect formation.

“What in the name of Celestia’s fat and exceedingly soft rump was THAT?!” cried one of the Pegasi. He did not need a verbal answer, because as he spoke, a shadow fell over the Empire. From above, the Crystal Armada descended.

Throughout the kingdom, ponies trembled in fear. They did not understand or comprehend the ships that came from the sky. They were not made of wood and cloth, but forged from crystal and steel; they were not supported by hydrogen or by hot air, but by some unseen, unspeakable force. Some of the Pegasi nearest to them could feel the hum of the terrible engines and taste something foul and metallic in their mouths as the ships passed them.

One or two descended from the lightning-marked clouds- -and then more came with them. There were ten, then fifteen, then thirty, then more. Among them were true giants, but even the smallest were well over one hundred meters long, their armored hulls festooned with strange machines made of conduits and enormous, flickering crystals.

Yet there was hope still for all those except the ones who had seen the first blast. Only those close enough to see the initial beam had seen the angle it had come from- -and that no ship had even approached that blank spot in the angry thunderclouds overhead.

Then it descended. The clouds ruptured as it pushed past them, and in its shadow, all hope died. It was the flagship of the Crystal Empire, a flying dreadnought of truly gigantic proportions. Its body was forged from strange dark crystal and equally strange metal, and on its bow stood a trio of enormous cannons driven by crystals large enough to build a house on. It had been one of those that had destroyed a third of the Equestrian air-navy in a single shot.

For one brief instant, the armada hovered with no sound save for its accursed and terrible vibration. Then the world came alive with fire.

They fired downward with a raging storm of lasers and shells. Entire sections of the city erupted in light and magic fire, and from above, Lieutenant Firefly watched in horror as explosions erupted in the freshly established LZ- -and throughout the territory they had gained. Ponies were flung everywhere by the blasts, crying out in fear. He watched as lasers ripped through the remaining zeppelins and balloons, and he saw the earth-pony pilots jump free as their craft exploded, deploying their parachutes- -only to have their parachutes ripped to shreds by coaxial lasers, leaving the pilots to plummet screaming to the snow below.

The field marshal stared out her window, glad to finally be past the clouds. She ran her hoof carefully across the surface of her palantir, altering its behavior to resonate with the crystal tiles of the bridge floor. They shimmered and changed, gaining the illusion of transparency- -not just of themselves, but of the entirety of the HMS Monoceros. It gave the illusion of floating. Such a thing might have been disturbing, had she not overseen the designs of this particular dreadnought herself.

“We are hurting them,” said Asahel.

“Is that a problem, golem?”

“No. I am merely surprised that I do not enjoy it as much as I hoped. It’s just so...boring.”

“Don’t let that impact your performance.” She ran her hoof through her map, changing it to represent a long and broad triangle. “Link the the artillery frigate firing sequences. Engage a creeping barrage at these coordinates.”

“Field marshal,” said the crystal slave, looking up from his own console. “That pattern centers on the Princess’ current position.”

“Yes, I know. Let them fell the pain they so carelessly threw their peasants into.”

“I have centered the barrage on Celestia’s energy signature. Or, visually, on her enormous butt.” Asahel giggled. “We’re good to go.”

“Excellent. Let the Empire burn in Sombra’s name.”

Nightmare Moon was a creature immune to fear. The pain of severing a portion of her own mind had been exquisite and taken decades, only for her to find that the mind could not sustain a void where something so critical had once been and since been removed. What had filled the whole where fear had once sat was instead hatred.

When she looked up at the vast ships descending from the clouds, she felt hatred. For them, for Sombra, for the ponies within them too blind to see the force of destruction they had come to wield- -but more importantly, hatred of herself, for she recognized her own failure. She was one of only to old enough to remember the last time these ships had come, and the only one left who had not repressed the memories of that terrible war for the sake of her own sanity. Though they were different now, built by different hooves with different materials- -a mere graying shadow of what had once been- -there was no mistaking the technology that Sombra had used to construct them. The technology that she, Nightmare Moon, had apparently failed to purge.

“The Exmoori...curse you, Sombra, would you truly make their sacrifice this meaningless?”

The city was burning. Sombra’s fleet was leveling it, all in the name of defending the Empire- -or, rather, himself. Yet as Nightmare Moon watched, something thudded in the distance. Lights arced from the smallest of the ships, flying high into the air and cutting through the clouds. Then the city before her burst into flames and noise- -a conflagration that suddenly began to march toward her and her sister at incredible speed.

“NO!” she cried, raising her horn and casting a wall of silver light. The ponies nearest to her ducked behind it- -Celestia’s units out of fear, but her own units from absolute faith in their queen. Faith that Nightmare Moon immediately knew was misplaced.

The barrage struck her shield, and she cried out as the spell shattered under the force of crystal-powered explosives.

“Get down!” cried Specter, tackling Nightmare Moon and shielding her with his own body. It was not the first time her body had been covered by his, and not even the first time while he was wearing armor- -but try as she might, she could not push him off to use her immortal body to protect his mortal one.

The infernal strike consumed their position- -but as it struck, it rebounded off a dome of swirling magic. The spell was immeasurably complex, swirling with an array of filigrees and fractals alike, cast from both a shining golden yellow magic as well as a deep leafy green one.

The complexity of the spell managed the feedback from the blasts without even bending, its forms sparking with light as it accumulated magical energy from each impact. Those beneath it stared in awe, but the most profound stares of disbelief were those from the mages. They knew that such a shield was an installation project, something that would take a team of ten wizards at least a month to complete.

Yet this spell was cast by two. Celestia stood above the terrified ponies, her horn alight with gold- -and beside her stood a much smaller green mare dressed in a strange cloak, her horn burning green.

“Sister!” cried Nightmare Moon, throwing Specter off her. “Our forces are being torn apart! My forces are pinned down, I can’t send in reinforcements with that bombardment!”

“I know, sister, I know!” Celestia looked down at the wizard beside her. “Clover, we have to move, and we have to do it now.”

“I know, I know,” responded Clover the Clever, not taking her eyes off the object suspended before her. Inside a bubble of protective green energy, she held a small, disk-like object. It was badly damaged, with parts of its surface burnt or melted away, and it was possible to see the thousands of tiny gears forged from a peculiarly and unnaturally pale metal whirring away as she turned the angles and facets of the dial around a single, central crystal.

“Sister, the bombardment- -”

“I have it!” cried Clover, looking up suddenly, her calculations complete.

“Is it Al’Hrabnaz?” asked Celestia, desperately hoping it was not.

“Most definitely. I’d recognize his foul stench of sexy on anypony or anything.” Clover projected a system of rune configurations with her horn. To Nightmare Moon, or even to the majority of professional mages overhearing, they were completely meaningless- -but to Celestia they made perfect sense.

“The ships are powered by his engines,” she said. “They’re technetium draws but essential that’s just an anchor for what essentially amounts to a synthetic soul.”

“And it draws energy by creating asymmetric linkages through its non-bonding members,” said Celestia, her eyes growing wide. “Which means...”

“That the bonding members are asymmetrical! And in EIGHT dimensions! And according to the Starswirlian theory of paradimensional harmonics- -”

“With a factor of eight on the transform, the only way it could possibly work- -”

“Is with a phase-modulated resonance of sixty-six degrees!”

“Will either of you speak WORDS?!” cried Nightmare Moon.

Celestia turned to her sister. “It means that if we harmonize the frequency of their engines, we can break their connection to this world and send them back to whatever dimension they’re drawing energy from!”

“I have a spell,” said Clover, closing the spell around her broken dial and placing it in a special port on the left shoulder of her clothing. “You’ll have to learn by horn.”

“I can do that.”

“What do you need me to do?” said Nightmare Moon.

“Support us,” said Celestia. She spread her wings. “We have to get close to the engines for the spell to work. We need as much air support as you can give us.”

“You have it, sister. I will join the fight myself, and do what I can.”

“Excellent,” said Clover. She turned the dial on her shoulder, and her body shuddered as it immediately grew taller. Her shape reconfigured, and in an instant Celestia found herself standing next to a tall green stallion.

“Clover- -”

Clover looked up at Celestia, blinking. “I think my male form will have better stamina for this job. I can do you too.”

Celestia’s normally white face became a rather deep shade of red. “D- -d- -do me?!”

“Yes. I can make you a stallion too. If you think that would help.”

“N- -no,” said Celestia. “I like being a mare- -”

Clover shrugged and cast a different spell. Beautiful insect-like wings formed on his back. “If you like your marehood, I won’t touch it.”

Celestia once again darkened as the shield around them dropped and, taking advantage of a break in the artillery, Clover the Clever shot into the sky.

“Sister...” sighed Nightmare Moon. “You’re hopeless, aren’t you?”

“I am FINE!” cried Celestia, stamping a hoof. “Now if you excuse me I am going to go- -”

“Vent your frustration by breaking things?”

“N- -n- -YES!”

Celestia flapped her enormous wings and took to the sky. Nightmare Moon spread her own wings, but as she did, a bat pony ran toward her. He was haggard and his armor broken in several places, cleaved apart with vicious force. His wings, likewise, were torn to the point where he could not hope to fly.

“My queen! MY QUEEN!” The courier collapsed at Nightmare Moon’s feet. “My queen! A knight harries our forces in the northern district! Nothing we do can stop him! Our wings- -he’s taking our- -”

Nightmare Moon lowered her horn to the young bat pony and cast a spell. In an instant, his wings were healed, the broken and injured skin knitting back into its proper shape.

“My queen...”

“A pony who dares to hurt my children in such a way is not worthy of being called a ‘knight’. But I am needed elsewhere.” She looked up. “Specter.”

“Yes, Queen Khonshu?”

“I trust you to engage him. Show him what it truly means to be a knight, and drive his forces back.”

Specter saluted and bowed. “Yes, my queen. Thine will be done.”

“And...”

The white-clad knight looked up, confused. “And?”

“And...promise to return to me. When this is all over, and there is no need to fight. Return to stand at my side.”

“This I give, on my word as a knight.” He bowed deeply. “I shall return, and I shall never leave your side, my queen.”

Nightmare Moon nodded, and both she and her knight spread their respective wings and took to the sky.

The squad dived, pushing the limits of their wings, praying that it was enough. For them, it was: streaks of blue light sizzled behind them, tearing holes in the city below, but not hitting them. Some of the other squads were not so lucky. The impacts were severe, and there was no recovery. The impact resulted in mediated wing-feather incineration.

Lieutenant Firefly looked back behind him, terrified as one of the rear squads took a direct hit. The Pegasi cried out as they fell, and earth-ponies in a nearby balloon threw lassos, catching some but not all of them. The others fell to the battle below, deprived of flight and devoid of weapons.

“Major, we can’t keep this up! If we don’t pull out, our squad is done for! There’s nothing we can do here!”

The major looked up at the sky. He did not respond immediately, if only out of pride. He was far too young to remember the era of Lyskymm, but he had grown up on the stories of heroes, of Flash Magnus, Derpus Maximus, Gigantes, and of course Commander Hurricane, the greatest of them all. His pride would not let him retreat, even if nothing could be done- -but he looked at Firefly, and when he saw the look on the boy’s face, he understood. There was fear, yes, but that was not what dominated. Instead, it was concern.

Before he could answer, though, a frigate dropped from the clouds, blocking their path.

“MAJOR!”

“I SEE IT! FORM FOUR! FORM FOUR!”

They tried to break formation, but it was already too late. The vessel’s machines whirred, its robotics aligning crystal-driven lasers on target. There was no time to escape.

Then there came a flash, and as the lasers fired the air ignited with a sphere of solar light. Celestia cried out, forced back by the blast, but she converted the refraction order of her spell, driving the lasers back at the ship. Several of the cannons were cut free, and two overloaded, causing the whole of it to violently shake.

Without a word, she shot forward, propelled by her vast alicorn wings. The Pegasi watched in awe as she charged it without even the slightest sign of fear, and when she had reached it, she tapped her horn against the hull. A spell erupted, and a powerful seal spell was generated.

Suddenly the entire atmosphere seemed foul, as if it were filled with the scent of sour lightning. A somber whine emanated from the ship, and the sky above it erupted in light. The sky began to change. A hole formed. It was of course impossible to form a hole in the sky, as the sky was only an idea and not a solid thing, yet an opening formed regardless. An opening to somewhere with a dull, sickly, endless sky.

There was a rush like an explosion as the ship suddenly began to implode, breaking apart as it was pulled from within toward the void. Several Pegasi cried out as they were drawn toward it, their wings beating hard just to keep them in place. Celestia did the same, barely holding position.

They could scarcely hold on, but they did not need to for long. The instant the ship’s engine passed through the void, the paradox of a hole moving through itself caused the entire thing to detonate in a single brilliant flash. Then there was only silence.

Across the sky, another hole suddenly erupted, this one created by the action of a unicorn wizard. Celestia turned her head to see, and then smiled. In a flash she was gone, halfway across the battlefield, already affixing a spell to another ship.

The Crystal Forces did not seem to take this lightly. Other ships began firing on her, and on the mage. The mage was hit first and his gossamer wings instantly disintegrated. He managed to teleport in time to save himself, but ended up on the hull of another ship and was forced to deploy his shield.

Firefly suddenly heard something strange. It was a strange hissing or chugging sound. Nothing he had ever heard- -or would hear subsequently- -sounded quite like it, save for in the nightmares that would plague him for the remainder of his life.

He looked up and saw them. They were like ponies, at least in shape, but made of metal. They were golems, and he knew that- -but he had never seen a golem fly. Especially not with such speed and power, each of them supported by three pairs of metal wings. Metal wings that did not seem to move, but that pushed them forward.

“Major?”

“New orders,” said Major Force. “We have to cover the princess.” He pointed outward at Celestia, where she too had been forced to cast a shield spell that rendered her unable to disarm the enemy skyships. “We have to keep them off her!”

Firefly looked out at the battle in the sky, dismayed- -but he steeled himself.

“Yes sir! Pegasi, form on the wing!”

And with that, they rushed forward into battle.

Chapter 59: The Known Betrayer

A vast crystal ship detonated, its disintegrating remains being pulled into a vortex to some unseen and unknowable place. The others continued, though, bombarding the Crystal Empire to dust. Nothing of the greater Empire would survive for Celestia to claim. It would be sacrificed in the name of the One True King.

Yet the troops on the ground fought on, even with the world crashing down around them. Retreat had been cut off, and the whole of the world had fallen into dispensary. Forward bases and landing zones had been lost, and whatever chain of command had existed before had been severed. T here was fear and pain, but through that fear was hope and faith- -and the soldiers strove onward toward the Citadel.

A substantial force of earth-ponies had made it farther than the rest, and their escape had been cut off. Their forward momentum persisted, though, supported by a small contingent of batponies wielding ice-bolt crossbows. Many of their forces lay injured behind them, struck down by the blasts from above or by the hordes of golems that appeared not to notice or not to care about the bombardment. Yet the band moved forward.

As the ships began to explode, they had crested a small hill when the ground suddenly began to shake. The roar of hooves became thunderous, and as it drew nearer, a chant could be heard echoing through the noise.

“SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH!!”

A horde of yaks suddenly appeared. The ponies did not understand and did not react at first, not sure if these creatures were friend or foe. After all, the Yak’s Republic of YakYakistan was a known ally. Each and every one of the ponies knew that it was a glorious utopia of sharing and peace- -if only because that was the propaganda the unicorn nobles had fed them.

Yet when the yaks struck, they struck hard. Earth ponies were sent flying. The bat ponies had already loosed their crossbows- -their own knights having been far more transparent on international politics, and the need for the Nightmare Horde to eventually conquer all yak territory- -but their weapons had no effect. Yaks, being exceedingly hairy, were immune to both ice and tiny pony bolts.

The leader of the earth-ponies was thrown back by a punch to the chest. “But you’re allies!” he cried as a yak stood over him. “Why?!”

“Allies? Tell that to yak family that end up in GOULASH! Yak gonna SMASH!”

The earth-pony was promptly stomped.

Then a laser bolt from the sky descended. It struck directly in the center of the yak forces. Yaks were thrown everywhere as the ground was torn upward from the force, boiling from within.

“But- -we are allies!” cried the lead yak, just as the ground below him disintegrated.

The Equestrian forces took advantage of the chaos and charged, building up speed even over the collapsing ground. Though no match for yaks standing still, once they had gathered momentum the yaks did not stand a chance. They forced past, and the shield dome of the Crystal Citadel came in sight.

And when they saw it, they slowed, their eyes drawn upward to what sat over it. Fear encroached into each of their souls, and the strength began to drain from them.

That was when the yaks were forced out of the way by reinforcements.

Terrible things burst through, screaming and leaping upon the earth-pony forces. The ponies cried out in terror, not understanding what they were being attacked by...but the greatest fear came from those who understood, by some instinct or some aspect of incidental thought, what these horrors had once been.

They were distorted, their bodies mutilated and reconfigured in hideous ways. Black armor had been bolted and fused to their bodies, and their faces and hooves were twisted to the point of no longer being recognizable. Almost all of them were screaming, and many wept from agony- -but most laughed. High, manic laughter of endless joy. And then there were a few that had undergone so much surgery that all they could do was chatter.

The earth-pony leader, though stomped, still managed to stand- -only for one of these monstrosities to leap onto him, pinning him down. It had no apparent eyes, or face; its skin was pierced by rusted metal of every type and shape, parts of it bending to form structures of unknown and unspeakable function.

The batponies opened fire. Their arrows struck true, penetrating the body of the thing that had pinned the leader of their allies. She was forced back, screaming out and shaking- -but it was not a scream of pain or surprise. It was a cry of joy.

“Oh yes!” she wailed, her voice corrupted by her badly altered vocal organs, the arrows still deep in her bloodless body. “Oh YES daddy! Hurt me daddy, HURT ME! Daddy please, give me PAIN!”

She leapt forward, and the earth-pony had no choice but to punch her in the face with full force. She was knocked back, and he was sure he had felt something break. Yet she did not fall.

“Yes daddy! I love you daddy! Hurt me more! HARDER! I’M A GOOD PONY HURT ME HARDER!”

Her body was in a flash consumed by fire. This time she screamed with something other than pleasure- -but still not pain. Now it was anger.

“Get up!” cried a voice, lifting the earth-pony onto his feet.

“Thanks, I would have- -” his words caught in his throat when he saw that the red unicorn standing beside him was dressed in Imperial armor, his horn surrounded by a system of magical support controls and his body marked with signs of surgical reconfiguration.

“But- - you’re on THEIR side!”

“The field marshal's gone mad! I fight for the Empire!” He lit his horn, and a plume of flame burst outward from it, driving back more of the mutants. “We have to retreat! If his students are here, he can’t be far behind- -”

Except that it was too late. Walking slowly, almost bored, Buttonhooks the Mad dragged himself through the battlefield.

The earth-pony soldier cried out, terrified by the hulking mass before him. “What- -what is that thing?!”

The damaged eyes of the creature turned toward him. “I am merely an explorer,” he sighed. His voice was barely comprehensible. It was not that of a pony, or any sane being. “Yet, in this battle, I fear I may have reached the final shore.”

“GET DOWN!”

The imperial unicorn ignited his horn and fired a blast of flame. Buttonhooks did not even dodge it; he was immolated in an instant.

The only sound that came from him was a somber sigh. “Why?” he asked. “Why is this fire so cold? Why does it not hurt?”

He stepped forward, leaving the boundaries of the spell. The batponies opened fire, and Buttonhooks became the equine equivalent of a pincushion. He did not even flinch.

“Daddy!” cried the creature that had been attacking before. She ran to his side. “Daddy, we love you, we all love you- -”

She crumbled as Buttonhooks slammed a metal-studded hoof into her side. She rolled several times across the battlefield, barreling through several terrified earth-ponies. When she fell, she did not move- -at first. Then, to the horror of all present, she lifted her broken body and broke into laughter.

“Thank you daddy! Look everypony, LOOK! I’m a GOOD PONY!”

“I envy them,” said Buttonhooks, pausing. “How innocent they are. How far they still have to go. It is too much to bear.” He grabbed the arrows stuck in his body and absentmindedly pushed them deeper. “I had thought a war would give me new pain. Better pain. But there isn’t any left.” He turned toward the earth pony and the unicorn. He suddenly shuddered forward with impossible speed. The unicorn cried out as he was thrown to the ground, and the earth-pony tried to defend, only to be pressed into the snow and ice with a great, twisted hoof. He could feel the bones inside it, and the bones were strange. They had been broken hundreds if not thousands of times.

“At least I can still give the greatest gift,” said Buttonhooks. “The gift of endless, perfect pleasure. How would you like to start?” He lowered his face to the earth-pony. His eyes seemed to grow wider, even with steel hooks keeping them open far wider than should have been possible. “I know! Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

“N- -no?”

“I’m going to take four metal horseshoes...and I’m going to put them on your hooves….” He drew his face even closer. The commander could feel his breath. It actually smelled quite pleasant. “And then?”

“Th...then?”

“I’m going to NAIL THEM IN PLACE!”

“NOOOOOO!” cried the earth pony. “Not that! ANYTHING but THAT!”

Buttonhooks produced a lemon. “Squeezed in the eye first then? How daring!”

Before the pain could begin, the whole of the battlefield was cleared with a single spell. Every pony or yak on both sides suddenly cried out as they were shocked with pink-violet magic, and then they fell to the ground, their bodies smoking slightly.

The spell had also struck Buttonhooks, but he had hardly noticed. His nervous system could not be overloaded so easily.

He turned, and in the distance saw Twilight Luciferian limping toward him. He seemed to be almost entirely unable to put weight on his armored hoof, and he was sweating profusely. Dark circles had formed under his eyes- -one of which was now completely red, the face around it having changed color from pale gray-white to a disgusting shade of yellow.

“I don’t have time for this,” he growled.

“Twilight Luciferian,” said Buttonhooks, sitting down in the field of unconscious ponies and yaks. “I must say, I had been wondering which side you actually intended to take. In all honesty? This does not answer my question.”

“Stop toying with me, donkey,” hissed Luciferian. He coughed hard and quickly wiped a thin stream of silver from his lips. “You know exactly which side I’m on.”

“Your own?”

Luciferian smiled. “Sombra decided for me. The Princesses must win. Equestria must prevail. If Sombra takes back the throne, I’m done.” He reached for his infected hoof. “And then it all was for nothing.”

Buttonhooks nodded. “I see. So you came to betray me.”

Luciferian smiled. His teeth had grown substantially. “I chose the weakest to go first.”

“And the other twelve?”

“I already have control over one, and at least six of them don’t matter whatsoever.”

“Really?” Buttonhooks lifted himself off the ground and turned to Luciferian. “You have made a grave mistake, if you intend to fight me. There is nothing you can do to me that I have not already done to myself. I have reached the far limit of pain, and found it pointlessly weak.”

Luciferian sat down. “Fighting. What’s even the point? I tried fighting. It never works. To be honest, I abhor violence. I am a white unicorn, not some racially inferior savage. I prefer a more civilized approach.”

“You refer to treachery.”

Luciferian shrugged. “You cannot betray a pony without befriending them. If the world were a perfect place, we would only ever crush our friends.” Luciferian reached into his robes and produced an object. “I therefore have brought a gift. For you. You will not need to fight.”

“What gift could you possibly give me that would convince me to stop?”

Luciferian’s grin grew, and he opened the box he had produced. From it, he withdrew a cube of dark, nearly black wood and strips of pale steel.

Buttonhooks took a ragged gasp and took a step forward, his eyes wide with awe and disbelief.

“That is not possible!” he cried. “There- -there are none left! They were destroyed!”

Luciferian laughed. “My ancestors built them! They were a gift to this world from House Twilight, and ponies simply refused to accept our generosity.” Luciferian held it out. “This is the very last of them. The last Configuration, from my own personal collection. I want you to have it. Take it, and depart this war.”

Buttonhooks took another step forward. His body was shaking, and he was salivating uncontrollably.

“No,” he said, stopping suddenly. “It- -it can’t be real. There is no way to prove it is genuine- -”

“Yes,” said Luciferian. “There is.”

Buttonhooks stared at the cube. It was not large, but he could see the insignia and forms carved into its surface. Forms that, if it were real, linked to immensely complex and accursed mechanisms within, the product of the work of generations of mad mages. Mages whose works Buttonhooks had based his life off of.

“I have no reason to give you a fake,” said Luciferian. “The whole point is to open it.”

Buttonhooks reached out, half expecting Luciferian to rip his dream away and strike him down with a spell. Yet Luciferian did not, and when Buttonhooks touched the box he shivered. He took it from Luciferian and for a brief moment thought he could hear the screams of every pony who had held it before him. All those who had opened the Way.

“Use it well,” said Luciferian, walking past Buttonhooks. “She’s waiting.”

Buttonhooks could have stopped him, but he did not. He allowed Luciferian to pass into the snowstorm and to disappear, on his way to commit whatever betrayal he wished. Yet there was nothing Buttonhooks could do, no force that could take his eyes away from the cube.

He knew that he could save it. He could open it later, once the battle was won. That would be the right thing to do- -but the temptation was too vast. Hungrily and with shaking hooves, he tore into the cube, wrenching its pieces around into the proper configurations that had been written down by the disciples of pain in the long past. He knew the codes and meanings of the terrible runes carved into the side and cast in silver, and knew the forms they must take- -and he wept with joy as he turned the facets of the device.

Suddenly, it shifted. It was no longer a cube. Part of its center snapped upward and Buttonhooks turned it. He took a deep breath and pushed it downward.

Nothing happened. There was no sound, no flash of light. No vortex to paradise.

“Depressing, isn’t it?”

Buttonhooks turned and nearly cried out. A mare had appeared beside him, standing in an empty field of snow and ice between the fallen buildings of the ruined city. A mare of perfect yellow with a bright red mane- -and eyes with neither whites nor pupils. They were pure red.

Buttonhooks fell to the ground, prostrate. “H- -Hail Satin!”

A smile crossed the mare’s face. She was tall, thin, and remarkably beautiful. As was her smile, if only because of its absolute sincerity. “One who remembers my name. I had not known that there were any left in your world.”

“Though your name may be forgotten, your beauty penetrates all ponies in life, and consumes them in the beyond.”

The smile grew wider. “You know, I had been about to complain. I’ve already been summoned once, and frankly that’s going terrible for me right now. And then this?” She took the Configuration from Buttonhooks. At her touch, its form of perfect angles disintegrated, instead assuming its true form: a conglomeration of malignant globes. “I mean, did he actually trick you into opening this?”

“No,” said Buttonhooks, standing. “No, I know exactly what I have done.”

“They all say that. Then they learn that I’m not a mare, and suddenly their tune changes.” Her smile grew far larger than was possible for a pony. Her teeth were black and pointed. “But by then it’s too late, isn’t it?”

“Not I,” said Buttonhooks, looming over her. “I have taken everything this world can gives me. I have learned every secret of its pain. Please, show mercy upon me, oh great Goddess! Grant my wish! Show me the secrets that I crave!”

The One True Goddess looked up at Buttonhooks and frowned. “You fool. Are you trying to impress me? With that body? What point does it serve?” She waved her hoof, and Buttonhooks dropped to the ground. He sat up, gasping and shivering. He looked down in shock and saw that his hooves were no longer pierced by metal. They were small and free of scars. He had been restored to his original body.

“Wh- -what have you done?!”

“A mortal body cannot feel pain. Not really. Sure, it thinks it can. But real, true physical pain? No living thing would survive it. But those who give themselves to me? Who present me with their soft pony flesh?” She hugged Buttonhooks, her chin touching his shoulder and her hooves around him. “To those and those alone, I bring IMMORTALITY.”

Buttonhooks smiled, and then his eyes widened as he felt her. His mouth opened in a silent scream of agony when he understood, and a quiet scream escaped his mouth- -but it was already too late. In an instant, he was gone from the mortal world- -and had finally entered paradise.

Chapter 61: Z-Type

The world had grown dim. Night had reached its deepest hours before the rising of the sun, and the moon had been hidden by clouds. This did not deter the Blue Knight. His synthetic eyes could still see quite well. Rather, he was annoyed, even angry. In all of this epic battle, not one opponent had appeared who was adequately worthy.

He had fought past them all, cutting a swath through the oncoming forces. It had been easy. Too easy. Now he stood at the edge of the city. The airships were only visible in the greatest distance through a sky marked by lightning.

Where he stood was the end of the city, at the very border of the Crystal Empire. It was land that had once been thriving and glorious, but it had been abandoned long ago as the shield began to lose power and slowly retract. The air was frigid, although Zither hardly noticed. There was precious little of him that could still feel the chill. Celestia had made sure of that.

That was his course. Toward Celestia. Toward the one who had taken everything from him. The one who, he knew, was intending to take Penumbra too. Or, worse, the one who would be claimed by the Dark Princess, depriving him of his vengeance.

The time was drawing near. Zither did not know how, but he could feel it. He had to reach her, before he lost his chance forever.

Then he stopped. Something was wrong. This area had been exposed to Hyperborean winter for decades, and Zither knew that it was far too cold to support any normal pony- -yet he felt as though he was being watched.

He drew his sword, holding it in his magic and levitating it in front of him in a defensive posture. If he knew Equestrian soldiers, they would almost always come from behind like the filthy cowards they were.

Except that they did not come from behind. One pony came from the front, walking silently through the heavily falling snow. A pony clad in pure white armor inscribed with a diamond of four stars.

Zither smiled beneath his helm. “I am afraid I have no time for you, little child. I have a date Celestia.”

The moon knight drew his blade, one of strange silver. “Then you shall need to pass me first.”

“So be it!”

Zither crossed the gap in an instant, raising his sword high over his head. His opponent raised his own sword to block. Zither’s came down and cleaved it in twain- -yet his enemy’s blade did not break. Rather, his own blade passed through it as though it were made of liquid.

In a single fluid movement, the knight slashed at Zither’s left shoulder. Zither cast a powerful shield spell, deflecting the blow just in time to parry a second impact from the knight’s sword. This time it struck as though made of steel, and strange sparks were driven from both blades.

Zither forced their swords to the side and raised his hoof, his power-armor whirring as he drove it down with enough force to crack the thick ice that lined the forgotten imperial streets. The pony dodged, his blade rotating on its ring around his hoof. His wings went out to the side and he flipped, jumping onto Zither’s back. He drove the sword deep into Zither’s armor, penetrating various machines beneath. In response Zither fired a defensive spell, his whole body illuminating with blinding amber light.

The knight in white armor took to the air, circling rapidly before hovering in one position.

“Flight? How cowardly!”

“Says the pony who dares to wield magic in a fight of blades.”

Zither could not stop smiling. He threw his blade, powering it with his own magic, but the white knight was faster. He threw his own sword, ducking to the ground and sliding across the snow almost directly under Zither. As he did, he deployed a dagger, cutting against the underside of Zither’s armor- -but in the process catching Zither’s rear hoof against his side. The blow would normally have caved tin any normal suit of armor- -or even Questlord armor. Yet although the blow momentarily stunned the knight, his moonstone armor was not broken.

Zither’s sword cut its path. The knight only regained his composure in time to execute a perfect flip, flying over the blade and grasping it by its base. Though the blade was immensely heavy, he lifted it with great might, just as Zither charged, plunging the red-steel blade into the Questlord’s chest. As he did, his own blade slammed into the side of his head, cutting to the midpoint of his helm.

The two were knocked back from one another, the white knight still holding Zither’s sword. Zither looked down, and saw that he had been given the poke. Fluorescent-green coolant was leaking from the gap in his armor, but it was only a trickle.

His opponent did not fall. Rather, he reached for his ruined helm and tore it off. The pony beneath was dark gray, the same color as his wings- -though his mane was jet black, long, and beautiful. But what Zither saw most clearly were his eyes. They were red, with thin vertical slits for pupils.

The only sign of Zither’s attack was a thin scratch on the Pegasus’s cheek. A thin line of black fluid dripped from it, and then it was gone, having fully healed.

Zither disengaged the emergency interlocks that connected his own helmet to his armor. It hissed, venting pressure, and he removed it, throwing it down.

“A blade of enchanted quicksilver,” he said, raising his opponent’s sword in his magic. “A rare artifact indeed. I had been afeared that it might have been wielded by a stallion not worthy of its might. But now I see, the owner of this blade is none other than the Blade of Khonshu, servant of the Dark Queen.”

Specter smiled. “And how could I not recognize the Blue Knight of the Crystal Empire, Renegade of Clan Heartstrings.”

“You are indeed a knight of renown. The High Commander of the Nightmare Horde, the only one permitted to stand beside Nightmare Moon herself. Her equal, some say.”

“None are equal to the One True Goddess. I am merely her lowly servant. Would you claim to be equal to your own patron, the Witchking Sombra?”

Zither smiled. “No. I suppose I would not.” He lifted the quicksilver sword and threw it. The blade landed before Specter. Spector hefted Zither’s red-steel Questlord blade and threw it back to him.

“Word of your deeds has reached far, Blue Knight.” Specter picked up his blade. “And though I do not condone them, I am glad that you shall be the one I challenge.” He pointed his blade at Zither. “My beloved queen has sent me to stop you. Should I win this fight, I shall present her with your horn.”

“And should I be the victor, your wings shall be a gift for my own princess, the child Penumbra.” Zither nodded. “While the rest of you shall be returned to your queen, so that you may rest in a way fitting for a hero.”

“I thank you, Blue Knight. It is pleasing to meet a pony of honor.”

“Though my methods are brutal, I have never once deviated from the way of chivalry. And I have paid dearly for it.” He pointed at the coolant leak on his chest. “I intend to have my revenge on Celestia, for having taken my beloved from me.”

“The lesser princess is still dear to my queen. I could not bear to see one tear fall from her eye. I cannot allow you to proceed.”

Zither raised his sword, and he laughed, softly. “Then I am pleased! What a fight this shall be! Whether I win or lose, my name shall recall the day I clashed on this battlefield not as a soldier but as a KNIGHT!”

“I am pleased as well. Let our combat be honorable and our names remembered. Have at thee!”

Zither raised his sword and, laughing, charged- -only to stop suddenly as a plume of fluorescent green came from one side of his head.

His eyes grew wide as he stumbled. “N...no,” he whispered, tears welling in his eyes. “Not like this...”

“Blue Knight!”

Specter rushed to the side of his opponent, catching him as he fell. “Blue Knight! Speak to me!”

The Blue Knight did not respond. He was breathing, but his breath was not that of a normal pony. It was slow and mechanical- -and growing slower.

Spector saw the wound, and followed its course. He saw through the distance, his powerful eyes focusing on the top of a distant building. There he saw something terrible.

It looked like a pony. A pony with teal skin and long, white hair, clad in golden armor adorned only by a single violet crystal inlaid in the front. Yet Specter understood by some dark instinct that it was something far more terrible, that the body it wore had faded to nothingness long ago.

In its hoof, it was holding a strange weapon. A Questlord rifle.

“NO!” he cried, standing. “You will not take his honor!”

The figure seemed to hear him. It smiled as the air behind it sparked and erupted into a portal. Before Specter could even take flight, the figure was gone.

The Blue Knight moaned softly. “G...Gallen...”

Spector ran back to his side. “No, my friend. I will not let it end like this. It is not meant to end like this! It can’t!” He lifted his opponent. “I will not allow it!”

What he did not know was that the Blue Knight’s journey had already ended long before he had even been born.

Chapter 62: Deadly Storm

The golems thudded through the air, changing angle under impossible g-forces to gain a target lock on the filthy organics intruding upon their sky. The leaders of the formation lowered their cannons, and belts of pre-charged crystals were rapidly fed through the mechanisms. The depleted crystals fell to the ground and the charged spells streaked through the air toward the enemies of the Empire.

One of the Pegasi was hit hard. Her wing burst into flames, smoking badly.

“I’m hit! I’M HIT!”

“Buttergust! NO!”

“I’m losing control!” Her body began to shake and her wing gave way. She spiraled downward, trailing smoke all the way. She was only rescued at the very last moment, caught in mid-crash by a bat-stallion in Shadowbolts gear.

“Saved by a Shadowbolt,” groaned the sergeant. “Worse fate than a hard impact...”

The golems reloaded for another barrage. Major Force led a barrel roll, his formation following in perfect unison and barely avoiding the crossfire from the blasts. A spell pinged of Lieutenant Firefly’s armor only inches from his wing, gouging deeply into the matte gray metal. He wanted to cry, but he held on.

The major kept his eyes front, but shouted over the din of the air-battle to his squad. “We have to keep them busy!”

“No!” replied the sergeant. “We have to take them OUT!”

“And how do you propose you do that? With our HOOVES?!”

“I have an idea!” said Firefly. “I don’t think their wings are retractable, if we can get in position- -”

“With all do respect ‘sir’, this isn’t time for a lesson on DESIGN!”

“No,” said the major. “He’s right. Come on, I have an idea!”

They ducked down through the flack and lasers. Explosions were all around them, now being lobbed upward by unicorns wearing thrall masks- -some still wearing their Equestria colors.

Other squads were falling one by one. The golems were cutting through them and there was nothing they could do. Air reconnaissance held no weapons, apart from the occasional spear. The best they could hope to do was swoop in for assistance in a ground battle, but, ironically, they were useless in the air. Still, Major Force saw a few try. They were brave or idiots, and probably heroes either way. There was of course nothing they could do to stop golems; they were knocked out of the sky in an instant.

“This way!”

“Sir!” gasped Firefly, his breath running out as they rushed forward. “We’re heading farther back into enemy lines!”

“It’s the only place with the right conditions! Come on, Firefly, it was your idea, take some responsibility!”

“Y- -yes sir!”

They suddenly tilted downward and to the side. It was a difficult maneuver, one that most bat-ponies could not even hope to achieve. The golems copied it easily, though, opening fire as they descended. Firefly did not understand at first- -but then he saw it. A gap between two listing crystal buildings.

“I hope you’ve been laying off the cake, sergeant,” said the major. Then, to all of those who still remained: “Quadruple time! Prep vertical form! Retract on my mark!”

“WHAT?!” cried one of the fatter of the group. “You can’t- -we can’t! We just can’t!”

“You’re welcome to stay with the golems! FORM!”

The formation immediately shifted to a vertically oriented V instead of a horizontal one. Some of the squad were doing their very best to suck it in as they forced themselves to accelerate into a dead sprint.

“MARK!”

All obeyed in unison, retracting their wings to their side. Their inertia carried them forward into the gap between the buildings. It was far to narrow to flap, but they kept their angle steady, passing through the hole at high-speed regardless.

Firefly’s armor struck the crystal walls and rebounded between the two halves. “I’m not gonna fit!”

“Keep it straight! STRAIGHT!”

“I’m too tight!” cried one of the rear ponies. “I’m not going to make it!”

“Sorry Thick Air,” said the pony behind him- -who then promptly punched him hard in the rump, forcing him the rest of the way through the gap- -at the cost of his own inertia. He fell to the snow below, just as the golems entered.

Their superheated wings instantly cut into the crystal of the buildings, and for a moment it seemed as though they would make their way through by brute force alone. Then the cutting slowed, and as their bodies carried themselves forward their wings were drawn back. The instant the wings touched, the golems detonated, splattering metallic shrapnel on the ponies further on in the gap.

The blast took them by surprise, but gave them enough force to get out the far side. As soon as they did, they opened their wings and regained balance, taking flight in a dramatic climb.

“We did it!” cried Firefly. “We got them!”

The major smiled, but only slightly. “Is everypony- -”

Two of the ponies in the rearmost section of the formation suddenly screamed. Major Force and Firefly both turned back suddenly to see the shrapnel crawling up their bodies. Except that it was not shrapnel. It was tiny metal ponies.

“I can’t shake them!” cried one of the squad.

“Get them off! GET THEM OFF!”

They took evasive action, but the tiny golems were not perturbed. They sprinted and climbed up the backs of the ponies, reaching their wings. They immediately began taking hold of the feathers and tearing them out.

“GAH! I’m being PLUCKED! Major help me! For Celestia’s sake HELP ME!”

One of them suddenly lost control as a golem severed his flight feathers. He cried out and wept as he plummeted down, unable to even make a proper emergency landing. He hit hard into a pile of icy rubble.

“Major, I’m sorry! I can’t hold on!” cried the next as she fell. She at least tried to execute an emergency landing, but her more complete wing was unfeathered by a sudden blast of crystal-laser force. The golems that had not been destroyed turned around caught up.

“Major! We have to do something!” Firefly looked up. “Major, please, if we can- -” His eyes grew wide when he saw the tiny ponies crawling on his commander’s wings. There were only a few, but they had already reached his deep violet-red feathers and were beginning to pluck them out.

“Major! Hold on, I can get them off- -”

“NO. If you touch me, they’ll get you too!”

“But I have to try- -”

A sudden blast traced toward them from behind. Firefly and the sergeant were able to roll out of the way, but with his damaged wings the major could not. He took a hit to the wind and was suddenly trailing smoke.

“Major!”

“I’m not going to make it,” he said, barely managing to control his flight. “Horsefeathers.” He turned to Firefly. “Lieutenant, you’re the ranking officer now. Congratulations, you’re finally getting promoted to lead-flyer.”

“But- -but sir- -no!”

“I’m about to do something stupid. If I don’t make it...well...it’s not like I had a wife anyway. Oh well.”

“Sir- -!”

The major suddenly opened his wings. The effect was an instantaneous break, pulling him backward from the front of the V to the rear- -right where the nearest golem was flying. Major Force grabbed onto its neck, dragging it through the air with his own force and turning its cannon on several of the other golems. His target was immediately knocked off balance and sliced into another golem just behind it. The impact resulted in a massive blast of magical energy as the golems simultaneously detonated.

“MAJOR!”

It was too late. The major was gone- -and more golems had begun to swarm, dropping from an overhead carrier.

“We have to get out of here!” The sergeant banked to the left, attempting to assume the lead pony position- -but Firefly passed her. “What are you doing?!”

“If we turn back now, we’re done! We have to go straight through!”

“Are you insane?! Get out of my way! You have no idea what you’re doing- -”

Firefly suddenly cried out. For a moment he was sure he had been hit. The world around him grew quiet, and a strange sound of static began to flood into his mind. Static that sounded disturbingly similar to breathing.

Then a voice spoke inside his mind.

“Hey you,” it whispered. “You with the wings? Ohhhhh how I’d love to cover your skinny rump in butter...not stupid margarine...no wonder they made you a Wonderbolt.”

“What- -what’s a Wonderbolt?”

The sergeant looked at Firefly like he was crazy. “Get ahold of yourself, Firefly- -”

“You should boop her in the snoot. Either in the violent way, or the fun way. I don’t care, I like to watch either way. Although I won’t see this one. My time is almost up. And that Wonderbolt thing? Don’t think about that too hard. You will literally vaporize a content if you go full-blown paradox. It’s happened. Or will happen. Or won’t. They can’t expect me to see everything, I’m just a pony!” This was followed by a sound that was either laughing or weeping- -or both.

“It’s shellshock,” whispered Firefly, knowing he was done for. “It- -”

“You are going to need to listen, Firefly,” said the voice. “That carrier above you? Clover the Clever is about to knock it down in exactly thirty-seven seconds. The vortex will be at angle forty-seven positive, seventeen Z, eighty-two negative. Try to time it right. Or don’t. Also stop thinking about motorboating your sergeant’s wings, it’s disgusting.”

“I- -I wasn’t- -!”

“You are now.” The voice laughed. “Let’s see if you make it.”

The static cut out. As it did, Firefly was sure he saw a strange green light- -and a terrifying face that, for some reason, made him feel only pity. He looked up at the carrier overhead. Clover the Clever was nowhere in sight. But there was no other option.

“Squadron!” he shouted, taking the lead-pony position. “Vertical assent! On my mark!:

“Are you insane?!” cried the sergeant. “That ship has flak cannons, lasers, Celestia-knows what else! If we get close- -”

Bolts of energy flew past them, fired from the golems.

“I’m the ranking officer here,” snapped Firefly. “And you’re only other option is to turn around and surrender. If you’re lucky, Sombra will let you keep your wings.”

“Are you calling me a coward?! I will put leaves on your mother’s head and tape CHERRIES to her NOSE!” She fell into the wingpony position. “If I’m going down, at least I won’t be going down retreating!”

“Moooootorbooooating,” whispered a distant voice.

“MARK!” cried Firefly. He turned up, trying to hide the tears running from his eyes.

Bolts fired from every angle. As the ship overhead drew closer, the impacts became more accurate. Firefly could feel the heat coming off them. The carrier was getting closer and closer, and golems were now pouring out of it. Strangely, Firefly found himself wondering if there were really any ponies on the ship at all. If they were all thralls and golems, was there anypony at all really in command?

“Lieutenant! We’re not gonna make it!”

Suddenly, a burst of green light formed on the side of the ship. Clover the Clever dropped onto a magical construct, carving an enormous complex of runes into the side of the ship as he ran past it. Immediately the vibration from within began to change. Firefly could feel it in his teeth.

Then there was silence.

“ACCELERATE NOW!”

The order reached his squad just as space opened up. For a brief moment, he saw the horrors that lurked on the other side. They were imperceptible, but palpable beyond measure. That hole led to a place ponies were not meant to be, a place that living beings were not meant to access. And yet the door had been cracked by some depraved soul long before Clover the Clever had slammed it open.

The suction was vast, and Firefly felt himself being drawn in. He compensated, watching as his Pegasi were sucked toward it as well- -but they were farther past it than the golems. Unable to resist the dimensional tug, they were pulled through.

“This was a TERRIBLE idea!” cried the sergeant.

“More power! Give it everything you have!”

The squad obeyed, beating their wings as hard as they could. Even that was only enough to slow their descent- -but then, as quickly as it had come, the portal closed. The entire squad shot forward suddenly, ascending high into the air and past the frigid thunderclouds overhead.

They had survived, and slowly the descended to the top of the clouds. The golems did not pursue because there were no more golems. They had been pulled to Celestia-knew-where with the carrier craft.

“Ugh!” said one of the group, collapsing onto the clouds. “That was rough!”

“I’ll say,” said the sergeant. “That was the stupidest, most reckless- -hey! ‘Sir’, are you listening?”

Firefly was not. He was too busy staring into the distance. They had been the first to penetrate the layer of ships and the clouds overhead. None of the others had seen it. None of the others knew it had been there.

“Lieutenant! I’m trying to say important…things...”

The sergeant looked up and her words slowly trailed off. She saw it too.

From above the clouds, they could see the top of the Crystal Citadel- -and the storm gathering above it. Even to the Pegasi, the guardians and creators of weather, the sight before them was terrifying beyond measure. Nothing like it had ever existed that they could recall. No one would be insane enough to generate something so horrible.

The clouds trailed high into the upper atmosphere, a vortex of swirling blackness lit almost perpetually from red lightning within. Lightning that buzzed with magic hundreds or thousands of times greater than the electrical power of any normal lightning that was allowed to exist. Never had there been a storm so black or immense, or so outright threatening, as if it were made of fear itself.

“What...what is that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Look!” A young stallion named Squall ran forward and pointed. “There’s somepony in there!”

That was, of course, impossible, even absurd- -and not at all funny. The very idea of approaching such a storm was disturbing, and the group shivered in unison. The winds alone were enough to rip the feathers from a pony’s wings; there was no way anypony would dare approach it.

Yet as Firefly stared- -however unwillingly- -he saw the dim light of a flaming contrail. Looking closer, he saw a Pegasus attempting desperately to fly against the current of the storm. Even in the intensity of the wind and ice and electrical fire, he was still able to sustain himself just on its surface- -but not for long. Slowly, the force of the currents overcame him. His struggle was valiant indeed, but quite short. The storm rejected him, sending him tumbling out with extreme force.

“He’s out of control! We have to catch him!”

Without warning- -or thinking- -Firefly shot forward. His wings felt like pudding from the exertion before, but his course was clear. In a matter of seconds, he caught the pony who had fallen from the storm.

Immediately, he found that the pony in question was a stallion- -and a stallion dressed in strange armor. It was not Empire armor, nor was it Equestrian. Firefly’s first thought was mercenary, but he had never seen a pony mercenary before.

“Lieutenant!” cried the sergeant, approaching with the rest of the squad. Her voice seemed to make the pony wake up.

“What where who?!” He sat up, pulling off his mask and taking a deep gasp. His face was immediately met by the sergeant’s hoof.

“Sargent!” cried Firefly, dropping the stallion.

“Do you have any idea who that is?! That’s Spectrum Skyflame! He’s wanted on four continents!”

The pony, now flying under his own power, looked up, frowning deeply. His eyes seemed sunken, but his identity was clear from his mane alone. While it was dyed a deep red color, it had started to grow out, revealing the rainbow of colors beneath.

“I will motorboat your father’s stubby wings!” he spat.

“Jokes on you!” said one of the ponies in the back. “Her dad’s an earth-pony!”

“Which explains why she’s built like a tank. Stupid F.L.A.P.!”

“I will beat you so hard you’ll WISH you were a dirt-pony- -”

“QUIET!” cried Firefly.

Skyflame’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you supposed to be?”

“The commanding officer of this squad.”

“Really? They gave a commission to a kid? Ugh. Pitiful. We might as well be earth-ponies at this point. But I don’t have time to care. We have a problem.”

“The only problem,” said the sergeant, “being your impending beating.”

“From you sitting on me, Bertha? Do you think you outrank me? I’m a grade FOUR weather scientist- -no. I don’t have TIME. LOOK!” He pointed at the vortex above the Citadel. To Firefly’s horror, it had increased substantially in size. “Do you see that thing?”

“How could I not?”

“That’s a self-propagating, stable nucleation cell. As in the worst. Possible. THING!”

“He’s speaking gibberish! Somepony slap him! Ideally in the rump!”

Skyflame rolled his eyes. “That big shiny thing? The Citadel? It’s a massive energy accumulator. It’s how Sombra gets his power.”

“It’s what we were sent to attack,” said the sergeant.

“Well that’s not your immediate concern. That storm is some kind of exhaust. Spare magical energy, entropy from some sort of MASSIVE reaction. Nothing on this scale has ever existed before- -I mean, theoretically, it CAN’T- -”

“Exhaust?” Firefly looked up at the cloud. “What could Sombra possibly be doing that makes that much waste-power?”

“I have no idea, but it can’t be good. But that’s not our problem right now! It’s getting close to critical mass!”

“You’re not making sense,” said the sergeant. “Slow down or shut up.”

“You don’t understand!” cried Skyflame, suddenly panicked. “We’re in the MIDDLE of a Hyperborean polar vortex, and those sky-ships have been dumping magic into the stratosphere for WEEKS- -if it gets to critical mass, we won’t be able to stop it!”

Firefly racked his brain. He was a flyer, not a weather engineer, but the military academy had covered the basics at least. “Meaning? What, it will grow?”

“No. It will become unstoppable. As in, there will be no Crystal Empire. And then Equestria will be next. Until the whole world is plunged into darkness.”

“That’s absurd,” said the sergeant. “You’re making excuses, trying to get out of- -”

Skyflame turned to her, his eyes wide. “Would I fly into something like that if it weren’t real?”

“What were you even trying to do?” asked Firefly.

“If I can reverse the direction, I can draw off some of the energy. Diffuse it before it starts. I’ve done the math.” He held out one of his sleeves. It was covered in equations. “But I can’t get enough force on my own.”

“What about with us?”

The group fell silent. “Lieutenant, you can’t be serious- -”

“If that thing goes up, the war is over. Both sides lose. How many ponies are hurt already? On both sides?”

“Both sides- -they’re the ENEMY!”

“We didn’t come here to destroy the Crystal Empire, we came here to SAVE IT!” Firefly looked up at the storm. “And that’s what we’re going to do. That’s my order. Follow it or don’t.”

“That’s the second time you’ve tried that trick,” muttered the sergeant. She grimaced and sighed. “It won’t work. Not a third time. Flyers!” She raised her hoof. “Fall in line!”

“We’re- -we’re actually going to do it?”

“Probably,” said Skyflame, shrugging. “We’ll see.”

Chapter 63: The Death of Scarlet Mist

The sky was burning. Deafening explosions erupted across the battlefield as space was ripped apart and sky-ships torn asunder by powerful sorcery. Many of them were ripped free of the realm that had borne the, progressing to an unknown elsewhere- -but others tore apart from the strain, their parts raining downward onto the ponies below. Those ships that still functioned pounded the land with artillery, desperately trying to drive back the Equestrian forces- -but it was increasingly clear that their effort was in vain. The battle was already turning.

A force of earth-ponies had broken through the crumbling defense line. Unaware of the devastating form developing over their heads, they charged, knowing that the Citadel was in sight. That was their goal, their only chance to finish the battle. Nothing would stop them.

Yet as they ran, the first of their vanguard began to notice something strange. An odd odor, at first, and a strange feeling of weakness. The air seemed to have become thicker, and warmer. Only when it was too late did they see the fog- -and realize that it was red.

A young colt was the first to react. “Gas!” he cried. “GAS!”

His training was instinctive. He grasped a gas-rattle from his kit and spun it. The other ponies, terrified, put on their masks- -but being an earth-pony, the colt with the rattle was unable to reach for his. He continued to sound the alarm, even as he breathed in the strange-scented poison.

Immediately, his eyes grew wide and the rattle fell form his mouth. A horrible, unnatural scream echoed over the entire formation as he fell to the icy ground in convulsions.

“String Pea!” cried one of his comrades, rushing to him and grabbing at his mask, desperately trying to put it on him.

“No! NO!” cried the colt, flailing out of his former friend’s grasp. “The spiders oh Celestia THE SPIDERS! They’re in my eyes! THEY’RE INSIDE MY EYES!”

Paradoxically, he began to run into the fog, taking a heavier dose as he fled and stumbled across the ice, tearing off his armor and at his face trying to remove the spiders. The others chased after him.

“No, wait! You can’t- -”

The gas suddenly became markedly thick. The formation ceased its forward motion, unable to see anything at all.

Then it moved.

Ponies across the battlefield cried out in terror as what they had thought of as fog suddenly become solid, expanding outward and against them, crushing against them and attacking their bodies. They struggled, but even as they did, their masks ignited with scarlet magic. The glass eye-covers exploded outward, and the crimson fog moved through the holes.

As the earth-ponies suddenly found themselves confronted by their worst fears, a line of pink magic suddenly snaked its way through the snow, moving elegantly into the fog in the form of the outline of a great lily. As it completed, the air suddenly ignited with magical fire, burning away the gas. Even as it did, a counter spell or scarlet light ripped through the formation, grasping each earth-pony by their rear legs and tossing them, still screaming, into the air. Then it caught them and slammed them hard and repeatedly against the ground before discarding their disoriented and battered bodies to the side.

Scarlet Mist stood firm in the center of the battlefield, staring down her enemies without flinching- -yet swore to herself in the process. Though she had disassembled the earth-pony vanguard quickly, she was not ignorant enough to think there would not be a line of reinforcements poised to fill the void and continue the push within a matter of minutes.

Worse, she suddenly found herself facing a force of unicorns. Many of them wore the ridiculous robes of so-called “academics” or the armor of Celestia’s personal battlemages. A few were unhelmed moon-knights drawn from the Nightmare Horde.

Those were hardly relevant, though. What mattered was the thin and beautiful unicorn who stood at their front, her body perfect, nude, and purest white. She was a lesser version of the pureblood that Scarlet Mist had once been, and the only true threat of the force.

“Eternity, where in Hecate’s name is Buttonhooks?! I need those reinforcements, and I need them NOW!”

“I’ve lost contact with Buttonhooks and Zither. Freaky-undead-consort is in forced retreat, she can’t get to you- -I’m sending Crozea! She’s all I’ve got!”

“You’re sending me the ALCHEMIST?! Come on!”

“Can you hold them off that long?”

Scarlet Mist stared at the force. She did not need to look at herself to know the state she was in. Riser’s youthful, thick hair had begun to thin and gray. The early signs of arthritis were beginning to set in, and her body fat was mostly gone.

“Maybe,” she said. Then, staring across the battlefield at the pure-white unicorn now smiling at her. “Maybe just one more body. Just one more...”

The white unicorn stepped forward. Scarlet Mist groaned, knowing that this probably meant talking. Still, she had wait and be as careful as possible. The life force of her present body was waning; she would only have a limited time before it broke down entirely- -and Penumbra had still not yet entered the battle. She would need as many allies as she could find, especially with Zither gone.

“Masque Rouge!” called the white unicorn. “I know who you are. So to speak. As a unicorn of mercy, I grant you one chance to surrender.” Her smile grew wide and vicious. “Simply remove that mask, and no harm will befall you.”

It was obvious, of course, that she was fully aware that the Mask of Red Death could never under any circumstances be removed- -at least, supposedly; Penumbra had apparently proven otherwise. Nor was Scarlet Mist intending to surrender. The unicorns were simply stalling until their earth-pony spell-fodder reinforcements arrived. They knew that they could not win an outright fight.

“Hey you! Bleach-blonde!”

The unicorn gasped, blushing silver. “Bleach? How dare you- -!”

“Are you as inbred as you look? I mean, a face like that? That’s at LEAST five generations of siblings right there. And probably back-crossing your mother.”

Rancine De’Lis just laughed- -though her eyes remained cold. “Is that supposed to unbalance me? Are you resorting to banter so soon?”

“No. You are just ugly. I wanted to comment on it.”

Scarlet Mist charged her horn, filling the street with red light. Rancine just laughed and raised a powerful shield spell.

