“Uh… Crown 6, this is Sparrow 14. You’re not gonna believe this.” Corporal Acoustic Burst shakily called into his hoofheld radio inching himself towards the clifftops surrounding a starless fissure in the sky overlooking the aftermath of a magical calamity. Craters of molten glass smoldered with lines of crystal shards carving the sand in glimmering dotted lines, turning the desert into a map of annihilation.

“Sparrow 14, this is Crown 6. What am I not going to believe?” The familiar bassy, calm voice of 2nd Lieutenant Lilac facetiously came through the speaker. Burst loved to hear her but didn’t as much anymore, as the reports in the desert were either nothing or complete fabrications in an effort to talk to her. A behavior he ceased after being threatened with court-martial and more time in isolation.

“Look. I know I haven’t been honest about my reports here, but you gotta take this one seriously.” He quivered, the radio unsteadily shaking in his hoof as pebbles trickled over the edge.

“Go ahead, Corporal.” Several drops of annoyance were introduced to her already snide tone. She didn’t trust his word any more than she’d trust somepony else’s who’d never been to the area.

“The… The sky above the Badlands has… Well, it’s split.”

The speaker sounded like it was fumbled before a gravelly voice came over the comms. Major Flak Jacket, the ranking officer at the communication towers. “Oh, I’m sure, Corporal. I’m sure the sky just split in two and let Nightmare Moon through. Or how I’m sure a meteor struck your tent while you were out on patrol.”

Burst suddenly stiffened at hearing the coarse voice, as if the brooding stallion was barking directly in his face. “Major, with all due respect, this is very serious.” He shuddered at how concerned his own voice sounded.

“Then why don’t you humor me. Give me a spot report. And if I don’t like it, your head is gonna be on a fucking pike.” His last few words blended with a terse laugh. The way an executioner would laugh hearing a clearly guilty criminal say they’re innocent with a noose around their neck.

“Sir!” He straightened into attention. “Following an engagement between an azure mare in a black cloak and what looked to be Scorpan, the Badlands’ canyon is badly damaged.”

Flak chuckled, “Oh yeah? And what’s the extent of the damage? Besides, of course, a split sky.” His voice came to a roar, barely discernible among the now peaking audio.

Burst gulped. “There are craters where the sand fused into glass, and crystal shards embedded everywhere, including the cliffs. And even some of those cliffs have split apart. The sky itself just seems black for a stretch of it, but it’s localized only to this area. The sky’s normal just over Appleloosa.”

Something came through the radio, but none of it was comprehensible. He heard a slam, likely the radio being thrown against a desk. Lilac picked it up and sighed. “Did you get any of that?”

“Not a word.”

She snorted. “I figured. Look, he’s pissed. So I’m going to ask you to take as many photos of the area as you can, and a video if you can. I’ll send a messenger there under my authority within the hour. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” He heaved a sigh. The Corporal never would’ve thought filing an actual report would be so difficult, but he was the one who cried wolf enough times to run his credibility thoroughly into the ground. Though, even Liliac knew that in that story, the wolf did come eventually.

“And, Burst.” She started. “If there isn’t anything out there like any of the other times, I will file the paperwork to get you discharged. Scorpan being dead is extremely serious. Your lying would leave me with no choice.”

“Understood.”

The radio clicked off, and the blonde pegasus immediately kicked off the sand with as much force as he could muster, launching himself off the ground and into the sky at a breakneck pace. He barely ground to a halt in front of his dingy green tent. Forcefully rummaging through its contents trying to locate the camera and magical device that allowed for videos, flinging everything unrelated away. He found them at the cost of breaking the photo he took of Lilac at boot camp. He would feel regret for it at another time, he felt the two chevrons on his shoulders weigh on him. He needed to capture a picture of this mare, whoever she was before she got away. For his own career and for Equestria.

Concrete surveyed the document mounds before her: In one pile, a case file of a string of murders with gruesome evidence and witness reports. In the other, a full report by a Corporal complete with pictures and a magical recording. She was reviewing this one now. Normally, she’d applaud the diligence for delivering such a detailed report. This was far from a normal occasion and she was further from the mood that allowed her applause. Concrete furrowed her eyebrows, taking a long drag from her cigarette before tossing the report down.

