The Nightmare Technomancer

by Phantomdust

Rating: mature
Tags: Gore, Violence, Dark, Death, Alternate Universe, Human, Nightmare Moon, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Science Fiction
Length: 33204

A technomancer gets cast out of his universe by a god and ends up in a version of Equestria where Nightmare Moon won.

Gerhardt Mechanica, the High Lord of the Research and Development branch of the Human Kingdom, has been cast out of his universe by Silvanus, a lesser god of nature with a serious grudge against him. However, the Equestria he ends up in is not like the one we all know. Instead it is a land cast in eternal night and ruled over by Nightmare Moon, due in no small part to the future temporal interference of Starlight Glimmer. In this world there is no friendship, Harmony is dead, and peace is non-existent there is only fear, nightmares, and violence.

Sometimes to fight a nightmare, one must become a nightmare themselves.

(This is an alternate version of The Mechanical Technomancer in Equestria: Technology is Magic. It is strongly recommended that you read that first otherwise you may lack some context for this story. At the very least you should read the beginning of the prologue in that version before reading this version.)

(I'm not sure if this counts as a sequel so I'm treating it as if it's its own thing for the moment)

Published 2021-02-09 17:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-08-17 21:11:34 UTC

Chapter 1

Gerhardt felt an absolutely immense wave of magic energy wash over him and everything turned white with the peripherals of his vision being the only color he could see as they were filled with ever changing fractal-like patterns that made it appear almost as though he was looking through some demented kaleidoscope. As soon as he was fully inside the vortex and it closed behind him, he began to experience a sensation as though the world had fallen out from under him and he was falling through reality itself, for lack of a better term.

Realizing he wasn't dead, at least not yet, he attempted to analyze the wild raging magic in the pure white space surrounding him but oddly he found it utterly impossible. It was as if he were trying to analyze an ever changing and ever moving fluid that operated in a non-euclidean space rather than studying actual tangible magic. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Attempting to manipulate this "fluid" or change it in any way, shape, or form he found was equally impossible. It was like trying to mold air or water like clay with his bare hands in a universe where the laws of physics worked completely differently to those of his own universe. Trying to use actual magic from his own energy reserves on this "fluid" did absolutely nothing but slowly drain what remained of his energy reserves.

Opening a writing program in his head, he began writing down notes and observations about this strange unusable pseudo-magic. His iolite vocalizer was no longer being shut down by an external force and out of habit he unconsciously started muttering to himself as he wrote his notes down. After a moment, however, he noticed something that made him pause. He just realized that he couldn't actually hear his own voice. Blinking in surprise, he tried saying something again. True absolute silence was all he heard. He couldn't even so much as hear the sounds or vibrations of his own body as he moved. It was as if his audio processors had been completely removed from his head entirely but a quick diagnostic check assured him that they were still there and were all working properly.

Curious, he reached into the chest of his robe and pulled out his ornate gold and silver concealed magic pistol he always carried with him. Flipping a tiny switch on the side and setting it from "Silent" to "Shriek" he fired a single shot off into the ether as an experiment to see if he might be able to hear something louder then his voice. Nothing. It appeared that sound just didn't exist in whatever this place was.

Even stranger, however, was what happened to the beam his pistol had fired. As the silver colored ray of magic energy shot off into the vast nothingness, Gerhardt watched as it bent, stretched, twisted, expanded, shrunk, turned numerous different colors, disappeared, reappeared, turned and shot back towards him only to pass harmlessly through his body as if either he or it didn't really exist, and many other things before it eventually just vanished again seemingly for good this time. Simply put, what happened to that beam was complete and utter bullshit. Hell, at this point he wouldn’t have even been surprised if the beam had turned into literal bull shit at some point during whatever the hell it was he had just witnessed.

Out of habit Gerhardt sighed to himself inaudibly. ‘I suppose that means this place’s laws of physics operate on non-standard logic then. Damn it all.’ He thought to himself in frustration. That meant if he wanted to figure out how this place truly worked he was going to have to use “Chaos Theory” which had always been something he absolutely hated ever since it had first been invented, yet had still been forced to use on multiple occasions as it proved to be extremely useful in certain circumstances. He had very little patience for dealing with the underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization inherent to Chaos Theory and found working with it extremely frustrating and tedious. He very much preferred the pure solid logic and order of technology and standard physics over supposed “chaos” any day. As such, he very much so wanted to get out of whatever this place was and back to a realm, plane of existence, or whatever else so long as it at the very least had a relatively normal set physics where things were relatively simple to understand and actually made sense, as soon as physically possible.

Not really sure what else to do, and having lost all interest in figuring out how the physics of this place worked upon discovering that he would have to use chaos theory to do so, he put his pistol away and continued to "feel" around in this pseudo-magic fluid for a few minutes, slowly reaching deeper into the seemingly endless ocean of the stuff. Eventually he found something that he could only describe as "solid" in that infinitely vast expanse of "fluid". It felt strange, alien, yet oddly familiar. As if with the instincts that he should technically no longer even have he almost immediately knew exactly what it was that he had found, though how he knew this was still a complete and utter mystery to him. It was a world, an entire universe even. Yet, while it felt somewhat similar to his original universe, he knew it was definitely not his original universe. He also felt himself rapidly being dragged away from it as if he was being pulled by the rapids of a raging river, while it was simultaneously moving away from him as it was also being dragged in a completely different direction.

He took a few microseconds to think, which for him was the equivalent to several hours for an unaugmented human due to his brain's drastically enhanced processing power. According to his internal chronometer he had in fact spent close to half an hour in this "place", if it could even be called that, already and he calculated that if he was being dragged this rapidly and this universe was being dragged just as rapidly in a completely different direction then he was already much too far away from his original universe to ever be able to find it again, let alone return to it.

The universe he had just found felt somewhat different but he estimated that it should probably be close enough to his original universe that he believed he should be able to survive in it. There was no guarantee if or when he would find another universe if he passed this one, and even if he did find another there was no guarantee he would be able to survive in it like there was with this universe. The gods only knew how long it would take for him to find another potentially habitable universe in... whatever this was. He also had no idea where he would end up if he just let this "current" continue pulling him along as it was. That was assuming it was even taking him anywhere since it could easily just be throwing him around completely randomly and without direction, like a leaf caught in a hurricane or a tornado.

After much deliberation he decided he had no other choice and followed these strange instincts he shouldn't even have in order to "latch on to" the universe he had found. Suddenly he felt his "direction", for lack of a better term, change and felt himself rapidly being pulled towards the universe he had latched on to. Finally he collided with the universe and felt himself being thrown towards a seemingly random location within. Suddenly he felt something — possibly multiple things — watching him and detected his "velocity" shift ever so slightly to send him somewhere else entirely. He immediately assumed his uninvited entrance to this universe had caught the attention of a few of whatever spirits or deities managed it and they were the ones who were changing his course for whatever reason. If he were to guess, they likely altered his course to force him to end up in the center of a star or a black hole or something to that effect to dispose of him as they would view him as an intruder. If he was correct, he was effectively doomed as it was much too late for him to do anything about it now.

With a noiseless sigh, he accepted his inevitable demise. He had been expecting this day to come for a very long time, he just never knew how, where, or when it would happen. Honestly, he was more surprised it hadn't happened sooner, especially in his line of work and with his political position. He had simply been lucky enough to survive this long, with quite a bit of help from his augmentations, but he was still mortal so his luck was not infinite and it seemed that it had finally run out. His only regret was that he didn't have salivary glands, lungs, or mouth muscles so he was physically incapable of spitting in Silvanus' face before he threw him through that vortex as a last great act of defiance, but he supposed that his words alone would just have to suffice.

As the bright white light vanished and along with it the feeling of being watched, Gerhardt realized he was still alive and had apparently been incorrect in his assumption about the intentions of whatever had redirected his course. However before he could register anything else, his sensors — which had a one mile effective radius — had very nearly exploded from a sudden influx of an absolutely massive amount of data as they immediately began detecting hundreds of thousands if not millions of energy readings all around him in every possible direction. It was almost as if he was in the middle of a forest and every living thing in said forest that wasn’t either a single celled organism or microscopically small had some sort of connection to magic. Not only that but only a fraction of the energy readings he was detecting were consistent with actual mages while most of the rest were not even remotely consistent with anything he had ever encountered before — though he was able to tell that almost all of them were mortal — and effectively all of them were somewhat unique in some way shape or form. None of which should have been even remotely possible based on everything he knew about magic.

A mortal being born with a connection to magic was a highly uncommon trait and was almost completely random as it had to do with how an individual's soul formed before birth rather than biology or genetics (though two mages reproducing did have a far higher chance of having their offspring be born with such a connection, however this phenomenon had absolutely nothing to do with genetics). Furthermore, when something — be it a member of a sapient species or even just a mere animal — was born with a connection to magic, they were always capable of using magic and thus were always, without fail, a mage. Every. Single. Time. Without exception. It was completely binary. Either one was born with the ability to use magic or they were not, there was absolutely no middle ground. As such all of these strange energy readings made no sense to him whatsoever.

However, he was unable to really consider these issues for very long as he was very quickly forced to lower the effective range of his sensors to a maximum radius of approximately 50 feet as they were not designed to handle anywhere near that much raw data all at once and were in grave danger of overheating and melting to a useless puddle of slag or outright exploding inside of him which could have potentially damaged a few of his other systems.

As soon as the range was lowered and he was no longer being absolutely bombarded with excessive amounts of data, however, he finally noticed something somewhat alarming that had previously gotten lost amongst the millions of other energy signatures. Even within the current drastically lowered radius of his sensors were still multiple energy readings. One was consistent with that of a demigod, several others were consistent with those of mages, while others were unlike anything he had ever encountered before. He panicked for a microsecond believing he had been sent straight into a trap of some sort, when he noticed something odd about the demigod, mages, and not-mages. Their energy signatures all seemed to lack proper control and coherency and seemed strangely weak, atrophied even, as if they lacked proper training and had never in their lives taken the time to properly maintain their magical fitness. Realizing this, he was no longer concerned about being in any danger but he was now more confused than ever.

Curious, he finally looked around and found himself standing in the middle of what looked like a throne room filled with strange, horrifically deformed, almost unnaturally colorful, tiny, mutant, equine-esque parodies of creatures with extremely exaggerated features that wouldn't look out of place in a child's picture book. Some of said pseudo-equine creatures had traits such as long spike-like horns sticking out of the center of their skull or uselessly tiny presumably vestigial wings on their backs that made them vaguely resemble unicorns or pegasus from ancient Elven and Dwarven mythology respectively, while others lacked either. Most of them appeared to be wearing primitive armor and some even wielded spears.

The demigod he was detecting — which appeared to be significantly larger than the rest of the pseudo-equine creatures and appeared to be some sort of black or very dark blue hybrid pegasus unicorn creature — was currently sitting on a throne and was somehow already glaring at him menacingly despite the fact that only a few milliseconds had passed. It was very clearly the ruler of these other equines.

Slightly intimidated by this demigod since it was currently the only being in the room that could actually pose an actual threat to him even with its magic atrophied as it was and it had somehow managed to react to his presence in a matter of milliseconds and how immediately aggressive it appeared to be towards him, Gerhardt immediately decided he didn’t want to become enemies with it if he didn’t have to. He couldn’t afford enemies at the moment, let alone an enemy that presumably ruled over an entire kingdom and especially not a demigod on top of that.

With that in mind the first thing he did was activate the universal translation device that was built into his brain while carefully raising a single hand so as to not provoke any of the creatures and lowering his hood in an attempt to look slightly less intimidating or suspicious. He then let his hand fall back to his side and said, “Greetings. I come in peace. My sincerest apologies for this sudden intrusion, my arrival here was not by choice. I would much prefer to avoid any trouble. So if there are no objections, I will be leaving now. Good day to you all.”

He was about to bow politely and turn to start heading towards the massive door that he could only assume was the exit. Before he could, however, the demigod shouted, “Halt! I don’t know who or what you are but you dare intrude in my palace uninvited and you think I am just going to allow you to leave?!”

“Again, it was not my choice. I was sent here against my will. If I had it my way I would still be back in my lab in my own kingdom and this would have never happened in —” Gerhardt tried to defend himself only to be cut off mid sentence.

“Silence worm! I care not for your pathetic excuses! Guards, execute this metal beast!” The demigod commanded. Her soldiers immediately began moving to follow her orders.

Gerhardt simply frowned slightly and reached into the chest of his robes with his right hand. Grasping the handle of his concealed magic pistol but leaving it in its holster for the moment he stated in a dangerously calm voice, “I said I would prefer to avoid any unnecessary conflict. Please just allow me to leave or I will be forced to defend myself.”

The guards ignored him and just kept coming while the demigod just scoffed as if what he had just said was completely ridiculous. Some of the unicorns fired beams at him all but one of which hit him in the torso, burned holes through his robe, and slightly dented the magically reinforced copper plates that made up his exterior, causing his pain receptors to flare up.

“Gah! Gods damn that stings! Very well, if you refuse to see reason and truly wish to kill me so badly then so be it! You cannot say that I failed to give you fair warning!” Gerhardt growled furiously as he tore his teleportation pistol out of its holster and pointed the ornate weapon at the mutant equine creatures. Allowing an advanced targeting program to take control of his arm, the limb began to move on its own as it very quickly aimed his sidearm at each of the creatures in turn and pulled the trigger of his weapon twelve times in rapid succession. A deafeningly loud otherworldly shriek as though reality itself were screaming in agony filled the air, rupturing some of the guards eardrums, as the inch wide silver beam lanced from the barrel of the pistol.

Each beam slammed into their targets leaving inch wide holes dead center through their heads killing their targets instantly. The bodies of the guards flopped lifelessly to the floor one after the other. Just as the last guard fell and Gerhardt was about to shoot the demigod in the leg as a warning, a powerful beam of dark blue energy slammed into his hand. This destroyed his weapon and all but ruined his hand.

“YOU INSOLENT WHELP! YOU DARE KILL MY GUARDS?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?!” The demigod roared at him as she stepped off her throne.

“No I don’t and I don’t care! I just wanted to leave peacefully! You’re the one who decided to attack me, now you’re going to die for it!” Gerhardt shouted back, raising his other hand and casting a powerful combat spell. Suddenly a large copper orb the size of his head shot out from his hand and towards the demigod at blinding speeds. However the demigod managed to raise a shield in time and managed to deflect the copper orb away from herself. As such, instead of hitting her it hit a wall and exploded with the force of an artillery shell. Bits of stone went flying like shrapnel as the entire wall and part of the roof began to collapse.

Gerhardt immediately began using telekinesis to redirect all of the falling debris towards the demigod, to which the demigod responded by firing an even more powerful blast of energy at Gerhardt which hit him in the chest and sent him flying. He crashed through the large door behind him smashing it to splinters.

Forcing himself to get back up Gerhardt’s entire body was enveloped by a pitch black aura as he began lacing some of the most horrific curses he knew into an absolutely devastating war spell. If this didn’t kill that bitch then nothing would. “DIE DAMN YOU!” Gerhardt roared, his voice heavily distorted from rage.

Hundreds of absolutely gigantic tendrils of pitch black arcane energy reminiscent of powerful arcs of electricity made of pure darkness erupted from the ground and began ripping the entire castle apart as if it were made of wet tissue paper killing everyone inside and cursing everything they touched. As the entire castle was collapsing, however, something shot up out of the rubble. Adjusting his eyes to allow him to see better in the darkness of the night, he saw the demigod. She appeared to be heavily injured and patches of her flesh were visibly beginning to rot away. That being said she was still very much alive and looked unbelievably angry.

Seeing her, Gerhardt immediately raised his good hand and cast a primitive but still very powerful and extremely lethal combat spell at her. Several massive bolts of lightning lanced forth from his hand, however the demigod seemed to have predicted what he was going to do and had raised a shield to block the lightning. It worked for the first two blasts of lightning but the third managed to shatter the barrier. He was about to fire a fourth blast to finish her off, but before he could she retaliated by flying away from his line of sight at extremely high speeds. Once she was in the air behind him she fired a huge beam of magic at him.

Gerhardt didn’t have time to react as the beam slammed into him. The blast was so powerful that it completely destroyed his clothes leaving only scraps of cloth and leather hanging off of him, ripped off his already damaged arm, severely damaged his left leg, heavily dented his back, ripped off portions of the first layer of copper plates that made up his exterior including those that made up his face leaving his steel teeth and the mechanisms under his face completely exposed as it used his body to dig a huge trench in the ground. When it was over he growled in fury and began climbing out of the trench.

The demigod stared at him in a mixture of disturbance at his current appearance, shock that he had somehow managed to survive that blast, and rage. “You don’t know who I am?! I am Nightmare Moon, Queen of Equestria and ruler of the Night! Now, do you have any last words before I destroy you, you insolent metal abomination?!” She demanded, a dark blue aura surrounding her horn once more as she prepared to cast another spell in order to kill him.

Gerhardt took a few milliseconds to evaluate his current situation. In his current state he knew that there was no way he was going to win this fight. He was too damaged and low on Arcane Energy. He needed to escape, gather resources, conduct repairs on himself, establish a base of operations, and make new tools and weapons. As such he cast an optical and auditory illusion spell and created a large flash of blinding light and a deafening boom. It had the effect of a flashbang grenade thus disorienting the furious and wounded demigod. Then he quickly created a portal leading high into the sky straight above him. Grabbing himself with telekinesis he quickly pulled himself through the portal before closing it behind him.

Now floating in the sky, he took a moment to look around and saw a large forest surrounding the now ruined castle. That would be the perfect place for him to escape through. That bitch of a demigod would never find him in there. As such he quickly looked around for a place for him to open a portal to. Unfortunately the canopy was a bit too thick for him to see through which unfortunately meant that he couldn’t open one leading all the way to the ground. As such he just resorted to opening one above the trees far in the distance. Floating through it he carefully lowered himself through the branches and leaves until he was finally on the ground once more. Then he began limping away, trying his best to get lost in the forest in order to minimize the chances that the demigod would find him.

