Who Knows Where

Chapters

A Beginning
Bynn The Breaker
The Crystal Shard
The Beginning, Somewhere Else.
Who Knows Where?
The Queen & The Stranger
And Her Alliance
Organization
A Day In The Life
Somewhere Else
Combat On The Sands

A Beginning

The Bastion, unfortunately, is now the only piece of solid land that survived the Calamity. Rucks, an elderly gentleman with bronzed skin and white hair, sat in his pitched-up tent made from white canvas and fabrics, quietly pondering the events and stories that led them this far.

A proper story is supposed to start at the beginning, but it ain't so simple with this one.

Praying to the Mother that the kid would wake up, it'd be up to him to make the choice of the bastions two core functions, restoration or destruction of the old world. If they'd been allied with the Ura, with Zulf and his people, then maybe, they could have used their methods of creating artificial anchors for the old world to bring more of the old world back slowly.

But they couldn't. Not when the kid had been forced to fight an entire battalion of angry and confused people in a country he never saw, bitter over things the kid hadn't done, in wars he never fought in. Despite the Bastion having been attacked and heavily damaged by Zulf, the kid still brought them back, wounded by his own people for leading the assumed enemy to the heart of their own bastion.

But Rucks did, and it was for that reason he didn't just go ahead and restore the world, instead of leaving its fate to the one who had never had a chance to experience it, to the one who actually collected the cores.

"Come on kid... Get up, it ain't funny."

"Oh Mother... And here I thought you had enough of me. You could have undone the calamity itself, but instead, you choose to live in a world like this?"

"I gotta admit kid, I ain't put much thought into that idea, but carrying on? With you here? We can't go back anymore. But I suppose we could go wherever we pleased."

"And if anyone's left out there, I sure would like to see the look on their faces..."

"When we dock this thing right on their doorstep."

Rucks paused in speech for a moment, untying one of the sails underneath the belly of the Bastion, the landmass converted to a flying island.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself, I could really use a first mate yknow."

It's been six months, two weeks, three days since that fateful day, flying through storms, rain, and shine. No solid ground to be seen yet, but one fateful day, the bastion flew right over the land its refugees would come to know as Equestria, casting an ominous shadow despite it being high above the ground, before it suddenly stopped at the edge of the frozen north, its sealed monument suddenly opening, detecting a shard nearby.

Rucks tried to find out wherever the shard was, but it was obscured in snow and ice. He couldn't see anything, and frankly, all that cold reminded him and Zia of the Ura tunnels. The site of the last human battle. Despite this The Kid seemed undeterred, lifting up his Caelondian Hammer, and taking the Galleon mortar with. It hadn't taken much convincing for The Kid to not[ use the strongest thing in their armory, the Calamity cannon, in place of his hammer. Rucks still wasn't happy with himself for the creation of a portable prototype for the Calamity.

With that mortar and a hammer, he's like a one-man demolition squad.

He never was one for words, always quiet and rarely speaking outside of what was said from a dream occurred by eating too much of Zia's cooking or taking the faintest drag from Zulfs fine glass pipe. He headed on to the Skyway, a lift created to take people long distances with the force of the wind, and was whisked away to who knows where.

Author's Note

And off he goes, a little boy on his way to raid the Crystal Empire. :pinkiecrazy:

The story here will be taking place after the Evacuation Ending and a rare few of you who still remember Bastion might be wondering what will happen with Zulf, or why the Bastion needs more power, or what will happen with the kid's dreamscape when confronted by Princess Luna.

It'll be answered in time.

Bynn The Breaker

It was going to be a mostly uneventful day for the crystal ponies, who were, for the most part, trying to keep up with their old lives in a strange new world after the events of King Sombra and their entire disappearance from the plane of existence, one of many things they'd prefer to forget.

