It was a loud night in Canterlot, its streets bustling with all manners of creatures from all over Equestria and its colonies as the noise of their walking and chatter reached up to the palace itself. It was from one balcony of that palace that Spike could observe and hear the scene below. He then looked at the city’s skyline that expanded until it almost reached the horizon, but stopped just before reaching it. Ponyville had become a neighborhood of Canterlot, swallowed up by the relentless advance of industry and progress, while the Everfree forest had been given a wide berth. A thin layer of smog covered the chimneys and apartments in the most distant parts of the city that Spike could somehow see just as clearly as if they were right in front of him.

His vision had never been so perfect, and no doctor could explain why it had improved so much after his return to Equestria. All Spike knew he could see every nook and cranny of Canterlot from that balcony. His hearing had also improved considerably, allowing him to pinpoint the source of even the faintest noise. No matter how much the doctors studied him, they had yet to find a rational reason for such a change.

It was because of the inexplicable improvements that Spike’s ears constantly heard the sound of the feast going on in the palace, despite him having closed the door behind him. He had been trying to ignore it with no success.

He took one last look at the Canterlot Central Hospital. Its cylindrical shape reminded him of the problem he could not solve on his own. Like a crack in a pair of glasses, he could only wait for someone more experienced than him to fix it. With that thought in mind, he went back inside.

The room was longer than it was wide, with the long sides having several large stained glass windows, but it still had enough space to have a constellation of tables scattered around with no precise pattern, each furnished by a dark blue or white piece of cloth. Every table had enough food to sate a dragon lord, if not for the lack of meat. Close to the windows on each side, but far enough to allow two ponies to walk side by side without feeling constrained, there were two rows of white columns reaching up to a blue ceiling with silver stars painted on it.

Many guests were performing an elegant dance in the center of the room while a crowd of them had gathered around them to watch. The notes coming from many violins and a black piano dictated the slow-paced movements of the dance. It was a somber song; the deliberately slow notes engendering in Spike a feeling of melancholy and loss as if he was trying to remember something he had lost forever.

A long table was on one end of the room, with a large blue and white flag behind it. High-ranking officers and powerful nobles from all over Equestria had their seats there close to Celestia and Luna. The two sisters had come back, on Spike’s written request, to act as regents while Twilight was in her coma.

Spike’s seat was on that table, that accursed table at the very center of the public eye. Celestia and Luna thought they were honoring him by giving him a seat right in front of them, but all he wanted were a few hours of peace, something that the entire universe seemed to be hell-bent on denying him.

“If you ask me,” a feminine voice Spike had heard before said from his right. The words were slurry, clearly the result of alcohol. “This seems a bit in poor taste.”

He turned to see who had spoken; it was the Lieutenant Golden Path. She was carrying a goblet of wine with her levitation magic and was struggling to not fall on the floor.

“Doesn’t even feel like a war has started,” she continued. “With all this food and wine, at least it’s good wine.”

She took a big swig from the cup and emptied half of it in the blink of an eye.

“I was not aware a Lieutenant could enter here,” Spike was surprised to see her, he had been told the little feast Celestia and Luna had thrown to inaugurate their hopefully brief regency was reserved for high-ranking officers and powerful nobles, and yet she, a simple Lieutenant, had gotten access to such a gathering.

“Oh, Blue Song got me in,” she casually admitted as she then finished the cup with a second swig. “He wanted a pair of friendly eyes and ears here, but I don’t care anymore. Got better stuff to do.”

If Blue Song’s hooves were not behind it, she would have impressed Spike with her achievement.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked her, worried by her lightning-fast drinking.

“Never felt better!” she grabbed a nearby bottle and filled up her cup once more as she slurred her reply. “How are you holding up?”

“Me?” he was not expecting a drunk mare to worry about him. “I’m doing fine.”

“Great! You know, all the… hic… all the…” She paused for a second so she could drink more. “The veterans from your crew came back with all sortsa problems, they’re all weird in the head… but you’re fine! Thank the gods.”

Once again, she drank all the wine in her cup with surprising speed, making all the contents of the cup disappear behind her lips in just a second. Spike, however, was paying more attention to the last few words coming out of Golden Path’s mouth. An officer who wore her religious beliefs on her sleeve was a rare occurrence indeed. The state presented itself as secular and most officers had no issues with not crossing that line in the sand, at least in public.