The very instant he had entered the forest he felt the anger and malice of the Nature Spirits that lived there but he didn’t have the time to deal with them. Not when an angry demigod could potentially be hunting him down in order to try and kill him. After a few hours had passed and he was finally confident enough in the fact that the demigod either wasn’t searching for him or couldn’t find him he finally stopped walking and started thinking.

His tools inside his portable tool kit had either been lost or destroyed in the battle alongside his clothes. Now he truly had nothing. Not his universe, not his world, not his kingdom, not his soldiers, not his lab, not his experiments, not his tools, hell not even the clothes off his back. The only thing he had was his life and he had come within inches of losing that as well! He wasn’t going to stand for it! While he may never return to his own universe, he would not just sit idly by doing nothing for the rest of eternity. No! Even if he had to build everything from scratch he was going to make a new lab here in this world and would continue his research, Silvanus and “Nightmare Moon” be damned!

For that he needed materials. There was plenty of wood around for him to use to build his lab but he needed more than that. He needed metal and crystals. Fortunately he knew just the spell to help him find some. It was developed by the Dwarves thousands of years before the War of Survival to help them locate new veins of ores and gems for them to mine. If there were any sources of metal or crystals within a mile from him, he would immediately know where they were. Raising his good hand above his head he cast the spell and detected a large source of both ore and crystals a ways to the east. As such he immediately set off limping in that direction. No matter how long it took, he would rebuild.

[Meanwhile on Earth]

With Gerhardt’s disappearance the Human Kingdom was currently in complete and utter chaos. So many pathetic humans were running around like decapitated chickens. It was just so amusing. Once the chaos subsided a bit, they would be forced to declare war on Silvanus for what he had done. It was all part of his master plan for revenge, which had been almost eight hundred years in the making. Still, until then he would simply watch the Humans and laugh at their plight. They deserved this and so much worse for perverting his gift in such a disgusting fashion.

Speaking of watching Humans, he was currently watching Gerhardt via the tether he had tied to the bastard’s soul as a back up plan before tossing him into that vortex. Most of what he had seen had been incredibly boring. The majority of it was just Gerhardt floating in the primordial space between universes. The most interesting thing that had happened to him while he was there was when he had decided to try firing his teleportation pistol. Even that only lasted for about a minute before the metal bastard was just floating in primordial white space again.

However that all changed as soon as Gerhardt had figured out how to latch onto passing universes and ended up being dragged into one. There seemed to be a bit of time dilation between this universe and that one but it was nothing Silvanus couldn’t put up with. The moment Gerhardt was dragged into that universe he had ended up in some castle and was assaulted by the demigod who apparently owned it and ruled over the entire kingdom Gerhardt had ended up in. The bastard nearly died in the ensuing battle, but so had the pathetic demigod that he had been fighting. However as per fucking usual the bastard survived yet another situation that by all rights should have killed him.

Silvanus found this both exceedingly frustrating and somewhat relieving. On the one hand he definitely wanted the bastard to suffer and die. On the other hand he was still extremely worried about how the Greater Gods would react to his most recent actions so he needed the bastard alive — at least for now — so he could pull him back to this universe if need be.

Still watching this battle gave Silvanus a bit of an idea. He may have needed the freak alive for the moment, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t subtly influence things to make the freak’s existence in that universe a living nightmare. All he needed to do to ensure this would happen would be to get in contact with the very demigod that Gerhardt had just been fighting. Then he could help her by telling her about a few exercises that lesser beings like her and mortal mages needed to do in order to maintain their magical fitness. Then once she was more powerful and Gerhardt had time to build up a base of operations and defenses enough to just barely survive, he could tell the demigod exactly where he was hiding so she could seek her vengeance.

This would be perfect! The worthless bastard would have no peace even in the separate universe he found himself in! Silvanus was going to make absolutely certain of it. He would turn that entire world into Gerhardt’s own personal hell! A large malevolent smile spread across Silvanus’ face as he extremely cautiously sent a tiny thread of power through the tether attached to Gerhardt’s soul and tied it to some nearby plants.

Once Gerhardt was far enough away Silvanus would then begin very very carefully working his way over to the demigod. Then he would have a little conversation with the demigod and may help her get rid of any curses that were still lingering from her battle with Gerhardt in order to build up a bit of trust and good will with her. After that his plan would already be set in motion and as long as he was extremely careful so as to not to get caught by the Greater Gods nor the gods that ruled over that universe there would be nothing that could stop it from coming to fruition! He couldn’t wait to see the bastard suffer!

Author's Note

This chapter is a bit short for my tastes without the rest of the beginning of the prologue of the original story. However, I was a bit worried that if I included that it may not count as being different enough from the original. So It's a bit cut down just to err on the side of caution. Either way I suppose it shall simply have to suffice. Well, hopefully the rest of the chapters will be just as long as the chapters in the original version.

Fun Fact: I have had this idea stuck in my head for the longest time. Originally I was planning for it to be a one off horror chapter in the original version of the story when I finally got to episodes 25 and 26 of season 5. However, I finally broke down and decided to make it its own story.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Chapter 2

It had been about two and a half months since Gerhardt’s encounter with Nightmare Moon. He had already made quite a bit of progress in rebuilding. His current base of operations was in a rocky mountainous area to the east of the Everfree Forest. When he first got there he had found the skeletons of a few bipedal dog-like creatures and disposed of them before he started using magic to dig up and mine as many crystals and ores as he possibly could. This area was strangely rich in a wide variety of both crystals and metal ores for some reason. Not that he was complaining. It made his job a lot easier.

In the months that he had been here he had been working nonstop the entire time and it had already paid off. First he had managed to build himself some new tools and had used them to repair himself. Now he already had three light mining golems constantly gathering more materials for him. He even had a new lab built by a pair of construction golems he had made specifically for that purpose.

He didn’t want to cut down too many trees otherwise he ran the risk of being discovered. As such the lab was mostly made of stone with only the floor, roof, and door being made of wood. Other than that it was an extremely simple and utilitarian structure. It had no decorations, no windows, or anything else of the sort. There was a small factory attached to it where the mining golems would dump all the crystals and ores they collected.

The factory would then separate the crystals from the ores and would dump each type of crystal into yet another organization system that would store the crystals in metal crates based on their type and classification. The ores would be dumped into several separate smelteries designated for each individual type of ore. The smelteries would then refine them into metal and turn them into bars that Gerhardt could use. The bars would then be stored in a similar manner as the crystals. Other than that the factory didn’t really produce anything else quite yet since Gerhardt didn’t exactly have any need to mass produce anything at the moment. After all he was the only one who would ever benefit from his machines any more, much to his chagrin, so what would be the point of mass producing anything?

Currently the only thing he still lacked were clothes to replace his old uniform, but he supposed it was fine since he was currently living in isolation. After all there would be no one around to see him like this and even if someone did wander all the way out here it wasn’t exactly like he had anything to hide. So in the end what did it really matter? Sure it was a bit humiliating to him but he had been in far more humiliating situations than this before.

He had considered building up some defenses just in case but ultimately decided it simply wasn’t worth the effort or the materials. After all it had been two and a half months and there hadn’t been so much as a single soul having passed by, save for some lizards and other animals. So he was pretty sure “Nightmare Moon” either was never looking for him in the first place or she couldn’t find him and had given up looking for him. So why bother preparing for something that would never happen?

Currently he was in his new lab conducting a few experiments. After he had gotten set up enough to start conducting experiments again he had noticed that magic was acting a bit strangely for some reason. As such his experiments currently revolved around trying to find out why. He was starting to discover that the laws of magic worked a bit differently in this universe. Apparently so did the more basic laws of physics since it appeared that this world was trapped in a state of perpetual night and he hadn’t seen the moon move so much as an inch in the sky the entire time he had been here.

He would have assumed that the moon was just locked in a geosynchronous orbit, if it weren’t for the fact that stars seemed to appear, disappear, and even move positions completely at random leading him to believe something else was going on. There were a few stars that remained constant but about half of them appeared to exhibit anomalous behaviour. It was also strange that the stars that were consistent didn’t seem to move whatsoever just like the moon as if the planet itself was not undergoing any sort of rotation for some reason. He planned to investigate why that was later on after he figured out more about the differences between magic in this universe vs magic in his universe.

As he was working his sensors — which he had extended the range from 50 feet to 250 feet since there weren’t many animals or insects in the area around where he had made his base — detected about twenty of the local Equines of all three types he had seen in Nightmare Moon’s castle slowly approaching his lab. They were currently spreading out as if to surround it. Some were approaching a bit faster than the rest. He assumed those ones were pegasi and they were currently flying, thus the reason they were able to move so fast while trying to remain stealthy.

He frowned and set down the device he was currently using to conduct his most recent experiment. Apparently he had been mistaken. Nightmare Moon had not given up trying to find him in order to kill him. He assumed that this group she sent was not meant to kill him, but instead was meant to scout out his base and find out what sort of defenses he had set up and sabotage them if at all possible. Their large numbers were likely to ensure at least one of them could escape if they ended up being discovered and he started killing them. After that they would get back out just as quickly as they came and would report their findings back to Nightmare Moon. Then she would send a much larger force to either subdue or kill him. Well he was not about to just sit back and let that happen! If he was going to go down then he would go down fighting!

Opening a portal to a position directly behind the intruders, he stepped through it. Immediately he saw that he was indeed correct. All of them were wearing armor that matched the armor the guards in the castle had been wearing. How unfortunate for them. If it had turned out that he was mistaken and they were just curious civilians that had somehow managed to stumble upon his lab, he would have let them live. He would have just erased their memories of this place before sending them on their way back to their homes. Now, however, he was going to kill them all. He would keep one of each breed alive for interrogation and study, but even the ones he kept alive would never be leaving this place.

Raising his hands, he pointed them at the group of equines and cast a non-lethal combat spell. Multiple arcs of electricity lanced forth from his hands and struck them one after the other. As soon as he cast the spell they were immediately alerted by the noise and noticed their comrades falling to the ground in twitching heaps. As such they reacted by trying to scatter in multiple directions, trying to get away to report back to Nightmare Moon. He wasn’t about to let them do that.

Having already stunned at least one of each breed he started using combat spells that were actually lethal. Bolts of copper colored arcane energy rapidly launched forth from his hands and slammed into the fleeing equines one after the other. The bolts exploded with the force of hand grenades on impact reducing them to little more than bloody chunks. Once the fleeing ones were all dead, he walked over to the bodies of the ones he stunned. There were a few extra so he picked up the extra ones and proceeded to snap their necks one after the other until there were only three left.

After that he picked up the three remaining equines with telekinesis and brought them into the factory portion of his lab. Setting them down he cast a sleeping spell on all three of them to ensure they wouldn’t wake up before he was ready to deal with them. Then he proceeded to start crafting some metal surgical chairs with built in restraints to keep the equines from being able to struggle. This process took a few hours. Once he was done, he removed each of the equines’ armor before shackling them into the metal surgical chairs. With that done, he slapped the pegasus awake.

“OW! Buck that hurts!” The pegasus exclaimed. Its voice sounded male. He had grey fur, a short dark grey mane, blue eyes, and a picture of a shield with wings on his rump.

“Silence.” Gerhardt ordered in an icy tone. “You are currently my prisoner and you shall be for the rest of your life. Now how long that life is and how difficult it is depends entirely on how cooperative you are and how useful you prove to be. I’m sure you know how this works. You will answer all of my questions and you will not lie to me. If you do then I will torture you until you decide to talk. Even if you bite off your tongue I will simply give you a new one and will remove your front teeth so you can’t bite it off again. If you still somehow manage to do so a second time, I will remove the rest of your teeth without anesthetics while you are still awake before giving you another new tongue. Now that you know all of the rules here is my first question. Let’s start off with a simple one. Were you sent here by Nightmare Moon?”

The pegasus snarled at him and shouted, “Buck you! I’m not telling you anything you bucking freak!”

Gerhardt sighed and said, “Wrong answer.” He then cast an intense pain curse on the pegasus.

The pegasus let out a tortured scream of agony and began struggling against his restraints. This continued on for about three minutes before the pegasus began begging him to stop. “PLEASE STOP! AHHHHH! I’LL TALK, JUST STOP!”

Gerhardt undid the curse and said, “Very well. I shall repeat my question in case the pain made you forget. Is Nightmare Moon the one who sent you here?”

“Yes...! She… She wanted us to scout the area… She wanted to make sure whether you were really here or not...“ The pegasus sobbed.

“I expected as much. Very well, how did she learn my location?” Gerhardt inquired.

“I don’t know! We’re just soldiers, she didn’t tell us anything! Please!” The pegasus pleaded.

“Judging by your heart rate and breathing, I suspect you’re telling the truth. How fortunate for you. Well since none of you will be reporting back to her, she will know that this is indeed where my base of operations is located. So do you know when she plans to attack me?” Gerhardt inquired.

“I… I can’t…” The pegasus stuttered in fear, clearly unwilling to tell him. “Please… I can’t…”

Gerhardt sighed again and said, “Why must you make this so hard on yourself? You know, I do not take pleasure in torturing you. Far from it. If I had it my way none of this would even be happening in the first place. You would be able to live your life in peace and I would be able to live my life in isolation. It is unfortunate that it has to be this way. However, it is even more unfortunate that you choose to force my hand.” He then cast a pain curse on the pegasus again.

“AHHHHHHHH! PLEASE! NO MORE! I CAN’T TELL YOU! SHE’LL HAVE MY FAMILY EXECUTED! I HAVE A WIFE AND FOALS! PLEEEEASE!” The pegasus screamed in agony.

“And she will try to kill me if you do not tell me. So I’m sorry but this isn’t going to stop until you talk. We can keep going for hours, days even, so please just make this easier on yourself. Besides, I have heard that excuse a million times. In my experience it is often not true and individuals just lie and claim that they do in a desperate attempt to gain sympathy. Unfortunately for you, you will gain no such sympathy from me.” Gerhardt said in a casual tone. This was nothing he hadn’t done before.

“A MONTH! SHE SAYS SHE PLANS TO ATTACK IN A MONTH!” The pegasus screamed.

Gerhardt undid the curse. He then let the pegasus rest a bit until his breathing and heart rate returned to normal. “Say that again. Does she really plan to attack in a month.” Gerhardt inquired skeptically.

“Y-yes… She says… She says she plans to attack in a month…” The pegasus sobbed, tears streamed heavily down his face.

Gerhardt frowned at him. “Judging by your heart rate and breathing, that was a lie. You know, I could just put a pain curse on you and leave you here screaming in agony for a few hours. I’m sure that will loosen your tongue a bit.”

The Pegasus’ eyes widened in terror. “NO! PLEASE! TWO WEEKS! THE ATTACK WILL BE IN TWO WEEKS!”

“Hm… I believe you. How unfortunate. That leaves me with very little time to prepare. Perhaps I should pack up what I can and run? I’ll have to think about this. In the meantime, I believe I have no further questions for you at the moment. I will be casting a spell to put you to sleep now and shall be interrogating your other two comrades to see if their answers match up with yours. Oh wait, before I do so what does your kind eat? I assume you are herbivores. I need you to tell me so I know what to feed you and your comrades. After all, you will be my prisoners and test subjects for quite some time and I do not want you starving to death. My methods may be a bit harsh but I am not unnecessarily cruel. I really would like to make your stay as comfortable as possible. It will be easier on all four of us.”

“Y-yes… We’re herbivores… We eat bread, hay, and flowers among other things…” The pegasus said fearfully.

“I see. Thank you for your cooperation. I shall keep that in mind. Now sleep.” Gerhardt said before casting another sleep spell on the pegasus. When the pegasus was asleep again, Gerhardt turned to the equine that lacked either a horn or wings. Since the pegasus was a male he assumed this one was female judging by the differences in bone and muscular structure. She had light blue fur, a darker blue mane, green eyes, and a picture of a shield with two spears crossed behind it. Gerhardt proceeded to slap her awake just like he had done to the pegasus.

“GAH! What the hay?!” The equine exclaimed as she was jolted awake.

“Silence.” Gerhardt ordered in an icy tone. “You are currently my prisoner and you shall be for the rest of your life. Now how long that life is and how difficult it is depends entirely on how cooperative you are and how useful you prove to be. I’m sure you know how this works. You will answer all of my questions and you will not lie to me. If you do then I will torture you until you decide to talk. Even if you bite off your tongue I will simply give you a new one and will remove your front teeth so you can’t bite it off again. If you still somehow manage to do so a second time, I will remove the rest of your teeth without anesthetics while you are still awake before giving you another new tongue. Now that you know all of the rules here is my first question. Let’s start off with a simple one. Were you sent here by Nightmare Moon?”

“Pfft! You actually think I’m going to tell you? Yeah right! I’m calling your bluff. You’re not going to do anything to me even if I don’t tell you anything!” The equine stated confidently.

Gerhardt sighed and said, “Tell that to the pegasus over there. I just finished interrogating him. Well either way, I suppose you require a bit of proof. Very well.” He then raised a hand and cast a pain curse on her. Like the pegasus she began screaming in agony and struggling against her restraints. Surprisingly, the metal was actually starting to bend. She was surprisingly strong. He needed to do something otherwise there was a very serious risk that she may break out of her restraints. As such he cast a paralysis spell on her so she could no longer move anything below her neck. It wouldn’t last forever but it should last long enough for him to finish the interrogation.

She continued screaming for almost a full five minutes before finally breaking, which was longer than the pegasus had lasted. After that, Gerhardt’s interrogation of her proceeded in much the same way as his interrogation of the pegasus. She said pretty much the exact same things as the pegasus had. When he got everything he needed out of her, he put her to sleep again.