Princess Cadence and Shining Armor on the other hand rarely got a chance to themselves as of late, dealing with law, crystal ponies, ways of successfully maintaining the economy of a place where not so much as a single bit flowed in and out for millennia, lest they collapse. They had very little to sell to the modern Equestrian market, outside of recently being a popular tourist site for ponies, though the visits weren't going to last long, and if any of King Sombras's magical presence remained and triggered, it could stain the Crystal Empire's fickle reputation in the eyes of Equestria's nobility.

The Princess Of Love sighed and prepared for another day in the newly remodeled court, prepared to settle matters both as royalty and alongside a jury of crystal ponies, today's matter was the possibility of farming in the Frozen North.

It was going to be a long day.

The kid was currently being hurdled through the air, taking the chance to do ~~a~~ a few summersaults. For the most part, he was always mature, to the point where if nobody had noticed his height and the softness of his facial features, they would have just assumed he was another Caelondian.

Another Caelondian who had taken another term on the Rippling Walls, ten years of labor, building, breaking, defending the walls.

Not a past he wanted to drift back to, despite the fact he'd grown up in the military instead of a proper childhood.

Maybe ill land somewhere soft this time... He thought, maybe it was just for the amusement of the gods, if any still watched over humanity, that he would always land somewhere hard, or in one particular case he would blame entirely on having prayed to Roathus one day, landed just inches away from a few soft pillows in the Sundown Path. That had left him feeling surprisingly angry for the duration of his time there.

Such thoughts were cleared and replaced with the hard feeling of slamming his face into the hard crystal road.

The afternoon was lazy as the day grew to a close, the sudden slam in the ground alerted what few crystal ponies were nearby, the darkness falling shortly after. Some thought Nightmare Moon returned for a moment, with the loud noise and the sudden coming of night, but in reality, it seemed like a small minotaur boy had just gone and fallen out of the sky, and few were mixed between worry of a potential omen and concern over the boy. At least until it suddenly got up, seemingly not showing any worse for wear with its strange armor made from a simple metal chest plate and shoulder-pad, with the most unusual being his red scarf tied into a bandana and the gear he had strapped to his back, tied with rope. White hair draped from its head in lazy, short locks. Its presence was intimidating despite its short stature, even more so when it got up.

Understandably, they fled to find the guards while on the verge of hysteria.

He groaned inwardly as he got up, the architecture reminding him of the Tazal Terminals in terms of color scheme, blue crystal architecture, shining glumly and faintly in the moonlight. Seeing towns was always a bit of a soft-point for him, considering...

Kid just hopes it won't turn out like last time, not much point in fretting the past

One of these days he might break his nose, but thankfully today was not today, despite his lack of a graceful fall he was none-the-less worse for wear and got to moving, normally he'd walk to wherever the land remained and if it was the right way the ground would form up underneath his feet. This time it just meant relying on the Star Of Caelondia strapped to his back, the city crest was, to his knowledge, just a form of identification until Rucks had pointed out it contained enough power to point the way to the cores, with similar power to the Bastions.

How it worked, or why it worked was beyond him, and it wasn't all that important to him. Right now what mattered was getting the shard back, hopefully in time for a warm meal and to keep the engines running. For how long he couldn't say, Rucks was always fickle on the details and never spoke about it often unless prompted, which to his fault, he never asked.

Marching forward in a steady pace, the gear he carried clanked softly, and his gait was un-impeded by the heavy head of his hammer, or the mortar and its artillery shells, not the mention his saving grace, the indestructible shield. A heavy thing that would never leave his grip no matter what was thrown at it.

He followed the tug of the energy, it waned and waxed depending on the direction he headed, which at this point was almost about to just be him waltzing into the center of an ornate castle made of gems. But, as fate had it, a pick-up job was never so easy.

Kid spies something stranger still. Is that a survivor?

Instead of the usual Gasfella and beasts that roamed his world, this time he had to fight some type of armored-up horse, all of which coordinated around him intelligently, covering each other's backs, and surrounding him with spears. This was certainly new. The tactics were unlike the Ura, who seemed to just be desperate to fight him off with what able bodies they had.