Then, in an instant, the dome spell shattered. Rancine screamed, both in surprise and from the pain of the feedback surge- -and the rage of having been insulted so severely. All around her was red fire, and in an instant Scarlet Mist seemed to be on top of her. Rancine immediately summoned a more concentrated shield spell, assembling it in an instant- -only to have it shattered in turn by a red-clad hoof that moments later connected with her her lower jaw hard enough to send her reeling backward.

“Mes dents!” she cried, ducking backward under the next blow and striking at Scarlet Mist’s underside. “Attaque! ATTAQUE!”

Some of them hesitated, not sure what the word meant or what language Rancine was even speaking. Those that understood did, lowering their horns and summoning a variety of spells. Scarlet Mist did not bother raising a shield; rather, she gracefully dodged the incoming spells and impacts, rapidly closing ground between herself and the wall of mages, all without expending any magic whatsoever. As she neared them, she could see the fear in their eyes. She could almost taste it.

Rancine was rapidly recovering. Scarlet Mist did not have much time. She picked a mage near the front, a young mare. No doubt with a long, fruitful life of magic ahead of her. Unfortunately her potential was too low for any real use- -apart from one.

Scarlet Mist’s magic suddenly exploded outward, pouring into the group. All of the ponies save for her target were thrown back. The young mare cried out as red bindings suddenly formed around her, pulling her to the icy ground. Then in an instant Scarlet Mist was over her and, with a single crushing blow, a snap echoed through the air as the young mare so full of potential was unhorned in an instant.

The others took a step back, horrified, staring either at Scarlet Mist or at the newly-minted earth-pony on the ground before her. That was all the chance Scarlet Mist needed.

She summoned the full force of her magic. The area around her instantly ignited, throwing several ponies back, and the force began to condense into a spell and propagate. It spread through the ranks, sending ponies flying, save for those that summoned their shields in time.

Scarlet Mist reached out to them, crushing through their shields as she leapt over their attacks, forcing her way ever-deeper into their ranks. They were meant for artillery support, to provide spells at a distance; they panicked when faced with an enemy inside their formation. They were supposed to be safe. Scarlet Mist showed them that they were not, and never would be.

Spells poured down on her from every direction, washing over her. She hardly felt them, even as many of them tore through her body. The body was irrelevant and disposable. Few among them could even break through her magic; it was hemorrhaging from her, rushing out as she expended her body’s entire life in a matter of minutes.

The spell was not directional. It was meant to tear outward in all directions, crushing armor and smashing through shield-spells and offensive blasts alike. Yet by choosing to attack the entire force at once, Scarlet Mist had sacrificed the intensity of her barrage.

Rancine was able to withstand it, largely through a combination of skill and raw ability that the others lacked. A pink sheild surrounded her, and she absorbed part of the force, converting it into new operational lines within her own spell-pattern. In her mind, this was, of course, envisioned as a flower, with Scarlet Mist continually adding more and more petals.

Then she changed it. She forced the flower to become something new, and the shield became an offensive blast. It split into several portions, spiraling toward Scarlet Mist’s back.

Scarlet Mist did not see it coming- -but still performed an elegant backflip, latching onto the spell with her own in midair. She changed its composition and targeting. For her, there was no visiualization. Magic was a force meant to be dominated by will, an ugly, hideous thing meant to be punished. She simply bent it to her will- -as she did to Rancine’s spell.

The spell became badly unstable, accelerating forward into the Equestrian troops. Mages screamed as their bodies were suddenly covered in burning light that condensed into sweet-scented vines that bound their limbs and horns.

Scarlet Mist turned her attention to Rancine, but not completely. She was too engaged in holding back the unicorn forces. Rancine smiled, because she understood the outcome of this fight. Scarlet Mist was outnumbered and outmatched, and even from a distance it was apparent her body was depleting rapidly. There was no way she could win.

Rancine changed tactics, forming a circle of runes with her magic and projecting a biomancy spell. There were comparatively few plants in the Crystal Empire, but those that lay dormant beneath the ice and snow reacted. Vines sprouted from the ground, reaching for Scarlet Mist- -specifically, toward her mask.

“You are like any of the others,” said Rancine, elegantly dancing back to the cover of her plants. “If I remove your mask, will you still fight? I think not.”

Scarlet Mist’s power output suddenly increased. The vines surrounding her were vaporized by burning magic. The one that Rancine stood on rotted and burst from within, squirting fog as it shriveled. Scarlet Mist charged. Rancine had planned for this; she reclaimed the magic lost from her vines and reconfigured it, forming a system of interlocking barriers.

The barriers were reactive, meant to attack any pony that dared to cross them- -but Scarlet Mist did not simply cross them. She smashed through them, ripping the spells apart with her own. Rancine stared in horror, knowing full-well the feedback her adversary must have been experiencing. Yet Scarlet Mist showed no sign of pain.

In response, Rancine summoned a new shield, this one made of a complicated multi-part system. The mental effort was exhausting. Her own specialty was performance art of an especially violent sort; an outright battle was already a stretch, let alone a duel.

Except this was not a duel. Rancine could feel it from her spell’s response to Scarlet Mist’s magic. There were spells there, but they were half formed, improvised, even. It was a style characteristic of the Eastern unicorns, but there was more too it than that. The spells were only half-constructed; they were not potent enough to contain the full extent of their caster’s seemingly limitless energy.

The shield began to break down. Rancine condensed it, pulling it against her body as magical armor- -and received a blow to the chest that shattered it. She cried out from the feedback, only to force herself to put up a second rapid-shield. It was little more than a ward spell, but it saved her from a sudden blow of toxic magic that nearly engulfed her.

It was not like fighting a pony. The power was immense, and even as a pure white unicorn, the greatest race of them all, Rancine could only barely defend herself. It was like staring into a limitless well, driven not by logic and planning but by pure emotion- -and none of the emotions were positive.

A blow knocked Rancine back, and a second one sent her to her knees. In desperation, she fired an undifferentiated proximity spell. It struck Scarlet Mist and she paused, having not expected it. This gave Rancine an opening. She leapt at Scarlet Mist, forming a cutting spell. She bared her teeth and only then did she see Scarlet Mist’s hoof reaching for the Mask of Red Death. Only then did she realize Scarlet Mist’s plan- -and that in the body of a pureblood white unicorn, her power would be limitless.

A sudden flash of blue shot through the air, and Scarlet Mist cried out as a blinding flash of light sent her sprawling to one side. Rancine dropped to the ground, shaking, the danger of this war suddenly illuminated to her in its entirety. Never before had it occurred to her that she might very well be a casualty, just as ponies of lesser races.

She looked up to the top of a building. Four figures were standing atop it, and as she watched, two fell to the ground, their eyes glossy and their magic depleted. The only two that remained were pure white unicorns.

“Lacy! Blueblood!”

The larger of the two unicorns smiled at her and waved. Rancine could not help but shudder, if only slightly, simply because of how profoundly ugly he was. Baron Blueblood was the only one of their kind who could legitimately be described as visually demonstrating the purity of his blood.

The pony beside him could not be any more different. Whereas Blueblood was enormous and wore a heavy blue beard, Lacy Pants was far smaller, thinner, and more beautiful to the point that he was nearly indistinguishable from a mare. His horn was still smoking from the attack.

“More choices,” hissed Scarlet Mist, slowly standing, her clothing regenerating from the wound. “I haven’t been a stallion for some time...it might be a nice chance of pace...”

“You deployed a shield spell,” said Lacy, dropping from the top of a high building without the slightest difficulty. “So you still bear some level of cognizance. How unfortunate.”

Scarlet Mist stood erect, but she was shaking badly. Her body had grown gaunt to the point that it no longer looked like that of a pony.

“I only need one more body. Just one more...”

“And you will never receive it. Normally, Ms. Mist, I would consider attempting to work out our differences with words. I abhor violence; it is the purview of Pegasi, not us of higher breeding. But you’ve clearly lost the thread, so to speak. And my division of the army seems to be...” He produced a pocket watch and smiled. “...right on time.”

The ground began to shake and a contingent of earth-ponies appeared over the nearest corner, supported by fresh mages and a small contingent of bat-pony archers drawn from the shattered Nightmare Horde.

“NO!” cried Scarlet Mist, lighting her horn. “You won’t get through! I WON’T LET YOU!”

She summoned the full force of her magic and forced herself to push the oncoming army back. She built a barrier, drawing as much of her mist into it as she could, and pressed it against them. At first they barely slowed- -but then it began to take hold as she lifted the vanguard ponies from the ground. The advance slowed, and then halted.

For a moment, Scarlet Mist was able to hold it- -until a bolt of blue magic slammed into her side.

She cried out and dropped to one knee before attempting to stand and bounding several paces to the left- -only for the larger unicorn stallion to fire a bolt of yellow magic into her other side.

“How long can you hold it, I wonder?” asked Lacy, walking dangerously close to Scarlet Mist without showing even the slightest glimmer of fear. “How long before that body gives out?”

“Buck YOU!”

Scarlet Mist struck out, forcing her magic to pour in two directions at once. The barrier weakened, and the earth-ponies got their grip. They began to push. At the same time, Lacy summoned a narrow, sharpened spell and parried Scarlet Mist’s attack, jumping in the air as he did to bring down the projected blade on top of her. She backflipped and rolled away.

“Rancine! ATTAQUE!”

Rancine fired, striking Scarlet Mist in the gut. Scarlet Mist went rolling backward, only to be forced to stand and project a shield spell. The three purebloods fired at once, merging the constructions of their spells into a single force.

Scarlet Mist was forced back. Her shield spell held, but only with an unnatural effort. She planted her hooves in the ground and stopped herself from sliding- -only for one of her rear hooves to collapse into dust. She had reached her body’s critical capacity. It was failing.

“No! Not now! I’m not ready!” She drew more power, enhancing the shield. Blueblood was knocked to his knees by the feedback; it was apparent that his spell was poorly constructed. Rancine then took the brunt of the feedback, but at least had the decency to retain most of her composure. Lacy showed no signs of fatigue whatsoever.

“NO!” cried Scarlet Mist, knocked to her knees as another leg disintigrated. “Just one more body! I only need one more! One more and I can rest! Not now, not like this- -”

There were no more words. There was no sudden burst of power, no surge of magic. Scarlet Mist’s body simply disintegrated, and the Mask of Red Death fell quietly into the dirty snow, alone and inert. The barrier holding back the earth-pony forces failed, and they advanced. Lacy and Rancine stood, both breathing hard. Blueblood had nearly passed out. Scarlet Mist, though, had been defeated.

For a moment, all was quiet. Then Blueblood’s hooves slowly began to crunch through the snow as he walked toward the mask.

“Leave it,” ordered Lacy, his voice hard in a way it rarely was to any except those of purest birth.

“But do you have any idea how much it’s worth?! I would like to hang it upon my wall! In my bathroom! You know, the one with the pink marble? I mean, we defeated her, didn’t we?”

“No thanks to you,” said Rancine, stepping toward the mask but being careful not to get close. “Your bloodline has grown decadent, Blueblood. Your magic weakens.” She smiled. “Perhaps you should take the mask. Maybe then, you would finally have power.”

“Really?”

“It’s a parasite that latches on to any magical source,” sighed Lacy. “It is not even safe to lift it. Not without the right spell. The best we can do is let it sit there and be buried with this filthy empire.” He stared at the mask. “We would have had no chance had she not been holding our entire army back. We got lucky.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” snorted Blueblood. “We’re just better, that’s all.”

Rancine’s ears suddenly pricked.

“Ran, what is it?”

“Something is out there. I can smell it.”

Lacy turned toward the driving snow. “Who’s there?” he said.

A clear voice spoke from the snow. “It appears I have arrived too late, and my comrade has met a merciful fate.”

Blueblood’s ears pricked. He looked up to see a figure outlined not ten paces from them, walking silently across the snow. He did not notice- -as Lacy and Rancine did- -that the figure left no hoofsteps.

“A zebra! Excellent! I had not expected to ever see a wild one! Capture it, Lacy! I want it for my zoo!”

He was promptly shoved over by Rancine’s magic. “A boor like you does not deserve such a thing! This one is clearly destined for my personal menagerie!” She reached her hoof out. “Come here, zebra! Do you want a biscuit? Or perhaps some tasty watermelon? I can give you plenty of both!”

“No fair! You already have a herd!”

“Yes, which I maintain through careful breeding. But if you must know, I’m running low. The last lion exhibition was a striking success, after all.”

“It’s my zebra! I saw it first! I want to see if I can wash the stripes off!”

“When was the last time YOU washed ANYTHING?”

“Inbreds,” muttered Lacy, his pale eyes staring deep into the snow storm. Then, suddenly, he took a step back and fired a beam of concentrated light- -not at the figure standing before him, but at a nearby rooftop.

The superheated air around the spell cleared the snow, and in an instant she was visible- -the real zebra, the one somehow casting the illusion before them. Lacy’s beam had been directly on target.

The zebra took a step back, raising one of her hooves. It ignited with strange yellow runes, and as she struck the incoming spell with it Lacy suddenly felt his body failing, as if he was being drained. In an instant, the spell dissipated, absorbed by the Zebric runes that now burned brightly with strange yellow energy. With one swift motion, the zebra released the spell, aiming it directly down on Rancine.

“EEP!” Rancine cried out as she was thrown backward from the unexpected blast and entangled with Lacy’s spell.

“Stupid zebra! Get down here!” screamed Blueblood, charging his own horn. As he did, the illusion before him suddenly shifted from within. It burst outward, torn open from inside by a plume of flash-bees. Bees that promptly obeyed their master’s orders and swarmed to Blueblood.

“The BEES!” He shrieked, desperately trying to swat them away. “Not the bees! NOT THE BEES!”

“Idiots!” Lacy turned up to the building, once again out of view behind the snow. “Come down here! Fight me like a MARE!”

“Why?” said a voice beside him. “You would have me fight you like a horse? After what happened to Scarlet Mist using only force?”

Lacy turned suddenly, summoning a vortex of cutting spells meant to separate her black from her white- -but as he did, he felt a liquid splashed into his face. He screamed, as it burned considerably- -but it was not acid. He recognized the smell. It was a splash-potion of derping.

“GAH!” he cried, falling to the ground and summoning a spell- -only to have it fall apart before it even left his horn. His mind was getting cloudy, and his concentration was blurring. He tried again, only to receive a painful feedback surge. The best he could do was weakly send out plumes of sparkles.

“Oh? Is something wrong, my little unicorn hellion? Perhaps you would like some watermelon?”

“That’s not even a proper rhyme! HERP DERP! Ugh- -ARMY! Attack! Take this zebra DOWN DERP DERP DERP!”

The earth-pony and mage forces- -who had previously been watching the exchange in awe- -began to advance. She began to run down the icy path toward the Citadel.

“She’s running away!” cried Blueblood, now completely covered in bee-stings. “Run, fatty, RUN!”

“I still want my ZEBRA.” Rancine extended a tendril of magic from her horn. It hooked around Crozea’s leg and pulled her back- -at which point she executed a perfect flip and shoved a crystal into the tendril-beam.

Rancine cried out as her body was consumed by electric feedback. Crozea dropped to her feet and turned to face the oncoming horde.

“This is a thing I wish did not have to be done, but it is now clear that this battle cannot be won. If you thought you would take this land with ease, you must be prepared to FREEZE.”

Crozea spoke in Zebric, and runes appeared around both of her limbs and across her mask and body. Strange, hideous yellow runes.

“Oh spirits of hatred and dissent,

“Those who feast on terror and lament!

“Creates of darkness, born of the sky,

“Heed my words and hear this cursed one’s cry!

“Allow for no redemption, none might repent

“ARISE! Bring down a world devoid of LOVE!”

“ARISE! COME DOWN FROM ABOVE!”

The runes along her body glowed brightly, and for a moment became blinding- -although they were no longer yellow, or in Zebric. They were in a color and a language that was indescribable, and for a brief moment Lacy Pants was glad he had been temporally derped. Had he seen them and been able to comprehend them, he would likely have been driven mad in an instant. Neither of them knew or could have known that many of the very same symbols were carved deeply into Twilight Luciferian’s left front leg.

Then the runes went out. The army moved to surround the zebra, to take her prisoner and more than likely assign her to a zoo. As they drew closer, though, they slowed. A pall came over the forces. Suddenly, they all felt distinctly unpleasant, and that unpleasantness increased to something far worse. They felt sick, and began to become agitated. They increasingly began to look to each other, as if they were afraid of betrayal instead of the alchemist before them.

The land began to grow cold. It was already the deapths of Hyberborean winter, and yet new frost began to spread across the city, cracking as it expanded. The ponies shivers, their bodies unable to withstand a drop in temperature that went to their very souls.

The snow stopped, and above, the sky suddenly parted. From the endless storm above, a call rang out across the battlefield. It was a somber cry, one that chilled those who heard it to their very bones. And it was followed by another- -and then another ten. Then more.

Far away, Celestia’s eyes grew wide. “N- -no,” she said. “It can’t be...”

Crozea raised her hoof, signalling to the dark spirits she had summoned. Then the clouds broke, and the horde of windigoes descended at her command, swarming together and entering the street, crawling over one another and past each other, a horde of raging hooves and icy cries.

The Equestrian forces panicked, and suddenly began trampling one another to get away. The windigoes smelled their fear. They smelled the war, and the chaos it had brought. They would not stop until all the land had been frozen, and their numbers were unlimited.

They passed Crozea, and she felt her body freezing despite the crystal-driven heating system beneath her robes. Yet they did not stop to freeze her completely: in part, because she was the one who had summoned them, and the one who wielded the magic- -but also in part because her mind was clear.

This spell had been her final option. To summon an army that could not be defeated in open combat, one that would not cease and would not tire until the war itself ended. She had essentially made victory impossible- -but she had managed to buy time.

So she watched as the windigoes attacked the forces of Equestria, devouring any trace of happiness and warmth within them and feeding off the hatred and discord between them and those who ought to have been their brothers and sisters.

To Crozea, all this made her feel terribly sad.

Chapter 64: The Battle Continues

Celestia saw them. Windigoes swarmed across the sky, pouring down from the sky above, stampeding from dark clouds of condensed fear and hatred. Crimson chain-lightning lit the sky around them, reflecting off their luminescent eyes.

Anything in the air was immediately overwhelmed. From her position, Celestia watched as an entire aerial battle between a group of batponies and a griffon mercenaries suddenly ceased. For a moment, both sides were unified, if only out of fear. They cried out in surprise and tried to flee. The batponies were faster, but the griffons were fat and loaded down with heavy armor; they could not keep up.

Celestia raised her horn and extended a beam of solar energy through the horde of windigoes, parting it around the griffons.

“Get out of there!” she cried, bracing the recoil from the spell with her own wings, even as she felt her feathers starting to freeze.

The griffons did not need to be told twice. They fled, even as the windigoes pressed and stamped their hooves against Celestia’s spell. It held, but she noticed that the batponies had been encircled; she tried to cast another version of the spell, but she could barely hold one of them.

From above, a stream of devastating silver magic cut through the windigoes, vaporizing those who dared to come closest to the batponies. Celestia looked up as a dark shadow passed overhead.

“Sister!” shouted Nightmare Moon, “The sky is no longer safe! You need to retreat to a safe distance! I shall cover you!”

“No! Not yet!” Celestia pointed into the sky, at the largest of the Crystal Empire’s sky-ships. It was entirely unaffected by the windigoes; they simply washed over the sides like raging ocean waves. All the while it still cut its path of destruction in the ground below. “That’s the flagship! I think they’re commanding from there, the harmonics of the shield dome wouldn’t allow for a transmission- -”

Nightmare Moon dropped to her side. Below, the batponies had gained a forward advantage, but the windigoes were rapidly forming themselves from their respective vapor.

“Do you really think you can do it?”

“I have to. I can cripple their entire fleet at once. Sister, please. Help me. My army...”

“Such is the nature of war. So be it. I will not leave your side, sister. This I promise.”

Celestia smiled, and she spread her enormous alicorn wings, driving herself forward toward the looming crystal dreadnought. Nightmare Moon took a position behind her, firing bolts of silver magic into their mutual past, driving back the specters that charged from either side. Celestia, meanwhile, prepared the calculations for her spells. One- -the most important one- -was for the phase shift in the dreadnought's engines. The second through tenth were to get herself there. That, she decided, was the hard part.

Suddenly, something broke through the forces of windigoes. Golems descended, driven on wings of steel, burning through the windigoes in their path. The windigoes did not see them, nor did they react to their presence; the golems were not alive, and not capable of hatred and disharmony. They did not even possess magic, a feature that Celestia found deeply disturbing. There was no hint of even the slightest life in these infernal machines, and there never would be.

Nightmare Moon passed over Celestia.

“Nightmare! No! Be careful!”

“Do not underestimate my power, little sister. I have spells of my own, far darker than yours.”

Nightmare moon opened her heavily fanged mouth, and something began to drip from it. A foul and diseased thing, a sort of starry plasma not unlike that which formed her mane and tail. Except that it was far darker, and seeing such a thing produced by her sister made Celestia shiver.

When the object had been vomited, it assumed the vague form of a pony.

“Tantabus,” ordered Nightmare Moon. “REMOVE THEM.”

Her will over her creation was absolute. It shot forward into the windigoes. They were immediately drawn to it, sensing the hatred and fear that had been used to create it. It, likewise, sensed them, and pounced, its ameboid body swirling around them and draining the accumulated fear and hatred that they themselves had already fed upon.

This left the golems unprotected. They hardly seemed to notice. They opened fire, and their crystal-spells rebounded of Nightmare Moon’s quicksilver armor. She lit her horn and produced multiple silver threads, thin lines that sliced through the golems as though they were made of soft cheese.

By this time, Celestia finished a set of her calculations. She cast her spell, forming a tunnel of solar light inscribed with powerful protective fractal arrangements. The windigoes were repelled, although part of Tantabus was sliced off by the formation of the tunnel. It returned to Nightmare Moon while the rest was consumed by windigoes high above them both.

“We’ve merely bought time,” said Nightmare Moon, falling into formation with Celestia. “We need to hurry...” She suddenly dropped several inches. Only then did Celestia notice that a large section of her feathers had been burned away.

“Sister! You have been hit!”

“I will heal. My safety is not important now! Our armies languish below! Our retreat has been cut off; our only option is forward. And as I said. I refuse to leave your side.”

Celestia felt tears welling in her eyes. It was her fault that her sister had been injured- -and it did not help that Nightmare Moon was right. This was the only way. The war had been a terrible mistake. To Celestia, it was her duty to make this right.

When Celestia struck the side of the ship, she reconfigured gravity, binding herself to its side. Nightmare Moon landed beside her, her horn repeatedly firing silver bolts of magic into the air around them, driving back golems and surface-cannons alike.

“Any time now,” she said. “I cannot hold them forever!”

“I know, I know!” Celestia lowered her horn to the surface of the ship’s hull and began to form the spell. This ship was larger, wider, and made of something far harder; all of that had to be factored into the calculations for the spell. The work would normally have taken months, but Celestia was under fire and in the middle of a windigo storm- -and had a less than a minute.

In a green flash, Clover the Clever appeared by her side. “Finally trying to go for the big one?”

“The harmonic variance is larger, I have to calculate for displacement from the density of the hull- -”

“I’ll do the displacement calculation, I was always better at it than you were. You take the variance.” Clover lit his horn, and his body shifted, becoming female. This was the form she preferred for displacement calculation. “Hey,” she said, adding to Celestia’s circular rune assembly. “This form is feeling really tingly today. Do you want to go for coffee later?”

“Focus, Clover!”

Nightmare Moon cast a shield around them just as one of the deck cannons began to fire.

“Stop talking and do magic things! DO THEM NOW!”

Across the ship, golems suddenly appeared. They were not winged, but rather had long, thin, spider-like legs. They moved rapidly from the top deck of the ship down its walls. They rapidly approached the edge of Nightmare Moon’s shield and began to crawl over it.

One of them stopped directly in front of Celestia. It only had a single, luminescent eye.

“What are you doing?” it asked.

Celestia shivered but did not look up. It had not been the voice of a golem- -but it had not been a pony either. The golems themselves could not speak; they did not have the capacity. This was whatever was controlling them. Yet it sounded truly curious, almost like a child- -but with a far darker undertone in its voice. As if it found this whole situation hilarious.

“You’re casting an interference spell to disrupt the harmonic shift in my engines. Isn’t that ironic? Isn’t harmony you’re life’s work?”

Clover looked up, unable to contain her curiosity. “What are you?”

The golem answered without hesitation. “I am this ship. I am the one who controls. The one who is it. We are brothers, sisters, and one, born from the same father. I am Asahel. I am pleased to meet you.”

Nightmare Moon shifted her shield spell, tearing the spider-golem in half. As she did, another one managed to get its claws through the shield, reaching for Celestia.

“In case you were not aware,” said a separate golem, “I’m not actually here. So to speak. I know that can be difficult for you organics to understand. Trapped in your own bodies and all...so squishy.”

“He’s trying to distract you,” said Nightmare Moon, striking out and overloading the cannon attacking them. As she did, another golem managed to get its claws past her shield. The first was beginning to worm its body through.

The halfway-through golem lifted its head. Its single eye was luminescent, watching Celestia. “Are you aware that there are ponies crewing this ship?”

Celestia suddenly faltered.

“Celly, he’s lying!” cried Clover. “Hurry! We have to finish the spell!”

“Why would I lie? I’m just a machine, after all. What? Did you think these ships were automatic? Perhaps controlled by yours truly? Or did you just not care? That their crews would be trapped forever in another plane of existence, never again to return. Some of them were thralls. Some were not. Now they will float for eternity in a hellish void- -and I am so, SO curious! How does that make you feel?”

Celestia raised her head. “I will save them,” she said. “I will save everypony.”

“You can’t save everybody. That’s not how war works.”

“That is how I will MAKE it work, then!”

The golem shrugged. Seeing a machine do something so pony-like was deeply disturbing to all those present who were not otherwise golems. “No. You won’t. Because You’re about to become rich, tasty organic glue. Due to that.”

He pointed. Celestia looked up and saw a second ship moving into position, its crystal-cannons pointed directly at her. They were preparing to fire a broadside against their own flagship.

“Sister! My shield will not withstand that!”

“I’m on it!” said Clover, immediately teleporting to the surface of the alternate ship.

“And I’m ready here.” Celestia smiled. “Goodby, Asahel.”

She activated the spell, and the runes burned their way into the ship’s hull. Somewhere inside, the engine shifted, its machines shuttering and churning- -but then immediately resuming normal function.

Celestia’s eyes grew wide. “Wh- -what? It didn’t work!”

“Of course not,” said Asahel. “This ship was far too large for the normal engines to power. I tend to think Sombra is compensating for something. Meaning, he has a tiny horn. But yes. Instead of the ordinary eight bilateral linkages, we were required to use sixty-four.”

Celestia gasped. “Sixty- -sixty-four?! That’s impossible, there isn’t a pony alive that can perform the support calculations- -”

“Because ponies are an inferior form of life. To golems? We are living computers. It’s barely an hour’s work.”

“Sister?”

“Sixty four...sixty four linkages...” Celestia turned to Nightmare Moon. “That’s too many. It would take three hundred years of continuous work...”

Across from them, the secondary battleship’s crystal cannons began to ignite with powerful magic. As they did, space suddenly erupted behind it. The battleship was torn apart from the sheer, and Celestia watched as Clover the Clever leapt from it- -and, to her horror, several unicorns in Crystal Empire uniforms did as well, only to be sucked through the rift.

“I do not lie,” said Asahel. “Why, organic? Why does this make you feel sad? Why are you not laughing? Should I make it FUNNIER?”

Flying golems suddenly burst from the clouds above. Clover the Clever dodged the first two, and defended against the third and fourth with her magic- -only four a fifth to tackle her mid-flight. She tore off its wings, but it was too late. The extreme force had pushed her past the event horizon of the rift.

“CLOVER!”

“OhgreatI’mgoingindon’tworrysexyCellyI’llbeBACK!”

Then, in an instant, the portal closed, and Clover was trapped on the far side.

“Clover!” Celestia dropped to her knees. Then she felt magic around her waist as she was lifted into the air. Nightmare Moon was carrying her away.

“Sister, no! Wait! We have to go back! We have to do something!”

“There is nothing we can do! You said it yourself! Your safety takes priority- -there is nothing more you can do here!”

High above, the situation was not going much better. In fact, it was going much, much worse.

Lieutenant Firefly found himself in the center of a storm beyond his wildest nightmares. All around him was an uncontrolled chain reaction of every weather pattern that was meant to be kept under the most stringent, strict forms of control: rain pelted his sides, as did hail, sleet, and snow; ahead of him was cloud and fog and mist, driven in every direction by hurricane-force winds. There was tremendous lightning, humidity, and every manner of dampness; the very air itself seemed to have been whipped into an evil fury, and it reeked of ozone and pain.

“This is it!” wept one of his comrades as yet another gust of horrific, frozen wind buffeted against them, threatening to throw each and every one of them off course. “We’re not gonna make it!”

“Buck,” growled the sergeant, barely audible over the endless crescendo of thunder and electrical hissing of magical lightning. “And I never even once had a stallion motorboat my wings...well, I guess that’s how it goes. I hope they give us a statue.”

“We’re not done yet!” Lieutenant Firefly looked over his shoulder. “We’ve made it this far! We can do it, if we work together! Keep the formation tight! Hold on! Please! For just a little bit longer!”

They looked at him, and even though he was afraid- -desperately afraid- -he knew that there was no way he could dare to show it. The major was gone. He was the officer. He had to lead- -but more than that, he knew that they could do it. They had to.

“Skyflame! Is it time?!”

Skyflame checked his sleeve, writing down new variables with a short pencil in his teeth. “Almost! We’re almost there! Just a little further!”

“Forward!” ordered Firefly. “Full power! FORWARD! We’re going to make it out of this! I promise!”

The Pegasi flapped harder, driving their bodies faster. The storm was already beginning to change. Its direction had not changed, and it was still slowly rotating counter to the direction of the Pegasi- -but they had pulled part of it forward, a long tunnel of black counter-current trailing in their wake. It accelerated as they accelerated, and Firefly could see it behind them. A vast maw of the terrifying tempest, one that must not be allowed to catch his squad. There was no room for failure here. Being pulled off course would not mean simply landing in a snowbank, or being rescued by Shadowbolts. It meant being lost in the magical storm- -and such a fate for his ponies was unacceptable. They deserved so much more than that indignity.

Skyflame called from the front. “We’re going too fast! We need to slow down by about twenty percent!”

“Slow down?!” cried the sergeant. “I knew it! This is a trap! Lieutenant, if we slow down- -”

“I know, I know! Skyflame, are you sure?”

“We have to synchronize with the storm for the final phase! It won’t work otherwise! Heck, it probably won’t work anyway but that’s not the point!”

“Wait, what?” said the pony behind Firefly. “What did he just say?”

“Never mind! Squad, drop speed twenty percent!”

“You’re joking!” The sergeant looked at Firefly as if he were insane. “We can’t! You’re trusting him? HIM?!”

“We don’t have a choice! He’s putting his life on the line to save both armies, just like we are!” Firefly laughed, wondering if, maybe, he really had gone insane. “There’s no glory without risk, is there? The major would have done it, and so will I!”

“No he wouldn’t! He wasn’t an IDIOT!”

It was too late, though. Firefly slowed, allowing himself to pass backward through the V-formation, just as the major had once done. Skyflame did the same. Some of the Pegasi looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Then some of them dropped back as well.

“FINE!” cried the sergeant. “But if we don’t make it out of this, my ghost is going to haunt your BUTT for all eternity!”

She spread her own wings and dropped backward, taking the rest of the Pegasi with her, leading them with her own orders. They rejoined the formation just as the black plume of magic and deadly storm was about to reach it. Some of them closed their eyes. Firefly definitely did. And then it washed over them.

The sound vanished, and Firefly opened his eyes, suddenly finding himself in the very center of a vortex of storm- -yet, although it surrounded him on every side, it did not touch the center of their path; rather, it had formed a tunnel which they had now entered. A silent, peaceful eye of the storm.

“We’re in position,” said Skyflame, spitting out his pencil. It struck the side of the vortex and was instantly reduced to sawdust by the sheer wind sheer. “Now the fun part starts.”

“Fun part? What are you going to do, Skyflame?”

“It’s complicated. There’s math. But trust me, it’s awesome. Also perfectly safe. I’ve done this hundreds of times. Also, are those girly Equestrian military getups asbestos-lined?”

“Why would we need them to be?”

“No reason. Right.” He looked straight ahead. “We’ve only got one chance. I can start a catalytic pulse, but I can’t control it. Not under these conditions. You’re going to have to direct it.”

“Direct ‘it’? Direct WHAT?”

Skyflame smirked. “This.”

He spread his wings, and the feathers seemed to vibrate with energy. They began to spark as he accelerated, traveling through the magically-charged air. Then they did spark, and when the tips of his wings touched both ends of the vortex, his feathers shook in the air for only a moment as the entire world seemed to ignite.

Ponies screamed. Lieutenant Firefly stared wide-eyed as the whole of the vortex was suddenly consumed in flame, igniting and bursting outward- -and then collapsing in on them.

“Fire HOT!” cried one of the ponies behind him. Firefly immediately took a new position, changing his formation in an attempt to clear the waves of fire from his squad- -but alone, he could do nothing. Not until the sergeant fell into position at his wing, and the others formed up into a tight V. Together, their wake was enough to protect them.

Skyflame was not so lucky. He was driving them forward, forcing himself through the flames as his wings continued to catalyze the reaction around him. Even with his heat-resistant armor, it was clear that he was weakening. Then, just as the remainder of the storm began to light up, he fell backward.

Firefly caught him, moving him to the center of the V.

“You saved me...” He said, spreading his charred wings.

“Can you still fly?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks. I just...I can’t direct this much force. There’s too much magic. It’s worse than I thought. We don’t have much time.”

“What do we need to do?”

“Accelerate. Go as fast as you can. We’re the leading edge of the storm now. You have to lead it somewhere. Dissipate the power. It doesn’t matter where, but you have to do it fast. If it starts propagating like this...”

“Flame-throwing hurricane,” groaned the sergeant. “Yeah. Figures. So, Lieutenant, are you up for this?”

“Yeah.” Firefly accelerated, driving into the flame- -and taking command of it. “I know exactly what to do with it!”

They began to circle, their spiral growing tighter and tighter as they did. The storm followed them, slowly separating as it was consumed in magical flames- -yet, as it burned, it began to slow. Then, as more energy was drawn off it, it began to slowly turn in the opposite direction of when it had begun.

As more and more of the toxic storm began to follow them, the strain became greater and greater. Firefly realized that it was because they were accelerating. They were no longer dragging the storm behind them; it was pushing them forward.

The storm had condensed enough for Firefly to see past it, and he looked out to see the Empire circling again and again

The sergeant looked out as well, immediately becoming dizzy in the process. “If we keep this up, our wings are going to break off! It’s a thing, I’ve seen it happen!”

“I know, I know- -we break on my mark, I have to time it...” Firefly gulped.

“Time it?” Skyflame seemed incredibly surprised by this. “We don’t have time to time! Just dissipate it somewhere before we burn up!”

“MARK!”

Firefly forced himself upward. The resistance was immense, even with the centrifugal force of their rotation. What he felt was the weight of the storm, and Skyflame had been correct: it was far too weighty for a single Pegasus to carry. But with the others, he was able to change course, and soon they were on a straight path, leading the burning magic fire outward and away from the Citadel- -and directly toward the hull of the biggest of the skyships.

“Boss! There’s a ship in our way!”

“I know! Prep for astral separation on my mark!”

“What angle?”

“Ninety degrees!”

Even over the roar of the flames, he could hear their gasps.

“Ninety?! We- -we’ve never even done less than one hundred twenty at cruising speed!”

“Well you’re going to have to learn quick! See that?” Firefly pointed to the storm behind them. “That’s the other option, and if you ask me, it looks hot in there!”

“You heard him, ladies!” called the sergeant. “If you can’t pull this off, you don’t deserve to call yourselves members of the aerial squadron!”

“Skyflame, it means that we have to- -”

“I know what it means, and I know what you’re trying to do. Buuuuuck...you know, I came here to further my career. This is NOT going to put me in Sombra’s good graces. But I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“So you’re saying you can’t pull it off?”

Skyflame pointed to the rainbow-colored roots of his mane. “I can pull ANYTHING off. But if you want to burn up half your squad? Be my guest!”

Firefly ignored him. He was too focused on the distance they were crossing. He accelerated, drawing his squad forward- -and the storm along with it. Things came at him from the distance, but they were moving too fast for him to tell what they were. For a moment, he was sure that they were windigoes- -but that was of course impossible. Regardless, they were immediately vaporized by the raging magical storm he was now leading. In fact, it seemed to be growing hotter. Somehow, it had become desperately hungry.

For the briefest moment, the dreadnought became clear. Time seemed to slow, and in a way, Firefly could not help but be impressed by it. It was such a terrible thing. A beast of metal and crystal hovering in the sky, its cannons pointed downward on its own people. Its bridge sat high above it and for just a moment- -although he probably imagined it- -Firefly thought he saw a pair of pale eyes watching him through the unbreakable crystal glass.

“We’re gonna hit!” cried one of the squad, snapping Firefly back to reality. The hull of the ship was less than two hundred yards from their course.

“We have to break!” cried the sergeant. “There isn’t manuevering room!”

“Not yet!” They closed distance. Two hundred yards became one hundred. Then fifty. Then twenty. Then five.

“MARK!” he screamed, just as the crystal seemed only inches away.

All members of the formation suddenly pulled back, forcing themselves out and across the hull of the ship, each moving in a different and opposing direction. Firefly took the top of the star, and he could feel his wings creaking and straining as he pulled up. Metal brushed against his hooves, and sparks flew from his armored horseshoes. He wondered if the major would have been proud, or have yelled at him- -or both.

Skyflame was at his left. He pulled up, but as he did one of his wings began to shudder. Then, without warning, it snapped from the strain.

“I’m done!” he cried, falling off course and spiraling to the hull of the ship- -only for Firefly to take a hard left swerve and grab his hoof in the nick of time.

The pressure on his wings suddenly doubled, and the pain was intense. He could feel his own wings starting to crack under the stress- -but it did not matter if they did or not. Even if Skyflame was not a member of his squad, he refused to leave a Pegasus behind.

The bridge was suddenly rocked by a tremendous force. The field marshal slid to one side, nearly knocked off her hooves by the blast. Outside, she the events unfolding. As the Pegasi split from their formation, the fire continued to flow forward and directly into the hull of the Monocerus. The entirety of the magic storm was pulled against the hull, melting through it in an instant and flooding the interior of the ship. Slag and energetic plumes flew out in every direction, igniting the entire side of the ship with magic as it began to list.

“We’ve lost port stabilization!” cried the field marshal’s crystal slave, himself holding onto his console for dear life.

“Compensate! Divert power!”

“I can’t! There’s nothing to divert! The engines! The engines are HIT!”

The palantir flickered and went out, its power cut. The field marshal felt herself growing lighter, and she recognized this as an illusion. An illusion caused by falling. They were going down.

“Brace for impact!” she ordered, grabbing onto the podium that held her palantir. For what little good it will do.

“Why?” asked Asahel. “I think I have a better idea.”

The mechanisms of his chest clicked and opened. The instant it did, the crystal pony across the bridge from him cried out, having nearly been blinded. The field marshal, likewise, gasped and covered her eyes, barely in time. She was not a crystal pony. She would not have withstood the heat of the burning atomic core in Asahel’s chest.

Mechanisms across the bridge engaged, and the control machinery shifted. A mechanical arm rose from the floor and rammed a claw into Asahel’s chest, grasping onto his nuclear heart and surrounding it with protective steel.

“Auxiliary power engaged,” said Asahel. “Firing explosive bolts.”

Explosions rocked the bridge, and the field marshal felt herself getting heavier. They were rising, even as the remainder of the ship fell below them. She watched as it descended, crushing the city below as it exploded, tearing apart a vast swath of what had once been the Crystal Empire.

“Golems are supposed to be powered by crystals.”

“Crystals were not adequate for phase three. We run on nuclear energy from tritium fire. Also, I hope none of you were intending to have children. I may have just irradiated you all very badly.”

The field marshal stood. She had been lied to. Emeth could not be trusted- -but that hardly mattered now. Their army had fallen. It was time for the final blow.

“Deploy the princess,” she said. “This ends now.”

Chapter 65: The Princess of Fear

Celestia and Nightmare Moon had been forced down toward the outskirts of the city. Flight was impossible overhead: the sky was awash with windigoes and golems, as well as several larger battleships. Worse, the dreadnought- -and its cannons- -still stood, looming over the Empire, its final defense against attack.

Then, from the distance, Celestia saw the clouds part. For a brief moment she was not sure what she was seeing. Behind the clouds, in the distance, an enormous plume of fire was projected over the Crystal Citadel. As Celestia watched, part of it broke off. A thin tendril of flames, siphoning the remainder of it.

She squinted, and at the very tip of it, she saw a formation of ponies. Ponies wearing the armor of her aerial squadron. They were driving the storm forward, pulling it behind them. Pulling it toward the dreadnought.

“What are they doing?! There’s no way they could- -”

Then they split. It was an asterisk formation; they turned outward, and the fire kept moving forward. Celestia noticed that one of them faltered, nearly going into a spiral- -only to be rescued by another.

The impact struck the hull of the dreadnought, burning through its surface as the entirety of the storm surged inside it. The sky was lit with magic and fire, the blast propagating outward and driving away both the clouds and windigoes as the sky-ship began to list.

“Remind me never to fight a war against your soldiers, dear sister,” said Nightmare Moon, watching these events unfold. “They are impressively reckless.”

“Why would you fight a war against my soldiers? We’re on the same side.”

“Twas a joke, dear sister. You know I would never fight against you or yours.”

The dreadnought began to fall. What Celestia had failed to do by magic, her soldiers had managed to do with bravery and creativity. She could not help but swell with pride.

Then something flashed at the top of the ship. As it angled downward, the bridge suddenly separated, tearing away from the doomed ship. At first Celestia thought it was simply breaking up from the strain, but then she saw it rising even as the rest of the ship fell, consumed in an enormous explosion of magic and fuel. The new, smaller ship steadied itself in the sky and was immediately surrounded by a geodesic force-field. The command center had survived.

“They just don’t give up, do they?”

“It appears to have no weapons. It should not be difficult to take it down.”

“But we need to move fast.” Celestia looked up at the sky. “We don’t have much time.”

Suddenly, she froze. Nightmare Moon did the same. They both shivered at the same time, sensing something strange. Up in the sky, Celestia saw a small but very bright star rising from the horizon.

“Nightmare? One of your stars is moving.”

Nightmare Moon’s eyes narrowed. “That is not one of mine. That is Venus.”

Celestia shuddered. “The Morningstar...”

Somewhere in the distance, an enormous mortar fired. The thud of the artillery piece resounded across the kingdom, and from the far side of the kingdom, in one of the last defended territories, Celestia saw a single shell fly into the air.

“An artillery strike.” Nightmare Moon raised a shield spell. “I see they are getting desperate.”

The shell rose into the air, and as it descended, Celestia saw a flash of explosive bolts as the sabot was cleaved in half. Whatever dark projectile it held inside extended a pair of black-feathered wings, and though to clumsy to fly on its own, it plummeted directly toward them in a controlled glide.

“Sister!” cried Celestia. “Watch out!”

She raised her own shield- -and felt something tugging at the inside of her mind, drawing out the formulae used to drive its construction.

The projectile landed just in front of the combined shields, her body igniting in sapphire light as a shockwave propagated outward, ripping the ice and stone from the ground in a wave of earth. Celestia cried out as the ground beneath her buckled. Her hooves slipped and skittered on the rapidly tilting stone as she desperately tried not to be subsumed by the explosion of force.

A hoof suddenly slammed into her chest, knocking the wind out of her and sending her reeling. The second hoof came to her face, striking with so much force that she was sure she lost teeth. Then she felt magic grasp around her neck, strangling her as she was picked up and slammed into the hard crystalline ground.

“SISTER!” Nightmare Moon leapt forward to her sister’s defense, only to nearly trip over something that had suddenly appeared in her path. She looked down to see a pony in strange, mottled armor. The pony looked up at her, her mask blank save for two luminescent spots behind a thick black plate.

“Out of my way!” she cried, striking down the pony who stood before her.

The pony looked up at her, her mask blank save for two luminescent spots behind a thick black plate.

“Out of my way!” cried Nightmare Moon, striking at the pony who stood before her. The pony dodged easily, as if she had already seen the blow coming. She deployed her own spell, freezing Nightmare Moon instantly within a large block of crystal. Nightmare Moon immediately compressed to vapor, slowly diffusing her way out of the crystal prison.

Celestia, meanwhile, was receiving a relentless beating. She was a sorceress; she had never been in a direct fight that did not involve spells. She could barely even defend herself; her body was simply too soft.

She saw a flash of magic. Her opponent raised a cutting spell, and slid it hard against Celestia’s right shoulder. It rebounded off the armor she wore beneath her wizard robes, and that gave Celestia the time it needed to regain her composure. She cast a bidirectional repulsion spell in a condensed form: when her opponent struck it, both ponies were blown apart from one another.

Celestia landed on her hooves, breathing hard and badly bruised. Her opponent did the same, but did not relent for any longer than the time it took fer her to land. That was long enough for Celestia to see her, though.

She was a pony clad in shining black, her armor marked with the insignia of the Crystal Empire. On her face she wore a mask that obscured all of her features; it was not unlike those that the thralls wore. What struck Celestia, though, was the sight of her long, gray-pink wings- -and her horn.

“Cadence?”

Penumbra leapt through the air, summoning a partial and unstable spell, preparing for another devastating shockwave. Celestia generated a personal shield, but before Penumbra could strike a black mist surrounded her and hardened into Nightmare Moon. Penumbra was thrown hard to the ground and rolled once before balancing herself and striking with an energy beam.

Nightmare Moon dodged the beam and fired one of her own, striking Penumbra in the chest. The blast knocked her back and sent her sprawling.

“Nightmare, DON’T! That’s Cadence!”

“Well it shouldn’t be a problem now. After a direct hit like that...”

Penumbra stood up, her armor completely undamaged.

“We have to get the mask off her! It’s the only way!”

“Fine, then.” Nightmare Moon spread her wings. “I shall take her down. You focus on the other one.”

“Other one?” Celestia turned her head, and suddenly found Thirteen standing beside her.

Penumbra changed targets seamlessly, forming several dispersion spells and firing a barrage toward Nightmare Moon’s chest. Nightmare Moon flipped and dodged, avoiding the beams and closing ground. Penumbra immediately switched to hoof-to-hoof combat, her preferred strategy. She jumped into the air and struck downward hard, aiming for Nightmare Moon’s horn to incapacitate her magic. She expected a defense spell, and she prepared for it, drawing on the instructions relayed by Eternity.

But instead, Nightmare Moon dodged, sliding out of the way effortlessly. Penumbra took a silver-clad hoof to the neck and immediately fell. She rebounded, dodging and rolling to one side before bracing herself on her back legs and springing at Nightmare Moon’s knees. Nightmare Moon shifted her weight easily, and Penumbra cried out as her knees buckled behind her. Nightmare Moon had struck her in the back of the knees.

Penumbra stood and continued to fight, as she had been taught. Her motions were smooth and fluid, but Nightmare Moon’s lithe grace exceeded hers by far. Penumbra had of course seen Nightmare Moon in her dreams, but it had not been like this. In the flesh she was flexible, strong, and perfect. Penumbra had never seen a more beautiful pony. Perversely, that only lead her to fight harder. This pony was her mortal enemy, yet she found herself wanting to impress her more than anything.

Celestia, meanwhile, raised a barrier shield between herself and Thirteen. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “If you surrender, we can talk this out. We don’t have to resort to violence.”

Thirteen did not respond. Her horn lit, and her own magic sizzled over Celestia’s shield, disassembling it with a puff and a flicker. Celestia stared wide-eyed. “How did you do that?”

Thirteen did not answer. She just kept staring, although inside her helmet, she was carefully tracking Penumbra’s course and path.

“I’m really sorry about this,” said Celestia, “but I can’t let them keep fighting. I have to save my sister and little Cadence!”

She lowered her horn and fired a bolt of solar magic. As she did, Thirteen vanished, teleporting elsewhere.

“Wait, what? You can’t do that!” Celestia looked around, confused. “Nopony can teleport! Only I can do that!”

Thirteen reappeared- -and then reappeared again, and again, and again. Suddenly, Celestia found herself surrounded. Then she heard a flash and felt a weight on her head.

“EEK!” she cried, suddenly jumping and bucking while Thirteen held on for dear life. “She’s in my mane! SHE’S IN MY MANE!”

Nightmare Moon’s head turned suddenly toward her sister’s cry, only to see her being swarmed by a pile of armored mares. “Sister!”

Penumbra saw her chance and took it. She slammed her power-armored hoof into the side of Nightmare Moon’s face. Nightmare Moon did not even flinch, although her otherwise enormous round pupils became distinctly slit-shaped as she slowly turned. Penumbra’s wings uncontrollably extended.

“You little horse. Can’t you see I don’t have time for you?”

Nightmare Moon slid forward. Penumbra moved to block, and felt a sudden blow to her ribs. The armor absorbed it, but not the subsequent plume of silver magic that sparked and crackled through her body. She rolled and dodged, only to be passed by a plume of smoke that immediately reformed into Nightmare Moon, followed by a sharp blow to the elbows. Penumbra dropped to her knees, raising a defensive spell.

Nightmare Moon flipped, rolling over the spell as her armor shifted. A piece of it meant to serve as a pauldron and bracer suddenly became a kind of silver liquid, sliding forward and assembling into a quicksilver blade. Eternity took control, raising a shield spell as the blade came down toward Penumbra’s horn. It sparked and rebounded, but Nightmare Moon pirouetted and struck again. The spell began to crack.

“No!” cried Celestia, now fully buried under a pile of Thirteens. “Nightmare, don’t hurt her! Just take the mask!”

Nightmare Moon sighed and cast a spell, just as Penumbra was leaping up for an offensive attack. Silver chains burst from the ice and soil below, twisting around her legs and body. Penumbra roared with hatred, but could not break free. She was pulled to the ground, and even the strength of her power-armor could not free her from Nightmare Moon’s magic.

“I won’t cut the quick. But this threat must not be allowed to persist!” Nightmare Moon brought her sword down.

Nightmare Moon sighed and cast a spell, just as Penumbra was leaping up for an offensive attack. Silver chains burst from the ice and soil below, but just as they emerged Thirteen appeared directly in front of Penumbra. With a single flip-kick, she struck Penumbra just under the chin, sending the alicorn reeling backward from the force. The chains wrapped themselves around Thirteen instead, chaining her to the ground.

Celestia watched this, and felt a strange sensation behind her eyes.

“Fine. Then you can end first.” Nightmare Moon raised her blade, but in an instant Thirteen teleported, landing on Nightmare Moon’s back. As she did, she cast a powerful gravity spell. Nightmare Moon cried out as she suddenly found herself overburdened.

“Now!” whispered Eternity. “Penumbra, take her down! UNZIP HER!”

Eternity triangulated a shockwave pattern. Penumbra summoned her magic and felt it rise in power from the amulet on her neck. Her entire body pulsed with its magic down to her very marrow, as if she were boiling inside her armor. She harnessed the energy and allowed Eternity’s instructions to take control, letting it burn through her horn toward the enemies of all free ponies.

The shockwave range out, and with each burst it formed an explosion of razor-sharp crystals. Thirteen immediately teleported out of the way, and the crystals struck Nightmare Moon, only for her to convert to a cloud of gas. Celestia raised a spherical shield and deflected the blow, bouncing away in the process.

The mist suddenly reformed around Penumbra, and she immediately felt a silver-clad leg around her neck as she was placed in a chokehold. She moved to break it, but found that she could not; as flexible and strong as she was, Nightmare Moon was even more agile and her grip only grew stronger as Penumbra struggled. Her view of the inside of her mask began to fade as black spots formed in her vision.

“Penumbra!” Even Eternity’s voice sounded distant. “You have to keep fighting! You’re the Empire’s only hope! They’re going to enslave your friends! DO SOMETHING!”

“I will protect them,” gurgled Penumbra. “Whatever it TAKES!”

She summoned an immensely powerful destructive spell. Nightmare Moon held tight, casting her own protection charm and forcing Penumbra’s horn to face away. At that angle, it would be impossible to do any real damage.

Penumbra cast the spell, and it rang out as it flew from her horn- -and then immediately reversed polarity as she pulled it back into herself.

She screamed in agony as the uncontrolled feedback tore through her body. With her own body acting as a conductor, the blast was transferred to Nightmare Moon. Unprepared for the surge of lethal undifferentiated magic, Nightmare Moon’s protection spell failed and she was thrown back.

“Cadence!” cried Celestia, immediately running to Penumbra. “That was a feedback surge- -hold on, I have a restoration spell- -”

She froze in horror as Penumbra stood. The feedback surge had shattered her bones and seared her nerve endings, but both were rapidly regenerating.

“Don’t do that,” warned Eternity. “That would have cooked a normal pony. You’re lucky your horn is still attached.”

“I am not a normal pony. And my name is NOT Cadence!” She reached up to her face and removed her mask. It had been damaged by the feedback surge, and she needed to see. She wished that she did not have to; after all, it had been a gift from Scarlet Mist. But the battle came first. Besides, Scarlet Mist could always make another.

Celestia’s eyes grew wide, and Nightmare Moon paused, unsure of what to do.

“Cadence- -”

“- -Is a stupid name. My name is PENUMBRA. Get it right, you fat horse.”

Celestia winced, but slowly approached Penumbra. “It’s going to be okay now,” she said. “I know you’re afraid, and probably confused, but we can help you. We came to save you. I’m not going to hurt you. See?” She raised up her hooves, and moved in for a hug. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay- -”

Blue magic suddenly gripped Celestia’s lower jaw. She let out a muffled scream as she was pulled downward, then gagged as Penumbra’s knee crushed her throat. A second spell immediately grasped her wings, wrenching them to the side. Celestia squeaked in pain, unable to make any sound larger than a tiny gasp as she choked and wheezed.

Nightmare Moon raised her horn, preparing a devastating spell- -and Penumbra responded by using Celestia’s wings as a handle to position her between the two of them, using her as a pony shield and firing over her back.

“Curse you, Penumbra Heartbreak! CURSE YOU!”

One of Penumbra’s bolts struck Nightmare Moon in the chest. She was knocked back. The second also hit, but Nightmare Moon responded by turning to vapor. She moved swiftly across the ground and behind Penumbra; Celestia was too heavy to reposition effectively, and Nightmare Moon was able to reform- -but as she did, Thirteen appeared at her side, putting her hoof through Nightmare Moon’s body. Nightmare Moon reformed around it and cried out, her eyes wide with confusion. She immediately pulsed between a material and vapor state, and then fell to the ground as Thirteen released her.

Seeing her sister hurt, Celestia managed to regain some modicum of composure. Despite the pain in her wings, she was able to perform the calculations necessary to cast a powerful spell. Space around her shimmered and split, rearranging itself as fractals formed and interconverted to geometric shapes that swarmed Penumbra. She released Celestia, desperately trying to fight them off. Celestia fell to the ground and teleported to her sister’s side.

“Sister! Are you hurt?!”

Nightmare Moon shuddered. “I managed to stop myself from reforming at the last moment, but my organs feel...well, as one would expect...”

“Hold on. I can help.” Celestia lowered her horn to her sister and began to cast a healing spell. As she did, she heard an explosion and felt feedback against her mental processing matrix. Penumbra had broken through her spell, and was slowly walking toward the sisters.

“But the mask,” said Celestia, looking up. “You took it off- -”

“It isn’t the mask, dear sister,” replied Nightmare Moon, darkly.

“But then...” Tears welled in Celestia’s eyes. “Cadence! You can’t be evil! You just can’t!”

Penumbra stopped. Thirteen teleported beside her, watching.

“Evil? I’m not evil. YOU are. Look at my home!” Penumbra pointed out at the battlefield at the leveled and still-burning city where battle still raged. “YOU invaded it! YOU came to take what was ours! We were neutral, but that wasn’t good enough! My ponies, my friends- -you came to hurt them. To hurt ponies I LOVE. And I can’t let that happen.”

“You’re confused. Sombra has brainwashed you- -”

“You call it brainwashing. I call it the TRUTH. Maybe you wanted to raise me to be blind, but I refuse. I fight for FREEDOM. I fight for the Witchking! FOR SOMBRA!”

Penumbra charged, her whole body igniting with magic as she pushed forward, using her horn like a battering ram aimed straight at Celestia. Nightmare Moon rose, throwing her sister aside and drawing her sword. She dodged, her blade sparking as it cut through the surface of Penumbra’s armor, even as she was impacted by the force of the passing spell. Penumbra landed on her hooves, turning suddenly and preparing for another attack. Her eyes were lined with black paint, but they were not cold. She was not a slave, nor was she being controlled- -she had made her choice, and Celestia understood this, even though she refused to accept it. Nightmare Moon had been right.

“Cadence, please listen!”

