The tunnels beneath the Temple of the Five were utterly lightless, but Golden Path could see just fine thanks to her divinely enhanced eyes. Its smooth walls were of black rock that would have reflected any light like a polished mirror, and the same was true for the floor and ceiling.

Carved into the wall to Golden Path’s right was a cell with thick steel mesh. It contained the one pitiable human captured by Mordred’s brothers. They had stripped him of his arms and armor and thrown him in rags in that cell.

For three weeks, Golden Path had taken care of him, mostly through her subordinates, and shown him the glory and truth of the true gods of the universe. In her generosity, she had granted him one blessing from each of the gods, even if he could not appreciate what she had done to him just yet.

She would have him change his tune soon enough.

Golden Path watched him from the cover of darkness, as he kneeled in his cell carved into the corridor’s walls. He was a beauty in her eyes. Bearing the influence of all the four great gods was not a privilege granted to most.

She lit up her horn and revealed her presence to him.

Suddenly struck by the light, the man looked away from her in fear and kneeled with his back to her as he then intoned a prayer. “Almighty Emperor, hear my voice now that I walk in the valley of evil-“

“Grant me your light so I might find my way through this darkness,” Golden Path continued for him, and he stopped praying at hearing her speak those familiar words. “Protect my body from all harm, grant my heart the courage to face any foe, and my mind the wisdom to reject all evil?”

She finished the prayer as a question, mockingly asking him if the words were correct.

“Yes, how?” the human asked her as he turned to look at her face. “How can a xeno know this?”

“Of course, I know your sacred words. Why would I not?” Golden Path replied with a question. “It was my prophet who wrote them. He put them to paper before he understood the one great truth of the universe.”

The gods had granted Golden Path many visions of the life of Lorgar Aurelian and she had seen in him the path toward enlightenment. Lorgar was a symbol for her, someone she had strived to imitate from the first moment she knew of him.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked another question, unable to understand what she was talking about. The human’s innocence and ignorance endeared him to Golden Path, making his future conversion even more appealing. “Where am I?”

“All in due time, human,” she smiled at him, the first smile he had seen since the start of his captivity. “I just want you to look at what you are, what we made you into. Go on, look at your reflection on the wall.”

The man did exactly as Golden Path commanded and turned pale as marble when he saw what his body had turned into. His jaw hung open as he watched the effects of what Golden Path’s subordinates had done to him, unable to say a single word when confronted with the horror of his new body.

His teeth were razor sharp like those of an apex predator, and extended over his lips, ready to draw rivers of blood in the name of the great Lord Khorne in close combat. A mosaic of green and yellow pustules covered his exposed belly, and from them flowed a seemingly endless flow of pus, a kind gift from Grandfather Nurgle. Under his natural pair of eyes, Golden Path’s subordinates had placed a new set of glowing blue ones, larger and brighter ones, so that he may better see the plans of the great Architect Tzeentch. Finally, his skin had turned so pale and white it resembled porcelain, a great work of art to praise Prince Slaanesh.

She had truly outdone herself with her generosity to him.

After admiring the results of her craft for a few more seconds, Golden Path broke the silence.

“Scarred and deformed,” she said. “Why would the Emperor allow this?”

“The Emperor protects,” the human muttered his predictable response, barely listening to what she was saying. “He must.”

“Does he?” Golden Path chuckled at him and got closer to force him to pay attention to her. “How can this happen if he protects you? Perhaps he wants you to follow this path, or maybe, just maybe, he is a weak god, unworthy of your soul and your devotion.”

“What do you want from me, xeno?” the human asked her with gritted teeth and looked away from his reflection.

“Nothing, I am here to show you the truth of the universe, so may join its splendor,” she explained. "You have lived your life dedicated to a god who clearly cannot or does not want to protect you, who has allowed you to turn into what you see now, but what if this is no curse? It is normal to fear the darkness, human even, but it is a weakness that shackles your potential. You now have the chance to embrace true freedom. The gods have taken an interest in you, they have seen the fire burning within you and can give you the spark to light it up. All they need is your acceptance to grant you power and joy beyond mortal measure.” She caressed his chin with her magic and lifted his gaze upward. “I am their messenger. I bear their sacred word, and they have sent me here to lead many into the glorious future that awaits us all. You have a bright future, little human.”