He blamed the slip of etiquette on the mare’s intoxicated state and thought little else of it. Her beliefs were her own, and her drinking was a much more pressing issue for him.

“So,” he said as he grabbed the wine and looked at it, pretending to be interested as he thought of some question to keep the mare distracted. The label said it was two hundred years old. “Did you pick this one for a reason?”

“Nah, I always grab the nearest bottle,” she smiled at him with mischievous pride, as if she was a filly admitting her misdeeds to her disapproving parents. “The others at the table were such a bore.”

She pointed at an almost abandoned table, with only one old griffon with grey feathers sitting on one of the nine white wood chairs around it.

“There was an… an economist and, like, a philosopher and they kept talking with each other,” She moved to drink again but stopped when she realized her cup was empty. “Bummer. Anyway, it was so boring I had to drink and drink. I was supposed to be paying attention and stuff but…”

“You drank too much?” Spike did what he could do to stop what he felt was an incoming rant.

“I… drank… just enough,” she tried to grab the bottle with her weak levitation magic, but Spike’s grip held firm and she almost slipped as she tried to grab it with her hooves. “Can I finish it?”

“No,” he said as he held onto the bottle. “Just come with me for a second.”

Thinking some cleaner air would do this drunk mare some good, and to spare her from further embarrassment, he led her to the balcony. He was sure the air would not be so cold that it would pose a threat to her.

“Whoa… pretty,” Golden Path smiled like a filly in front of a candy shop as she looked at the city below with its dazzling lights and elongated skyline. She then looked up, and some of her smile faded. “No stars… bummer.”

It was far from the first time he had heard those words; they had only become more frequent as the new Equestria absorbed the old one and the light pollution increased exponentially. In moments like that, Spike wished he had not seen the old world so that he could enjoy the new one without the burden of so many old memories.

“Still pretty,” she stumbled forward, the alcohol in her system having weakened her legs significantly. The rail of the balcony stepped her unexpected advance. “Hey, I can... I can see my temple from here.”

“Your temple?” Spike gently pushed her away from the ledge.

“Yeah… it’s right there.” she went back to the ledge and pointed at a small octagonal building not too distant from the palace. It looked modern, clashing with the historical architecture around it “We gather every week, it’s a great time.”

“That’s… great,” he patted her over the right shoulder as he tried to get her away from the ledge. She wouldn’t have been the first drunkard to fall to her death. “Can you take a step back?”

Perhaps bringing her to the balcony was not the best idea he ever had, he thought.

“I think… I think you should come,” she mumbled. “To the temple.”

“What?” he tilted his head as he heard her proposal and wondered why she thought he would ever accept it. He had shown no interest in those matters before. “No thanks, I have other stuff to do.”

“Why not?” her voice shifted tone in the blink of an eye, the words coming out quickly and confidently. “I can give you something that you’ll like… a lot”

The behavior of her eyes had also changed without warning. No longer aimlessly looking around, they had focused on him alone with a gaze that could pierce scales, flesh, and bone. Behind those eyes, Spike saw an all-consuming ambition burning brighter than the stars.

“I’m not interested.” Spike rejected what he was sure was an indecent proposal.

“It’s not about that,” she giggled, and then her expression turned dead serious as the last traces of inebriation vanished. “I have something more useful. I know you won’t say no to it.”

“No, I don’t like being tricked,” Spike said decisively, then moved to turn around, only to be stopped by one of the mare’s hooves holding his left hand. "This conversation is over."

“Oh, come on, I just had to get you isolated to make sure no one will hear us,” she pleaded. “Half of that room works for that damn admiral.”

Hearing the freely given information, Spike decided he would not leave just yet.

“You still haven’t given me a reason for visiting your church.” he pulled his hand away from her but remained where he was. “Tell me I should not turn away and report your behavior. I should not even be talking with you.”

“Because if you do what I ask you to do,” she took a few steps, circling him as she spoke, never losing eye contact. “I will heal and save Twilight.”

He had angrily dismissed the invitation at first. The thought that a small and unknown religious group could do something the best doctors in Equestria could not was absurd. Surely, he thought, scientific professionalism would once again prove it had no need for petty superstitions and religious beliefs. That had been the norm for the entirety of Twilight’s reign.