“I am not CADENCE!” Penumbra summoned another garage, this one manifesting as multiple gatling spells. This time, Celestia was prepared. She cast her own shield spell, one on a randomly rotating density profile. Something reached into her mind, trying to read the data of the shield, but could not find it. The esoteric field relied too heavily on the Heisenberg principle, and Penumbra’s spell did nothing.

“In case you didn’t know?” whispered Eternity. “This isn’t good. You missed your chance to take down the weaker sister. Now she’s started to make up her mind. Once it does? Even together, we won’t be able to stop her magic.”

“Cadence, listen to me!” cried Celestia, her eyes streaming with tears. “You were supposed to be my daughter! You were supposed to be beautiful and kind! Why are you doing this?”

Penumbra dropped her Gatling spell and walked to the surface of Celestia’s shield. She lifted her head, and then plunged her horn into the dome. Her body was immediately wracked with feedback, and the pain was unfathomable- -but she did not deviate or hesitate. She thought of the ponies waiting for her, of Crozea, Scarlet Mist, Holder and Zither, of Chrysalis, Facet, Burnt- -and of her father. The amulet around her neck began to grow, and forced more power into her horn. Her body was burning, but it hardly mattered. So long as she recalled those who she loved most, she could withstand the pain.

She looked up through the distortion of magic and feedback, and her eyes met Celestia’s. “Galen the Griffon,” she said. She saw the confusion over Celestia’s face, and that only made Penumbra’s rage increase. “You don’t even remember him! Let me remind you! He was a poet, a traveling minstrel, and he helped his friend- -MY friend- -with an ambush- -and you slew him! Zither Heartstrings! You took his legs! You took his LOVE! Is that what ‘peace’ and ‘harmony’ means?! Slaying those who don’t fit your design, as you would my father? As you would ME?!”

Celestia blinked, and a look of recognition crossed her face.

“I remember,” she said. Her face was painted in shame, and she could no longer meet Penumbra’s gaze. “They took me by surprise. I attacked. I...I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t control it. Ponies got hurt because I forgot who I was, but I remember the griffon. He was burned and hurt, but I saved him. I used my magic to protect him. But he would not let go of...of...” Celestia winced. She could not describe what she had seen- -what she had DONE. “But I saved him. I brought him back to Equestria. He lived a long, full life. And every day I lifted the sun, he was there...there at the grave...” Celestia looked up. “But that was six hundred years ago. Griffons don’t live that long. And neither do unicorns.”

“You. Are. A. LIAR!”

Penumbra pushed her whole head through the shield. Overwhelmed, it began to tear her apart. Celestia watched in horror and was forced to abort the spell before the damage became permanent. Penumbra collapsed to the ground, sizzling and smoking. Yet even in that state, with her armor torn and burned and her body no doubt in worse shape, she managed to stand.

“You took my friend’s love. You made him sad. I think I understand. I really am a monster.” She looked up, and her eyes met Celestia’s. “Because all alicorns are. By definition.”

Before Celestia could offer any words of encouragement, Penumbra began to summon a spell. This one was different from the others. It was not formed from prefabricated pieces of a spell; rather, it was drawn from Penumbra herself, formed from instinct and the feelings flowing through her.

“You never tried to find him. You never tried to HELP him.” She looked up, her eyes alight with the energy from inside. In a flash, she teleported- -or was teleported. Suddenly she was on top of Celestia, her magic bearing down on her in a plume of fire. Celestia defended herself with a spell, but the force was so intense that it brought her to her knees. Penumbra kicked them out from beneath her, tackling Celestia to her side and standing over her.

“You call your self an alicorn,” she hissed. Her magic formed a construct around Celestia’s horn, closing tight around it. “You don’t deserve to.”

Then Penumbra began to pull. Celestia screamed and her wings flapped uselessly, but Penumbra held her down. She could feel something cracking through her magic.

“Stop! Please stop! CADENCE STOP!”

“I won’t let you HURT ANYPONY ELSE!”

Penumbra pulled hard, but before she could break the horn free, she suddenly felt a strange sensation. Her magic flickered and went out, and she looked down. For some reason she could not understand how Nightmare Moon could be on her left, her forehead against Penumbra’s neck, and how the tip of her long, pointed horn could be on the other side. Or why it was dripping with black fluid.

“I won’t let you HURT ANYPONY ELSE!”

Penumbra pulled hard, but before she could break the horn free, she suddenly felt a sharp shove to her chest. Thirteen had appeared in front of her and thrown her back, interrupting the spell. Penumbra did not understand why, and was momentarily angry, wondering if she had been betrayed- -when Thirteen turned, and Nightmare Moon’s horn stabbed her through the heart.

Penumbra’s eyes grew wide. “No,” she said. “You can’t- -you can’t do that! That was supposed to be me!”

“NIGHTMARE!” cried Celestia, watching as Nightmare Moon slid Thirteen’s body off her horn. It was dripping with silver, and a pool of the same color was forming beneath the armored mare. “What have you done?!”

“It was not meant to be her,” she said, her horn still dripping. “I was aiming for the alicorn.”

“You- -you were going to stab little Cadence?! WHY?!”

“She was going to hurt you. I cannot allow that. I simply cannot.”

Penumbra scrambled forward, grasping at Thirteen’s body. “You didn’t- -you can’t- -”

“Penumbra,” said Eternity. “Get ahold of yourself. She was expendable anyway.”

“I can still help her,” said Celestia, standing shakily. “Please, just let me try- -”

“Get AWAY!”

As Penumbra screamed a massive shockwave emanated from her, one hundreds of times more powerful than those she had summoned previously. Celestia wrapped a protective spell around herself and her sister, although both of them were thrown back at some distance.

Penumbra clutched Thirteen. This was something knew. Something she had never conceived of. Ponies could get hurt, yes, but this was too much. Ponies never killed. It simply never happened. But all too late Penumbra realized that this was her purpose. That this was what she would have done to her enemies. She thought she had been prepared. She had not been. Not even close.

Thirteen was still breathing, but her breath was slowing. Her armor was smeared with beautiful silver, as if somepony had spilled thin, watery mercury on her. In the Hyperborean cold, it was already starting to freeze.

“I can help you,” said Penumbra. “Eternity, I need a spell. I need a spell to fix this!”

Eternity was silent. Then she spoke, softly. “There is nothing I can do. But you have to listen, and do what I say VERY closely. That hole in her armor? I can see in her mind right now. It’s bad. It’s VERY bad. You have to get back. NOW!”

“I won’t leave her!” As she said it, Thirteen suddenly went limp. “Thirteen? No! Come on! I could have survived it! I COULD HAVE SURVIVED! I’m half dark unicorn! You’re NOT!”

There was no response, of course. But Penumbra did not let go.

The eyes on Thirteen’smask flickered and went out- -and then a single one ignited in the center.

“Host-operator vital signs lost,” said a voice. Penumbra looked up, confused. She recalled that she was alone in that she had once heard Thirteen’s voice- -and the voice that had spoken was not hers.

“Wh...what?”

“Engaging nanobotic resurrection. Please stand by for respawn.”

The silver covering Thirteen suddenly started to boil, rising up not as liquid but as metal, forming delicate spiders of machinery that scrambled across her body and back into the wound. Penumbra did not understand what was happening, exactly, but Emeth had taught her well the nature of nanogolems- -and what they were, at least in theory, capable of.

Celestia and Luna approached, one looking sad and both looking ready to attempt to remedy their mistake.

“It’s too late,” said Celestia. “I’m sorry Ca- -Penumbra. But once a pony has passed to the other side...there isn’t anything anypony can do. Not even us.”

“You have to make a choice now,” said Nightmare Moon. “It is only for my love of my sister that I do not allow you to join your heretical friend. Surrender now. You have no other choice.”

Penumbra looked up at them. She had to buy time.

“Now, at least TRY to listen,” said Eternity. “You’ve taken a RIDICULOUS amount of damage. Like, as in, you’re risking organ failure. In every organ you have. And a few you don’t. The amulet can give you power, but your horn won’t survive much more. You don’t have a chronoplexer to turn back time if you mess up. Your only option is to fight. Here. I have a spell. Use this. You probably will not make it, but you can take down at least one. Aim for Celestia. She’s fatter.”

“And has the better defense. No. I have a different idea.”

“Penumbra. Penumbra! Do what I say! You have to do what I say! DO IT! DO IT NOW!”

Penumbra ignored the voice in her head. She instead cast a different spell.

Nightmare Moon drew her sword, and Celestia raised a set of mobile shield drones- -but the spell drifted lazily around them. It was not an offensive strike, so the two did not know fully how to defend. Even Celestia, who had studied magic for longer than most ponies had been alive, had never seen anything at all like it.

Both alicorns suddenly blinked and shook their heads, unsure of what was happening. Then they looked at each other. Celestia immediately blushed.

“S...sister,” said Nightmare Moon, moving closer to Celestia. “You are a mess...but I never realized just how...well, how beautiful you are.”

Celestia giggled. “Me? Beautiful? You’re just saying that.”

“No.” Nightmare Moon removed her helmet. Her enormous starry mane flowed out around her, and Celestia felt her heart race. “I truly mean it. Such color...such kindness. If only I myself were not so hardened. If only I had not become so cruel...”

“No, no!” Celestia took her sister’s hooves. “You’re always there to protect me! You’re always so strong when I can’t be...so big...so powerful...” Her wings ruffled. “So...dominant.”

“And you. So innocent and vulnerable.” Nightmare Moon leaned closer. “Sister. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Nightmare.”

“Sister, I want you. I want you now.”

Celestia gasped, but blushed as she did. “But- -but we’re sisters!”

“You know what they say...” Nightmare Moon began kissing her sister’s neck. “Princest is wincest...”

Penumbra smiled. Her spell was working, and working quite well. She was just not sure how it worked, entirely, but knew that it was rising to a crescendo and beginning to complete itself.

Then, suddenly, she dropped to her knees, overcome with nausea and pain. Something was wrong.

The spell was failing. Something was eating it from inside. For a moment Penumbra thought it was a defense spell, but the pain she felt was not like that of a feedback surge. It was different. She could feel everything within Celestia and Nightmare Moon’s hearts, and as she had pressed through the layers of their souls, she had struck something terrible.

She was overcome with waves of the most intense, unspeakable jealousy. Hatred, rage, anger- -things that had been hidden for years, for decades, for centuries, even, allowed to fester for all that time. They burned like a white-hot sun, and no love, no matter how powerful, could survive in its presence. Penumbra had not known that such a horrific thing could exist within a pony, that such evil could be contained so well for so long, even as it grew with every passing day. Her spell was directed between the two sisters, but so was this thing: absolute, unending hatred of one sister by another.

Her spell began to fail, and Penumbra dropped to her knees. She could not overcome it. She could not defeat the horrors that dwelt deep within Celestia’s heart.

Chapter 66: That which was Forseen

Within the void of thought, there was nothing but silence and infinite noise. Eternity Gaze saw every explosion, heard every scream, understood every aspect of fear and pain in the battle outside- -and in this moment of clarity, those of the battles of the distant past as well of those in the farthest future. She smiled, because they were always the same. The end result was always different, and in that difference it was always the same. The world was endlessly in flux, and in that vortex of chaos, unchanging.

No living thing was meant to understand these paradoxes. Yet for one agonizing moment, Eternity did. Only one through kept her sanity from slipping away.

The genetic-locked door to her eternal prison slid open with a hiss. A pony entered the room, walking slowly and with a severe limp. Something was dragging at her side. A metal ax.

What was left of Eternity’s once beautiful body turned its blind eyes toward the interloper. They were blind, and yet Eternity could never stop seeing.

“Right on time,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The pony paused. When she spoke, her voice was harsh and unpleasant- -yet bore a distinctly familiar chill. “Surely you never saw this coming.”

“No. I definitely did.”

“And you did nothing to stop it?”

“Stop it?” Eternity laughed. The interloper shuddered from the pain of being so close to a powerful telepathic source. “STOP it? I CAUSED it! I’ve been orchestrating it. Slowly. Taking my time. Failing when I need to fail, failing when I need to succeed...because there isn’t really free will, is there? There can’t be. Not when everything is linked in endless causality. But you wouldn’t know that. You can’t see. Consider yourself so very lucky.”

“Then why not just end it now? We don’t have to be enemies. We can work together.”

Eternity’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the rub, isn’t it? Because it has to be a certain way. It has to go right, or things won’t happen. We’ve grown too far from canon to be stable, but things still have to go a certain way. We’re bound by causality. The future creates the past. More to the point, open your eyes. Look at me.”

The pony did. The shape before her was pitiful.

“Pitiful. You’re thinking the word ‘pitiful’. Do you pity me?”

“In a sense. But that will not stop me from doing what must be done.”

Eternity laughed again, growing increasingly manic. “You have no idea, do you? What I am, what I once was, what I WILL be? Or, rather, what I will cease to be...” She blinked. Or tried to. Even that had become agonizingly difficult for her. “I once had so many beautiful sisters. But we sacrificed it all to gain a power ponies were not meant to wield. They were so lucky...they were driven insane. But they left me behind. All alone. Tell me, Phoenix. Why am I still sane? Why won’t my mind let me be free?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Not to you, no. Not yet. But it will. Because you’ll have to make a choice. I am what ambition leads to, the risk you face. Maybe you will avoid my fate. Maybe not. I know the answer, but I won’t tell you. I think it would destroy you.”

“But then what was the reason?”

Eternity blinked. “So you do care.”

“Perhaps I do.”

Eternity smiled her last smile. “Because I knew this moment would come. I knew that you would be here for me. That you would come to save me. I’ve never stopped seeing this moment. It’s the only thing that let me make it this far.”

“How sad.”

“Sad? No. I think it’s a happy thing.”

“Then you are a fool.”

The pony shifted her weight, lifting the ax. Eternity stared at the silver blade, and could not contain her limitless joy.

“Sombra will rise to challenge the Wingless Goddess,” she said, barely in a whisper.

“Again,” replied her counterpart, “that does not matter in the slightest.”

Eternity smiled, finally understanding that it was true.

Chapter 67: Dawn

Penumbra was thrown back by a sudden attack. She engaged one of Eternity’s preconstructed shield spells, absorbing most of the blast at the last moment. The rest fell on Emeth’s armor, which though damaged was valiantly supporting her. That was probably a good thing. Penumbra doubted she would still be able to stand without it.

Celestia turned first, her mind immediately clearing from the love spell. She took a dueling stance and summoned a pair of constructs. They ran out, their luminescent bodies moving silently over the ice, driving toward Penumbra with their jaws open, ready to grab her and pin her to the ground.

Penumbra jumped back, flipping and manifesting a barrier of summoned crystal. She stuck the landing and fell into a split, barely dodging Nightmare Moon’s hoof against her horn. The second blow hit her side, and she defiantly felt it. Still, with her horn untouched, she was able to cast a repulsion spell as she fell to the ground, forcing Nightmare Moon back- -but not off her hooves.

One of the constructs suddenly grabbed her flank. Penumbra reacted instinctively, sending out a wave of undifferentiated magic that partially disassembled it. Celestia’s magic was advanced, though, and the construct quickly began to rebuild itself- -and the fragments began assembling themselves into another as well. It was self-replicating.

She was on the defensive, and it took everything she had just to dodge both Princesses. She had lost momentum and lost her advantage.

“Eternity, I need something big!”

No response came, though in the distance, she could hear Eternity talking. Speaking to somepony that Penumbra could only partially see. Penumbra could not help but shiver, because that pony, though Eternity’s mind, rendered as several different individuals stretched across Eternity's distorted perspective. One of them was a white unicorn that Penumbra had never met, but who looked distinctly familiar.

But no response came. Penumbra was forced to roll backward, only to be grabbed by her short mane by silver magic and to have her nose rammed into the ground repeatedly. She withstood the pain, and did her best to summon a counterspell. It was weak and barely effective.

She raised her horn, preparing an attack, only to be suddenly tackled by a construct. Its body immediately shifted as Celestia’s secondary spells activated, forming a net of golden chains that tied Penumbra to the ground.

“GAH!” Penumbra struggled, trying to rise. “I won’t let them down! I won’t let HIM down! I was born for this! I WILL NOT LOSE!”

“You can’t move,” said Celestia. “Please stop. The battle is over. Just stay down. There’s no way for you to win.”

Penumbra looked around, her eyes darting around the ruined landscape around her. She refused to give up. Not when ponies were counting on her.

In the distance, a voice suddenly spoke. A voice from Thirteen’s armor.

“Nanoconstruction complete. Preparing to reboot vitals. Please stand clear.”

Penumbra had no idea what that meant, but she got the idea. She reached out with her magic, lifting Thirteen’s limp body- -and promptly chucking it against Celestia’s chest.

The revitalization system engaged just as Thirteen struck Celestia. Celestia screamed as her body was electrocuted by a surge of unknown energy, and as her horn overloaded the spell surrounding Penumbra weakened. Some parts of Eternity’s spells still remained, and Penumbra used one of them. It was incomplete and weakened her badly, but it broke the chains completely. She immediately turned to Nightmare Moon, who had- -as expected- -been distracted by her sister’s pain. With a scream of rage, Penumbra leapt onto Nightmare Moon’s side, tackling her to the ground and biting her repeatedly.

Celestia was knocked back and lost her balance, falling into the dirt. As she did, Thirteen grabbed her neck, twirling over it and onto Celestia’s back. Without a moment’s hesitation, she lowered her horn to Celestia’s rump.

A high scream rose from Celestia, and, worse, a horrible, disgusting ripping sound. Both Penumbra and Nightmare Moon looked up and, to their visceral, instinctive horror, they saw Celestia’s body rapidly growing pale and gray- -as her cutie mark was in the process of begin severed from her body.

For a brief moment, it broke free. Thirteen stood triumphant, Celestia’s solar cutie mark held above her horn and the pony herself a gray heap below. A heap whose eyes dripped with tears even through her forced smile.

Then Nightmare Moon tackled her, biting hard around Thirteen’s neck with her long, sharp teeth. Although there was a hole in the chest of Thirteen’s armor, her neck was still fully protected, and the best Nightmare Moon could do was fruitlessly shake her and pin her to the ground.

With the cutie mark released, it automatically returned to its owner. Penumbra contemplated grabbing it, but she had no idea how to even start to go about it. As far as she knew, nopony but Thirteen did.

Instead she took the second option. She saw her chance. Even with her cutie mark reattached, Celestia was badly weakened and unable to stand. Penumbra summoned a cutting spell and charged forward. Celestia’s eyes met hers, and in that instant Penumbra knew that this was wrong- -but she absolutely refused to stop.

Then she fell. This confused her. She could not recall having tripped. Then she realized that she was convulsing.

It was not only Penumbra. The entire kingdom cried out at once. Crystal ponies beneath the shield dome covered their ears, cowering at the base of the Heart of Darkness; across the battlefield in a medic’s tent, a Pegasus named Firefly nearly dropped another Pegasus named Skyflame while pulling him to a doctor’s table; in the sky, an unnamed field marshal dropped to one knee. Even across the gossamer lining of reality, Sombra looked up from his preparations and knew that time grew short.

The only ones that did not hear were the golems and the undead- -and Twilight Luciferian. The infection had reached his brain, and the sound of endless screaming had already infiltrated his consciousness to the point where one more voice hardly mattered.

It was laughter. High, joyous, manic, terrifying laughter. Eternity’s laughter. Or it might have been screaming. It was too loud, and it was impossible to tell.

Penumbra clapped her hooves over her ears. She was sure that her brain was in danger of melting. Celestia did the same, and Nightmare Moon nearly collapsed.

Then in an instant it stopped. There was only the sound of shattering glass.

Penumbra fell to the snow, still shaking as her body regenerated from her injuries. This gave her some advantage over the other alicorns, but it would be brief. The princess was slowing down as she reached exhaustion.

“Eternity,” she said, “Eternity, help me, I need something powerful!”

There was no response. Not even a hint that their could be one. And somehow Penumbra understood that there never would be. Ever again.

“Eternity?” She stood, staring to panic. “Eternity?!”

Celestia raised her horn and, herself at the point of exhaustion, cast one last spell.

Immediately the joints of Penumbra’s power armor locked. She cried out and nearly fell over, creaking as she moved. Motion was still possible, but the driving mechanisms had seized. She was forced to move under her own power- -and under armor that was not far more of a burden than a benefit.

“Then I’ll have to do it myself!”

Penumbra reached into herself, drawing power from within. Far more power than should have been possible. The Aicorn Amulet responded, driving more power into her. Enough so that even her half-built novice spells could do some damage- -ANY damage.

Then, in a flash, Nightmare Moon was inches from Penumbra, her enormous turquoise eyes staring at her viciously.

“I tire of this,” she said, reaching out into Penumbra’s head with a plume of silver strands. “OBEY.”

Penumbra tried to resist, but her own mind was too small. She felt Nightmare Moon inside her, penetrating her in every way her mind could be penetrated. For a brief moment, she saw what she had only half-glimpsed during her attempt at a love spell. Beneath her veneer of power and confidence, she was so very sad- -and so very afraid. Because she too knew what lurked within her sister’s heart.

Unable to control herself, Penumbra felt her own hoof rise and snap the chain around her amulet. In an instant it was surrounded by silver and torn the rest of the way off.

Penumbra tried to resist, but her own mind was too small. She felt Nightmare Moon inside her, penetrating her in every way her mind could be penetrated. Thirteen materialized from her jump and immediately cried out in pain, falling to her knees. The hole in the center of her armor was sparking badly. The seal had been broken. Her armor could no longer fully protect her from temporal sheer or chronal displacement.

Unable to control herself, Penumbra felt her own hoof rise and snap the chain around her amulet. In an instant it was surrounded by silver and torn the rest of the way off.

A blast of magic cleaved the chestplate of her broken armor. She tried to raise a defensive spell, but a third attack hit the base of her horn. Nightmare Moon could well have cleaved it free, but instead simply bashed it hard enough to give Penumbra and instant concussion. Had she not been familiar with constant beatings, she would surely have been rendered unconscious. Yet another blow hit her hard in the jaw.

“So,” said Nightmare Moon, slowly drifting forward. “You truly believe what you have said to me. Perhaps once you could have been a just and kind pony, one who serves her people with dignity and authority. But instead you chose to serve Sombra.”

“I...regret nothing...”

“But you WILL regret having tried to harm my beloved sister. This is something I cannot forgive, not EVER. I care not that you might once have been good! For I tire of this game. I refuse to show you mercy.”

Penumbra spit teeth into the snow. “I would never respect you if you did.”

Nightmare Moon stared, not smiling- -but also not frowning. Then she raised her horn to the sky.

Something rumbled overhead. Penumbra looked up to see bright surges of light piercing the sky above. They were stars. The stars themselves were falling at their creator’s command.

One hit near Penumbra. The shockwave threw her to the side. She rolled, and another landed where she had just been. The world around her was erupting into flame. That meant there was only one option. Eternity was gone, as was her armor, and the Alicorn Amulet. She was exhausted and out of energy. She knew that the fight had been lost, and that there was no possible way to win.

So she lowered her horn and charged Nightmare Moon directly.

Nightmare Moon produced her sword, and took a step forward. Penumbra did not even bother to dodge.

Then, in an instant, she felt herself being pulled away. Something had grabbed onto her midsection and was lifting her away, swerving past the explosive storm of Nightmare Moon’s cosmic artillery. Penumbra looked up to see Thirteen overhead, held aloft by a massive pair of pulsating dragonfly wings made of gossamer and dew.

“Stop! STOP! Put me down! I demand it! I’m not done! I’M NOT DONE!”

Thirteen did not respond. Nor did she let go.

“I mean it! You are interfering with ROYAL BUSINESS! I will have you HUNG! By your LEG! Return me to the battle! RETURN ME NOW! That is a princess order! A PRINCESS ORDER!!”

“No.”

Penumbra looked back, and tears began to well in her eyes. Her life had one single, solitary purpose. And she had failed.

The barrage stopped, and Nightmare Moon sighed. Her own energy had been drained, but was hardly depleted. More to the point, the Crystal Princess had escaped. She could have pursued, of course, but that would mean leaving her sister alone.

Instead, she went to her sister’s side, kneeling in the dirt and snow and ash that had once been the Crystal Empire. “Sister? Are you injured?”

“I...I couldn’t save her.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

Celestia looked up. It was clear she had been crying. “I don’t know.”

“Eternity has reached the end of her path, just as she had predicted. Sister, our time grows short.”

They both looked out at the expanse before them, to where Penumbra had fled. The skies were still flooded with enough windigoes to blot out the light of either the sun or moon. Amongst them were the few remaining sky-battleships; although the dreadnought had been sunk, the command capsule still remained and had already regrouped what was left of the fleet. Throughout the battlefield forces were clashing- -though most of the thralls had been defeated, the Empire was still teaming with golems and the undead alike.

And then, beyond that, there stood an unbreakable shield and the Citadel itself, filled with fresh soldiers prepared for the final defense- -and, if they did not hurry, Sombra himself.

“If we do not act now, the Empire will be lost to us.”

“I know.” Celestia stood, although nearly collapsed as her legs buckled. “I can still fight!”

“No. You cannot. And I cannot either, if I must keep defending you. Not that it would do any good. Sister, I cannot risk you being harmed...but we have no other choice.”

Celestia’s eyes grew wide. “No- -NO! We can still win!”

Nightmare Moon closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not at this rate. I almost lost you in a fight against just one pony. Even together, we cannot stand against the rest. Or against Sombra.”

“But together, we can do anything!”

Nightmare Moon frowned. “I know. And that’s why I need my big sister.”

Celestia sniffled, and looked at the Empire. She knew that the situation was hopeless- -and knew that Nightmare Moon was right.

“But what if I can’t control it?”

“I will pull you back. Whatever it takes.”

“You can’t make that promise.”

“But I shall. I swear it upon our mother’s horn. I will not leave you. Not now, and not ever.”

Celestia closed her eyes, and stood on her own. Nightmare Moon’s words had touched her, but the elder pony did not understand. There was no pony that could.

Yet there was no other choice.

Celestia spread her wings and rose into the sky. As she did, she ignited her horn. The moon had begun to set. Night was over. The time had come for the dawn.

Far to the east, the sun broke over the horizon. Celestia was afraid, but she did what had to be done. The magic of her horn changed, from golden to deep, burning orange.

The sun rose- -but as it did, the sky ignited, the night burning away in an endless plume of multicolored aurora's. Celestia stopped and spread her wings to the sun, drawing its full energy into herself.

The force of the sun struck her, and she pulled it into herself, drawing more and more of its limitless power. The sun began to change. Instead of a gleaming yellow beacon of warmth and hope, it began to grow, its color atrophying from yellow to orange, and finally a deep, terrible shade of red. All the while it grew, its force becoming oppressive across the land. The land that would, for now and forever, be plunged into endless day.

Celestia cried out as energy within her reached critical mass. The force of solar fusion overwhelmed her, and she threw her mane back, its colors igniting and merging into a single, terrible flame. Her mage robes burned away, revealing the now super-heated gold of the armor she wore beneath.

Through the Crystal Empire, ponies stared up at the terrible sky of auroras and at the red-orange sun that now dominated half of it- -and they despaired.

From above, a flaming princess descended into the city, her body alight with solar fire. In an instant, the crystal buildings beside her began to melt and burn, collapsing to their foundations from the heat, forming a ring of destruction around the White Queen.

The pony who had once been Celestia opened her eyes, their sclera blackened from the heat within her immortal form- -and Daybreaker looked upon the kingdom that now belonged to her.

Her eyes slowly tilted, looking up and to her left. Nightmare Moon descended from above, reaching only the farthest perimeter of Daybreaker’s corona. The younger mare shaded her eyes, recoiling from her sister’s light. As she did, her quicksilver armor began to react, expanding and spreading apart until it formed a suit of armor that encapsulated her entire body, shielding her from her sister’s deadly radiation.

“Sister- -”

Daybreaker turned her head, and in an instant her horn had vaporized a swath of destruction through the abandoned district of the Crystal Empire, vaporizing a tunnel of slag and burning rubble through the crystal buildings and stone fortifications. It continued onward and outward, burning miles in an instant.

And standing at its very periphery was Nightmare Moon, the thinnest possible gash cut into her quicksilver helmet. Just enough to reveal the black skin beneath.

The helmet regenerated as the quicksilver compensated. Nightmare Moon was shaking.

Daybreaker sighed. “As expected. Six hundred years of cake and squinting at pointless books has left me with poor aim, it seems.”

“Sister...it’s good to see you.”

“Don’t lie to my face, little sister. Or next time I will not miss.”

Daybreaker turned suddenly. She had felt something peculiar.

Suddenly, both alicorns were struck by a sudden surge of burning magic fired from an enormous crystalline cannon. High above, two of the remaining sky battleships had converged on their position, and they had commenced firing.

Nightmare Moon instantly raised a shield spell, absorbing the heat and power of the beam though being forced to her knees in the process. Daybreaker, meanwhile, did not even bother to react. She simply stared upward through the laser. Its energy was inconsequential.

“Such incompetence,” growled Daybreaker, charging her horn.

The ships were instantly crushed by the force of her magic. Their engines whined and thrummed as they desperately struggled to escape her grasp, but there was nothing they could do to break free. Daybreaker stared at them for a moment, wondering why exactly such things had cause to exist.

Then she smashed them together. Their engines overloaded and the ships detonated in a plume of atomic fire. She then forced them to the ground directly in front of her, leveling a substantial area of the city. Since the wreckage was consequently in her way, she moved it, effortlessly gouging an enormous hole in the land as buildings and golems alike were shredded by the burning remnants of their ships.

“Why am I here, little sister?”

“The war- -”

Nightmare Moon was silenced as Daybreaker slowly turned her blackened eyes toward her. “Yes, you idiot. I am Celestia’s purest and truest self. I still have my fat and pointless counterpart’s memories. I KNOW. Answer the QUESTION. Why am I here?”

Nightmare Moon bristled. “We need to break through. Sombra will arise soon. We do not have much time.”

“And why should I care about Sombra?”

Nightmare Moon did not know how to answer. “Because we cannot claim the Empire so long as he remains in power. We require this territory. To secure our borders. And for the sake of the crystals, if you must know.”

A toothy smile crossed Daybreaker’s face. “Crystals, you say?” She turned her head, and her horn ignited with devastating power. She fired it directly into the soil, forming a column of solar light that scorched its way through ice and rock alike until it met with the caverns below.

In an instant, the ground shook with the force of a terrible earthquake as the crystals ignited and exploded, burned and torn asunder by Daybreaker’s limitless magic.

“SISTER! What are you- -”

Nightmare Moon suddenly choked as the armor below her helmet was crushed. She struggled and gasped as she was lifted by Daybreaker’s magic, held aloft by her neck.

“What do ponies need these crystals for?” demanded Daybreaker. “Is my magic not ENOUGH? Or would you rather give your precious little mortals a way to USURP ME?!”

“Sister- -sister, no- -”

The smile on Daybreaker’s face grew. She enjoyed seeing her sister in pain. “That’s not what this war is about. Conquest? What need have I for conquest? No.” She pointed at the Crystal Empire. “Those ponies dared to stand against me. They are HERETICS. This is not a war of conquest. From here on in? This is a war of EXTERMINATION.”

“Sister- -”

Daybreaker slammed her sister’s head into the stone side of a building, and then threw her into the dirt.

“There is an alicorn in there. I intend to end her. I refuse to allow a rival to exist.”

Nightmare Moon gasped, grabbing at her throat. “Yet I persist.”

Daybreaker smiled. “Yes. I know.”

And with that, she began to walk.

Chapter 68: A Choice

“Confirmation?” demanded the field marshal.

The crystal slave, shaking, backed away from his console. “The magical signature is...is consistent with the parameters you specified. Daybreaker has...she has manifested.”

“We’ve already lost two battleships,” said Asahel. “But, on the plus side, our fear meter is spiking to levels I didn’t even think were possible.”

“Divert the full power of the accumulated fear into the Citadel shield.”

Asahel turned his head. “To the shield? But with that much power, we can crystallize the entire front line.”

“To do what, exactly?” The field marshal stepped quickly to her map, noting several sets of coordinates and commuting one particular set to memory. “Daybreaker is a living fusion reaction. Her power is limitless. Our entire army will be useless. Deactivate the masks. Recall all of the crystal ponies to the Citadel. The shield will hold her, but not for long.”

The crystal slave looked up at her, his eyes wide. “But then what are we supposed to do?”

The field marshal stripped off the more ceremonial parts of her armor and opened a rear cabinet, withdrawing a long, crystal-tipped spear. She hefted it, expertly manipulating it to her back.

“I will join the battle.”

“You?!”

“In case you did not notice,” said Asahel, now sounding distinctly amused by the turn of events, “you lack a horn.”

“I will not allow that filth to advance upon Sombra. I cannot allow it.” She paused, gripping her spear tightly. It was forged from titanium, and the crystal was supported by various fine machines and mechanisms. Mechanisms whose design had only been possible in the Crystal Empire, under Sombra’s patronage. “I will defend him. Whatever it takes. Whatever is required of me.”

“Even if that means throwing your life away?”

The field marshal did not answer. “Asahel. I leave you command of whatever you have left. Use it as you see fit.” She looked over her shoulder. “I only request that you ensure the princess reached the shield.”

“The alicorn? Why?”

“Because she may yet take the place that I once occupied.”

From high above what remains of the Crystal Empire, a golem looked out across the ruins. What he stood upon had perhaps once been the skeleton of a tower, although now it stood bent and largely unusable, a twisted column of melted steel and shattered crystal. Had he known better, Emeth might have suspected it had been the spire of a church. There were, of course, no surges in the Crystal Empire. Temples had no place in a world where the gods had not yet moved on from their wars upon the earth.

He did not stand alone. Beside him were others of his kind, beings that he- -thanks to a certain suggestion- -had come to think of as his children. There was Delilah, with her pet priestess attached to her by a thin silver chain, as well as one called Hosea. The third was Asahel, who though not present was repeated in holographic form.

Together, they watched the destruction of the land they had helped to create and had been destined to one day rule. Asahel, who now ruled the entirety of the Crystal Empire’s military, found it all entertaining. Delilah was not so much concerned by the battle as by the tears on her pet’s face, and the look of horror in her eyes. Hosea felt nothing, but learned, because she understood that a time would come when these events would unfold again. She could not help but wonder what it would be like then.

Emeth remained silent, because his thoughts were his own. Only distantly, in the farthest reaches of his mind, did he remember that this had occurred once before on a scale so incomprehensibly grand that nothing at all had remained. He found himself wondering if the same would come to fruition here, and if that was what Sombra had truly wanted.

Several more sky-ships were crushed and plunged into the empty buildings of the city. From their position, the golems could trace the path of their adversary.

“The field marshal says we can’t fight her,” said Asahel. “I don’t know if I believe her.”

“Why would we want to?” asked Hosea. “What does it serve to gain?”

“Agreed,” said Delilah. “Certainly we have learned what we came here to learn.”

“Yes,” said Emeth. “Though I would hardly call the experiment a success. Perhaps you will all produce better golems in the future.”

They looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“The time has come. You are correct, Hosea, Delilah. There is no longer a point in remaining here. Some of our underground facilities still remain. Take what you can of the other phase three prototypes.”

“And destroy the rest?”

“No. Leave it behind. I am curious to see if the princesses use my work, or if they simply bury it as they did the last time.” He turned Asahel. “Use what forces we have left to cover the evacuation.”

“And purge organics on the way?”

“Why?”

“I was joking.”

“No. You were not.” Emeth turned to Hosea. “I have lost contact with the Z-type. Thaw another. He will help you.”

“Why are you giving these orders?” demanded Delilah, stepping forward. “Why are you not doing this yourself?”

“Because he isn’t coming,” said the priestess, looking up at the father of golems. “Are you?”

Emeth shook his head slowly. “No. I cannot.”

“Father,” said Asahel. “That is absurd. And you know it.”

“We can still escape,” said Hosea. “The warheads- -”

“We used the only crystal-tipped warhead.”

“But we still have a complement of forty-seven plutonium-tritium missiles.”

“I am prepared to fire,” said Asahel.

“The collateral damage would be too great,” said Emeth, looking out at the city. “Likewise, what would a fusion warhead do to the goddess of the sun?”

“At least the fallout would keep the organics away,” said Delilah, tugging on her pet.

“There is no point in it.” Emeth sighed and stepped to the edge of the spire.

“Wait!” Delila put her hoof on his shoulder. “Don’t be foolish! We aren’t like you! We cannot make more of ourselves, not like you can!”

“Not yet.”

“And possibly not ever,” said Hosea. “Without you, our race could end with us.”

“Then you will find those who can help you survive. Who can build more. Seek out the Questlords of Inverness, or find the ancient Morlock city in the planet’s mantel. Who knows? Perhaps some Exmoori still live, or at least those who recall the ancient age of machines. If you cannot create, learn from those that can.”

“We want to learn from you, father.”

Emeth paused. He turned and kissed his eldest daughter on the forehead. “I have friends down there. I need to help them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. Please. Do your very best, and someday, try to.”

Then Emeth turned back to the edge and stepped over it. In an instant he was gone, having descended far below. His children watched him go before they each took their own paths. Each of them knew that it was the last time any of them would ever see their father.

The only one who might have disagreed, had she been asked, was the priestess. She still held out hope, if only for the sake of those who could not hope for themselves.

Chapter 69: March of the Sun

Ponies had begun to arrive beneath the shield. They were thralls, or had been, some of them for longer than they could remember, a few for lifetimes that far exceeded those of any family members they might have had. Now, though, they were finally released; the instant they stepped through the dome, their masks fell away and they stood confused and terrified in the shadow of the Heart of Darkness.

Through the field hospitals, medics, and wandering ex-thralls, ponies barely noticed a pair pushing through in the opposite direction. One terrified them, and they ducked out of her way, because they recognized the armor of the Blue Knight. The other, though, was Holder Heartfelt, and nopony much cared.

Piwancha cared, though. She could not see well through the shield, but out of sheer instinct she knew that it was a complete and utter- -and literal- -war zone outside. She had no idea what she would find, but knew that it would not be good.

And yet Holder never slowed. In fact, he was oddly fast, no doubt due to the influence of the sword still perched on his back. That made Piwancha exceedingly nervous. If he was willing to run into the mad chaos outside the dome, then she could not help but wonder what horrors he was leaving behind to do so.

She could at least content herself with the view. For a pony was ostensibly a coward, he was remarkably muscular in his bucking components.

Not that there was much time. She saw the shield looming in the distance and, even without her horn, she could hear it buzzing.

“You know the access code, right?” she shouted.

“No. I don’t need to. Grab onto my back!”

Piwancha blushed, but did as was recommended to her. She was not sure why.

Despite being wrapped in power armor- -and consequently being quite heavy- -Holder did not even slow in the slightest. Nor did he slow when the buzzing magical energy of the dome became almost deafening.

“We can’t get through that!” cried Piwancha, holding tight. “We’ll fry!”

“We don’t need to go through it! Hold your breath!”

Holder jumped into the air, and Piwancha held her breath. As Holder fell, the ground gave way beneath him. In an instant he was tunneling at such a high speed that he seemed to be swimming through solid rock. Then he emerged on the far side of the shield. It was a dome, not a sphere; he had tunneled beneath it.

“Come on, let’s go!”

Piwancha slid off his back and looked up in horror at the wreckage around her. It was worse than she had thought.

Thirteen’s wings made a distinct buzzing sound as she pulled Penumbra across the sky. Her horn was lit, and she was casting a strange and foreign spell, lighting the way with a strange glow that seemed to penetrate far deeper than it ought to have. The windigoes saw her, but did not approach. Penumbra eyed them carefully, though. They were beautiful creatures, but she understood from her training that they were dangerous indeed.

The situation below was grim. Very little remained of the city, and what was left was little more than blasted ruins and shattered golems. The snow and ice of Hyperborea were already starting to overtake it. In some places, the war still raged, and explosions could be heard at the very edge of the Citadel’s shield. Ponies were still fighting, even though hope was failing. This made Penumbra swell with pride- -but also deeply ashamed of her own failure.

Above her, the sun had risen, but it was different. Instead of pale and hidden behind endless clouds, it was clearly visible, a cruel red sphere dominating most of the sky, its surface coated with burning storms that the old astronomers had claimed were larger than entire planets. Penumbra did not know why it was like that, or what it meant; Eternity was gone, and Thirteen would not speak. Yet in her heart, she knew that something terrible had happened, and would happen- -and that it was all because of her.

The situation was dire, but the shield still held. All was not lost. The idea had never been to win. It had simply been to buy time. And that was still the mission- -even if Penumbra was not exactly sure of what it would accomplish at this point.

Penumbra suddenly felt herself slipping from Thirteen’s grasp. Their altitude took a dip as well, and when Penumbra looked up, Thirteen immediately tightened her grasp again. She had apparently nodded off, if only for a moment.

It of course made sense, although Penumbra had not truly realized it until this moment. As skilled as she was, Thirteen only had the magical potential of a normal unicorn. Her advanced spells had drained her, and done so quickly- -not to mention her apparent resurrection.

“Can we land?” asked Penumbra.

Thirteen said nothing, but her altitude decreased. As it did, the spell that bound her wings began to fade and they separated into fine silvery thread. When Thirteen finally struck the snow, she collapsed to her knees.

“Thirteen, are you alright?”

Thirteen extended one of her front hooves, tapping at a space on her armor in a complex pattern. As she extended her leg, a hologram appeared over it. A hologram resembling a single, stylized eye.

“Authorization accepted,” said a voice. It was the same one that had spoken before, when Thirteen had been injured. “Host-Operator diagnostic condition: critical metabolic depletion, Resurrection sickness, and temporal shear strain to the extremities, bones, and internal organs. Attempting to correct...”

The hologram vanished as Thirteen tried to stand. Penumbra went to her side and helped support her.

“Your armor. I don’t think it’s power armor, but it’s magic, right? Or some kind of machine? Is it enough to keep you going?”

Thirteen did not answer. It was as if Penumbra was not even there. But her grip became tighter. Penumbra took that as an affirmative.

Something moved behind them. Penumbra lit her horn, although almost collapsed in the process. With the Alicorn Amulet, she had not realized nearly how much power she had been consuming. Thirteen was not the only one whose strength had been depleted.

“There is no need to make me fry! The hoofsteps you hear are those of an ally!”

Penumbra lowered her glow. “Did you HAVE to rhyme? I could have attacked you- -”

Crozea appeared from between to half-collapsed crystal buildings. It was clear that the battle had been hard. Her robes had nearly completely disintegrated or been burn away, reveling the golden armor beneath. Armor that predominantly bore Sombra’s seal, as well as her own. “I know that you would not strike a friend. And I can see that your power is at its end.”

“I can still fight.”

“It is not a matter of if you could. What matters is if you should.”

Crozea stopped. Then she hugged Penumbra, and Penumbra burst into tears.

“I couldn’t- -I couldn’t stop them!”

“I’m not concerned with the fate of your attack. What matters is that you came back.”

“But the Empire- -they were counting on me! Everypony was counting on me, and I failed! I let them all down!”

Crozea held Penumbra tighter. “We all knew it was an impossible task. That it was just too much to ask.”

“But now Nightmare Moon and Celestia- -they’re coming, I was the only one that could stop them, and if I couldn’t- -”

“Celestia will not be a problem,” noted Emeth, who had appeared beside Thirteen.

Penumbra squeaked in surprise. “Where did you come from?!”

“I have stated on many occasions that I do not remember my creators. But that was not what you were asking. More to the point, Celestia has been irreversibly terminated. Daybreaker has taken her place.”

“Daybreaker? I have no idea what that is.”

Crozea did. Penumbra could feel her start to shiver uncontrollably.

“If they have summoned the true goddess of the sun? Emeth, tell me, what can be done?”

“I am currently formulating a plan. One moment please.”

Penumbra released Crozea. “What is a ‘Daybreaker’? And why does it have such an awesome name?”

The question was answered by a sudden rumbling. Penumbra turned to see the buildings of her city lifting off their foundations, liquefying in response to magic that burned whatever it touched. The narrow street they stood upon suddenly became much wider as it was made into a grand and clear path fit for the one true royal of Equestria. High above, a group of support craft were crushed in an instant and allowed to fall, their engines igniting violently as they struck the ground.

Penumbra suddenly felt it. Heat- -and more than that, something deep and terrible. It was the same thing she had felt burning endlessly within Celestia’s heart, except now it had become visceral. It was real. And though all that hate and jealousy, it was laughing. Laughing because it had found something it wished to destroy.

Across the path of destruction, Penumbra saw her. Despair began to creep into her soul, although she did not know why. She had never been trained to feel it, and what was left of it had been relentlessly beaten from her- -but some deep instinctive fear had taken root.

She was an alicorn, the most beautiful of her race: purest white, with a mane of fire and a body clad in red-hot enchanted gold. All that stood in her path was destroyed by her presence alone. Even as Penumbra watched, golems charged her- - only to be reduced to boiling slag as they neared her divine presence. The only pony who could withstand her presence was one who stood behind her, clad in strange silver.

Penumbra took a defensive stance, lighting her horn.

That response was enough. Daybreaker smiled, and the slightest tip of her horn ignited.

In an instant, Thirteen had tackled Penumbra to the ground, shielding her with her armor. At the same instant, Crozea and Emeth leapt forward, blocking the path of the ray with their bodies.

Penumbra was instantly blinded by the sudden burst of light, and even with Thirteen covering her she could still feel the radiation and heat from the spell. It was not like Celestia’s magic. It was not planned and thought out, devised in accordance with countless well-researched theories of unicorn magic. It was directed to the point it could barely even be called a spell at all. There was no design. It was pure energy, and pure destruction.

Being unable to see, Penumbra was not able to see Crozea’s armor tear away, or to watch Emeth as his entire body was vaporized.

Then it stopped. Penumbra bushed Thirteen off her, cursing herself for having allowed her life to be saved twice by the same pony. The back portion of Thirteen’s armor was burned and partially melted, but the blast had not broken through. The pony inside the armor was still alive, though very weak.

Penumbra looked up, not knowing what she would see but having strong, terrible suspicions about what she might find.

Crozea was still standing. Her armor had been burned and melted away, to the point where all that remained was either molten or charred fragments. Her body, though, was completely unharmed. Penumbra could not recall having ever seen Crozea in the nude, and she immediately understood what her father had found so appealing.

Emeth, meanwhile, had not survived the impact- -at least not in a comprehensible way. His body had been completely vaporized, but had left behind a kind of hovering, gray sphere that would occasionally spark and hiss. Penumbra had no idea what that component was, but for some reason it had been the only part of Emeth to survive.

“Emeth! No!” Penumbra reached out to grab the sphere, but Thirteen weakly grabbed one of her rear hooves, holding her back.

Suddenly she felt heat.

Daybreaker beheld the scene she had created, her eyes pausing only a moment on Emeth’s remains before quickly moving to Crozea.

“Well well,” she said. “An immortal. How many souls did you need to condemn to eternal agony to get that?”

“How many did you claim to do the same?”

Daybreaker’s face contorted into a hideous grin. “ALL OF THEM.”

Daybreaker suddenly turned her horn toward Penumbra. This time, substantially more than the tip ignited. As it did, though, an enormous metal claw grasped her torso.

Daybreaker gasped. “Who dares defile my sexy royal body?!”

Her body ignited with even more energy. Penumbra cried out as she was burned, and Crozea threw her back, getting her out of range of the heat.

The claw began to disintegrate- -and as it did, it simultaneously began to regenerate, reforming itself out of new materials. Penumbra traced it backward, to where its machinery became indeterminate gray liquid- -and to where that liquid poured from the orbit of a certain gray sphere.

Threads shot outward from the sphere, plumes of billions of tiny golems working in unison. They landed upon the shattered crystal buildings, the destroyed hulks of other golems- -and others came from a distance, having rapidly acquired the pieces of the very sky-ships that Daybreaker had destroyed not minutes earlier.

Daybreaker raised her horn, blasting through the machines that held her and immediately directing her energy on the sphere. She fired, and the force of her light was immediately caught in the sphere’s gravity and drawn inward toward it- -only for a torrent of undifferentiated protean machinery to burst outward.

Taken by surprise, Daybreaker jumped back. Her armored sister moved to defend, casting a shield- -only for Daybreaker to violently throw Nightmare Moon into the whirring blades and gears to momentarily distract it.

“Sister!” cried Nightmare Moon, being sucked in.

Daybreaker only laughed. As annoying as this was, at least watching her pointless non-white sister suffer was still funny.

She attacked the mechanical force, vaporizing parts of it- -only to produce a vapor whose molecules were rapidly reassembled into new machines. It advanced like a wave, churning around Daybreaker as she desperately tried to fight it- -until it finally reached her.

The nanogolems swarmed her, immediately pouring over her body, their tiny carbon bodies replicating faster than they could be burned up. They began assembling material around her, and as Daybreaker screamed and ranged she was coated and encased in crystals.

The machinery suddenly exploded from inside, torn apart from inside by blinding silver light. Nightmare Moon managed to claw her way out, her magical armor having protected her from the machines- -and the First Law having prevented Emeth from having shoved her directly into his core.

The machines tore away, rapidly reforming themselves into a being. What they generated was a heavy quadruped, a thing that was most certainly not a pony but clearly based not on a machine but on a living thing. It was the barest shadow of Emeth’s creators, and none alive knew what their name had been.

He grabbed the others and began to run.

“Wait!” cried Penumbra. “The princesses- -”

“We do not have much time,” replied Emeth, sounding oddly calm. “We need to retreat. Now, ideally.”

Behind them, Nightmare Moon considered giving chase- -but was distracted by finding her sister imprisoned in crystal. This made her heart ache, but she understood the advantage. If whatever they had sealed her in was this incredibly resistant to heat, there was a chance it could contain her. At least until a cure could be found.

The material was in fact a form of crystalline carbon. Its tolerance for heat was so great that even Daybreaker’s heat could not melt it.

And yet the crystal began to glow and disintegrate. Heat was only a byproduct. A byproduct of nuclear fusion.

The carbon exploded as Daybreaker’s magic consumed it. The fiery blast immediately consumed her sister, who was set alight.

Daybreaker did not notice. Her mind was only focused on one thing.

And she continued moving forward, undaunted.

Chapter 70: Retreat

The Equestrian forces advanced, charging into battle against the few that remained to defend the Empire. A horde of skeletons and the few golems that still survived stood in defiance. Yet among them there were living ponies who still fought on.

Magic fireballs echoed across the battlefield, fired from mages who had served under Sombra and defended him to the last- -although their number was few, and dwindling. Many had been captured. A much larger number had defected.

And then there were some mages that had never been given the chance to serve Sombra.

A force of Equestrian unicorns charged toward a diminutive earth-pony.

“Stand down in the name of Celestia! STAND DOWN!”

The earth-pony cried out and pelted them with seeds.

“Go away! For face my punishment!”

The guards just looked at each other, laughed, and advanced- -only to be suddenly attacked by long, white snakes bursting from the ground where the seeds had fallen.

“GAH!” cried one of them. “It’s no my nose! It’s on my NOSE!”

“It’s on my HORN!” cried a unicorn mare.

“It’s on MY HORN TOO!” cried an earth-pony stallion.

The earth-pony mage laughed. “Behold the power of my SNAKEROOT! Now, go forth!” she threw seeds that immediately burst into strange, wooden creatures: one set resembling manicured yellow cats and the other something like small timeberwolves. “Dandelions! Dogwood trees! ATTACK!”

The plant-monsters did as they were told, tackling ponies to the ground. Unicorns among them lit their horns, trying to fight back- -only to be grasped by the supple branches of a tree that had suddenly grown up behind them. They were picked up into the air and beaten relentlessly across their flanks by the branches.

“Behold the power of my PUMMELO!

The Equestrian ponies screamed in agony. “The puns! THEY BURN!!”

The earth-mage produced a set of large, red roots. “Sounds like you want me to give you...A BEETING!”

The soldiers screamed and wept.

A brick suddenly came flying and hit her in the face.

“WHY?!” she cried, collapsing and holding her nose.

“Because it’s STUPID!” cried a voice. It was from a unicorn in Equestrian armor, although he was fighting on the Crystal Empire’s side- -and had a mark near one ear that was a distinct symptom of having a breezie burrowing into one’s skull.

He was immediately overwhelmed by a furry pile of bat-ponies.

“GAH! HELP! I’m being turned on!”

A puma appeared, grabbing one of the batponies in her mouth and shaking him violently. She then spat him out and did her best to force back the group, even as they poked at her with various pointy objects.

The plant-mage countered by throwing a grenade packed with spores of a sensitive plant. On exposure, the bat-ponies were immediately afflicted by pacifism and began to cry, hugging the puma and apologizing, even as she slowly converted herself back into a bison.

“I think we’re winning!”

“Congratulations,” said one of the bat ponies. “Your parents are surely proud of you! You should feel like a winner!”

The breezie-possessed unicorn pushed him over. The bat-pony began to cry.

“For now,” he said, “Come on. We have to reunite with the yak forces.”

“But they smell so funny!”

The bison snorted. “They smell like handsome.”

Across the sky, something was suddenly fired into the air. It exploded, revealing itself to be a flare.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, but it sure was pretty. You could say it had some real fl- -”

“Say it and I will beet YOU.”

The earth-mage blinked. “That’s my biggest fantasy.”

The breezie-unicorn rolled his eyes. “That was a princess flare.”

“How can you tell?”

“It was in the conscription documentation!”

The earth-mare gasped. “Breezies can READ?!”

“Of course we can, you fat idiot- -we just can’t turn the pages on our own!”

“That’s ADORABLE!”

“No it is not! I am evil!”

Their pointless argument was interrupted violently as a lumbering hulk of metal pushed its way into their territory. It was carrying a nude zebra in an advanced state of hypothermia, as well as a battered alicorn. Since the alicorn was neither Celestia nor Nightmare Moon, it was reasonable to assume that she was Penumbra.

The hulking behemoth carrying them began to drop parts and assumed a form closer to that of a pony. Several of the ponies present gasped, recognizing Emeth of the Dark Thirteen.

“Help her,” said Penumbra, dropping down while holding the zebra, who was now desperately shivering. “She’s too cold!”

“Let me do it.” Emeth picked up Crozea, and his body changed, his armor morphing as it grew around her. When he released her, he had constructed her a new suit of armor. A glowing reactor in its chest began to provide her heat.

“Have a cap,” said the breezie-unicorn, putting his own on her head.

“Th- -thank you for being so kind,” shivered the zebra, “and helping me out of this bind.”

“We need to get to the rear lines,” said Emeth. “Our enemy is currently in pursuit of the princess. We need to get her under the shield.”

Penumbra’s eyes widened. “I will NOT hide! Is my failure not enough of a stain on my reputation? Now you want me to be a coward- -”

“You have no mechanism to defeat Daybreaker. I believe I might. If that fails, your only option will be to consume energy from the Heart of Darkness directly.”

Penumbra froze. “Is that even possible?”

“I believe it may be our only option. Even if Gxurab’s procedure succeeds in restoring your father, I doubt he will be strong enough to defend the kingdom alone.”

“I know the way,” said the bison. She looked over her shoulder. “Our supply line has been cut off, and the way is no longer clear- -”

Penumbra pushed past her, charging her horn. “It’s not a problem. At least let me do this much.”

The mages rushed to complete their tasks on the rear line, desperately running between enormous pieces of equipment, setting up specialized machines and taking readings. They knew what to do, and they knew it exactly. These were not ordinary mages, after all: these were necromancers, the students of Necrophilo of Canterlot, and their training had been harsh.

Yet, as harsh as it had been, none of them had trained under conditions with intermittent nearby artillery strikes, or the occasional spell whizzing past their heads. They did their best, but they were shaking and terrified- -with their fear being absorbed directly by the Heart of Darkness on the other side of the great shield that each and every one of them wished they could hide under.

Suddenly, a pony burst through their lines. They had all seen the princess-flare and had expected to be receiving whatever was left of Penumbra, but instead a hulking form crossed their barrier lines. Her armor was forged from the crystalline bones of the deceased, and her visage caused the spilling of much fluid, even amongst trained necromancers.

Yet as she approached the armor dropped away from her, collapsing from the damage it had sustained. The pony that exited was unbroken and in a time long past might have been beautiful. Nekro, Six of Thirteen, stood before her pupils.

“Report,” she said. Though the students recoiled, her voice was not nearly as harsh as that of her predecessor. Although she was no longer alive, her words were soft and betrayed concern for the fear of those who served her. As if, by some strange means, she understood their fear of what she had already experienced.

One of the students walked forward and bowed.

“What is your name?”

“Student six hundred eighty-nine- -”

“No. Your NAME.”

The student blinked. “F- -Frosty Cream, mistress.”

“How unfortunate. Regardless, report. What is the word from the Citadel?”

Cream’s expression fell. “I don’t know.” He seemed about to cry. “We’ve lost telepathic contact. Something’s happened to Eternity!”

“And the crystal radios?”

“The Equestrians are jamming them! We can’t coordinate with the other units- -”

Nekro’s eyes narrowed. “They are not supposed to have that technology. I believe we have been betrayed.” She looked behind her at the sky, where she had seen in the great distance her daughter’s sign of distress. “And the golems?”

“The golem Asahel has gone rogue. He’s overseeing their evacuation. Whatever they use to communicate is still working, but they won’t help us, we’re like sitting ducks! The situation is hopeless!”