No ma'am, just some ponies, clad in armor and weapons.

Rather than the black, red-hinted stone used in Ura spears, these were clean, metal spears, though they lacked the polish and range of Brusher Pikes, and the way they stood told him they were hesitant, and almost out of practice. Maybe just this once he'd hold back, and pull a punch. His hammer was readied, drawn in one swift movement and he broke the stand-off. The shard was needed, so no time was left for pleasantries, just the business end of a Masons specially crafted sledgehammer. The thing was both weapon and tool, and was ornate, yet simple in its design, leaving everything to function and form afterward. He swung around, dug his feet in, and just like that he was a whirlwind of hurt, rolling past the guardsmen who were knocked down, and the rest presumably fled, although two were still up against him. A quick parry of a spears strike was enough to deter one, and the morale of its partner, and the two fled somewhere deeper into the castle.

Kid follows the natives in, they'd know the place better than him after all.

He rushes in after them, not to chase but just to trail them. It wasn't his concern just yet, he focused more on the shard, and the stairs leading upwards into the castle. He'd find more guards to try and stop him on the way, but he ran past them.

It was only thirty minutes after dark when he had settled into his office to deal with the diminishing pile of paperwork and training regiments he had to plan out. Just as Shining Armor hoped, it was an easy day.

Until it wasn't, just at that moment a guard rushed into his office unannounced, and completely uncomposed. A yellow crystal earth pony in the standard armor of the guard, cutting off Shining just as he was about to ask what was going on. "The Empire is under attack!"

His march continued, suddenly greeted by a squadron of armed ponies with seemingly more spine than the last group. He was somewhere on the second floor of the castle. They didn't allow him to strike first, one of them taking a jab at him from which he rolled out of the way and off to the side, no longer stuck in a choke-point.

Kid uses some fancy footwork to get around.

Another one takes a jab at him, the spear trying to clip him while he's down when-

Clang, Trusty shield saves his hide.

He pulled his shield in a fluid movement, twisting to cover his side with the hunk of metal, bearing the motif of a bull. Said shield was placed aside for a moment as he took his hammer out, and swung in a broad strike, knocking down a pony and throwing one to the side, then turning he swung upwards and flowed back into the side of two more guards. They seemed to be far less durable than what he worked with, the majority of them were either out-skilled or outclassed in strength, and didn't have the constitution to keep standing after a single strike. Something about the way things were lining up told him it might end up like the Workman Ward when the core was stuck in a metal cage and had to be waited out against waves of enemies. He dreaded the thought, and even more so thought about where he could find a sky-lift home. It just can't ever be simple, but at least it was easy enough for now.

Starts to feel his bruises though.

The march onwards continued, following the path the crest told him to take as he rounded a corner into another set of spiral stairs, and being for the most part unable to roll up them, just settled for a run up them. Had he any less stamina and more of a mind to express himself openly he would have complained about the amount of them. Taking this small break from combat he remembered about the little red bottle he had brought with him, taking it out he looked at the label, two blue hinted tear-drops in a heart shape. The second most useful thing from tonics. Removing the cork he took a deep gulp of the stuff and finished it, putting it in a waist pocket as he wasn't one to litter.

"Squirt Cider will toughen you right up. Too bad about the musty aftertaste."

On the third floor, he turns to the left of the square lobby, leading him to another group of guards. The tug felt stronger, it was getting close, and the ones further up seemed to have increasingly more spine and determination to stop him in his tracks. Swerving and ducking, he clashed against a spear with his hammer and blunted it so, slamming into a pony who thought to delay him. He was going to get that shard sooner or later, so he decided he'd cut the idle fights and skip to the big one, rushing straight ahead despite the shouting of the ponies that slowly turned a bit recognizable. Running up the last flight of stairs he felt the rush of the crest.

He spots the shard, heart-shaped, but a shard it is. A blue-tinted forcefield stands in his way.