Finally he turned to the unicorn. This one also appeared to be female. She had reddish fur, a pinkish mane, grey eyes, and oddly enough instead of having a picture of a shield on her rump like the other two she had a picture of a paint brush. Gerhardt couldn’t help but wonder what the significance of these pictures were and why the unicorn’s was so different from the other two. Regardless he slapped her awake just like he had done to the last two.

As soon as she woke up and found herself restrained a reddish aura surrounded her horn indicating she was about to try to cast a spell. Gerhardt immediately proceeded to grab her by the horn and threatened to snap it off her head if she tried using any magic. After that she put up the least resistance of all of them making her interrogation go a bit quicker and smoother than the last two. When it was over he put her to sleep again as well.

With his interrogation concluded for the moment he proceeded back outside and gathered up all the remains and chunks of meat and gore with a telekinetic spell and set them all in one big pile. He then cast a spell to light the corpses on fire. With that done he walked back into his lab.

This wasn’t good. He only had two weeks until Nightmare Moon and her soldiers came to try and kill him. He had to prepare as fast as physically possible. She will have likely learned from their previous encounter and would have come up with some sort of strategy to subdue him. Well he was not going to just sit idly by and let this happen!

Gods above, why had he been so foolish as to believe she had actually given up on hunting him down?! Why hadn’t he prepared more?! Damn him! Well it didn’t matter now. He just had to adapt as best he could and learn from his mistakes.

Overclocking his brain and drastically speeding up his perception of time, he immediately got to work building himself a weapon. This time he wasn’t going to settle for some pathetic little teleportation pistol. Instead he built himself a powerful rifle with four barrels that could be swapped between with the press of a button. The first barrel fired powerful 1 in particle beams, the second barrel fired 1 in beams of concentrated coherent photons and could be calibrated to fire at any frequency ranging from microwaves all the way up to gamma rays, the third barrel was essentially just a larger, more powerful, and much longer ranged version of his old teleportation pistol, and the fourth and final barrel fired 1 in bolts of arcane energy that would explode like particularly powerful hand grenades on impact. He would have made the fourth barrel even more powerful than that but he simply didn’t have the time.

Once his rifle was finished he immediately rushed to start building automated turret emplacements. Combat golems were next on the list if he had enough time to work on them. His hands were moving so fast that to an outside viewer they would be little more than a blur of motion. The same could be said for the tools he was currently using with telekinesis.

It took him twelve hours but eventually he managed to complete two turrets and was half way through building a third. However, it was then his sensors detected a full four hundred equines rapidly converging on his position. He detected the presence of a demigod with them. Panic suddenly shot through him. What were they doing here?! They weren’t supposed to attack him for another two weeks! Had the soldiers he had captured lied to him?! No, they couldn’t have! Their heartbeats and breathing had been completely normal when they answered him! Had Nightmare Moon sped up her plans when none of her scouts had returned? That had to be it! It was the only thing that made any sense! Even worse was the fact that Nightmare Moon’s energy signature was significantly stronger than it had been during their first encounter, meaning she was already far more powerful than he was.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” He cursed. Quickly opening a portal to the inside of his lab he grabbed his rifle and pulled it out before closing the portal behind it. It was currently set to fire particle beams. That would just have to do for the moment as he could already see the full battalion of equines approaching him. Raising the rifle, he aimed and began shooting the pegasi out of the sky. His turrets immediately followed suit, rapidly firing particle beams of their own. The unicorns among the battalion began returning fire and primitive combat spells began slamming into Gerhardt and his turrets.

In response he raised a shield in front of him to block the combat spells. Then he proceeded to press a button on the side of his rifle and switched it to fire beams of coherent photons. It was currently calibrated to fire microwaves which were invisible to the naked unaugmented eye but were still extremely deadly all the same. As he fired his weapon through his copper colored shield ponies began splitting open or outright exploding in gruesome showers of steaming blood and gore from the moisture inside their bodies being vaporized in an instant.

Suddenly a powerful beam of dark blue energy slammed into his shield, shattering it and sending him flying backwards several feet from the sheer concussive force behind the attack. Hitting the ground he rolled to a stop and immediately forced himself up. As soon as he was standing again, Nightmare Moon had landed directly in front of him and had a victorious smirk on her face. “My word, you do work fast don’t you? Hmph. Too bad.” She said before grabbing him with telekinesis and violently smashing him into the stone wall of his lab. “Did you think you could just get away with killing my soldiers and destroying my castle?!” She tossed him up into the air and fired a powerful beam of energy at him that left a horrible dent in his chest and sent him flying over the roof of his lab.

Hitting the ground he groaned as his pain receptors flared in agony. Shutting them down he forced himself back up again and quickly recalibrated his rifle to fire beams of blue visible light. When Nightmare Moon landed in front of him again, he demanded, “How the fuck did you find me?! More importantly your fucking soldiers said you wouldn’t be attacking for another two weeks! Why in the infernal realm are you here already?!”

Nightmare Moon just smirked and said, “I have my sources, and did you honestly believe I would give you any time to prepare?! HA! What a fool! Now DIE!” She then grabbed him with telekinesis again and began slowly crushing him like a tin can. She obviously wanted him to suffer as he died. Too bad for her, Gerhardt couldn't feel pain at the moment having already shut down his pain receptors. More importantly he had absolutely no intention of dying today.

Gerhardt pulled the trigger on his rifle and fired a lethal laser at the ground. Now for a laser to be used as a weapon it has to be extremely bright to the point it would instantly and permanently blind anyone with organic eyes who wasn’t wearing specially designed eye protection. And that’s exactly what happened with Nightmare Moon. She was instantaneously blinded by the laser, unfortunately given her nature as a demigod it wouldn’t be permanent but it didn’t need to be. Nightmare Moon screamed in pain as her retinas were instantly burned out. While she was distracted by the pain, Gerhardt cast a combat spell. A ball of copper energy formed in front of him before flying towards Nightmare Moon and hitting her before exploding like an artillery shell.

Immediately the telekinetic grip holding Gerhardt in the air vanished as Nightmare Moon was blasted backwards. Demigods were extremely resilient creatures so Gerhardt knew full well that she would survive that, but he didn’t care. Instead of risking continuing to attack her and having to fight the three hundred remaining soldiers she had brought with her, Gerhardt decided to abandon everything and flee again. Before that though, he cast a war spell on his laboratory itself. Suddenly numerous spheres of copper colored energy rained from the sky and began slamming into the lab, each one exploding like an artillery shell. The war spell quickly reduced the lab to rubble and destroyed everything inside including the three ponies that he had taken prisoner the previous “day”.

After that he began sprinting away as fast as he possibly could, his maximum speed being 115 MPH. His body’s joints whirred and clicked in protest as they strained to keep up the rapid pace. Looking back as he ran he saw numerous pegasi rapidly catching up with him. In response he raised his rifle in one hand and fired. It was still set to fire blue lasers. As such the pegasi were blinded as he blasted them out of the sky. After the first few exploded from being shot by the laser the rest immediately stopped in their tracks and began backing off, likely not wanting to meet the same fate as their comrades. Though admittedly it was also just as likely that they had simply been blinded by the laser and just couldn’t see where he had gone and didn’t want to try chasing him while blind. Some of the ones that were further away might possibly be able to recover from the laser induced blindness — though they would likely have significant eye problems even after they recovered — while the ones that were closer to the beams were likely going to be blind permanently.

After that he simply continued running and did not plan to stop any time soon. He would need to try to find a completely new base of operations, preferably somewhere much better hidden than this place had been. Hopefully it would also be easier to defend than this place had been. It was really unfortunate. This place had been so rich in ores and crystals. It was such a shame that he had to leave it behind like this. But such was life. As long as he survived what did it matter?

He was currently running south and after a few hours he found himself in a desert. Seeing a small city off in the distance next to what appeared to be yet another forest he decided to change direction slightly to run south west in order to go around the city. He didn’t want to try taking his chances in a forest if he could possibly avoid it and he definitely didn’t want to risk going into a city where he knew he would be discovered almost immediately. So once he got around the city he kept running south until he ended up in what appeared to be a badlands of sorts. Hopefully this would work better as a hidden base of operations. This time he would try doing as the dwarves do and would make his next lab inside a cave. He just needed to find another source of ores and crystals. First though he needed to find a suitable cave then he could start looking for ore and crystals.

After a full twenty four hours he found a relatively hidden cave that his sensors didn’t detect any life inside. He decided that would be sufficient then immediately got to work looking for more ores and crystals. Unfortunately for him this area wasn’t nearly as rich in ores or crystals as the previous area. It had some but not much. Still he would just have to make do for now. He spent about a week working and setting up his next lab before it too was discovered just like the first one had been. Casting a spell he caused a cave in to destroy everything he had been working on before fleeing once again.

This time he tried running north west, avoiding yet another town, and finally discovering a large gorge. He considered making his next base inside this gorge but ultimately decided against it when he discovered the giant eel-like creatures that lived there. He deemed them too large of a threat to be worth risking establishing a base of operations in that gorge. As such he simply levitated himself across the gorge and kept on running. Eventually he found a mountain range and tried establishing a base of operations there, but once again he was discovered within a week.

He tried running north until he ended up in an icy tundra, he tried running south until he ended up near a massive waterfall, he tried running east again. Each and every time he finally found a place to establish a lab he was discovered. Every fucking time! It began wearing on him more and more until finally he just snapped. If this bitch wasn’t going to give him the time to build up defenses and create an army of combat golems with which to defend himself with then he simply had no choice but to build up an army of another sort, as much as he loathed himself for having to resort to this. But what other fucking choice did he have?! Nightmare Moon had proven that she was not going to stop until she finally managed to kill him and she wasn’t going to give him enough time to do anything else!

As such he went from forest to forest and started killing every animal he could possibly find before using necromancy to resurrect them as undead. Within days he had an army of ghosts, zombies, and even a mindless animalistic version of a shade enslaved to his will. If this bitch wanted a fight then he was going to give her a fucking war! Maybe then he could finally buy himself enough time to build some gods damned golems so he wouldn’t have to resort to such morally reprehensible methods as this ever again.

He despised using necromancy like this. It made him feel no better than Caedes which disgusted him to no end. But at this point he was at his wits end. What the fuck else was he supposed to do? He had no options! He could no longer fight Nightmare Moon on his own. Her power seemed to be constantly growing so he couldn’t keep escaping from her like this forever! One of these times she was eventually just going to be able to kill him through brute force alone! He needed backup and this was the only realistic option he had at the moment that he could think of to get the back up he so desperately needed.

So once he had a few thousand undead monstrosities following him, he went west again. There didn’t seem to be many towns or cities out that direction so that’s exactly where he planned to build up his base of operations, and these undead would ensure that he would finally be able to fight back when Nightmare Moon inevitably found him again.

[Meanwhile in Canterlot]

“What do you mean it’s too dangerous to go after him again?! I nearly had him last time! I know for a fact I can kill him this time!” Nightmare Moon roared at Silvanus furiously. “I want my bucking revenge and I am going to get it one way or another!”

“You don’t understand you fool! We made a mistake and have finally pushed him too far over the edge! I want him dead just as much as you do, in fact I want him dead more than you do, but the bastard has finally snapped! He has a legion of undead abominations following him now! If you try to attack him again you will lose!” Silvanus’ disembodied voice roared back at her inside her head.

“If we give him time to prepare then there will be an even higher chance that I will lose! Tell me where his next base is this instant or you can consider our allegiance over!” Nightmare Moon hissed at the nature god.

“Grrr… Fine! Perhaps once you see it for yourself you will learn to listen when I tell you it’s too dangerous! He’s here in the area you call the “Undiscovered West”.” Silvanus growled, before forcefully shoving the image of a map with a red marker on it into her mind. “Whatever you do, do not bring any soldiers! If you do then they will just die and will only serve to bolster his forces further, only with truly sapient undead! Trust me when I say, you do not want that to happen!”

Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, whatever. We can continue this conversation later, I have a metal ape to destroy.” She then proceeded to teleport herself to the city known as Tall Tale since it was the closest place to the metal freak’s newest base that she was familiar with.

“Be extremely careful little demigod. This is going to be one of the single most dangerous situations you have ever been in.” Silvanus’ voice said before his presence disappeared from Nightmare Moon’s mind.

Nightmare Moon just scoffed. How bad could it possibly be? She was a demigod! What could a mere mortal like this metal ape do that could be even remotely dangerous to a higher being like her. Nothing he had done up until this point had come anywhere near killing or even permanently injuring her, and she was already vastly stronger than she had ever been in her entire life! Nothing would be able to stop her now!

Completely confident in her abilities to kill Gerhardt, she spread her wings and began flying towards his newest base. It only took her about two hours of flight to get there. Immediately she was hit with the scent of death. Even this high in the air it was so thick it made her want to gag. She then saw exactly what Silvanus had meant. She could see thousands of reanimated corpses, glowing specters, and a single giant pitch black ethereal monstrosity with glowing green eyes surrounding a large wooden building. Gerhardt was standing in front of the building with his rifle in hand, staring up into the sky. He was clearly waiting for her. She landed a ways away from him and his monstrosities.

“Ah, Nightmare Moon. I have been expecting you. Well, I believe it's only fair I give you one last warning. Leave me the fuck alone and let me conduct my research in peace otherwise I will no longer be content to remain on the defensive as I have been up until this point. Continue pursuing this petty grudge of yours and I will be forced to escalate this conflict between us into a full scale war. And I guarantee it is a war that you will not win.” Gerhardt shouted at her so she would be able to hear him from their current distance.

“Ha! A war? Oh please… As if I am afraid of a few walking corpses.” Nightmare Moon scoffed. She then shot a powerful beam of energy at him.

He immediately jumped out of the way and the beam slammed into the ground directly behind where he had once been standing causing a relatively large explosion. “So be it. Kill her!” Gerhardt ordered his army. Then almost as one the horde of animal corpses, ghosts, and the inky black monster began charging towards Nightmare Moon while Gerhardt just stood where he was and watched.

Nightmare Moon reacted by unleashing even more powerful blasts in an attempt to eradicate the horde of undead abominations. It worked extremely well on the ones that were little more than walking corpses, however it had little to no effect on the ghosts or the monster whatsoever. The ghost of what appeared to have been a manticore reached her before any of the other spectral monsters. It immediately lashed out at her with its ethereal scorpion tail as if trying to impale her with it. She tried to raise her wings to block the strike but the scorpion tail simply passed straight through the feathers doing absolutely no damage and continued on until it passed through her face. Once again the tail did no physical damage but somehow pain erupted through her face as if she really had just been stabbed in the eye.

Hissing in pain Nightmare Moon spread her wings and used them to launch herself backwards away from the ghost. Since all of her attacks seemed to pass through the ghosts and the inky black monster harmlessly, she tried grabbing a couple of them with telekinesis. It didn’t work. She tried creating shields to smash them. This also failed. One thing after another she tried and failed to attack and even so much as injure the ghosts or the monster. Nothing she tried came even close to working.

Eventually the twenty foot tall mostly formless inky black monster managed to get within fifteen feet of her and pain coursed through her body as she felt her flesh starting to rot away at a rapid pace like it had during her first fight with Gerhardt. Then she noticed that her armor was starting to corrode and crumble to dust. Finally she realized that everything within a fifteen foot radius of the monster was withering, dying, corroding, and crumbling to dust around it. Trying to get out of its radius, she launched herself into the air and started trying to fly above the ethereal creatures. Unfortunately for her this did not stop them either as they all simply began floating up into the air after her. She tried getting as far away from them as she possibly could without actually resorting to turning and running away but they were rapidly gaining on her and she eventually found herself being swarmed by the ghosts and the monster.

Agony and rapidly growing fear coursed through her as the ghosts and the monster began tearing into her. No matter what she tried she couldn’t injure them, she couldn’t force them away from her, she couldn’t do anything to them! For perhaps the first time in her life she felt well and truly powerless and she absolutely hated it! She had no idea how they were hurting her despite leaving no physical damage but she could feel herself slowly dying and it terrified her! She didn’t want to let a pathetic mortal like this metal ape and his undead abominations force her to run away but if she didn’t get out of here as soon as possible she knew she was going to die! So she was forced to swallow her pride and teleport herself all the way back to Canterlot, where she had been staying ever since her castle in the Everfree Forest had been completely destroyed by Gerhardt.

“Silvanus!” She demanded as soon as she was back, knowing full well that the god of nature could hear her. “I need answers! What the buck were those things?! More importantly why couldn’t I hurt them?!”

“I already told you. They are undead. The disembodied souls of the dead forcefully bound to the physical realm and enslaved to his will. Those ones were only made from animals he had killed. It could have been much worse. You could have had to contend with sapient shades, wights, phantoms, banshees, liches, or even wraiths if you were particularly unfortunate.” Silvanus’ disembodied voice responded, sounding somewhat smug. “Now do you understand why I said it was too dangerous?”

“Yes…” Nightmare Moon growled reluctantly. “What am I supposed to do against those things if I can’t even so much as touch them?! How do I fight them?!”

“Hm… I have a few ideas but before any of that you need to let your soul recover. It sustained quite a bit of damage in that fight. If you try attacking him like this again while in that condition you will die. Unfortunately damage to the soul takes quite a while to heal. You will be out of commission for a month. In the meantime, we have some work to do. You will need to make some specialized weapons and armor for your soldiers.” Silvanus informed her.

Author's Note

And that's the second chapter done in record time for me. Now, to be perfectly honest I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter. It works but eh... Please feel free to tell me what you guys think. I am completely willing to go back and rewrite this chapter if you guys feel like I should. Though if you do, I would very much appreciate it if you would let me know what you think I did wrong so I can try to fix it. The same can be said with any chapters in any of my stories. If you feel like I did something wrong in them please let me know what so I can try to figure out how to go back and fix it. After all, I can't do anything about it if I don't know what I did wrong.