The human stood stock still, not even breathing as he thought about her words and looked away from her to stare once more at his reflection. He wept as his brain began to truly understand what Golden Path and her followers had done to his body and that there was truly no way back for him.

Golden Path had expected the weeping. It was natural to do so when faced with such monumental change and with sudden exposure to the truth of the universe. She would be lying if she said she did not enjoy the sounds, which became a symphony of anguish in her ears.

She waited for his response, so she could welcome him into damnation.

Before the human could answer, Golden Path heard armored footsteps approaching her fast. She turned around and saw the towering figure of Mordred walking quickly toward her, as always moving too elegantly for such a towering figure. The white line over his helmet’s beak slightly glimmered when hit by magical light.

“Master,” she said. “I am glad to see you here.”

Mordred kept moving towards her, his armored boots sending their echoes down the corridor. When he was close enough, Golden Path could see the white light of his helmet’s eye lenses resembling a burning star in the night sky.

“You have done well with this human, Golden Path,” he told her, his voice as cold as ice echoing in the corridor. “I take it he shall soon see the truth?”

“He will, master,” she replied with an obsequious tone, then smiled at him as she skipped the formalities. “But you have not come here to check on this human, have you?”

“No, I have not,” He stated flatly and quickly. “I am here to command you.”

“I await your orders,” Golden Path said. “What is your will?”

“The imperium will be here soon enough,” Mordred informed her. “Get the cult ready to take over the city.”

“So your brother, Tiberius, is coming too,” Golden Path thought aloud, thinking of the Space Marine she had seen not so long ago. “Shall I bring you his head?”

Golden Path was already relishing the opportunity to test herself against that one. That Space Marine could become a genuine test of her skill and a wonderful sacrifice.

“No, leave him to me,” Mordred said and caressed his sword, even tapping it a few times. “I cannot wait to put that old dog to rest.”

Mordred’s words left an ashen taste in Golden Path’s mouth. She had always hated having to call him master, and now he planned to steal her kill, and with it her glory. Hot anger boiled in her head and her muscles tensed as she considered betraying the Space Marine right there and then, but her mind prevailed and she barely maintained her self-control.

All in due time, she told herself.

“What am I to do?” she asked him.

“Spread the word,” Mordred ordered her. “You must all be ready for combat when the drop pods and troop transports descend.”

Golden Path nodded in feigned deference. “It will be as you command. I have one last strategic meeting to attend with the alicorns and their officers before that, however.”

She presented her success in front of him to show he had not complete control over her, to remind him of her power and influence that she still held regardless of his might and connections.

“Then get to it,” Mordred said. “I shall keep this human company in the meantime.”

Three weeks had passed since Twilight had woken from her coma, and she had not rested for a single second of those days and nights. Often she stayed awake for seventy-two hours at a time, only sleeping when her body rebelled against her and demanded a few hours of uneasy sleep.

Twilight did not look forward to sleeping anymore, not only because she how much she needed to do to prepare for the invasion, but also because nightmares haunted her every time she closed her eyes.

The first one was an incomprehensible crystal maze from which she could not escape no matter how much she ran.

Cruel and mocking laughter echoed through its nonsensical corridors, made only worse by the whispers in language that Twilight both knew intimately and felt utterly alien to her ears. She was not alone there; small creatures with pink skin and round bodies gave chase to her, laughing maniacally as they flung every kind of spell their way.

Hitting the beings with her spells was of no use, as they just split into two blue versions of their previous selves and their mood turned angry and spiteful.

When she was not exploring the maze, she wandered in an endless forest of rotten trees covered in pus and surrounded by bloated corpses that served as food for large green and brown flies caked in filth. They hugged their victims like one would a dear friend before leaving them once they had squeezed everything out of them.

There were other beings there, stumbling on two legs as they counted, with no rest or end in sight to their task. Some went after her, but they did not run, instead they just maintained the same glacial speed, inevitably getting closer despite Twilight’s running as she stumbled on the many obstacles and pools of mud and pus covered with brown leaves.

She only woke up when the monsters were almost upon and she always had a head-splitting headache for the entire morning that no medicine could cure.

The third of her nightmares was a battlefield under a blackened sky, with the ground covered by a carpet of fresh blood and severed limbs. Hulking warriors of any race fought and killed each other wherever she looked. With no care for colors or allegiance, they just killed and moved on to the next target. In the distance rained what Twilight thought was regular water, and eventually realized to be skulls and black blood.

