Arc 6 – Emergence Chapter 2 – Pyre

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“How can she sleep at a time like this?”

Though Night Wind addressed her question to nobody in particular, muttering it under her breath, Teleta answered her, glancing at a slumbering unicorn, “Wire isn’t glued to our Mother’s side. She has spent most of her time in the field.”

The Kirin’s dark coat couldn’t hide the circles under her eyes, betraying the heavy exhaustion bestowed upon the mare by the last few days; a few hours of sleep she had snatched before visiting Wire couldn’t remedy that.

The changeling commented on her state, “You, too, should rest while you can, commissioner.”

“Work at the police isn’t all sugar either,” Night dismissed her words.

The hovercraft’s smooth flight did offer enough comfort, but seeing the changelings in arcanium armour, prepared for the battle, the Kirin just couldn’t find it in herself to close her eyes; not because she didn’t trust her entourage. The metal-clad equines were either dozing off in a fashion similar to Wire’s or reclining on the seats, rested, absorbed in their thoughts. Perhaps, they purposely avoided returning Night’s impolite stares, since even the changelings might fail to keep neutral expressions when observing a Kirin, who wore but a fabric uniform and carried no weapon other than her horn.

The half-dragon nearly jumped when Teleta spoke again, “Glad to see you instead of Grim Mastic.”

“He does have a personality difficult to get along with,” Night agreed. Her colleagues used to regularly place bets on how quickly Grim could transform her into a Nirik.

Though the changeling captain knowingly smiled, she shook her head. “Grim treated Hope like a second Canterlot, not realising it made him a part of the problem.”

“Not even a week has passed since I got promoted.” The Kirin nervously chuckled. “So it’s not like I have much idea what to do.”

The hovercraft’s interior suddenly became suffocating; going to war somehow seemed a better alternative than returning to Hope; Night tried to convince herself of her sojourn having a chance to solve the terrorist problem. Even if it were true, she would still be left with Stalliongrad ceaselessly trying to expand its influence, vagrants raiding Hope’s markets and homes, the citizens seeing the police as no more than another gang…

“Just don’t forget.” Teleta saved the commissioner from the threatening tide of panic. “Hope is our home, not a battlefront.”

Night took a deep breath, followed by a sigh of equal scale; she couldn’t deny the changeling’s words, but that wisdom cast little light onto her future—the prospect of onerous ungratifying work. Putting a massive effort in banishing her worries from her mind till the time to face them came, she duly noted, “Ironic, considering we are heading to join a war that isn’t even ours.”

“We aren’t abandoning our Mother.”

Every changeling straightened up, their expressions instantly igniting with indefatigable purpose; Night expected to be writhing in the fire of their indignation, but every pair of faceted eyes gazed past her. The Kirin glanced at the unicorn in concern—even for a mare having a nap, Wire seemed suspiciously still.

“I can taste your remorse,” Teleta stated flatly.

Wire’s healthy eye snapped open and the other one gradually regained its golden glow; that let her match the changeling’s glare, though the contest didn’t last for long—interrupted by Wire’s jaws dehiscing in a monstrous yawn. When she finally regained control of herself, the mare, still being glowered at by the changelings, complained, “Then why keep rubbing it into my face?”

With all the commendable haste the Swarm exhibited upon receiving the news of their Mother’s whereabouts and predicament, Teleta still had taken her time to thoroughly reprimand Wire for not telling them anything outright. Upon hearing the unicorn’s complaint, the captain’s already severe expression further hardened, portending another round of tongue-lashing for the royal adviser. Not blind to that, Wire muttered, “Nevermind.”

“But aren’t you defying Heterocera’s orders?” Night came to her rescue.

“We’d rather face our Mother’s wrath than suffer her death.”

Whilst the Kirin had no intention to argue with such a statement, on a fundamental level she couldn’t help but find Teleta’s conviction a bit pervasive and had to ask, “Why are you so sure Sombra means harm to her?”

The warlock fit the old myths and legends somewhat poorly; he did give her a worrying impression, however, every equine involved in the desert gathering couldn’t evoke no other response.