She ground her smoke into a cloudy gray ashtray, a graveyard to its brown filter brethren. Major Flak Jacket paced in front of Concrete, going from one end of the tidy smoke-filled office to the other, the ground slightly trembling with each step while puffing himself on a cigar. He would say that it helps him focus better than the ‘grunt cigars’ that soldiers usually get.

He was a large pine colored stallion, well seasoned and seared in the fires of Equestrian war. Scars and burns clung to his body and made him closer to a walking cadaver that refused to die than a pony. His long service lent itself to shocks of white in his garnet mane and patience in those he deemed had earned it, but less for those who’d lost it.

“Why in the hell should we believe a single word of the Corporal?” He ashed his cigar in a huff. “He’s done nothing but give me fabricated intel and headaches. He’s a delinquent, General.”

Brigadier General Concrete leaned back in her seat, which groaned in protest. She felt for her chest pocket daring for another cigarette, but she retreated her hoof back to the desk. Her gaze went to the piles of paper before her, then to the Major before her. “This speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Why would a fabrication be so detailed and evident elsewhere in reality?”

Flak Jacket allowed himself a short chuckle. “Because he’s done this kind of thing before. I recall a time where he said a mirror image of himself appeared and was wreaking havoc on the region. He had photos then too.”

“This is different.” Concrete clicked her hooves together, looking again to the contents on her desk. “Tell me what you see here, Major.”

He took a breath in and gave his answer. “I’ve seen these reports, and I know what you’re -”

“Answer me, Major.”

“I see a made-up report and real evidence for a set of unrelated murders.” He took a drag from his smoke.

Concrete leaned forward, allowing her weight to rest on the desk. “Major. Do you want to know what I see?”

“Of course.”

“I see a report whose contents are extremely dangerous, and I see reports of the murderer who relates this...” She tapped the murder reports. “To this.” She taps Bursts’ report. Flak Jacket opened his mouth to speak but was swiftly cut off. “And I see an officer who is ignoring perfectly good intel.”

“Given by an untrustworthy soldier ordered to be given by another officer who undermined my authority.” The Major threw up his hooves.

“Given to you by an isolated, demoralized soldier ordered to be given by an officer who didn’t want to take a chance.” She ground her teeth and swatted at the table. “In any other circumstance, I’d condemn your negligence. This situation requires your particular expertise.”

Flak Jacket sunk his teeth further into his cigar. “And why’s that?”

Concrete lost her patience and slammed her hoof into the dark wooden frame. “Did you read the report, Major Flak Jacket? You must not have to not know. I’m outraged that you’d lie to me, and after this situation blows over, your career is in question.”

“No. No, I didn’t, General.” He pressed a hoof into the opposite side of the desk. “As I said before, I don’t trust a word of the Corporal.”

Concrete wordlessly pressed the magical device and a translucent screen projected itself forward. The exact scene Burst was describing was displayed. The camera panning to the fractured cliffs and the melded sand below, then up to reveal something the report couldn’t quite describe. The orange sky was bisected by a hollow fissure, an inky nothingness where light ventured but never returned. There was no indication that it was even there save for its amber neighbors. It was a skyward void that fell upward and Concrete was staring directly into it.

Then the recording moved down to the valley itself, and there was a figure striding away from a billowing fog of black smoke opposite it. A cloaked figure with glimpses of cerulean fur below walked away from this as it would walk away from a weekend errand. The recording closed in, losing clarity for closeness’ sake. The shape turned and red eyes transcended the recording, piercing directly into Concrete’s own. She winced, but it turned into a shudder when she saw what hung around its neck. A black onyx amulet bearing the likeness of an alicorn with a crimson jewel resting ominously below.

Concrete gulped. She had wanted to dismiss the reports. To have the story be that this mare couldn’t have killed those unicorns, or that the amulet hadn’t found a new host. But there was no room for doubt left in her mind, this was the mare she’d seen at the quarry. This was the murderer, Trixie Lulamoon.

“So what?” Flak Jacket ashed his cigar again, it now being half burned away. “He got one of the locals to dress up and take the fall for this rampage of his.”

“And I suppose one of the locals got ahold of the Alicorn Amulet and did all this for a laugh?” She pointed to the insidious necklace around Trixie’s neck.

Flak blinked, squinting to see the image and then recoiling from it. “That’s impossible!”

“I would’ve thought so myself. But it gets worse.”

“How could it possibly?”

“I know that mare.”