In a twisted way, she preferred that kind of nightmare to the others because of its simplicity. Even when she had to defend herself from a frothing berserker gripping a constantly bleeding two-handed axe, she knew there was no hidden trap or illogical twist of fate waiting for her. It was an honest and direct fight, one that she had to win without her magic, which refused to work during those nightmares.

Recently she had suffered and enjoyed visions of a fourth place, a palace that she could hardly describe when she finally woke, only leaving within her the wish to sleep a bit more, just to see one more scene of that accursed and blessed palace, to satisfy one more desire.

She could remember little of that place in the morning, but she knew her soul yearned for more, to experience more. The lack of memories was a subtle torture, causing her to think of the palace for days after dreaming about it and longing to return there.

Twilight had asked Luna to accompany her in one of those dreams, but Luna could not find her in the dream realm, no matter how hard she looked.

All of that led to a mixture of fear and frustration dwelling and growing within Twilight as she prepared one meeting after another to discuss and coordinate the ongoing war. For all her efforts, the enemy would soon reach Equestria, they all knew it, and the latest meeting would prepare the defenses for the inevitable invasion.

The meeting room under the palace was less crowded than it had been the last time Spike had been there. Many officers had either died in action or were away on duty with no way to communicate, so there were some familiar faces joined by recently promoted ones.

Celestia’s presence dominated the room, her white coat and constantly moving mane seeming to sparkle despite the penumbra around her as if she had a light of her own. She wore a golden suit of armor similar to that of the Royal Guards but with no helmet. She had placed that particular piece on the round table in the center of the room.

She kept her eyes locked on the holographic map coming from said table. It showed that the enemy had advanced even further and had functionally surrounded Equestria. Multiple invading fleets infested all sable routes through the Endless Sea, and were helping with the siege of the related worlds. Each red sector was signaling the loss of millions of lives, as there was no way to send reinforcements or evacuate the population.

Luna was also there, but not physically, as her body was on the Moon. She attended the meeting as a hologram despite the many protests of security officers and S.M.I.L.E. agents worried about creating an electronic path into an otherwise secret room.

Twilight’s authority had overruled them all. She could trust Luna without a doubt, and it would be their job to keep the connection safe from any would-be listeners.

The least expected and appreciated officer in the room was Golden Path, whose rank would have barred her from any important location. Once again, Twilight’s word was the one that mattered and Golden Path had taken a seat right next to the Princess, much to the disgruntled mumblings of many officers. Her rescue of Twilight’s life landed her face in every newspaper and even earned her a few interviews. Openly mentioning her faith during those interviews had done nothing to endear her to the other officers of every branch.

The mare was in uniform, with a silver medal pinned to her chest in recognition of her service to the crown.

Blue Song was not there, as they did not invite him. His idea of defeating the enemy in detail had ended with a series of massacres when faced with the enemy’s overwhelming firepower. The failure has seen the admiral disgraced in officer circles and lost him a lot of social influence.

If Equestria did not need every officer it could get, Blue Song’s career would have already been over. At that moment, however, his fall from grace did not go beyond no longer being admitted to strategic meetings and a considerable resizing of the number of ships under his command.

Spike was the only admiral worthy of note in the room, the two griffons next to him having achieved their rank only through seniority, not actions or personal connections. He looked well rested, with a shiny bright look on his face and scales so polished they almost sparkled.

“Now that everyone is here, we can begin,” Twilight said, causing everyone to look at her. “First things to-“

She stopped in the middle of her sentence. Someone or something was watching the room. Her senses immediately felt a magical gaze looking straight at her, but she could not discern the source of the spell, only that its caster was at a cosmically significant distance from her.

Twilight looked at the ceiling and then those around her before setting her eyes on Celestia.

“I feel it too,” Celestia said as she lit up her horn and looked around just as Twilight had done. “It’s a powerful spell.”

“What is it?” Spike asked them.

“Someone is using magic to spy on us,” Twilight explained, and lit up her horn. “It shouldn’t be possible. I made no mistakes with the ward, I'm sure of that. No one can break through them, not as long as this place is intact.”

“If I may make a suggestion,” Golden Path raised a hoof and lowered it after a nod from Twilight. “Why break a thing when you can go around it? What if this wizard is just circumventing your seals?”