Also, unfortunately this story does not take precedence over the original. I'll try my best to update it as frequently as possible but the main story is my priority. I just wanted to get a second chapter out for this version ASAP since the previous chapter was a few thousand words too short for my tastes and I wanted to give you guys a bit more to read until the next chapter.

Fun Fact: Shades have a few similarities with Wraiths but usually can't use magic, are a lot more formless, and are usually completely and irrevocably insane.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Chapter 3

Gerhardt’s undead army had forced Nightmare Moon to retreat. This was Gerhardt’s first victory since arriving in this world which was a major relief to him. He finally bought himself a bit of breathing room. He would not squander this luxury. He immediately got to work mining ores and crystals from a nearby cave he had found, and using a crude stone blast furnace heated by magic to refine the ore into metals. This took a few days. While he was doing this he considered what types of golems he should build.

He needed golems that were as powerful as possible but he didn’t have enough time or resources to build very many of even the smallest and most bare bones model of heavy combat golem possible, let alone even one of the skyscraper sized Super Heavy Combat Golems. He could build maybe three very basic Heavy Combat Golems at most. And that was if he kept his brain overclocked and had his perception of time drastically sped up for the entire month. He could have possibly built five by the end of the month but he didn’t have the resources. He could build maybe 15 to 30 basic Combat Golems or 50 Light Combat Drones, if he was lucky, but they lacked the power he needed and were too easily destroyed. So traditional Combat Golems in general were out of the question.

Also he had been in this world having to constantly abandon everything he made and flee for his life, all while stressing quite heavily over the situation the Human Kingdom was in and worrying that his species was going to be driven extinct and it was all his fault that it was starting to get to him. The psychological effects of all of these things combined manifested itself in a way that he never would have anticipated. If he were to be perfectly honest, for the first time in centuries he was actually feeling extremely lonely and found himself longing for human contact. He had spent his life disdaining wasting his time with anything other than his work, but now he would have given anything to at least have someone to talk to.

This world and the situation he was in on top of knowing the situation Humanity was in was his personal hell, his worst nightmare come to life, and he wanted something, anything, to distract him from it even for a mere moment. His work no longer sufficed in that regard as he constantly had to stress over if he was going to have to destroy it all and abandon everything again in a few days making his work nothing but a source of highly intense anxiety for him. The fact that he had been forced to use necromancy to raise an army of the undead only multiplied his stress and anxiety even further. He honestly felt like he was on the verge of having a mental breakdown. So he felt like he needed someone to talk to, who wasn’t out to kill him, just for the sake of his own sanity.

Thus he had an idea. Why not kill two birds with one stone? He needed powerful combat golems that weren’t particularly large or resource intensive and he definitely needed someone to talk to. So why not build a few sapient golems that were also extremely powerful mages? He had already violated the laws of the Human Kingdom and more importantly his own moral code by raising an army of the undead, so why not build some sapient golems too? It wasn’t like it could be any worse than anything he had already done in this world and if they turned on him and ended up killing him at least he would die at the hands of his own creations rather than some spiteful bitch of a demigod. So he could take some comfort in knowing that.

Thus after building the tools he needed he immediately got to work building four sapient golems. He chose four specifically so as to mimic the structure of the Human Kingdom, with him acting as the High Lord of the Research and Development branch once again. He did this because he really needed some sense of normalcy at the moment given his current mental state. With his brain overclocked and him working on all four simultaneously, it only took him a few hours to build them all. Then it took another ten minutes to give them some initial programming to make them loyal to him and download everything he knew into their brains. The only knowledge of his that he didn’t download into their brains were his own memories as he did not want to make mind clones of himself. Thus they were also perfectly aware of necromancy and how to use it since at this point Gerhardt had been forced to accept that it may actually be entirely necessary for them to use necromancy if they were to win this war.

When he was done, both a copper and ethereal green aura enveloped his hands as he activated them and used necromancy to ensure all of their souls would form in such a way as to make them as powerful mages as physically possible for mortals. All of their eyes snapped open at once and their eyes began to glow. Then they all began looking around curiously.

All of them looked pretty much the same. All of them were 6’5’’ just like him, all of them had silver exteriors, all of them had mostly androgynous features, and all of them had faces that looked more human and were much more expressive then Gerhardt’s. The only major difference was the color of the corundum crystals Gerhardt used for their eyes. This was mainly because they were the only ones of the batch he mined from a cave in a nearby mountain that were large and clear enough to use as eyes. One had two crimson rubies for eyes, another had green sapphires for eyes, another had pink sapphires for eyes, and the last one had purple sapphires for eyes.

The one with rubies for eyes was the one who looked at him first and said, “Hello father.” Its voice was very serious and surprisingly deep and masculine since golems were never truly male or female. It also seemed to have the most aggressive demeanor of the four.

The one with pink eyes looked at the one with red eyes and then followed its gaze to look at Gerhardt. Getting up off of the very basic table it was sitting on, it rapidly walked over to Gerhardt with a large smile on its face and wrapped its arms around him in a tight embrace. “Hi dad. Thank you so much for building us!” Unlike the one with red eyes, this one’s voice was surprisingly feminine. It’s voice also sounded a lot kinder than the one with red eyes.

Then the ones with purple and green eyes looked over at Gerhardt. The one with purple eyes raised a hand in greeting and said, “Hey, everyone.” It’s voice wasn’t as deep as that of the one with red eyes but it still very much sounded male. It’s voice sounded the calmest and most easy going out of all of them.

“Greetings, father, siblings.” Said the one with green eyes. It’s voice also sounded female though it was slightly deeper than the one with pink eyes. It’s voice sounded the most emotionless and professional of all of them.

Gerhardt just blinked in surprise. He had not been expecting them to consider him their father or each other as siblings. With his current mental state being as poor as it was he honestly sort of welcomed the prospect of having a family and enjoyed being called “father” even though that went completely counter to his views prior to his arrival in this world. Other than that, though, he supposed that would make it less likely for them to turn on him or each other if they all thought of each other as family. It was also strange how different each of their personalities were considering how they all had exactly the same knowledge downloaded into their brains. Well, since they thought of him as their father he decided he may as well address them in kind. “Hello my children. I’m sorry to ask so much of you so soon after your creation but I’m afraid we have a lot of work to do in order to prepare for war with a demigod. I’m going to need all of your help with this. However before we get started on working, I can’t let you all go on without names. Since you are all able to talk and all have the minds of adults, I shall allow you all to decide on your own names.”

The one with pink eyes released him and said, “Hm… Alright, I want to be called Alice!”

“My name will be Arthur, after the man who slayed the lich Caedes.” The one with red eyes declared.

“I shall be Elizabeth.” The one with green eyes stated.

“I guess that just leaves me. Hm… I guess I’ll be Jack.” The one with purple eyes stated.

“Huh… Surprising. Am I to assume you all consider yourself either male or female respectively?” Gerhardt inquired. It was strange to him that the ones with masculine voices chose male names while the ones with feminine voices chose female names.

“Yup.” Jack said with a small smile on his face.

“Enough of this. Now that we all have names we have work to do. Father, I would like to request a short briefing on our current situation.” Arthur requested.

“As you wish. Currently an equine demigod by the name of Nightmare Moon is trying to hunt me down and kill me. I have tried making hidden bases in multiple locations but somehow she kept finding me within a matter of days each and every time. I could not keep escaping her forever so given my lack of options I killed many animals in numerous different forests and used necromancy to raise an army of undead to fight her off. This worked. She could not harm the shade or the ghosts but they were able to harm her. So she fled. Now I estimate that we have perhaps a month to prepare before she returns. Before that happens, I would like to go on the offensive if at all possible. However I cannot build enough combat golems of sufficient power fast enough on my own. Plus I would like assistance in commanding my army. Also… Um… As much as I am loath to admit it… My current predicament is having a very negative impact on my mental health and I require companionship at the moment… Er… Anyways, that’s where you four come in.” Gerhardt explained.

“You built us to assist you in building and commanding your army, and for your own mental health. A logical decision based on our current circumstances. What are our orders then, father? Until our army is built you are the leader.” Elizabeth inquired.

“First the five of us need to go mining as I used up most of what few materials I had managed to collect in this area building you four. I’m afraid I do not have any mining equipment so we’ll have to use magic. After that we will need to refine the ores we gathered. Unfortunately my current smeltery is rather crude and primitive, but it will still work to refine the ores we collect. After that we need to build as many combat golems as possible. Finally we need to discuss our strategy for how we are going to approach this war as we cannot remain on the defensive forever.” Gerhardt responded. “Also, do not consider me a leader. As far as I am concerned the five of us are equals. We shall vote on what course of action we take and of course the majority vote wins. So do you agree on this current course of action I have proposed?”

All of them except Arthur nodded. “I do not.” Arthur stated.

“Oh? And why is that? Perhaps you have thought of a better suggestion?” Gerhardt asked, genuinely curious.

“I believe we should split the work and take shifts instead of all of us doing the exact same thing at once. Two or three of us should go mining and two or three of us should remain here to work on building up our forces. That way we can get more done at a more consistent rate rather than in bursts.”

“Hm. A fair point. Very well. All in favor of Arthur’s proposal?” Gerhardt asked before raising his hand. All of the others raised their hands as well. “Then the decision is unanimous. We will divide the work into shifts. Regardless, I still have to show all four of you where the mine is so you will know where to go when it is your turn in the mines. Please follow me.” With that he turned and led the four of them to the cave he had turned into his own personal mine. “Here it is. I suppose to begin with all five of us should go and mine resources until we have enough to refine and use. Otherwise two of us will be out here doing nothing while the other three work, which isn’t fair.”

“Very well then, father. However before we begin I have somewhat of an inquiry about what our approach to this war shall be. And depending on the answer I may have a suggestion as well.” Elizabeth stated in a very matter of fact tone.

“Very well. What is your inquiry, dear?” Gerhardt asked.

“How will we be dealing with this enemy kingdom? Will we be conquering it and seizing control over its populace by force of arms, will we be conducting a campaign of extermination, or will we simply be crushing its military and using force of arms to ensure it can never build up another military ever again rendering it unable to wage war on us in the future?”

“Hm… Personally I am considering conquering it. I see no reason to go so far as to exterminate the people for the actions of their leader. They have no control over what Nightmare Moon does and I’m sure none of them truly wish us harm. Hell, I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even know we exist in the first place.” Gerhardt explained. “Why? What is your suggestion?”

“I would like to recommend that we create our own kingdom. Or I suppose technocratic stratocracy would be more accurate since we would be forming a sort of military oligarchy rather than a monarchy, but for ease of conversation the word “Kingdom” should be fine. Regardless, I see your point about not eradicating the species, but that doesn’t mean we have to rule them either. Why should we have to put up with ruling a bunch of organics who aren’t even human and having to deal with all of the issues associated with organic beings in general when we could simply create our own kingdom of golems like us? Besides which, our army would be significantly stronger if it were made up of more sapient golems like us.”

“Hm… I must agree with Elizabeth, father. This would appear to be the best course of action. Perhaps we could start out conquering a few towns and cities until our numbers and infrastructure have grown significantly. Then after the war has concluded, we can give the conquered population centers back to the Equines. Or perhaps we can utilize these towns and cities for our own ends and send the entirety of the organic populations to whatever territory the Equines have left. That way we retain the territory without the organic civilian population.” Arthur added.

“A fine addition to the plan, Arthur. I agree with this notion.” Elizabeth stated with an affirmative nod.

“But if we did that we would be kicking them out of their homes and ruining their livelihoods!” Alice objected, clearly finding the idea morally reprehensible. “Sure, organic beings may come with quite a few issues, but ruling over them would be better then just taking everything away from them and their families.”

“That is entirely the fault of their current leader for forcing father into this situation to begin with. Even more importantly it is simply not our concern. Alice, this is war. Such things are unavoidable in war. Civilians will inevitably lose their homes and livelihoods regardless of what course of action we take. This way simply maximizes the potential benefit to our kingdom by ensuring we retain a large area of territory.” Arthur rebutted. “Jack, you have been silent up until this point. What is your opinion on the matter?”

Jack frowned to himself and hummed in thought. “Well… I’m not entirely sure to be honest. On the one hand, I see what you and Elizabeth are getting at. On the other hand, I see Alice’s point… Hm… Oh, I know! How about a compromise? We do as you and Elizabeth suggest, but instead of just leaving them all homeless we send a few construction golems to build them a few cities as a replacement? Or at the very least a few shelters to stay in until they can find new homes and businesses.”

Elizabeth frowned. “What a waste of useful materials and resources… Still, I suppose limited resources won't be an issue once we are able to start mining asteroids. So I suppose this would be an acceptable arrangement. So, are we all in agreement?” The other three nodded in response. They then looked at Gerhardt. “Father, do you agree as well or do you disagree?”

Gerhardt was a bit shocked. He had only intended to make four sapient golems since he had been hoping he would only need four. Yet his children had decided that they were going to make more and he was outnumbered four to one in the vote. Even more stress and anxiety began piling on top of the stress and anxiety that had driven him to build these four to begin with, putting even more strain on his already heavily strained mental state. “Y-yes… I… I suppose… It’s a good plan. A very good plan… I have no reason to disagree… Besides which you four already out number me in the vote, so even if I were to disagree I would have to go along with it anyways as the majority vote always wins.” The quality of his voice had degraded and his eyes had dimmed significantly. Were he still mostly organic he felt like he would be trying to keep himself from crying.

He couldn’t really argue with them. The plan was indeed very good. Plus sapient golems capable of using magic would be the best and most efficient golems he could possibly build. They would be as powerful, if not more so, than any Heavy Combat Golem could ever be while taking far less resources to build. So logically they would be his best option. He just didn’t want to have to resort to that because he had always hated sending people to their deaths. Making this even worse was the fact that he would be sending nothing but his own children and grandchildren to fight and die for him. Not even the Human Kingdom which was actually important, but him. Just some irrelevant technomancer who holds no real significance in the grand scheme of things. He didn’t want to… He didn’t want to… He didn’t want to… But, he had no choice… His children had already made the choice for him… He was starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just give up and let Nightmare Moon kill him. Surely death had to be better than this… But it was too late now. He had already built his children so there was no longer any going back… At least he was no longer completely alone in this world…

All four of them noticed the change and gave him concerned looks. “Dad? What’s wrong?” Alice inquired walking over to him. She appeared to be the most concerned out of all of them.

“It’s… It’s nothing… The stress from the past couple of months is starting to get to me… That’s all… L-let’s just get to work… That will take my mind off of it… Hopefully…” Gerhardt stated before turning and immediately heading into the cave to get to mining.

The four of them stood there and watched for a moment. Once he disappeared inside the cave, Arthur growled furiously. “I don’t care if she is a demigod, that bitch is going to fucking pay for doing this to our father. I will force her to watch as everything she cares about burns down around her just before I flay her alive.”

“A waste of effort and more than she deserves. Simply destroying her soul and getting it over with is the optimal solution.” Elizabeth stated in a very professional tone.

“I don’t really agree with going to those sorts of extremes, but I do agree with you two in that she can’t be allowed to get away with this.” Alice stated.

“Hmm… Yeah that’s great and all and I definitely agree with the sentiment, but uh… Are we sure that dear old dad is in suitable condition for this?” Jack inquired, looking around at his siblings.

“No. He obviously isn’t. He is very clearly unstable at the moment and quite possibly emotionally compromised.” Elizabeth stated, crossing her arms. “We have to try our best to keep him out of any sort of stressful or anxiety inducing situations so his condition does not deteriorate any further. Unfortunately, I believe that means we are going to have to go behind his back quite a bit from here on out. He won’t like it if he finds out, but it's for his own good.”

“I’ll try my best to stay with him as much as possible and help him deal with what he’s going through. I’ll also be trying my best to distract him from anything too stressful. So, essentially, I’ll be trying to take the role of the high lord of the medical branch. That is if none of you object to this?” Alice stated.

“Very well. Medical treatment is typically only required by biological beings, but psychiatric issues can affect even us. Plus you can focus on conducting repairs to damaged soldiers instead of treating wounds. Also anything relating to biological technology can fall under your purview. So the position is still entirely viable even in our new society. In that case, I suppose I will take the role of the high lord of the aviation branch. I would have chosen the research and development branch but I assume father will claim that role.” Elizabeth stated. “That just leaves the army branch and the navy branch.”

“I’ll take the role of the high lord of the navy if you don’t mind, Arthur.” Jack said, looking at his brother.

“Hmph… Go ahead. I wanted to be the high lord of the army anyways. Though based on the incomplete map father has made of this land and downloaded into all of our heads, it would appear that the majority of the enemy kingdom is landlocked. Of course, once we have better infrastructure you could station ships off the coasts and provide long range artillery support. Or you could take most of your operations into orbit and thus provide orbital bombardment. Until then, however, our roles will likely have to be shared somewhat for the duration of this war. So you will assist in commanding our troops on land until we have ships and satellites for you to command. That goes for you as well, Elizabeth.”

“Eh, fair enough.” Jack shrugged.

“That is reasonable. Until we have vehicles at our command we cannot truly be considered a navy or an aviation force. Thus the army is the only viable option until that point… Actually, I believe I will be helping father with research and development until my aircraft are finally built. As I said, I would prefer to be the high lord of research and development but I suspect that will be father’s job.”

“Alright, well, now that that’s all decided, I think we should go help dad mine for resources. We can’t just stand here talking all day while he does all the work.” Alice said before turning and heading into the cave. The others quickly followed along behind her.