Despite being concerned about her confusion offending the faithful children, it came to Night as no surprise when Wire barked at her, “Don’t be stupid!”

“Such a comprehensive answer, thank you.”

The abrasive unicorn met Night’s sarcasm with more castigation, “Haven’t you ever held a history book in your hooves?”

“The current historical era began when a changeling queen killed an equestrian ruler,” the commissioner deadpanned. As the changelings tensed, she hurried to add, “Yet here we are, fighting side by side.”

Nobody knew what to say for a few moments, even Wire had no response ready on the tip of her sharp tongue. However, it was her, who broke the silence—hesitantly and not before giving Teleta a wary glance. “Queen Chrysalis’ methods might have not always been agreeable—”

“She did it for us,” the captain spoke in Wire’s cast; not angrily, but with firmness allowing no room for arguments.

Wire respectfully nodded and continued, her tone starting as subdued, yet quickly regaining vitriol as she went on, “But Sombra is different—that stallion cares only about himself and if his goals require backstabbing his allies, he won’t hesitate for a beat of his rotten heart.”

“And how do you know that?” Night challenged the unicorn.

Accompanied by a glare, her explanation came in an instant, “I have had a chance to flip through the recordings of a mare who used to be a witch in his Coven.”

“So, all you have is second-hoof impressions?”

“I’m not risking anyone dear to me to find out if Sombra can be trusted,” Wire all but spat.

“What if because of your premonition Equestria loses a valuable ally during its worst crisis?”

Already opened to spew out some snarky retort, Wire’s mouth closed with almost an audible snap; the fire in her eyes, if not faded away, lost a lot of its intensity. More than just that one ‘what if’ had to be considered in the final calculation—the Machine Goddess might have made up the whole ‘the world is at peril’ situation or overdramatised; but if she didn’t lie, the mage of such a calibre would be too precious to lose, regardless of anything. The battle of common sense and fear darkened the unicorn’s eyes and twisted her face with a grimace so profusely, the Kirin hurried to give Wire some respite.

“Look, I’m not asking you to kiss him the next time you meet him, but could you not fight Sombra as soon as he enters your view?” Giving Wire’s sooty horn a pointed look, Night added, “At least, not until you recover from the magic burnout.”

Wire sagged, bitterly assenting, “I can try.” No less dejectedly, she muttered, “As if having my horn working makes any difference…”

With that, the conversation died and everyone returned to contemplating their immediate future in strained silence. Night stared at the floor, trying to imagine the dangers she would have to face. Under Wire’s furrowed brows her slightly mismatched eyes harboured doubts piling upon doubts. The changelings fared barely better as very little of their experience prepared them for something like this; nor could they count on it to be an average military operation when it involved Sombra and who knows what else lurking in the heart of the Crystal Empire. Only Teleta, unaffected by the inevitable warfare, refused to succumb to nervous tension—she leant into the aperture leading to the pilots’ compartment, half-disappearing. Upon returning, the changeling tapped Wire’s shoulder.

“Testing your self-control isn’t going to keep you waiting.”

Stunned for a heartbeat, the unicorn promptly recovered, perking up with a hopeful expression. “How long until—”

Her question turned into a hiss as a blinding flare filtered through the cockpit; her protest fit the chorus of groans and yelps—none was prepared for a sudden flood of brilliance. As soon as the equines blinked the pain away, they rushed to the door. Whilst the chitinous equines showed some appropriate restraint, the Kirin and unicorn found themselves stuck in the opening, side by side. The awkwardness went ignored by either of them—just as the changelings’ snickers—the two mares gawked at the sky aflame.

“It’s killing the Windigos!” Night whispered in utter awe; the distance failed to render the sight any less cosmical.

The Praetorians’ training was tested at that moment like never before, though even with their eyes undergoing a swift transformation to adjust to the situation and satiate their curiosity, the soldiers could only grumble in discontent—the Kirin’s voluptuous mane blotted out almost all the view.