“Do we he any idea who it might be?” Twilight turned to Talking Hooves, the kirin Captain of the Royal Guard.

The Captain had ditched the uniform in favor of his armor, as he knew the enemy could arrive at any moment. His armor sported intricate arboreal designs that served as frames for scenes from Twilight’s life. From her transformation into an alicorn to her coronation, the artist had carefully lined the scenes up to form a clear narrative that celebrated her reign. From her ascension to the throne through the unification of the planet and all the way to the exploration of space.

The Captain’s helmet had a white crest with one red section for each extremity. Twilight knew one section was a recent addition. They marked the failures of the Royal Guard. One was for Flurry Heart and the other one was for her.

“No,” he signed. “I know of no magic user more powerful than an alicorn in general, and you in particular.”

The Captain was born mute, but the technology of the Royal Guard had made that an irrelevant factor during his rise through the ranks.

“I might have an idea who it could be, but I do not know the name,” Golden Path replied. “I thought he busied himself with looking at wolves lately, but I guess I was wrong.”

After those words, the moment was over as quickly as it began. The alicorns turned off their horns and let their magic dissipate.

“It’s gone,” Twilight announced, then thought of Golden Path's words. “What else do you know of this wizard?”

“Not much,” Golden Path shook her head. “Only that he has looked at my temple in the past for reasons beyond me. I never thought it would be a problem, but this wizard must have an interest in me specifically. I will investigate the matter now that it has proven a security flaw. Perhaps he has put some curse on me that allows him to bypass the seals, if that is so, I will remove myself from this meeting immediately/”

“It will not be necessary, I will send some unicorns to assist you with this matter,” Twilight said before picking up a stack of white papers that went above her head. “We really should get started now.”

The meeting that followed went on for twelve hours, as Twilight wanted a complete review of Equestria’s military situation. In any other circumstance, she would have relished the chance of dealing with so many numbers, but the reality of what they represented sapped any joy from the activity.

They began with the fleet, as just a look at the holographic map told that the enemy would enter the system in a handful of days if not less. The list of active vessels painted a grim picture of a force reduced to a quarter of its former size and crippled officer core.

One detail that disturbed Twilight was how much the creatures invading her domain resembled those she had met in that alternate dimension all those years ago, only they seemed a thousand times more hateful. She hoped the two species had no relationship, as any connection between them looked impossible. The hate-filled monsters she had to face could not be descendants of those kind girls she had helped and called her friends.

Twilight decided that the fleet would serve in a defensive role until further notice and found unanimous support from all in the room.

Then came the army’s turn. Which regiments were on the planet and which ones could arrive fast enough or at least receive the urgent order of reassignment before it was truly too late? They looked at their ammunition supplies, compared them with the number of soldiers at their disposal, and speculated on how long they could last.

Two weeks was the most optimistic estimate for most regiments, with only a few exceptions. The regiments on the Moon fared better, with two months’ worth of ammunition, although both Twilight and Luna questioned its viability. Too many years in storage could have made it useless.

A long list of army officers followed, listing both the live and dead ones, their citations, their medals, and their contributions to military theory with their related publications. In lack of an actual war, most officers had spent their years locked in academic discourse with each other on what a large-scale conflict might look like. The war had proven most of them wrong, but some, like defense in depth, seemed to have survived contact with the enemy.

One general in the room brought up the idea of initiating a draft, just to remedy the number disparity, but Talking Hooves and Twilight both rebuked him by pointing there would be no time to do such a thing efficiently. Even if they could, it was not worth the potential riots that could have come from such a drastic decision.

Eventually, they moved on to discussing Equestria itself, starting with the food supplies and their related silos and warehouses, both of which were plentiful but lacked the proper protections to withstand enemy bombardment. They would have to ration the food, despite its abundance, and move a lot of it to secure locations while writing off the rest as already lost.

At that moment, when she saw the food supplies being cut in half because of their indefensible locations, Twilight wished she had focused on different things during her reign. What good was all the scientific progress and artistic expression she promoted when most of that was about to burn under enemy fire?

Planetary defenses were next, both the ones flying in orbit and the ones on the surface. The Moon stood as the one actual fortress on the system, with its arrays of ground-to-void cannons and missile platforms coupled with its substantial garrison. It could offer some serious resistance to the invader, but even Luna knew it would not last forever, and she said as much. There were other minor defense installations, mostly concentrated on the planet’s poles, but nothing that would dissuade an invading force.