It took the rest of the month with the five of them working in shifts, alternating between mining and refining materials and building. This process started out slow but was sped up more and more as more sapient golems were built as they would also start assisting in the process of mining and refining materials or building more weapons or golems, after each batch were briefed on the situation by either Gerhardt himself or one of his first four children. Anyone working on building would spend the entire time with their brains overclocked and their perception of time drastically sped up as they built as many more weapons or golems as they could as fast as they possibly could. That was until their shifts were up and it was their turn to go into the mines. There were always more people in the mines than there were building so as to ensure the ones that were building never ran out of materials to build with.

By the end of the month there were a total of 125 sapient golems, not counting the first four Gerhardt had built, which were divided into groups of 25 and assigned to one of the five branches. Furthermore all of them were armed with weapons which were effectively the exact same as Gerhardt’s as their main weapon. However, some also carried heavier weapons capable of destroying Heavy Tanks and Heavy Combat Golems or blowing up buildings. All of them also carried sidearms in the form of pistols of varying types. Some carried teleportation pistols, others carried particle beam pistols, others carried magic pistols, and others carried laser pistols. What type of pistol they carried and if they used heavy weapons or not all depended on the individual golem’s preference.

Obviously 125 was an extremely small number for an army. However what they lacked in quantity they more than made up for in terms of quality as each and every last one were highly lethal soldiers on top of being the most powerful that mortal mages could possibly be. Gerhardt was actually the single weakest individual in the entire army by far. Each individual absolutely eclipsed him in terms of power. As long as they were working together they should be more than a match for the average demigod. Also their numbers were bolstered quite a bit by the army of ghosts and the feral Shade that Gerhardt had created to fight off Nightmare Moon.

So finally the month came to a close and they were as ready as they could possibly be. Thus they began marching to war under the command of Gerhardt, Arthur, Alice, Elizabeth, and Jack respectively.

[Meanwhile in Canterlot]

Like Gerhardt, Nightmare Moon had not spent that month sitting idly by doing nothing. Not at all. She had spent the entire time creating highly advanced weapons to combat Gerhardt’s army of golems and ghosts. Unfortunately she had to form a magically binding contract with Silvanus before he agreed to teach her how to build the weapons to fight the undead. This contract made it so that she was unable to use necromancy to raise the dead herself, to teach others how to use necromancy — at least not without forcing them into a very similar but much stricter magical contract than the one she was had been forced to agree to —, to let anyone try to reverse engineer the weapons to learn how necromancy worked, or to attempt to exploit any loopholes in the contract among several other things. She was, however, allowed to spread everything else he taught her as long as it had absolutely nothing to do with necromancy.

Still by the end of the month she had significantly upgraded the arms and armor of her soldiers and had put all the new technology Silvanus had told her how to make into mass production. She had a small army of unicorns working overtime to build it all since she knew exactly what Gerhardt was doing and the preparations he was making thanks to Silvanus.

She and Equestria were fully prepared for war. From the very beginning this war would be like nothing this relatively peaceful world had ever seen before and she knew it would only grow in intensity in the months and years to come. Yet she was not worried in the slightest as she was completely confident in her ability to win a war against a bunch of pathetic mortal apes made of metal. Even if her armies took heavy casualties, what did she care? They were mortal, lower life forms, and it would serve them all right for their lack of appreciation for her beautiful night. She knew her people still hated her and her night, though they would never voice this opinion for fear of execution, and she hated them all in kind. They always liked her sister better and they still did even a thousand years later, and that fact always infuriated her to no end. So the deaths of her people were of little consequence to her. Perhaps she would start caring about them and their deaths if and when future generations started appreciating her night as much as the current generation now longed for her sister and the sun.

[Tall Tale]

Gerhardt and his army had sent a few small bird shaped and sized drones to scout the area and find the nearest major population center. These drones found two separate cities in close proximity to each other. They had originally intended to take the population centers one at a time, however given how close the two cities were to each other they couldn’t take the risk of someone escaping from one of the cities and running to warn the other. Thus they were forced to split their army in two.

Arthur and Alice would be assaulting the city that was closest to them while Jack and Elizabeth would be assaulting the city that was slightly further away. 1000 of the ghosts would go with Jack and Elizabeth while the other 1000 would be going with Arthur and Alice. The feral Shade would be staying with Gerhardt as something of a bodyguard since he wasn’t nearly as powerful as any of his children or grandchildren and he would need the assistance to fight off Nightmare Moon, assuming she showed up.

Meanwhile Gerhardt’s forces would be managing communications and would be split among the two invasion forces to act as support. It was also decided rather unanimously by Alice, Arthur, Elizabeth, and Jack that Gerhardt himself would be staying in a secure location protected by at least five of his own soldiers and the feral Shade. He had no idea why they decided on this, but as much as he wanted to object the four of them had out voted him so he really didn’t have a say in the matter. He had tried his best to convince them to let him participate in one of the two battles but they firmly refused no matter what he said. Hell his guards were even under orders by his first four children to keep him there and to stop him if he tried to run off to join one of the battles. So for all intents and purposes his children had put him under house arrest and he couldn’t help but find the whole thing completely unreasonable. He knew he wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind at the moment, but as far as he was concerned his mental state did not warrant this.

Thus Gerhardt was currently sitting on a chair in the middle of his lab, looking through the eyes of the twenty of his soldiers that were assisting in the two battles — all of whom he was wirelessly connected to at the moment. He wasn’t allowed to participate in the battle in person but that didn’t mean he couldn’t participate in the battle at all. So he was watching what was happening and was giving orders to his soldiers based on what he saw through their eyes and information he was receiving. Meanwhile he was trying his best to keep Arthur, Elizabeth, Jack, and Alice updated on all the reports and information he was receiving so they could better strategize.

The local law enforcement and what little military forces were present in the cities were putting up some resistance and apparently they had upgraded their equipment quite a bit since the last time Gerhardt had encountered them. So the battles were not going nearly as smoothly as they had first anticipated. Still, between the ghosts and the mages they were winning. One of the first targets of both invasion forces had been the train stations. They didn’t want any of the inhabitants to escape, thus they captured the train stations and had several hundred ghosts patrolling around the outside of the cities and in the skies. Not even the Pegasi would be allowed to escape. If they tried they would be assaulted by dozens of ghosts and would likely be shot out of the sky by one of the golems for their trouble.

“Grandfather?” One of the golems guarding him asked.

“Yes, Walter? What is it?” Gerhardt knew each and every last one of the golems by name. The one who had spoken was Walter-0002. There was some overlap in the names the golems chose so they had decided to give themselves serial numbers as a sort of analogue for last names since technically all of their last names would be Mechanica since they were Gerhardt’s children and grandchildren. This one was the second golem to choose to name himself Walter, thus he was designated 0002.

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am… I realize you would probably rather be out there fighting with the rest of them than be sitting in here doing nothing…” Walter stated.

“You don’t have to apologize, Walter. It’s not your fault. You are just following orders. And considering our family is a military as well you should. I do not blame you for it. Nor do I blame Alice, Arthur, Elizabeth, or Jack. They were very clear in that they are doing this for my own mental health and I suppose they are right in a sense. This entire ordeal has been taking a heavy toll on me and I am perfectly well aware of that fact… Gods above… I was forced to use necromancy to raise an army of the undead just to survive long enough to start building all of you… Humanity is being destroyed by Silvanus and may in fact already have been destroyed by now for all I know… I may very well be the last human in existence… I constantly have to fear for my life and worry that I’m going to have to destroy and abandon all my work and start over again… And, of course, I have no choice but to send my own children and grandchildren to fight and die for me… And maybe I’m also wondering if it would be better to just let Nightmare Moon kill me and get it over with so all of you don’t have to suffer for my mistakes…”

Gerhardt trailed off for a moment before sighing and saying, “B-but… I’ve… I’ve faced worse… I’m still a soldier… I know I can still fight… I know I can still lead…” His voice didn’t sound very confident in those statements. Had he really ever faced anything worse than this? It was sort of debatable… This was definitely one of the worst experiences of his life and it was playing hell on his mind. There had been some other things that were quite close but none of them ever affected his mental state nearly as much as this was…

To put how bad it had been into perspective, the redundant systems and failsafes that were meant to forcibly keep him sane had been active constantly for the past month and a half and they were being pushed a little harder every “day”. He honestly wasn’t sure how much longer they would be able to hold up since they had never been designed to be active for this long or to be pushed as hard as they currently were. If something didn’t change and soon he was actually legitimately worried those systems might be overwhelmed and he may snap. He was trying his best to update and reinforce them as much as he could but there was only so much he could do with the framework that was already in place. And he couldn’t take out the framework and replace it with anything more robust with the failsafes currently active.

The five golems that were guarding him shared a concerned look and quietly sent messages to each other wirelessly without letting Gerhardt know what they were doing. Everyone in the family knew there was something very wrong with Gerhardt, however none of them knew how to help him. This was because they were all currently limited to the knowledge that had been downloaded into their brains and that they could share amongst each other. And unfortunately since Gerhardt knew very little about mental health care beyond some very basics he had been required to learn so he would know how to deal with traumatized civilians just long enough to get them to people in the Medical Branch, none of them knew any more about it than he did. So keeping him safe and away from battle like this was the best any of them could do for the moment.

As high lord of the medical branch, Alice would be researching psychology quite extensively. Especially after the cities were captured since she could read every book the equines had on psychology, biology, and medicine. She already knew how to repair damaged golems so she didn’t really need to conduct any further research in that department. Unfortunately, until that point she couldn’t do anything for him either.

About half an hour into the battles something rather unexpected happened. Hundreds of Equine soldiers appeared in a flash of blue light inside the city closest to Gerhardt’s base of operations. There were about 1000 in total. All were armed with highly advanced weapons and armor. Furthermore, Nightmare Moon herself also appeared above the city and she appeared to be wearing some sort of helmet with a glass visor. Mere seconds after she appeared, every single golem that had been assaulting the other city opened portals to the closest city and stepped through in preparation to fight her off. Arthur, Elizabeth, Alice, and Jack all ordered the ghosts to deal with the soldiers while they dealt with Nightmare Moon.

Not even waiting for the other golems to get there Arthur was the first to attack. Snarling in fury at the demigod he raised his hand towards her and fired a beam of powerful destructive necromantic energy towards her, intent on destroying her soul. He had decided Elizabeth was right, the bitch wasn’t worth the effort to torture and destroying her soul would be just as satisfying.

A wall of ethereal green energy appeared between Nightmare Moon and the attack, absorbing it as if it were nothing. The other golems all began an unrelenting barrage of devastatingly powerful and very clever attacks. Some opened portals around her and fired attacks through those, others fired their weapons at her — especially the ones that were carrying heavy weapons —, and so on.

She dodged and blocked the attacks with almost contemptuous ease, but she couldn’t keep it up forever and she knew it given their numbers and how powerful all of them were. Thus she began attacking the golems in kind. She unleashed devastating combat and war spells that the golems had to work together to defend against. Fortunately their brains were all wirelessly connected to each other and their brains were all overclocked so they could send, receive, and process information in nanoseconds so they could all operate in perfect synchronization. Plus their perceptions of time had been drastically sped up by their overclocked brains giving them all plenty of time to react to Nightmare Moon’s attacks and retaliate.

Meanwhile Nightmare Moon’s soldiers were actually dealing with the ghosts surprisingly well. They were taking quite a few casualties, of course, however they were all using weapons that fired destructive beams or bolts of necromantic energy that actually injured and were even able to destroy the ghosts. As such, the battle was surprisingly evenly matched. That was until more of Nightmare Moon’s soldiers began teleporting into the battle in squads of five to ten. Then the ghosts started being overwhelmed, until the ones that had been left in the other city started arriving as reinforcements. At that point the battle returned to a sort of equilibrium.

However the tides began to shift once again as Nightmare Moon unleashed a particularly powerful attack that destroyed a relatively large number of the golems. About 15 in total. Jack was included in those 15. With 6.4% of their fighting strength gone, it became that much harder for them to effectively combat Nightmare Moon.

Gerhardt was watching the entire thing. And as soon as Jack and the 14 other golems were destroyed his eyes dimmed to the point they weren’t emitting any light whatsoever. He knew this was a possibility from the very beginning, which is why he didn’t want to build this many sapient golems from the very start. Knowing he just sat there on the sidelines doing nothing as he watched his own children and grandchildren fight a demigod and die for him put further stress on his mind. He was just sitting there… He wasn’t even out there fighting alongside them… They had died for his mistakes… One of his first children had died for his mistakes… None of them had even been more than a month old…

“Uh oh… Now dad, all of us can tell you’re upset but just calm down… You know all of them were well aware of the risks and still decided to fight for you and our new kingdom willingly. If they didn’t want to do it, then they could have just left and none of us would have stopped them. So the fact they stayed to fight just proves they were willing to risk their lives.” Susie-0005 stated.

Gerhardt said nothing and continued to watch the battle through the eyes of those that were fighting it.

The golems sought bloody vengeance for their fallen brothers and sisters and managed to land a few hits on Nightmare Moon, inflicting horrific wounds. However, Nightmare Moon managed to damage or destroy even more of them in kind.

As more and more of the golems died, the more and more concerned the five that were guarding Gerhardt became. Short bursts of static began to fill Gerhardt’s vision as his failsafes were pushed to their very limits. He just felt so useless… So helpless… So worthless… He was sitting here under guard while his creations were dying for him… He wasn’t even there to help them… His E.P.U. began to overheat forcing the emergency cooling systems inside his head to kick in. Then Alice was also destroyed by Nightmare Moon, along with yet another group of the golems.

The redundant systems and failsafes meant to forcibly keep Gerhardt sane no matter what rapidly began failing one after the other. Emergency warnings began to fill Gerhardt’s vision only for the text to start being corrupted as the bursts of static filling his vision began growing more and more frequent. Finally Gerhardt felt something inside his head break.

Suddenly his vision cleared up entirely. His eyes rapidly began glowing brighter and brighter until they were shining like flashlights. Growling in unholy rage, Gerhardt stood up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Grandfather, please just sit back—” Walter-0002 started only to be cut off by Gerhardt who didn’t even seem to notice he had said anything.

“ENOUGH! I AM DONE RUNNING AWAY! I AM DONE SITTING ON THE SIDELINES! I! AM! DONE! SHE WANTS TO KILL ME AND MY CHILDREN?! FINE! I’LL JUST HAVE TO SHOW HER HOW BIG OF A MISTAKE IT IS TO MAKE AN ENEMY OF ME! “NIGHTMARE MOON”?! SHE THINKS SHE’S A NIGHTMARE?! HAHAHAHA! I’LL SHOW HER WHAT A REAL NIGHTMARE LOOKS LIKE!” Gerhardt shouted. His voice was so heavily distorted that it was actually somewhat difficult to understand.

“You five! I am officially using my office as your high lord to completely override your previous orders to keep me here! I AM going out there, and I am going to make her PAY! All five of you are coming with me! Do I make myself clear?!”

All five of them had horrified looks on their faces at what was happening, but they hesitantly nodded. They would have forced him to stay anyways but at this point they were more worried about what he might do if they kept him here than what might happen out on the battlefield.

“Good! Now all of you come with me! That includes you, Shade!” He ordered before turning and opening a portal to the battlefield and stepping through it. The five golems and the Shade followed after him.

Almost as soon as he stepped through the portal many of the golems turned to look at him in a mixture of surprise and concern. Nightmare Moon also noticed him pretty much immediately.

“I see you’ve finally come out of hiding, you metal freak! Finally come to accept your death, I presume? I’ve already destroyed quite a few of your pathetic little toys!” Nightmare Moon said in a mocking tone.

A burst of static flashed across Gerhardt’s vision and his head twitched slightly as Nightmare Moon called his children and grandchildren “toys”. Snarling in fury an ethereal green aura enveloped his entire body as he began using necromancy to bring all the golems she destroyed back in the form of ghost based liches. Though a few of their souls he took and melded together to form two separate wraiths. He even used necromancy to turn all the dead equine soldiers and even some of the civilians into undead as well. For the unicorns he forcibly bound their souls to their corpses and transformed them into liches that were enslaved to his will. As for the rest he turned them into all manner of other forms of undead. Doing this to such a large number of creatures drained his Arcane Energy reserves all the way to 2%.

Seeing all of this happen a horrified look crossed Nightmare Moon’s face. Apparently she hadn’t been expecting him to use necromancy on sapient beings.

“No… I’ve come to make you suffer! KILL HER! MAKE HER SCREAM AS SHE DIES!”

“““Yes, father.””” All of the ghostly Liches, the golems, and even the two wraiths said almost in unison. Though some of the golems said ”grand father” instead of “father”. Similarly the undead Equines said, “““Yes, my lord.””” All of them then turned and began assaulting Nightmare Moon at once. All of them except two.

Elizabeth and Arthur came running up to him. “Father, requesting permission to kill the equine soldiers and to use necromancy to raise them as undead. Since you seem to have cleared necromancy for use in this war, judging by your use of it, we believe it would be good to bolster our forces even further in order to drive back the enemy forces and the demigod.” Elizabeth requested. They both assumed he was taking full command of their forces and thus decided they should likely follow his orders. They both knew he wasn’t well, but given his current behavior they thought better of questioning him at the moment. Especially since this was the middle of battle and countermanding his orders right now could spell disaster by causing confusion within their ranks.

“Permission granted. You may slaughter the civilians as well. The equines don’t seem to have any issue with slaughtering us, so why should we treat them with any form of respect or mercy?! Make them regret ever starting a war with us in the first place! She calls herself “Nightmare Moon” so show her a true nightmare! Let the streets run red with the blood of her people and let their screams of torment ring out through the night for all to hear! I want you all to avenge every last one of us that died here tonight!” Gerhardt exclaimed in a tone that was angry to the point he sounded deranged.

Both of them saluted and said, “Yes, father!” before turning and running off to go fulfill their orders.