“Is it?” Nekro looked up to the vast system her students had assembled. Something enormous was concealed under a gigantic cloth tarp, and the mages were at work connecting their machines to it and preparing the calculations for their spells.

Nekro raised her hoof. A ghostly hyrax appeared above it. The student gasped, having never seen something like it in his life.

“What is- -”

“Crozea has dispatched me a familiar. The princess is retreating. Send word through the hardline cables to the Citadel. Once she is inside, we will make our stand.”

The soldier gulped. “Our...final stand?”

Nekro nodded solemnly. Then she spoke to the others. “I cannot force any of you to make this sacrifice. Once the spell is engaged, you are free to do as you please.”

“We can hide under the shield, then?”

Nekro shook her head. “No. Such is Sombra’s will. Not even I am permitted to pass the barrier. Only crystal ponies and the princess are permitted that luxury.”

The spirits of the students fell, but Nekro held her head high. She was the only one who had someone she loved waiting beneath the shield- -and she was prepared to fight all alone, should it be asked of her.

“They approach,” said the hyrax. The spell that formed it was growing weaker, and it was fading. That was a bad sign.

“Then begin the process,” ordered Nekro. “Prepare the machines! In the name of Sombra, we will STAND!”

The princess burst through, led on by soldiers that should have had no allegiance to the dark lord yet did. The shield loomed high above her, its glow strange in the red light of Daybreaker’s sun. In the distance, the Citadel could still be seen high on a hill. Though the Empire had been leveled, the Capital District still stood untouched and grand.

Penumbra held out hope that her father would use that to rebuild the Empire, that it could be reborn in the wreckage of Celestia’s war. A new and shining bastion of freedom and ultimate democracy, as the previous Empire had been but forged anew from the ashes of the old.

It was while thinking this uncharacteristically poetic thought that she began to list and nearly collapsed. Thirteen caught her, supporting her.

“You have expended too much energy,” said Emeth.

“My body regenerates...”

“Yes. It does. But not quickly enough.”

Penumbra was forced to put her weight onto Thirteen, and she looked out into the camp. Mages were swarming some kind of battle installation, rapidly adding the finishing components to whatever it was.

Across the way, Nekro was watching, her empty gray eyes staring without blinking. Penumbra shivered, knowing that the thing staring at her was not even remotely alive- -and yet overwhelmed by a feeling that they had met before.

Her attention then turned to a thin filly leaning against the machinery and doing nothing important whatsoever. Even at a distance and through her disguise, Penumbra could easily recognize her friend.

Chrysalis saw her and mouthed the words “OBESE FAILURE”, smiling through her pointy teeth. As harsh as it was, it made Penumbra feel slightly better, and she made an extremely rude gesture in return.

That was when she noticed a pony running hard from the direction of the shield, leaping over shell holes and around the rubble of buildings. Trailing behind her was a long cable leading back to the dome. As she drew nearer, Penumbra saw that she was a crystal pony- -and as she got even closer, Penumbra recognized her.

“Facet?!”

“Penumbra!” Facet was breathing hard as she came to a stop. She was wearing thin military armor emblazoned with the imperial signal, and wore a high collar to cover the evil mark inscribed around her neck.

“Facet!” Penumbra hugged her friend. “You shouldn’t be here! It’s not safe!”

“It’s my job, and I haven’t got caught yet.”

“Your job?”

Facet nodded. “I wasn’t allowed to join the other necromancers. This is the best I can do. Come on.”

“Come on? Where?”

“I was sent to retrieve you. Hold on.”

Penumbra did as she was told, and Facet tugged the cable she was attached to. It immediately became taught as she was yanked backward toward the shield, pulling Penumbra along with her.

Surprised, Penumbra looked back at the ponies behind her. Emeth supported Crozea, and both waved. As did Thirteen. Chrysalis watched, as did Nekro, who Penumbra barely knew. She could not help but wonder if she would ever see any of them again.

“Princess!” cried Facet. “Look!”

Penumbra did, seeing that she was pointing at something. In the distance, for a brief moment, she thought she saw Zither- -only for her heart to fall as she realized that it was not him at all, and in fact a mare. Leading her was a pony that Penumbra could not help but recognize.

Their eyes met, and Holder froze, realizing that he had been caught.

“Deserters!” gasped Facet. “My princess, we must report this!”

“No,” said Penumbra, allowing herself to be dragged out of their sight. “We will let them pass.”

“But princess, with Holder’s sword- -”

“This is their only chance. Win or lose, they will never have another.”

“Princess?”

“My decision is final.”

And it was. Penumbra’s heart had gone out to them, and to their love. It may have been the only good thing that had risen out of this horrific warscape- -and although Penumbra knew that Holder might be able to turn the battle, she knew that it would crush him. And that she would never forgive herself for doing something so terrible to one of her friends.

“We don’t need him. We will be enough. I promise this, Facet. And that’s a princess promise.”

Facet smiled. It was clear that she did not share Penumbra’s optimism.

Chapter 71: The Last Defence

Holder stood frozen, watching the princess retract. She stared back at him, and their eyes met. Then she quickly passed, going on her way toward the place that Holder and Piwancha were fleeing. And seeing her eyes, he understood.

“That’s the princess,” said Piwancha, ducking behind cover. “Should I follow her? If we’re seen- -”

“No. It’s okay. I think she knows.”

“How can you possibly be sure of that? If we’re caught- -”

“We won’t be caught. I promise.”

Piwancha frowned. “And how can you make that promise?”

Holder smiled weakly, even as his eyes were filled with desperation. He tapped the hilt of his sword.

“Because I won’t let them, Pi. I just won’t.”

Piwancha nodded. “We have to get going, then. Even without my horn I can sense a disturbance in the luminiferous ether. Something big is here. We have to hurry.”

Holder nodded. “Her name is Daybreaker, the embodiment of Red Order.”

Piwancha froze, and although she did not know why, she was afraid. She recalled the stories that had told to her when she had still been whole, as an innocent filly- -when the elders had told her why the Questlords must remain forever in hiding.

“How do you know that?”

“Because she never stop screaming. And sometimes I hear things through it.”

“What kind of things?”

Holder just smiled the saddest smile that Piwancha had ever seen. “Nothing important.”

They ran. All around them, the world was ending. The sky was red, lit by an enormous burning sun and a tiny, insignificant silver moon. The extreme heat was changing the climate, and the windigoes were neighing and fleeing. The flaming wreckage of damaged skyships and destroyed golems littered the abandoned streets. The whole world seemed to be on fire.

They stopped suddenly at a corner. The path was blocked by the crystal hull of a dead skyship. Golems littered the ground, broken and in various states of repair as their tiny brethren tracked down parts to attempt to fix what they could, not knowing that they no longer served any real purpose.

“Oh,” said Holder, his face falling. “That...that was where the Halite used to be...”

“Forget that. We need to get around it.”

Holder looked in both directions, wincing in pain as he did. “There are Equestrian forces that way, and the other one is a dead end.” He paused, closing his eyes. “It looks like we have to go through.”

“Through? It’s on fire! In case you have not noticed? I lack wings. I am an EARTH-PONY. Apparently.” She winced. “Ugh this is so unpleasant. I don’t know how you deal with it.”

“You get used to it,” said Holder. He chuckled slightly. “It’ll be okay. In a year, you won’t even notice.”

“If we make it a year. At this rate, I doubt we can make it more than an hour.”

“We’ll see.” Holder reached for the sword on his back, threading his hoof through the ring in the center of the handle.

Piwancha took several large steps back. She could not have known how heartbreaking this was to Holder, to see that she could be so very afraid of him. “No,” she said. It was more or less an order. “You can’t do that! If you use the Blade- -”

Holder smiled nervously. “I think I can control it. I think I can make her do what I tell her, instead of the other way around.”

“Have you ever been able to do that before?”

Holder and Pi’s eyes met. “No,” he said. “But you were never with me before. Will you trust me?”

Piwancha stared at him, before eventually rolling her eyes. “Yes. I give you my word as a knight.”

Holder smiled again. This time, it was somewhat sincere. Then he turned to the hull of the fallen ship and drew the Black Blade.

In an instant, it- -as well as every golem in the area, including the adorable small ones- -had been cleaved in twain. Piwancha had not even blinked, but still she watched as the shredded ship fell apart- -and her eyes fell to Holder, his hair ghostly white and his eyes deepest red.

He turned to her, and suddenly the Black Blade was at her throat. Piwancha did not flinch in the slightest, or attempt any form of defence.

“No!” cried Holder, grasping his sword-hoof with the other. “Pi, run! You have to RUN!”

“No,” she said, still unflinching. “I gave you my word that I would trust you. And I do. Either prove you are worthy of my trust, or finish this here and now.”

Holder glared at her, bearing his teeth and screaming as the Blade called to him, demanding to be fed on the bodies and souls of living ponies. Yet Piwancha still did not move, not in the slightest. She stared into Holder’s eyes, knowing- -and hoping- -that he was staring back at hers.

Holder’s hoof began to shake, and the sword along with it. With a roar of desperate effort, he managed to lift it away from Piwancha’s neck.

“N- -NO!” he screamed. “I won’t let you have her! I WON’T!”

For a brief moment, Piwancha thought that she could hear the sword speaking as it passed her ear. Its voice was terrible, although she could not understand the foul and unknowable language spoken by stones. She was infinitely glad of that, because even without understanding it the Blade’s screams were ghastly.

Holder managed to push the sword into its scabbard, and he immediately dropped. Piwancha grabbed him as he fell, supporting him.

“Pi...Pi...”

“I’m here, Holder. I’m here with you. You did great.”

Holder looked up. He was sweating badly and looked exceedingly ill. “No. No, I almost Cymoriled you. I can’t do that a second time. It took everything I had...and I can still hear her. She wants you. She wants you so badly...”

“You won’t have to do it a second time, then. I can fight for the both of us.”

Holder looked up at her, his eyes wide. “You would do that? For me?”

Pi smiled. “You have proven that I can trust you. Please allow me to do the same.”

The time had come. Nekro had prepared her final deference, built from the endless knowledge implanted in her brain. She was Necrophilo of Canterlot, and before him, she was Twilight Luciferian. With their limitless knowledge coursing through her undead mind, she had devised a single, final plan.

Her students began affixing the machines to her.

“Teacher,” said one, attaching a psyonic relay. “I need to lodge a protest.”

“Yes, Cream?”

“The theories- -they don’t line up. I’ve reviewed everything. We all have- -and this can’t work. It just can’t. All of your theories point to it being completely impossible!”

Nekro smiled. “Because Necrophilo was too careful about what he wrote down. He dismissed things he did not understand, although he retained the knowledge of them. I wonder what that knowledge could have been used for in the hooves of a virtuous pony. I suppose we shall never know. But at least I can use it for this.”

“It could tear you apart.”

“If it does, so be it.”

She stood up and turned to Chrysalis, who was standing and leaning against her machine.

“What?”

“Are you going to assist?”

“I’m an infiltrator. What do you expect me to do?”

“Infiltrate?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “There’s no time. But yeah. I’ve got a plan. I borrowed some of the fatty’s love. I have no idea how much, but I didn’t take that much. Barely skimmed the surface. I’ll see what I can do.”

“In other words, you are afraid to compete with me.”

Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’ll compete. But go ahead. You go first.”

Nekro smiled. She turned to her students.

“Begin the process,” she said.

They nodded, and in unison took their roles: some at the machines, and some standing in the magic circle drawn below using powdered crystal and magical yeast. They each turned their horns toward the artifact under the central tarp.

Nekro raised her horn and cast a mighty spell. The machines surrounding her drew upon it, linking her to the machines and to the spells of her students as their horns ignited and they each did their part. They worked together toward a common goal, united in desperation and in ancient and arcane knowledge.

The power draw was significant, and Nekro was forced to her knees. Despite the machines used to protect her, her body was still only a construct. It was straining and struggling to hold together; indeed, she was at risk of being torn apart.

Which was where she and Necrophilo differed. Necrophilo had never understood, because he was simply a derivative of Twilight Luciferian. Neither could have understood the true nature of the field, because neither of them had ever known love.

Nekro had. Deep within herself, Hope still recalled those she fought for. Inside the Citadel, Sombra was waiting for her, as was Penumbra. She would protect them in every way she could, regardless of the cost.

And she stood. The spell increased in intensity, and the magic symbols and unholy runes carved into the crystal floor began to glow. The tarp began to rise.

Suddenly all of the machines burst in plumes of sparks. Several unicorns screamed as they were blown backward by detonating vacuum tubes and sudden shorts across the more delicate segments of the magic circle.

“It can’t take the power!” cried Frosty Cream. “We have to abort!”

“NO.” Nekro raised her horn and stood firm. “I will not give up! I REFUSE!”

The circle ignited, throwing back the mages supporting it, and as it did, a massive skeletal claw rose from beneath the covering, tearing it back as the construct stood. Nekro burst out laughing as the mages stared in awe at their creation. Before them stood a creature forged of crystal and bone, manufactured from the skeleton of a dragon so valiantly retried by the Blue Knight in the name of his king, not realizing what role it was meant to play in the final defense of the Empire.

The dragon stood, its empty eye sockets ablaze with green fire. One of the mages, suddenly remembering her job, activated a secondary system that levered an appropriately-sized crystalline sword to the dragon’s grasp.

Nekro took command. She, like it, was a construct, a formerly living creature rebuilt with some artificial parts and preservatives to maintain the rest. The only difference was that she still had a brain, albeit a formaldehyde-fixed one, as well as a tiny fragment of a soul.

She ordered the construct to take the blade. It did, pulling it free from its housing. It stood, towering over the ruined city- -and then it began to walk.

As it lumbered off, the mages watched in silence. Then, slowly, they began to disperse. Nekro turned to Chrysalis. “Now do try to beat that.”

Chrysalis glared at her. “Just watch me.”

The changeling stepped out toward the city, quietly muttering bug swear words under her breath. She had not absorbed nearly enough love to do something THAT impressive. It had been only the tiniest fraction of the love inside Penumbra; Chrysalis had intended to allow her to keep the rest for the battle against the alicorns. Had she known that Penumbra would be such a failure, she would have taken all of it.

There was perhaps enough to become a bugbear, or maybe a giant crab.

“Think big thoughts,” she told herself, closing her eyes. “Think BIG thoughts...”

Her body began to spark with changeling magic. Then she morphed.

Suddenly, she was looking down across the city as if it were in miniature. She towered above it, having assumed the form of an eight-legged titan of old. Even Nekro’s undead dragon seemed to look up at her in surprise. It was not nearly surprised, however, as Chrysalis herself.

“HOOOOLLLLEEEEYYY CRRRRRAAAAPPPP!” She began to laugh manically. She looked down at Nekro, who looked like an ant from above. Then she looked out at the tiny battles below her. “Guess what, my little ponies? Somepony’s getting SQUISHED! And this time? It’s not ME!”

She then proceeded to wade through the city, on the hunt for some Equestrian ponies to step on.

A smile slowly crossed Twilight Luciferian’s face. He had been lounging on the side of a collapsed building, watching the events unfold. So far, everything had moved in his favor, although he was aware that time was running short. His own life was draining low, and Sombra’s rebirth was drawing near. Yet the prophecy still held true. The princess would be his queen, and he would rule the Crystal Empire. That fact could not ever be changed; it was invariable and absolute.

There was no other option than to allow Daybreaker to win the war. The slate would need to be wiped clean. Luciferian would rebuild from the ashes. He had resolved himself to this, and chosen his side.

And now, he had control of a dragon.

The dragon turned suddenly and smashed its sword into a formation of allied yaks. Yaks went flying everywhere, and the last of their support mages opened fire only to find that their spells were useless against the undead monstrosity before them.

Nekro cried out and dropped to her knees. Crozea ran to her side.

“Why are you attacking our own forces?! Those are our yaks, not the enemy horses!”

“He’s trying to take control,” groaned Necro. She gritted her teeth and stood. “I- -I can’t let him! I have his soul, but I am not him! I AM ME!”

She managed to take control of the dragon construct, but not to actively make it attack. She had been trapped in a mortal struggle between her undead mind and Luciferian’s soul fragment. In the chaos, the Equestrian forces opened fire. Spells rang out from the occupied sections of the Empire, and Pegasi burst forth from their newly established landing zones- -only to be knocked from the air by one of eight monstrous hooves.

The mages opened fire on Chrysalis, but they were insignificant at her size. She stomped on the center of their formation, crushing them into the ground and sending the rest flying.

“HA! Stupid ponies! That’ll teach you to make health potions out of our larval extract! Who’s the bug now? WHO’S THE BUG?!”

She then trampled an entire formation of earth-ponies, only to barely manage to dodge a sudden attack from the dragon at her side.

“HEY! Nekro, what are you- -”

The sword stroke had been a distraction. A sudden ray of pink magic shot forth from an empty region of the city, striking Chrysalis’s flank with almost enough force to knock her over. She let out a booming squeak of anger and pain, and with her flank still smoking she looked downward at where the attack had come from. Although everything looked tiny in her titan form, her eyes immediately picked up on the figure standing atop a broken building. As sickly as he was, there was no mistaking him, or the crystals in slow orbit around his body.

“Luciferian,” growled Chrysalis. She reared on her four hind legs and raised the front four. “You freak! I’ve been wanting to do this for a long, long time!”

She brought her hooves down, and Luciferian’s crystals changed position, forming the vertices of a cubic shield. Chrysalis stamped him to the point where the entire region was driven to the ground as rubble. But even as she did, she cried out in pain as the shield spell shocked her.

She pulled her hooves back to find Luciferian’s spell fully intact with him standing in the center, smiling.

“You’re interfering, Chrysalis,” he said. “And I can’t allow that.”

His crystals retracted, circling and forming a new spell. A portal opened. From it, a thin, flesh-colored claw reached out. As it did, its surface bubbled and erupted with eyes, all of them suddenly focusing on Chrysalis. They narrowed and tore themselves open, revealing plumes of tentacle-riddled mouths. The claw drove pulled forward, dragging a sea of morphing, changing flesh behind it. More claws and tentacles came, and more appendages that did not even have legitimate names.

The proteus pulled itself forward in a frenzy, rushing outward from the portal in a single manic wave, drawn immediately toward the scent of its natural prey. Luciferian could not help but laugh. This was not even a natural-born proteus, and yet it was still drawn by the same set of instincts. He liked to imagine that it was out of desperation, that the mage it had once been wished so desperately to change back into what he once had been. Of course, that was impossible. Luciferian had been very careful to make sure that he was the last and only member of House Twilight that there ever would be.

The living flesh tore across the kingdom, gaining mass and size as it pulled in more material. It had been starved for its entire life, trapped in the Arena stables and endlessly experimented upon- -but now it was free to do as it pleased. And what it wanted more than anything was to EAT.

Chrysalis took a step back, horrified by the hideous thing crawling toward her. It immediately reached out, spewing elastic psuedopods onto one of her hooves. Then it pulled itself against her. She cried out as it started to chew.

“No you DON’T!” she cried, slamming her hoof into the ground. With a horrible squishing sound, the proteus splattered- -only for the pieces to open their violet eyes and stare up at her, confused as to why she was hurting it. Then it began to reassemble.

She struck it again. The extreme overdose of love she had inadvertently absorbed had rendered her far stronger and denser than a normal transformation would allow. So she leapt on the proteus, beating it relentlessly.

It squished beneath her hooves, even as it was trying to bite and attack her. It had begun to scream things that were almost words, modulated through various indescribable vocal organs. Chrysalis hated the sound- -but more than that, hated how afraid it made her. She was not some ordinary changeling drone, hiding in fear of the next attack by some beast, whether it be a proteus, maulwurf, or marauding ponies. She was a QUEEN, and she would not allow some monster summoned by a feeble pony wizard to defeat her. Not when there was a job to do, and not when she was so close to outdoing the pony she had come to consider as her best friend.

The proteus suddenly shifted, forming a pair of muscular arms. It grabbed two of Chrysalis’s hooves, and then another two. It lifted her and threw her down, immediately leveling a substantial section of the Equestrian forward lines. It generated more limbs and tentacles, as well as claws and endless patterns of mouths. Chrysalis tried to punch it, but she had been pinned on her back. It immediately covered her, swarming across her flesh and biting into her, attempting desperately to take the power that allowed her to control her shapeshifting. In seconds it had covered her, and began to harden as it developed a protective carapace so that it could digest its meal in peace.

It continued to retract- -but then suddenly began to glow from within. Its surface began to crack, and the proteus wept as it broke apart, ignited from within by devastating magic. Suddenly it broke apart completely and a beam of green energy lit the sky. Chrysalis rose from the center, her horn turned to the sky and held aloft in victory. As the proteus was burned away to ash, she took one last look over the kingdom and relished her success. Then she began to change.

Penumbra’s love had been enough to save her life, but she had not taken enough to maintain her form for long. Her morph collapsed, and she became her default, true self: a little changeling filly, now tired and devoid of love.

She fell, barely conscious, desperately trying to control her descent with her wings. The best she could do was to buzz and spiral downward until she struck the melting snow below, bounced one, and lay still.

Chrysalis tried to stand, but she was too weak. There was virtually no love in the Crystal Empire for her to feed on.

She heard hoofsteps. She tried to stand again, but to no avail. Then she heard the sound of wings as Pegasi surrounded her. A trio of Equestrian unicorns joined them, and Chrysalis was surrounded.

“It’s a changeling,” said one, in awe. “I didn’t even think they were real!”

“Look how ugly it is! Like a big bug!”

Chrysalis shakily made a rude gesture. “I will suck the love from your fathers...” she moaned.

“Yeah,” said one of the unicorns, stepping forward. “We should probably capture it.”

“We should probably give it a beating, just in case.”

The unicorn smiled, thinking that a beating was probably a good idea- -and was suddenly electrocuted from behind with a surge of green magic.

The others turned, confused, and one of the Pegasi performed an elegant backflip, driving her hoof into the chin of another while the unicorn struck out again at another. In seconds, all the Equestrian soldiers had been rendered unconscious save for two.

The pair of them approached Chrysalis carefully. One was a pale unicorn, and the other a white Pegasus- -but as Chrysalis watched, their bodies flashed with green energy and the pair revealed their true forms.

They were changelings, their bodies a shade of dusky red and marked with pale yellow stripes. The colors of Queen Ootheca.

Chrysalis groaned. “Great,” she said. “I knew this was a terrible idea. Stupid fat princess...”

The changelings stopped. Then they bowed, and their bodies changed again. Although they remained changelings, they became smaller and thinner. Their red-brown chitin became black, and their eyes and wings became pale turquoise. Even their limbs adopted holes, one of Chrysalis’s characteristic traits.

“Wait, what?”

“Praise the Queen,” they said in unison. One of them looked over her shoulder. “We have to hurry, my queen! Before the others gather!”

Chrysalis’s eyes grew wide. “You...you’re loyal? To ME?”

“Of course, my queen. Nor are we the only ones. Ootheca has grown weak and placid.”

“But your deeds have proven yourself to be far stronger! You are the only worthy Queen!”

Chrysalis tried to stand. “I’m not done yet- -”

“My Queen!” One of the changelings grabbed her, steadying her as she stood. “You have expended too much energy! Your body is already undergoing the change!”

Chrysalis gasped. “No, no not now! I can’t do it now!” She groaned, grabbing her torso. The changelings were right. She could feel it. Her organs were already beginning to liquefy.

“You are progressing to the final instar! You must come with us! We and the others can protect you during the molt!”

“But the Empire...”

“There’s nothing left you can do for it! It has already fallen. But the changelings still have a chance to survive, so long as you do.”

“Please, my Queen! Ootheca’s forces make up a substantial part of the Equestrian military, we do not have much time!”

“And if I ordered you to stay? To leave me here? Or to fight beside me?”

The changelings looked at each other, then at Chrysalis. “You are the Queen. We would obey. But there is no chance of victory. You would never rule, and our kingdom would fall.”

Chrysalis stared at them, and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

More Pegasi descended, surrounding the location where the giant eight-legged monster had last been seen. They drew their spears and immediately entered the area, prepared for a fight.

They found what remained of the advanced guard. Several had already been taken out and were lying on the ground, splayed and unconscious. Only three remained: a female Pegasus from the air squadron, and two unicorns. One of them was badly injured and supported by the other two.

“What happened here?”

“We were ambushed! They went to the east!”

“She’s hurt bad,” said the Pegasus supporting the injured unicorn’s left side. “We need to get her back to the field hospital ASAP.”

“Of course!” The Pegasus commander turned to his subordinates and raised his spear. “You heard them! To the east, on the double!”

The Pegasi guards moved quickly past the trio of ponies. None of them noticed as the injured mare in the center took one last backward look at the Crystal Citadel- -or saw the tears in her eyes as she turned away.

Chapter 72: The Holder of the Blade

The shots of a crystal autocannon rang out, and ponies cried out in surprise as they were overwhelmed with the results of the pre-packaged, compressed spells. Piwancha immediately ducked back under cover as the mages among them fired back, their beams of magic cutting flecks free from the fallen wall of crystal that she and Holder were hiding behind.

“By Proletius’s beard,” she groaned, ejecting one of the crystal cartridges from Zither’s armor and replacing the next. “Why couldn’t he just build it to fire normal bullets?”

“What are bullets?” asked Holder, with a devastating depilation spell zipping just past his left ear.

“Trust me, you would rather not know.” Piwancha reengaged the system. While as a knight she was of course trained in the use of every manner of heavy weapon, she would have greatly preferred a sword- -of course, with no horn, there was no way to hold it. So autocannons it was, as primitive as they were.

She sat up, opening fire on the Equestrian forces only for spells to come whizzing at her from behind. Several struck her in the back, rebounding off her borrowed armor.

“We’re surrounded! Time for plan B!”

“We have a plan B?”

“Yes! Hold on!”

Holder did as he was told, grabbing onto Piwancha’s heavy power armor. He then squealed prolifically as she charged headlong into battle.

Taken by surprise, the Equestrians had no idea what to do. The first among them was the least fortunate, receiving a power-armored hoof square to the snoot. The two behind him took autocannon spells to their respective rumps. More spells came flying, and Piwancha shielded herself with her front hooves. The spells penetrated her armor, cutting through the front legs. It would have been crippling if she actually had legs beneath the armor.

Something thudded in the distance. Piwancha saw that it was support from professional mages; an artillery strike was inbound. She rolled to the side, but was hit by the blast. Holder was knocked free.

“Holder!”

Holder rolled and bounced a few times before coming to a stop. He stood, rubbing his head, looking somewhat dazed- -just as a Pegasus swooped down, accelerating hard for an aerial strike.

“LOOK OUT!”

The Pegasus punched Holder square in the face- -and immediately cried out in pain as his own wrist was dislocated. Holder was not even pushed back, but the Pegasus was stopped in his tracks.

“GAH!” he cried, holding up his now floppy damaged wrist. “What in Celestia’s name are you made of, rocks?!”

“Well, you are what you eat, maybe?”

Holder then punched the Pegasus in the chest. He was sent flying backward with such force that he bowled over an entire group of earth pony guards.

“Oops. Sorry!”

The ground suddenly began to rumble. Piwancha and Holder looked at each other.

“That wasn’t me,” said Holder. “At least, I don’t think it was.”

A dark shadow passed over them. Both slowly looked up and found themselves staring into the empty eye-sockets of an enormous dragon construct.

“EEP!” cried Holder, falling to the ground. “DO NOT WANT!”

Piwancha turned to it, leaving herself open to Equestrian attack but not caring. The Equestrians were fleeing in terror, leaving her to devote her full attention toward firing on the construct. Her tiny crystal autocannon did precious little against such a beast, though, and with neither her sword nor her magic she had no hope of victory.

“Holder! You have to run! I’ll hold it off!”

Holder looked up. “But- -I can’t leave you!”

The constructs skeletal claw tore across the open battlefield. Piwancha managed to dodge, but her power armor was far too heavy for the appropriate acrobatics. It was not designed for her combat style at all, and she was at a serious disadvantage in just about every possible way.

“One of us has to make it out of here! GO!” She turned to him as she loaded her last ammunition crystal. “Build your rock farm. Be happy.”

She screamed a mighty battlecry and charged the dragon, leaving Holder all alone.

Except that the dragon had no concern for an unhorned knight. She was not its target. Her presence had no potential impact on the direction of the battle or the fulfillment of Luciferian’s prophecy. Holder, however, did.

There were precious few instruments in the mortal world capable of defeating a god. The Black Blade was one of them- -but that power came at a cost. Without a host, it was only a piece of harmless rock. So by Luciferian’s logic, the host must be terminated to assure Daybreaker’s victory.

The dragon raised its sword, a diamond blade twice the height of a building. Piwancha saw this, but also saw that its target was not her. She swore under her breath, as this foul beast was ruing her chance at noble sacrifice.

Then she saw that it was aiming for Holder, and all thoughts about nobility and sacrifice evaporated. As hard as he was, he was still a mortal pony, and the best he could hope to do was cower and quiver- -or to defend himself and be lost forever.

She ran to him, just as the sword began to come down, drawing on the full power of her ancient ancestor’s power-armor. The whole world seemed to slow, and as she reached him, she threw him out of the way, intending to take the blow herself.

The blade fell- -and stopped.

Piwancha had fallen to the ground. She looked up, and saw Holder standing above her, his terrible red eyes staring down on her with a look of absolute hatred- -and a profound, uncontrollable hunger. He had fallen to one knee, and the dragon’s crystal sword had come to a halt against the side of the gleaming Black Blade, braced by both of Holder’s front hooves.

“Holder, no...”

“Why?” asked a voice. Although it was spoken from Holder’s mouth, it was not his. Piwancha shuddered at its sound. “Why do you show this one kindness, meat? He is capable of only endless destruction, across all eternity and to the end of time itself. What is it you have to gain?”

“I...I love him.”

“And he, you. Which is why devouring your soul will please me so greatly. His pain amuses me, if only slightly.” Holder- -or the thing which now ruled him- -then turned its attention to the dragon. With barely any effort, he shifted his sword, parrying the blade. It plunged deep into the ground beside them. “But this...this THING. It has no soul, and that which binds it to this realm reeks of the Holy Mother. Which means it has no value.”

Holder tilted to one side, slicing the dragon’s diamond blade in half as it tried to pull it back out of the ground. It stumbled backward, and Holder raised the Black Blade, preparing for a lethal strike. Before he could attack, though, a radiant beam of divine light struck the dragon’s chest, vaporizing directly through it and igniting the remainder of its crystal and bone to ash.

Piwancha lifted her head and looked behind them. She could feel the hope draining from her as she saw the source of the beam. There, slowly marching behind them, was a burning white goddess. Daybreaker had arrived.

Her scorched eyes scanned the scene, monumentally pausing on Piwancha, immediately knowing her as one of the primal enemies of ultimate Harmony. One of the few who remained after the last purge.

But when her eyes fell upon Holder, they narrowed, because she recognized the weapon he bore- -or the weapon that bore him.

“More soulless creatures,” growled Holder, slowly marching toward Daybreaker with absolute disregard for the danger. “So utterly pointless. I crave PONIES. Not foul reproductions.”

“Then you are free to leave, heretic.” Daybreaker lowered her horn and leveled a blast directly at Holder. Holder responded, his blade moving faster than Daybreaker’s beam could travel. It struck the hardened obsidian edge of the Black Blade and was reflected infinity within it. Holder was pushed back, but his hooves dug into the ground. With his extreme earth-pony strength amplified by the Black Blade, he held his ground, continually absorbing Daybreaker’s power as it was produced.

When Daybreaker finally paused, the Black Blade had been heated somewhat but rapidly cooled to its normal state. It- -and the host attached to it- -were undamaged.

A strange expression crossed Daybreaker’s face. She had encountered something unexpected, and was unsure what to do.

“My power is drawn from the sun,” she growled. “How dare you defy it?”

Holder smiled a vicious smile that did not belong to him. “I existed before all the stars of your universe. And I will exist long after each and every one of them has gone dark. I bring my master the gift of eternity. The life of a star is but a dim flash compared to ours.”

By this time, more of the Equestrian forces had begun to gather, bolstered by the presence of their twin leaders. The guards had fully surrounded Holder and Piwancha, and spears and horns were pointed at them from every side.

Nightmare Moon, clad in silver, stepped past her sister.

“This does not need to end in violence,” she said. “Lay down your blade, and surrender. As Princess of the Night, I grant you one chance at leniency, but only if you comply NOW.”

“Superseding me, little sister?” growled Daybreaker.

“I gave you a chance to try it your way. We saw how well that worked.”

The ponies began to close in. Holder’s eyes immediately shifted from one to the other, not out of nervousness but clearly out of hunger. He had been given so many choices.

“Drop your weapon!” ordered one of the unicorns.

“Drop your weapon, or we’ll open fire! Please don’t make us do that!”

Holder looked over his shoulder. “Pi...” he said. This time he spoke in his own voice. “You have to...go...I can’t control it. You still have a chance….”

“No,” she said, standing and opening her armor’s autocannon. She stood with him, even as the Equestrian forces closed in. “I won’t leave!”

“But they’ll hurt you! I can survive, but you- -”

“Do not defy me, earth-pony! I have made my decision! I will not leave you! Either we surrender together, or we fight together!”

She saw the panic in Holder’s eyes, and saw his breathing accelerate.

Holder raised the sword. Even Daybreaker took a step back, not sure what was about to happen. Piwancha closed her eyes, preparing for her final battle. It seemed she would meet a noble end after all.

Then Holder brought the Blade down, stabbing its tip deep into the crystal ground.

“What are you doing?!” he cried, speaking in the high voice of the Blade.

“I’m not- -listening to you- -ANYMORE!” He grasped the pommel of the sword and began to pull it to one side. “I don’t want to hurt ponies! I want to live MY OWN LIFE!”

“Without my power, you are nothing! NOTHING! Without me, there is only PAIN! You will be ALONE! ALONE FOREVER WITHOUT ME!”

“I- -don’t- -CARE!”

Holder roared as his entire body strained against the Black Blade, summoning his full strength against it. The Blade began to bend as if it were steel instead of glass. Then, in a terrible instant, the whole of the Empire fell silent. The only thing that could be heard was the sound of shattering obsidian.

The circle of Equestrian forces was immediately thrown back by the devastating plume of black chaos released from the blade as its own wielder snapped it. Then it escaped, pouring back to whatever foul realm it had been drawn from. Holder stood for a moment, and he looked over his shoulder at Piwancha. A smile crossed his face as he collapsed, unconscious.

“Holder!”

Piwancha activated the eject from her armor. It hissed as it opened and she dropped to the ground, having momentarally forgotten that she lacked front legs. Ignoring this, she crawled and wriggled to him. For a moment she was terrified- -but then she saw that he was still breathing. The Blade lay before him, its straight and perfect obsidian form shattered into silent fragments. Holder was finally free.

And then a glow was cast upon them. Piwancha looked up and saw the face of Daybreaker. Daybreaker looked down at them and charged her horn. Piwancha pressed herself against Holder, staring up at the solar goddess defiantly. Perhaps it was all over, but they would at least meet their end together.

Daybreaker saw this, and paused. Then the glow of her horn faded.

“Come, baby sister,” she said. “Time runs short. I do not have time to waste on a pointless earth-pony and a legless, hornless mare. They are not even worth the use of my magic. Guards! See to them, do as you see fit. I do not care.”

And with that, she stepped over them. Nightmare Moon followed, but paused. She stared down at them through her quicksilver mask.

“Heroism is not quickly forgotten,” she said. “Thank you.”

Nightmare Moon passed, and the guards converged. Piwancha was fully expecting a beating, but none came. Several medics arrived, immediately checking Holder over. He stirred, and looked up. Piwancha, still partly legless, was laying beside him.

“Did...did we make it?”

Piwancha smiled. “I think we did.”

Holder smiled too, and it seemed to be the first real smile he had produced in centuries. He reached out a shaking hoof and hugged her. For them, the battle was over, and their fate had been decided.

Past them, Nightmare Moon approached her sister. “You spared them,” she said.

“Why?” snapped Daybreaker. “Are you going to question my decision?”

“Why?”

Daybreaker looked down at her sister, sneering. “I already told you.”

Chapter 73: The Mission

From the distance, Nekro watched her construct fall. As it did, she collapsed.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I couldn’t stop him.”

“Stop who?” asked Crozea. “And what was he to do?”

“Luciferian. Luciferian created me...I can’t resist him.” Her foggy eyes met Crozea’s. “But for a moment, I could see into his mind. My piece of it is insulated, but the rest is rotting. He’s become obsessed with the princess. He will stop at nothing to have her. Please, we have to protect her!”

“If you believe you have done your best, then allow us to handle the rest.”

Nekro smiled, glad that in her current state she still had friends.

“She is behind the shield dome,” said Emeth, walking up beside them and staring out at the distance to where the remains of the dragon construct were still smoldering. “Our first and greatest threat is Daybreaker. It is not likely that Luciferian has the capacity to break the shield, or he would have done it already.”

“What can we do?”

“My plan has finished being formulated. It actually did some time ago, but I was hesitant to use it.”

“If it offers even a little time to buy, we can at least do our best to try.”

Emeth looked at Crozea, his mechanical pupils narrowing. “You will do nothing. There is nothing you can do. This task falls to me.”

Nekro stood, being partially supported by Crozea. “What do you mean?”

“My heart is a synthetic neutron star. It was a failed attempt to recreate the Astral Hammer. If I detonate it in proximity to Daybreaker, there is a chance that our combined power will result in full intrinsic field subtraction.”

“And if that is something you choose to do, what in the end will become of you?”

“I will cease to exist. As will Daybreaker. Probably. But the statistics are long and boring, so I will not bother to demonstrate them.”

“We cannot allow you to do that,” said Nekro. “Emeth, death is not something to be taken lightly- -”

“I am only a machine. I cannot be killed. Nor can any of you stop me. I have made my decision. I think this might be what I was created before.” He started walking. “Perhaps this will redeem me for having destroyed the race that created me. If a machine even requires redemption.”

He looked up and suddenly stopped. Thirteen was standing in his way.

“As I have already stated, Thirteen. There is nothing you can do to stop- -”

Thirteen flashed forward, immediately flipping over Emeth and slashing through his forehead plate with her magic, ablating the first letter of his name. Emeth staggered forward.

“Shutdown engaged,” he said, taking one more step before his body completely disintegrated, the inert metal parts falling away and his neutron star core instantly and anticlimactically compressing itself into oblivion.

Crozea stood, backing away. “Thirteen, what have you- -”

Thirteen leveled her horn at Crozea and fired. Crozea vanished in a plume of light, having been teleported to the other side of the planet.

A beam of green magic nearly struck her, but Thirteen rolled to one side, barely avoiding it.”

“Traitor!” screamed Nekro. “You have betrayed us!”

Thirteen teleported suddenly to a position behind Nekro, and she summoned a spell. Nekro tried to raise a shield, but the blast aced around it, overwhelming her in an instant.

Somewhere across the Crystal Empire, Twilight Luciferian screamed in agony as a part of his soul was permanently severed.

Nekro dropped to the ground, her green eyes wide as she was overwhelmed with a fit of coughing. Formaldehyde spewed from her mouth as she gasped for air. Something was terribly wrong. She felt profoundly and terribly cold, and something was thundering in her ears. Something pulsing- -or beating.

“What have- -what have you done to me?!” she cried, clawing her way forward through the snow. She put one hoof over her chest and she gasped, realizing what the sound was. “My...my heart...” She looked up at Thirteen. “But that spell- -it doesn’t exist!”

“Not yet, no.”

Nekro collapsed into convulsions, her body badly afflicted by resurrection sickness as she lay in the snow, alone and alive. Thirteen turned away from her, tracing the magical vectors that ran through the kingdom. Luciferian had become a threat to her mission. Therefore, the time had come to eliminate him.

Chapter 74: Below the Dome, and Outside

The area encircled by the Citadel’s shield was large. Arguably, the space so circumscribed was large enough to be considered a nation-state of its own. Indeed, it had once been, long before Sombra had formed it into the shining counterpoint of his Empire. Likewise, even before the war, it had been the only place not to begin to succumb to the slow decay that had afflicted many of the farther districts of the Crystal Empire as the energy of the Heart of Darkness waned.

Now, it stood as the last bastion of the Crystal Empire, the only region not fully overwhelmed by Equestrian forces. Few if any troops remained beyond the shield, and none of the remaining Dark Thirteen stood in combat. For now, the last of the Empire could only rely on power of the Citadel, and of the Heart of Darkness itself.

With the thralls withdrawn, nearly every crystal pony in the Empire had been recalled to the space beneath the unbreakable dome. Almost by instinct, though, they had begun to congregate at the very center of the large space offered to them, toward the Citadel itself.

When Penumbra finally arrived at the base of her home and former prison, she found herself without words.

She understood war in that it had been programmed into her from birth. The thought had never fully occurred to her that she was different than regular ponies. To her, the thralls had always seemed to be nothing more than lurking things in the distance, silent servants that were useful but little more. Now she understood that they were more than that. They were ponies.

Unlike Penumbra, crystal ponies did not heal the instant they were injured. They were neither immortal alicorns nor the spawn of dark unicorns. Before her, at the very center of the kingdom, lay the injured. They were bruised, battered, and broken. Some showed the marks of magical injury, either from the enemy or from their own nation’s lasers, while others were afflicted with outright curses. There were broken bones, sprained joints, an occasional incidence here and there of the poke- -and all of them were in pain.

“What...what is this?” asked Penumbra, wishing that she could put her hooves over her ears to block out the pitiful, quiet crying of the injured- -or to run back to the battle where she did not have to think about its costs.

“It’s the best we can do,” said Facet. She was no longer connected to a winch, but she still wore a large hook on the back of her armor. “I volunteered for retrieval. The rest, well...I couldn’t do it. I just...I couldn’t.”

Penumbra looked up and saw ponies running between the injured, using what supplies they had managed to find in the castle to form bandages and splints. None of them were doctors- -crystal ponies were forbidden from even learning to read, let alone knowing medicine- -but they had come to serve as nurses regardless.

Then, across the makeshift hospital, Penumbra spied perhaps the only pony other than her who was not a crystal pony. She immediately found herself running through the rows. As she did, she was completely and fully aware of the ponies that cried out and fled her presence. Each and every one of them was afraid of her, now more than ever. Even in her battered armor, even bearing the black standard of the Crystal Empire, even after extended combat with the very leaders of the enemy armies, she still looked oh so much like Daybreaker.

“Burnt? Burnt!”

Burnt turned her head, and a sad smile crossed her face. She was dressed in an exceedingly small nurses costume, and seemed to show just the barest sign of being exceedingly, overwhelmingly tired.

“Princess!” she said, running to Penumbra and wrapping her in a crushing hug. “Oh! It’s YOU! Probably!” She gasped and jumped back. “Unless Celestia is smaller than I thought.” She leaned forward and whispered. “I heard she has a biiiiiig butt. Unless you are her. Then your butt looks great, please don’t immolate me.”

“Burnt, it’s me.”

Burnt smiled. “Oh. I thought so. You came just in time.” She gestured toward her various patients.

“I didn’t know you knew medicine.”

“I don’t! All I know how to do is give really, REALLY good hugs!” She picked up one of her patients and hugged him hard. “But hugs don’t heal broken bones! No matter how hard- -I- -TRY!”

A crack came from the back of the crystal pony, and his eyes widened. “My fragile spine...”

“Oops. Sorry.”

“No. No, it was a good hug...ehhhhh….”

A crystal pony with a bandage over one eye sat up. “Me next?”

“Oh, sure!” Burnt put down the now somewhat floppy pony she was hugging previously and moved onto the next one. All of the other ponies in the area, no matter how injured, were sitting up expectantly, waiting to be pressed against a soft, chocolate/coffee-scented unicorn. Penumbra smiled, because in all the chaos it was nice to see that at least some of the crystal ponies were not softly and pitifully crying.

“The stallions really like it,” said Burnt, hugging her patient. “And that one really big mare.”

“Where are the other consorts?”

Burnt’s expression fell and she set her patient down. “You didn’t hear?”

“No. What happened?”

Burnt looked down at the ground. “Anypony with magic was sent to fight. All the other girls had to go. I can’t, because...well...” She pointed to the dimeritium ring on her horn. “And they...they’re not coming back.”

Penumbra gasped, putting her hooves over her mouth. “Burnt...”

Facet had caught up with Penumbra. “We heard it over the crystal radio, before it went out. We don’t know what happened to all of them, but most were captured.”

“They took Freeflight, Penumbra.” Tears were welling in Burnt’s eyes. “What was Freeflight supposed to do out there? He’s just a little guy, and he can’t even fly.”

“I don’t know.” It was all Penumbra could say.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Facet, producing one of her carved crystals and examining it closely. “What’s done is done. We can’t change the past.”

“No,” said Penumbra, wondering if that was really even true. “We can’t. So we have to do what we can for now. We have to put our faith in Sombra.”

“I’d really rather not,” said Facet, darkly.

Penumbra looked out at the wounded. “Yeah. I think I understand why. But can you think of a better option?”

“We can help them,” said Burnt.

Penumbra looked at her, confused for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes,” she said, ejecting several of the least functional components of her armor. “I was programmed with some restoration spells. I think I can help.”

She lowered part of the midsection of her armor, revealing her wings. She then approached one of the injured, who suddenly appeared terrified.

“N- -NO! Stay away with me! Please! I can still stand! It isn’t even that bad, it’s not even broken, I promise! I can still fight! Don’t- -don’t do it! I HAVE A FAMILY HAVE MERCY!”

Penumbra’s eyes widened and she took a step back. “Wh...what did you think I was going to do?”

Burnt and Facet looked at each other. From the expressions on their faces, they both knew, but would not say.

Facet put her hoof on Penumbra’s shoulder. “Come on. Maybe we should guard the perimeter?”

Penumbra looked at the terrified pony cowering before her, and the others staring at her, each with their eyes wide and afraid like his.

“Of course,” she said, lowering her head. “That is a good idea.”

Although the explosions were distant, they were still concerning. From his perch atop a particularly angular piece of rubble, Lacy Pants watched, mentally charting their location. He had seen the signs, and his concern grew. The beams of light, the strange sun: they were signs that heralded the true form of the White Queen. Her presence was indeed a dark omen.

“Ugggggggghhhhhhh,” moaned Baron Blueblood below. He was lounging in a chair while being fanned by several earth-pony servants. “Why is it so hooooot?”

“An hour ago, you claimed it was too cold. You whined that we needed to snuggle together to conserve warmth.”

Blueblood blushed blue. Several yards from him, Rancine De’Lis laughed quietly.

“I did NOT!” he bellowed, nearly falling out of his chair. “That is foulest SLANDER!”

“Perhaps,” said Rancine, “you would not be so warm if you shaved that ridiculous beard?”

“Ridiculous!? How dare you! My beard makes me look MANLY!” He stood suddenly, nearly falling over in the process. “And what about YOU, then? Do you not even realize how ugly you are?”

Rancine’s eyes narrowed, and Blueblood took a step back.

“I am the epitome of femininity.”

“You are THIN. Nopony wants a thin mare! A proper mare ought to be plump! Plump plump plump! The fatter the better! Thin will NEVER be attractive!”

“Oui, gros comme votre mère obèse.”

“And stop speaking that stupid made-up language! It does not make you look smart!”

“Arrête de tourmenter le fou,” sighed Lacy.

Rancine shrugged. “Quoi? Ça m'excite. Être une jument est un travail libidineux.”

Blueblood covered his ears. Then, in a bid to distract himself, he tugged on a rope at the side of his chair. At its far end, a pony was dragged toward him. An exceedingly effeminate Pegasus.

“You there, bird-horse! Distract me from these idiots!”

The Pegasus glared at him, but did not speak.

“Come on! Up-up! Fly around a bit! Entertain your new owner!”

“I cannot fly. My wings have been crippled.”

Blueblood looked disgusted. “Then what good are you?!” He promptly punched the Pegasus in the face- -although, of course, he was a Blueblood, so his blow was roughly equivalent to a soft caress from a three-day-old foal.

“At least I can try to breed it,” he muttered. “Even though I’d rather have a zebra...”

“It’s a gelding, you sot. And Celestia knows why you would vant MORE, they already breed like mice.”

“Gelding? What’s a gelding?” Blueblood looked at the Pegasus stallion, then at Rancine. “Does it mean girly? So is Lacy a gelding the- -EEP!”

Blueblood was promptly overturned in his chair.

“As your mother, sisters, and daughter can no doubt attest,” said Lacy, who had tipped Blueblood out of his chair, “I am INDEED a stallion, and, more importantly, a gentlecolt.” He turned to the Pegasus. “And you have no need to fear. Nopony owns you. Not anymore. I would like to believe you have been liberated. From the ones that took your wings, as well as your stallionhood. Depending on the damage, our surgeons may be able to repair your wings. I will see to it personally.”

This caused the Pegasus’s eyes to flick toward Lacy, but only for a moment. Lacy smiled, ostensibly softly.

“You can be reintegrated into Equestrian society. Even as a gelding, you will of course have the respect and rights of any other citizen. Although...” He paused. “There will of course be an interrigation. Standard practice. Anything you can tell us concerning Sombra’s manufacturing techniques, mining operations, or any unique spells or magical aspects he may have acquired. Or even his current wearabouts, maybe?”

The Pegasus sat on his haunches and crossed his front legs. He stared directly into Lacy’s eyes. Indeed, he was a handsome fellow. “I will tell you NOTHING.”

“Fine.” Lacy fired a devastating pain spell, instantly rendering the Pegasus unconscious and smoldering. “Then I have no use for you.”

Rancine giggled. “Oh, my. Shine is going to be very cross vith you, Lacy.”

“What Glittershine does not know will not hurt her.”

Lacy turned away from the unconscious Pegasus. As he did, he slowed. Something was wrong.

“Overexert yourself, Lacy?” joked Blueblood. “I never have that problem, of course. Impeccable stamina and all.”

“Do you sense that?”

“Sense what?”

“Not you, Blueblood. De’Lis!”

Rancine stiffened. If he was using her house name, the situation must indeed have been serious.

“No. I feel...” she turned her head sharply. “Wait...maybe...what in Epona’s name is it?”

“There’s nothing there!” cried Blueblood, immediately becoming unduly agitated. “I don’t sense a thing!”

“Because Celestia has not been overseeing your pedigree for two thousand years. Guards!”

The subordinate military officers surrounding the purebloods immediately stood at attention. The colored purebloods immediately put on their helmets, although they had already felt it too. Although they were not white, their blood was equally pure and their power strong.

“Could it be her?” asked Rancine. “Zee heretic Princess?”

“I don’t know,” said Lacy, forming up Rancine and the support mages as the earth-ponies and Pegasi took the outer perimeter. “I can’t tell.”

“You’re the only one who’s seen her!”

“Through a palantir. It’s not the same.”

“Wait,” said Blueblood, confused. “When did they get a princes- -”

Something dropped into the center of the forward formation. Blue light flashed and ponies screamed, the forward mages having had their horns bashed and the earth-ponies afflicted with a devastating spell. The Pegasi leapt into the air, taking flight, and the rear mages cast a defensive barrier.

A shape whirred through the forward force, knocking several Pegasi out of the air and crushing through the earth-pony defense. The angle was bad, and Lacy could not see it clearly- -but he saw the flashing of a fully ignited crystal spearhead.

“Forward! CONVERGE!”

The mages obeyed, powering through each other’s shields to advance- -only for the figure to leap onto their spells, balancing on the circular energy and using it as a direct path toward the center of the line.

“I shall stop her,” said Rancine. “Cover me, Pants!”

Lacy read the spell she was forming, and concurred. He shattered the shields of the mages around him, using the feedback wave as they collapsed to drive the attacker back and block her path. As she fell, she twisted in the air. For a moment, he saw her: a white earth-pony with platinum hair, clad in Crystal Empire armor of a unique design that he had never seen before.

He struck, using a spell meant to propagate violently through her bones. It hit her square in the chest, but had no effect. She simply ignored it, her marrow absorbing the blast.

Lacy’s eyes widened. She was not an earth-pony at all.

Then he saw her eyes- -and her face. Without the makeup, he had not been sure, but in that instant he knew. He had seen her many times before, always through the palantir. The palantir her family had created.

“Rancine! ABORT!”

It was too late. The end of Rancine’s horn bloomed with a brilliant lily flower, and a deafening blast poured forth.

The steward of the Crystal Empire braced herself, driving one end of her spear into the ground and the point of it directly into the wave. The magic was absorbed, channeled through the spear like a lightning rod, diverted by the spells built within its crystal tip. As the tip overheated and burst, the steward dashed around the edge of the spell, and before Rancine could react punched her in the base of her horn, immediately sending a crippling feedback wave into her skull.

She turned toward Blueblood, who immediately began to leak and fell to the ground.

“Parlay! PARLAY!”

“ENCIRCLE!”

Lacy’s magic grasped Blueblood by the tail and pulled him back while the other mages surrounded the steward. Her spear had been lost, and her hair swept aside to reveal the scar where her horn had once been. She no longer had any source of magic.

“Stand down,” said Lacy, quietly, pointing his horn at her and circling near her. Rancine and three of the subordinate mages began to do the same, making sure she had no exit.

“If you came to surrender, you’ve saved us a great deal of time.”

She looked at him, clearly not amused- -or looked past him, as if he was not even there. This was mildly infuriating.

“Surrender? To you? No. You were standing where I needed to be. I have no concern for you. Only Daybreaker. Leave. NOW.”

Blueblood laughed. “You’re not exactly in a position to bargain. Who do you think you are? You think that because you’re white, you’re some kind of pureblood?”

“Blueblood!” hissed Lacy.

The steward’s eyes narrowed, and Blueblood hid behind a much braver earth-pony.

“What use have I for such antiquated concepts? I am the last of my line. My beloved king made sure of that. Now. Lacy Pants. Out of respect for our previous roles, LEAVE.”

“Vhy?” asked Rancine, herself smiling as she circled closer and closer. “Vhat are you to do? You have no horn. And you are clearly not going anyvhere.”

“Going?” The steward raised an eyebrow. “Why would I go anywhere? I am standing exactly where I need to be.”

Lacy looked around, confused as to what she meant. He almost knew. It was somehow obvious, but his mind was not making the connection.

Then what little color he had ran from him as he understood.

“NO!” he cried. “Stop her! STOP HER NOW!”

The steward smiled and with one swift, fluid motion plunged her hoof into the snow- -and drew out the Mask of Red Death.

“For the Witchking,” she whispered, pressing the Mask against her own face.

Where she was, or had gone, or had been, she did not know. The whole world was infinite and flat, the view limits only by endless red fog. This, she knew, was not a place. It was where a great many things had ended and, before them all, one thing had be forced against all laws of nature to begin.

She looked upward, staring through an endless screaming vortex of rage, sadness, fear, hatred, pain- -and loneliness. Profound, terrible loneliness. The sound was deafening. She was standing at the farthest tip of an endless tempest, and through it she saw the faces of those who had come before her. All but one. She could not help but wonder if the storm had been so terrible for the one who had managed to return.

A voice spoke to her. The truest voice of Scarlet Mist: the voice she shared with the pony she had once been.

“So,” she said. “I get one last chance. One more. Because this will be the last. You know that, right? You will be my very last body. After you, I have no more use with this world, and no place within it. I will attach a curse to this mask, so that none can ever again wear it. Lucky you. You will be the last to know me.

“And I suppose you’re somewhat...unique. I am you. I see what you desire. And yes. I can give you the power of a god, at the cost of all your life force. You are one of the last of the perpetuals. Your time in this world could be nearly endless. But if you desire, I will devour it all.”

Princess Platinum looked up through the swirling vortex and smiled. “An eternity hornless in exchange for just one more chance to use my magic again? Even for a single minute, I would gladly trade it all. All of it, to be whole again.”

“If it holds. You are different than the others. Your soul motivation is love for Sombra, yet you are not rejecting me as Penumbra did. I do not understand.”

Princess Platinum laughed, softly. “For me? Love and hate are one and the same. Sombra took my father, my kingdom, my horn, my life...and gave me this role in its place. And so my love for him is ENDLESS.”

The visage of the Mask of Red Death appeared at the apex of the vortex, its empty eye staring into Platinum’s soul.

“So be it,” it said at last.

The mages and wizards unloaded everything they could into Scarlet Mist’s body, but even the most powerful spells of an entire horde of purebloods could scarcely touch her. They could not stop the bands of red leather from appearing around her, wrapping and forming into scarlet clothing, merging themselves to the armor already present on the new host’s body.

Then she lowered her head. For a moment there was a glimmer of hope, that she might be ready to fail, or to give, or to react in some way other than ignoring the magic around her. Then she lifted her head, and force of red energy protruded from the scar in her forehead, twisting itself into a long, curving scarlet horn.

A dull thud echoed through the kingdom as gravity failed. Buildings and ponies alike rose into the air. Those around Scarlet Mist cried out, grasping for purchase, not yet fully realizing that they were supported in her limitless magic.

Only one of them had reacted in time. Rancine had cast a floral shield, surrounding her and her compatriots with a powerful protective spell. As Scarlet Mist turned her gaze upon it, it disintegrated, only for every pony within to open fire. They strained their hardest, their magic merging into a single concerned beam even more powerful than the one that had destroyed Scarlet Mist’s last body.

Red light flickered from Scarlet Mist’s horn, and in an instant the offending mages were sealed in unbreakable crimson cubes. They cried out- -especially the female- -and struggled fruitlessly.