"By Order Of Equestria, Stop right there!" A clear command rang out among the voice as the clatter of hooves paused around him, a white stallion with a blue main and horn, clearly different from the others.

Roathus [ROH·thus] - The God of Thirst and Plenty

"The Gorging Host grows ever larger yet remains insatiable, His eyes awash in tears."

All the gods now after the calamity seems to bear misfortune when prayed to, always sporting an ironic twist against whatever positives they stand for. This particular one was always prayed to by event-hosters wherever food and banquets were involved, no matter how big or small. Whenever this one was invoked by The Kid, he'd find much less to use for himself in the field, but just slightly a little more to bring back on his travels.

Brusher - A person, more accurately a huntsman who would go beyond the city walls to explore, document fauna and wildlife, and other various threats and points of interest for Caelondia, it was a dangerous job. Their Pikes and skill with it were the stuff of legends.

Author's Note

During the point of view of the Kid ill be taking advantage of the narration Rucks always provided in the game during gameplay. It's such a nice thing that I wish was found more frequently, and I'm lucky it works so well with the story.

I must admit, the thought of having the Elements petrify one of them, or at least them know about petrification is a hard one because the Calamity turned every man, woman, and child to perfect statues, which were all thoroughly dead and made of hardened, stone-like ash. So the thought of them still being alive and not having thought about bringing them to the bastion to maybe save them might break a few of our cast members here with false hope. Alternatively, our humans might focus on destroying the Elements, since despite the rainbow look is definitely just another form of calamity to them.

Oh the amount of things i can work with on misunderstandings alone.

The Crystal Shard

Author's Note

Fixed a few grammar errors here! :P

The Crystal Shard

"By order of Equestria, stop right there!"

The kid keeps his life-long friend at the ready, no bronzed cages to deal with, instead, a clear blue barrier stopping his path to the shard. Blue instead of purple, and heart-shaped, but the crest recognized it as a shard, so did the bastion. Shards were Shards no matter their shape and color.

He turned around, facing the pony that had tried to order him around. A horned stallion with white fur and a blue and teal-streaked mane. Recognized as only a unicorn, if only for the small number of myths surrounding them, as a fairytale. He finds himself at a crossroads in the story. Listen to the talking horse, or press forward?

Shining Armor stood, unsure of what he was looking at. The being in front of him was unfamiliar, except for how it vaguely stood like a minotaur, or more accurately like a dragon, on two legs. It was small, but despite that still had enough force behind that hammer to knock a pony down in one swing, and was apparently strong enough to withstand a fall from the sky. For a moment he'd worried King Sombra had suddenly returned, but he detected no dark magic behind the sudden intruder that was after the Crystal heart. Which left another question, why steal it? Not even the diamond dogs dared to steal an important magical artifact.

"Step away from the Crystal Heart, and stand down." He said sternly, in a commanding tone.

In response, the snow-haired being hanged its hammer on its back, and gave a strange gaze in its brown eyes, not one of malice, but more of an indifference, whatever emotions it held were hard to read. It was outnumbered, twenty-one to one, and with no magic to even the unlikely odds. It at least seemed to know what was said. That's great, he could get to the bottom of this. "Good. Come forward, the guards will take you into custody, you will not be-"

They suddenly pulled out a cylinder, propped on three legs, which Shining recognized. While heavy artillery like mortars had been seldom used except for rare skirmishes against griffin airships decades ago, as Captain of the royal guard he was still trained in them, in an unlikely event they were required.

And as such knew how much power one of them contained, and was surprised when it fired inside, and launched a tall pillar, with a blue middle barrel and the shape of a dragon's head at the top, right behind them. Instinctively he flared up a shield around him and the guardsponies, stopping the impact of a bright blue explosive shell, cracking his shield, but not breaking it.

Great, now he was stuck fighting on both ends.

Unsure of how to handle the turret, Shining had the guard focus on the human while he shielded them from the turret. He couldn't keep his eye behind him, but despite his best efforts to rally the group it seemed like a live shell was fired indoors, the noise was deafening and broke his focus, and the turret fired again, sending him skidding across the floor as it broke the shield he'd put up again at the last second.