As they left, Gerhardt immediately raised his rifle before pulling the trigger and unleashing a relentless salvo of high explosive bolts of arcane energy at Nightmare Moon. These explosive bolts of energy were easily blocked by Nightmare Moon’s shield. However, at the moment she wasn’t paying him even the slightest bit of attention. Instead all of her attention was focused on defending herself from the golems and undead that were now relentlessly assaulting her. She fought back, of course, and successfully destroyed a few of the liches. However the Wraiths were by far her largest concern as the two of them had the combined power of all the souls that had been used to create them which made them very powerful indeed since the souls of dozens of golems went into creating both of them.

She was able to hurt them with necromancy and potentially even kill them, yes. However, they were also very familiar with necromancy and were able to use it to defend against her attacks. And considering how powerful they both were, it wasn’t easy for her to break their defenses. She could do it, she was a demigod after all, but it was exceedingly difficult. And between them, the still living golems, and the ever increasing number of lesser undead she was decidedly put on the defensive.

Eventually her soldiers' resolve began to break as they saw their friends dying around them only to be reanimated moments later. Thus the highest ranking officers among them that were still alive called for a full retreat, and the unicorns among them began teleporting them all away in groups. Thus leaving Nightmare Moon to fight Gerhardt’s army on her own.

Knowing this had just turned into a losing battle, she growled in fury and shouted, “Fine! You win this round you bucking monster! But rest assured I will win this war, one way or another!”

“HA! I’m afraid you’re mistaken! This is no longer a war! THIS IS HELL AND I AM THE DEVIL! I AM THE NIGHTMARE THAT WILL SLAUGHTER YOUR DREAMS FOR I AM THE GREATEST CREATOR THIS WORLD HAS EVER SEEN! AND I WILL PERSONALLY SEE TO IT THAT YOU BURN UNTIL THE END OF TIME! EVEN IF YOU DIE, YOUR VERY SOUL SHALL KNOW NO END TO THE SUFFERING I WILL INFLICT UPON YOU!” Gerhardt roared back at her.

Nightmare Moon scowled at him and scoffed before finally teleporting away.

Author's Note

Hey! Sorry for the long delay. Anyways, my focus is still on the main version of the story. I just happened to finish this chapter for this story first since I'm having a little trouble with the next chapter of the main story since the chapter is focused on Pixel instead of Gerhardt and its a bit tricky figuring out what I should have her do. Regardless I promise the next chapter of the main story should be coming out very soon.

Fun Fact: There is a reference to a song in this chapter. It's fairly obscure so congrats if you find it!

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Chapter 4

After pushing back Nightmare Moon’s forces capturing the two cities had gone rather smoothly. The resistance of the local law enforcement was pitiful. It was safe to assume that some of the ponies managed to escape from the city that was apparently called “Vanhoover” during the battle in the city known as “Tall Tale”, however that didn’t matter. Most of the population remained so Nightmare Moon wouldn’t be able to draft them into military service to use them to increase the size of her army so by taking the cities they had effectively deprived her of potential soldiers. Well over half of the population of Tall Tale were killed in the battle and turned into undead as per Gerhardt’s orders. Once the battle had concluded and the cities were officially under their control a male and a female of each of the three breeds of equines were captured alive and taken in for study and experimentation, which Elizabeth was in charge of conducting.

Gerhardt had ordered a few of his children to work on building new bodies for his children and grandchildren that had died and he had turned into undead. There were only about 55 of them who were still truly alive but he wanted to help those that had died fighting Nightmare Moon in any way he could. He was fairly certain it would be possible to bind the average ghost liches to physical bodies again. The wraiths, on the other hand, he wasn’t so sure about given the fact that they were a conglomeration of souls that had been seamlessly melded together rather than an individual soul. So he had no idea if binding them to a physical body again would even work but he was damn well going to try.

Thus he himself was working on the bodies for the Wraiths. He had actually used Alice and Jack’s souls as the base for the wraiths so their personalities were dominant over the others that had gone into creating them. Sadly, however, their personalities had changed significantly after having died and been turned into wraiths. They were still completely loyal to him but not only had the personalities of the other golems that served to create them had melded with their personalities but their compassion and empathy for fully organic beings was now practically non-existent. They only truly cared about sapient golems and undead golems. So, essentially, the only thing they truly cared about now was their family. Fortunately that was perfectly fine by Gerhardt as he was now exactly the same.

Some of his children and grandchildren were working on building mining golems and using what Elizabeth learned about how unicorns’ magic functioned to set up completely automated factories to mass produce weapons and combat golems. In the meantime, the majority of the unicorns that inhabited the cities that were old enough were rounded up and forced to work in the mines until the mining golems were completed. This included many of the pony liches that Gerhardt, Arthur, and Elizabeth had created during the battle, though some of the liches and other undead ponies were sent to conduct assaults and raids on “Equestria” in order to buy them enough time to build a larger amy and set up an actual infrastructure.

About a week after the battle Gerhardt had finished the first two prototype bodies for Jack and Alice. They were both designed to be absolutely terrifying. They looked like massive monstrous mechanical skeletons as he loosely based their appearances off of the demigod Mors. They both had four crimson red rubies for eyes, needle sharp steel teeth, had small holes in the tips of their fingers to extend and retract monomolecular knives, had four arms and two legs, had built in smoke generators for both stealth and added intimidation, and had multiple very powerful built in vocalizers for psychological warfare purposes though they could also be utilized as sonic weaponry.

As soon as he was finished, Gerhardt left his lab to go find Alice and Jack. He found them in a new section of the lab with Arthur and Elizabeth. “Ah, there you two are. I thought I should inform you that the new prototype bodies for you are complete. We may attempt to put you two in them whenever you are ready.”

“Thank you, dad. The four of us have a gift for you as well.” Jack stated.

Gerhardt blinked in surprise. “Oh? And what might that be?” He inquired.

Elizabeth took one of her hands out from behind her back and Gerhardt saw she was casting some sort of spell. The aura vanished and suddenly something appeared sitting on a table behind them. It was a new body, Gerhardt realized.

It was about 7’5”, had a silver exterior, six blood red rubies for eyes, two long curved horns stuck out of its head, it had six large dragon-like wings on its back, it had no lips and its teeth were an inch long and were needle sharp, it had two very bulky arms and legs, each of its fingers had monomolecular knives sticking out of their tips which were presumably retractable, and instead of feet it had cloven hooves. It was clearly modeled after the form that the greater Spirit of Evil, the Devil, usually chose to take according to what Gerhardt had heard from myths and legends. He had never had the immense displeasure of seeing the Devil in person before so he had no idea if he actually chose to look like this or not.

“We heard what you said to Nightmare Moon before she was forced to flee. So, since this is Hell and you are the Devil, we thought you may as well look the part.” Elizabeth stated motioning to the body. “We incorporated what I learned about all three breeds of Equines’ biological magic from my studies of their species into its design. So it can fly, it can manipulate the weather, it has greatly enhanced strength, it can control plants, and the horns are attached to a battery of Arcane Energy which will allow you to cast more spells than what you currently can. Though, unfortunately, the horns won’t make you any more powerful than you are now. They are just a different method through which you can use your magic.”

Gerhardt approached the body and examined it. “I see… Thank you very much, my children. I appreciate the gesture greatly! After we try putting Alice and Jack into their new bodies I will gladly allow you to transfer my brain to my new body.”

“Actually, father, it already has a fully mechanical brain inside of it already. Part of the reason we built it was so you may shed the last remnants of your old organic form and become just like us.” Alice said.

“Really now? Very well. You, Jack, and dozens of your brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters all died for me already. I suppose it is only right that I return the favor.” Gerhardt said before opening a small portal back to the storage section of the lab and grabbing a pistol out of an open crate. Pulling the pistol out of the portal and letting the portal close behind it, he quickly put the gun to his own head in a spot he knew that it would hit his frontal lobe and pulled the trigger before any of his children could react. A particle beam pierced through one side of his head and out the other before going on to punch a small hole in one of the walls.

Moments later his body collapsed lifelessly to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Arthur and Elizabeth’s faces contorted into expressions of shock and horror. They hadn’t been expecting him to do that. They had planned on using necromancy to extract his soul safely without causing him any harm before placing it in his new body.

Alice and Jack’s faces didn’t have mouths so they couldn’t emote either way. Even so they both appeared mostly unphased by their father’s decision to kill himself. Alice simply raised an inky black shadowy hand towards his corpse. After that her hand was enveloped by an ethereal green glow, as were both Gerhardt’s corpse and his new body.

Mere moments later the eyes of Gerhardt’s new body snapped open. His body jerked violently as his vision was filled with nothing but static and the new much more powerful failsafes Elizabeth had installed into the new body in hopes to restore his sanity immediately failed. After a few seconds his vision returned to normal. Looking down at one of his new hands, he retracted and extended the monomolecular knives a few times before finally leaving them retracted for the moment so as to not risk damaging anything by accident. He then moved his new wings a bit before folding them back up and getting up off the table. It was a bit awkward trying to balance on hooves at first but he was able to do it.

Arthur immediately punched him in the gut. Not hard enough to cause any actual damage or even really hurt, but hard enough for Gerhardt to understand that he wasn’t happy. “Don’t you EVER do something like that again!” He shouted at Gerhardt. “We could have transferred your soul to the new body without you having to fucking kill yourself and you damn well know it!”

“As I said. Many members of our family have already died for me. It was only right that I did the same for them. If anything it was meant as a display of my unwavering love, loyalty, appreciation, gratitude, and trust in all of you. Proof that I would gladly die for all of you as many of you have done for me.” Gerhardt explained.

“The gesture is very much appreciated, dad. It means a lot.” Jack told him.

“Of course. Now, let’s go put you and Alice into your new bodies.” Gerhardt said before walking away and leading the four of them to the section of the lab that he had spent the entire week working in. Before they left the room Elezebeth sent a message to everyone in the family informing them of Gerhardt’s new body and not to worry if they found his old body.

The process to put Alice and Jack into their new bodies went just as quickly as it had taken Alice to put him in his new body. Surprisingly it actually worked and they now had physical bodies again despite the fact that both of them were now Wraiths. However, after a bit of testing Gerhardt discovered that their souls were putting an exceptional amount of stress on their new bodies, especially their brains. He estimated their bodies would wear out and die within the next month or two. He still had a lot of room to improve upon their designs.

However, since they did have bodies now he turned his attention to new projects. Specifically a new classification of Golem he had thought up while building their bodies. Due to the designs they weren’t quite able to be called “Combat” Golems. No. Instead their intended purposes would be causing terror and conducting mass slaughter. He was actually basing them very heavily on his past experiences with demons and that one arch demon he had seen before. However calling them “demonic” seemed a bit disingenuous to him since there were no literal demons inside them. Thus he decided to call them “Nightmares” as a way of mocking the demigod who called herself “Nightmare Moon”.

Some of the Nightmares were fully sapient just like him and the rest of his family just with enhanced sadism and enhanced hatred of Nightmare Moon, Equestria, and the Equines as a whole. Others were programmed to perfectly mimic the behaviour and thought processes of demons (though they had programming to guarantee their undying love, loyalty, and obedience to him and his family for reasons that should be painfully obvious). And the last group were little more than animals with drastically increased aggression.

The last group was obviously the most expendable though Gerhardt wouldn’t particularly mind if the ones designed to be perfect mechanical replicas of demons were to be destroyed along with the animals. However he still very much considered the sapient ones to be his children and grandchildren and thus assigned each of them as leaders for the Nightmares. He even made an entirely new branch specifically for the Nightmares and thus the first sapient Nightmare he built joined his first four children as a High Lord. Her name was Inferna. And much like Alice and Jack, her body looked very different from a baseline Golem.

She had multiple heads each with blood red eyes and overly large mouths filled with multiple rows of needle sharp teeth whose lower jaws could split apart like a set of mandibles. Her necks were able to extend from normal sized necks to a full ten feet long with quite a terrifying amount of mobility. She had a large humanoid torso attached to the body of a centipede, though her torso could be detached and placed on a humanoid lower half for when she wasn’t in battle. The front of her torso had multiple tiny arms pincers and claws meant for ripping organic beings to shreds. She had eight arms two of which ended in normal hands, two of which ended in crab like pincers that could chop through a block of solid steel, two of which ended in claws meant for rending flesh from bone and flaying organic beings alive, and two of which were simple dull spider-like limbs meant for pulling individuals into her torso and holding them in place while they were ripped to pieces. Mechanical tendrils struck out of her back and all along the back of her centipede-like lower body, some being covered in claws with which she could manipulate things while others ended in sharp blades that could easily slice through limbs or impale even a fully grown elephant. She had dozens of spider-like limbs that were each monomolecular blades but could emit plasma fields for enhanced cutting power whenever necessary. She also had all the parts meant for psychological warfare that Alice and Jack had and much more since that was one of her primary roles.

It took him another week to build her due to the size and complexity of her body. After she was made he would have had his children and grandchildren make more sapient Nightmares like her, but she insisted on making them all herself. Apparently she wanted children and grandchildren of her own so only she and her children and grandchildren were allowed to make more sapient Nightmares. Gerhardt was the only exception to this rule but he respected her wishes and let her and her children craft the vast majority of the sapient Nightmares. She also insisted on making the demonic nightmares but was a bit more lenient in that regard. Strangely — at least it was strange in Gerhardt’s opinion — she apparently loved each of the demonic Nightmares like the rest of her children and grandchildren and treated them the same as the sapient Nightmares. Though she was a bit stricter with the demonic Nightmares and tended to keep them on a much tighter leash than the sapient Nightmares (again for reasons that should be painfully obvious).

In total they had about another month to prepare and build up their forces while Nightmare Moon did the exact same thing. Silvanus had been horrified by what Gerhardt had become and realized that he and Nightmare Moon had pushed him way too far. He had gone completely insane and Silvanus had never predicted the technomancer would go this far off the deep end. He was legitimately trying to emulate the Devil and the demons and to that end was creating mechanical monstrosities that appeared to have come from the deepest darkest depths of the infernal realm itself and was experimenting with combining his technomancy with some of the darkest and most terrible aspects of necromancy. He was very rapidly becoming worse than that bastard Caedes had ever been.

Thus Silvanus was trying everything within his very limited power to prepare Nightmare Moon and Equestria for Hell on Earth because that was what Gerhardt seemed determined to bring them. His motivations had changed from hating Gerhardt to horror so now he was legitimately trying to help Nightmare Moon kill Gerhardt rather than just tricking her into continuing to torment him. He had decided this had gone way too far and it needed to stop as soon as possible. Metaphorically speaking Pandora’s box had been opened but there was no hope to be found inside only the mechanical monstrosity Silvanus had unintentionally unleashed upon that world.

He tried convincing her to build WMDs and just reducing Gerhardt and his creations to atoms but she had refused vehemently. Apparently she didn’t want to resort to using something so destructive both because her own pride wouldn’t allow it and because she didn’t want to cause such devastation upon her own land. He tried to convince her how large of a threat Gerhardt had become but she continued to refuse no matter what he said. Thus instead he had to teach her how to build technology to rival if not surpass Gerhardt’s which was extremely difficult for him. He knew a little bit about technology and could teach her how to build technology close to as advanced as Gerhardt’s but he was a god of nature not a god of technology. He wasn’t even friends or allies with any gods of technology, in fact most either disliked or hated him, so he couldn’t even go ask any of them how to make such technology.

Eventually ghostly creatures had been spotted in the sky and with them came a significant decrease in temperature and sudden snowfall. Apparently the ponies called them “Windigos” and they were attracted by hatred which Gerhardt and his family had in abundance as did the remaining populations of Tall Tale and Van Hoover. Since the Windigos apparently weren’t aligned with Equestria or Nightmare Moon Gerhardt decided to just ignore them unless they started causing significant problems.

At the end of the month, Nightmare Moon had sent about a hundred pegasi pulling specialized gliders loaded with more conventional bombs and explosives to try to blow up Gerhardt’s lab and collapse his mines. She only partially succeeded. They caught Gerhardt and his army off guard and the bombs caused quite a bit of damage to his lab and his factory. However they reacted very quickly and he and his children worked together to create a shield to defend what was left. Fortunately most had survived the attack though about 27 had been destroyed in the explosions. Some of which included Inferna’s Nightmares, thus she raised them as ghost based undead and was extremely angry. So much so in fact, that she opened a portal into the sky, charged through in her combat ready centipede-like body, kept herself aloft in the air with telekinesis, and began personally slaughtering as many of the pegasi as she could get her claws or tentacles on. Their blood poured from the sky like rain and their screams could be heard all the way from the ground.

The rest, completely horrified by her and the gruesome ways in which she ripped their comrades appart dropped the entire rest of their payloads all at once before flying away as fast as they possibly could. About 20 of the 100 managed to escape and only 7 of those 20 escaped unharmed. That was not the end of the assault, however, as artillery cannons were teleported about a mile away and began bombarding them from long distance.

They tracked the angle, speed, and trajectory of the artillery shells and determined the location of the artillery emplacements. At that point Arthur and Inferna lead a joint assault on the artillery emplacements. The ponies that were killed by Arthur and his soldiers or the undead under his command were the lucky ones. They died quickly and mostly painlessly. The ones killed by Inferna and her Nightmares, on the other hand, died screaming in agony as they were ripped apart, flayed alive, or were tormented in ways too vile to describe. The Nightmares that were meant to emulate demons were exceptionally good at emulating demons to the point that in a demonic invasion it would be almost impossible to differentiate the two if it weren’t for the fact that the Nightmares were mechanical and made of metal. Though depending on how the individual perceived evil it may be truly impossible to differentiate them as the actual demons may have looked exactly like the Nightmares to them.