Port Luna was the only military station in orbit of note, but that was calculated as part of the Moon's own defenses. They figured that it could deny enemy landing for as long as it stood.

Celestia urged her sister to come back to the relative safety of Canterlot, but Luna refused, claiming someone would have to make sure the defenses held for as long as possible, and she had to be the one. No matter how much Celestia pleaded with her sister, Luna would not budge, and she eventually forced her to relent. Celestia frowned as she gave up the argument, making everyone know the discussion was far from over.

Finally, they reviewed the performance of the Royal Guard, and it looked like they had been fighting a different war. The dead and wounded were rare, and each fallen had taken down several invaders before falling surrounded by a pile of enemy bodies.

Their only weakness was in the numbers. There were only a thousand Royal Guards spread around Equestria and its colonies, nowhere near enough to turn the tide of the war. Twilight regretted not investing enough resources in making their armor easier to produce. Talking Hooves did not lament the situation, or even comment on it, ignoring it in favor of dealing with the cards he had.

With the much briefer section of the Royal Guard over, they could claim to have reviewed every section of the Equestrian military. The Research Corps members were always more adventurous and eccentric researchers with guns than frontline soldiers. Their contributions would not go beyond scouting ahead of the fleets or serving as escort vessels.

“Now that we are aware of everything concerning our defense,” Talking Hooves signed. “What are your orders?”

“We cannot defend everything,” Twilight stated confidently. “We must gather the population in the cities we can defend and rebuild the rest after the war.”

After the war, Twilight did not dare to admit that those words rang hollow to her.

“Are you sure?” Spike asked her. “This will not please the rest of the confederation.”

“We’ll save the citizens; I hope it will be enough to calm them down,” Twilight quickly replied, already running the unfeeling arithmetic of warfare in her mind and realizing there might not be enough space to save everyone, she did not have the heart to tell him that. If only she could use that old spell to go back in time once more, she thought, then she would rule differently, much differently. “This meeting is over. We’ll be back here in eighteen hours to discuss which locations are suitable for defense.”

As Twilight allowed herself to fall back into her chair, knowing that the meeting was finally over, then she jumped back up when he heard the near-defeating blaring of several sirens followed by red lights flooding the room in a rhythmic pattern.

The sirens kept their noise coming for several more seconds before something started speaking.

“To all soldiers and officers in this facility,” a metallic voice said, the voice slightly reverberating on the cold grey walls. “Enemy forces are about to enter the system. We cancel immediately all shore leave permits. Report to your assigned stations within fifteen minutes. Do not be afraid. We are the largest concentrations of Equestrian forces in history, and the strength of four alicorns is with us. Trust in each other and your superiors. We will survive this storm.”

Blue Song frowned as he sat on his command throne. His plan of defeating the invaders in small, manageable groups had crashed against the reality of the enemy’s overwhelming firepower, earning him the scorn of soldiers and officers alike. Years of his career had gone up in flames alongside thousands of lives delivered straight to the gods.

Sacrifice was something he could justify in his mind, especially when considering how poorly the war was going, but there was no way he could justify wasting lives. Those crews had died for less than nothing, and that thought and the guilt it carried weighed heavily on his mind and threatened to crush it like a rock would an insect.

The idea had not been completely his. Golden Path had made a casual suggestion during one of their many private discussions, and he had made it his own. Despite that, he would not throw her to the wolves and took full responsibility for the losses.

That sensation of friendship had dwindled rapidly in the past days, and he could feel a growing resentment towards the mare who did not know her place in the hierarchy. He felt stupid for even allowing her to speak to him in private, despite their difference in rank. All of that happened because she followed something that sounded like his parents’ religion, his familiarity with the subject had allowed for a plethora of private conversations on it. His interest in what she had to say had been merely academic, but Golden Path spoke to him like a preacher, and he would have lied if he said he had not found himself drawn to her words like a moth to a flame.

He was sitting on the command throne of the Shield of Truth, his newly assigned ship, as a holographic map of the space around the vessel filled with red dots representing the incoming enemy. There were hundreds of dots quickly approaching the Equestrian fleet. Blue Song’s eyes stared at the map, mesmerized by the sheer size of the force he would have to face.

