While Shining Armor busied himself with the Element bearers, Frosty had crawled into the crystal caves and with the help of Sweetie Belle located a magic storing gem that could quickly dispense its stored magic.

Their quest to the caves was rather uneventful. In fact, it was so uneventful that Applebloom and Scootaloo almost fell asleep while walking with them – and that even though they are undead and technically didn’t even need sleep anymore.

After they had found the gems, they took two of them and then headed back… to the dragon lands, to the great confusion of the fillies. They tried asking Frosty about it, but he seemed strangely secretive about this. However, each time they asked brought a small, childish smile to his face.

They spent another few hours on the road, before finally arriving back at the former bastion. Once there, Frosty immediately bolted past the many graves that now littered the whole area and ran right into a large tent that stood close to the smaller tents that the guardsponies likely slept in.

When the fillies and the changelings caught up to him, they found that the tent was the field kitchen and that Frosty was currently rummaging through the kitchen utensils, until he apparently had found what he was looking for.

“AHA!” He shouted triumphantly, as he held up four metal bowls.

“Uhh, Frosty? Was this the sole reason why we came back here?” Sweetie Belle asked with a slight undertone of annoyance. The other two shared her annoyance and didn`t really bother to hide it.

“It was one of the reasons, yes. Another was this.” Frosty said, holding up a bundle of wire.

“We coulda jus’ gone to Barnyard Bargains if ya needed kitchen supplies, y’know?” Applebloom pointed out.

“Isn’t it a bit weird to plan for a kitchen when there isn’t even a house anymore?” Scootaloo commented beside her.

Both of the fillies were sporting slight looks of annoyance, now that they saw what Frosty had come here for.

“Yes, I know. However, going to Barnyard Bargains wasn’t feasible for two reasons: firstly, I didn’t want to be spotted, neither by Shining Armor, nor by anypony else, really. Secondly... the completely barren and almost uninhabited dragon lands are the perfect spot for some… testing.” Frosty said cryptically.

He took one of the Crystals that he had been carrying with him and shot a beam of magic into it. When the Crystal was full, it too shot a beam of magic out of one of its ends. Frosty kept track of the amount of magic needed to get this result and charged the crystal again with only a tiny bit less than before.

The now fully charged crystal glowed purple and it looked a bit like the magic was swimming inside of it like a liquid. However, Frosty didn’t take the time to look at it more than necessary and instead smashed the crystal into the ground. Nothing happened.

Frosty sighed. He had really hoped that simple blunt force would be enough to discharge the crystal, but sadly that wasn’t the case.

He picked the crystal back up from the ground, where it had left a clean imprint of half of a six-sided prism, and sat back on his haunches. He then held the wire onto the Crystal and cast a beam of magic onto it. This time, the crystal discharged.

“Yes, most metals conduct magic. I could’ve told you that.” Sweetie Belle remarked.

“And I could’ve asked you, but experimenting is a lot more fun, don’t you think?” Frosty countered happily. “Now, would you please give me the glowing rock?”

Upon him asking, Scootaloo opened her wings slightly, so that the rock could fall from under them. Admittedly, that was not the easiest or most comfortable way to carry it, but it was the most secure, as if they were to encounter anypony, they would be far less likely to question them if they didn’t see them running around with a glowing rock.

Frosty took the rock in his magic and put it to the ground. He then carefully used some magic to cut off a small glowing pebble from the larger rock and placed inside one of the bowls. Next up, he took another bowl of about the same size and some wire and, with the help of some heat magic taught by Twilight, welded the ends of three strands of wire onto the inner bottom of the bowl.

He charged the crystal with some magic and then placed it between the three wires, which he then used to affix the crystal to the bowl. Lastly, he attached the glowing pebble to the open end of the crystal by just binding it onto there with another wire and then put the bowls top-on-top and welded them together to get a roughly spherical metal container, into which he scratched a marking on the side that had the crystal attached.

“Great.” Frosty said, when he finished welding the sphere. “Now, with the help of some cartoon logic, this will hopefully work.”

“Cartoon logic? Frosty, you still haven’t told us what we’re doing here!” Sweetie protested.

“And I don’t plan on telling you.” Frosty said, getting three sad ‘awwww’s in response. “Instead, I’ll show you.” He said and teleported everypony and ‘ling present, plus their luggage somewhere into the dragonlands… where the former colonel of the bastion was currently pushing head first into a canyon. Sadly, even though he now had the strength of an undead, he was still too weak to push through several kilometres of solid rock.

“Hey, it’s the colonel! Didn’t you send him off somewhere into the… oh.” Scootaloo said, quickly realizing where they were now.