Wire, however, didn’t hurry to share the commissioner’s wonder; after observing the sundered with the flames firmament for a few seconds, she grimly stated:

“Dragon fire.”

Unsure if she would be glad to hear a positive answer or not, Night asked, “Is it Spike?”

“His fire isn’t green anymore,” Wire worriedly noted; her hoof then shook the pilot’s shoulder. “We’ve got to get there as soon as possible!”

The radiance began to fade, leaving behind the rapidly dispersing veil of mist. Any moment it would reveal the coveted northern empire, yet none of that seemed to matter as the mysterious blaze causing it to return posed enough concern by itself—everyone restlessly shifted trying to better look and figure out what ruptured the heavens.

“I can’t go any faster,” replied the changeling stallion at the controls; even he sounded disappointed.

The co-pilot in the next seat abruptly reported, her voice laden with urgency, “Incoming arcane signatures. Equinoid crystals. Too many to count.”

The steam hanging above the Crystal Empire finally disappeared, but a dark cloud still obscured the sight of the gemstone spires. A tenebrous mass moved on its own, approaching the changelings’ landing party at lightning speed. The hovercraft veered in a futile attempt to avoid the nebula glistening with metal, but it still hit the hovercraft like a sandstorm or, rather, a swarm of locusts. Something bombarded the fuselage panelling with sharp powerful pings.

Everyone at the cockpit—Wire and Night included—jerked back when one of the hurricane’s ‘particles’ landed on the glass. An insect-like mechanism wasted no time and started to drill its way into the cabin. The panel of armoured canopy split with cracks, though still held together… yet. A keening whine whistled through the vessel as a sharp borer breached inside, less than a hoof length from the pilot’s muzzle. Golden glow enveloped the drilling machine and it vanished back into the swarm of its metal kin assaulting other hovercrafts.

“What was that?” Night asked the unicorn, who, grimacing, rubbed her horn.

The Kirin got no answer—not that Wire would have been able to give it to her; both mares were pulled back into the main compartment in the most undignified fashion possible—by their tails.

“You’re asking too many questions, commissioner,” Teleta barked before they got a chance to rouse the indignation. “Wire—no magic, I don’t need you out of action when we haven’t yet arrived.”

The hovercraft shook.

This time the changeling addressed more than just two mares as she ordered, “Get ready!”

“We’re losing altitude!” the co-pilot composedly informed her passengers. “Looks like those things went for the engines.”

“Now we’re going faster,” the pilot joined her, in a voice, however, strained. “Grab onto something!”

The desire to let emerald flames engulf her gnawed on the changeling queen’s mind exactly equally to how fiercely cold nibbled on her chitin. The magic fire would have scarcely brought any warmth with it, but it could leave behind a creature less susceptible to the harsh northern winds fueled by the fury of the cosmos itself. A gryphon’s plumage would have fixed her problem and saved precious energy for another metamorphosis when it came to the moment of battle. However, doing so would give an impression of her either being eager for the carnage or the winter getting the better of her. So, Delight shadowed the king with her teeth clenched and gait expressing not even a fraction of the confidence and anticipation with which the stallion led his little army through the snow; though, were she not freezing, such feelings would have hardly gone through her mind.

“You should be honoured,” the king commented on her struggle to keep up with his pace—steady yet composed. “Not many have had a chance to stand where you are now.”

Beneath the snow crust threatening to crumble under the weight of a tall, if not so regal at the moment mare, beneath the shallow layer of rime-blighted dirt lay bones of thousands that had once gazed upon the shimmering gates of the Crystal Empire; before their futile sacrifices, an army led by two demi-goddesses bedewed those infertile fields with blood.

Able to momentarily stop her teeth from chattering, the queen answered only with, “I’d rather be somewhere warm.”

“Don’t embarrass me, Heterocera.” Sombra remained unimpressed by her demeanour. “We are on the precipice of a new era, an era we will usher to this world.”

A shudder quaked the changeling’s tormented flesh, begot not by the air’s frigid touch; she just realised—her predecessor, too, had marked an epoch in Equestria as she tried to save the Swarm. The king’s words summoned one more worry, no less dire.