The bridge was smaller than what he was used to. Its look was artless and spartan, being a much older model, with sharp angles on the windows and doors and no decorations on its grey walls making the place feel soulless. At least, he thought, his command throne was still slightly elevated and at the very back so that could oversee everything happening on the bridge. Some design choices had not changed since the early days, why fix something that was not broken?

“Hundreds of contacts!” reported one changeling operating the closest console, the one dedicated to the long-range radar. “It’s beginning. They’re here!”

Blue Song had felt them coming, of course, so had every officer in the fleet worth anything. Such a massive force was impossible to hide in the warp, but it still felt surreal to see them in front of him. Fate had set its strands in one inexorable direction, and he did not feel inclined to act the correct role in the play.

“Everyone to their battle stations!” he ordered, and the console operators in the room began tapping quickly as the ship’s combat systems came to life.

He could see a report fluctuating in front of him showing him the guns powering as up as they appeared on a quickly growing list.

Under the list of weaponry, he saw the status of the ships under his direct control. Only ten light frigates, five of which had suffered damage to their hulls, could operate all of their guns. His usual fleet was larger, but his recent debacle had seen it massively reduced as he lost his ships in battle or saw them assigned to more cautious admirals.

Only a week prior, the sight of what remained of his fleet would have sent him fuming as he looked at the destruction of his ambitions. Yet in the last few days he had spent away from Equestria, it was like a fog had vanished from his mind, and all he could feel at that moment was regret for having wasted so many lives for nothing.

Anger finally rose within him, but he directed it at himself for having paid attention to the snake that was Golden Path. If he ever made it out of the war alive, he would discipline her for her breach of discipline and her double loyalties. One day, Blue Song had almost converted, but his pride and his memories stopped him before what even then he felt would have been an irrevocable decision. He knew from his parents that what the gods gave with their right hoof they took with their left. He could still hear their shrieks as daemons dragged their souls into the warp all those years ago. They had not been so immortal after all; he chuckled to himself.

He focused his thoughts by looking at the map and saw that the other admirals were moving their much larger fleets away from the enemy, communicating their new direction every time they altered their course.

A moment later, the battle started.

The invaders fired the first shot, a bright lance of light that gutted a ship called the Gentle Light before she could raise her shields. The secondary explosion from the ammunition compartment snuffed the two thousand souls aboard out in an instant. Some of her fragments lodged themselves in the engines of one of the largest cruisers in the fleet, the Rarity’s Memory, and crippled her where she stood. The injury made the cruiser unable to dodge a second shot, which destroyed her command bridge before exploding and splitting the ship in half.

A moment later, the Equestrian fleet responded, spreading out as much as possible as every available ship opened fire. They did not fire at every target available. Instead, multiple groups focused on a single target at a time, hoping to overwhelm their shields through the sheer volume of their fire.

Blue Song focused his fire on one of the escort vessels, which had gotten a few kilometers out of formation. A trifling distance in space combat, but enough to make it stand out.

“Fire Crystals,” he ordered as he highlighted the ship on the map by tapping it with one hoof, Crystals being the Equestrian callout sign for void torpedoes. “Then withdraw at full speed towards the planet.”

The set of six torpedoes flew vertically upward from the hull for two seconds, then turned sharply towards their target and sped away. For one minute, they flew ahead of a barrage of white energy shots. They sped through the staggering expanse of space, leaving behind a trail of hot-blue flames and short-lived white smoke. The target’s defensive weaponry intercepted three of them, and another two smashed against her shields. One, however, punched right through them and vaporized one cannon on her sides. The shots coming behind it just carved their way through the hull before the shields reactivated to put an end to the destruction.

Not a good trade, Blue Song assessed.

He got another look at the map. The enemy fleet was spreading out from its line of contact like a hunter’s net, and would soon cut any avenues of escape. A concentrated salvo of missiles had destroyed a battleship, the Dash of Courage, by blowing up her engines a leaving her as a drifting hulk as secondary explosions made their way through her corridors. Other smaller ships were facing similar fates, with the battle’s death toll already passing the tens of thousands.

He would not waste more lives than he already had.

“Belay the second order,” he said. “Head outside Equestria’s gravity well while I prepare for entrance into the Endless Sea.”

He would have wanted to make the jump immediately, but the pull of gravity made it hard to focus when his consciousness was one with the ship. Entering unreality when so close to so much real matter could have deadly consequences for the crew.