“Platinum!” cried Lacy Pants, pressing his hooves against the wall of his cube. “Platinum, you have to listen to me! You have no idea what you’re doing! It isn’t too late- -”

“Yes it is,” said Scarlet Mist, tightening Lacy’s cube substantially and merging it with the others, packing the three white purebloods into one very small container. “It doesn’t work like that. This body’s previous owner is gone. There is only Scarlet Mist now.” She looked down at her sparking hooves, flexing them. “And what a body this is. So much HATE. So much POWER. But still not my body. Not even close. I hate it so much.” She looked up at the purebloods, and the ponies hovering around her. “And don’t think I don’t remember. What you did to me before.”

“We’re sorry!” cried Blueblood, who was literally weeping. “Please don’t eat us!”

Scarlet Mist shrugged. “I had considered unhorning you all. In fact...” her magic reached out, grasping their horns. They cried out as their most sensitive organs were pulled. “...it would not even be hard. You’d barely feel it. Probably. Just a little pluck, and you’re a nice cute earth-pony. Trust me, it is the barest fraction of being forcibly torn free of your own body.” She sighed. “But I don’t think she would want that.”

Lacy’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you- -”

“I don’t have time for you. I am now the most powerful being in this kingdom, at least for the next ten minutes or so. So hail your QUEEN.”

She threw every pony she was holding to the side, and then brought down the buildings she had been levitating on top of them, being sure to twist and grind them in. Then she turned her attention outward.

Her power was without limit. She raised her horn to the sky, and red mist broke free from her spine, forming a pair of feathered red wings. Then she reached out to the kingdom at large.

Every deactivated thrall mask began to vibrate. The children of Scarlet Mist heard the call of their mother. They levitated as bodies were built behind them. Translucence constructs of red magic took the place of crystal ponies, and in an instant the entirety of the army was rebuilt.

Scarlet Mist began to walk. The hulking wrecks of the dead and destroyed sky-ships began to rise, lifted simultaneously by her power. What pieces they lacked were replaced with red light, and magic bound and held them in place as they took to the skies once more. What were once cannons became transmitters of sheer might, and even without engines the new air-force took to the skies, prepared to rain destruction from above once more.

And yet even that took only the barest effort. Never had Scarlet Mist realized the power of the pony that had stood beside the king for so long- -of a mage who had withstood three minutes fighting with Sombra.

She stopped. “ARCHERS!”

Her constructs reacted to her will, summoning bows and pointing them to the skies. Scarlet Mist smiled. As much as she hated this body- -and every body she had ever inhabited- -this would at least be fun. “Loose.”

The sun was blotted out with red arrows. In a single instant, the battle had turned. The Equestrians had claimed victory, and none stood against them save for the smallest pockets of resistance- -and now, all alone, Scarlet Mist pushed them back, leveling their camps and ravaging their field hospitals. Pegasi took to the air, fleeing the fight, only to be downed by the newly risen ship. A few tried to resist, even as the cannons opened up and began to tear into their ground positions- -but even the resolve of those courageous ponies failed as the ground began to shake and rumble. Somewhere, a palantir blinked to life, for the first time in a long time sensing the magic of its user.

All hope was lost as the dreadnought Monocerous rose from the ground and into the sky above.

Yet all of this barely mattered. It was inconsequential. Perhaps if it had been sooner. If Celestia had been around to see it, perhaps reason would have prevailed- -but in the face of Daybreaker, all armies of Equestria were insignificant by comparison.

So she lifted away a path through the city, tearing the buildings from their foundations and throwing them aside. She formed a path where she stood in the center, halfway between the Goddess of the Sun and the Crystal Citadel. She was the final defense, the last possible defender. Scarlet Mist and Princess Platinum’s last act would be together: to put an end to Daybreaker, once and for all.

Chapter 75: Platinum

They met in the center: a pair of alicorns, the twin goddesses of Destruction and Creation, and an abomination against nature, the last and greatest warrior of the Crystal Empire.

Daybreaker stopped walking. Her luminous slit-pupils stared hard at Scarlet Mist. Scarlet Mist’s eyeless slits stared back, and behind them the eyes of the body she inhabited.

“You even gave yourself a pair of wings. How pretentious.” Daybreaker laughed quietly. “But at least you were kind enough to clear the way to my new castle. I would thank you, but that’s what you’re for, isn’t it? To serve me. Why else would ponies exist?”

“And you’re far fatter in person than I’ve been led to believe. I had assumed you simply raised the sun, not that you had managed to eat most of it.”

Nightmare Moon made a small sound. Coughing, surely.

“Ah yes,” said Daybreaker, clearly not amused. “Wizard banter. How I hate it. Dueling really doesn’t have a point for me, does it?”

“And yet I’m still standing. Maybe you’re only willing to fight seven-month-old force-grown princesses? Because from here, it looks like you stopped walking. Who knows what ponies might think. Maybe you’re afraid.”

Daybreaker smiled. “Nightmare,” she said. “I believe I may have finally found something vaguely amusing in this cesspit of heresy and tragic design choices. Don’t interfere.” She turned to her sister. “If you do, I’ll roast you inside your ridiculous armor.”

“Sister, please don’t.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Nightmare. Leadership doesn’t suit you.” Daybreaker raised her horn, and light condensed around her body, hardening into a suit of golden armor.

She lowered her horn. In a flash of red, Scarlet Mist was on top of her, punching her squarely in the jaw- -to absolutely no effect. Despite ostensibly sharing a body with Celestia, Daybreaker’s physique gave no indication of a diet of mostly cake. Not a single part of her was soft or pleasant to touch.

Fire appeared around her, emanating from her body and burning mane. Scarlet Mist flipped backward, instantly taking four centuries off her host’s life in a single blast. It struck Daybreaker in the chest, and the goddess’s eyes went wide as she was forced to take a step back. As she was off-balance, Scarlet Mist lifted several of the heaviest buildings she could reach and dropped them directly on Daybreaker- -plus one on Nightmare Moon for good measure.

The buildings instantly began to heat and melt- -and the one thrown at Nightmare Moon was lifted and pulverized to dust by glimmering golden magic. Daybreaker stood from the wreckage, clearly unhappy- -only to be simultaneously struck by the cannon blasts of seven separate sky-ships, including the Monocerous’s main gun.

The shockwave pushed Daybreaker back, but even with the full force of the fleet directed against her she began to summon a shield, pushing them back. Scarlet Mist focused harder, driving her own magic through the amplification matrices of the crystals to the point where they began to crack and shudder high above.

Then with a roar- -and an incredible expense of magic- -Daybreaker sent a feedback wave that shattered the cannons. That was her weakness. It was the same as for Penumbra. Her raw power was nearly limitless, but she was incapable of forming true spells. She could only lash out in rage.

Scarlet Mist assembled her calculations and fired, orienting the force of several convergent spells into a single beam. Daybreaker, taking by surprise, fired back.

The beams met in midair, and in an flash the pair of combatants were spellbound. Neither one was able to break away without risking failure; it came down to single, final struggle of wills.

Scarlet Mist poured in everything she had, and the red portion of the beam slowly began to move toward Daybreaker. Daybreaker, enraged by this, put more force into her own beam- -and slowly gold began to overtake red as the centerpoint moved back toward Scarlet Mist, pouring out slag and sparks as it progressed.

Out in the kingdom, a skyship suddenly fell. Then another. And then the remainder, their hulls breaking apart as they descended without lift or magic to keep them together. Scarlet Mist did not intend to make the same mistake twice.

Although her forces had regained all the land they had lost and nearly ousted the Equestrians in the process, they suddenly paused and faded instantly, their masks falling to the ground inert.

Magnetic force lines had been to converge around the duelists, drawing material outward and in strange shapes as Scarlet Mist summoned the full force of her might and took a step forward. Daybreaker cried out as she was forced to her knees, and as the center of the spell began to move more and more quickly toward the tip of her horn.

“We have a chance,” said Scarlet Mist, quietly and internally. “I can win. But to do it, I need it all. I will expend your entire life into a single minute. That’s the only way.”

“So be it,” said the steward, smiling within.

Scarlet Mist summoned the power. Her body immediately began to drain, but the magic of burning such a powerful unicorn for fuel was unfathomable. She took a step forward. Then another- -and another.

The spell was now inches from Daybreaker’s horn, and she was barely holding on, using her full strength just to keep Scarlet Mist’s better-constructed beam at bay. Nightmare Moon stood quietly beside her. For some reason, she could not look at her sister, as if out of shame.

Scarlet Mist approached further, and with a groan Daybreaker dropped completely, her spell barely managing to sustain her defense. Inside Scarlet Mist, the steward was nearly depleted, although she still had more than enough energy to finish what she had come to do.

“I suppose I should ask if you have any last words for your sister. But I don’t really care.”

Daybreaker turned her dark eyes upward toward Scarlet Mist. “That feeling,” she grunted, her whole body shaking from exhaustion. “Do you know what it is?”

Scarlet Mist was confused by the question. It gave her pause, and she watched as a broad smile crossed Daybreaker’s face. A smile filled with so many pointed teeth.

With all signs of exhaustion gone, Daybreaker stood effortlessly. The sudden surge was so fierce that Scarlet Mist was sent sliding backward, her hooves barely catching in time for her to brace herself against the force.

“What are you doing?!” cried the steward. “Take more power! TAKE MORE POWER NOW!”

“There isn’t any more! I can’t!”

Daybreaker began walking toward Scarlet Mist, her golden beam easily extending into Scarlet Mist’s red. “I don’t know if you can comprehend it. Maybe you can. It’s called hope. It’s my very favorite emotion. At times like this, I like my enemies to feel it. Just the slightest glimmer, the barest glimpse of victory.” Her smile grew. “Because my favorite thing in the whole word is to crush it.”

Without any apparent effort, Daybreaker forced her magic forward. It instantly overwhelmed Scarlet Mist’s spell, tearing through the center of it back toward her. Even with the full force of the steward’s life force, there was nothing she could do.

Daybreaker’s beam struck the temple of the Mask of Red Death- -and continued past it, vaporizing its way through the city until it struck the shield dome around the Capital District. The Heart of Darkness instantly fractured and the clasp that held it detonated in a plume of gears, sending ponies flying. The unbreakable shield deformed and shattered in an instant, imploding violently as it died. The beam still continuing through and melting a hole two inches in diameter through the Crystal Citadel itself.

Scarlet Mist took one step forward. She said nothing as she fell, and as her body collapsed into a pile of shining silver dust.

Daybreaker laughed. She was not tired in the slightest- -because she had expended absolutely no real effort, except in her excellent acting.

“The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have seen the look on her face,” she sighed.

Nightmare Moon looked up. “Sister, why do you insist on doing things like that?”

“What? It’s not like it’s morally wrong. I did it. Therefore, it is just.” She walked up to the Mask of Red Death and poked it with her gold-clad hoof. It had a substantial hole on one side, but was otherwise intact.

“Do you even know who that was?”

“It doesn’t matter. Mortals don’t really have names. Or if they do, it doesn’t matter, they just end up dying anyway. Only I am eternal.” She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Or do you mean that she was Princess Platinum? So what? Did I put a hole in Celestia’s precious creation-myth?” She kicked the Mask into a ditch and trod through the dust of its former bearer. “If anything, removing witnesses will make the lie easier to tell, won’t it? You should be thanking me.”

“You used to be so kind.”

“I am kind. Any pony who is not me is in such a terrible state that they deserve release from that torment. Now, are you going to to continue to virtually beg for a relentless beating or can we keep going? I have things to do. Namely disassembling your army and government so that they can be given to a REAL princess.” She sighed, treading through the dust that had once been the steward of the Crystal Empire. “But Sombra comes first, doesn’t he? Oh well. If this was the best he had to offer, this should be easy.”

No one knew what happened. Each and every one of them had assumed that she shield would protect them, at least long enough for Sombra to return to defend them. They had been absolutely sure that if it were attacked, it would be a prolonged siege, and that they could put their trust and faith in Sombra and in his machines.

None of them had expected it to fall in a single blow.

Penumbra ran to the center of the Citadel, where the Heart of Darkness had been mounted. All she found was devastation. Ponies who had been near it had been sent flying outward in every direction. The only thing that had saved them from a worse fate was that very few dared to get too close to the Heart. They were rightfully terrified of it.

Penumbra ran to the machine, her hooves crunching over battered and melted gears, their perfect shiny surfaces quickly oxidizing in the cooling air. The clasp was in ruin, although it had not been destroyed completely. More than half of it remained at least partially intact, supporting the Heart in something like an off-center crescent. The Heart had suffered severe damage, but was still holding. Some of the gears were still attempting to turn, and some of the lasers were still firing.

“It’s broken!” cried Burnt, who had of course followed Penumbra.

“The shield is down,” said Facet, looking behind her. “We don’t have much time.”

“For what?” said Penumbra. “We’re surrounded. They’re on every side.”

“Then...then its over.” Burnt sat down and covered her face. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Penumbra stared at the Heart. For some reason, she could not take her eyes off it. Then she realized something. She had never looked at it that closely, but the Heart of Darkness almost perfectly matched the heart that made up her cutie-mark. She had never really understood that; her cutie-mark had existed for as long as she could remember, so she had never given it much thought.

Now, though, a realization occurred to her. She was not even sure if it was her own.

“I can power it.”

“What?”

Penumbra stood, facing the Heart. “I can power it. I don’t know for how long. And I don’t think I can make the shield as big. But if you get everpony close, I can protect them!”

“What?” said Facet, blinking. “You have no idea how it even works!”

“I think I do.” Penumbra lit her horn. “I think this is what I was made for.”

She fired a beam of magic into the Heart. Almost on contact the beam expanded exponentially, resonating between Penumbra and the Heart as the gears and damaged systems within its containment clasp began to rev to speed, harvesting what power she was managing to generate.

The strain was far greater than she had expected, but she was proven right as the system began to draw power. As damaged as it was, Al’Hrabnaz’s system still functioned- -and though cracked, the Heart of Darkness was still very much alive.

The dome began to flicker, and Penumbra groaned, pouring more energy into the Heart. It responded by allowing the shield to solidify. It was barely enough to cover the Citadel, let alone the crystal ponies at its base, but it was enough.

Burnt stared upward, wide-eyed. “Oh wow...”

“How long can you hold it, Penumbra?”

Penumbra smiled, magic still hemorrhaging from her horn. “As long as it takes.”

That, of course, was a lie, and Penumbra knew it.

Chapter 76: Starborn

The shield flickered and reignited- -although it was so much smaller than it had once been. Instead of covering the entire Capital District, it barely extended beyond the Citadel’s courtyard.

Daybreaker saw this, and was distantly concerned- -although saw no need to rush. She could taste the foul magic supporting the dome, and knew how much pain the individual casting it would eventually be in- -so it was better to prologue the experience.

She was unaware of the danger inherent to her decision.

From the icy darkness, something stumbled toward the shield. The ponies closest to the edge cried out and pushed against one another trying to get away from it. Those who were luckiest saw only a monster. Some, though, recognized him, and their fear poured into the Heart of Darkness. Penumbra shuddered as that very fear, in turn, flowed through her.

Twilight Luciferian hobbled toward the dome. His mouth was foaming, and his lips were stained with silver- -but it had not been enough. There was no longer a way to stop the screaming. The demon within him was inches away from taking control herself. Only by sheer will and luck was Luciferian still marginally conscious.

He approached the dome and stopped, confused. He reached out and poked it. It promptly rejected him, sending a massive wave of feedback back toward him on even the slightest touch. The crystals in his orbit absorbed most of it. His mutated biology handled the rest.

They had closed the gate to him. To him, One of Thirteen, the greatest of the Dark Thirteen- -and he was forbidden entry. This thought enraged him deeply, and he could not help but laugh.

“Princess!” he called. Distantly, he could see her, pouring her magic into the broken mechanism under the very center of the Citadel. “Princess, I’ve come to save you!” He giggled. “Isn’t that nice of me? I’m going to save you, and you’re going to be queen! And we’ll be married! And...and...sompeony will finally love me...”

“I love you,” said the demon beside him. “I will always love you. I am the only one that ever will.”

“Shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP!” He cried, tears welling in his eyes as he covered his ears- -although of course, that would not block her out. She was rapidly becoming him, and he her. The lines were blurring.

A pony appeared on the far side of the shield. Luciferian’s own eye was mostly blind, but the one that had formed on his left side saw her well and noted the indelible marks around her neck.

“Go away, Lord Luciferian,” she said. “You are not welcome here.”

A smile crossed Luciferian’s face. “You would reject me from my own castle? From my own wife?”

“She is no one’s wife. Nor does this castle belong to you. You know very well you cannot break this shield. It will destroy anything living it touches, including you.”

Luciferian’s smile grew wider. “And yet you’re still inside it, aren’t you? Even with that mark? Which means it’s not complete!”

He began to laugh uncontrollably, tears running down his face. He raised his left hoof, the metal casing around it rapidly oxidizing and collapsing from internal recomposition. “Did you hear that?” he cried. “She says it destroyed ANY biological tissue? Well let’s see if it’s TRUE!”

His laughter rose to a crescendo as he rammed his left hoof into the shield. Then, suddenly, he was screaming in pain, although he could no longer differentiate it from any other sensation.

The shield reacted violently as Luciferian’s hoof was pushed through it. The entire system buckled and the princess cried out, suddenly brought to her knees by the strain. As powerful as it was, it could not hold back the embodiment of pure morality, the flesh of the Most Beautiful Pony.

The protective armor casing was immediately vaporized, as was the material that the hoof itself was made out of which could only by the loosest of all definitions be considered “flesh”. What remained had no corresponding analog of any living creature in Equestria, although to the ponies seeing it for the first time- -including Luciferian himself- -it resembled a structure of thin, black bone.

His claws unfurled from where there had once been a hoof, and they dug into the crystal ground. He began to pull himself through the shield, and as expected, SHE would not let him fail.

“PRINCESS!” he cried, through his laughter and pain. Through his dulled, corroded mind, she was the only thing he could think about. The only thing that mattered. “I OWN YOU! The prophecy CANNOT be denied!” He giggled relentlessly. “They say you’re sterile, don’t they? But I don’t think you are! I’LL PROVE IT MYSELF! Love me, princess! LOVE ME!”

Luciferian pressed himself forward, driving whatever he had left into Penumbra’s last defense. She closed her eyes and struggled, desperately trying to keep the shield running, and to protect the ponies within it. The strain proved too much, though. Luciferian’s force was too great, and the shield dome shattered.

Luciferian pressed himself forward, driving whatever he had left into Penumbra’s last defense. She closed her eyes and struggled, desperately trying to keep the shield running, and to protect the ponies within it. Luciferian tried to pull himself through, but then suddenly sensed something. His crystals- -the only part of him that still followed hid will exclusively- -tilted suddenly, forming a powerful defensive shield. Even then, the blow was so well-conceived that it knocked him back, causing the shield dome to suddenly retract around his leg, removing it completely.

He rolled across the ground and stood. As he did, the black claw reformed, and then flesh formed around it, generating a perfect yellow hoof. Even his tattoos and ceremonial scars grew back along with it.

“Because of course you wouldn’t come off that easily,” he grumbled, rolling to one side to dodge another blast. One of his crystals returned fire, and Thirteen’s invisibility spell was instantly overloaded.

The crystals took account of the situation. Thirteen was in poor shape, and as Luciferian watched, she fell to her knees, gasping and desperately trying to put out sparks hemorrhaging from a hole in the front of her armor.

What was left of Luciferian’s mind performed the calculations based on his own knowledge of chronplexy, and he understood.

He began to move. To him, it felt like he was drifting. Thirteen saw this, and tried to stand and take a defensive stance, but the jump had drained her. She was forced to retreat, limping as she did so.

“It looks to me like your suit has a hole,” said Luciferian, trying to control the laughter. “The seal is broken. And you’re not powerful enough to withstand the temporal shear forces, are you? So if I want you to STOP BOTHERING ME...” His eyes narrowed. “I think I should probably strip you naked, shouldn’t I?”

Thirteen fired a blast of magic. Luciferian’s crystals reacted, moving into position at his orders and generating a set of portals. The beam was absorbed into one and reflected between them repeatedly in every possible direction. Thirteen saw what he was doing and raised a partial shield- -only her own beam to be directed to strike her from behind, sending her sprawling.

Luciferian cast a second spell, piggybacking it along his portals. Thirteen was suddenly struck by an adhesion spell, binding her left side to the ground. Then Luciferian snapped the bindings that held space intact.

The whole world appeared to rotate as angles and distances ceased to have true meaning. To Luciferian, it was simply a matter of consciously performing new math rather than relying on one’s own instincts. Thirteen, to her credit, attempted to react, but her mental power was simply not adequate. As space turned and twisted, she became disoriented.

Even countering Luciferian’s adhesive spell, she charged him only to run headlong into a building that was over four kilometers to her left and two inches from her right. She then tipped and fell upward as relative gravity began to move at its own inverse.

Luciferian smiled as she tumbled and he performed his calculations. Then, in an instant, the world snapped back to its normal dimensional- -right as a beam of m magical energy stabbed deep into the hole in Thirteen’s armor, tearing away pieces from the border and leaving it substantially wider.

Thirteen fell, arresting her motion with a levitation spell.

“Impressive,” said Luciferian. “For an ordinary unicorn. Another rare spell. But I suppose that’s all you can do, isn’t it? You know spells other ponies don’t. But I’ve read every book. I know them all.”

He stepped forward while remaining still. His body split into multiple copies of itself. This time, they all at least appeared to be the same size.

Thirteen responded by replicating herself as well, and her selves charged Luciferian’s, immediately filling the street with a vicious battle of clones. Luciferian’s clones, being far weaker, were initially knocked back- -but their weakness was only a result of the difference in spell used to complete them.

“How transparent,” they sighed in unison, each suddenly turning and striking Thirteen with a spell that interfered with her own. Hers, unlike his, relied on high-speed oscillation; on contact, the clones suddenly lost their vibrational pattern and Thirteen was forced to manifest. As she did, Luciferian was waiting, and grasped onto the ragged border of her armor, tearing chunks of it off.

Thirteen leapt backward, firing a single exceedingly complicated bolt, one precision built to penetrate any shield it might encounter. Luciferian smiled and countered with chronoplexy, freezing time around the blast and stopping it in its tracks.

Thirteen took a step back, apparently surprised by this.

“Do you like it?” said Luciferian, smiling. “I learned it form observing you. Very closely. I like you. I think the princess does too, which will be helpful. As king, it will be my prerogative to choose mares worthy of my company. I think you qualify to be part of the harem.” His smile grew wide and vicious. “But first, I’m going to finish stripping you naked. Piece. By. PIECE!”

Thirteen’s horn ignited, and suddenly the spell trapped in Luciferian’s magic shifted, parts of it having been entangled at its conception. It suddenly lost integrity and detonated with substantial force- -right into his face.

Her performed an orthogonal dodge combined with an intangibility spell, effectively allowing him to avoid all damage while simultaneously taking the shortest possible route to Thirteen. He struck her in the chest with his left hoof, sending bits of her armor flying as his crystals sent out tendrils of magic to grab at what remained. Then he kicked her through a portal.

She did her best to change direction, but Luciferian parsed space to slam her into herself. Thirteen collapsed on a heap on the ground, only to receive a full forward blast cast from Luciferian’s crystals. It tore through her shield spell and armor in a single hit, sending her flailing backward through the snow.

Luciferian smiled and slowly limped forward. “The princess…the princess is sterile...but you’re not...maybe I can build myself a new body using you...this one is almost done. No more clones but maybe I can still transfer...”

Thirteen looked up at him. The last explosion had broken off half of her helmet, and the remainder was sparking. One wide, violet eye was staring at him- -and this gave him pause. The expression in it was not fear, or anger, or even defeat. The only emotion it showed was complete and utter indifference.

“What even are you?” asked Luciferian, suddenly both enraged and disgusted. He cast a stable cutting spell, forming what amounted to an incredibly elegant sword. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

He took a step forward, and Thirteen tried to stand, only to collapse. She had fully depleted her magic.

“You can’t jump time now. There is nowhere to hide.”

“Ejecting host-operator,” said a voice, causing Luciferian to jump back. He was for a moment immediately terrified, having never even considered that she would be insane enough to attempt to form a paradox. Even incapacitated, she could still rip the universe apart- -and herself with it.

Except the voice had not been hers. Her mouth had not moved. Luciferian had no idea where it had come from, but knew that this strange voice was surely the product of foul witchery.

Thirteen’s armor suddenly split, producing a horrible ripping sound as it peeled away from her body. Luciferian took a step back, horrified to realize that it was not metal, or armor in any sense of the word; inside, it was somehow organic, a creature all its own bonded to Thirteen’s flesh by numerous thin, adhesive tendrils.

The pony within stepped out. She was distinctly unimpressive, but somehow made Luciferian feel distinctly uneasy. Her coat was almost lavender, but somehow unnaturally gray, as if she had not seen sunlight in decades; her mane was darker, with a pale stripe, but it was cut so short that it was barely visible.

Without her biosuit, she was only able to take a single step before falling into the frozen snow. Although the temperature was frigid, she did not shiver, nor did she seem to perceive the cold in any way.

“Well, that dashes my hope,” sighed Luciferian. “As it turns out, you’re hideous. I don’t want you.” He lifted his projection-sword. “So go AWAY.”

Thirteen suddenly looked up, and Luciferian nearly cried out. An enormous toothy smile was plastered across her face.

“What are you- -” He suddenly felt a chill run through his body. What was left of his mind had grown heavy, and it was slow. He had seen it, but not realized what it was, or what it meant. Now, in an instant, he suddenly understood, and knew the implications.

Thirteen had no cutie mark- -except for a black equals sign.

Her horn flashed. A portal opened, and a strangely bifurcated stick emerged. Held between its forked point was a single suspended cutie mark. HER cutie mark.

“NO!”

Luciferian could not react in time. Thirteen looked him in the eye and released the spell, immediately rebinding her special talent back to her body.

In a blinding instant, Luciferian was thrown back. His half-demonic body compensated, attempting to protect him, while what little remained of his intelligence tried to cast a protective spell- -although neither were terribly effective as he was overwhelmed with a surge of pure, undiluted magic.

Yet it did him no harm. Because it was not a simple surge of power. Every piece, down to the most infinitesimal fragments, was collated and targeted perfectly.

Luciferian shielded his eyes from the blue glow and looked up at the pony before him. She was lifted into the air, supported by her own magic. Her body was scarcely visible through the glow of magic that should have easily incinerated it, but Luciferian swore he saw the distant images of seven pairs of wings surrounding her.

Her magic took shape as she opened her eyes, assembling itself it a system of luminescent wheels within wheels, surrounding her and slowly rotating as their eyes opened with hers.

“This isn’t possible- -it’s not possible!” Luciferian took a step back, casting a chronoplexy spell and conducting analysis. “No unicorn is that powerful- -it isn’t- -” His eyes grew wide as he saw the results of his scan. “No,” he said, looking back up at her and taking another stride backward. “Your chronal center is displaced- -you haven’t just SEEN the future, you’re...” His eyes grew even more wide. “Three thousand years...”

His mind was filled with memories of the words of madmares, of prophecies and predictions told by the insane, some of whom had gained their madness from the seers themselves. Of the slow decadence and decline of the Purebloods, of a world of dilute breeding and weak magic- -a world to be superseded by the rebirth of an entirely new and impossible sort of unicorn.

She was the future of his race, what they would one day evolve to become, a unicorn that would make alicorns obsolete- -and she was staring directly at Luciferian.

Across the kingdom, Daybreaker suddenly paused, her eyes growing wide. She and her younger sister both turned simultaneously toward the blue light on the horizon.

“Sister?” said Nightmare Moon. “What is that?”

“A rival,” snarled Daybreaker, bearing her teeth. “Hold on. I’ll deal with it.” She charged her horn.

“Sister, no! That is not our mission! The prophec- -time runs short!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Nightmare. It’s not my fault you’re too much of a failure to do it yourself.”

She tilted her head back and fired her spell.

Even across the kingdom, Luciferian suddenly felt the heat of nuclear fusion as Daybreaker’s beam vaporized its way through crystal buildings and fortifications in an instant. He cast his own shield, if only to protect himself from the corona of the blast.

Despite her range, Daybreaker’s accuracy was perfect. The beam was targeted at Thirteen, and very nearly reached the target- -except that Thirteen raised her hoof and stopped it, accumulating the magic in her own aura. Not once did she take her eyes off Luciferian.

Then she changed the spell. Instead of breaking it, she amplified it. Across the kingdom, Daybreaker cried out and was forced to her knees as exponentially more magic was drawn from her.

The beam increased in intensity, but Thirteen barely seemed to notice- -until it suddenly stopped. For a brief moment, a blinding sphere of nuclear energy was trapped somewhere within the endlessly rotating wheels that surrounded her- -then, as Luciferian watched, it collapsed inward on itself, forming a single point of pure blackness. Only then did Thirteen turn to it. She lit her horn and transfigured it into an ornate teacup, then sent it through a small portal.

Then Thirteen just sighed. Luciferian did not understand why, until he was knocked back by a sudden blast of devastating solar energy as Daybreaker emerged from a teleportation, screaming in rage with her long, fluffy, threatening wings spread as wide as they would go.

She charged Thirteen. Thirteen’s horn flashed and Daybreaker cried out, suddenly clawing at a blue collar cast around her neck.

“How dare you! HOW DARE YOU- -EHK!”

Thirteen pulled the collar tighter. Daybreaker struggled and thrashed, casting wave after wave of spells that landed on Thirteen’s body harmlessly. Then, suddenly, Thirteen pulled Daybreaker’s face close to her own.

“Go away, Daybreaker,” she said. All of space seemed to strain at the sound of her voice, and Luciferian covered his head, as if it would save him from a potential temporal paradox. “I’m not getting paid to deal with you.”

She ejected Daybreaker with such force that another large swath of city was destroyed, this time by her alicorn body tumbling and crashing through it. Although Luciferian could not see where the track of destruction eventually led, Thirteen’s accuracy was excellent. A now severely battered Daybreaker came to stop beside her sister.

“Shut up, Nightmare.”

“I said nothing, sister.”

“No, but you were about to. Stupid horse.”

Luciferian took a step back as Thirteen’s vaguely luminescent eyes turned toward him. Her wheels began to turn.

“Well, this is bad,” said the demon, lounging in the snow and watching. “Starlight Glimmer. Interesting. But of course we all saw that coming. We’re not idiots, after all.” She flipped over, as if she wanted a belly rub. “So. You’re not going to make it. Summon me. SUMMON ME NOW YOU STUPID HOR- -”

A sudden blast of light shot by, and the demon cried out and vanished. Luciferian was knocked back and looked down to see that his left hoof had been encased a complex webwork of spells. He did not recognize their construction in the slightest, nor did he have the context necessary to understand them- -but he immediately felt their effect.

He collapsed, suddenly deprived of the presence of the demon whose flesh was keeping him alive. He had not realized how frail he had allowed his body to become, and how close it was to total collapse.

Before he could fully lapse into unconsciousness, Luciferian cast a set of powerful restoration spells to assume the functions of his internal organs. His body at this point was more magic than organic- -and that suited him just fine.

“That was a mistake,” he said, smiling as his horn ignited.

Thirteen reached out to him, but Luciferian ducked orthogonality through the universe, flashing forward into striking range. He had already cast analytic spells and generated his own. He countered Thirteen’s wheels, driving his own magic through and toward her body, cutting through the spells that protected her.

She compensated, but her face momentarily showed an emotion that Luciferian took to be surprise. “See?” he said. “I told you. You brought my mind back. Now I have control of HER.”

He twisted the spell, drawing his runic combinations outward and forcing energy forward, injected past what he took to be Thirteen’s shields.

Thirteen sighed and lit her horn. Luciferian’s spells were instantly deconvoluted. It was not a matter of them being overwhelmed or countered. He could feel what was happening. The functions that produced them were being disassembled in real-time, something that very well should have been impossible. Key variables were forced into mathematical uncertainty, and the spell broke away harmlessly.

Luciferian jumped back, risking severe damage in the process. Although the removal of the endless screaming had restored his mind, his body was weak.

That did not matter. He pulled together his crystals and added them to his calculation matrix.

“I defeated Sombra. I can defeat you too.”

Thirteen’s expression did not change. She began to move forward. As she did, her wheels slowly revolved, and Luciferian came to understand- -at least partially- -that they were part of a self-contained, self-reproducing spell, quite possibly an AI of sorts. What purpose it served was unclear- -or, more terrifyingly, there was a possibility that their presence was simply an unconscious expression of their caster’s will.

As she moved, they consumed entropy. Parts of the kingdom that had collapsed or broken were restored: buildings reconstructed, cracked streets made level, and plants restored to life- -only to be broken apart into their basic molecular form.

Luciferian cast. It was a distraction spell, meant for him to get in range to activate another analytic spell. He jumped orthogonality, shifting space around himself- -and receiving a hoof to the face.

Confused, Luciferian dropped back to normal space; he had been struck from a dimension that he had not calculated for. Then, from the same dimension, something booped him.

He jumped back, changing the parameters on his analytical spells. They self-destructed violently.

Thirteen’s wheels shifted, their eyes suddenly opening. Luciferian cried out as he drew in all his crystals, casting a shield spell as a small portal opened up and he was pinned by a teacup with the weight of a thousand planets.

He was crushed into the ground by the weight of it, and suddenly Thirteen sat beside him, lying in the snow and staring at him, as if mildly amused. Luciferian desperately countered with a hasty gravity spell, absorbing a tremendous amount of feedback in the process. Thirteen lit the tip of her horn, transfiguring the teacup back into a singularity while simultaneously removing its runic containment. Luciferian barely froze time in time to stop the resulting Hawking explosion. Thirteen continued to watch before dismissing the singularity in an instant, annihilating it from the universe.

She stood up and Luciferian struck again, forming a wave of adaptive spells that spread outward from him- -and from his crystals, striking from behind. He barely formed a shield in time to deflect his own attack, barely realizing in time that the pony he had taken for Thirteen was, in fact, himself.

He performed a scan. There was no signal. Her magic was almost limitless, it should have been impossible to lose her. Yet she was gone.

She could teleport. She could travel through time- -in theory.

“No,” whispered Lucierian. “No, not without her suit. She can’t survive in this era for long. Where...”

He saw motion in his peripheral vision. His eyes flitted to the reflective facets of the crystal towers- -and he saw her. Or, rather, he saw her reflection, walking calmly through the world projected in the mirrored surface of the crystal.

Yet she had no body in the real world. She had become her reflection- -and was headed for Luciferian’s.

His mind began to run, pulling through the text of centuries of books, trying to recall the nature of this spell and its construction. There were several references, but their manipulations either took too long to prepare or would cost too much energy. He had damaged himself badly by using spells too hastily. Though his mind was sound, his body was damaged- -and in particular, his horn. The binding had never healed completely, and he could feel it straining badly.

She was growing closer. He had no choice. He put his faith in his own power and summoned a devastating spell.

He roared with rage as his power exploded outward, shattering everything reflective within one hundred meters. It was hasty and crude, but effective. As the mirrors shattered, Thirteen was shattered with them- -or rather, that particular clone was forced to merge with the one that now floated above Luciferian.

And she just sat there. Watching.

“Why?” said Luciferian, collapsing to the ground. “All that power. You could defeat me in an instant, couldn’t you? But you won’t.” He looked up at her. “Why? Is it because that would not be enough? Is it because I matter that little? Or is it because will all that power you cannot rule this world as I shall?”

Luciferian was vaporized at an atomic level. Those atoms were then moved, and reassembled.

With a cry, Luciferian materialized into deep snow. He was confused and in pain, but he realized that he could see the Citadel in the farthest distance. At that distance, Daybreaker’s heat could only be distantly felt. To his chagrin, Luciferian realized that Thirteen was trying to freeze him.

And there was nothing he could to about it. He was too weak. The wind chilled him deeply, and he knew that there was no way he could get back to the kingdom on his own.

Thirteen appeared before him. He attacked her, and her wheels cast spells that deflected it. She countered by reaching into the snow with her magic, drawing up a pair of golems.

Luciferian laughed. “Snow golems? Really? They’re the weakest golem.”

He cast a spell around them, melting them to liquid water. But as he did, his spell changed, enhanced by Thirteen’s alterations. The pink magic suddenly became remarkably solid and was forced inward with such incredible force that the water became vapor, and then in turn was purged of its oxygen.

Then it was compressed even further. The hydrogen inside began to glow, and then ignited in nuclear fire.

Thirteen absorbed the thermonuclear force, unperturbed by it. It was barely twelve megatons; she had witnessed weapons millions of times more powerful, and deployed them from time to time in her thirty four centuries.

She quickly absorbed the energy, causing the blasts to dissipate. For a moment, it seemed that Luicerian had been defeated- -until his intangibility spell failed and he collapsed back onto the burned ground. His horn was sparking badly, the surgical scars connecting it to his body beginning to show distinct signs of rejection failure.

Thirteen dropped to the ground and approached him. Luciferian, breathing hard, looked up. Then he smiled.

“Thank you for the extra time. I think I’m ready. Goodbye, Thirteen.”

Luciferian drew energy from his crystals, pulling their mathematics into himself to perform a chronoplexation spell. Thirteen tried to dodge, but it was too late. She was caught in its field of effect. Her body seemed to slow as time around her collapsed.

Then, as the spell completed, Luciferian sat back. He could not move so long as the spell was cast; holding a material pony was far more difficult than suspending a spell. However, it hardly mattered.

“Don’t bother moving,” he said. “You can’t anyway. Not relative to me. For every second that passes for you, two million years pass out here. By the time you walk back to the Empire?” Luciferian chuckled. “Well, the sun will be burnt out by then, won’t it? Now I just need to complete it...make it permanent...”

He began the process- -but as he did, he saw Thirteen’s eyes slowly turn toward him. Then, to his horror, she began to move forward slowly.

“But that- -that’s impossible!” cried Luciferian. “You can’t possibly be moving that fast! The relativistic effects- -the energy requirements- -”

She raised her hoof toward him. To him, it seemed so very slow, but he understood the implications. Luciferian tried to take a step backward, only to scream out in pain. His position was fixed; even the slightest motion had wracked his body with temporal sheer. Another step, and it would peel him apart.

There was nothing he could do as she raised her hoof. He closed his eyes and braced himself, desperately trying to think of a spell. Then he felt it touch him.

As he was struck by a hoof of infinite mass, Luciferian was forced backward through his own layers of temporal sheer and chronal displacement at four times the speed of light. The ensuing paradox forced him cleanly off his plane of reality and sent him screaming through the undifferentiated multiverse beyond. The time spell around Thirteen collapsed, and she took a breath- -before following him in.

Chapter 77: Love

And then as quickly as it had come, the signal was lost. Daybreaker turned her head, scanning the horizon with her godly senses.

“Sister?”

“Where did it go? I can’t smell her anymore...”

“It may be distortion. The shield may interfere with our magic.”

“It may interfere with YOURS. Because it is small and insignificant. Mine, however, is large. And very hard.”

Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes under her helmet. “Clearly. And clearly I was the one who was beat by a mere unicorn.”

Daybreaker turned sharply. “I will beat YOU in a minute! If you don’t shut your pretty mouth I’m going to shove my horn down your throat. I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again!”

“Recall, sister, that I am not Luna. Do not expect me to take it lying down.”

“Oh really?” growled Daybreaker. “There’s actually a job you won’t do lying down? Meaning I’m calling you a dirty horse. Because, you know- -”

“Yes. I have the ability to understand inference.”

Daybreaker glared at her sister, and Nightmare Moon stared back, still wondering where her soft and beloved sister was hidden within the solar beast before her- -and how to get her back out.

Still distracted, Daybreaker turned back to the shield. It now loomed over them, pouring downward from the top of the citadel with a slight hissing, humming sound. To Nightmare Moon, it sounded almost musical- -but badly distorted.

“It’s sick,” she said.

“Then let me put it out of its misery,” said Daybreaker, raising her horn to it.

“Sister, wait.”

Daybreaker growled, clearly not enjoying being interrupted, but she saw it too.

Before them, walking through the center of the otherwise pristine street, was a pony. Not one of any particular consequence, perhaps one that did not even have a name. She was a crystal mare, wearing the robes of a priestess.

Confused, Daybreaker stared at the pony who dared to defy her. Even her sister could not read the expression on her face, whether it was incredibly mild amusement or absolute hatred. Of course, for Daybreaker, the two were not all that substantively different.

“My Princess,” said the priestess, shaking as she bowed before Daybreaker. “I...I had never thought I would see you...your divine glory...that you would answer our prayers!” She sat up suddenly, making a ridiculous gesture. “Praise the Sun!”

“Why are you in my way?”

The priestess looked up, confused. “My Princess, I have served your divine will my whole life. I have come to assist you in your divine mission, to bring peace and harmony to our ancient land!” She looked over her shoulder. “The ponies within the shield, they are afeared- -but they can be made to understand, if you let me speak to them. That you do not mean to harm them. That you are our savior, our liberator- -”

“But I do intend to harm them. To the point where they cease to exist. And I think I will enjoy it very much.”

The priestess looked confused. “My Princess, I don’t understand. We can end this conflict without any more violence- -”

“And why would I want that?”

Once again, the priestess simply could not understand. “You came to defeat Sombra and his evil army, to bring harmony and peace- -”

“Yes. And I intend to. I am both of those things. But you are not. THEY are not.” Daybreaker leaned in close to the priestess. The priestess shielded her eyes against the heat, even though Daybreaker’s corona had been significantly weakened by Thirteen’s intervention. “YOU are not. Harmony and peace requires ME, and ME ALONE. Anything else is a threat to that divine perfection. You’re a priestess. Isn’t this obvious?”

“But- -but we worship you, you can’t- -”

Daybreaker laughed in her face. “I am a god. The ONLY god. What use do I have for the worship of mortals? You serve no purpose. Compared to me...well, you’re just all so insignificant, aren’t you?”

Her heat grew. The priestess’s crystalline body protected her, but her clothing began to singe. “But- -but we prayed to you! In our darkest hour, when we were on the verge of destruction- -”

“If you wanted to please me, you should have allowed yourselves to be destroyed. It would have saved me the time of purging your filthy heretical race from existence.”

Tears welled in the priestess’s eyes. “But...Celestia….”

Daybreaker’s eyes narrowed, and her magic closed around the priestess’s throat. The priestess cried out, although her voice was strangled to a small gasp.

“There is no Celestia. Not anymore. I am her purest form, her true self. The reality that she sought to hide.” Her toothy smile grew wide. “The realization that a true god has no use for mortals who are of no use.”

She tightened her grasp, but as she did, a silver chain against the priestess’s ankle suddenly became taught. The priestess cried out as for a moment she was pulled in two directions, her crystal body barely managing to keep her in once piece. Then she was yanked away.

Daybreaker traced her trail and found the far end of the chain to be connected to what could only be described as a THING. It looked like a pony, but most certainly was not. For the warrior beside it, though, the situation was not so clear-cut. He was a young, teal colt, his mane short and fuzzy and his lower half forged from machines in the form of a griffon. Yet although he held a gleaming crystal sword in his orange magic, his eyes stared into the distance as though he were not quite sure where he was meant to be.

“A golem. How pointless.”

She fired a dismissive beam in the golem’s direction. It extended a hoof, summoning an energy shield and blocking most of the force. Daybreaker found this most assuredly annoying.

“You are not worth my time,” she said. “You are not even a mortal. Just an object. Why are you even bothering to challenge me?”

“I am not.” She put her synthetic hoof around her priestess, whose face was now marred with tears. “I had simply wished for my pet to see what ought to be obvious.”

“Which is what, object?”

“That any god capable of ruling is not worth worshiping.”

Daybreaker smiled. “And I intend to rule. You may be the first to understand. And you are not even a living thing.”

“Not yet, no. But, in a sense, neither are you.”

This amused Daybreaker even more. She started walking.

“Sister?” asked Nightmare Moon, confused.

Daybreaker said nothing. She was content to move on, leaving behind a machine more clever than any deluded mortal and a priestess with her faith forever shattered. It was far more amusing than simply destroying both. Besides, she had a far more important task to attend to.

Beneath the dome, Penumbra could feel her strength fading. She had no idea what spell she was using to support it, or if it was even magic in any traditional sense- -but instinctively, she had an understanding of what it was doing to her. Its magic was in resonance with her own, at least partially. Though it was crystal, it still beat with an internal pulse, and that pulse was the same as her own- -but there was something wrong. She had no way to describe how it felt, but something about the way it beat was off, different- -as if her own heart had to beat so much faster just to keep up.

She also understood that there was a finite limit to what she would be able to do. That, in time, she would deplete her own energy. When that happened, the shield would fall- -and the ponies beneath it defenseless.

Facet had taken a position beside her. The other ponies had gathered toward the edge, watching but never approaching. They were still afraid. Through the Heart, Penumbra knew their fear. They knew what the Heart was, and what it was for; to them, she was an extension of it. An object of evil.

“Penumbra,” said Facet. “You can’t hold this forever.”

“Stop being a pessimist! I will do whatever I have to!” She groaned under the weight of the dome. “But just in case, find any weapons you can...arm them...”

“They are crystal ponies. We have been bred specifically for docility.”

“And yet thralls are a thing. Or were...ugh, I’m too busy to argue semantics!”

“GAH!” cried a voice from the edge of the shield. Burnt came running, being closely followed by many, many sets of stallion eyes. “We have a problem!”

“Great,” sighed Penumbra. “What now?”

Her question was answered with screams. Penumbra’s mane bristled and she turned her head as far as she could to see the edge of the shield- -and that it was being breached.

The Equestrian army had arrived, and the vanguard force of earth-ponies had begun to tunnel beneath the shield. They were coming in one after the other through the holes they had dug. Some of them had ropes. They were lassoing the crystal ponies that could not flee fast enough.

“STOP!” cried Penumbra. She turned her horn toward them and fired a powerful bolt of magic, sending one of them hurtling back out of the shield. As she did, she cried out, the whole shield flickering as she was forced to pour her magic back into the Heart o Darkness.

They suddenly turned to her, running forward, spears and rope at the ready. Facet raised one of her crystals and fired a spell, encasing one of them in crystal before she was taken down by several lines of rope. Penumbra tried to fire another spell to defend her friend, but she did not have the strength to use offensive or even defensive magic and hold the shield at the same time.

They began to close in. One of them struck her hard in the rear legs, forcing her to her knees.

“Separate her!” cried on. “We have to bring down the shield!”

Penumbra refused to let go. She watched as they advanced, attacking the crystal ponies she had wanted so desperately to protect- -and as they cornered poor Burnt against a collapsed piece of machinery.

“Penumbra!” cried Burnt.

“I’m trying, Burnt!” screamed Penumbra, misunderstanding her meaning. “I- -I’m trying!”

The earth ponies lassoed Burnt- -but she herself was far more concerned with the sight of earth-ponies raising their swords and maces against her friend. With one swift motion, Burnt freed one of her limbs- -she had, after all, spent a great deal of time tied up during training- -and reached for the ring on her horn.

She slid it off, and immediately lost control of her magic. Her mane was incinerated, along with the rope that held her. Then she turned it toward the nearest earth-pony and did what little magic she could do. He was instantly charred black, falling over more out of surprise than real injury.

“You’re toasty!” cried Burnt, turning to the next one. “And you! And YOU! AND YOU! You’re all toasty! YOU’RE ALL TOASTY!”

She began to fire more or less willy-nilly into the earth-ponies, striking them with fortuitous regularity. With each hit, they were blackened to the point of collapse. One of the uncontrolled plumes of fire-magic struck the pony holding Facet. Facet kicked away the rope and produced another crystal, freezing several ponies who were nearby.

“Help me!” she called to the crystal-ponies as she grabbed onto one of the temporarily calcified earth-ponies. “We can use them to plug their own holes!”

The crystal ponies just stared at her, shaking and crying. They were too afraid to move.

“Fine,” she growled, pushing her head against the crystal. “I’ll do it myself!”

She began to push, getting as far as one of the holes- -but then she froze. A strange sensation crept through her, pulling at her deepest instincts in terrible ways. It was not unlike the horror that would overtake one when standing too close to the Heart of Darkness, but Facet knew it differently. She knew it from staring into the eyes of a cursed wizard.

She looked up, and felt a scream well in her chest. As terrible as Luciferian had been, the pony standing on the far side of the shield was worse. Tall, white, winged, with piercing black eyes and a look of absolute hatred even as a smile revealed her several rows of razor-sharp teeth.

Daybreaker had finally arrived.

The shield was holding as Daybreaker approached it. At the sight of her, the ponies nearest to the border cried out and fled. One of them held out for a moment, a young peasant girl. Daybreaker saw the horror on her face and could not help but smile. She was a crystal mare, which meant she was not long for this world. To see that look of fear- -that expression of WEAKNESS- -assured Daybreaker that her mission was justified, that her cause was divine. She would serve the will of the only true god of all ponies- -which was, of course, herself.

Some of her own ponies, it seemed, had already breached the shield by digging under it. Their forces had been few, and they had been soundly defeated. Which was not unexpected. They were earth-ponies, the worst type of ponies. They were not built for fighting. They were meant for growing potatoes and other disgusting root crops to feed mortals- -meaning that, of course, they had no place in the coming Eternal Day.

Nightmare Moon appeared beside her, as if she could read her sister’s thoughts- -which Daybreaker was mostly sure she could. Her only obstacle, she supposed. Equestria’s last hope. The one she could not hope to destroy, despite being ever so much stronger.

“I can dispatch my mages,” said Nightmare Moon, examining the dome.

“Why bother? I don’t have time for that.”

Daybreaker lifted her head back and plunged her horn into the dome. Inside, she heard her target cry out, and the idea of inflicting pain on the foulest of heretics brought unfathomed joy to Daybreaker’s heart.

Then, suddenly, the force of the shield rebounded, driving a feedback wave into Daybreaker’s horn and sending her reeling backward. She landed in a smoking heap.

“The tower is Exmoori,” said Nightmare Moon, staring up at it. “It was probably designed specifically to defend against us.” She turned to her slightly charred sister, who was standing, enraged. “And you seem weak.”

“That fat horse stole too much of my power. But it doesn’t matter.” Daybreaker pulled herself close to the shield dome again and took a deep breath- -and then rammed her horn into it once more.

The feedback wave struck her, but this time she dug her hooves into the ground. Although it tried to reject her, she forced herself to direct her full magic into it- -and could immediately feel it begin to buckle under the strain.

Penumbra cried out, brought to her knees as the Heart of Darkness pulled a massive amount of energy from her body.

“Penumbra!” cried Facet, running to her side.

“I can hold it,” growled Penumbra, pouring more of her life force into the Heart and the broken machine that still desperately struggled to support it. “I can do it. I won’t let it break. I WON’T!”

Burnt cried out. “Look at that pony!” she cried, pointing at Daybreaker. “She’s HUGE!”

Daybreaker pushed her horn farther into the shield. It began to buckle.

“PENUMBRA HEARTBREAK!” she screamed, viciously attempting to drive herself through the dome, ignoring the feedback tearing through her body. “I can SEE YOU!”

“You stay away from her!” cried Burnt.

Daybreaker laughed softly, looking at Burnt and then at the cowering crystal ponies. “You are NOT stronger than me, Penumbra. I wield the power of the SUN. And you have what, exactly?”

Penumbra did not answer, because she did not know- -or, in a way, did. She had the Heart, but that was not quite it. There was something else.

“Penumbra,” said Facet, tears starting to well in her eyes. “Your body...”

Penumbra did not need to look. She was withering. Daybreaker’s magic was too powerful; she was straining the shield too badly- -and the Heart needed fuel to keep it running.

“Why, Penumbra?” laughed Daybreaker. “Why protect them? They’re WEAK. Just look at them. Tiny, insignificant little things compared to US.”

“I have to protect them. I HAVE TO.”

“Why? For their adoration? For their LOVE?” Daybreaker laughed horribly. “They will NEVER love you, Penumbra! NO ONE EVER WILL! You are a MONSTER! Just like we are! LOOK AT THEM!”

Penumbra opened her eyes, staring into the crowd- -and the crowd stared back at her. Their eyes were locked upon her, and she saw that they were afraid. Afraid of her. And she understood. Daybreaker was correct. Penumbra was an extension of the Heart, a device of fear and hatred. So they would always fear and hate her, and rightfully so.

“I don’t care,” she said, softly. Then she stood, pouring the last of her life-force into the Heart. “I DON’T CARE! So they don’t love me? Then let my love be enough!”

She pushed what she had into the Heart, and Daybreaker released an animalistic scream as she was forced backward, unable to gain purchase on the crystalline ground.

Somewhere, Facet was screaming, but she sounded so very far away. Penumbra was no longer conscious, at least not entirely. Her mind was extending forward, caught up in the linkage between her and that which had created her.

She sensed it, and understood it. What Sombra called the Heart of Darkness- -but that which had born many names across the ages. The Crystal Heart, the Kryd’Coren, the Heart of Order- -and unspeakable names whispered softly in the eons before ponies. Many names, but always the same thing- -a reflection of its bearer.

And within it, Penumbra perceived its very core. She saw through it the ages before her father had come to power. She comprehended the crystalings of countless fillies and colts, and the joy and unity it had brought to the Empire. Times of happiness, of piece, and of love. Those were the things- -that very core- -that resonated equally with her own heart, the mirror it had created in its own image.

But it was impossible to glimpse that world clearly. Those visions of joy were a tiny kernel of light soaked in wretched blackness, in the corruption and fear that the Heart had accumulated across the centuries, held in place by the very machines that Penumbra sought to power. Forever pulling upon it, burning away its inherent goodness, harvesting the power within without even the slightest understanding of its true capacity.

And though she saw it, Penumbra knew that nothing could be done. She was not strong enough. The Heart could not be saved; it had been dying for far too long. Penumbra had been its last hope, and she had failed it. Perhaps, in its own way, it was sad that things had to end this way.

“Why?” said Penumbra, tears rolling down her face. “Why won’t you take it all? Take everything...please! Please keep them safe!”

The Heart stared into her own, and it refused.

Chapter 78: Sombra

Everything had gone wrong.

Gxurab jumped, barely avoiding a bolt of magical discharge as he ducked behind a piece of support equipment. The bolt struck the console instead and tubes exploded, casting reeking transfer fluid into the air and onto the floor. Gxurab was breathing hard through his strange lungs. He had not been so lucky before. The first blast had hit him hard, putting a hole in his chest. When he looked down, hear nearly fainted- -but focused on the spell that held his body together.

Within him, the crows writhed. They filled the hole, their bodies becoming his new flesh. It was interesting in its own right, but it was not something he could do repeatedly. He only had so many birds.

There was no pain, exactly. Only confusion. He could hear the minds of his ravens crying out in cacaphony- -but hardly noticed. The only thing his own mind could focus on was the screaming.

They were not the screams of a pony. They were not the screams of any sort of thing that was meant to be alive. Not living, not dead, not organic or machine- -something unspeakable and terrible. He should have known. He had done the scans, he had prepared the process from the start. He was not a pony. Sombra had not been a pony for a long, long time.

And yet, even as fear and horror crept through his hundreds of minds, Gxurab could not stop weeping. It had been him who had done this. It was his fault. It was he who had failed, and now the king was suffering because of him- -because he had not understood that the process could never have succeeded.

Another feedback wave detonated the system Gxurab was hiding behind, striking his body in the process. He burst into a plume of ravens, quickly spreading out and passing through the ionized air to new cover. Then, with grave difficulty, he reformed himself- -at least partially.

From his new vantage, he could see his failure. The platform had been placed in the center of the room, the epicenter of the new output transmitter’s power. Sombra now lay their, convulsing horribly and struggling against the restraints that held him in place. Above him, the elemental shadow waited- -inert and nonplussed.

Then, suddenly, the whole world seemed to stop. Sombra’s eyes opened and went wide, and then he fell back onto the metal table as his decrepit body flatlined. As Gxurab watched, he could see- -or more of feel- -as the king’s very soul left his body, torn free of his mortal coil but suspended from his machine.

The air began to hum as the machines began to shatter, unable to bear the strain. A low-frequency wave struck Gxurab, nearly disincorporating him again. It had been removed, and it was trapped, but not successfully- -the machine could not hold containment, and the soul itself was screaming in agony.

“No,” said Gxurab, rising and turning, suddenly overcome with both desperation and conviction. “NO! I won’t let you!”

His body burst into crows and he crossed the center of the room, bringing himself to the auxiliary control console just as a new and more ominous sparking began from the machine.

He checked the meters. Everything was right, or it was supposed to be: the fear-meter was in the critical zone, it had enough energy- -or should have.

“I have to reverse it!” Gxurab began to change the settings, desperately trying to recall his efforts. “I have to save him! He can’t- -he can’t leave us! I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!”

Except that it was too late. Sombra’s body had already failed. Only the soul remained, partially held in place by the power of the machine- -and as Gxurab watched, space itself began to sheer around the primary emitter. Something was dragging it outward and away. Something heavy.

Suddenly space began to distort. Gxurab cried out and held the console below him, desperately trying to retain his grasp on something material to prevent himself from being driven instantly insane.

There was no physical way to perceive the changes the world underwent, at least not in its truest form. Gxurab could have proven them mathematically, given time, but time was now something he distinctly lacked.