The room’s air grew still, the smoke from the two that once floated weightlessly now felt like an iron fog that found respite on their shoulders. Both of them knew of the horrors that the amulet and their wielders were capable of, but not personally. They both received a briefing on it once upon a time, but it was always a distant threat. One that was always in the next kingdom over, one that was always in the past, and one that was never domestic. But here it was, right in their kingdom, in their time, around the neck of a mare that the General knew.

Flak ground his cigar into the murky ashtray, losing his appetite for its drags. Quietly, and gravely, he said, “General… I wasn’t fully on board with this, but something like this is beyond Burst’s knowledge, there’s no way he could fake this. But I need to know. How do you know this mare?”

“It isn’t a personal relationship if that’s what you’re asking.” She felt for a cigarette, but reluctantly put it off again. “Based on what we know from these documents, specifically a one Paid Tab’s testimony, Trixie’s sister died and she ran to Ponyville before being run out of there too. Then she found her way to my family’s rock farm, and that’s where I met her.” She paused, rising from her chair to peer outside her window. Blocks of soldiers marched in identical formations across her paved sky compound. It was an uphill battle to get to her position, an earth pony overseeing a unicorn training compound was unheard of. Despite her race, she knew of magic thoroughly, enough to strategize with it at or above levels of similarly ranked unicorns.

Flak switched the recording off, wincing at the eyes that the unknown mare possessed. It wasn’t so much a frightening look, but one of serenity. Given the context, he would’ve preferred a crazed bloodlust stare. He understood frenzy. What he couldn’t fathom was that a murderer and an amulet bearer could be so calm. “What happened there?”

Concrete turned back to Flak. “I offered her a position in the EUP. She was strong when I met her, but nothing like this.”

“Obviously, this was the amulet’s doing.” He nodded.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” She ran a hoof across her chin.

“Oh? How’s that?”

“In all your knowledge of the amulet, do you know what happens when the wearer kills somepony?” She stared emptily at the magical device in between the documents, hints of fear in her vision as though Trixie would come through it and wreak havoc.

“Something else happens?” He raised an eyebrow.

“I figured. If the victim is a unicorn, their power, their very essence is drained to the killer. So on top of its otherworldly power, it can get stronger.”

Flak eyes the ground, horrified. “Why would she want it? Who is she anyway?”

Concrete took her seat once again. “She’s Trixie Lulamoon.”

“The magician’s daughter?”

“One of them, yes.” She nodded. “She means to resurrect the other daughter. Her sister.”

The already still and tense air seemed to be sucked out of the room. The heavy gray smog was proof that it remained, however. The Major walked to face the window from behind the desk, glancing out. “This is bad, General.”

“This is worse than bad. It’s potentially a cataclysm.” She gravely uttered.

“What do we do?” Flak surprised himself with the fear in his own voice.

“Major!” Concrete called, snapping the officer to attention. “Here is our course of action. Violence is not our first priority, but it is a close second if I can’t talk her down.”

“You’re going to try and reason with her?”

“Yes. I know Trixie. I know she won’t do anything reckless and I know she can be reasoned with. She wants her sister, I can play to that.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Your orders are to relay this information to Princess Celestia and General Stellar Solstice. Tell them to assemble Solar Team 8 and tell the unit to standby on the outskirts of Appleloosa and await my orders.”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“Dismissed!” The two exchanged salutes. Flak made for the door, opening it wide to fit his frame, but was stopped by Concrete. “One more thing, Major.” He stared back at her expectingly. “Be careful. I don’t mean to pressure you, but know that the situation demands it.” He nodded and shut the door behind him.

Concrete felt for a cigarette, and this time, she decided to indulge herself. As she breathed in a deep breath of Appleloosan tobacco she realized her hooves were faintly trembling. In her time as an officer, nerves presented themselves to her but never overtaken her. She was scared, genuinely and uniquely fearful.

She let a breath out in a smoggy sigh. Why should she be scared? She was a famous General about to be joined by the most effective small unit in Equestria. Solar Team 8 has never failed in their missions, or so much as been harmed. In the South, they repelled a dragon invasion unscratched. In the West the stamped out the changeling insurrection without injury and in the East had gone to quell a Kraken and returned with calamari. The small unit of six’s might was not in question.