“Sir, with all due respect, this leaves both the Moon and Port Luna undefended,” someone from further away on the bridge protested. “And what of the admirals? We might get court marshaled for this.”

“If they stay near Equestria, you can count them as already dead,” Blue Song stated quickly. “Inform them of my decision and reasoning, but do not wait for a response before executing.”

The bridge officers all looked at him and murmured to each other, but eventually, all of them complied with his command. One by one, the other ships in his fleet complied as well, with only a few promising to file a complaint about him. He even sent a message to the commanders on the Moon and one directly to Luna herself, just to be thorough.

It was not long before he received complaints from other fleets. They ranged from accusations of cowardice to promises of him being court marshaled for said cowardice, as he was retreating far too early for the fighting withdrawal High Command had ordered in case of an attack.

Not all the other admirals protested. A few recognized his maneuver as the only course of action that would not end in their death, and followed suit, or feared that his withdrawal spelled the end anyway and had no choice but to do the same. Either way, several Equestrian fleets began disengaging, giving more to their engines as they kept themselves as far away as possible from the enemy.

After a few more minutes, he received a response that caught his eye: Luna’s reply. “I understand,” were the only words of her message.

An alarm’s sudden blaring got his attention away from the messages and back to the world in front of him.

“Vampire, ripple, bearing two seven zero, too fast for point defense,” One Yak operating a short-range radar said frantically. “High likelihood of shields not holding.”

Five anti-ship missiles, vampires, were on their way. The Yak quickly added them to the map as dazzlingly fast red lines, and Blue Song could see they were on a collision course with his ship. He had already seen enough of those missiles at work to know that even one could tear the Shield of Truth in two.

“Intercept with Crystals,” he gave the order with the calm he knew was necessary. His behavior would be an example for his crew. Panic was not a luxury he could afford. “Then hope for the best.”

He watched another set of torpedoes fly away, two for each target they were supposed to intercept. A part of him wanted to move the Shield of Truth out of the way, but he knew the missiles were tracking the ship’s heat and would correct the course if he moved; only making the job harder for the far less maneuverable torpedoes.

Shutting down the engines was not an option either, as it would make the Shield of Truth a sitting duck for every enemy weapon, which had not fired because of the kilometric distance he had kept from them that made avoiding their shots relatively easy.

As he considered what else he could do to increase his odds of survival, he received the first report.

“One vampire splashed,” said one weapon operator, then he repeated his report two more times, leaving two anti-ship missiles intact. It was still enough to cripple the ship and still too fast for point defense to be of any use, and Blue Song knew that one of them was enough to punch through the shields.

A moment later, the second part of his prediction happened, and the shields flickered out of existence like a dying electrical light.

The last missile was soon close enough that he could see it from outside his bridge, getting closer and larger with each passing second and leaving a quickly vanishing trail of white smoke as traversed the void.

Officers and sailors of every rank ducked as they saw the end approaching them, but Blue Song kept still on his command throne as he closed his eyes and lit up his horn. He focused and let the Endless Sea flow into him.

Nameless things immediately scratched at the corners of his mind, trying to get his soul during a second of perfectly normal weakness. Blue Song’s parents would have called those things gods or angels, but he knew better than those superstitious fools. Golden Path had made a more convincing point about their power, but that still not made them worthy of his worship in his mind, so he rejected their offers and stole all he could while giving nothing back.

Those things deserved nothing anyway; they were tools to be used and nothing more.

He opened his eyes and focused his gaze on the rapidly approaching missile, and touched it with his mind.

He began with the exterior, picking apart the missile’s casing and throwing it into space before moving on to the wires, causing them to detach and flail in space like noodles before vanishing completely as Blue Song unmade even their molecules. Last was the warhead itself, which exploded into a bush of mechanical components that Blue Song then scattered away.

What he left of the suddenly harmless missile was a foal’s play to dismantle and soon there was no sign that it had even existed besides one last puff of white smoke.

Some on the bridge erupted into cheering as they realized they would not die just yet, but most quickly went back to work as soon as they recovered from their surge of fear.

Blue Song look at his officers and noticed several of them in praying positions. Religiosity had been in rapid increase since the war’s beginning. He had never been a fanatic loyalist of Twilight’s rule, but even he respected her pursuit of rational progress and her rejection of superstition. To see so many supposedly much more loyal officers turning to prayer made him visibly sneer in contempt.