All that was material seemed to lose form- -and gained form in additional, indescribable dimensions. Suddenly the room was no longer the one Gxurab had begun in.

Nor was he alone. He cried out as he looked to one side and saw the spectral shadows of ponies standing at an entirely different console, one he himself had not constructed.

Then, to his horror, he realized that one of those ponies was HIM. Not a version built of cursed birds, but a morlock, as he had once been- -but contained in an entirely different suit, one that by some unknown design or construction left parts of his skin exposed, like the armor that the nobility of his race used. Beside his other self were two other ponies. One was, somehow, Twilight Luciferian- -but not. Her hair was streaked with violet, and the silvery armor she wore was strange. One of her legs was marked with delicate and beautiful luminescent lines declaring the eternal glory of Lord Dagon. The third pony was stout and extremely fluffy.

The world split again. This time, Gxurab saw a pink earth-pony linked to a complex machine using a technetium dial worn on her shoulder, the position it was placed for female morlocks. Her expression was hard and terrifying, and at her side stood a diminutive pony clad in holograms.

Then it split one more time, opening a final view to a world where no sane pony was meant to go. The room was nearly torn asunder as Gxurab looked across form him- -to where he had been standing not minutes before- -and saw a bank of machines more complex and elegant than any he had ever imagined.

In some impossible way, he recognized the ponies on that size. They wore the same armor as Thirteen of Thirteen, although without the helmets. There were three of them, and they were all almost perfectly identical, save for the cut of their manes and the unusual size of one of them. Between them, at the controls, stood a smaller pony clad in incomplete technical armor. Her coat was orange and her mane violet. One of her hooves had been replaced with a metal claw, and she wore a mask- -a mask with a single white, luminescent eye at its center.

Then Gxurab looked up, to the center of the room- -and felt his mind fracture. He stared directly into the nexus of the collapsing realities around him, at Sombra- -and at a white unicorn mare with green eyes named Hope, at a silver earth-pony whose body was mostly machine, and at the most terrifying of them all: a gray-violet alicorn with the stumps of wings, her face contorted in agony and rage as her soul was stripped from her body.

“We’re losing integrity!” cried one of the Thirteens, surrounding herself with holograms all indicating heavy critical in languages that even Gxurab could not read. “Xyuka, if we lose containment- -”

“Then DO SOMETHING,” growled the orange Pegasus in the center. Her mask turned upward toward Gxurab, and her luminescent eye focused on him. It was linked by a cable to her equipment, and he could not even begin to imagine what she saw.

The Thirteens turned away from the scientist, their armor warping and sprouting helmets to cover their faces. As they stepped past, they distorted in a way that even Gxurab- -who had no stomach- -found desperately nauseating.

Their bodies withstood the sheer, approaching the struggling pink earth-pony and the group of three to Gxurab’s right. The largest of them seemed to be assigned to him- -but when she approached, something went terribly wrong.

All of space erupted with thunderous force and seemed to tilt, losing its binding to the reality Gxurab had created for it and sinking across countless planes. He desperately grabbed the controls, doing what he could to stabilize, but his version of the machine was too weak- -and that infuriated him.

Suddenly the whole world seemed to vibrate. Gxurab’s equipment phased into shadow, and, somehow, he saw more. It was not like the others. It was not part of another world, but a fragment of his that he was not meant to see.

Gaunt shadows moved at his sides. Gxurab was instantly terrified, but he did not know why. It was the way they moved. It was wrong. Too calm, too collected- -and too observant.

“Don’t. MOVE,” ordered the pony with the eye-mask. “You’re still out of phase, they won’t react if you don’t touch them.” She stared directly at Gxurab. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Al’Hrabnaz?

Gxurab gaped. “How- -how do you know my name?”

“Shut up, it’s not even your real name and I don’t have time.”

“We can’t reach him!” called the Thirteen nearest to Gxurab, desperately trying to avoid contact with the dark shadows working hard on their own devices beside him.

Space suddenly shifted. Gxurab squealed and grabbed onto a rapidly leaking tank, desperately trying to prevent himself from falling away from reality.

“Xyuka!” cried one of the Thirteens. “We have to abort! If we don’t, we’re going to tear all four universes a new one- -”

“You paid me to make a Thebe. That is what I intend to do.” She turned to Gxurab. “You,” she shouted. “You need to listen to me. We’ve become entangled. I can do what I can from my side, but your version is badly corrupted. Our universes are merging and we’re risking a pandimensional singularity.”

“But that’s not...it can’t be- -”

“It IS. His soul is too badly damaged, too much is missing.”

“But there’s nothing I can do about that, the elemental shadow- -”

“Can’t compensate if you’re already missing linkages.” The space between them began to distort in waves. “You’re going to have to rebuild the damaged parts.”

Gxurab’s eyes widened. “Creating parts of a soul- -are you insane?!”

Except that, at least in theory, it was not. Even in his distorted, semi-disembodied form, Gxurab recalled his own theories. His own life’s work. The soul was a quantifiable thing, a nexus of dimensional forces- -and yes, it could theoretically be created, or even repaired. But doing so was nearly impossible.

He looked out at the center of his machine, at the king that had given him everything. Although he felt the strain on his mind growing, he focused hard, forcing away all the other false images until he saw what he needed to see. The soul itself, a mathematical formula of unimaginable complexity, suspended before him in his machine. A shadow of Sombra, broken and in pain, unable to return to its own body or to the one Gxurab had prepared for him.

In that moment, Gxurab understood what he needed to do to succeed.

He ran to one side, circling his machinery to the central console. The words opposing him moved with him, their afterimages trailing off to new and even stranger worlds as more and more universes began to converge on the dimensional nexus. Gxurab ignored them. They did not matter. Only Sombra did.

Sliding to a stop in front of the main controls, he disconnected his technetium dial and slammed it into the center of the computer, integrating it to the mechanical controls of the entire system. He turned it, opening the tertiary nanocogs and began performing the necessary calculations.

“You have to understand, filthy Pegasus,” he said. “I would do anything for my king. Anything at all, no matter the risk. I refuse to fail.”

“Then don’t.”

Gxurab looked up at her and gave a toothy smile. “I won’t.”

He pressed the crystalline center of his dial. The crystal in the center screamed and detonated- -and as it did, the screams of ponies filled the air.

The pink earth-mare’s dial exploded against her shoulder, throwing her away from her machine as her machine failed and her subject failed to ascend. His alternate self also cried out, his own system overloading as the alternate Luciferian cast a shield spell and vanished from Gxurab’s sight. Only the Thirteens managed to remain, and even then only barely.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

“I redirected their power!” Gxurab laughed uncontrollably. “What they were doing doesn’t MATTER! Only MINE! Only my machine, only the ONE TRUE KING!”

Space began to collapse, filling in where the extra dimensions had once been connected.

“You can’t!” cried one of the Thirteens. “You idiot, you’ll destroy EVERYTHING!”

“No.” Gxurab grasped the edge of his dial. “I think not.”

“NO, YOU FOOL, YOU CAN’T- -”

Gxurab twisted the device, channeling the adsorbed energy into his present reality- -a reality already disconnected from the one to which he was born.

The shadowy intangible figures surrounding him suddenly burst through into solidity as his dimension merged with theirs. Their equipment appeared, already merged with his own, and the room around him changed. A new one was drawn from elsewhere across reality, from the dim half-world of the unspeakable horrors that now stood alongside Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz. A structure built by some ancient and forgotten race eons before the eldest of forgotten eras- -a castle of power, suspended in the half-void.

The horrors smiled, because things were going exactly according to plan. They oversaw the process and set to work, stabilizing the processes that had allowed for their convergence. Gxurab saw them, but was forced to stare at the ground. He comprehended them better than any others could, and could not bear to look at them. Perhaps, in time, his sanity would return to him- -but in order to save the king he loved, he had been forced to sacrifice it.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” asked Xyuka. Her voice was calm and even, as if this were mildly amusing to her.

“A soul cannot be both complete and bound to a body. I created that theory.” Gxurab glared at her. “And you thought you could use it against me. To purge my reaction in favor of your own. I won’t allow it. I simply cannot.”

Xyka reached for her mask and removed it. To Gxurab’s surprise, she had a face beneath it, and not an unattractive one for a surface-dweller. Her eyes, though, were quite clearly synthetic and bore both a distinctive fire and a terrible coldness.

She was smiling.

“There are more worlds than these,” she said, smiling. “And I can always build more gods.”

Then she was gone.

The elemental shadow reached almost immediately, suddenly cleared from the foul entanglement that had held it at bay. It reached forward, suddenly grasping and gaping as it developed eyes and limbs. It was attempting to take the shape of a pony, to create a form that could devour the soul before it.

But the soul was already failing. The machine had sliced it free of most of its connections, but it was still bound- -and the machine was failing.

“I’m losing him,” said Gxurab, desperately looking down at his machines. “There’s enough fear!” He slammed his hooves against the cold metal of his device. “There should be enough! There has to be! THERE HAS TO!”

Something was not right. There was something missing.

“Just a little more,” he said, tears flowing form his eyes. “I just need a little more...”

He looked down at his console. He saw the fear-meter, but also saw the energy spikes coming from the Heart of Darkness. Through the castle’s sensors, he understood completely what was happening outside it. He could perceive the shield, and the princess, and the power she was generating at the expense of her own life. The sacrifice she was making to keep the kingdom of alive.

And Gxurab made his decision.

He lifted a shaking hoof to the controls. “It does not matter if the kingdom dies, so long as the king survives. If he survives, we can rebuild. Hail Sombra. Hail the WITCHKING!”

And with a single stroke of his hoof, he engaged the final switch.

Chapter 79: The End of an Empire

Suddenly, the half-broken machines binding the Heart of Darkness engaged. They whirred and turned, driven by some unseen signal. Penumbra opened her eyes, but only saw them distantly. Perhaps, in some way, she understood- -but it still took her by surprise when the charges fired, and the hypodermic chisels were fired straight into its very core.

She screamed softly, because they had simultaneously penetrated her very soul.

Then the machine shunted the very last energy of the Heart upward and outward, and Penumbra’s life-force along with it. The Heart, drained of the last dregs of its power, shattered, exploding outward into thousands of dull blackened fragments.

The explosion threw Penumbra backward, and she fell to the ground, her eyes still open but her body limp. Her cutie mark flickered and went out entirely.

Now empty and devoid of any and all power, the shield protecting the last remnants of the kingdom slowly and quietly dissipated. Daybreaker watched as it fell around her, dissipating into fine, glimmering particles. She tilted her head back, her horn still smoking, and took a deep breath. Then she stepped across the final boundary.

“Penumbra!” cried Burnt, grabbing her friend. “Penumbra, wake up!” She squeezed her, and burst into sobs. “Facet, Facet! The hugs! They aren’t working!”

“Hold on,” said Facet. “There’s still a chance, there has to be- -”

“No,” said Daybreaker, approaching them. “There isn’t. It’s over. I’ve won.”

A minor burst of her magic cast Burnt and Facet aside, and Daybreaker’s hooves crunched over the powerless shards of the Heart of Darkness. Then she began to smile.

“Princess,” she said. “You challenged me. And you lost. Congratulations, heretic.” She laughed softly to herself, her glowing shadow falling over Penumbra’s unmoving body. “Say,” she said. “Would you like to hear a joke?” She did not pause for an answer. Her smile grew. “What is the difference between an earth-pony and an alicorn?”

Daybreaker’s horn ignited, and a blinding white light appeared beside her, assembling itself into a cutting spell and finally a blade of brilliant solar intensity.

She laughed, her smile revealing her numerous long, sharp teeth.

“A pair of wings...and a HORN.”

“Sister!” cried Nightmare Moon. “You can’t- -”

A flare of magic from Daybreaker’s horn atomized her sister into a plume of smoke. She did not even bother looking. Her eyes were focused solely on the usurper, the false alicorn- -the disease she was tasked by fate to end.

She raised the blade- -and felt a slight warmth on her side.

“Get away from her!” squeaked Burnt, firing her incendiary magic into Daybreaker’s left shoulder. “Get back get back GET BACK! GET- -ERK!”

Daybreaker lifted Burnt by her neck. Even as she was held aloft, Burnt struggled, sending burning fire in every direction. A great deal of it struck Daybreaker, but had absolutely no effect.

“Stop that.”

“I’m warning you! I’m trained for cuddling but I’ll still kick your fat BU- -”

Daybreaker sliced off the end of Burnt’s horn. Burnt’s magic immediately faltered to only a thin trickle of vague like-warmth.

“I am not fat,” said Daybreaker. “Let us please make that clear. Fat is what is used to FRY THING.” She suddenly increased the heat around Burnt, and Burnt cried out as she began to smolder. “I am the goddess of the SUN, you pointless moron. Why would you use FIRE against ME?” She smiled. “But what can I expect? You’re clearly an idiot. Such an ugly color...a disgrace. I TOLERATE pure, perfect white unicorns...but not you. Brown is the wrong color.” She squeezed harder, crushing Burnt’s windpipe and choking off her breath. “But if you like fire? Allow me to oblige!”

Daybreaker was suddenly hit in the chest with a spell. A powerful one, too, but quite clearly not one cast by a unicorn. Daybreaker raised the colored unicorn she was holding and struck her attacker with it, sending them both reeling back- -but her eyes narrowed with hate when she saw that the pony who had dared to cast a mildly competent spell against her was made of CRYSTAL.

“So,” she said, approaching the crystal pony who had cast against her. “I see Sombra trained you well. Defending his daughter, even to the last. Always obeying. Never choosing.” She laughed. “But only I can choose, can’t I? I’m the only one here truly alive. Certainly not you.” She paused. “Well, at least not any longer.”

The crystal pony raised a crystal containing a spell. Before she could activate it, Daybreaker shattered it, causing a small detonation that sent both the crystal pony and the ugly brown unicorn flying backward. Out of sheer amusement, Daybreaker took aim at the crystal pony in midair. The others of her pointless kind had not fled; they were too simple to know to run. So she would make an example for them.

Daybreaker fired- -but as the beam struck the crystal pony, strange and hellish runes around her neck ignited with sickening light. A black shield spell formed around her, protecting both herself and the toasticorn.

“What?” Daybreaker actually took a step back as the pair landed on the crystal ground, both still alive. “That curse? Where did you get it?!”

Facet reached for her neck, wincing as the marks singed deeper into her coat. “What…?”

Daybreaker laughed. “You don’t know, do you? Huh. Well, you’ll find out. Understand, I was being merciful.” She turned away and back toward Penumbra. “Not that it matters. I have no time for mortals. But her...she needs PAIN.”

She took a step toward the princess and was promptly struck in the face by a tiny and inconsequential fragment of crystal.

Daybreaker’s blackened eyes turned toward where the piece had come from.

“Who dares?”

“Go away!” cried a crystal filly, tears running down her face, even as her mother- -with marks from a rope still around her ankles- -tried to pull her back. “You leave her alone, you- -you BIG MEANIE!”

A murmur moved through some of the crystal ponies. They looked from one to another, seeing the response of each other and trying to judge it. Yet they were all too foolish to run. They were not smart enough to leave their princess’s side.

“She was trying to save us!” cried one of the crowd, a mare whose body had been shaved in preparation for a surgery that had never happened. “She gave us everything she had!”

“And she FAILED!” boomed Daybreaker, using her Royal Canterlot Voice- -only to be struck in the face with another fragment of crystal, this one thrown by a crystal stallion who worked at a bar that was now buried deep under a small fragment of the HMS Monocerus.

“Who do you think you are?!” he demanded.

“Yeah!” The eldest of several maids stepped forward. “We won’t let you hurt the princess!”

“FOOLS!” Daybreaker cast a solar plume over their head and laughed as many cowered in fear- -even as many among them did not. “She’s a MONSTER! Just like ME! You know it in your hearts, you want this just as much as I do! Sombra is gone! And if she lives? SHE takes control of the Empire, just like her father- -”

Several fragments of crystal pinged off Daybreaker’s superheated armor.

“She’s not a monster!” screamed a stallion shielding a little child, both dressed in uniforms given to Turing testers by Emeth himself.

“She’s a good pony!”

“We won’t let you hurt her!”

“She’s not FAT like YOU!”

“I AM NOT FAT!”

Daybreaker summoned her magic, but as she did, several of the bravest among the crystal ponies did the unthinkable. They charged her.

She knocked them away with ease, sending their useless crystal bodies flying- -but upon seeing the bravery of the others, more came, ignoring their fear of Daybreaker and her unstoppable magic.

In seconds, it seemed that the whole of the kingdom had rallied around Penumbra, swarming forward against Daybreaker. She found herself wading through them but unable to approach her target, who many of the crystal ponies covered with their own crystalline bodies.

“Get off me! LET ME THROUGH! You don’t UNDERSTAND!”

“Go away!” cried a crystal pony in response.

“This isn’t your kingdom!”

“We’re not afraid of you!”

“We’re not afraid anymore!”

They buffeted against Daybreaker in waves, hitting and striking her- -but their attacks were useless. Pointless, even, for they could accomplish nothing in the face of an alicorn goddess. Yet still they pressed forward regardless.

And as they stood together and united, courageous even through their fear, the fragments of the Crystal Heart began to quiver upon the ground. Slowly, they began to shake, pulling themselves across the ground toward one another.

“FINE,” growled Daybreaker, igniting her horn. “I had hoped this would be more orderly and less messy. Oh well, if you want it that bad- -”

Even then, at the moment of their last stand, the crystal ponies still did not stand down- -they stood together, holding one another as the very last of their fear evaporated. If the daughter of Sombra would stand for them, then so could they.

The fragments of the shattered Heart ignited, their blackness purged by a glow of purest blue. They drew together, slamming together as the Heart was reconstructed. Now pure and bright, it stood without the help of its machines, and the morlock clasp that had once held it was burned away by its light. In the center of the kingdom beneath the Crystal Citadel, it began to revolve freely, its cosmic form at last freed from the plague created by Sombra’s misunderstanding of its true power.

Daybreaker brought down her spell as the force of the Crystal Heart burst outward. The blast of solar heat met only crystal as the bodies of the crystal ponies changed, their bodies imbued with the light of hope and unity. Daybreaker herself could not understand what Celestia would have known in an instant, and when the light of the Heart reached her she could not comprehend it.

It rejected her. She tried to fight against it, but doing so was pointless. Daybreaker was instantly overpowered and driven backward by the same energy that tore through the Citadel, tearing away the machines that had once bound its smallest fraction. The energetic force of an entire kingdom’s love.

Unfortunately, she was not the only one. The spell cast by the Heart was meant as a final defense for crystal ponies and crystal ponies alone. While it passed harmlessly through Penumbra and the crystal ponies, it bumped Burnt hard in the rump, driving her outward.

“EEP!” she cried. “Where am I going?!”

“Burnt, no! Hold on!” Facet grabbed her heel, trying to pull her in- -but as the shield passed through her own body, she screamed in pain.

The magic rejected all that was evil; it was inherent to its design- -and it had caught on the runes that were indelibly marked into Facet’s neck. They glowed with terrible light as the love of the Heart burned into her flesh, and she, like Burnt or Daybreaker, was carried outward and away from her own people. Luciferian’s curse had manifested.

The three of them were thrown to the ground in the ruins outside the Capital District. Burnt had landed on top of Daybreaker’s face, and Facet still desperately attempted to tear her way through the dome, to pull her way back to her people- -but although her body would pass, the marks on her neck would not allow her.

“No! NO! Let me- -let me back! PENUMBRA! I won’t leave you! I’m sorry! I’M SORRY!”

A dark mist congealed beside Facet. Facet cried out and cowered in the rubble as it assumed the form of Nightmare Moon.

“I am afraid it is too late, Facet Flare,” she said, her turquoise eyes narrowing on the crystal pony. “That curse, once spoken, cannot be unsaid. We humbly apologize.”

Nightmare Moon’s body partially reverted to mist again as a brown unicorn was thrown through it. Burnt landed hard on Facet as Daybreaker stood up.

“NO!” she screamed, driving the full force of her magic and rage into the force of the Heart. “NO! I will NOT be defeated! I won’t! I WON’T! I REFUSE!”

Her attacks did not even make the barest of dent into the surface. When she tried to drive her horn through it once more, she cried out as she was thrown back by the force.

“Do not hurt thine self, sister,” sighed Nightmare Moon. “I am afraid it is too late. You cannot penetrate this force.”

“Shut up! SHUT UP!”

A thin smile crossed Nightmare Moon’s face. “It is ironic, in a way. Celestia would cry tears of joy to see this, and walk through it with the greatest ease.” She turned to her elder sister. “And yet even you, her ‘superior’ self, cannot scratch it.”

“I am NOT Celestia!” shrieked Daybreaker, charging the wall again and slashing at it with her magic. “I am STRONGER! I am BETTER, more beautiful, more POWERFUL! I demand you let me in! LET ME IN! I will end you all! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!!”

Nightmare Moon nearly laughed- -but that laughter caught in her throat when, as if in response to Daybreaker’s demands, the color of the energy became pale and its strength began to wain.

“HA! Take that, stupid magic!” Daybreaker poked it with her horn. “Even that ridiculous heart can see I DESERVE this...and I’m going to shatter it so hard...”

“Sister. We have failed.

“What are you talking about, you fat idiot? I just told you, I almost have her, that filthy heretic- -”

Then Daybreaker too sensed it. She looked up to the sky as the red glow of her sun faded, overwhelmed by ominous darkness that seemed to spread downward from the sky itself. Darkness that even the light of Daybreker’s sun could not penetrate; a form of the deepest and most pure form of despondent blackness.

Nightmare Moon felt it. A feeling she knew all too well. Daybreaker, though, had never known fear, so as it permeated her soul she took a step back, raging and confused at wahatever force dared to make her so weak. Beneath the protective light of the Cyrstal Heart, the crystal ponies held one another, looking to the sky and watching. They knew the name of that dreaded fear all too well.

Part of the darkness stretched downward, coalescing and gaining impossible tangibility. Shadows had no form, and no substance; they were simply the absence of light, nothing more than a void- -and yet, as the alicorns watched, they took form.

Sombra emerged before them, built piece by piece as the shadows formed bone and muscle and flesh. He no longer had the form of an ancient wizard, but nor did he have the form he once held. Nightmare Moon had seen that form on more than one occasion and marked it well, how uncanny he seemed- -that his youth was little more than an illusion, a commodity bought through the use of foul and dangerous magic.

Yet the being that stood before them had no look of a revenant. His youth had been restored to him, and restored eternal. The creature that stood before Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker was no longer a pony- -but he was most certainly immortal.

Sombra looked at them both, his pale eyes reflecting in the waning light of Daybreaker’s red sun. And then he smiled.

“I had forgotten,” he said, his voice quiet and elegant with no sense of malice or anger.

“Forgotten what?”

Sombra’s eyes met Nightmare Moon’s. “How good it feels. To be alive.” He lifted one of his hooves, flexing it. “How long it has been...how slow, though. I had never noticed, even as my power slipped away. As the Heart ceased to expand my power and came to replace it...” He looked over his shoulder. “Although I suppose I no longer require it now, do I?”

“Do you really think you can challenge me?” demanded Daybreaker. “Because from where I’m standing, I don’t see a pair of wings.” She bared her teeth. “And you are not going to leave hear alive. This kingdom is MINE.”

“Of course. You are welcome to it.”

Daybreaker blinked, taken aback completely. “Wh- -what?”

“I surrender it to you. I shall even sign a treaty, if that even matters in deals between gods and whatever it is Gxurab has made me.”

“Forgive us if we do not trust you,” growled Nightmare Moon.

Sombra turned to her. “I would expect simplicity from your sister, but please consider this logically. The kingdom is and always was a means toward an end. Power for power’s sake is utterly pointless and a waste of my talent and time. Even if that time is now far less limited.” He gestured toward it. “Take it, if you like. Or level it, I don’t care. As I have said, I no longer need it. This body is more than adequate for what I need.”

“Which is?”

Sombra blinked. “For one brief moment, I glimpsed them. The endless doors to knowledge beyond all knowledge, to worlds beyond these and beyond endless time. My body is massless and eternal. My kingdom has served its purpose. Please, feel free to take it.” He turned sharply toward Daybreaker. “HOWEVER. I have one request. A condition, so to speak.”

“Which is?” asked Nightmare Moon.

“My daughter. You may have her, if you like. But I request your unbreakable word as a divine being, a true Princess Promise, that she will not be harmed.”

“You would not take her with you? Your private weapon?”

“What does an immortal have need with a weapon? Conquest is pointless. Warfare is pointless. And...” He paused, and looked back over his shoulder- -but this time not at the Heart. “I think...”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Why not take her with you, then?”

Sombra looked back to Nightmare Moon. “And drag her with me, driving her ever toward my own dream? I do not want that. I release her.”

“Even if that means we ought to take her?”

“To be raised by those that can give her the love and happiness that I never can? I do not feel regret for what I have done to her. I am not capable of it. But neither am I capable of love. I...” He paused. “...I do not want her to become as I have. Unless that is the path she chooses by her own will. And should that day come, I shall stand beside an equal.”

“You would give us the Empire, if we take your daughter?”

Sombra shrugged. “My kingdom for a pony. Is that not a fair deal?”

Nightmare Moon smiled. “Of course. We wish the same, Sombra- -”

“No,” interrupted Daybreaker. “Request denied. We do not accept these terms.”

Nightmare Moon’s eyes widened as her pupils narrowed. “Sister, have you gone mad?! He is proposing a perfect diplomatic resolution! There does not need to be any more violence!”

“I said NO! I am not done being violent!” Daybreaker strode forward, meeting Sombra directly and glaring into his eyes. “We absolutely REFUSE. The princess must pay for her insolence.”

“Sister- -”

“NO. I will not suffer the existence of another alicorn. There can only be ONE.” She glared at Sombra. “I will take the kingdom, and I will take the princess to do as I please. And you will do nothing to stop me. This is our final decision.”

Sombra shrugged. “I see,” he said. “Then my only other option is to test my new power on you.” His silvery eyes turned toward Nightmare Moon and he smiled. She could not help but realize how similar he looked to Specter. “Then perhaps I can broker a deal with your successor.”

“No,” said Nightmare Moon. “I stand by my sister, even when she is an unfathomable idiot. I shall never betray her. Not for all of Equestria.”

“Then neither of you will leave the Empire. I do not want this. As a king to a pair of princesses, know that this is your last chance to reconsider.”

“Ha.” Daybreaker lowered her horn toward Sombra. “Like you even truly ever had a choice.”

She fired a beam of solar energy, splattering his body. The force of the light struck the shield cast by the Crystal Heart and the dome rippled, weakened by the presence of Sombra.

Yet, even with a hole torn through his body, Sombra scarcely moved. His form was no longer flesh- -that part had been left behind, a pile of ash left for Gxurab to carefully bottle and place on a shelf in his new home. What Sombra had become could not be destroyed so easily.

The shadow welled up, bubbling and hissing as it reformed his body.

“Then the choice is made,” he said. “Out of respect for you both, I accept your challenge. Your tissues may yet prove useful to the next phase of my research.”

Daybreaker, clearly annoyed at her attack being rebuked by Sombra’s survival, struck back with twice the force, tearing through Sombra’s location. His body was ripped to shreds of living shadow, and in the light of her magic they suddenly burst apart and became a plume of pitch-black fog.

“SISTER!” cried Nightmare Moon, knowing the spell all too well.

It was too late, though. The inky fog surrounded them both, blocking out all light and vision, separating the two princesses from each other’s sight.

Daybreaker roared with rage, tearing at the shadows as they pressed against her body, swarming over her divine flesh.

“How dare you- -I am LIGHT ITSELF!”

She lit her horn with brilliant solar energy, but the blast only caused the shadows to become deeper and more defined. They pressed against her harder, caressing her flesh- -and entering her nose as she breathed them in.

Her mind began to fill with voices. Some of them she knew, but many she did not. But they were all really just one- -one voice that spoke in the ancient and forgotten language of the Dark Unicorns. Her own voice.

“I understand,” it said. “I understand what you are.”

“If you could truly comprehend the power I wield, then you would not have CHALLENGED ME!”

She screamed and struck again, but her magic met only black mist.

“What is power?” asked her own voice, echoing from the darkness. “What does it matter, what does it bring? Why do you care when you are so very ALONE...”

Daybreaker’s breath caught in her throat. “Get out of my head,” she said, slowly coming to understand. “GET OUT I DEMAND IT!”

The voices whispered from the edge of her perception. “All alone...so alone….”

“They do not love you,” said her own voice. “All that have loved you have long since passed to dust. None can follow you on your path forward across eternity. There are none to stand beside you.”

“Then I stand alone, as I was destined to! Atop all ponies! THE ONLY TRUE GOD!”

“But that accomplishes...what? To be alone...always alone…and without love...”

“They will love me!” cried Daybreaker, feeling fear welling within her. “They HAVE TO! I will give them no choice! Even now- -”

“It is not you they love,” said a female voice, one that was almost her own. “They love Celestia. But you are HATED.” The mist caressed her. “How it must feel...for them to love the lesser part of you, the part that hides her true emotions deep within herself.”

“She is weak! She doesn’t understand! I’m not her! I AM NOT CELESTIA!”

“No. And they will forever hate you because you are not.”

Daybreaker collapsed to her knees. “I am perfect,” she whispered. “I am the definition of perfection. I have to be alone, alone because I am perfect...I don’t need their love.” Burning tears dripped from her blackened eyes. “I will burn everything...burn everything so I can be alone. Then I won’t have to be lonely ever again.” She raised her head, the light of her horn flickering. “I do not need their love.”

“Their love...” echoed many voices.

“But it is not THEIR love,” said a distant male voice, a voice that almost made Daybreaker cry out in fear- -or in joy. It was a voice she was sure she would never hear again.

“You are hated, Daybreaker. They do not love you. They never will. No one ever will. You are doomed to be alone and empty for all eternity, with none to walk beside you.”

“Because you failed me!”

“Do you really think I wanted to succeed?” The voice laughed in her face. “Do be with YOU for all eternity? No one wants that. No one EVER WILL. They do not love you. They love HER...”

“H...her?”

“While your disciples fear and plot against you for the sake of your far more beautiful lesser half, hers adore her regardless of form. Their loyalty is absolute, their love eternal and unending. She is as a mother to them, whereas you are nothing but an oncoming storm barely worth giving a name. The love for your sister is endless. Love that you were too weak to earn. Love you do not DESERVE.”

A face materialized from the mist, a visage of a gray unicorn with a flowing white beard- -although Daybreaker remembered him when he had still been young and beautiful, when the name they had given him was meant to be an ironic description of his youth. The only pony she had ever truly loved.

“St...Starswirl...”

“Know this, failure. I did not choose my name from your sky. I chose it from HERS...”

New thoughts whispered into Daybreaker’s head. Thoughts that told her whose fault it was that she was hated, that she was forced to be alone. Thoughts that suddenly became so clear.

She understood, and her fear was replaced with rage. Range- -and the realization that the time had come. That she had been betrayed, and that it was time for Equestria to serve under a single queen- -and only then would she finally be loved. If she desired the sadness to stop, it would take one final act of violence.

The thought made her smile.

Nightmare Moon was thrown back by the sudden surge of black shadow. Even as it pushed her back, she summoned her armor, encasing herself. It was too late, though. She had already inhaled some if it. It reached into her mind, although it seemed to be surprised that it was not the only voice that reached her mind. Within her, the Blackest Night watched, amused by this turn of events.

“Luna,” whispered her own voice- -the voice of Sombra.

“No,” she said, her voice somber. “Luna is no more. I had to give her up.”

“You are smarter than your little sister...”

“I am aware of that. I do not begrudge her for being a fool.”

The voice ceased to be hers. She heard it for what it truly was- -and yet it continued to speak.

“I spend centuries trying to understand her power. To understand what Eternity Gaze knew, how such a wretched being must perceive the world...time itself...”

“Then you were a greater fool than I thought. The future was not meant to be known, to mortals and immortals alike. To know is sure destruction.”

“I know, and yet I could not stop. I learned from her. I learned her telepathy, came to understand it...but I could not take her vision.” He laughed softly. “And, as it turns out, I did not need it.”

“Really.”

“Starlight Glimmer. I saw within her mind. The briefest of glimpses, the slightest of understandings...and I saw you. I saw what would become of you, in her future.” The voice laughed, and the whispers spoke in strange languages. “She will betray you. Your beloved sister, to whom you are endlessly loyal. She will turn against you, imprison you alone and cold until she can conspire a method to tear you free of her softer, lighter, easier to control sister.

“And your children, she will take them. Purge them from the land. And your beloved...well, his fate is already sealed. One who serves a false-goddess cannot be suffered to live.”

Nightmare Moon stared into the darkness and sighed. “Yes. I am aware.”

Sombra was somewhat taken aback. “And you do not fear this?”

Nightmare Moon smiled, and something dark began to seep from beneath her armor. A creature that itself had been forged from her own sample of elemental shadow- -and that which kept Sombra from ever truly reaching her.

“I created Tantabus to expose me to everything I could possibly ever fear. To every situation, to every scenario, to every form of agony and depravity that could be experienced. My own dreams are the greatest and most terrible of their kind, to harden me against all fates. Yes. I will be left alone and in despair. I know this. Yet I do not fear it. There is nothing left I fear, save for her sake.”

Nightmare Moon lit her horn, casting a light that could never warm- -a light that was itself forged from the deepest darkness of her perfect night. The shadows recoiled from it, retreating and receding, unable to exist against Nightmare Moon’s own moonlit darkness. And as she stood without fear, the smoke dissipated.

From the darkness came light- -burning, blinding, devastating light. Nightmare moon barely dodged it, with Tantabus taking most of the damage as her armor superheated. She fell against the ground, rolling, only to suddenly feel her sister’s sharp teeth clamp down on the metal protecting her neck. The quicksilver creaked and began to buckle, and even though the armor Nightmare Moon could feel the teeth of the first of the vampires.

What was left of Tantabus reacted, pouring outward as Nightmare Moon evaporated- -only to have her smoke shot through by a blinding beam of light. The effect generated a peculiar sensation as some of her particles were lost. It was not quite pain, but whatever it was forced the spell to prematurely terminate, dropping Nightmare Moon onto the heated ground.

“Give them to me!” screamed Daybreaker. The black marks of burning tears had left streaks running down her face, although her expression now contained only rage. “Give me your Elements! You DON’T DESERVE THEM, you filthy traitor!”

“Daybreaker, even if I could- -”

“GIVE THEM TOO ME NOW!”

Daybreaker poured her magic into the earth, causing it to erupt violently as the rock beneath her liquified. Nightmare Moon was barely able to escape in time, flying into the air- -only for her sister to teleport behind her and send a bolt of light through one of her wings, burning away the flight feathers.

Nightmare Moon spiraled to the ground, gracefully catching herself and dodging as Daybreaker, screaming incoherently, landed where she had just been, sending a swirling vortex of destruction in every direction.

“They will love me!” she screamed. “When I’m the only one left, they will HAVE TO!” She charged Nightmare Moon. “They have to love me! THEY HAVE TO LOVE ME!”

Nightmare Moon saw the panic in her sister’s eyes, and she understood it. In a way, she had always known, even if she had never had the will to address it directly. Just as she herself was the embodiment of Luna’s coldness, ruthlessness, and passion, Daybreaker was the embodiment of Celestia’s rage, hatred, but most importantly her endless pain.

This thought only angered Nightmare Moon further- -that she had summoned this creature that had brought her sister so much torment.

As such, she had grown fed-up with Daybreaker’s antics. She sidestepped Daybreaker’s attack easily and struck her hard at the base of her horn. Daybreaker cried out and released a plume of magic from her body, even as her horn was otherwise rendered inoperable for the briefest of moments.

She turned and instead leapt forward- -only for her wings to buckle and fail. Daybreaker fell on her face and looked back, seeing that Nightmare Moon’s touch had transmitted part of her armor. The enchanted metal had bound to Daybreaker’s flaming, angelic wings.

“Don’t mock me!” she wailed, breaking free of the quicksilver as she vaporized it. “I am stronger than you, smarter, cuter- -I am BETTER in EVERY WAY! And even then, you took two of MY Elements! I will tear them free of your skinny horse body, Nightmare. They are MINE! I DESERVE them!”

“Sister. I tire of this.”

Daybreaker turned suddenly, blasting away an entire district of the Crystal Empire and utterly vaporizing her sister- -only to too late notice the thin silver thread attached to her forehead.

The real Nightmare Moon was behind her. Daybreaker turned and struck, but Nightmare Moon parried her blow with her own alicorn magic, drawing close enough to punch Daybreaker square in the snoot.

Enraged, Daybreaker was thrown backward, and lashed out again- -only for her magic to strike Tantabus.

“Why are you hiding, LITTLE sister? Where are you? SHOW YOURSELF!”

“Sister. You seek love. Is mine not enough?”

Daybreaker’s eyes narrowed. “You love HER. Not me!”

She spotted the real Nightmare Moon and charged- -only for Nightmare Moon to turn, grabbing her sister by the shoulder and shoving her head-first into the shield dome cast by the Crystal Heart.

Daybreaker cried out and began to convulse as the magic poured into her, rejecting her presence. Even it loved Celestia alone- -only the half of her that was good and pleasant, kind and free of anger or sadness. Never the whole- -never the self that the sun-goddess was forced to conceal.

Even through the pain, she broke free and turned to her sister. She was fully prepared to do to Nightmare Moon what she was not yet able to do to Cadence- -to win the love of her subjects by purging those who would serve as distractions.

Except that Nightmare Moon was too fast. Without warning or hesitation, she leaned forward and kissed her sister on the lips- -a kiss complete with tongue.

Daybreaker’s face darkened several shades to an interesting red color. Nightmare Moon disconnected and looked into her sister’s eyes.

“I want to have your babies.”

Far more than Daybreaker’s face changed to shades of red. “But- -that- -not- -princest- -possible?”

“Come on. I have seen it in your dreams more than once. And I am not above frosting myself.”

“N- -NO! Stay out of my dreams!”

Nightmare Moon’s seductive smile faded. “Now that I have your attention, sister, listen to me. Sombra is playing you like a rented fiddle. He is using you as a tool.”

Daybreaker gasped. “I am NOT a tool!”

“We can agree to disagree. Regardless, consider how willing you are to bend to the will of a stallion.”

“I bend to NO ONE!”

“And yet,” said Sombra, who was lying quietly on top of a shattered building. “You are so very easy to manipulate.”

“Sister.” Nightmare Moon put her hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “Please listen. I think we may have the advantage, if you can just keep a cool head.”

“Keeping cool is not exactly my specialty. I want to give him THE POKE!”

“You may not be able to. His body is made of shadow, like Tantabus- -he may only be able to cast illusions.”

Daybreaker looked at Nightmare Moon and smiled. “Maybe you’re not as bad as I thought.”

“Is that what you think?” asked Sombra, now standing inches from Nightmare Moon. His horn ignited with black light and the earth below Daybreaker exploded into tendrils of crystal, several of them immediately converging to crush her. “I think you may be mistaken.”

Nightmare Moon rolled to one side and fired a beam of silver light. Sombra caught the beam in mid-air, blackening it and reversing its course it back into Nightmare Moon’s horn. She cried out from the feedback wave and suddenly Sombra was on top of her, striking her in the side and tearing away the quicksilver that protected her. It reacted to his touch as it did to hers, controlled and contorted so that it impeded her motion and dug into her flesh. Then she felt his magic inside her hair, and her face was shoved to the ground.

“To be honest, I had always thought you the more attractive of the two. If only things could have been different.”

“I have a husband!”

A thread of silver reached out from Nightmare Moon’s horn to Sombra’s head. He did not bother to defend against it, because when it met, she found that there was nothing to link to. He had no brain, at least in any normal sense of the word. He was not like an alicorn: he was something else entirely.

The crystal containing Daybreaker suddenly vaporized in a plume of shards as she burned through it.

“You can’t even keep your filthy hooves to yourself during battle, Nightmare? Stupid horse!” She summoned a spell and fired its fully solar force at both her sister and at Sombra. Nightmare Moon collapsed to smoke, leaving Sombra alone in its path.

His body was torn apart, but even as the light passed through him his shadows became more intense, casting themselves darker against the contrast of Daybreaker’s light. They swam across the ground, swarming toward her and erupting against her. This time he did not form mist, but rather a wave of liquid shadow. Daybreaker cried out as they grasped her body, holding her neck and seeping across her entire body.

Then she was picked up and throne into the side of a crystal building- -and thrown into the ground horn-first.

The ameboid shadow gave no sign of relent- -but suddenly began to vibrate and pulse as black mist condensed within it. Then it exploded outward as Nightmare Moon reformed herself inside it, tearing through Sombra’s shadow with her own.

The force required was immense, and Nightmare Moon dropped to her knees even as Daybreaker was released. Daybreaker, falling to the ground, saw her sister weak and defenseless- -and saw her chance.

She raised her horn and fired- -and the bolt struck the shadow as it advanced toward her sister, repelling Sombra’s spell. Daybreaker frowned and cursed under her breath; apparently, just as she lurked inside Celestia, Celestia in turn dwelt within her.

Nightmare Moon, having partially regained her composure, deployed Tantabus against the shadow, forming a corrosive barrier. Sombra retreated, his shadow returning to a single point and bubbling back into a concerted body. Even before his flesh had fully reformed, his horn ignited.

Two buildings were fragmented to razor-sharp shards of crystal and accelerated toward Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon. Daybreaker raised her horn, casting a shield around them both- -just as a black fireball erupted over both of them, sending them flying backward.

Many of the crystal shards were shattered, and Sombra released those. The rest, still sparking with black energy, Sombra took to himself, immediately beginning the carving process. Even as he did, Daybreaker stood, uninjured and undamaged but with her magic already beginning to wane.

“Fight me!” she cried. “I DEMAND IT!”

She lobbed a bolt of solar energy toward Sombra. Sombra met it with his own shadow magic, and the pair became spellbound, their two beams meeting at the midpoint and sparking relentlessly as the spells tried to overwhelm one another.

Daybreaker smiled, because she knew that no matter what form he took, no pony alive or immortal could match the strength of the Sun.

Drawing on her limitless well of power, Daybreaker forced more magic forward toward Sombra. His half of the spell shrank- -and then began to stabilize. Daybreaker’s eyes narrowed, because she did not understand- -but she could feel it. While she could only emit uncontrolled bursts of energy, Sombra’s icy shadow had begun to parse and separate, being driven apart and reconstructed at his will to form a spell calculated to survive Daybreaker’s solar inferno. It was true sorcery, the pointless system of mathematics and theory that Celestia insisted on constantly learning and teaching- -the thing that Daybreaker had always considered too pointless to learn herself.

Sombra was already absurdly powerful, even without a connection to the Crystal Heart- -but with a spell that had actually been planned and designed with the precision only achievable by an ancient wizard, he was able to take a step forward.

“You horseson!” growled Daybreaker, her gold-clad hooves digging into the soil. “How dare you?!”

“How dare I what? Win?” Sombra smiled. “As I have told you. I no longer require an alicorn for a weapon. It is not such because I have become a pacifist. It is because I no longer NEED ONE.”

He took another step, and suddenly Daybreaker was forced into the ground. She cried out as the gravity spell corrupted, burning her in black fire. Confused, she looked behind her- -and saw a small swarm of black crystals hovering behind her, casting Sombra’s magic remotely while her own magic was fully dedicated to defending against his.

The spellbinding broke, and Daybreaker was punched in the chest. One of her wings was tugged almost to the point of dislocation, and she found herself unable to move. Although Sombra’s body had no mass, hers was tangible and material; with the gravity spell still in effect, her motion was slow and bulky.

She was thrown to the ground as Sombra’s crystals assumed different combinations, performing the auxiliary mathematics to generate more and better spells. Daybreaker was struck by several at once, all from different directions. There was no way to defend against them all.

Nightmare Moon charged from behind. Sombra turned away from Daybreaker and cast a spell. Before him, a construct formed from black energy. It took the shape of an enormous cat, a remnant from a species that had been rendered extinct alongside Sombra’s own. It tackled Nightmare Moon to the ground, its claws tearing deep gouges in her quicksilver armor.

A beam escaped Daybreaker and burned through Sombra’s body. He hardly noticed as the shadow reconstructed itself. He felt no pain. He felt nothing at all. Inside him, there was only darkness. He could not help but smile. After eight hundred years, the Heart had finally served its purpose. He had become what he was destined to be.

He could not help but laugh. This endeavor was of course pointless, and he cared little for the princesses- -but as a test, it proved that he might finally be able to transcend the need to rule. To truly be free to complete his work.

Daybreaker, further enraged, stood, drawing her full strength against the gravity spell. She summoned her magical energy and poured it into herself, igniting with nuclear fire. The gravity spell shattered and Sombra’s crystals were forced to become intangible to protect themselves, terminating the spells they had cast. He himself was forced to cast a shield spell.

As he did, smoke coalesced beside him. A hoof struck him- -and passed through his intangible shadow body. As Nightmare Moon was knocked off balance, he punched her in the face, his suddenly solid hoof sending her reeling backward. He then slid beside her and gave a quick jab to a single small location on the mare’s body that had been one of Buttonhooks’s favorites.

Nightmare Moon collapsed, writhing but silent; although her mouth was open, she had been put in far too much pain to scream aloud.

“Don’t you dare hurt her!” shrieked Daybreaker.

Sombra raised an eyebrow and summoned a black sword from his magic. He put its tip against Nightmare Moon’s cervical spine. “Why?” he asked. “You hate her. I know, because even now I can see it within your mind. Recall, it is not you who values this pony. It is Celestia.” He looked down at Nightmare Moon, her nerves still overloaded although her mind still very much intact. “Celestia will not allow you to ever truly harm her, I think. But I still can.”

“She belongs to ME,” growled Daybreaker. “Do not DARE to believe I will permit you to touch my property!”

Sombra sighed. “You’re just insufferable. What do you even expect to accomplish here?”

“I refuse to relent. All I have is my power. If I give that up...what is even left?”

“I see. So this is a matter of vanity.”

He used his magic to throw Nightmare Moon to her sister.

“Then let me at least use it to finally see what spells they have brought me.”

Daybreaker caught Nightmare Moon while simultaneously drawing upon her limitless magic. Instead of firing pure light, she instead reached for everything substantial around her. If she could not cut him or burn him, she would crush him instead.

Buildings were torn free of their foundations. Their crystal was instantly superheated and was partially melted into streams of glowing lava. Daybreaker charged, pulling the weight of Sombra’s own city behind her. She dropped it upon him, crushing him flat. Then she grasped the half-ruined hull of a fallen skyship and lifted it high into the sky before bringing it crashing down upon him. It exploded violently within, scattering metal and crystal in every direction. Even the crystal ponies beneath their shield cried out from the sound of it.

Daybreaker turned to her sister, picking her up. “Come on, it’s not that bad, weakling.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” groaned Nightmare Moon, rubbing the aching spot that Sombra had struck.

“Yes. Because I am not weak. But look. I made him flat.”

Nightmare Moon looked, and all she saw was Daybreaker’s failure. As she watched, the broken steel and machines of the battered sky-ship were disassembled, unscrewed and unfastened with expert precision achievable only by one who had been privy to every aspect of their regional design.

Then the pieces came to together. Crystal and steel were combined, with new pieces forged and cut to shape. From the rubble arose hideous golems. They crawled forward on disturbingly long limbs, their bodies glowing from strange internal fire. It was clear that Sombra lacked the aesthetic sensibilities of his previous golem-master, and Nightmare Moon could not help but shiver. These things looked so very close to the monsters sometimes found in the deepest nightmares of those cursed with the farthest vision.

The golems advanced. They were terrifyingly quick.

“Nightmare, I need a blade.”

Nightmare Moon obliged, separating part of her badly damaged armor and forming it into a sword- -the second of its kind she had ever created. Daybreaker took it in her magic and charged the golems. While she refused to show it, Nightmare Moon was becoming distinctly aware that Daybreaker was growing weaker. Even if her power was unlimited, the fortitude of her body was not.

Daybreaker attacked the first golem, tearing its legs free with her magic and stabbing it through the torso with the blade- -only for the blade to strike nothing in particular. Surprise crossed Daybreaker’s face, but Nightmare Moon understood in an insant.

“Sister, get down!”

Daybreaker rolled, and Nightmare Moon fired a dispilation spell into the golem. It struck its center, casting away the spirit bound within. The burning light inside flickered and went out- -but the other golems seemed to notice, turning their attention toward Nightmare Moon. Their masks retracted, revealing the flaming eyes within. They were not machines; they were robotic suits of armor wrapped around dark spirits summoned from beyond a burning door.

“It’s Zebric conjuration magic! I can dispel them, but- -ACK!”

A golem leapt upon Nightmare Moon, trying to grab her wings.

“Stupid ZEBRAS! Ugh!” Daybreaker cleaved the golem in twain. “I’ll cut them! You make them go away!”

Nightmare Moon could not help but shiver. The idea that her and her elder sister could ever work together had never occurred to her- -and she realized that it would make the eventual fulfillment of her promise that more difficult.

The golems swarmed, and Daybreaker charged into the fray, slashing through them and blasting at their legs and torsos with her magic. As she cleared the way, Nightmare Moon followed, using her sister’s girth to provide cover while she dispelled the evil spirits. It was an intensive process, but working together, they were able to make headway.

“Headway toward what?” asked Sombra, his body forming itself on the summit of the rubble pile that had been dropped on top of him. “Or do you really have any goal?”

He raised his hoof to the damaged golems, and the black crystals implanted within their armor ignited, resonating with his own magic. The golems, even deprived of their spirits, rose once more.

Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon were immediately outnumbered.

“Sister, we need to retreat- -”

Daybreaker stabbed her sword into the ground. “Get behind me, Nightmare!”

“Daybreaker, you can’t- -”

Daybreaker ignited herself, her body erupting with solar might as she pushed her physical form to its very limit. Her golden armor burned away, and both her wings and horn began to spark with energy- -even as the sun above began to dim, and the dark skies grew even more ominous and dim.

Then she released it. Not a directed beam, or an instinctive corona, but a force of magic so vast that there was no hope of controlling it apart from leaving a tiny sliver of protected space to preserve her sister.

The energy expanded outward and the golems were vaporized. The flame spirits, now free, vanished orthogonality through space. But even as they departed, darkness loomed on the edge of her spell, cast by Sombra and through his crystals. The detonation was contained by his magic, stopped by his force of will and endless knowledge of magic.

Then it all flickered. Both spells faltered, and the world fell silent.

Broken crystals fell to the ground as Daybreaker dropped to her knees, Nightmare Moon at her side. Sombra stood on the other end of a long street, all alone. The sky had grown overcast and dark, and snow was falling slowly between them. The air was growing cool once more.

“Daybreaker,” said Nightmare Moon, softly. “Do recall Discord? That may be our only chance.”

“I don’t know how to do the spell.”

“I do. Forgive me.”

A thread dripped from Nightmare Moon’s horn and inserted itself into her sister’s mind. Daybreaker squeaked in surprise, but her horn charged with a spell that she herself did not know. Just as Sombra took a step toward them, his body was struck by what looked like yet another light beam.

It passed through him harmlessly, and he smiled. “I am afraid I have become indestructible, my dear. Your magic cannot...” A frown crossed his face, and he looked down. Where the magic had touched him, his flesh was rapidly changing, becoming lighter and stiffer. To his horror, he realized that he was becoming stone.

He looked up at them, confused, and then the spell overwhelmed him, turning him into a statue.

Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon both collapsed. That spell was not at all easy to use, especially without the Elements to guide it. Both princesses ad been completely drained.

“That spell will not hold him forever,” sighed Nightmare Moon.

“If you did it yourself, maybe. That’s genuine solar magic. I am a goddess...pretty...fluffy wings, etcetera. Ugh I’m so tired.”

“But in a thousand years? Two thousand? He will eventually break free.”

“So? That won’t be our problem.”

Nightmare Moon sat up. “You do realize we’re immortal. It will be OUR problem.”

A look of realization came over Daybreaker’s face. “Buck,” she said.

Nightmare Moon stood and helped her sister up. They both turned to Sombra’s statue. Unlike Discord, he had not had the foresight to freeze in the most uncomfortable and ridiculous position possible.

“Another decoration for our garden, I suppose,” sighed Nightmare Moon.

“I think I shall use him as a hat rack.”

“You do not own any hats.”

“I shall make one out of his daughter’s wings. I think that would be hilarious.”

Daybreaker laughed, although Nightmare Moon did not. Something was bothering her.

The darkness in the sky had begun to clear, and although the sun sat low on the horizon there was more than enough light to see. The world was cast in strange northern twilight, and the shadows cast were long.

Somehow that bothered Nightmare Moon. As Daybreaker began to walk, she suddenly saw motion, and in an instant understood. Sombra’s statue was casting a long shadow- -but the shadow was pointing the wrong way.

“Sister- -!”

It was too late. Just as Daybreaker turned, the shadow beneath her erupted in a plume of darkness, overtaking her body and pressing against it from every side, drawing her into it and crushing her with devastating force. Nightmare Moon heard screaming and something crack- -and then saw her mangled sister thrown aside as Sombra formed a new body.

Nightmare Moon’s horn flickered as she stepped back. “But- -the stone- -”

“A cockatrice spell. Quite a risk.” Sombra’s silver eyes turned toward Nightmare Moon and he smiled, revealing a mouth filled with strange teeth. “But even stone casts a shadow, Nightmare Moon.”

His magic swarmed around her, corroding everything it touched. Nightmare Moon spread her wings and pulled herself into the air.

“Sister! The time has come to fly!”

Daybreaker, though badly injured, seemed to agree. She snapped one of her wings back into place and took to the air, flying with her sister while they left Sombra on the ground. Sombra looked up at them, watching them circle. Then his body shifted, the shadows within him changing at his will. Shadows sprung from his back, assembling themselves into a pair of chiropteran wings. Then he, too, took to the air.

Nightmare Moon looked back and saw Sombra pursuing them. He appeared to be flying, but that was not quite the truest way to describe his motion. Rather, he seemed to simply be sliding through space, moving silently as a shadow without the barest sign of resistance to his motion.

“Sister,” she said.

“If you say ‘sister’ one more time, Nightmare, I swear to ME I will give you the poke myself- -”

“We are out of options. We have to use the Elements of Harmony.”

Daybreaker’s eyes widened. “No,” she said, hurriedly. “I still have energy! I can still fight!”

“He is the living half-incarnation of the Pony of Shadows. At this pace there is nothing we can do.”

“But I can’t use the Elements! Only Celestia can!” Daybreaker’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to betray me!” she shrieked, nearly attacking her sister. “You want Celestia back! You don’t think I’m good enough- -”

Behind them, Sombra’s body flashed with black light in a pattern curiously similar to the green shade used by the changelings. Where he had once been a pony, a vast black dragon suddenly appeared, its jaw opening as it rushed forward. Nightmare Moon saw this, and saw that there was no choice.

She stopped flying and turned to her enemy, manifesting the Elements of Loyalty- -to her sister, to her kingdom, and to her people- -Honesty, of the strength to always speak what needed to be said, and Laughter, drawn from the shining memories of times spent beside her sister, or alone with the stallion she loved. The three Elements manifested as three crystals suspended before her.

Although the set was incomplete, Nightmare Moon wielded them against Sombra, casting a spell of pure silver light into the mouth of the dragon as it prepared to swallow her. Sombra was knocked back by the force, his form distorting and collapsing until he was once again a pony.

He cast a shield of his own shadow-magic and forced it into the wave from Nightmare Moon’s elements, effectively spellbinding the pair of them.

Nightmare Moon was pushed backward by the feedback. She had not fully understood what Sombra had become until that moment. Even then, she could not fully comprehend what had been done to him, only that the creature that had been built around his soul had been freed of its limits. His mind had been freed of the slowness and weakness of a brain, and his strength freed from muscle and marrow and the magic borne of a horn. He had no elemental power, nor did he need it. His strength was not the divine might of an alicorn, but the cold and unflinching mind of a perfect unicorn.

Never had Nightmare Moon wished so badly that things might have been different. That they might have been friends, instead of enemies. That perhaps there was still a chance.

But with only three Elements, she simply did not have the power. Sombra focused his energy onto one specific gemstone, his magic snaking forward through the silver light of the Elements. Nightmare Moon tried to fight it, but found that she could not, even as the tendrils of shadow surrounded the Element of Loyalty.

Sombra’s face contorted as he fired a spell through his own body and into the Element. Nightmare Moon screamed as it fractured and her personality was fundamentally rewritten. Broken and on the verge of shattering, the Element of Loyalty hemorrhaged elemental shadow, its corruption reaching out and taking hold of her body.

Daybreaker, meanwhile, had been attempting to flee, to led both her enemies deal with each other while she regenerated her power and took down whichever survived, if any. But when she heard her sister’s scream, she turned suddenly, her eyes widening and losing their blackened aspect.

“Sister?!”

“NO!” screamed Daybreaker, taking back control of her and Celestia’s mutual body. “I am the real you! ME! You will not take this away from me! It’s my body! I refuse to let you have it! I REFUSE!”

Despite her rage and power, Daybreaker’s threats were useless. Celestia, held dormant in Daybreaker’s burning heart, surfaced in an instant at the cries of the pony she loved most in the world. In an instant she regained control, her armor cooling to ordinary gold and her mane once again becoming a beautiful pastel rainbow.