“Yes, I did indeed. Now, originally I didn’t think I’d have any more use for him, but now… Colonel, take this and run a mile or two back that way. When you’re there hold this over your head, with that scratched marking facing our way.” Frosty ordered, levitating the prepared sphere over to the colonel and pointing him into the barren wasteland that lay behind them.

The colonel turned around and ran in the pointed direction, keeping the sphere levitating beside him. It took him a few minutes, but eventually he reached the ordered two miles and when he did, he turned back around and lifted the sphere up, with the marked side facing Frosty and his group.

“Perfect. Now, my ladies, please brace yourself for this is going to be very turbulent.” Frosty announced, before readying himself.

The fillies and changelings quickly dove behind a few rocks for cover and when he saw that his fillies were somewhat safe, he unleashed a few magic beams, trying to hit the sphere. In hindsight, it would’ve probably been easier to just let the colonel do it, but in hindsight one always knows better.

Finally, one shot hit the sphere and the reaction was imminent. A bright flash blinded everypony and changeling for a few seconds, quickly followed by a wave of tremendous pressure and scorching heat.

Frosty had severely underestimated the power of the bomb, especially since he didn’t take the flat terrain and hot weather into account. The fillies and he had to expend a lot of energy to keep their bodies intact, while also keeping the changelings ‘alive’. Finally, after a few seconds, the heat and pressure died down and allowed them to take a better look at what had just happened.

The colonel was no longer to be seen and neither was the terrain around him. The whole area had just been transformed into a massive crater in the middle of the desert that seemingly was highly radioactive. Frosty noticed this, as he was subconsciously still using up energy to repair unseen wounds, which were most likely the molecular alterations caused by said radiation.

“YES! That worked!” Frosty cheered. “Fillies and Gentlelings, you’ve just witnessed the creation of the nuclear bomb!”

The fillies meanwhile stood there with their mouths agape in silent awe. Scootaloo was the first to get out of this state and excitedly jumped around.

“YEAH! That was AWESOME! Can we do that again? Please?” Scootaloo begged.

“Yeah, that was impressive. There isn’t anything left of the colonel, though. Isn’t a bomb as destructive as this one kinda unfeasible for us, since we get stronger by eating our enemies lifeforce?” Sweetie Belle pointed out.

“Which we kinda can’t do when they’re gone?” Applebloom added.

“Yes, you two are indeed right with that, at least when looking at it purely from the perspective of a necromancer.” Frosty answered, still a bit shaky from the excitement and earlier nervousness. “However, as somepony who would like to conquer Equestria, there is actually a particular group… or rather a particular race that is worth more dead than undead to me.”

After saying that, Frosty turned over to Pharynx, who was neutrally looking at the small mushroom cloud that was rising into the sky.

“Pharynx?”

“Yes my lord?” The changeling answered.

“Can you lead us to your old queen’s hive?”

Twilight had barely recovered from seeing the impaled blue dragoness and her completely lacerated companions, when she felt the earth shake and heard a loud blast in the distance and when she looked in the direction it came from, she saw a big black mushroom-shaped cloud rise into the sky.

‘What in the name of Celestia was that?!’ She thought to herself, before running back towards equestrian territory.

When she finally reached the origin point of the blast, whoever caused it was long gone. However, what they left was still enough to leave a mark not only in her mind, but also in the surrounding terrain.

There was a sizeable crater beneath the cloud and several of the surrounding rocks appeared to have partially melted. The crater also didn’t seem like a normal crater from an impact or an explosion. Normally such a crater would have the dirt that was thrown out pile up on the edge, creating high walls. This one, however, looked like somepony just scooped the crater out of the ground and took the taken dirt o who-knows-where.

Twilight had to get a closer look! She put up every shield spell she knew, just in case there was still some kind of lurking gas or chemicals or maybe even spells, and then slowly advanced towards the hole.

When she reached the crater edge, Twilight had to suppress a gasp, when she actually realized the size of the crater. Not only that, but the bottom of it seemed to be molten in some places meaning that, whatever had caused this was tremendously hot.

She walked around the crater a few times, measuring the circumference in her head and coming up with numbers that she refused to believe, even though her subconscious told her that it was true.

Conflicting thoughts weren’t the only thing she found though. She also found what looked like five sets of hoofprints that were leading back into equestrian territory, although slightly angled towards the south.

‘Hmmm… an explosion of this magnitude likely kicked up a lot of dust. That means that these hoofprints had to be made after the explosion, maybe even by the ponies who caused this! Actually, I think I have a pretty good guess on who caused this…’ Twilight thought to herself, before setting out to follow the trail that Frosty and his group had left.

Author's Note

Also sorry for the delay, we had some... slight difficulties during editing.