Then she must doubt herself. No, that can’t be true. In all her dealings, she too had found near-complete success both martially and diplomatically. Negotiations have always remained open and beneficial to an Equestrian victory with her heading them. Then it must be Trixie.

Such a gifted mare, spending her potential in the wrong place. She wanted power, this much Concrete was sure. The EUP tempted her, she could see it in her eyes, but the amulet must have tempted her more. The prospect of power without earning it is overwhelming. Concrete was unsure of just how powerful Trixie and the amulet could be. She saw the damage in the Badlands, she knew that it was immense but doubted that example was the limit.

The General took a long drag, scorching nearly half of the cigarette in one breath, before letting it seep out through her gritting teeth. She didn’t want anypony to die, and she’d spent her life minimizing the death count. She knew that Trixie was reasonable, and she knew what she wanted. But she also knew that Trixie wasn’t herself anymore. She was a corrupted killer who showed no intention of stopping. Concrete took another puff, and she made the calculation as Generals often do. If she was successful, as she was known to be, the EUP would know an insurmountable ally or at the least, had neutralized its greatest threat. But if she failed. Concrete sighed. If she failed, her life would likely be forfeit and Solar Team 8 would be a band of martyrs. More than that, if she didn’t succeed, Trixie would have unstoppable power.

Her mind turned then to the area, the Badlands. A red desert valley devoid of any life or hospitality, it was where Flak sent his troublesome soldiers as punishment. Of course! How could she forget? A great prison lay beneath the sands of the Badlands, one containing the greatest and most primordial threats to Equestria. Creatures of unparalleled power and unbridled malice, things that rightfully earned their place behind that indestructible door. Trixie was nearing such a status.

Concrete shook her head, finishing her cigarette and grinding it down. She cursed under her breath as she missed her mark of the ashtray, leaving blackened scorch on her desk. She instinctively moved to clean it with a handkerchief in her pocket but stopped. Instead of removing it, she opted to keep it, what was the point anyway. However this was going to shake out, this post wasn’t going to be hers anymore, let alone a replaceable desk.

Concrete spun in her chair to face the outside once again, hunching over in contemplation. Trixie was a snowball mid-roll down miles of winter hills, she needed to stomp her out before she became invincible. The General knew that this was going to be the most difficult interaction of her life, and it would require every last ounce of her skills and then some. Strategically and diplomatically, she would try and quell her. She would try and reason with Trixie, but if she couldn’t, Solar Team 8 would be tested as Concrete would be. And if they failed, she would have no choice but to banish Trixie to Tartarus.

If she only knew where Tartarus’ doors were, or how to pry them open. However, Concrete knew somepony who could: The Sun’s Crown. Princess Celestia has been the only pony to her knowledge that has used Tartarus to sentence, and if she was properly convinced, would allow for Trixie’s imprisonment. She sat up, her back cracking painfully in response. Concrete winced, knowing that her age was catching up with her. She’d been hiding it from her superiors, dying her hair off the record and stoically enduring pain that came from her wizening body. She’d been hiding it for Equestria’s sake, lives needed to be prevented from being lost, and she was the only mare she knew that could deliver on that desire.

There was one loose end in this story: Scorpan. What was he doing in the Badlands and how could he have possibly known Trixie was there? It was probably happenstance that they happened to meet one another, or maybe. Something drew him in… Regardless, was he seeking redemption for what happened in Griffonstone? No one blamed him for leaving. In fact, we expected him to. Lieutenant Colonel Orange Marmalade intentionally made the fight bloody so Scorpan would flee, thinking that him being scarred and alive was better than dead.

What Marmalade couldn’t have predicted was something beyond his control or understanding taking Scorpan anyway. The beacon of friendship was dead seeking the redemption it thought it lost.

Even when facing a near doomsday threat, she remained adamant in her non-violent prerogatives. Trixie didn’t need to die, nor did anypony. But despite this, despite her knowing that she’d be spared and that the odds were on her side for success, she couldn’t shake the feeling of demise. That in the next coming days, either six would die or one would.

Author's Note

Hello again, dear readers! This is your pilot speaking, and I... Thought this was going to go somewhere.
Failed joke aside, I'm happy to report that this chapter is now finished along with the sixth! They both took a long while to write and polish, as I worked very hard on them to get them just right! I hope you feel the same way, be sure to let me know what you thought!

Stay tuned for the next chapter next week and a one-shot before that!