“It almost sounds like you aren’t going to stop with the Crystal Empire.”

“You lack vision so sorely, it physically hurts to witness.” Delight swallowed the insult stoically, also ignoring the look of utter condescension accompanying that jab; the unicorn continued, explaining in an exaggeratedly charitable tone, “Freeing the Crystal Empire is going to break a centuries-old stalemate, causing a massive shift of forces everywhere.”

In a world largely dominated by technology and starving for resources—precious gemstones, the heart of any arcane device—any economy salivated at the thought of the Crystal Empire becoming accessible, but any nation feared the semi-sentient blizzard choosing their lands as its new residence. The king had somehow discovered a solution to the Windigo conundrum, thus promising to break the shackles of fear and frost holding the realm hostage. However, it might not be the thaw everyone waited for—rivulets promised to run crimson.

“But of course!” The changeling theatrically slapped her forehead. “Being free to resort to violence because it won’t bring the Windigos upon their heads is a good thing for everyone!”

Somehow, Sombra managed to eye the queen colder than the winds whipped at her and deadpanned, “You might want to leave politics to me.”

“Wouldn’t that leave me doing your dirty work?” retorted Delight, squinting at the stallion; his army would lack in numbers no matter how much prowess in battle they possessed.

“Not unless you miss a chance to prove to be worth more than my henchpony,” the king deflected the accusation and repeated, “Please, do not disappoint me, Heterocera—I have high hopes for you.”

Before his words could be contemplated, Sombra abruptly stopped; his warriors followed suit with a disturbing lack of lag. The changeling, however, stumbled one more step and not just because the cold rendered her muscles uncooperative—focused on bickering with the king and fighting off the winter’s molestations, she had failed to notice the change in the snowstorm’s nature. Mere steps away, the violent gales no longer belonged to nature; nor could they be traversed even by the warlock and his zealots emboldened by the flame of retribution. The torrent of ice shards promised to tear any flesh apart not unlike the maelstrom of eldritch darkness which had once broken through Black Star. The painful flashback almost succeeded in sending Heterocera fleeing by overwhelming her with a suffocating sense of déjà vu—she was about to commit something truly atrocious, if unavoidable for the survival of her children.

The churning in her guts only got worse when the reality split to let the Machine Goddess join them, accompanied by all twelve of her Harbingers. The equinoid would have been graced by a scathing look from the queen either way, yet the changeling tried her best to set the arcanium alicorn aflame with the force of her will as the Machine Goddess greeted both her and the warlock with but a curt nod; nor did it help how Sombra only smiled in return—there seemed to be something Delight was missing.

The equinoid met Heterocera’s mute wrath with trademark composure; the queen couldn’t fume for long anyways. As much as the mechanical deity’s appearance coincided with the unpleasant memory, her presence reminded the changeling of Hope and the ancient wind-eaten mockery of the castle she and her children called home. Would it also be their grave? Had the dwindling love supply already started to weaken them? For whereas cold bit into her flesh with no mercy, a slowly but steadily growing void gnawed on her insides with the deadly curse of her chitinous kind.

Delight silenced the panic rising in her mind; not listening to her thoughts left her with dubious alternatives—to engage in a conversation with two equines she didn’t even want to see, or to bask in the presence of the spectral corpses circling the place where her salvation might await. Sombra absolved her of that choice; like a smouldering ember, his curved horn weakly glowed, exposing a web of cracks on the dark bone. Nevertheless, shadows obediently coiled around the unicorn till they coalesced into a singular object—a bulbous sphere languidly pulsing with jade light.

A single look at it, a seemingly harmless item, was enough for a wave of dread to wash over the changeling. Not being adept in arcane secrets, even she could tell with no mistake—whatever the warlock held in his magic, it brimmed with energy. The Machine Goddess’ veneer of calm started crumbling, as she, too, stared at the orb in horror, solidifying Delight’s apprehension.

The stallion’s horn flared up once more and the sphere answered in the same fashion—its glow rapidly strengthened, but before it could reach blinding intensity, the shadows consumed the orb, warping it somewhere else.