The ideological foundations of Twilight’s reign had been science and reason. Religions and superstitions were not persecuted but were understood to be a mere leftover of a less enlightened past, one that would fade away with enough time and education.

In the morning after Golden Path’s offer, Spike witnessed the formation of a terrifying crack in Twilight’s ideology.

A single stallion dressed in a white doctor’s suit rushed inside the throne room, where Spike was acting as an advisor, to deliver a piece of world-shattering news: Twilight was dying. The doctors were doing everything they could, but even their best estimates gave her a week of life in the best-case scenario. He said that the worst could happen at any moment, and they could only wait for it.

After hearing the doctor’s words, Spike had rushed to the Canterlot Central Hospital, unwilling to believe those words without seeing any proof. All he saw was the dried-up shell of Twilight, just a bundle of skin and bones barely clinging to life as her heart kept beating dangerously slowly.

It was there, in that hospital room, that the mare’s offer suddenly gained appeal. He did not even know if her words had been true, if she really did know how to heal Twilight, but dark circumstances have a way of shining light on even the shadiest offers.

He went back to the palace and he waited for most of the day to pass, as Golden Path told him the gathering would happen in the evening. He then sneaked out of the palace just as the sun touched the horizon and long shadows covered the streets of Canterlot’s historical city center. To avoid being recognized, he wore a long robe and hood to hide his body and face.

After a few minutes of walking down old alleyways, the temple appeared before him once he turned a corner.

From a closer distance, it was even more of an eyesore for Spike. The eight black and windowless walls contrasted horribly with the ancient marble around it. It was also larger than it had seemed before, dwarfing the small houses around it and casting a long shadow over several blocks.

Golden Path was there, talking in front of a small gathering of what he assumed were her fellow believers. He was far enough that could not hear the words, but all those who listened seemed to be entranced by what she was saying. She was not preaching, merely talking, but it was enough to win her the undivided attention of everyone around her. She was wearing a blue hood over her head and a robe of the same color.

Noticing he had arrived, she stopped talking and waved at him, causing the rest of the congregation to turn around and look at him. All of them had something slightly off about them, whether it was unicorns with horns longer than what was normal or griffons with flamboyant colors on their feathers. Their looks deviated just slightly from what Spike knew to be natural.

Deciding to ignore the feeling of wrongness, Spike walked towards Golden Path as he kept a stern and inscrutable expression on his face.

“I knew you would come!” she said with a blindingly bright smile as she offered to shake his hand.

“You know I don’t have a choice.” he shook her hoof out of politeness. “I just hope I’m not wasting my time.”

“That’s why I knew you would come,” she said, maintaining her cheerful facade. “And don’t worry; this will be worth your time, I made sure of it. Let’s get you inside.”

With the brief introductions out of the way, she led him and her small congregation through one of the four gates of the temple. He could feel the congregation watching his every step, but he did not let that feeling stop him.

The inside of the temple was lit up by enormous cauldrons of fire, one for each of its alabaster walls, casting dancing lights onto the black marble pavement and producing a moderate amount of grey smoke. Precisely in the center, surrounded by eight thick pillars of red marble that reached the flat ceiling, there was a larger cauldron with an enchanted fire. It switched from blue to purple, then to green, and finally settled for a few seconds on red before the cycle began anew. Spike had not seen it in the night, but the ceiling had a large hole in its center that allowed the smoke from the fires to exit the room. There were also four additional doors that clearly did not lead outside.

“Welcome,” Golden Path said as she moved one of her forelegs above her head in a grandiose motion. “To the Temple of the Five.”

They walked towards the center, but Spike did not wait long before he opened his mouth. “You made a big promise to get me here. I hope you’ll keep it.”

Golden Path slowly turned to face him, the golden trim in her eyes somehow glimmering through the shadow cast over her face by the flames. “The ritual will begin in minutes, just a matter of waiting for everyone to show up,” she spat out those last two words, visibly annoyed at all the delayed arrivals. “But I swear it will happen before the first ray of sunlight.”

“I don’t have time,” Spike said quickly. “Twilight might die at any moment; I need what you say you have, and I need it now.”

“Do not worry,” she reassured as she glanced at the central fire which had just turned green. “The Grandfather has promised me he will keep her alive for as long as possible.”