After one more minute of everyone getting back to their stations, a bridge officer addressed him. It was a Kirin assigned to a communications console. She wore a tiny medallion with two wings, one white and the other purple.

“Sir, we’re receiving new messages,” said a kirin with a nasal voice. “From a civilian ship.”

“Which one?” Blue Song asked her.

“It’s the Zephyr Heights,” she marked the ship on the holographic map, making her assigned dot blink several times to catch Blue Song’s attention. It was a refugee vessel, holding at least twenty thousand souls onboard. “Her captain is requesting permission to merge with our fleet as we move outside the gravity well.”

Civilian vessels had simpler names than military ones, being named after towns and cities with no further embellishments. The Zephyr Heights were among the hundreds of refugee ships that had reached the Equus system since the war had started, overcrowded and carrying tens of thousands of souls each.

His fleet had been fast enough to get outside of the range of most enemy weapons, something that he could not say for the many who were facing the full destructive power of the invaders. Green dots were disappearing every minute, each one representing hundreds or even thousands of lives lost. The Equestrian Navy was vanishing before his eyes.

Blue Song considered his options for one second. Leaving the civilians to die would have allowed him to get out faster, making it an acceptable sacrifice at first glance. What turned the sacrifice into a waste were his thoughts about the future.

Since he had no intentions of seeking out the enemy if he managed to escape the battle, he was about to spend months in the void, and he would have no support, contract, or oversight from other fleets. He would turn into a king. It was wise to start his rule with an act of kindness to give a good impression on his crew.

Perhaps he should have called them his subjects instead of his crew, as his mind was already warming up to the idea of kingship.

“Slow down and allow them to merge,” He said as he watched two more Equestrian ships disappear from the map and gripped his throne. “Fire the last crystals to provide a distraction.”

“Roger,” said the weapons officer. “We’re dry on crystals now.”

It would be long now before Blue Song would see those columns of white smoke again, he thought as he watched them go into the darkness, not caring about the effect they would have on their target. Perhaps, he thought, he would never find new ones.

Blue Song looked at the map to observe what he knew was the end of the Equestrian navy on the map. A few other small fleets had reached his position, but all of them had suffered losses and had become even smaller than Blue Song’s skeleton group, despite starting with much higher numbers.

Merging into a cohesive formation took half an hour, the Zephyr Heights took her position in the center to be shielded by the heaviest ships, while the lighter ones formed the outer layer. Once all was done, they had fifty vessels capable of moving and had to abandon five others because of the damage they had suffered when trying to get out of the battle. Two Research Corps vessels also added themselves to the group, filling the role of escort ships.

After a painful hour of taking and avoiding enemy fire, they reached a spot where they were completely out of range of the enemy and the pull of Equestrian gravity well was weak enough that a jump was possible.

Overall, he called himself lucky to have gotten away with only three ships lost during that hour. Peanuts, compared to the massacres he had already witnessed that day.

“All magic users prepare for the jump of their assigned vessel,” he said in a channel he had ordered the communication officer to create. “We can’t waste more time.”

A proper jump required some minutes of preparation, as Blue Song did not intend to repeat what had happened to Twilight Sparkle and her fleet. Only her ship had made it out of her disastrous jump, and she had taken a life of her own returning to the warp despite having no crew left.

Blue Song had kept quiet when heard of that last detail, even if he knew his parents’ gods were behind it. He was sure his imminent jump would not be as disastrous, as his energy pool was unaffected by the spell he had used. All he had done was to channel the warp through his mind, nothing more.

“To where, sir?” asked the commander of one ship, unsurprisingly a unicorn. The higher ranks of the Equestrian navy were full of the few species capable of magic, like kirins and unicorns.

Instead of answering with words, he sent the coordinates to every ship in his fleet. The spot he had chosen was not any system in particular, but it was in the dark space between the stars where he knew the enemy would not look for them.

“Are you sure, sir?” the same commander asked.

“Affirmative,” Blue Song said, then on his communications with the other ships under his command. “This is only a temporary measure. We will return.”

As Blue Song prepared the spell and felt his consciousness flow out of his body, becoming one with the Shield of Truth, he had one last thought before he was no longer himself and something more at the same time.

He really should have warned Twilight about the cult.

Author's Note

This chapter is brought to you by Grandfather Nurgle, who got me sick enough to stay at home and actually do some writing.