A heartbeat later, the sky bloomed.

The expanding surge of fire left Heterocera as a gryphon one thought away from zooming into the now tainted firmament; ragged rends in the tapestry of reality opened their maws to swallow the equinoid goddess and her entourage. Only the king stood motionless—triumphant—observing the calamity of his own making.

The roar of flames waxed, matching the incinerating radiance descending from beneath the clouds torn apart. But not only the flood of gleed contributed to the deafening noise—the howls of exultation joined the sound of the atmosphere burning. The Windigos, the undying heralds of endless stillness, thrashed in the ruptured sky, fighting each other to get close to the only kind of magic able to terminate their miserable preternatural existence; they leapt into the cleansing light, dissolving in it.

Just as the heat finally reached the equines gathered before the scene of the impossible happening, almost prompting some of them to leave once again, the inferno in the heavens finally began to ebb. And as it did so, shrinking, the fading fire as if sucked the last of the Windigos with it, leaving behind lingering warmth.

Even considering the inevitable unwelcome consequences of the ancient menace gone, one should have been able to revel in the freedom for a moment, at least. Yet none of those who witnessed the era of an inescapable cold coming to a conclusion, albeit through questionable means, had a hint of a smile on their muzzles. The king himself no longer smirked with sheer confidence and pride.

Melted into mist, snow could conceal the Crystal Empire no more, though… none would dare to call that place such, for it had retained almost nothing in common with the city of glimmering gemstone palaces.

A black deathlike abyss yawned at the Sun, an aperture as wide as the kingdom of old used to be, if not more vast. Like a clot, a mass of metal resided upon that stab wound in permafrost; rows of capsules trailed into the bottomless underground void and in their murky reddish liquid forms stirred, curled in a foetal position. The gargantuan amalgam bristled with arrays of towers; amidst them stood a single remnant of the Crystal Empire—the central spire shimmered in the sunlight, dazzling the observers. The rest of the place teemed with machines; they crawled over every fragment of the massive factory attuned to survive any cold, whilst ceaselessly harvesting crystal flesh.

“Face what you created, the Goddess of Machines,” Sombra was the first to break the stunned silence, mocking the equinoid.

“That is as much my creation as it is yours, the God of Shadows,” she spat at him and vanished along with her children before he could give her even a scathing glance.

Heterocera couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight so abhorrent—a land of artificial life that had prospered in the shadow of Equestria, whilst also quenching its greed. As she gazed at what had the Crystal Empire turned into, despair soaked her every fibre—what were the chances of the city’s new masters keeping a library and its contents intact? How worse things were going to get now?

“Focus on your part, changeling queen,” Sombra’s voice snapped her out of the stupor; as she blankly gazed at him, the stallion added, “I’ll take care of the rest.”

His ponies had already begun to deploy a camp; tiny explosions of black mist marked the arrival of crates with weapons—instantly opened to pass the blades and guns around; the equines readied themselves for the battle with frightening speed.

A sudden movement standing out from the polished motions of soldiers caught Delight’s attention—a strange pair descending from the sky. An armoured pegasus and a dragon landed not far from the unrolling camp; Rainbow Dash, the queen realised. The dragon she failed to recognise, but something about her seemed oddly familiar.

Rainbow gave the ‘Crystal Empire’ a very long look, despite having had a great opportunity to observe the city from the air. The pegasus presently engaged in a staring contest with Sombra, but it was abruptly dropped as both of them almost simultaneously whipped their heads to squint at something in the side opposite to the nightmare that had emerged from the blizzard. The changeling followed their gazes, narrowing her eyes, too—an unnecessary measure as her borrowed eagle eyes should have given her an advantage.

Above the snow, a fleet of hovercrafts sailed the winds—the vessels belonging to her Hive’s hangars.

Author's Note

English isn't my native language; though I try my best and use various tools to aid myself, I'm aware that a result is far from perfect. That said, if you notice anything that you think should be fixed—please let me know.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this story so far.
Stay awesome.