“The Grandfather?” The cryptic glimpse into her faith had left him with another question. If he was going to put hope in this blind long shot, he would need to know all that he could about it.

“You will know him one day if you wish to walk the same path I did,” she then shifted her gaze towards the colorful flame, and then kept speaking. “But all you need to know is that he is a god of life and death at the same time.”

“Forgive me if I’m not entirely convinced,” the mare’s words could have come out of the mouth of any preacher that had appeared in Equestria in the last twenty years, hardly convincing for Spike. They went against everything Twilight’s Equestria stood for, and that did not help her case. “I would need evidence of this Grandfather’s power.”

“As would I,” she nodded in agreement. “I would not be in this temple if the gods had not shown their power to me.”

He had heard the same words from another preacher many years before. All he had to convince him of his faith were dreams and the flight pattern of birds above the Everfree forest. She, he was sure, would be just as nonsensical. Only his desperate hope this mare had one last trick up her sleeve kept him from storming out.

“And what would that proof be?” he asked, expecting the worst.

“They saved my life,” she replied, her speed showing she had expected that exact question. “When pirates captured me when I was young, the gods vented all of them into space and returned the ship to safety.”

A little filly misinterpreting what was happening around was not the worst explanation for faith he had ever heard, he thought. Spike had seen with his own eyes how faith had given hope to the desperate, and it made her religiosity more genuine than the one of a run-of-the-mill scammer. Perhaps he had been too harsh in judging her so quickly.

Their conversation had the added benefit of making time pass with relative speed, and it was not long before a small crowd had gathered around the central cauldron of fire. All were wearing a hood and they all had something that Spike could only define as mutations just like the ones he had seen outside.

“Finally, forty-nine,” Golden Path exclaimed as once again she smiled, this time in a much more satisfied manner. “Now the ritual can begin.”

Golden Path spent a few minutes giving orders to those who had gathered in the temple. After everyone had received their directions, the ritual began.

After a nod from her, the forty-nine followers spread out to form seven concentric circles around the fire while Spike and the mare remained near the fire, both observing the ceremony from the center. With another identical command, the entire congregation intoned a chant.

It was a barely audible murmur at first, but it slowly grew louder. The words were incomprehensible to Spike’s untrained ear, but the cultists had practiced them so many times they knew them by heart.

As the chant grew in potency and otherworldliness, strange things happened in the temple. The walls glowed in different hues, matching the one shining from the one in the center as all the fires grew stronger with each second. With a mechanical buzzing noise, the hole in the ceiling expanded to let the smoke, which had increased in volume because of the stronger flames, flow out into the sky.

As it did so, the ceiling also turned transparent so that only its eight supporting beams remained visible to the naked eyes essentially forming an eight-pointed star right above Spike and Golden Path.

Golden Path could not believe it was all working so perfectly. She gave her thanks to the Architect with her thoughts as she performed her part of the ritual.

The lighting up of her horn was the signal her fellow cultists were waiting for. The circle closer to her began rotating in a clockwise manner while the one behind it did so in the opposite direction. All other circles repeated the same pattern until all of them were moving. They did not stop chanting for even a second as they did so. They did not know the words were meaningless gibberish, but that did not matter. The belief and the emotions behind the words were the real fuel.

Charging up her magic powers, she could feel they had increased massively thanks to Imperium providing emotions and turmoil all over the little sector Twilight called an empire. It made the wait for the inevitable escalation of the war almost unbearable. The Lord’s attention to the sector was growing, and she was sure he would soon demand his tithe.

Focusing on the moment, Golden Path channeled the energy of the ritual into a healing spell that, thanks to the power of the Gods, would have put any other spell ever cast in Equestria to shame. Just the effort of holding up so much power gave her a head-splitting migraine that quickly spread to her entire body. Her frail mortal form could not handle so much power from the warp and the price for even attempting to do so was unspeakable agony. Despite her legs trembling from the pain and the feeling of all her bones being about to splinter, she pushed on. Pain was merely a gift from the Prince, so that she may better enjoy all pleasures in life.

That thought allowed her to steel herself and focus once more on her duty instead of her pain.