There was a hole in the roof where the mortar impacted, and the guards cautiously stepped back in shock before they cranked the mortar again, winding it up. "STOP THEM!" He barked. If there was too much damage the whole building could fall in-

The loud explosion impacted against the barrier protecting the Crystal Heart, and he felt himself drain in magic as he focused on both his shield and the barrier, full of fading spider webs as it threatened to shatter. Once again the winding started, and this time the guards rushed forward, only to suddenly get knocked back by a rush of wind from being so close to the third explosion. Another shell and he'd lack the magic needed to keep his shields up.

The turret shot at him again, every few seconds. It had a pattern of some type, but he couldn't figure it out just yet. His head scrambled to find a strategy to beat the turret, he dropped his shield and fired a stunning spell at it with no effect on the construct. It was worth a shot, and he followed up with a simple magical bolt of energy at the turret, which chipped away at it.

That surprised him, and the shield went up when it fired. He fully expected it to not be standing, but it looks like it was built sturdier than most cannons. This was quickly getting more complicated, if he had another unicorn to help, maybe it'd even the odds.

He could hear shouting as the being swung its hammer, defending the emplacement as it was half prepared to fire another shot. A group of six rushed to encircle him with spears and was knocked down as it used its hammer as a counterweight, spinning in place and knocking them all down with a flurry of swings. A strong downward swing struck at the barrier, and it briefly broke a hole in the shield which regenerated quickly as Shining Armor focused new magic into it as quickly as possible, as much as he could spare.

As the guards slowly broke formation he found the number of able ponies slowly dwindling, the hammer was swift and hit hard, and spears thrown and jabbed it's way were dodged by a dexterous roll, or blocked by the clang of a metal shield. If he couldn't hurt it, maybe its own turret could.

Dropping the shield he let it fire and ducked, the shell headed straight towards the direction of the human, mid-process of knocking down another pony guard when he suddenly paused, and turned, rotating and drawing the shield in what looked to him as a desperate attempt to block the explosive power.

And deflected it back at him.

Boom. Right back at ya.

Kid knocks the unicorn down, he isn't all that happy about his choice, in fact, he had half a mind to just surrender and see where it went from there, these were not his people, and the Marshals Badge he had, what little rank he had in the old world? Well, it just wouldn't let him stand down to Captain O' Horse-Town. The mortar winded up again with a perfectly timed shot, and the charge flew with a whistle and this time...

The barrier stayed broken.

Guards shouted at him and rushed to attack, but the Kid is just a bit too quick, and his shield keeps his hide safe. Until he got a bit too cocky and let a spear cut his sides. Starts bleeding a little. But a tonic and some time at the Bastion will fix him right up, don't you worry.

Kids been through far worse to little a paper cut stop him now.

He rushes to the heart and grabs it. The ground beneath him seems to rumble and shake, and it's like he's at the Rippling Walls during its collapse on his first day of the Calamity. The eyes of the ponies widen.

Kid eyes the hole he's made in the process. It's a... Bit of a drop.

Shining Armor got up, dazed and confused as he thought the building was about to cave in, before realizing that though damaged, it was still structurally sound, and he sighed in relief.

It was short-lived when he realized the rumbling came as a short wave from the direction of outside the city, from the snowstorms that were kept at bay by the Crystal Heart. And with its absence, the storms could come back into the city, a disaster waiting to happen when winter hit and the storms got even worse.

The heart needed to be recovered. That was his one thought when he glanced around and saw that the being had escaped, and there were worried glances from the remaining guards-ponies.

"Sound the alarm. Get every guard to find and recover the Crystal Heart, we cannot afford to lose it!"

The Kid lands on a table, breaking it in the process. He's alive but bruised. He gets up, groaning audibly. So much for landing on something soft.