Once the ponies were dead, instead of destroying the artillery cannons Arthur decided to keep them. He knew that he could put them to very good use. They even had a bit of spare ammunition left over. Or he would have kept them if they hadn’t exploded moments after the last of the ponies guarding and operating them were dead. Apparently they had been attached to a sort of deadman’s switch that caused them to self-destruct if the artillery crews were killed. That or they had been detonated remotely, Arthur wasn’t sure which. Either way he would keep that lesson in mind for next time. Regardless, they could at least collect what was left over from the artillery cannons, melt them down, and reuse the metal elsewhere. Such as to make barrier towers to protect their lab and factories so something like this couldn’t happen again. At least not as easily.

This time Nightmare Moon did not appear to lead this battle in person. Gerhardt was actually somewhat disappointed by this fact but not surprised. Apparently she had learned from the last two attacks and didn’t want to risk putting her own life on the line unless she was confident that she could actually win. This attack hadn’t been meant to destroy Gerhardt and his forces. Instead it had been meant to soften them up and sabotage the progress they had made, and it had succeeded in that regard. However he wasn’t going to just let this attack go unpunished.

Thus he, Arthur, Elizabeth, Inferna, Alice, and Jack began planning their next major assault on Equestria.

A week later and their plans were underway. Their next target was a major Equestrian military base they learned of from interrogating a few Equestrian soldiers they had captured. Apparently it was very new and it had been set up in a strategic position between Equestria and their territory. They would have attacked the city known as Los Pegasus but apparently after they took Tall Tale and Van Hoover, Nightmare Moon had decided to start fortifying every major population center near their territory. Los Pegasus was the largest of the population centers near them thus it was the most heavily fortified next to Canterlot at the moment. So taking this fortress would put them in prime position to invade the city.

Arthur, Jack, Inferna, and Elizabeth were leading the invasion. It needed all four of them due to how heavily defended the fortress was. While they did that, Gerhardt and Alice would be invading another Equestrian military base elsewhere. It was less heavily defended and was of lower priority so they estimated it would only take the two of them and their respective forces to capture it.

[Inferna]

“So my darling children and I are to start the assault and soften them up for you three, correct?” Inferna inquired, trying to make sure she understood the plan correctly. Her voice sounded eerie and unnatural and came from all of her mouths at once and her movements, much like Gerhardts neither appeared like the movements of an organic being or a golem. Instead they seemed to combine all the wrong elements of both.

She was currently holding one of the smaller ones of her lovely demonic Nightmares and was stroking it like a beloved cat or puppy. Its eyes were alight with eagerness at the prospect of spreading bloodshed and suffering to their enemies and its body was practically trembling with excitement. From an outside perspective it appeared as though some terrifying giant mechanical eldritch abomination was holding and petting a relatively small demon made of metal. Thus the sight was actually quite unsettling, though she certainly didn’t see it that way. She saw herself as beautiful and all of her children and grandchildren as adorable. To her the normal golems looked bland and boring. Gerhardt, Alice, and Jack all looked okay but she thought that with a little work they could look even better. Even so she loved them all the same despite what she perceived as their “flaws”.

“Yes. I would suggest you use portals to get past the range they can safely use their artillery against you. Their wall mounted turrets will still be a problem but once you're that close you should be able to destroy them with a bit of effort. After that spread as much fear and chaos amongst their ranks as you possibly can. Though if you happen to see the commanding officer that is in charge of the base, you are to capture him alive and in useful condition if at all possible. We need him for interrogation.” Jack advised.

Inferna chuckled. “Thank you for the advice, dear brother. However, I don’t believe either the artillery or the wall mounted turrets will pose a serious threat. You see, I have been researching and practicing another form of magic I think will work quite well in this situation. At least in the way that I plan to utilize it.”

“Oh, and what would that be? If I had known you were researching a particular form of magic for use in situations like this I would have attempted to assist you.” Elizabeth inquired in a genuinely curious tone which was unusual for her as usually she was rather monotone and professional no matter who she was speaking to.

“Hm… I was planning on letting you wait and see for yourselves but since you asked… You know dimensional magic and space magic correct? I plan to use them both in a way to distort space around myself and my enemies so as to disorient them and make it much more difficult for them to hit me. You know how demons will occasionally create non-euclidean space in a particular area to disorient their prey and make them just as if not more likely to harm themselves than the demon in question? I drew quite a bit of inspiration from that. Standard demons aren’t that much more powerful than us mortal mages so I decided it couldn’t be that difficult for us to replicate.” Inferna explained.

With an amused chuckle she continued, “And as it turns out, I was right. It’s not difficult at all. The most difficult part is the processing power required to comprehend what you are doing since we aren’t really designed to understand or operate in non-euclidean space, though I am working on that as well. Admittedly the spells I have devised for this are overly complex and aren’t very efficient just yet so I can’t sustain them for more than five minutes if I wish to use magic for anything else, but they should still work well enough for the purposes of this siege. Besides which my children and I can take shifts casting the spells so the effects can last longer than if a single individual were to cast them on their own.” Inferna explained in what was to her a casual tone.

“I see. That could prove quite useful from a strategic perspective if you could improve upon these spells and master them. I would highly recommend working together with Elizabeth and Father on this matter in the future. For now, however, we must focus on the matter at hand. After you and your forces begin your assault, we will wait for your signal before joining you. If you do not give a signal, we will join in approximately ten minutes after you begin your assault.” Arthur stated.

“Very well. Then it is time we get started. Come my beloved children! Let us bring Hell to these accursed Equines! Bathe in their blood and sing along with the beautiful music of their screams of fear and agony!” Inferna called out to the Nightmares under her command. The sapient and demonic Nightmares cheered or roared their approval. With a sadistic almost demented laugh, she set down the demonic Nightmare that she had been petting, opened a portal and charged straight through it. The other Nightmares quickly followed suit.

“I realize I am a Wraith inhabiting a mechanical body and am thus a monster in my own right but Inferna and her “children” fucking terrify me.” Jack stated as soon as Inferna and the other Nightmares were gone.

“Good. They should. That’s what they are designed for. Father has taken upon himself the role of the Devil and they are his demons. So fearing them is only natural.” Elizabeth replied.

[Gerhardt]

Gerhardt was humming his lullaby to himself as he, Alice, and their soldiers and undead slaughtered the ponies. In fact he was using auditory illusion magic so as to make it sound as though his voice was coming from every direction at once and could be heard across the entirety of the military base. He did this both to comfort himself as some of his children and grandchildren were injured or died around him and also as a method of psychological warfare. He wanted the ponies to learn to associate the lullaby with him and thus come to hate and fear it as much as they would eventually come to fear and hate him.

A pony shot him with a high powered necromantic weapon and agony flared through him as his soul was injured. Even so he didn’t stop humming even for a moment. Instead he grabbed the pony with telekinesis and pulled it over to him. He then proceeded to tear its throat out with his teeth before eviscerating its body and tearing it limb from limb with his monomolecular claws. He had killed it in this fashion intentionally so as to coat himself in its blood as a means of psychological warfare. The other ponies would see the blood running down his torso and dripping from his mouth and claws and would presumably panic at the sight of him.

Apparently it worked as quite a few of the ponies now seemed to be focusing much of their fire on him. That was not quite the reaction he had been hoping for but it could prove useful nonetheless. After all if he was drawing their fire that gave his children somewhat of an advantage as that meant there were less ponies shooting at them. As such he decided to turn himself into a massive target and draw as much of their fire as possible. Thus he sent a message to all of his children that were participating in this particular assault so they could capitalize on his actions.

Casting an optical illusion spell he bathed his entire body in light to make himself as visible as possible, especially in the darkness of this perpetual night, before flapping his wings and flying above the base. He then proceeded to begin casting very flashy combat and war spells while firing fully automatic bolts of magic from his rifle to draw as much attention to himself as possible. He also overclocked his brain and slowed down his perception of time until everything appeared to be moving at a very slow crawl. He needed to do this since if he was going to be drawing as much of their fire as possible then he would need to be able to react and retaliate in an instant, otherwise he would be shot to pieces in a matter of moments.

He turned in the air and flapped all six of his wings hard in order to launch himself out of the way of a volley of particle beams and raised a barrier to deflect some bolts and beams of arcane energy that were being fired at him. His sensors, which he had slightly increased the range of for this battle, detected some pegasi directly above him by approximately 92 feet. Looking up he saw them moving clouds above him. He assumed they were intending to use those clouds in order to shoot him with lightning, since he had learned the pegasi had that ability. So he pointed his rifle at them and sprayed them with fully automatic fire, blasting them to pieces.

Unfortunately, while he was distracted by this a couple of the ponies below managed to land shots on him. A bolt of arcane energy blew off his left leg while another blew off one of his wings and several high powered lasers melted holes in his torso. His humming took on a slightly harsher tone and he used his remaining wings to launch himself out of the way again before retaliating with a moderately destructive war spell aimed at the ones who had managed to land hits on him.

He had been lucky. If they had managed to shoot him in the head he could have died. Fortunately he wasn’t organic so a missing leg, one missing wing, and a few holes in his torso wasn’t going to put him out of commission. The only way they could truly stop him would be to destroy his brain. Still, he was going to need to be more careful. Even with his perception sped up like this he was not invincible or untouchable. It was just a lot more difficult to hit him then usual. Of course if his enemies were using lasers there was no way he was going to be able to dodge them. He was neither a god nor was he truly the greater spirit of evil so he couldn’t move faster than light, as much as he wished he could.

[Inferna]

Inferna let out an otherworldly shriek of pain and rage as a rocket slammed into her side and blew some of her legs and tendrils off of her body. In response she cast a curse on the pony who had shot her. It began screaming in agony as its bones beagan to warp and snap and its flesh began sloughing off of its body.

Another pony fired a grenade launcher at her and wrecked even more of her body. She crushed the grenade launcher with a telekinetic spell, rendering it inoperable and rapidly extended two of her heads towards the pony. She then proceeded to rip it to shreds with her teeth, while simultaneously fighting for her life.

The battle had been going on for thirty minutes now and it was not going in their favor, and that was in spite of her and her children warping space like demons to disorient, confuse, and entrap the ponies. Apparently the ponies had expected them to attack this base and laid a trap for them which they had fallen into almost immediately. Thus they were currently losing.

Many of her children had died in the battle, which had enraged her. So she had resurrected them as undead, however many of their souls were also destroyed by the ponies who were carrying necromantic weapons. This only served to enrage her further. So she was currently trying to slaughter as many of the ponies as she possibly could and she was trying to make their deaths as painful and horrific as she possibly could.

“Inferna, we need to retreat!” Arthur shouted at her via her built in communication systems.

“Not until I make these fucking bastards pay for destroying my children’s souls!” Inferna roared back at him.

“Inferna, listen to me, you cannot avenge them if you’re dead! Retreat now so you can live to avenge them later!” Arthur ordered.

Inferna growled in frustration. Grabbing a couple of the ponies with her tendrils she opened a portal in front of her and charged through it with her newly captured victims in tow. The ponies screamed in terror and begged their comrades for help as they were unwillingly dragged into the portal by Inferna. Once she and her victims were all the way through, she closed the portal behind them. “Fine! But we are coming back, and we are going to slaughter these fucking equines!” She shouted through her communication systems. She then rotated her heads 180 degrees and glared at the ponies she had captured who were trembling in terror and were begging for their lives. It seemed that she was just going to have to take her frustrations out on them once they got back to the lab.

Author's Note

Welp... That's another chapter down. This is about where things really start to go down hill for everyone. So look forward to that!

Also, just so you're aware, Gerhardt having the traits of all three races of pony won't make him an demigod like the alicorns. At least it won't in this version of the story. He might become more powerful later on due to something I have planned, but right now he's essentially just like any other mortal mage.

No fun facts this time.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!

Chapter 5

Gerhardt and his family had just finished slaughtering the last of the defenders of the military base they were assaulting when Gerhardt received a message through his built in communication systems.

‘Father, it was a trap. Unfortunately we have no choice but to retreat.’ Elizabeth informed him.

“What?!” He growled furiously in response. “Send me a full recording of what happened from multiple perspectives, now!” He demanded.

A few moments later he received the video footage he demanded. What he saw infuriated him to no end. It had indeed been a trap. Even with Inferna and her children warping space like demons, the ponies completely ripped them to shreds.

“Grrrr! This won’t do! Fine, if we can’t capture that base then we’ll just destroy it and build a new one on top of the ruins!” Gerhardt hissed in complete and utter hatred and loathing. “Return to our main base of operations and begin manufacturing bombs! In ten hours, we’re blowing that damned base straight to the infernal realm!”

‘Understood. We are already back at the base and will thus begin manufacturing the bombs immediately.’

Gerhardt shut off his built in communication system and punched a nearby wall hard enough that he punched a hole straight through it and completely destroyed his hand. Looking down at his now ruined hand he scowled at it and proceeded to rip it straight off. He would repair it later. For now he would have to do without it.

He then proceeded to use necromancy to resurrect several of the ponies that he and his family had killed. He made sure to keep their bodies and souls separate. “You are going to tell me everything you know. Plans, strategies, important locations, important military officers, supply routes, everything!” Gerhardt hissed at the ghosts of the pony soldiers.

“N-never…” One ghost moaned, struggling to resist the necromantic influence. The other ghosts also appeared to be trying to resist his influence.

Gerhardt scowled. “That wasn’t a request… You are going to tell me no matter what. Even if you force me to put your souls into artificial brains so I can rip the information from the memory banks! Though, before that, let’s start with some basic interrogation and torture… I’m sure at least a few of you will break before I have to shove your souls into artificial brains. As for the ones that don’t… Well… I will ensure your suffering will persist for the rest of eternity! If this universe even has an infernal realm, I will ensure those who force me to place them into artificial brains will suffer there until the end of time!” He hissed in a menacing and slightly deranged tone. His inhumanly intense hatred of the ponies as a species and towards the ones currently in front of him caused his E.P.U. to start heating up forcing his emergency cooling systems to kick in to prevent it from overheating.

As he said this, his internal thermometer detected a drastic drop in temperature and he heard a strange sound from up in the sky. Looking up he saw what appeared to be ghostly horses of some sort running across the night sky, obscuring the stars in clouds. Snow began falling from said clouds soon after.

“I am seeing unknown equine entities in the sky. They could be servants of Nightmare Moon. Investigate, capture some for interrogation, study, and experimentation, and dispose of the rest.” Gerhardt ordered through his built in com systems

[A few hours later, main base of operations]

About a quarter of the family’s production ability was currently dedicated to manufacturing bombs to destroy the base that Arthur, Elizabeth, Jack, and Inferna failed to capture. Their father wanted that base destroyed and by all the gods it would be destroyed.

In the meantime Elizabeth was currently making a new type of weapon of her own. Namely, she was augmenting several dozen ponies from the cities under the family’s control to turn them into living weapons without any free will. Her idea was to use the ponies to make cheaper and more expendable combat golems as well as utilizing another method of psychological warfare. Of course, she didn’t bother wasting the time or effort to remove their awareness since she honestly just didn’t care. So they all still retained their souls and were effectively prisoners within their own bodies without any control over their actions whatsoever, so they would feel every ounce of pain from the wounds inflicted upon them during battle and would be perfectly aware that they were being forced to kill other ponies.

Not that it truly mattered. Their thoughts and emotions were completely irrelevant as far as Elizabeth was concerned. The same could be said for all organic life forms that weren’t human or at the very least allied with humanity. And in this case she cared even less than she would for any other species since the ponies weren’t just random organic life forms but were enemies that were actively at war with her family. The fact that these ones had been civilians with families of their own was similarly irrelevant. The hypocrisy was not lost on her, she just didn’t care.

“Hm… Now isn’t this fascinating.” Inferna stated walking into the lab, using her more human lower body so she could actually fit inside the building. “I must say, I love what you’ve done with them, dear sister. I assume they are all still fully aware, so their suffering will be beautiful once they enter combat. Though if I could suggest one alteration, it would be to install devices into their brains to force them to constantly experience excruciating pain thousands of times more intense than what fully organic brains are capable of experiencing. The gods know these equine bastards deserve it and worse.”

Elizabeth was surprised when Inferna walked in but she didn’t show it. Instead she merely continued to work. “No. There isn’t enough room in their heads to install such a powerful processor. I would have to attach it to them externally and then wire it into their brains. Not only that but it would be nothing but a waste of time and resources. Both of which are in limited supply, I might add. They aren’t worth it. Now, what do you want? As you can see, I am rather busy developing cheaper, faster to build, and more expendable combat golems to supplement our forces. We have two whole cities worth of organics at our disposal, so we should use them. And merely killing them all and turning them into undead would not be using them to their fullest possible potential.”

Inferna sighed and walked over to one of the “golems” Elizabeth had finished and gave it a malicious smile before casting a pain curse on it’s soul. “Ah, how boring… I do see your point, however. I suppose simple pain curses will just have to do until we have enough time and resources to expend on them. Regardless, I actually wanted to request your assistance with a little project.”

“That being…?”

“I would like your assistance in altering the standard architecture of basic artificial brains to be able to comprehend and operate in all three: standard, non-euclidean, and standard multidimensional space. The fact our brains were unable to process exactly what we were doing to space and how to maneuver through it rendered any advantage doing so may have given us completely null and void. In fact, I would even go so far as to say it completely screwed us. My plan was good in theory but was horrible in practice due to the limitations of our hardware.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Pointless. I agree that it could provide a distinct strategic advantage, however that advantage is not sufficient enough to warrant wasting our time redesigning already functional technology in order to pursue it. At least not at the moment. There is a proper time for everything, and this is simply not the time. Why don’t you go do something actually productive with your time rather than pursuing unnecessary goals that will ultimately waste our limited time and resources?”

Inferna crossed her arms. “I see… You lack the knowledge to assist me. Father must have made an error while uploading information into your brain when he first built you. What a shame. I suppose I’ll just have to ask one of my children or my many nieces and nephews to help me instead.”

“Hmph… Your crude and unsubtle attempt at manipulation will not work on me. I have all the same knowledge that everyone in our family does, so your words mean nothing to me. So my advice still stands. Go do something productive with your time rather than wasting our time and resources. This conversation is over.”