With an unnatural roar, she released the energy in the form of a green wave expanding outward from where she stood and she felt it traverse the entirety of Canterlot. It healed everything it touched, from crippling injuries to seasonal colds and especially the one mare the entire operation revolved around. Just as Golden Path lost track of her energy, she felt the princess moving, jumping up from her bed with a scream.

“It is done,” she said with composure. The time to celebrate was still far away. What she had done that night, she knew, was merely the first step of plan centuries in the making, all she had to do was to wait for when the citizens of Canterlot would come asking questions and for Blue Song to play the role the Architect had designed for him.

After all, he was the one in charge of the toys.

Taking her out of her thoughts, Spike scoffed. “This is it?” He asked. “Just a weird spectacle and a magic trick?”

“Go to the Central Hospital and see the results for yourself,” she calmly told him. “I am sure you’ll like the results.”

“If I found that you lied…”

“You won’t,” she dismissed the veiled threat. “Now please go, there is a princess that is feeling very confused right now. She will have questions, and you should be there to answer them.”

Spike went to one of the doors, understanding the truth behind Golden path’s words. He only stopped for a moment to turn around and speak one last time. “I’ll be back.” He pointed his finger at her. “With questions.”

Then he walked out, gently closing the door behind him.

“I’m sure you will,” she said as she turned to look at the central flame. “You wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”

For a few minutes, she just looked at the fire, contemplating her role in the designs of the great gods. Compared to them, everything that lived was a petty animal of no significance; only by being useful to the gods could a life gain any real meaning. She was no different, but, unlike many, she was happy with her place in the universe.

That was how she saw herself, a willing and enthusiastic tool of the gods. She did not pray at their altar because she hoped for a keener mind or a stronger body. Those gifts were nice obviously nice to receive, but they were not her reason for her faith. She followed the gods because she agreed with what they represented, in their entirety, and she worshipped them all in equal measure, as everyone should.

She had not lied to Spike, not completely at least. She had just omitted some details about the pirates that had taken her. They were the ones who had inducted her into the faith, after all.

Her contemplations could not go on forever, and acolyte eventually approached her. She turned to face him before he opened his beak, startling him with the quick movement of her head.

He was a young griffon with feathers of every color imaginable, surely a gift from the Prince.

“Speak,” she ordered. “But be quick, I have a meeting with the Master soon.”

“If I may ask,” the griffon hesitated, only irritating her. “Why did you let him leave? He was right where we needed him.”

He pointed to where every cultist hid a dagger if they were wearing robes of any kind. The griffon was not carrying a dagger because his talons were sharp enough to make them excellent substitutes for almost all blades.

She took her eyes from him, and once again looked at the ever-changing flames. “Because we need him to spread the word,” she explained. “The Lord of Battle will surely understand if we deny him one drop of blood for the sake of spilling much more in the future.”

The reference to a god the griffon did not either worship or even understand had the intended result of making him step back, the alternative would have been to admit his hedonistic impulses to ruin the entire plan for the sake of a quick thrill. No matter how hard she tried to understand them, she could only have contempt for those who gave themselves to one god only. Just fools unwilling to see the bigger picture, she thought.

As the griffon left her alone after nodding to pretend he understood her words, she walked towards one door that did not lead outside and walked down the stairs right behind it. As the air became dank and water dribbled down from the rocky ceiling, she reached a large cave with many glowing circles on the rocky walls.

They were portals to various Equestrian colonies. Establishing them had taken years, for some even a whole century, of work. Despite that, using them was still a nauseating experience, but they allowed all cultists to move in secret across the colonies. She had already shut some of them down because of Imperial arrival, but many were still functional. Soon she would have to shut down all of them, she thought, as they would no longer be necessary.

At the center of the room, there was a solitary figure. It was dragon-like in size and posture, but it wore a grey set of armor that Golden Path knew to be impenetrable by regular Equestrian weapons besides explosives. Its helmet had a white beak almost like that of a griffon and two glowing white eyes. It had a sword longer than the entire mare hanging from its hilt and an enormous gun on the other side of that hilt.

“Master, I have succeeded,” she said as she bowed to the figure and kissed the floor. “The fuse is lit.”

“Commendable,” the master’s voice was booming and powerful. “Then I believe it is time for my brothers to arrive. I hope your rulers will be… accommodating to their presence.”

Author's Note

Sorry for being late but uni stressful.