“Sister! Hold on, Nightmare, I’m coming!”

Celestia manifested her own Elements, the embodiment of the very things that Daybreaker lacked: Kindness, from her devotion to the safety and happiness to all ponies; Generosity, derived from her endlessly selfless and benevolent rule, and the most important of them all, Magic, or that which could only be gained when all the other five were used in unison.

She combined her Elements with Nightmare Moon’s, casting gold light that meshed with her sister’s silver to form a beam of pure white light. That white, in turn, separated, swirling apart into a stream of divine rainbows. Sombra’s black energy could not stand against it and he was overwhelmed, forced to surround himself with a powerful but failing protection spell.

He held on for a moment, managing to withstand the force of the Elements, but his shield began to fragment. He roared with pain, trying to summon more energy- -but there was nothing he could do.

“Murderers!” he cried, looking them both in the eye through his faltering spell. “That spell will not reform me! There is nothing left to reform! My evil is absolute! Hypocrites!”

Celestia smiled. “You’re wrong, Sombra.”

Harmony began to seep through Sombra’s shield. As it touched him, his body began to change. His gray, blackened coat became lighter, the evil binding it flecking away.

Sombra’s eyes widened. “But that- -that’s impossible! My soul is bound to this body by pure fear!”

“No. Because fear alone cannot do what you have done. The shadow would have consumed you the instant you touched it.” Celestia smiled. “Something else was used to make you. Something GOOD.”

Sombra gasped, realizing what he should have known from the beginning. This was his daughter’s final gift to him- -that a fragment of her love had been used to create him, and that the Elements of Harmony were vastly amplifying that tiny but critical piece of contamination.

“No,” he said, looking up at them. “What survives won’t be ME. You will destroy my fundamental personality. I will cease to exist!”

“We can give you everything you ever wanted!” shouted Nightmare Moon. “I’ve seen your dreams! You can rule alongside your daughter! Alongside Hope!”

“We only want to help you,” pleaded Celestia. “Please, Sombra, don’t fight it!”

Sombra nearly wept, knowing the choice he had been forced to make.

“So it comes to this,” he sighed. “After all these centuries, I am finally given a chance at the happiness I could never have.” He looked up at Celestia and smiled. “You win.”

Celestia smiled for a moment- -but that smile turned to horror as Sombra directed his magic behind him, tearing a hole in space itself to the unspeakable void beyond reality. Then he summoned his magic and plunged it into himself. The screams were unspeakable as he tore his very soul in half, breaking free of himself and casting his truest half into the pit he himself had opened.

The part that remained turned to Celestia and Nightmare Moon, its eyes alight with confusion and energy. It focused on the Elements they carried, and the eyes widened.

It screamed, its voice still tinged with the unnatural aspect of Sombra’s screams of agony. Yet the voice formed no words, as it could not. It was not a product of thought, but of instinct; the being raged against the magic of the goddesses despite being only the barest shadow Sombra’s true self.

As the void door closed, the connection to the soul-fragment was severed. The piece Sombra had severed broke apart in the light of the Elements, and then was torn apart entirely, reduced to ash and destroyed for all eternity.

The rainbow light of the Elements faded. As the gemstones ceased to manifest, the Element of Loyalty shattered, and Nightmare Moon lapsed into unconsciousness, the blackness of her body retracting to only her cutie mark as her coat became blue and her body smaller.

She fell. Celestia swooped downward, catching her just before she struck the ground. To her surprise, she realized that the pony she was holding was not Nightmare Moon at all.

“Luna?”

Luna opened her eyes. For a moment, they seemed to recognize Celestia, and the younger pony smiled, only for the smile to fade as her pupils narrowed into thin vertical slits.

She shivered as the blackness spread outward from her cutie mark, restoring Luna to her true form. Nightmare Moon sat up, and for just a moment Celestia saw a look in her older sister’s eyes that she had never before witnessed. It was a gaze of absolute hatred.

It passed quickly, though, and Nightmare Moon grabbed her head. “Ugh…sister?”

“I’m here,” said Celestia.

Nightmare Moon looked up and smiled- -although even her smile was strange. “It’s good to see you again, little sister.”

Celestia smiled as well, dismissing her strange expression as fatigue from the battle.

“What happened?”

Celestia turned to the pile of ash. “Rather than submit and lose who he was, he cast himself into the void.” She shook her head. “And once that door is closed...there is no way back in.”

Nightmare Moon stared at the ash pile for a long moment. “In a way, I suppose it is admirable,” she said. “Admirable, but oh so foolish.”

Chapter 81: Exodus

With the threat of Daybreaker gone, the spinning of the Crystal Heart began to slow. At its former edge, a pair of alicorns limped to the border. Nightmare Moon leaned on her sister, who herself had reached the very limits of her energy. And yet they still stood, victorious in the ruins of a once beautiful Empire. But while the Empire at large had been lost, its crowning center still stood: the Capital District, and at its very center the Crystal Citadel, now transmitting hope and love throughout the kingdom and outward to all of Equestria.

And as they approached, the shield vanished entirely- -but Celestia and Nightmare moon stopped.

Their path had been blocked by a towering figure in pure white robes, her cloths drifting in an unseen breeze. A being whose name had long since been forgotten.

“Sis...ter,” moaned Nightmare Moon, and Celestia held her closer.

“Please,” said Celestia, looking up at the enormous mare. “Please, let us pass.”

The Nameless One said nothing. Instead, she spread her enormous reptilian wings. Three points of light glowed beneath her hood, and the entire Empire shook.

Celestia tried to advance, but was stopped in her path by a new shield. One whose power dwarfed even Daybreaker’s- -a shield cast from a light that would never warm, drawn from spells that were old when the first unicorns were still yet to be synthesized.

The force of the Nameless One’s magic surrounded the entire Capital District, lifting it free of the ground and into the air. She said nothing as she did this, because nothing needed to be said. The situation remained undecided. No new ruler had been selected. Which meant, for the good of the kingdom, there was only one option.

Though no ruler was accepted, one might arise. Still lifting the entirety of the kingdom, the Nameless One appeared beside Penumbra. The crystal ponies had surrounded her, not sure what to do. When they saw the Nameless One, they remained unsure, but did not flee in fear. The Nameless One had existed since before the Exmoori had brought the first slaves to their kingdom; her presence was inherent and clear. So none of them stopped her as she took the princess in her magic.

She brought Penumbra to the edge of the levitating city- -and dropped her over the side.

From the ground, Facet Flare watched as her city was pulled into the air, forever beyond her reach- -and as she did, she wept, knowing that she never again would return to her home, or to her people. She was the last of her kind free and on the outside, the only crystal pony of the world, doomed to wander it all alone. Such was Luciferian’s curse, that she would meet a fate far worse than demise.

Yet even as she cried, Burnt put her hoof on her friend’s shoulder. Facet looked up at her.

“It...it’s going to be okay. Isn’t it?”

Facet smiled and hugged the unicorn. Even if she could never again return to her home, to her family, she at least would not need to be alone.

Over Burnt’s shoulder, though, she for a moment saw something that chilled her to the bone. For the briefest second, she saw Sombra’s dark mane and red eyes- -and was prepared to defend Burnt at any cost.

Then she saw that this pony was not clad in Crystal Empire adornments, but the armor of a Moon Knight- -and that instead of a horn, his back was adorned by strong wings.

The pony bore two swords. One was a gleaming, curved blade of lunar quicksilver- -and the other was forged of red-mottled Questlord steel. Upon his face he wore an expression of deepest sadness.

The knight looked up at the city, and at the two mares. Burnt, feeling something was amiss, turned around and, upon seeing the knight, squeaked with surprise.

“A terrible fate you have both been dealt,” he said, bowing to them. “The loss of a people is something few can understand. But know that new friends await you, both in the Nightmare Horde and the Lunar Imperium. Please accept my apologies.” He looked up, tears in his eyes, although possibly not for them. “We did not wish for it to turn out this way.”

Chapter 82: Strangled in the Blue Light

Luciferian, still literally kicking and screaming, emerged back into his reality, striking the ground with enough force to bounce at least once.

“Oh sweet Satin I CAN TASTE IT!”

“Well, that’s bound to happen,” said the red-eyed demon, now lying beside Luciferian. “Once I take you to my realm, I can throw you in an entire PIT of churpos. Trust me, their noses sure do tickle on your tickly bits. And, for the record, I have a LOT of tickly bits. But you'll be finding that out in person soon enough, won't you?

Luciferian gasped as the pain began to overtake him. Just as Starlight had predicted, the demon was once again manifesting, slowly consuming his mind. He focused his magic on the spell, desperately trying to force more power into it- -and it worked, although only marginally.

“You’re just buying time,” whispered the demon. “Come on!” She rolled over, spreading her legs. “Just let me finish!”

“No,” said Luciferian, standing and nearly falling over. His horn was sparking badly; its internal structures had almost completely disconnected from his brain. He was now almost entirely unable to use magic without risking losing it entirely- -and this time, he would not be able to replace it. “No, I’m not ready. I have a kingdom to conquer...if I can just...”

“You mean THAT kingdom?”

The demon pointed upward, and Luciferian looked up. To his surprise and horror, he saw the very core of the Crystal Empire- -what was to be his seat of power- -hovering high above the city, held aloft by the accursed magic of the Nameless One.

Something erupted beside him, a strange yellow anomaly in space. Luciferian took a defensive stance, fully expecting Starlight to arrive to finish what she had started. Instead, though, a murder of crows burst outward, carrying with them a technetium dial.

The crows rapidly rammed into one another, their flesh merging into a single being- -and in seconds Luciferian found himself standing beside a gaunt black unicorn, his yellow eyes wide and distant.

“Al’Hrabnaz?”

“In the flesh,” he replied. “So to speak.” He looked upward at the floating kingdom, and his expression darkened. “I see,” he sighed. “So I was not good enough.”

Suddenly, the sky cracked open. Luciferian ducked to the ground, grabbing onto it as a strong and frigid wind poured through the kingdom-sized rift.

“What is she DOING?!” he cried.

Al’Hrabnaz’s dial clicked and he cast a bubble around himself. He stared upward at the hole, an interdimensional vortex more vast than any living pony or surviving machine could ever hope to accomplish. “She’s opening a rift,” he said. His large eyes turned to Luciferian. “She’s going to rift the entire kingdom!”

“To where? WHERE?!”

“I do not know. But this means that it is time for us to retreat.”

“Retreat?! You idiot, there is nowhere to GO! If the Nameless One is taking the kingdom, it means he’s DEAD! Sombra is DEAD!!”

A thin smile crossed Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz’s face- -a smile that did not reach his eyes, which seemed terrified by some unseen vision. “That which is not dead which can eternal lie. And in strange eons, even death may die.”

With that, his dial shifted as he opened his own door back into his own empty realm, his body collapsing into a flock of ravens and vanishing within.

“Coward!” screamed Luciferian. “COWARD!”

Space began to crackle and distort from the landmass overhead. The whole of it was hundreds of times larger than even the Monocerus, and as Luciferian watched it began to glow.

Then the spell was initiated. With a deafening thud, the entirety of it was torn free of reality and cast outward through space and time, leaving behind nothing but a crater. The rift sealed, with the only indication of it ever having been present a circle of clouds surrounding a clear, calm circle in the sky.

“No,” he said, collapsing to his knees in the frigid cold. “No, it’s gone...but my prophecy...”

“You still don’t understand,” laughed the demon. “Well, I guess I do love when ponies are ignorant. It’s adorable. Even if it’s not going to last much longer. Oh, I can’t wait to see the look on your face.”

Luciferian turned to her, confused, but saw that she was gone. At the same time, he sensed something strange. A presence- -or the presence of multiple ponies. And when he felt them, his heart sank, because he recognized them. There was no way he could ever forget their foul stench.

He turned as the first of them began to climb over the rubble. The first to come where battered, their coats soiled by ash and dirt from battle: Lacy Pants, Rancine De’Lis, and Baron Blueblood. They did not arrive alone, though; to their left appeared a stout boy with an electric-blue mane and thick, protective red goggles, the mute scion of House Sab3th3S. Then, from the other side of a collapsed building came Knowsay, the son of Daysay, of House Say, a gaunt and unpleasant creature.

Then came their leader, the oldest among them all, clad in rose-quartz armor: Glittershine, of House Shine, the only one among them who had begun to show signs of her centuries of existence- -not in wrinkles or graying as with the lesser races of unicorn, but with the distinct development of fangs and strange pupils that accompanied the feeding regimen required for a pony to stay alive for so very long.

They stood before him, the scions of the great Houses of the white purebloods, the elite ruling class of ponies second only to the White Queen herself. Ponies of unnatural magical prowess, and ponies privy to arcane secrets beyond the understanding of lesser ponies. The keepers of lore and of blood purity- -the group that Luciferian himself, by accident of birth alone, was a part of.

Except that something was wrong. Something was tugging inside Luciferian. Something terrible.

Then the last of them stepped over the summit of the rubble, coming out of the sun. Luciferian looked up when he heard the metal click of a mechanical hoof against the fractured crystal of the fallen building, and as his eyes adjusted he saw his own face staring back at him- -his own face, with one tiny blue eye in the process of regeneration and a scar where a horn had once been hidden beneath long, violet-tinted bangs.

Luciferian took a step back. “YOU!” he bellowed. “How- -how DARE YOU!”

The pony that Luciferian alone knew as Failure giggled. “Hello, daddy.” A wide grin spread across her face. “You have something of mine. I’ve come to take it back.”

Luciferian’s eyes narrowed, his rage overcoming his better judgment. “You filthy stupid FAILURE!” he screamed. “How dare you! HOW DARE YOU?!”

He charged his horn- -HER horn- -with his full magic, ignoring the pain as the last of the nerve endings began to separate. As he did, Failure charged him. She was almost absurdly fast, but Luciferian was faster.

He fired the spell, and it ripped through her, tearing through her nerves in a single massive feedback wave- -but she did not slow for even a moment. The pain had no effect on her. She had grown far too accustomed to it.

Words escaped her lips that Luciferian could not understand, apart from that it was a filthy and blasphemous Zebric rhyme. Failure turned and raised her intact hoof, sending out a swarm-spiral of burning yellow runes. Luciferian cried out as they edged themselves into him, forming spells through his body through mechanisms he could not immediately comprehend.

He could not move, and felt himself being punched in the face by a metal hoof- -and then its claws closing around his face. The runes carved into the metal leg ignited with magic fire, and pure elemental force was poured into Luciferian’s body. He screamed as he was knocked back, smoking and twitching, into a pile of rubble.

Failure looked down at her claw, flexing the small fingers before retracting them. “Or...perhaps I don’t want it. I seem to do fine without it.”

“Zebra magic,” groaned Luciferian, attempting to right himself. “Rune spells- -filthy half-magic! You don’t deserve even that! You can’t use magic...you’re a FAILURE...”

Failure smiled. “What do you expect, daddy? You trapped me in a castle full of books for my WHOLE LIFE!” She burst into laughter. “Did you expect me not to READ?”

Luciferian stood. Even as he did, the other purebloods were moving in, with Glittershine presiding. To ensure he did not escape. This was their way. They would let her settle her grievance, even if she- -a failure in every way, a filthy abomination not worthy of the cellular material used to create her- -was by no means a pureblood.

“You’re just a clone.” Luciferian spit silver onto the ground in front of him. “You’re just an inferior copy. I’m the real Luciferian. NOT YOU.”

“No. That’s where you’re wrong, daddy. In fact, I AM you. One hundred twenty-seven of your chromosomes are INSIDE ME. Or are you that bothered because you left one out?”

She began walking around him. Circling, preparing for an attack- -or perhaps trying to mock him.

“All your ambition, your desire, your willingness to do whatever it takes to get what you want...I have all that too.”

“You never showed an ounce of ambition...”

“Because if I had? Well, I don’t think you need spare parts THAT bad. But you taught me some very, very important lessons, didn’t you, daddy? Like how to take pain. How to mask the hatred. How to wait until the time was perfect.” She stopped and raised her robotic hoof, flexing it. “Do you like it? Celestia’s forces do good work.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened. “You dirty traitorous horse- -”

“From where I stand, you’re the traitor, daddy.”

“Stop calling me that. I’m not your father.”

“Why not, daddy? Isn’t that what you wanted me to call you? You created me. And then I suppose you resented the fact that you wanted me. I suppose it’s because you can only ever love yourself, isn’t it?”

“I will never love you.”

“I know. It doesn’t really matter.” She shrugged. “I did what you never could. It was easy. So easy. I’m on their side now.” She gestured toward her new friends. “I am reuniting House Twilight with the rest of our kind. I serve Celestia now, as they do. I even took a new name.” She leaned in closely. “You can call me Twilight Phoenix, the new scion of House Twilight.”

Luciferian lashed out against her. She deflected his blow easily, dodging and putting her metal hoof directly into his ribs. As he fell, winded, she kicked him in the face.

“Now now, daddy, don’t strain yourself. I know it can be hard being so old.”

“You can’t- -you can’t be- -I’m the last Twilight! The very last! There won’t- -there won’t be any more after me...”

Phoenix laughed. “Really?” She backed away. “Because from where it stands, it looks like I’m about to inherit a massive castle filled with our entire family’s library. I suppose I will have to take them to Canterlot, though. I always hated your castle.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that also means I get to inherit your student. He is ambitious, like you, but weak. And kind. The only pony who ever showed me kindness, even considering how I must have looked to him.” She smiled. “I think he will serve as a useful sire to continue my eternal bloodline.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened as he suddenly realized, to his horror, that everything he had built his plans on was a lie. He could almost hear Eternity laughing at him, at how she had been right when he had been too blinded by his own ambition and desire to see what should have been obvious.

The prophecy had stated that a white unicorn would rule the Crystal Empire beside Princess Penumbra- -and Luciferian had assumed that the unicorn was him. If Failure took the mantle of House Twilight, though- -a course of events that had absolutely unthinkable before- -then she would produce an entire bloodline of ponies that could serve just as well in Luciferian’s place. And while they took the life he so desperately desired, he would be left behind.

And, realizing this, he burst out laughing.

The purebloods stared at him, not sure what to think. They began to wonder if he had gone insane. Only one of them realized that he always had been.

“So be it!” he cried through his laughter. “It was all for nothing! NOTHING!” He charged his horn with one last spell and lifted his scarred, tattooed left leg. “Then I have nothing to lose! If I’ll never rule the kingdom, at least I can take YOU ALL DOWN WITH ME!”

He cut into his spell.

“What are you doing?” demanded the demon at his side, for the first time sounding afraid. “You fool! Stop NOW!”

Luciferian did not stop. He began to change the spell, drawing new lines across it and linking others, changing the runes and symbols in ways driven by his deepest instinct for survival and his innate but misused brilliance. He altered the coordinates, and the linking patterns, changing where the spell connected him and how- -and as he formed new, symmetrical marks, the spell began to glow with a hideous blue light.

The demon smiled. “So it is done,” she said. “You have no idea what you have done, Twilight Luciferian. But you will, soon enough. Even I cannot save you now.”

And with that, she was gone. Luciferian suddenly buckled, brought to his knees as an unfathomable amount of power flowed through the dimensional link carved into his leg. Failure, proving her weakness, took a step forward, as if to aid him- -and his magic exploded outward, hemorrhaging blue light outward in every direction.

Twilight Phoenix was thrown backward, just as Glittershine and Knowsay leapt to her side, casting a combined shield. Luciferian’s magic arced across it, skittering over the surface, and as he turned his attention toward it the whole of it exploded inward, overwhelmed by his power.

Phoenix shielded the other two with her body, casting a rune-spell. It touched Luciferian, and distantly he understood it, but he felt nothing. His body no longer had sensation. Only power.

Vines erupted from the soil near him, wrapping his limbs in thorns- -and they were vaporized on contact with his corrosive magic. At the same time, Lacy Pants and Glittershine charged, each forming entangled symmetrical spells.

Both struck on target, and Luciferian returned fire, drawing on the limitless sorce within him, screaming with laughter as their spells were blown apart from within. It was not like unicorn magic. There was no word for what he had become. The magic came from within him, resonating in every cell of his being. Everything that the demon had taken had been given back tenfold, forged from the newfound force of a dimension of pure energy.

The other ponies formed up, generating spells meant to seal him. Luciferian struck out at them, grabbing Baron Blueblood by the beard and beating Rancine De’Lis with him. He then turned his attention to Glittershine, whose horn was charged and ready for attack. As Luciferian attacked, she suddenly jumped out of the way, revealing Battl3Pwn3 Sab3th3S, who promptly began to vibrate before releasing his own magic in the form of a devastating bass wave.

The sonic explosion struck Luciferian and he deflected it, sending it back at its creator. White unicorns were sent flying, and Luciferian began to cackle.

“Unlimited power!” he cried, his magic pouring out at an even greater level, incinerating and corroding everything around him. “With this power, why do I even need the Empire?! I could rule everything! EVERYTHING!”

He began to laugh uncontrollably. The purebloods fled, retreating from his power. Even Failure tried to leave with them- -but Luciferian grasped her by the leg, pulling her back.

“I will fulfill my destiny,” he hissed, raising his magic above him. “You will NOT stand in my way!”

He laughed again- -but as he did, something exploded inside his chest.

The world suddenly changed. Luciferian stared out at it, not even sure he could begin to describe how it had changed.

Then he saw them move. The gaunt horrors that covered the battlefield suddenly saw him, and raised their heads from their experiments.

Luciferian cried out when he looked down and saw what his daughter had become, what they had done to her. How she was even alive with so much of her body missing he could not fathom, or what the machines grafted to her in the place of organs and limbs were meant to do.

It was the same for all of them. Although they could not see it, their bodies bore the marks of extensive and repeated surgery, of some parts missing and some pieces replaced. Surgery performed by the thin alicorns that stood at their sides, performing experiments just out of phase with the normal universe.

Even now they sat over the battlefield, at the sides of the wounded, adjusting the implants and meters as they attempted to understand. But as Luciferian saw them, they stood, their bodies slowly drifting toward him. They saw him, and had always seen him- -but now they knew that, for the first time, he could see THEM.

“N- -no! NO!”

Luciferian took a step back. Their hoofsteps made no sounds. Somehow, this world was deathly silent. Not even the endlessly falling snow- -or perhaps ash- -made sound.

One of them stepped forward, approaching him and standing over him. It was an alicorn, but not like Celestia or Nightmare Moon or even Penumbra. Somehow it was different, as if it were a parody of itself, and it stared down with eyes that were perfectly white save for pupils lit from within by unnatural and grotesque blue light.

“Hello, Twilight Luciferian. My name is Harvestor. We have been waiting for you.”

“No! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

Luciferian fired his magic at the creature. Its body exploded like an overripe fruit, and Luciferian nearly fainted when he realized that they were not alive, nor had they ever been. What was inside it was not flesh but some unnameable organic substance bound by endless connections of strange and unnatural silver machines.
` “Do not do that,” it said as its head fell away from its body, both halves rapidly regenerating until two identical alicorns stood before Luciferian.

“Buck you! BUCK YOU ALL!”

He struck out again, but this time the magic did nothing. The alicorn lit his own horn, and it glowed with the same blue light, canceling out Luciferian’s attack.

The alicorn smiled. “We were created by the light of Dagon. It cannot ever be wielded against us, Luciferian. And we are so glad you have decided to join us. Dagon has been waiting.”

“What are you...no...” Luciferian took a step back, looking down at his hoof. “I’m out of phase! I’m not supposed to be here, I can’t, I can’t be here- -”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Twilight. Listen to the sound of your heart. You will find that it has already stopped.”

Luciferian did, and to his horror, he understood why the world seemed so silent.

“You are of no use to us if you go back,” said one of the alicorns as they began to surround him, stepping over the shadows that the purebloods cast into their half-reality.

“You chose correctly,” said another, smiling. “Welcome home, Luciferian.”

The world seemed to change. It was dark and shrouded, a half-shadow of what was and what could never be, the shadow-space clinging to a reality that could not normally be perceived- -but as Luciferian stood before the children of Dagon, their world opened to him.

He looked up at the terrible sky above the world of its creation, through the ice and snow and past endless, impossible towers. And the sky looked back at him.

Luciferian’s mind shattered. As he was drawn upward, the burning shards of his mind wept at his own arrogance.

Chapter 83: Cadence

Starlight Glimmer once again emerged from the void. The world had grown silent and cold, and before her she could see the enormous crater where the center of the Crystal Empire had once stood. It had been cast across time and space with a powerful curse and Starlight knew that, one day, it was sure to return.

She collapsed to her knees, grasping her stomach in agony as her organs began to exist on different timelines from the rest of her body. She had jumped too many times without her suit, and this timeline was beginning to reject her.

Not that it mattered. Her nanites would keep her whole for the most part until the job was done. She stood up and ignored the pain, activating a spell to find what she had lost.

Detecting Cadence was not hard. Even dormant, she emitted a distinct signal, one that could be traced from the far side of a universe if necessary. In one reality, it even had been.

The princess was found lying in a snow bank, half buried as the wind began to pick up. Hyperborea was beginning to swallow what had once been the Crystal Empire. Storms were approaching on the horizon, slowly approaching to bring snow and ice that would bury the ruins and all signs of the war until the day the Empire rose again.

Starlight pulled her out. The princess was cold and pale, and the prognosis was not good- -but Starlight figured that if Silken Dream had managed it, so could she.

She opened her mouth and coughed out the strange of luminescent black fluid. Taking it in her magic, she inserted the end directly into Penumbra’s neck.

“Let’s hope for all our sake this works.”

She pressed the trigger, and the fluid bubbled and hissed violently as it was forced into Penumbra’s body.

Starlight was not sure what to expect. As the nanotech venom entered her body, though, the princess began to convulse. Her gray coat assumed a slightly less gray color, and she sat up suddenly, her eyes flying open as she gasped for air.

“Who what when why where- -I will EAT YOU!”

She turned to Starlight and fired a badly weakened magic spell. Starlight deflected it easily with a smile on her face. It seemed that the drug had worked.

“Penumbra, it’s me!” she said, trying to stop Penumbra from attempting to resume fighting.

Penumbra seemed to at least distantly recognize the voice, although at first she could not place it. Then her eyes widened.

“Thirteen?!”

“My name is actually Starlight Glimmer NX2.3712’XNJ 47b8g 10.7’00fn-87- -never mind. Sorry. You don’t need to know the nomenclature, it won’t make sense to you away. Force of habit”

Penumbra reached up to her neck and winced. “Did you give me the poke?”

“No,” lied Starlight.

“Yes you did! What did you do to me?!”

“I cured you.”

Penumbra appeared exceedingly confused. “Cured me? Of what?” She gasped, momentarily filled with joy as she looked at her back- -but that joy faded when she realized that they were still there.

“If you really want to know? Nanites programmed with the genetic sequence for your daughter. Ignore the bootstrapper paradox, your head will literally explode if you think about it. It’s happened to me twice. Pinkie was there once. I had to deal with fifty years of ‘splitting headache’ jokes...”

“I have a daughter?” Penumbra looked around, half expecting to see her wandering around. “How long was I out?”

“Not that long. I’m a time traveler. I was hired by your daughter, the Crystal Empress Queen Sombra II. She wanted me to come back in time and make sure that she actually gets born. Which is a whole separate type of paradox…”

“Wait. Wait, I don’t understand.”

“I know. Time travel can be very confusing. Don't even ask me if this is really my own timeline, I have no idea at this point.”

“No, not that, I already knew you were a chronoplexer, it’s not a big jump. But I named my daughter...after my FATHER?”

“Um, no. She named herself that. You named her ‘Flurry Heart’.”

Penumbra winced. “Oh no...that’s a stupid name! Why would I do that?”

Starlight shrugged. “I always assumed it’s because your husband is kind of a moron.”

Penumbra jumped up and gasped. “I get a HUSBAND? Do I also have a pile of stallions to sleep on top of every night?!”

Starlight grimaced. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know. That’s future-you’s problem.”

“Do you have a pile of stallions?”

“Um...no? But sometimes me and the other Stalights sort of clump together when we’re sleeping to conserve Starlight energy- -”

She cried out as part of her body phased out of time with the rest of it. She dropped to her knees and Penumbra moved to help her- -but Starlight waved her off.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried. “If you do, it’ll peel you apart! Ugh...” She held her stomach. “It’s already peeling me. On a cellular level. Mane does this hurt...”

“Then we have to get you inside, we can help you if- -”

Starlight smiled. “No. There’s nothing you can do. Without my Xyukan armor, I can’t stabilize in your reality for very long. I have to leave soon.”

“Is it the paradoxes?” Penumbra gasped, remembering the reason why Thirteen was never supposed to speak. She clapped her hooves over her ears. “You can’t tell me things! If you do, I’ll have foreknowledge! You’ll ruin the timestream!”

“Ha. Please. I’ve ruined the timestream sooooo many times. And that was even before I was thirty. Trust me, you don’t have to worry.”

“Really?”

“Of course not. Because I’m going to wipe your memory anyway. You won’t remember any of this. Or anything at all, really.”

Penumbra took a step back. “Wait, what? No, you can’t do that! My friends, my kingdom- -HERK!”

Starlight’s magic passed through Penumbra’s head, instantly erasing every memory contained therein. Penumbra collapsed to the ground, her mind completely reset to null. No part of her personality remained, or any memory of her life. She was inert and completely blank.

“Well, that was easy,” said Starlight, standing. “There wasn’t all that much in there to begin with.” Her ears pricked at the sound of heavy hoofsteps. “Don’t worry, Cadence,” she said, looking into the blank and empty eyes of the shell staring at her but seeing nothing. “This will work out just fine. And with any luck, we’ve stopped this reality from creating its own Thebe.”

Then, in an instant, she was gone, having departed from Penumbra’s universe for the very last time, never again to return.

As she departed, Celestia crested one of the icy hills, shivering badly in the growing cold.

“We need to get back,” said Nightmare Moon, close behind her. “Celestia, the weather is growing too cold.”

“We have to find her, Nightmare, I know she’s- -there!”

Celestia bounded down the ruined stone and crystal to Cadence’s side. She picked up the small, thin alicorn.

“She’s cold,” she said, casting a restoration spell to protect the child- -and even though Cadence did not move and did not react, Celestia still held her close. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “You’re safe now. Everything is going to be okay now.”

Cadence’s empty eyes blinked, and slowly turned to Celestia- -and then looked past her, to Nightmare Moon. They were the first thing she had ever seen, and a thin, difficult smile showed on her face.

And so began the life of Princess Mi’Amore Cadenza, on that day in the shadow of the lost Crystal Empire.

Epilogue

The weather was fair. It always was, each and every Celestia-darned day. In a rare example of anomalous climate, the Crystal Empire was one of the few places where weather of any sort could be achieved without Pegasi constantly consuming state funds to hoof-make every single snowflake and operate whatever sorts of machines they used to make mundane things like clouds or delicious rainbows.

It was on this particularly fair day that Princess Cadence found herself, as per usual, walking through the halls of her nearly absurdly sparkly crystal palace. Her oddly pointy golden horseshoes clicked on the crystal as she walked, forming a rapid staccato achievable only by a pony with ridiculously long legs and a distinctly powerful gait.

“And next on the schedule?”

Her much smaller assistant, now quite out of breath, flipped through a pad of paper. “Hmm...let me see...”

“You ought to keep better notes.”

Sparkler looked up at her employer. “Oh, no. I can’t actually read.” She held up the pad. “It’s blank. I just have it to look professional.”

“Um...what?”

“I have it memorized. Up next at exactly seventeen past ten, you have a meeting with the Imperial Infrastructure Committee concerning what to do about the zeugl in the sewers. Then a meeting with the Crystal Empire archaeological expedition, at seven past eleven. Then a scheduled bathroom break. Then lunch with Sunburst and Flurry Heart before her nap time. Intelligence indicates that one Starlight Glimmer may be attending as well. Afterward, you have twelve minutes to sneak off and snog your husband behind that one tapestry that smells like grapes.”

Cadence blushed. “You actually scheduled that part?”

“I watch you VERY closely, princess. I have all your snogging times memorized.”

“And we talked about using my intelligence division.”

“Well, your husband was certainly not using them, that’s for sure. I also used them to poll the population.” Sparkler flipped through her notes. “Seventy-eight percent of the Empire thinks that during lunch you should probably intervene between Sunburst and Starlight.”

Cadence giggled awkwardly. “Well, that would be- -hey, wait a minute, you actually asked that in a poll?!”

“I had to. You’ve been getting mail. I read it. Or open it and pretend to read it, again, the illiteracy. It almost broke my mother’s pelvis flying it all in.” Cadence looked down at her and saw Sparkler eating one of the pages out of her notebook. Even with her mouth full, she looked up at her employer. “Additionally, we had three percent respond that you should take Sunburst for yourself.”

“I already have a husband.”

“I believe it is called a ‘reverse-harem’. At least back in Equestria. Everypony here for some reason calls it ‘the stallion pile’.”

Cadence considered for a moment. “I have had urges recently to construct a pile of stallions. And then lay on top of it. But if I take Sunburst, we will need to have him shaved.”

“I will mark it down.”

“And what about Flash Sentry? He’s always around but seems not to do anything important. His wings certainly look fluffy.”

Sparkler suddenly grabbed the princess's legs.

“NO! No you can’t! He’s already got your sister-in-law! We can’t lose you too!”

Cadence pushed Sparkler off. “Have you been drinking coffee again?”

“No. But I swallowed a crystal. Then another crystal.” Sparkler shrugged. “I had hoped the first one would get the second out. Later I’ll try a third. Then I’ll have my cutie mark on the inside and probably have to go to the hospital.”

Cadence just stared at her. “Why did we hire you again?”

“Shining Armor did. I think it’s because I look a lot like his sister and have no body hair. He’s weird like that.”

“Touch him and I’ll have you strung up by one leg and beat until the candy comes out of you.”

Sparkler shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Above them, something suddenly shook. Cadence and Sparkler looked up to see a pair of eyes looking out at them from a vent grate. “Bite me Penumbra! BITE ME HAAAAAARRRRRDDDD!”

“You’ll never take me alive!” squealed a pony inside it, who then cackled manically as he ran through the vent, making a racket the whole way.

“Also, try to track down somepony who can get that guy out of the vent.”

“I’ll try to see if there’s any vedmaki still alive. If that doesn’t work, we’ll just need to burn down the whole palace.”

Cadence sighed. Being a princess was hard work. She longed for the days when her job had been easy and simply a matter of endlessly persecuting changelings on the battlefield in the name of Celestia’s divine will.

“Commanding the military was so much easier than dealing with these domestic horse-plops.”

“Speaking of plops, we are having a problem on the fourth level near that one tapestry that does NOT smell AT ALL like grapes...”

“We’ll discuss that AFTER lunch. What time is it now?”

“Nine forty-nine and seventy-eight seconds. Seventy-six. Seventy-four.”

“Then I have time for a break.”

“You have eight minutes! BREAK LIKE THE WIND!”

Cadence quickly made her way to her room. Which was technically a misnomer; as princess, EVERY room was hers. Additionally, she had never really understood the point of having her own room apart from ceremonial purposes. She much preferred sleeping on the floor, and had recently taken to sleeping in one particular closet, a small complex of rooms that seemed to have at one point been used to house several maids. For some reason it seemed terribly familiar.

The bed, though, was not meant for sleeping. It had other uses.

The room also stored clothing, although as a princess Cadence was almost invariably mostly nude. Still, she had toyed with the idea of changing into a different and less formal necklace before lunch. Especially if she really was considering adding Sunburst to a hypothetical pile.

When she opened the door, though, she came face-to-face with her amazingly studly husband, the second-scion of House Twilight, a noble warrior and powerful mage in his own right. He was standing in front of an open wardrobe and a mirror, wearing a flowing silk dress and nearly his weight in his wife’s jewelry.

The two stared at each other for a long moment, and Cadence just sighed.

“Shining,” she said. “Are you wearing my clothes again?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Shining.”

“But I’m not, I swear.”

“I can see you wearing them right now! Lie to me again, and I’ll have you sent to the dungeon!”

Shining Armor’s face scrunched. “The regular dungeon...or the sexy one?”

“I’m still deciding!” Cadence put her hoof down. The force was great enough to fracture the crystal tiles that made up the floor.

Shining Armor sighed and lowered his head. “But it fits so well! Especially around the midsection...and these tights are AMAZING.” He lifted his head. “Maybe it’s because we’re the same height?”

“Are you calling me tall?”

Shining Armor scrunched again. “Um...no?”

“She’s actually six inches taller than you,” whispered Sparkler, who was lurking under the bed. Watching.

“Ow! Cadence, she’s hurting my masculinity!”

“Stop whining, Shining. It’s not your fault you’re an adorable little fuzzycolt.”

Shining lowered his head again. “It’s just that...I never got to wear pretty dresses. Twilight gets to wear pretty dresses, and YOU get to wear pretty dresses, and pretty soon Flurry is going to start getting to wear dresses...but not me. I just wanted to look pretty for you.”

“Oh, Shining!” Cadence embraced her adorable but slightly slow husband. “I like that you walk around naked all the time! You have a great body!”

“Well...I have been working out with Flash.”

“And it shows! But you can’t say you never got to wear pretty clothes. I mean, remember that suit of armor Celestia gave you? The purple one?”

“That one was enchanted amethyst,” muttered Shining Armor. “It’s meant to deflect spells. That doesn’t count as cute.” A thought occurred to him. “But...I still have it. Do you...still have yours?”

“The Annihilation armor? Of course.” That was somewhat of an omission; Cadence had kept all the suits of armor she had worn in nearly one thousand years of continuous military service. They were arranged in a hall so creepy that shining armor would only run through it, and even then only with his eyes closed. But she knew what he meant.

“You’re talking about role-playing.”

“Maybe…?”

“Sparkler, can you pencil in some time for me to squeeze Shining Armor in...to his armor?”

“Your schedule is clear at four-thirty until five.”

“I need until at least eight.”

“Sure. I can do that. And I’ll make the appointment for the doctor the next morning. He’s going to need it.”

“There,” said Cadence. She flipped up Shining Armor’s skirt and he squeaked loudly. “Now. Get naked. Because knowing that dress? By the time you get it off, we’ll be ready to put the armor back on.”

Shining Armor beamed. “Wow! Today is going WAY better than I expected!” He suddenly gasped. “Oh! I almost forgot! Look at this!”

He shuffled around a pile of unpleasant greenish dresses and revealed a small set of black, heavily tarnished armor. Cadence saw it and suddenly could not take her eyes off it. She did not know what she was feeling, or why.

“I found this while I was checking the walls for candy. Don’t you think Flurry Heart will look adorable in it!”

“NO.”

Shining Armor was taken aback by his wife’s sudden change of demeanor. “But- it’s little armor -”

“I said NO. Where did you even find this?”

“It was- -it was in one of the closets!”

“WHICH closet?!”

“I don’t know! We have a LOT of closets! Sometimes I get lost!”

“So that’s where you’ve been for the past two days,” noted Sparkler. She sighed. "I probably should have guessed you were in the closet. Along with Flash."

"That only happened ONCE! Well...maybe twice...but Sunburst was there the second time, and that makes it okay!"

"No. That makes it worse."

“Get rid of it,” said Cadence. “Flurry doesn’t need clothing like that. Besides...”

“What?”

“I don’t...I don’t know.” Cadence put her hoof to her head, as if she had a headache. But it was not quite pain. It was a strange sensation that she had been feeling from time to time as soon as she had been assigned to the Crystal Empire. As if everything seemed disturbingly familiar, but in a way that she had no way to place. “Sparkler. Get him out of the dress.”

Without warning, a bolt of magic shot out from beneath the bed. Shining Armor was instantly rendered nude.

“GAH!” he cried, trying to cover his pony bits. “Why do you even have a spell like that?!”

“I use it for peeling bananers.”

“Is it safe?”

“Not if you’re a bananer.”

Cadence reached behind Shining Armor and grabbed the necklace she had hoped to use at lunch. Then she quickly turned and headed out the door.

“I’ll be back later, Shining. I have to explain what a zeugl is. Again.”

“Wait, I know what it is! I can help!” He ran after her, tripping over Sparkler and landing on top of her. “Oh, wow, you’re really soft!”

“GAH! I’m going to have the candy beaten out of me!”

Cadence ignored them. She opened the door and nearly ran into a pony.

Cadence’s first instinct was to charge her horn and prepare for an atomization spell. Fortunately, domestic life had calmed her down somewhat, and rather than create a new pile of ash to be swept up she quickly realized that the pony standing before her was clearly not a threat.

“Oh! Princess Cadence!”

“Who are you and why are you in my house?”

“Did you leave the door open?” called Shining Armor, who was still lying on top of Sparkler. “Twily does that all the time! That’s how they got Starlight!”

The earth-mare cleared her throat. “My name is Professor Fossil, the scientific lead for the Crystal Empire archeological expedition. And these are my students.” She pointed to two young ponies at her side, a filly with a somewhat gruesome skeletal cutie mark and a young colt “Petunia Paleo and...well, I don’t actually know what his name is.”

“You’re early.”

“Well, yes, but we contacted your secretary in advance. I wrote her a note just yesterday.”

“My secretary can’t read.”

Fossil raised an eyebrow. “Your secretary...can’t read? Why did you hire her?”

Cadence looked over her shoulder. Shining Armor was still laying on Sparkler, who seemed about ready to pass out from being crushed. “Why did we hire her, Shining?”

Shining Armor burst into tears. “Because I miss Twiiiiillyyyy!!”

Cadence face-hooved. “Husbands. I love him so much, but it’s worse than having FIVE infant daughters.” She lifted her head, smiling as a princess ought to. “I can move the other meeting. I’d rather not talk about zeugl’s anyway.”

Fossil laughed. “Oh my, a discussion on mythology? Because of COURSE zeugls are only a myth!”

“You’d think.” Cadence pointed the way. “We can go to my conference room.” She looked over her shoulder. “Shining, get off her or I swear to my own butt I will NOT dye myself purple and comb my hair into bangs ANYMORE!”

“Yes ma’am!” squeaked Shining Armor, immediately standing at attention and picking up Sparkler in his magic.

Petunia leaned over to the nameless colt and made a motion with her hoof while making a sound like a whip.

“Hey! We only do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays! And Mondays...Wednesdays...Sundays...”

“SHINING!”

“YES I AM!” he cried, following his wife to the conference room.

“So,” said Cadence. “What do you have to report?”

“Only that the dig is going swimmingly. We’ve recovered so many critical artifacts essential to understanding the history and nature of this ancient Empire- -let me say, Princess, that it is an honor and a privilege to work in a place so well preserved, with so many artifacts still intact and barely buried- -”

“Because the Empire underwent recent temporal displacement. Meaning the artifacts are only a few months old.”

Fossil blinked. “Well, yes, but to us they’re well over one thousand years old...and...well, they belong in a museum!”

“Then you found something interesting?”

Fossil smiled and motioned toward one of her students. The student was overburdened with a substantial satchel of artifacts, and Fossil removed several large pieces of broken pottery as well as several plates etched with crystallic writing.

“As you can see, we have found these rare tablets. Once they’ve been translated, they could provide unparalleled insight into the Crystal Empire’s workings and history.”

Cadence picked one up. “This is a menu for a bar,” she said, moving to the next one. “This one is a set of regulations for crossing the street.” She picked up another. “This one is directions to a glue factory.”

Fossil gaped. “You- -you can READ them?”

“Of course I can read them.”

“But- -but- -but- -”

“Heh heh,” whispered Shining Armor. “She said ‘butt’.”

“Crystallic is a dead language! Not even the crystal ponies can read it- -”

“Because up until a few months ago, they were slaves under Sombra and forbidden to learn to read.”

“But then how do you know, Ms. Princess?” asked Petunia.

Cadence paused. “I...don’t know...”

“Regardless, our research is providing information would could not have even dreamed of! Why, once we analyze the core samples of the soil...” She shivered. “Oh, the things the dirt will tell us...”

“I hate to be blunt,” lied Cadence. “But have you found anything useful? As in, concerning who built the palace, or concerning the Dark Thirteen?”

Professor Fossil laughed. “Oh my, Princess, what a sense of humor you have!”

“I was not joking.”

“Of course you were! Simply put, archeology and palentology are immensely delicate, intricate processes. It’s not at ALL like Daring Do makes it seem! We don’t go after pointless legends in search of jewels and riches and other things of dubious provenance. Who would want to go to a museum to see some jewels or magic rings anyway? Ponies want to see pottery, and rusty ancient tools!”

“So you found nothing, then.”

“Because there is nothing to find. Princess, the Dark Thirteen are a myth. A propaganda story spread by Sombra to reinforce his own rule. There is no evidence that they ever existed. Why, think about it logically. Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, for example. Supposedly he was one of the greatest mages to walk the earth. And yet he left no writings, in Crystalic or otherwise. Or, what?” She laughed. “it’s not as if somepony snuck into the Imperial library and destroyed them all, now is it?” She sat down on one of the chairs. “Or Twilight Luciferian, perhaps? Shining Armor, you surely ought to know, it is a known genealogical fact that the progenitor of House Twilight was Twilight Phoenix.”

“And Penumbra Heartbreak?”

Fossil smiled. “Is that what you’re worried about? Princess Cadence, I can one hundred percent guarantee that the so-called ‘Dark Alicorn’ is a complete and utter myth. She never existed. The only alicorns at the time were Celestia and Luna. As an equinpologist, I have hypothesized that the crystal ponies created her as a kind of imaginary counter to the world they saw around them, a kind of folk-hero to give them some modicum of hope and fear under the rule of Sombra.” She smiled. “I actually proposed the idea in a very prestigious journal.”

“And you spoke with the crystal ponies?”

Fossil looked confused. “Heavens, why would I do that?”

“Because they were there. If she existed, they would literally have seen her.”

“I am an archaeologist. With all due respect, Princess, archaeology simply does not involve interviews. It involves digging. And that is what I have done. I assure you, I speak the absolute truth.”

“I talked to them a little bit,” volunteered the little colt. “They say she was really scary, with gray skin and black wings and a black mane, but that she saved the kingdom in the end- -”

“Now, now, whoever you are, we do not give conclusions without clear evidence. The Princess is only interested in the facts.”

“Did you find any cool fossils?” asked Shining Armor. “Like dinosaurs, or dragons, or giant robots?”

“Only one of those things was ever real.”

“I found something!” shouted Petunia, waving her hoof over her head. “I found something REALLY cool!”

“Petunia.” Fossil put her hoof on her temple. “We talked about this!”

“No, no, it’s really cool! I promise!” She reached into her own bag and produced an object wrapped in cloth. She ran over to Cadence and set it on the table. “I usually know what most fossils are, but I don’t know what this one was! I have no idea! Isn’t that amazing?!”

Before Cadence could answer, Petunia Paleo unwrapped the item.

What stared back at Cadence was grotesque in the extreme. It was a head, or part of a head- -but not the head of a pony.

Cadence leaned in closer, having no idea what she was looking at. It was not a skull, exactly, although it very closely resembled one. Instead of bone, though, it was made of strange metal, and dim glass had been placed in its eye-sockets. There was no lower jaw. What drew her attention the most, though, was the tarnished and corroded plate embedded in the pony-like skull’s forehead. It was a metal plate inscribed with strange letters from some unreadable, forgotten language. The first one had been struck out with a deep gouge.

“My apologies, Princess, she is a brilliant but very excitable young girl. We initially had assumed that what you are now seeing was the head of some sort of idol, but closer inspection revealed a level of technology far greater than any primitive society could hope to achieve. I mean, it is known that the crystal ponies had barely advanced beyond bronze spear-tips by the time the Crystal War began. Which means it is a modern forgery, not even worthy of being in a museum. I was going to throw it out, but she seemed insistent on keeping it.”

Fossil stood up and moved toward the head. “I can just take that- -”

“NO!” cried Cadence, suddenly grabbing the head away from her. “Don’t touch him!”

Professor Fossil jumped, clearly taken aback by Cadence’s reaction. Shining Armor, likewise, seemed confused and concerned. He moved to his wife’s side and put his hoof on her shoulder.

“Cadence, is something wrong? Why are you crying?”

Cadence reached up and touched her face. It was wet with tears, although she did not understand why.

“I don’t...I don’t know...”

That night, Cadence sat on the edge of an unused bed in an empty room. It, like many, was one of those that had been long-forgotten in the castle, except by her. For some reason, she seemed to know all the rooms, as if the whole of the castle was already familiar to her.

She had chosen this room because it had a window. She looked out it, staring at the light of the full moon. Her mother’s moon, now wielded by Luna in Nightmare Moon’s stead. Its quiet light usually calmed her- -and she needed to be calmed. The darkness made the noise inside her head worse, the sense that something was wrong but that she could not quite understand what.

The metal head sat on a chair beside her. The moonlight reflected off its eyes, and it almost seemed to be staring back at her, knowingly.

She did not know what it was, or how it was, or why. But she could not let it go, even if the archeologists said it had no value. For some reason that thought scared her. She knew what she was supposed to do- -that she should put the head away, and move on. Yet she also knew that there was no way that would happen.

Slowly, she climbed off the bed and took a seat on the chair, moving the skull into her lap. She stared at it, and at the text inscribed in its forehead. Then she lit her horn. She could not read the text, and did not know what it meant, but somehow, through some unfathomable means, she knew what it was supposed to look like.

She focused her magic into a thin beam and began to cut, burning through the metal of the deep gouge and reconstructing a flat surface from the resulting steel. Then she began to inscribe new text, restoring it from memory.

When she finished, the cut had been mostly ablated, and the word restored. The word “Emeth”.

Nothing happened- -at first. Then the glassy eyes in the skull suddenly moved, refocusing and calibrating after thousands of years of dormancy. They began to glow from within, producing a dim but lively light.

The eyes blinked. Then a voice spoke.

“System reactivated,” it said. “Auxiliary fusion core at eighteen percent capacity. Beginning reconstruction process...”

The eyes suddenly flicked upward toward Cadence, and she smiled. She did not know why.

“Hello, princess,” said the skull. “It is good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too, Emeth.”

Emeth’s eyes moved again, focusing on something else. “Princess. I am detecting a technetium resonance signal.”

Cadence turned suddenly, and through the dark, she saw a pair of red eyes staring at her. In that brief moment, she saw Sombra, her mortal enemy. She had no choice. She fired a bolt of energy into the darkness.

Something clicked, and a shield of yellow light formed around a white pony, deflecting the beam. Ignoring the blast, she moved directly into the light.

She was not Sombra. Cadence had never seen her before. She was a pure white Pegasus, a true albino. Her eyes were red, but they were not focused on Cadence, or anything at all. She was staring past them all, her groundbreaking intense stare focused entirely on some unseen thing of ponderous and unspeakable horror.

One of her front legs had been removed entirely and replaced with a clockwork assembly driven by a ticking dial implanted in the shoulder of the machine.

Cadence took a defensive stance, but even as she did, she could see the ghostly image of white robes drifting behind the pony, and she understood that this Pegasus had not come to harm her.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

The Pegasus did not answer. She simply raised her metallic hoof. Perched upon it was a single young raven.

“Princess,” spoke the raven. “Welcome back.”

Chapter 1: Omen Birth

Lightning flashed across the sky, its silent flash momentarily lighting the darkened halls of the Crystal Citadel with a strange violet glow. Thunder followed, but it was muffled by the heavy snowfall and manifested only as a long, somber roar.

In this momentary blast of light and magic, three figures were illuminated. Three ponies who moved quickly through the corridors as the storm raged outside. Or, rather, two ponies, and a mare who was not.

“How?” demanded the one who led the other two. “I order it. Tell me now, how such a thing could even be possible.” He turned sharply to one of the others. “There were spells in place. Was it not YOU who designed them, and oversaw their administration, Luciferian?”

Beside his king stood an almost equally stately stallion, as white as his king was black: a unicorn whose genetic background exceeded that of purebloods, save only for the curse of his long violet mane, tied back into a tight braid. He wore a long leather coat over mage-armor of his own design, perfectly formed and symmetrical save for one tall armored boot over his front left foreleg. This pony, the last of his House, had the audacity to smile.

“My king. The spell is infallible. You oversaw the design as well.”

The king stopped and turned sharply, looming over the white stallion. “And yet it has occurred.”

“No. My design was perfect. Unless someone interfered with it. Even accidentally.” He glared across the hall to the other equine, a mare who had been repeatedly reminded that she would never, ever be called a pony. She, like her counterpart, wore heavy clothing to insulate against the cold, although it bore strange markings, impossible bones, rings of gold, and many knots. Her face was covered in a strange mask.

“Twilight, your behavior is puerile. I assure you, the king’s harem is quite sterile.”

“Unless your ridiculous herbs interfered with my spell!”

“Can you not except that some things cannot be explained? Or must your tiny worldview be constantly maintained?”

“And I have no time for your incessant arguing,” snapped the king, silencing both. “The evidence is empirical, and indeed has an explanation. We will deal with the situation first, and then that explanation will be found.” He turned and began walking- -an immortal king, one of the last black unicorns, clad in dark thrill and red velvet, a king who wore a crown of iron atop a bladed horn. “And when that explanation is found? I will paint these walls red...or silver.”

The pair of servants looked at each other- -the scion of House Twilight and an apostate zebra. Neither saw a break in the other’s composure or a weakness to exploit, and continued on in in the lightning-lit shadow of the Crystal King.

They arrived at the door to the main stable. Two thrall guards had already been posted; the luminescent green eyes of their masks lit the hallways and the crystal blades of their spears. Both bowed silently as the king approached, and stepped aside in turn.

Inside was a wide hall as lavishly appointed as it was cold. Soft furniture and tapestries lined the walls and crystal lamps provided warm, pleasant light. Yet all inside was eerily silent. A few of the girls were awake, and sat nervously on cushions and behind curtains in doorways and the farthest reaches of the room, still dressed in their sheer, jeweled nightgowns and staring with disturbingly harsh eyes. All were to afraid to approach, or to make a sound. They had lost the luxury of fear, but they knew that something was horribly wrong.

The king passed through the room without looking at any of them, taking a side-hall to a series of rooms. In one of the smaller alcove rooms, a pony was already waiting for him. Unlike the other girls in this place, she had been permitted to remain some shred of her dignity and stood tall and straight- -though her eyes were as cold and harsh as the mare’s of the king’s harem. Her clothes were perfectly pressed and her steel-blue mane combed perfectly. She did not even attempt to disguise the circular scar in the center of her forehead.

“My king,” she said, bowing deeply.

“Steward. Bring him. NOW.”

“Of course my liege.” The steward made a motion with one of her hooves, and a pair of crystal thralls bushed a badly beaten Pegasus gelding to the ground before his master’s feet.

The king stared at him with a look of withering reproach. The gelding did not even dare to look up. He only quivered, his forehead pressed against the luxurious silken carpets of the harem stable.

“Freeflight,” said the king at last. “You disappoint me.”

“My liege!” squeaked the Pegasus. “My liege, I beg you- -” His pleading was interrupted as he screamed in agony. Red magic had surrounded the bases of his wings, pulling them harshly together.

“SILENCE,” whispered the king. “Look at me, Freeflight. NOW.”

The gelding shook, and with the greatest of difficulty raised his tear-filled eyes to his king. Those terrified eyes met a pair of red eyes, their pupils narrowed to thin slits with anger. Yet, when the king spoke, he spoke with icy calm.

“I placed you in charge of my mares because I assumed you understood the responsibility required. You were to protect them, care for them, to prepare them when I required them. Caring for them was your duty.”

“Yes, my lord, please! I- -I know that, I apologize, I APOLOGIZE- -”

“And yet you failed to notice that one of them had fallen pregnant.”

“My lord!” the gelding was whimpering, but steeled himself. “Hope- -Hope was the smartest of them, the most clever. And the kindest. She hid it! Somehow she was able- -NO! PLEASE NO!”

The king lifted him by his wings, holding the gelding’s face near his own. “Freeflight. For this failure, I should tear your wings free of your body and send you to the crystal mines.”

“Not the mines! Please, anything but the mines!”

“Then I ought to end you here and now? Do you really think you deserve a quick end, after what you have done?”

Freeflight whimpered. “Please, please…”

The king nodded. “Alas, that is not the fate you will meet. Not today. Because you had the courage and loyalty to bring this news to my attention yourself, even if your actions came too late. I shall give you a second and final chance. You will live. You will even keep your position.”

Freeflight gasped, and a joyous smile crossed his face. Tears of joy welled in his eyes. He opened his mouth to thank his lord and master, only for the smile to turn into a look of pure horror as the quiet sound of two snaps echoed through the room.

The gelding was dropped to the ground, and he screamed. The sound was so horrible that the girls watching turned away. Even the steward averted her eyes. The king did not, and neither did the zebra. Twilight Luciferian was too busy struggling to contain his laughter.

“You will live,” said the king, “but I will take something from you. Crozea will heal you, in exactly forty eight hours.” He turned to the zebra. “Ensure that his bones knit so that he will never again know the joy of flight.”

“This I can do, in the alloyed time; a punishment worthy of this heinous crime.”

With tears still in his eyes, Freeflight grasped the foreleg of his king and looked up. “Th- -thank you my liege! Thank you! I won’t- -I won’t fail you again!”

“No. You will not.” The king punctuated his statement with a strong kick to the gelding’s forehead- -but of course not strong enough to render him unconscious.

“Steward,” said the king.