Inferna huffed in frustration before stomping out of the room. As soon as she was gone Elizabeth sighed and shook her head at Inferna’s immature behaviour. “Where did father go wrong with her? First she endangers herself and the entire mission in her rage over her children’s souls being destroyed, which she was aware was always a risk, now she acts like a spoiled child when she doesn’t get her way. She doesn’t deserve her position as a leader… Perhaps I should talk to father about this. Then again, father’s clearly not in the proper state of mind to be dealing with such things at the moment, so perhaps it would be wiser to speak with my siblings instead? Hm… I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll start preparing for the bombing of the pony military base.”

[Later]

Gerhardt had finished interrogating the ghosts. All of them broke in the end so he showed them mercy and sent their souls to go attack the nearest pony population center, where the ponies soldiers would surely show up to destroy their souls and put them out of their misery. Now he opened a portal back to the main base and met with Arthur.

“Are the bombs ready?” He inquired.

“Yes. We even have a surplus of about five. All of them are the equivalent to about fifty tons of tnt. We didn’t think anything larger would be necessary for something so small as this.” Arthur stated.

“Good. Bring one to me.”

Arthur raised a hand and opened a portal. He then levitated a bomb through it and over to Gerhardt. It was about the size of a human head and was shaped almost like an egg with stabilizing fins in the back to help it fall straight.

Gerhardt took the bomb and opened a portal to the sky above the pony military base before stepping through. Only two of his wings were still functional, but that was sufficient to keep him aloft in the dark sky. Looking down, he saw the military base surrounded by a dark blue shield.

“What?! How could they have known we were going to bomb them?!” He roared furiously. Unable to contain his rage he threw the bomb down at the shield with every ounce of strength his artificial limbs could muster. And with the augmentations replicating the biological magic of the Earth Ponies that this body had been built with, that was actually quite a lot of force.

As soon as the bomb hit the shield, it exploded with a massive blast of highly destructive arcane energy. When the energy faded moments later the shield was still there appearing no worse for wear.

“No, no, NO! GODS DAMN IT! RAAAAAA@!#$%^&^#$!@!$@!#$*(*=^%$_+@!-$#@!~#%!!!” Gerhardt screamed with impotent wrath, his voice rapidly devolving into little more than static. After a few minutes of screaming in fury, he finally regained his composure and returned to the main base still fuming with unholy rage.

“They knew! They fucking knew we were going to bomb them and that demigod bitch raised a shield to stop us from destroying that damned base!” He shouted as soon as he was back.

“Really? How is that possible? There are no ponies among our ranks and none of us are displaying any signs of disloyalty towards the family, so they can’t have any spies among our ranks.” Jack stated, as he was one of the few individuals in the area to hear Gerhardt.

“YES! I don’t have the faintest clue how it’s possible, but they knew! They must be spying on us somehow! Perhaps they’re using some form of magic we aren’t familiar with?! That’s the only thing that would make any sense!”

‘In that case, I would recommend we cease all verbal communication and instead communicate strictly through encrypted wireless transmissions. Similar to how the Machina Hominum communicate with each other back on Earth. That way they will be incapable of listening in on our conversations if they are somehow spying on us.’ Jack said through their built in communication systems without saying a word verbally.

‘Agreed… This is Gerhardt 0001 to all of my children and grandchildren. The bombing of the equine military base has failed. The ponies somehow knew what we were going to do and Nightmare Moon raised a barrier to defend the base from our attack. We are now operating under the assumption the ponies are spying on us via some heretofore unknown form of magic. We will have to investigate this. Regardless, until we know how they are spying on us and how to counter it, all verbal communication is to cease. We will communicate strictly through highly encrypted wireless transmissions from this point forward, similar to the Machina Hominum but with further security measures to ensure our transmissions can not be intercepted or deciphered by the Equines.’ He said. He then received dozens upon dozens of confirmations simultaneously. Though one caught his attention in particular.

‘Father, this is Arthur 0001. With both missions having failed we need to reconsider our strategy. Specifically, we need allies. We can’t keep this up on our own. Surely there has to be other species we can get in contact with.’

‘Hm… Yes… Allies… That’s it! Thank you, Aurthor, I now know exactly what we must do. Inferna, gather the Nightmares. Especially the demonic ones. We are heading to one of the cities under our control.’

‘As you wish, Father. Should I gather all of them that remain or only a few?’

‘All of them. We need allies so we are damn well going to get an ally that will make Nightmare Moon tremble in fear! This world’s equivalent to the devil.’

‘Father, no! I must protest! This is beyond insanity! Not to mention the moral and ethical ramifications! We are many things but we are not evil!’ Arthur exclaimed.

‘Arthur, you are so very young and you have much to learn. Especially if you believe that. Morality is nothing but a hindrance to progress and good and evil are purely subjective. They are only objective when in reference to demons. Yes, I realize how that sounds. However, the devil is notorious for making deals with mortals so long as it advances his agenda of spreading misery, suffering, blood, death, and carnage. As well as collecting souls to torture for eternity within the infernal realm. He will try to deceive the one he makes the deal with however if one is intelligent enough they can see through his tricks and make him accept a straightforward contract with no strings or loopholes. It has been done twice in my lifetime and it has had disastrous consequences for the enemies of those he has made deals with. It will be no different this time. Besides which, this is our best option for victory. Nightmare Moon is only a demigod so she cannot possibly hope to stand against the power of a Greater Spirit on her own.’

It took a few seconds before Aurthur finally responded. ‘Very well, father… However, I will be setting up counter measures in case this goes wrong. Namely, my children and I will be creating something to banish this malevolent entity back to the infernal realm where it belongs as soon as it becomes a threat, because it will become a threat. I will also be requesting assistance from the other branches in this matter.’ He sounded very reluctant to accept this.

‘Very well. Inferna, I will be waiting in Tall Tale for you and your children. I will have the undead stationed there begin the process of rounding up each and every last one of the civilians for use in the ritual.’ Gerhardt said before opening a portal to Tall Tale and stepping through.

[A few hours later]

The sounds of tortured, terrified, mournful, and violated screams filled the air as the streets ran red with the blood of the thousands of ponies who had inhabited the city. A malevolent red aura engulfed the entire city as Gerhardt and Inferna along with all of Inferna’s children conducted the ritual. As a result from the streets of Tall Tale it looked as though the night sky had turned a dark crimson red. Some of the pony victims of the ritual died from the horrors they were being subjected to. However even then they were granted no peace as their souls would immediately be resurrected with necromancy and would continue to be tortured in ways too horrific to describe.

About thirty minutes passed before the blood and mutilated corpses started to move. They began pulling themselves together and clumping up in the middle of the city forming a large mass of meat, bone, and viscera that vaguely resembled a some sort of twisted and nightmarish tree that was actually larger than many of the buildings in the city, most of which were small skyscrapers. The blood was all pulled into the ground to water its roots. Once the tree was formed, the living victims and the souls began to be pulled towards it as well screaming the entire time. As soon as they touched it they were immediately pulled inside where they then disappeared beneath the blood and gore.

Suddenly the demonic Nightmares sparked all at once before heading towards the tree. Inferna tried to stop them, however they were no longer listening to her orders or the orders of anyone in the family. Gerhardt walked ahead of Inferna and her children until he was standing about a hundred feet from the tree with his arms crossed, waiting. He had never bore witness to the birth of a spirit’s physical form before but he assumed it was about to happen if the “tree” was any indication.

He wouldn’t have to wait long before an unholy shriek emanated from the tree and something began pulling itself up out of its blood soaked roots. It was by far the single most terrifying thing Gerhardt had ever seen in his life and since he had seen an archdemon before that was saying a lot. Its form was impossible to describe as it just kept shifting until it finished pulling itself all the way up out of the ground at which point it had finally settled on a form much like Gerhardt’s except made of flesh and bone rather than metal. Gerhardt had to wonder if that was the universal appearance all devils took or if it had decided to base its physical form on his appearance since he had been the one to lead the ritual.

Finally it turned and looked at him with a spike toothed smile causing a jolt of terror and existential dread to shoot through Gerhardt’s very soul. He was looking into the eyes of the purest form of evil and it was far worse than he ever could have possibly imagined. He was already starting to regret his decision and was on the verge of praying to the greater gods of this universe for forgiveness when it teleported directly in front of him causing him to stumble backwards in fear. He actually had to use his wings to stop himself from tripping and falling on his ass.

“You… You’re the one who led this ritual and granted me this physical form. Gerhardt Mechanica.” It said in an eerily normal sounding voice that was completely at odds with its appearance and the malice in its eyes. Though Gerhardt couldn’t tell if it sounded like a man or a woman. Perhaps it hadn’t decided yet as Greater Spirits were actually able to choose which sex they wished to be and it had presumably only just gained sapience.

“I am…” Gerhardt said, trying his best to keep his cool.

“That wasn’t a question. That was a statement of fact. Regardless, since you have just given me a lovely sacrifice and meal I suppose I will spare you and your family… for now… Ah but you have a reason for this don’t you? You want to make a deal… Don’t bother saying anything, I already know what you want. Vengeance, bloodshed, the destruction of your enemies, and ugh… peace.” It shuddered and sneered at the word “peace” as if it had just tasted something truly repulsive.

“I can give you all of this and more… for a price…” It smiled at him sadistically.

“Yes. I am aware. You want souls to torment. And you will have them. My children and I will collect thousands if not millions for you in return for two things. Your assistance in this war and a guarantee that you will never harm any member of my family specifically.” Gerhardt offered, trying to force himself not to stutter in terror and to put on at least a façade of confidence. However, he was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that this creature could see past his façade as easily as one could see through a perfectly clear pane of glass. Still he couldn’t let himself show any weakness otherwise he feared what this spirit would do.

“Hm… A good deal. However, I’m afraid that last part is going to cost you extra. So I want those souls and something from you specifically.”

“That being?” Gerhardt inquired.

“Nothing that should matter to you in the long term. So do we have an agreement?” The devil inquired, holding out a hand for him to shake.

“No. I refuse to agree to anything unless I know what it is beforehand. I refuse to give you my soul and I refuse to be your servant.” Gerhardt said defiantly, praying to all the gods of both this universe and his own that saying that wouldn’t provoke the devil.

The devil chuckled in amusement. “It’s funny that you think you have a choice. You need me, I don’t need you. In fact the only reason I’m giving you a chance to make this deal is this glorious sacrifice you prepared for me. However, my patience is quickly running thin. Keep your soul, that’s not what I want. Now, unless you wish to be my newest toy for the rest of eternity, do we have an agreement?”

Gerhardt gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He really didn’t want to do this without knowing what he was agreeing to. Unfortunately it didn’t seem this creature was going to give him a choice. Well… At least he would be allowed to keep his soul… So he reached out and very reluctantly shook its hand. Pitch black arcane energy enveloped both him and the spirit for a moment as the contract was sealed.

When it was over he opened his eyes and looked at the devil. “Alright… The contract is sealed. What did I just agree to?”

The devil gave him a wicked smile. “Four things. One, your family will claim a minimum of a million souls for me. Two, the ‘demonic Nightmares’ you created are mine and you will produce a minimum of a thousand more for me every year for a century, all of which should be as powerful if not more powerful than your children. Three, you will be my champion in the mortal realm and will claim souls for me for the rest of your days. Finally, you are now cursed. You will have small bouts of sanity every so often where you will be forced to realize the horrors you have committed and will commit in my name. Your suffering during those times will be absolutely delicious…”

Gerhardt blinked, not understanding what it meant. “What? I’m perfectly sane!”

The devil chuckled and poked him in the forehead.

Suddenly his vision was obscured by static before clearing a moment later. He then fell to his knees and stared up at the tree of gore in absolute horror. “By the gods… What have I done…?” He then looked at the devil not in fear but in remorse. Its very existence in this form was representative of what was by far the single largest mistake of his life. The Undead and Nightmares were bad enough but this? This was far too much even if he was desperate…

Placing a hand against his head he tried to cast a spell to destroy his own soul. However his magic was blocked by something. Trying to access it was as if he were beating against a bulletproof glass wall that was ten feet thick with nothing but his bare hands prior to receiving his augmentations. “What have you done?!” He demanded furiously, looking at the devil.

“Oh nothing. As part of the curse, you are simply incapable of committing suicide. I knew you would try but that would be far too boring. Oh don’t worry, when you lose your sanity again you’ll forget all of this. That way your suffering will always be fresh and new during the short bursts in which you regain your sanity. This is the price for me not harming your family. Be grateful I’m in a good mood, because I could have easily made it far worse on you.”

Gerhardt just sat there in silence staring at the tree of gore, reflecting on the severity of his mistakes. The worst part was that he knew he deserved this for what he had done in this world and what he was inevitably going to do.

“Now, let’s go draw out that demigod so I can capture it…” The devil said sadistically, forcing Gerhardt back up onto his feet with telekinesis.

Gerhardt was about to ask what it meant by that but quickly realized. Of course it didn’t want to kill Nightmare Moon, that would be too easy. It wanted her as another prisoner to torment for eternity. The fact she was a demigod likely only made it want her more.

Suddenly there was a wave of darkness and Gerhardt found himself in the middle of what appeared to be the military base his children had failed to capture. He was then forced to watch the most horrific slaughter he had ever seen in his life as the devil butchered the defending equines as if it were shredding through mere scraps of paper. Well, he called it a slaughter yet none of the defending equines died. No. They only wished they were dead. Instead the devil kept them alive as it tore them apart, tortured, and violated them. It was such a horrific display that it put what Gerhardt and his Nightmares did in Tall Tale to shame despite being on such a significantly smaller scale. It took about thirty minutes in total and during that time Gerhardt’s insanity eventually returned. His burst of sanity had only lasted ten minutes in total.

Eventually Gerhardt’s sensors detected the presence of a demigod. Looking in that direction he saw Nightmare Moon flying there in the air about twenty feet off the ground, looking at the scene of carnage in horror.

As soon as she showed up the devil stopped what it was doing and looked up at her. Suddenly Gerhardt’s sensors began detecting the presence of another Greater Spirit and before the devil could say anything a small pink cloud appeared above its head and began raining some sort of brown liquid on its head. Snarling in fury it pointed a claw at the cloud and zapped it with a bolt of pitch black arcane energy. Suddenly it turned into a floating mass of gore raining blood instead of whatever that brown liquid had been.

“Alright, ew. Wow… You’re even less fun than I expected when little Luna here told me how you gained your physical form.” Said a disembodied voice that came from seemingly every direction at once. Suddenly a creature that looked like one of the chimeric creatures created by the most insane necromancers from Gerhardt’s world if it was actually a living being rather than a patchwork undead monstrosity appeared next to Luna.

“I told you, I’m Nightmare Moon! Luna is gone!” Nightmare Moon growled at the chimeric spirit.

“Whatever you say, Luna. Anyways, what’s your name supposed to be and what do you represent if you don’t mind me asking?” The chimeric spirit inquired, floating over to the devil.

“Hm… A name… I suppose you can call me Malice. I am the Spirit of Evil and Malevolence. And you are?” Malice said in a calm but annoyed tone.

“I am Discord, the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. It is my immense displeasure to make your acquaintance. You being the spirit of evil certainly explains why you are so unbelievably disgusting. You know, normally I’m not one to end lives but…” Discord snapped his fingers and suddenly all of the ponies that Malice had been torturing died from numerous different rather ridiculous causes. “I’ll make an exception just this once for the poor souls you were torturing.”

Seeing all of its victims up and die, Malice simply chuckled before snapping its fingers. Suddenly their souls were all resurrected and were being tortured by unseen forces. “That’s fine. I don’t care if they lose their physical forms. I get to keep my toys either way. Unless you want to destroy their souls. By all means, go ahead. If you really wish to help them, then erase them from existence because that’s the only way I’ll let go of any of my toys.”

Discord scowled at Malice. “You truly are evil.” He then looked at Gerhardt. “And you’re the one who granted this monster a physical form I presume?”

Before Gerhardt could say anything Malice snapped its fingers and Gerhardt vanished. It had teleported him back to the tree of gore. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do anything to that one. I have a contract with him, you see. He and his family are going to claim quite a hefty sum of souls for me once I capture that demigod and start tearing this pathetic kingdom to shreds. Though I suppose that will have to wait. For now, how about you and I have some fun?!” Malice said before flapping its wings and launching itself into the air.

“I don’t think we have the same definition of ‘fun’ but all right. If that’s what you really want, I suppose it has been quite awhile since I’ve really cut loose. So I’ll have plenty of fun. I don’t know about you, though.” Discord said while stretching in preparation. As he did this he also snapped his fingers and teleported Luna back to Canterlot.

Author's Note

I'm honestly not sure about this chapter. I actually had three different ideas for how this could go. First, Gerhardt makes a deal with Malice. Second, King Sombra finishes conquering the Crystal Empire and attacks Equestria, then Gerhardt and his family ally themselves with him. And third, Gerhardt's family seeks out the Dragons, the Griffons, the Deer, the Minotaurs, the Yaks, the Buffalo, and/or the Diamond Dogs to convince them to help them fight Nightmare Moon.

So if you guys don't like this version and would have preferred one of the other two versions just let me know. I'll happily rewrite it.

Fun Fact: While any spirit can technically reproduce with mortals they are technically sexless. Only Greater Spirits ever really choose a sex due to the given world's perception of the concept they embody. So if a world views war as a more masculine thing then the greater spirit of war would be male. If a world views Nature as feminine then the greater spirit of nature would be female. The world of MLP, however, doesn't view evil as male or female thus Malice is neither.

Anyways, as always, constructive criticism is more than welcome. Please, tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and how you think I could improve if at all. I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much if not more than I enjoyed writing it!

Stay safe out there everyone!