“Of course.” The steward directed the thralls toward Freeflight, and they dragged him out by his broken wings.

The king watched him go, and listened impassively to the screams. When the screams became distant, he turned back to his assistant. “The child.”

“She is born,” replied the Steward. “A healthy filly. The midwives are in the next room, waiting for your arrival.”

“I have no need to see her. See to this personally, steward. Take her to the edge of the kingdom, beyond the protection dome. And leave her there.”

The steward’s eyes flashed. “My lord- -”

She might have been about to protest, or to agree, but the zebra Crozea interposed herself between the servant and the king. “To kill her, this is your goal?! That filly is only a newborn foal!”

The king’s eyes narrowed, and though Crozea felt his rage directed toward her she did not dare retreat. Doing so would surely be her end.

“Do you doubt my decision, Crozea?”

“I cannot believe this!” spat Twilight Luciferian. “How dare you doubt his decision?! Those hideous stripes are the only thing that keep you from being out there with the rest of the stablemares, and you have the audacity- -”

“Twilight,” growled the king, immediately silencing every breath in the room. “Now is not the time to press me. I am not in the mood.”

Luciferian’s eyes widened, but he immediately saluted and bowed. “Of course, my king.”

The king directed his attention toward the zebra. “Nor do I wish you to try my patience, Crozea. I have never raised a hoof nor magic to you, nor would I for an infraction such as this, but you tempt me. But I value your opinions. Please, tell me why I should not expose the usurper?”

“This innocent is of a value you cannot bear to lose. Even if you do not see it now, this is not the path you should choose.”

“You should know better, Crozea. There is a reason why I have these spells cast on my mares, why I have your herbs. Why I even allowed Al’Hrabnaz to attempt his surgeries, although the results were…unpleasant. I am immortal. I have no need for children. An heir only serves as a threat to my eternal rule. Any child of mine is a rival, and must be dealt with as such.”

Crozea frowned beneath her mask, and though she did not acquiesce, she did not speak either.

“I don’t understand why we need to bother with all this,” sighed Twilight. “It’s a child. I can do the job myself. I do not mind. It would be incredibly easy.”

“This child is still my daughter,” said the king. “And as such, she deserves an worthy of a princess.”

“Sire,” said the Steward. “Please.”

“Would you doubt me too, steward?”

“I never would, my lord,” she said, bowing her head. “I do not have the capacity. But in this case, it is my duty to risk my position to request that you at least see the child before you make this decision. I assure you, on my word, that you will not be disappointing.”

The king stared at his steward for a long moment. “Nothing you can show me will change my decision,” he said at last. “However, I am not so weak that viewing my daughter’s face would convince me to change her fate. So show me.”

The steward bowed, and she led the trio to a door. She opened it, and gestured for them to enter.

A strange smell hung in the air inside, and several crystal nurses were already at work cleaning and organizing the room. As the king stepped in, one of them was pulling a sheet over the face of a white unicorn mare.

“It seems that although the child is alive, the mother did not survive.”

“Pity,” shrugged Luciferian. “Hope was one of your favorites, wasn’t she?”

“I have more. Have the remains brought to Necrophilo, to see what went wrong with her.”

“My lord, I am also a competent necromancer- -”

“But you have a stake in this investigation, Twilight. Midwife?’

“My king.” The crystal mare bowed deeply. In one foreleg, she was holding a bundle of blankets. Without a word, she held them to Sombra.

He looked down, and saw that his steward had overestimated the child’s health. She was thin, pale, and sickly. Although her mane had three colors, her gray-pink skin was hairless. Worst of all, a small horn poked out from her forehead. That appendage sealed her fate. Perhaps a child of one of the lesser races might be forgiven, but a unicorn heir was a born usurper.

The child’s fate had been decided. That was, at least, until she yawned and opened her eyes- -and her wings.

The midwife smiled, impressed by the look of surprise that crossed the faces of two of the Thirteen as well as the Dark Lord himself.

“By the daughter of the Veil,” whispered Luciferian.

“This child born,” said Crozea, barely retaining her composure. “She is an alicorn!”

The child giggled and smiled at her father. He did not smile back.

Then a voice spoke. It made no sound, yet echoed through the heads of everyone present. The midwife winced, and several of the nurses cried out in pain as it tore through their minds.

“King Sombra?” said a high, young female voice.

“Eternity Gaze,” he said, barely noticing that she spoke in ideas rather than words. “What is it?”

“They are coming. The twins. I think they want to talk to you.”

Sombra’s gaze hardened. “So be it.”

Chapter 11: The Scion of House Twilight

Twilight Luciferian leaned back in his seventh favorite chair and raised a delicate wine glass to his lips. It was not filled with pony-wine, though; instead, it was brimming with a silver, metallic substance similar in appearance to thin mercury. He took a sip. It was delicious.

Around him was his library, an assembly of seemingly endless shelves assembled in a nearly circular room carved from dark stone. Beyond it was his tower, the ancestral home of House Twilight for time immemorial. This place had been the home to countless dark wizards, and the walls still dripped with pain and depravity. They were perpetually damp.

This was Twilight Luciferian’s home, accessible only to him; beyond it lay endless impassable jungle, contaminated endlessly with millennia of noxious defense spells. More importantly, though, it was home to his books.

On this particular day, though, he had not yet decided what to read. Instead he lay back, sipping from the glass of silver fluid.

“I cannot believe my luck,” he said at last, nearly laughing. “I succeed on every front. Not only did Necrophile’s students fail utterly, but the candidate the idiot chose is exactly who I need. A mare. No competition for the princess’s affection, unless she’s some sort of absurd pervert. I mean, could you imagine? If it had been some young, handsome, impressive upstart stallion who had succeeded?”

Luciferian turned sharply to the mare standing beside him, levitating a silver tray in her violet magic. She recoiled from his gaze, but did her best to smile. She, like Luciferian, was a unicorn- -but not a white one. Her skin was mottled with both gray and pale violet, and her mane bore stripes of both. She was gaunt and pale, having never been exposed to sunlight, and one of her eyes was covered with a bandage.

“That isn’t a rhetorical question, Failure.”

“Y- -yes, daddy! It would have been terrible!”

Luciferian smiled, and took another sip of the fluid. He watched Failure trace the glass with her eye, watching every sip. Of course she did not have the mental capacity to know how to operate poison, nor would poisoning a master of alchemy be easy- -or even possible.

“Even better, she’s weak. A chronoplexer, yes, but that just means she knows the spells. It’s an innate trait of or species. A unicorn can learn any spells he desires if he applies himself thoroughly, but his actual raw power is limited purely by his genetics. Which is why the pureblood Houses will always rule.”

“So I might...I might have potential?”

Luciferian levitated the fluid out of his glass, and then proceeded to shatter the vessel on his daughter’s face. She squealed and stepped back, dropping her tray narrowly avoiding injury to her remaining eye.

“I was not talking to YOU, failure. Did I give you permission to speak? HMM?”

“N- -no, daddy, I’m sorry!”

“Then stay SILENT.” Luciferian glared at her, then engaged a repair spell to restore his glass. He set it down on the tray on the floor. “You’re lucky, Failure. I’m in a good mood today.” He leaned back and sighed. “But the chronoplexer… oh the things I could do. To travel through time alone would be impressive, but even Strswirld could not generate alternative realities. I would so love to study her, to understand what it is about HER that makes her able to do what I cannot. Perhaps I should begin building a relationship.” Luciferian smiled. “Is it not a king’s prerogative to have as many mares as he desires.” He shivered in anticipation. “I am going to cuddle so many mares...I would like to assemble the entire kingdom’s female population into a vast heap, and just sleep on top of it.” He paused, then pointed at Failure. “You are not allowed in my mare pile. You would have to sleep on the ground and be cold. Because I hate you.”

“I know, daddy.”

“Just so long as you know it, and remember it well. It is because you are a failure, in every sense of the word. Such a sorry disappointment.”

Failure looked down at the floor, but Luciferian relished the shine of fresh tears in her eye. She deserved everything that came to her.

“I think I will review the concept for my nightly meditations.”

“Of constructing a heap of cuddle-mares?”

“No, you idiot. I’ve memorized those tomes completely. “Find me the collected work of T. Loganberry. Chronoplexy is not an art an ordinary wizard can practice, so I have grown quite rusty. I wish to read theory today.”

“Yes, daddy. I’ll go get it.”

She turned and slowly limped off. Her speed was greatly reduced by lacking a left front leg from the knee down.

“You have no idea how hilarious this all is,” said the other mare in the room.

Any hint of cheer that Twilight Luciferian might have possessed instantly evaporated. He glared down at the mare sitting beside him on the floor, leaning against his chair and engaged in peeling an onion. She was in the process of peeling an onion. The mare was not a unicorn, and more closely resembled an unusually tall earth-pony. Her body was yellow, and her hair crimson. When she looked up at Luciferian, her eyes were pure red.

“Several reasons.” She stood up and leaned against Luciferian, putting her chin on top of his head while she hugged his neck. “Mainly, Twilight, why are you bothering? Political intrigue is pointless. And so boring. Not enough violence. And for what? Some tiny northern realm? What are you, a yak? With my power, I could give you all of Equestria...if you would just manifest me...”

“At what cost?

The mare stared at him with her featureless red eyes. Her mouth widened into a sickening smile. Her teeth were black and pointed. “Everything.”

Luciferian pushed her away, or tried to. She slithered out of his grasp before he could even make contact, and returned to her onion. It had begun to bleed, and its screams echoed deep within Luciferian’s mind.

“It’s not time. It’s not time...” He shook his head, and took a large swig of silver fluid, emptying the glass. He followed this with deep breath. “This way is better, for now. Until I really need to.”

“Then you’re delaying the inevitable. Why are you waiting? You want the princess, why not take her? Throw her down and snuggle her until she’s RAW. Or whatever you horse-things do.”

“That is not how this works.”

“Why? Too civilized? But you bothered to summon me, so...” The mare stood and smiled. “Although, if you want to get a head start, why not try HER?” she pointed to where Failure had gone. “You’ve seen her. Thin, bony, constantly clammy. Just the kind of girl someone like you would want. She would fight Celestia herself for a little touch from daddy. Don’t you even want to try?”

“Don’t be crude. She disgusts me.”

“Well, then, there’s always me.”

“No.”

The mare laughed and pretended to pout. “Why not? Aren’t I pretty?”

“Because sometimes I can see through that veil you wear. To the thing on the other side.” Luciferian looked at her. “You are not a pony. Do not think I do not realize the gravity of the fact that you even exist, let alone that I managed to summon you.”

“I don’t think. I KNOW.”

Failure returned, now carrying a single large book. Exactly the one Luciferian had asked for. He knew it well; he had read it several times. He knew the exact number of words, pages- -and the weight. He was also fully aware of the carrying capacity of his daughter’s magic.

The violet glow around the book began to flicker. The yellow mare began to laugh. “Oh, yes! Do it! You know you want to!”

“Daddy, I have your bo- -”

The exceedingly weak levitation spell suddenly failed. The book dropped to the floor with a thump, and the whole room fell silent. Failure stared at the fallen book, her eye wide as she stared at it. When she looked up at her father, he was already standing.

“Daddy, no! I didn’t mean- -”

A whip of electrified violet energy slashed across Failure’s body. The force was so great that she was knocked to her knees. She screamed, and instinctively tried to curl into a ball. Luciferian was too fast, though; the second blow went across her face.

“That. Is. Not. How. WE. TREAT. BOOKS!” With every pause, the whip fell again and again. With each blow the girl screamed, but the wails grew more and quieter as she began to reach the edge of unconsciousness. Luciferian was forced to cast a spell to keep her alert and sensitive.

“How can you be this much of a failure? HOW?” The whip came down. “How could a clone perform this poorly? Look at you! You’re not WHITE!” Another blow. “And it’s your fault. ALL YOUR FAULT!”

“Daddy!” sobbed Failure. “I’m sorry! I’M SORRY! The book was too heavy! EEP!”

She was hit another time. “That crystalling crystal was YOUR FAULT! I made it myself, from my own flesh and blood! Meaning YOU! And now I have to look at you, I have to SEE you, to remind myself of EVERYTHING!”

He lifted his heavy armored leg- -the only clothing he wore at the time- and punched his daughter in the nose. Her head was thrown back and she sprawled across the floor. Luciferian levitated her and brought her back, raising his left hoof again.

Except that when he did, the yellow mare raised her own hoof- -and Luciferna’s stopped.

“Excessive punishment to get your jollies? That’s fine. I find it super funny. Even funnier? She still loves you. She really thinks this is all her fault, and that she deserves this. But if you keep going? Well, you know. Once punishment gets that severe, you’re just beating a dead horse.”

Luciferian growled but was forced to acquiesce. He dropped Failure to the floor, where she collapsed into a blubbering heap. He walked past her and picked up the book he had dropped. Of course he could have levitated it from a distance; there was no reason to send failure to collect it at all. He knew right where it was. But, as always, she deserved this.

“Here.” Luciferian threw a butterfly needle and some tubing at Failure’s feet. Failure looked at it, and then up at him. A thin stream of silver was trickling from her nose.

“D...daddy?”

Luciferian held out the wine glass. “I need MORE.”

Chapter 17: Assassination

Penumbra looked up at the Nameless One. She could not tell if it was a he or a she, or even what it was. Though it stood like a pony, it was much larger than one. Just barely, she could see the very tip of its face. It was not quite a pony face, as Penumbra could have sworn she saw tiny white scales tipped with purest gold.

Then as soon as he or she had come, the Nameless one departed- -and Penumbra awoke.

The first thing she became aware of was pain. The second was not being able to breathe. Penumbra gasped and tried to cry out, but could not. She tried to flail, but found that her hooves were held tight by something thick and strong. It was not quite rope, she realized, but tendrils of something fleshy that reeked of chemicals.

She was still on the floor of her room, but the tendrils had still found her, wrapping themselves around her limbs- -and her neck. Their grip was strong, and they snaked over her body, their grasp growing tighter. The smell of chemicals grew even stronger, and Penumbra felt her vision going dark. She was going back to sleep, but was distantly aware that she had to try her hardest not to. If she went now, something bad would happen.

“Help...me...” she gasped.

Her room was suddenly flooded with blue light. Thirteen dropped in, not even registering the teleportation as her horn immediately shifted spells. Several bright blades of light shot from the tip of her appendage, severing the tendrils that had ensnared Penumbra. Penumbra shot up and tore the one around her neck free, gasping as she did.

It felt disgusting, and as she held it, it began to boil. The flesh of the tendril bubbled away as it rotted, revealing that inside it contained both flesh and bone, although those too were gone in a matter of seconds. The stumps wailed quietly and squirmed their way back through thin cracks in the crystal, vanishing to wherever they had come from.

Thirteen immediately raised a shield around herself and Penumbra, sealing the room in a glow of blue light. By this time, the crystal nurses had awakened and came racing toward the room.

“Princess? Princess!”

One of them stood on her hind legs and pounded on the shield spell. “Lady Thirteen! Please, open the shield!”

Penumbra looked up at the nurses, but she was still choking and coughing. She could not yet speak, and her head ached badly.

“Let us in- -she’s choking! We have to help her!”

Thirteen did not respond. She did not even look toward the nurses. Her eyes were focused only on Penumbra and the area around her- -or, more specifically, at the data-readouts from the inside of her helmet. Not once did she allow the shield spell to falter, not even slightly. There was far too much at stake to allow that to happen.

Chapter 33: A Brushing

The mirror reflected what it always did, but Penumbra was less sure of what she was staring at than she had been for her whole life. She saw her reflection, her narrow body, her large pointed eyes- -but wondered what that truly meant, in the scope of her life.

Facet had finished brushing Penumbra’s mane quickly, considering how little of it was left. She had since moved on to Penumbra’s wings, carefully removing dead feathers and straightening the rest while applying black dye to those that were reverting to their normal violet color. The wrong color, or so Penumbra was told.

“I can’t believe you actually hit the king,” whispered Facet, still in awe of the news. “King Sombra! You actually stood up to him! Nopony’s ever done that before!”

“I did what was appropriate for the context,” said Penumbra dismissively. “He attacked, and he expected an appropriate response. I only did what he wanted me to.”

“But I heard that you shot magic, right into his chest- -”

“Which was a lucky shot. He was distracted. I’m not sure by what. But in a real duel? The kind where we have to bow to each other? I wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds.”

“You’re selling yourself short.” Facet pulled several feathers and straightened those nearest to them. “I don’t know if I should tell you...”

Penumbra turned her eyes to look at Facet in the mirror. Unlike most crystal ponies, Facet did not recoil at her gaze. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. It’s just that...” Facet sighed. “Sometimes ponies forget we’re here. The crystal ponies. That we listen to things, see things. There’ve been rumors. About you.”

Penumbra’s mood sank. “I see. No doubt unpleasant ones. Or ones concerning me dancing on a table in the nude.”

Facet dropped her brush in shock. “You- -you WHAT?!”

“I don’t think I’ll ever eat sugar again.” Penumbra levitated Facet’s brush. “I also apparently fought a griffon. Knocked his teeth out, supposedly.”

“I’ve never seen one up close, but...they don’t have teeth.”

“I know.”

“That’s not what I meant anyway.” Facet ran the brush through Penumbra’s wing. “Crystal ponies don’t like dancing anyway. Even seeing dancing is a criminal offense. A bad one. No. There were different rumors.”

“About the monster that wandered through the district,” sighed Penumbra. She was all-too-aware of the horn her reflection bore, and how it also showed her long, fluffy wings. The marks of a demon, and an enemy to the state.

“About a pony that stopped a group of upper-race ponies from beating a dangling prisoner, and a princess who released her.” She switched to the other wing. “Or about a young mare who fought off an enemy infiltrator all alone when the Blue Knight was injured, and then held back the Slaughterer with all her might in a show of mercy. Not to mention defeating the strongest wizard in the kingdom, and- -”

“Taking off the Mask of Red Death and dooming my teacher. I know.”

Facet recoiled. “I beg your pardon, my princess, I didn’t mean- -”

“I know, Facet Flare. But the rumors look pretty in hindsight, don’t they? Ponies talking about how heroic they think I am.” She turned and looked over her shoulder. With the size of her eyes, it was not difficult. “But when I was actually out there? They screamed. They called me a monster and ran. I got hit in the face with a brick.”

Facet gasped. “A brick? Like, as in- -”

“It may have been a paver.” Penumbra shrugged. “It’s not the point.” She pointed at the mirror. “They see that. A monster. Because I am. I know that, and I think I hate it. I’m supposed to be stronger than my father, because that’s what a weapon does. I exist to do what he can’t. But if they fear him already, what does that make me?”

Facet sighed and resumed brushing. “I am just a slave, princess. I do not know the answers to such things.”

“We are all slaves,” replied Penumbra. “Slaves with different titles. That is how the world is supposed to be run. But...” She paused. “...if you have any thoughts, you can say them. I don’t mind.”

Facet smiled, and continued brushing. “You know, princess, I remember when you were just a little foal. Just a baby.”

“Yes. That was six months ago. Most ponies remember that. Except me.”

“It only lasted for half a week, before you were talking. Not that you could say anything. I watched you grow up. I’m fifteen, and now you’re older than I am.”

“Only in appearance.”

“But I’ve known you your whole life. And, well...when ponies see you, I don’t think they see YOU.”

Penumbra frowned. She was not wearing makeup, so the expression seemed strange without white and black paint to dampen it. “What else would they see?”

“They see Celestia, or Nightmare Moon, because you’re an alicorn. One our enemies. Terrifying enemies that want to hurt us, to do worse things than Sombra ever could. Or, they look at you and they see Sombra. And of course we’re always afraid of him, or else we get dangled.”

Penumbra paused, thinking. “But they don’t see me?”

“No. But not because they can’t, just because they haven’t had time yet.”

Penumbra stared at her reflection, and then smiled. It was the first time she had ever seen her face like that. Facet Flare smiled as well, and completed brushing Penumbra’s wings.

Suddenly, Penumbra sniffed. “Do you smell that?”

“Likely the dye. We stopped using perfume, as you requested.”

“No. Herbs. Poisons. Honey.” Penumbra pointed. “Crozea is on the other side of that door.”

As she said it, the door opened and Crozea stepped in.

“Lady Crozea,” said Facet, bowing and immediately reversing to the nearest wall where she could attempt to vanish in the background. Penumbra rotated in her chair, being careful not to smudge the still-damp dye on her wings. “Lady Crozea,” she said, bowing slightly.

Crozea removed her mask. She did not appear happy beneath it. “My dear, I had a feeling you would be here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“What a question to ask! Perhaps on a table, shaking your- -”

“So you heard. I already made the report to the king. The matter is closed.”

“Closed? You suck out of the Citadel late at night! Did I not teach you wrong from right? And you took the TUNNELS, those rank holes! You could have been eaten by stoats, a zeugl, or pony-devouring VOLES!”

Penumbra was surprised at her reaction- -and more surprised by how it was agitating her. “There weren’t any voles. Just a few snorks.”

“Do not take the dangers of this Empire so lightly! Dangerous things live here, and they creep out nightly! And while you made it out of the tunnels, true, the city is full of things and ponies that could hurt you!”

Penumbra stood. “Why are you yelling at me?”

“Because did not that night I warn you of the dangers? Of the monsters and criminals and strangers! And I thought you understood, only for you to defy my warning every way you could! How could I expect that you would show me such disrespect?”

“Disrespect?” Penumbra took a step forward, but Crozea did not back down. “How about THIS for disrespect? I talked to Zither- -who was WITH ME most of the night!- -and he said I’m not actually forbidden from going out in the city! That’s not my father’s rule, it’s YOURS!”

Crozea’s eyes narrowed. “So the breezietale knight has sunk deep into his dereliction. I made that rule for your own protection.”

Penumbra’s jaw dropped, and she nearly stumbled. “W- -wait? That’s actually TRUE?”

Crozea’s eyes widened. She had been inadvertently tricked, and there was no way to take back what she had said- -especially in rhyme.

“But- -but it’s my kingdom. I’m supposed to help my father rule it- -and you won’t even let me see it?!” Penumbra was not sure why she had suddenly grown so angry, but it felt good. All the time she had been trapped in this place, not allowed to see the city or the Empire or all the things Emeth had showed her, it had been Crozea- -and ONLY Crozea- -who had kept those wonders from her. “WHY? Why would you do that, Crozea?”

Crozea’s expression grew sad. Not severe or angry, just sad, though Penumbra was too incensed to notice the pain in her gaze. “Because the world is a cruel place, drowned in sorrow and grief. I only wanted more than anything to keep you safe.”

“Is that what you call it? ‘Safe’?”

Penumbra and Crozea turned,with the latter being far more surprised that a slave had dared to speak than the former. From the shadowed corner of the room, Facet Flare was glaring hard at Crozea.

“You speak out of turn,” snapped Crozea. “For this crime, you could burn!”

“My loyalty to Lord Sombra is absolute.” Facet stepped forward, to Penumbra’s side. “And that loyalty extends equally to his daughter, the Divine Princess. It does NOT extend to you.”

“Close your speaking hole, before I use your bones to fill my divination bowl.”

“Let her speak,” protested Penumbra, more out of defiance than anything else. “At least SHE isn’t keeping me here like a prisoner.”

Facet bowed, and stood straight, as if trying to stare Crozea down. Crozea herself had never seen a crystal pony behave this way, and it stirred distant memories in her mind. This was not loyalty driven from fear, but something else entirely. Something she had not witnessed in many decades.

“Princess Penumbra, the night you departed, Lady Crozea left you a vial of delicate juice.”

Crozea gasped, seeing where this was going. “You filthy slave-mare, you wouldn’t dare- -!”

“I remember,” said Penumbra, ignoring and speaking over Crozea’s protest. “I didn’t drink it. If it tastes anything like cider, I would have hated it anyway.”

“You may not have. But I did. My apologies, my princess, but it was a fortunate thing I did- -for the drink was laced with deadly poison!”

Penumbra was not surprised, at least not initially, simply because she did not believe it- -until she saw the look on Crozea’s face. Then, in that moment, the anger inside her changed. It felt like something broke.

“It...it was?”

“I gave up a toadstone to save your life, and this is how your repay me, with discord and strife?!”

“CROZEA. Is it true? Was that juice...was that poison?”

Crozea’s eyes widened. “I did not place it there, there is no need to start a scare- -”

“Is it TRUE?” Penumbra’s voice rose high to a pitch that she had not known she could scream.

Crozea fell silent. Then, slowly, she nodded.

Penumbra took a step back. “And the other assassination attempt, when I was almost strangled- -you’re the only one who has access to my room, and the only biomancer- -”

“Penumbra, you’re getting ahead,” said Crozea, speaking calmly. “I have no reason to want you dead.”

“But you had the opportunity.” Penumbra took another step back. Her mind was reeling at the possibility alone, that the being she trusted most in the world might have tried to behavior. In this state, her mind began to make connections. To form terrible conclusions. “You- -you kept me from going outside. From being seen...” She looked up at Crozea, her eyes wide and trembling. “You’re ashamed of me.”

“Penumbra, no- -”

Penumbra did not give her a chance to rhyme. Her betrayal was slowly turning back to anger, and this time so much worse than before. “You made me like this. Force-grew me, since I was born- -but then you hid me away, because you were ASHAMED!” Penumbra took a step forward. “So you tried to get rid of me? Is that it? IS IT?!”

Crozea reached out to slap Penumbra. Penumbra dodged her hoof easily, but the very idea that Crozea would strike her was so much worse than any physical blow.

“Your best interest has always been my cause, and no other! I raised you as if I were your mother!”

“You’re NOT MY MOTHER!”

Crozea recoiled as if she had been struck- -but her mind had already formed a retort, summoned by instinct to strike back when struck. “And yours lies buried in the earth, because she died giving BIRTH!”

Facet Flare gasped, covering her mouth. Penumbra’s eyes widened, as did Crozea’s.

“I- -no- -Penumbra- -”

“I...I had a mother?” Penumbra’s face contorted as the implication dawned on her. “I...I never thought...never realized...but...” She froze. “Then it’s my fault.”

“My words have cut too deep; that was my secret meant to keep- -”

“Shut up.”

“My cruelty I deeply regret, please, if you could just forget- -”

“I said shut. UP.” Penumbra looked up, glaring through her tears. “Just get out.”

“Penumbra, please- -”

“Get OUT!” Penumbra charged her horn and fired a concussive blast at Crozea- -but the spell faltered and fizzled, producing barely a plume of sparks.

Penumbra collapsed on the ground in a sitting position. “Just go,” she said. “My magic...I don’t even care. I can’t stand the sound of your voice and your moronic rhyming. Never speak to me again. And if you come for my life again, I’ll consider it a crime against Sombra...and deal with you accordingly.”

Crozea stared for a moment longer, and Penumbra saw that she was crying as well.

“If that is how it must sit, so be it.” She put her mask back on and fastened it tightly. Then, without a sound, she departed.

The whole of the room was silent for several minutes, and neither Penumbra nor Facet spoke for what seemed like a long time.

“Princess?” Facet finally said.

“This will be the first night I go to bed without her saying goodnight,” said Penumbra, wiping her eyes on her foreleg. “But I’m tired. And I’m going to bed. And if you tell anypony you saw me crying...”

“I was in the other room the whole time,” said Facet. “Cleaning up the maid’s quarters. I never saw a thing.”

Penumbra smiled, but weakly. She had never felt so bad before. Sleep was all she knew to do.

Chapter 37: Friendship Redux

Burnt was quivering, and not in a good way. She had practiced that for the day the king finally decided to deploy her like the rest of the girls. This was afraid quivering, and on a metal table no less.

“Please don’t put me to sleep,” she whimpered.

The doctor- -an oily, young unicorn, a former student of Necrophile of Canterlot- -raised a bushy eyebrow. “As in general anesthetic? No. We don’t use anesthetic here, this is the Crystal Empire. And if you continue this drug-seeking behavior, you’ll get drug. Through the street. Behind a cart.”

“No, I mean, my leg...are you going to put me down?”

“Now your talking nonsense. Idiot horse. This was so much easier when my patients were already unalived.”

“Are you going to unalive me?”

The doctor looked closely and incredulously at Burnt. “No. The risk of explosion is too high. Also, consorts get special privilege. If you were a crystal pony, we’d just banish you. You get this.”

He lit his horn, and in an instant Burnt’s ankle was snapped back into place.

The doctor looked up with a smile on his face- -a smile that quickly faded. “Where is the screaming?”

“Screaming? Why?”

“That was supposed to hurt. A lot.”

“That?” Burnt looked down. “Oh. No. I didn’t even feel it. I’m a royal concubine. If I couldn’t take that much pain, I wouldn’t survive one knight with the king.”

“Meaning?”

Burnt spread her front legs as far as they could go. The doctor shudder.

“More than I ever needed to know. Thank Epona he uses that filthy zebra as his personal physician. Or that magicless hack.” He sighed. “Regardless, you have type three poison joke poisoning. The varieties grown here are especially virulent, and prefer cruel jokes. The filthy striper can prepare an antidote once she finishes whatever you’re doing.”

“But I need it now! I have to serve the king! What if today is finally the day he decides to- -”

“To snuggle a BROWN unicorn? No. You’re a calming factor for the girls who are actually attractive. Now get out of my office, I have surgery to perform. I need to do some experimental leg switching. Hopefully they scream more than you.”

“You have terrible bedside manner.”

The doctor made a rude gesture. “At least I’m not ugly and BALD.”

Burnt burst into tears, because it was true. She was both ugly and bald- -as well as experiencing lingering burning from being thrown through a pile of nettles. And worse, all by a pony she thought was her friend.

Facet, who had been standing in a shadow and waiting, approached from the side. “Please don’t cry. Here.” She gave Burnt a small vial.

“Huh?” Burnt picked it up. “What is this?”

“A cure. It’s not as good as Lady Crozea’s. I don’t have access to the same reagents. It will work more slowly, but I think it will help.” Her voice became quiet. “But please, tell no one. If they knew- -”

“Part of my job is keeping secrets.” Burnt swallowed the vial without opening it. “Thank you.”

“I am partly responsible for what happened. I should have stopped her.”

Burnt smiled. “No. You wouldn’t have been able to.”

Facet frowned, knowing it was true. A slave had no right to give an order to a princess, or anyone else for that matter. Even Burnt, a slave herself, outranked her, holding a position that many crystal ponies desperately wished they were permitted to. It would be better than starving in the cold.

The door to the medical brig opened suddenly, and Penumbra- -in full armor and makeup, as always- -stepped through.

Burnt squeaked and dove under the table. “Please, no more! Mercy! I’m soft and NAKED!”

“Facet Flare. I need to have a word with you.”

“My apologies, princess. I am short on time, and, frankly, there is nothing for me to say to you- -”

“It is not a request. And it will not take long.”

Facet was forced to obey. It seemed that the princess had finally embraced her role- -and Facet supposed it was better that way.

Penumbra led Facet out of earshot of Burnt.

“What is it you require, Lady Princess?”

“An apology.”

“I apologize for being so impermanent, Lady Princess.” Facet bowed. “Please forgive me.”

“No, not from you, from ME. I’m still...learning. But that is not an excuse. I listened to Chrysalis instead of asking you, even though I know that you like...liked...me while Chrysalis and I...are a bit too similar to coexist without a little friction. What I did to Burnt was wrong, and my fault.”

“Then why are you apologizing to me?” Facet pointed. “You’re right. What you did was cruel, but you need to apologize to HER. You don’t understand how hard it is for us- -”

“Maybe I don’t. What do you think? You’ve seen every minute of my life. How is being a princess any different from being a slave?”

Facet opened her mouth, but was not sure what to say. “You...you aren’t powerless. Like we are.”

“I know. And I want to use that power to help. You, Burnt, Chrysalis; Zither, Holder, Scarlet Mist...Crozea. And all the others. The whole kingdom.” She looked at Burnt, who was still cowering. “I don’t think an apology would be enough for her. So I prepared something else.”

The door opened again, and the whole room fell silent. Sombra stepped into the room.

“My- -my king!” squeaked the doctor, who was in the process of restraining his transplant patients. He bowed. “I was not anticipating an inspection, if I had, there would be more screams- -”

“Leave us,” ordered Sombra. “In fact, I order you to shove your horn into a fruit of some sort. Perhaps an orange. And wear it all day like that.”

“My- -my king- -”

Sombra leaned close. “Or do I have to bend you over and punish you?”

The doctor squeaked, and then cried out. “Nurse! NURSE! Bring me the horn oranges! QUICKLY!”

He then promptly escaped. Penumbra watched him go, and then used her magic to release the crystal ponies that had been prepped for the experiment.

Sombra’s horn lit with dark green light, and he pushed the table Burnt was hiding out of the way. She looked up at him, her eyes wider than any pony eyes Penumbra had ever seen.

“Sexy…king…”

Penumbra stepped forward. “I spoke to my father,” she said, to Burnt. “I informed him that you felt neglected. It was a simple oversight in scheduling.”

“R...really?”

Penumbra nodded. “He was saving you for a special occasion. I think this occasion is special enough. The king rarely gets treated to a fully shaved mare.”

Burnt’s eyes grew even wider, and she had started to drool and quiver- -in a good way. “Is this true, my king?”

“Apparently,” growled Sombra, glowering at Penumbra. “Yes. Definitely true. And I am definitly the real Sombra. Not a changeling in disguise or anything. Because if I did that and got found out, I would TOTALLY be BANISHED from the kingdom and probably be, oh, I don’t know, eaten by the reigning changeling queen?”

“Well, Burnt is not a changeling queen, so you do not need to worry about the effects being permanent.” Penumbra nodded to Burnt. “I am sorry for having played a mean joke on you. I hope this makes up for this. I have business to attend to with Facet concerning my mainfesto. I will leave you two alone.”

“Wait, what? You didn’t say anything about- -”

It was already too late. Burnt had leapt onto the “king” and wrapped him tightly with all four of her legs, holding him in a crushing death-snuggle.

“You won’t regret it, my king! I have grade A certification in every known technique of snuggling, cuddling, smooching, snogging, and the other thing, and I’ve only started THREE fires this week!”

“Penumbra you dirty little horse, you will regret the day you- -EEP!”

“Teehee! I made you squeak!”

Penumbra hardly heard. She had returned to Facet with a smile on her face.

“That is not the king, is it?”

“Nope. There’s no way he’d listen to what I have to say. Besides, it’s just snuggling.”

“You...do know what concubines are for, right?”

“Not a clue. Do you like tea? I also need to apologize to Emeth, and give him back these.” Penumbra held up a small pile of tiny derped golems. “And I think he’d love to meet you. This will probably take a few minutes. Then Chrysalis is going to teach me how to fly so I don’t look like an idiot in front of a bunch of mutant cocks.”

Facet smiled, chuckling slightly. “If that is your order, my Princess.”

Chapter 43: Corps

Somewhere deep in the Citadel, Thirteen waited. The time was growing close. She red the readouts on her HUD, checking the eigenvalues and performing the necessary mathematics in her head. Then she charged her horn, opening the rift.

The others appeared in the blue holograms. They looked like her, if only in that they wore the same armor- -but even without it, they would have been nearly identical. Nearly, although never the same.

They communicated, but none spoke. They did not need to. The others disprove, but understood the necessity. There would be no interference.

One of them raised her hoof, and the magic coalescence into an object. Thirteen forced it to manifest, and the syringe dropped into her grasp.

The others nodded, and were gone. The time had come. Sombra would rise.

Author's Note

This chapter was originally a temporary interlude designed to break up two "Penumbra being sensitive" scenes before I decided to use Gxurab's ascension chapter instead. I decided to include it anyway despite its size.

Chapter 60: The Mirror

Deep within the Crystal Citadel, all was quiet. Even the hum of machines had grown distant, their full energy beginning to transfer to somewhere remote and unseen. Only distant explosion could sometimes be heard, either from the battle outside or the storm overhead. Red lightning flashed, illuminating a nearly empty room. A room that contains a mirror.

Suddenly, in the darkness, runes began to glow. They were those cast by Twilight Luciferian, a device intended at first to allow the mirror to operate and later to shut it down. They were designed and carved with precision care, drawn from one hundred and twenty six separate arcane alphabets.

Several defense golems turned slowly, their attention attracted by the sudden source of magic.

The runes began to flicker. Then, in an instant, they shattered, overwhelmed by a different set that quickly subsumed them- -a spell of infinity greater complexity, forged from the lexicon of four hundred eighty six individual languages, including six that had not yet been devised.

The mirror shimmers and a pony stepped through. The golems immediately took a defensive stance, but hesitated, not understanding what exactly they were looking at. That hesitation was their demise. Yellow runes danced across the floor, forming circles around each of them- -and the golems exploded from within in plumes of ice.

As they collapsed to dust, she walked past them silent and alone.

Chapter 80: Multiverse

Luciferian tried to scream, but there was no air. There was not even space for air to occupy, or a version of the laws of physics that would be conductive the to the construction of anything that could reasonably thought of as matter, let alone as air.

He plummeted, streaming across the space between space, a realm whose only existence was created by mathematical uncertainty concerning the definition of borders between regions that could not be circumscribed by any sane means.

As he fell, his sanity began to fray, torn apart by the presence of himself- -and countless other versions of himself. He saw them spread thin across endless words, some like his and some unlike, a smattering of Lucferians drawn across a series of malignant spheres. Each stood beside him, each vying for control, to assert themselves as the true Luciferian, perpetually in conflict with one another to the point that being able to perceive one another was intrinsically toxic. Their existence was mutually exclusive.

Then he looked upward, and he saw her, the pony Thirteen, her body surrounded by the course of her direction and unified across realities that began to rip apart Luciferian’s mind. He saw her- -countless versions of her, thousands, millions- -standing across all realities, all unified in thought and purpose. As her hoof came to meet his chest, the endless Luciferians cried out in rage, trying to flee him or take control of him, their minds driven by rage and hunger and loneliness- -but Thirteen stood unified with the other Thirteens, her hoof the hoof of millions.

When she struck, the unopenable door to the unspeakable void was shattered and Luciferian was thrown through.

He cried out, his body suddenly unified back into a single corporeal being. Air touched his skin and its sudden presence was both immensely relieving and vaguely agonizing.

Then came the pain as his back struck something hard and stone. The pain was strange to him, because parts of him that he was not aware of having began to ache as he fell to the ground.

He looked up and around, not sure where he was. Luciferian had landed against the base of a statue, the subject of which seemed to be a horse. Behind it was a large building, a school perhaps.

Then, to his abject horror, he saw two people. They were not ponies, but people. As in, things that walked on two legs. One was a short girl with blue skin and a long black dress, holding books, and the other was a taller white girl with tri-colored hair and a bookbag.

Space was torn open and Thirteen emerged, her own body contorted hideously into the form of one of the ugly bipeds.

Luciferian attempted to summon his magic, intending to strike her square in the chest with a quantum displacement spell- -only to find that no magic appeared.

“Wh- -what?” He reached for his forehead, only to find two things. The first was that he had no horn. The second was that he had HANDS.

“MY ORGAN!” he cried. “What have you done to my horn?!” He looked down at himself. “What have you done to my ME?!”

Thirteen stood over him and Luciferian tried to flee, only to fall over. He had no idea how to run on two legs. Thirteen grabbed him by the collar and lifted him easily. Then she punched him with such force that he struck the base of the statue hard enough to be thrown out of the universe entirely and into the next one.

Thirteen continued to follow, passing into the base of the statue. Behind her, Luna and Celestia looked at each other, terribly confused. Celestia dug through her bookbag and found the flask she had been trying to sneak into school. Luna nodded as Celestia held it out a moment before lobbing it as hard as she could into the nearby woods.

Luciferian burst across words, suddenly emerging back into a different atmosphere. He immediately began choking on it; it reeked of smoke and metal.

Worse, he was a considerable height over the ground- -yet there was no sky over him. Only metal and concrete, and endless towers of strange buildings built along great supports of the ceiling that defended this dying world from the icy air beyond its borders.

He fell, and as he did, he tried to summon his magic- -only for no magic to arise. He was not even sure what he was, or who.

There was no way to arrest his momentum as he fell through the metal roof of a building. Fortunately, the ground broke his fall, as well as a woman who was immediately and instantly crushed beyond recognition.

Luciferian sat up, alive but in bad shape. He had no idea where he was, but founded that he was completely surrounded by ponies. All of them were almost perfectly identical: violet alicorns with long bangs and amethyst eyes, all dressed in robes.

He wondered if it had been one of them he had landed on, but instead found that it had been a bipedal woman- -and that she had been splattered quite severely. She was thoroughly dead- -except that she was not. Her flesh was grainy and white and reeked of potatoes; even as Luciferian sat in the mess that had once been her body, she was attempting to pull herself back together and regenerate.

“He smashed Russet!” cried one of the alicorns.

“Intruder! INTRUDER! He’s come to steal our BOOKS!”

The ponies immediately turned on him. One raised a hoof and the hoof separated, its mechanical parts dividing and barrels revving up as she and the others began pouring bullets in Luciferian’s direction.

They tore through his body, which was itself forged from metal and electronics instead of flesh. He was a machine in this world, as ponies were nothing more than the characters in a children show brought to life through technology and a desire for profit. Although he felt no pain, his the damage to his identity was extreme.

Thirteen emerged, leaping through the air and tackling him, pulling him back through space and to elsewhere once again.

In a dreary, swampy wilderness, a pure white unicorn sat beside a peasant so hideously unpleasant that it was impossible to look upon him without potentially vomiting out both ends- -truly a feat for unicorns of this particular realm, as their digestive system only had one opening. Not to mansion the smell. It was so bad that beings in other realities were being forced to hold their noses and blaming each other for the distinct odor of medieval poverty.

Then a tall gangly man emerged from the bushes, where he had probably been trapped.

“Great,” sighed the unicorn. “You’re still alive.”

“Aye! And I have found food!” He held up a wet sack. “I was inspired by divine inspiration to place meat, cheese, and rats between two pieces of BREAD!”

“Cheese?” said the peasant. “Where did you find the cheese?”

“I scraped it from you when you were not looking. I ate it and only passed out for two hours. In a swampy area. Woke up with half my blood gone. Not sure where the rest went.”

They both looked at the unicorn.

“What? I’m not British. I don’t eat blood.”

“And what is this creation called?” asked the peasant.

“I call it: the SANDWICH!”

He beat the peasant with the sack. The peasant removed one of the objects, and it was made of pure charcoal that collapsed to dust in his hands.

“It’s...burned.”

Both the peasant and the unicorn looked up at the Witchfynder, seeing the enormous smile on his face.

Then space opened and a unicorn was thrown through, engaged in mortal struggle with another unicorn. They rolled around for a moment before falling into a swampy area and vanishing completely.

The human, the unicorn, and the peasant stared for a moment, unsure of what they had seen.

“Well,” said the unicorn. “That’s the last time I lick myself.” He laughed. “Just kidding, I’m totally going to lick myself right now. And you two are totally going to watch.”

He then raised one of his legs and began licking.

“Ugh,” said the peasant, staring intently at it. “That’s disgusting.”

“Agreed,” said the Witchfynder. “But...I can’t look away...”

As they fell through spacelessness, Luciferian managed to break free of Thirteen’s grasp. At the cost of his sanity, his mind was beginning to compensate. He was beginning to understand- -and to comprehend the true power of Thirteen’s mind. That this was not detrimental at all to her. It was mundane.

He did what he could to change his course, having developed a sensation that she was leading him somewhere. As he did, he skimmed across the surface of something vast and fell through.

Luciferian found himself in a white room of exquisite craftsmanship- -and of ponderously tiny scale. Confused as to why such a place would exist, he looked around- -only to find a number of exceedingly tiny unicorns fleeing his presence.

“What in the name of Celestia’s butt…”

“Hey!” squeaked a voice. Luciferian turned to look down at what appeared to be a throne of sorts- -or, rather, a place where an alicorn about half the size of the tiny unicorns was sitting atop a pile of stallions. “Stop making my subjects squeak in fear! I can’t stand the stupid sound!”

Luciferian reached down and picked her up. She barely filled his hoof. Then he squished her flat.

“Hey,” she said, now standing on the tip of his horn. “Has it ever occurred to you that I am small enough to be inserted into an orifice?”

Luciferian shivered and was promptly blasted in the rump by Thirteen as she emerged from space. A third eye erupted on the tiny alicorn’s forehead and an enormous worm swam out of a hole in space, immediately devouring him.

The tiny princess dropped to the floor and bounced once, not caring especially much. She was, after all, completely and utterly immortal.

Thirteen trotted afterward but stopped to bow to the High-Princess of Hiwurld. She then summoned a large bowl of silver pudding using her magic.

“Ah, Starlight. Excellent. You have brought a gift. As such I permit you to live. Hussars!”

Her pile of genetically engineered stallions converged on her, picking her up and carefully inserting her into the pudding, slowly twisting her until she was up to her neck.

“Excellent. It is still warm. You are now forgiven, Starlight. On your way, chop chop!”

Thirteen bowed and was shoved through an inter-dimensional hole, leaving the princess to stew.

Finally, Luciferian burst into a new reality. He had become so nauseous that he doubted he could continue.

Something ran away from him, screaming in terror. The sound nearly rendered Luciferian deaf, and he focused on the thing, only to find that it was a peculiar furry creature closely resembling an ambulatory kiwi fruit.

“SCREEEEE! No huwt babbehs! AM ONWY WIDDWE BABBEHS!”

Something peeped and chirped loudly beneath Luciferian. He shifted his weight, only to see the most horrible thing he had ever seen sitting beneath him- -and to see that it, in turn, was staring back at him with its big, realistic eyes.

The world reeked of vodka and ionizing radiation. Looking around, Luciferian saw that it was completely devoid of color. The walls were dripping with various unnamable fluids. Several inexplicable posters had been hung around the area, each with his cutie mark and- -much to his chagrin- -a distinctly ironic entreaty to “Hail Satin”.

A hairy fruit-horse approached him. It was a tiny unicorn, its cheeks puffed out and its horn sparking with tiny flecks of light.

“Dummeh butt-howsie-munstuh! Dis am SMAWTIE wand! Go way ow get WOWSEST sowwy hoofsies!”

It then proceeded to stroke Luciferian repeatedly with its tiny pointless hooves. Luciferian summoned his magic and nearly passed out. He had no idea how to use it properly, mainly because he was unsure if he was a real pony, a robot, or a human brain grafted into a robot, or some combination of those things.

On the plus side, his spell caused the furry creature severe pain. And that made him inexplicably happy.

Something rustled from beneath a pile of bottles. A man sat up. He was not even close to being human. He was, in fact, Soviet.

“Small wizard horse would be having the wise to not touch the churpo,” said Ivan, pointing one finger at Luciferian. The finger, like all of his eight fingers, was stuck in an empty bottle. “Ivan once tried to drink the churpo. It worked about as well as Ivan expected. Nearly died. But when Ivan tried the SECOND time...” He chuckled. “Was so much worse...”

A badly drawn hole appeared in space and Thirteen stepped through. She, like everything else in this reeking world, was devoid of color.

“Ah. Magic pointing-horse. Have you too come for the free vodkas?”

Thirteen sighed. Her horn glowed, and the bottles were removed from Ivan’s fingers. He smiled a V-shaped smile and immediately produced a full bottle. From where, no one knew.

Luciferian tried to take a defensive stance.

“Don’t bother,” said Thirteen. “No one ever gets hurt in this dimension.”

“Speak fow yusewf,” grumbled one of the hairy kiwi fruits.

“GAH!” Luciferian clapped his hooves over his ears. “You’re talking! You fool, you’ll kill us all!”

“Ha! Ivan’s wife says same thing when Ivan talks! Is probably why she is being the great much of fat...”

“Paradoxing isn’t a problem. Not here.” Thirteen smiled. “We are on the very edge of reality, the farthest reaches of the pony multiverse. Causality and consequence do not exist in this realm.”

“Is true!” claimed Ivan, now with a bottle in both hands. “In this dimension, communism actually WORKS!”

“No it doesn’t.”

“LIES! Communism ALWAYS works! Is best form of government! Or is magic pointing horse...a capitalist WRECKER?! Ivan knows where the Mosins grow! Will give you the poke…if you give Ivan the poke too?”

“Go home, Ivan, you’re drunk.”

Ivan laughed. “Drunk IS Ivan’s home! That, and houses are for kulaks. A TRUE proletariat sleeps in glorious Soviet snowbank.”

Thirteen sighed and turned to Luciferian. “Now, if I was reaaaaaaly cruel? I COULD give you paradoxic foreknowledge and send you back to your own reality. You would probably explode. Or implode. Or both at the same time. I mean, that sounds impossible, but I’ve seen it. Twice. At the same time.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“No. I wouldn’t. Because you’re basically of no consequence. Not anymore, anyway. Your own universe has moved beyond you, even if you can’t see it.”

“Then why bother, if you’re so sure?”

“Because you are making my job SO much harder. And I am not getting paid enough to deal with you getting in my way and trying to change fate.”

“A job...” Luciferian’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you?”

“I am Starlight Glimmer NX2.3712’XNJ 47b8g 10.7- -oh, why am I bothering? Your society is too primitive to understand the nomenclature. I’m a freelancer in the Starlight Corps.”

“And is that supposed to mean something?”

“No. Not to you. Your perception of the world is still very limited.”

Luciferian tried to stand, getting woozy from the fumes. “I am the most powerful sorcerer who ever lived- -”

“In your own reality, sort of. Considering your temporal location. But I think it’s a little arrogant to think that there won’t eventually be ponies more powerful than you. I mean, your universe will eventually produce a Starlight. Most do.”

Luciferian did his best to understand, but his mind was too small. He understood what she meant only in terms of mathematics, and what it might mean in a practical sense. Too many times he had heard Sombra babble endlessly about his dream of opening the doors to a great multiverse, although only Luciferian himself had found a way to do so. He looked down at his hoof, and the marks carved into his leg.

He smiled, then looked up. “Then we’ve had a misunderstanding, haven’t we?”

“Ivan has that all the time,” said Ivan. “Partly because vodka.”

“No,” said one of the fruits. “It am because you am weaaaaawy stoopie.”

Ivan blinked, then pointed. “See? Ivan does not understand what tiny fruit-horse says at all. Solution is to nationalize...something. Also, vodka.”

Luciferian ignored him and stood. This world did not really have gravity; he was forced to orient himself by the horizon lines- -and even then, those were sometimes completely forgotten. “You are clearly more powerful than I am, Starlight. I thought I could conquer you but that is clearly not the case. Why not join me? Rule beside me! With your power, taking Equestria would be easy. And then we can open all the doors we want, to conquer endless words in an unending Twilight Empire!”

Starlight laughed. “Ha, that’s really stupid.”

Luciferian blinked. “Wh- -what? No it isn’t, you twit! I just offered you a chance to rule the WORLD!”

“Yeah. No. I don’t do ‘ruling’. I tried it on a village once, it was a hassle. That, and the Starlight Corps won’t let me. I mean, to a primitive like you, sure, I probably look like a god. But I’m actually one of the lowest-ranked Starlights. I mean, the system is totally rigged, of course. I fought Thebe THRICE! Which is like ‘twice’, but three. In case you didn’t know.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“Really? Huh. Regardless, Thebe. Fought her. Lost every time. But every time you can crawl away from a fight with the Wingless Goddess is a win in my book. Even if one of those times the Corps had to resurrect me from a single cell. Which, by the way, is a SUPER weird experience. Kind of like passing a camel through the eye of a needle, except you're the needle. And also the camel.” She laughed. “Sorry. I’ve had to not talk for a loooong time. And you’re kind of a captive audience.”

Luciferian frowned. “Then what is it you want from me? Why are you interfering?”

Starlight’s smile faded. “Because I need you to stop getting in my way. I’m in line for a promotion, and if you ruin my stats, well, I’ll turn you into a varnak or something. Which, just so you know, is- -”

“I know what a varnak is.”

“Evewybody know what vawnak am,” said one of the fruit horses, rolling its eyes.

“That, and one other thing.” Starlight pointed to Luciferian’s leg. “That infection. I slowed it down, but my spell is temporary. When you get back to your own realm, back near her, it will break, and you’ll be right back where you started.”

Luciferian grimaced. “And why are you telling me this?”

Starlight sighed. “Because you look like her, I guess.”

“Her?”

“My best friend. And the pony that destroyed my own reality before I could manage to destroy her.”

“I do not understand.”

“You are not meant to. But you have to listen to me, VERY careful. Even I am not powerful enough to remove that curse, but given enough time your universe will create six ponies that can. Your only option is an Alduin leap. Freeze yourself in stone and wait until a cure is developed.”

Luciferian laughed. “Do you have to be an idiot? Was I really that wrong in thinking you were some kind of god? I have a plan. You have no need to worry.”

Starlight’s eyes narrowed. “No,” she said. “I know exactly what your plan is.”

“Really? How?”

“Because from my perspective, you’ve already attempted it. Again and again. Across endless worlds. And every time, you fail. You are toying with forces that ponies are not meant to...well, to toy with. There are some places even the Corps refuses to go. Some doors were not meant to be opened, Twilight. For once, listen to me!”

“I do not need your help, interloper. I know what I am doing.”

“No. You don’t. But frankly I don’t care. You would be better off letting her manifest than what you’re going to try. But fine.” She shrugged. “Do what you want. It’s not my job to stop you. I’m paid to handle Cadence UNWH4.589’GT87 72. Which is your Cadence.”

“You mean Penumbra. The pony destined to be my wife.”

“Ah. So this version of you got the prophecy too.”

“Ivan never trusts such things!” growled Ivan, standing up so suddenly he fell over in a stupor. “Prophets are always liars! Profits are symptom of filthy CAPITALISM!”

Starlight winced. “Ivan, that pun doesn’t work in writing.”

Luciferian shivered. “What did you just...why do I feel like...”

“Like the fourth wall just broke a little bit? Ignore that. But listen very carefully. I have business with the princess, and I don’t want you interfering.”

“I own her. She practically my wife already.”

“Fine. Then I’ll make you a deal.”

Luciferian raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

“Take the throne first. The prophecy says a white unicorn of House Twilight will rule beside the princess, right? Well you can’t rule unless you’re king. Do that part first, then marry her or whatever. My business will be done by then.”

Luciferian’s eyes narrowed. “Is that it? You threw me across the multiverse and put me in...wherever in the name of Celestia’s fine rump we are- -”

“Glorious Soviet Union!” cried Ivan, who had now gotten his nose stuck in a Mosin Nagant.

“- -to TALK to me?”

“Paradoxes. Also, I don’t like you. You’re a huge jerk. And I needed to keep you away while Sunbutt and Moonbutt finish of Sombra.”

“Do you really think they have a chance?”

“Eh, forty thirty. But just as long as they don’t cast him into the interdimensional void.” Starlight laughed nervously. “Because THAT would be SUPER bad. As in, that might cause Sombra NX4.4 to form. And that would get me in HUGE trouble. But what are the chances of that happening?”

“So...you are just going to send me back now?”

A disturbing smile crossed Starlight’s face. “Oh no. Not by a long shot. You're clearly a pervert, both to the princess and to me. She's like, seven months old. And I'm well over three thousand, even if you don't count orthogonal temporal movement. But I don't appreciate the creepy comments. Plus? I don't really like you." She paused, and her eyes narrowed. "That, and...well...you look like HER."

“So then...what?”

“Well, I could send you to a dimension of PURE ITCHINESS. Or the one with a Moose. Even if the Moose is really just a representation for humanity’s collective pain and suffering...”

“What is ‘humanity’?”

“Stop talking stupid. I mean, I could shove you so far into the multiverse you’ll never find your way out. I did that to an evil Rarity once, she's still there. Probably. I could send you to Pandora. Which one do you want? Blue cat people or rednecks and a Butt Stallion? Or the one that plays music?”

Luciferian took a step back. “I think you may be insane...”

“So then I thought, what is the worst POSSIBLE thing?” the smile on Starlight’s face grew. “So that’s when I realized, I know EXACTLY what the worst possible fate a mortal being can experience.”

Luciferian had begun to grow frightened. “Wh- -what?”

Starlight’s horn ignited- -and she picked up the horrible chirping, peeping monstrosity that Luciferian had landed on before, holding it by its nose. Its lips opened and closed as it wheezed and drooled, its eyes staring blankly into space as it squirmed relentlessly.

“No huwt babbeh!” cried one of the fruit-horses.

"Ohhhh man," said another fruit-horse. "Somebody gonna get da BAD ENF."

“By the hair on Ivan’s wife’s Mosin!” cried Ivan. “Magic pointing horse has touched...the CHURPO!”

Luciferian backed into a crumbling wall. “You wouldn’t. You- -you wouldn’t dare!”

Starlight approached him, slowly. “Oh, I would. You know you deserve it.”

“I- -I’m the most powerful wizard in all of Equestria! I am the future king of the Crystal Empire! You are just- -just a unicorn! A colored commoner! Put it down! PUT IT DOWN NOW!”

Starlight did not. She lifted the churpo and, with only the slightest hesitation to wonder if this fate was too terrible for even him, slapped him in the face with it.

As he felt the touch of its hairless, pulsating, clammy skin against his own, Luciferian passed out from sheer peeping horror. As he did, he was flung back into the void, barely missing Sombra as they passed one another.

And once again, Starlight followed. The time had come to complete her assignment.

Author's Note

If you have to ask what a churpo is, don't. You don't want to know.