Has to get up a lot faster if he wants to make a clean getaway, starts running despite his bruises. Anyone else would've not made that fall, but living on the Rippling Walls tends to make you a little used to falling from heights. There was a limit though, and he knew it well.

His March turns to a run, his gear clinking on itself as his boots hit the ground, not much point in being discreet when you're a one-man demolition team. The idle jog turns more to a free run as magical bolts of energy get shot his way, and guards arrive to cut him off.

Kid doesn't stop running for anything, rolling like crazy.

Rolling underneath tables in the streets, running around boxes, the one thing it seems he didn't do was try to vault or things. If it was directly in his way as a sudden barricade, well, a souped-up mortar shell later and a whirlwind from his hammer would make short work of it, serving to delay him just a few minutes. Skyway, he needed a Skyway to get out of here, something that could direct air, usually there's one no matter how remote the area.

A little brick plate forms up in the ground ahead near the outskirts of town, spotting it by the drops of light that flew up into the sky from it. Escape to the Bastion had shown up. So did the unicorn. The approach had changed from making barricades to simple barriers that he was forced to roll around or smash through with his hammer, which he briefly did, but with the Bastion so close and with night up in the sky, he would just play it smartly and run, as fast as he could. Kid pauses and feels something hit his back, and he falls down.

Kid falls out like a light, but the Skyway picks him up, whisking him up away

The ponies attempts at following are unsuccessful...

Marshals Badge - A simple but ornate Badge carved from a fragment of a core, worn by honorable men who acted as peacekeepers and handymen for the people of Caelondia.

The Beginning, Somewhere Else.

Twilight Sparkle had an uneventful day, with little to do with her friendship studies, and oddly enough the lack of something to study. It was quiet, almost too quiet. Fortunately, she had a bit of a clearer head on her shoulders this time around and was definitely not about to start another iteration of the aptly named "Want-It, Need-It" incident, so she'd gone walking around with Spike in tow to ask around her friends to see if they'd be up for just an hour or two to relax. A picnic together maybe? The recent months had been very stressful and hectic and it would do some good for all of them.

Pinkie-Pie, being Pinkie-Pie, unsurprisingly said yes, she almost never said no to an invitation. She was likely going to bring cupcakes, she almost always did. Rarity, she thought, would be harder to convince, but the fashionista apparently felt her creative well running a bit dry, and thought a bit of time with her friends would help refresh it. Rainbow Dash was unfortunately out of her reach right now, she was probably sleeping in at her house in the clouds somewhere, it was her day off and on the rare chance she wasn't outside performing tricks and practicing ways to be faster and train harder, the rainbow would just be snoozing the day away.

Applejack had given a shakey agreement, which was basically just giving her the spot they'd meet up, in the time span of about three hours, and hoping she'd finish up her chores. (Which she usually would, not much can stop a practiced and skilled farm pony like her, it was just she never liked leaving the farm a mess before heading out despite there being others who could take care of the apples for an hour or two.) Fluttershy would have loved to come, just as soon as she finished up treating one of her resident critters for a stuck thorn.

Even though she told them all, she left a note for all of her friends (that she could get a hold of) about her impromptu picnic, and set out to help Spike with making some sandwiches. Considering all the work her favorite assistant did day in and day out, this was the least she could do.

...

"So when do you think the girls will show up?" Spike asked, carrying a basket in his claws. Twilight carried another one along with magic. For the most part, it was cucumber sandwiches, a cut watermelon, some grape bunches, things on the less sweet side since Pinkie-Pie would be bringing the sweeter treats and pastries. "I'm not sure, but I'd say soon. We know that Rarity and Pinkie will show up, so we just really need to wait on Fluttershy and Applejack." Pausing Twilight Sparkle found a nice little spot on the hill they'd agreed to meet up on and unfurled a checkered blanket. "In the meantime, we might as well set up. Spike?" "On it!" The little dragon hopped off Twilight Sparkles back, and set down the woven basket, opening it up for a second to take a look inside to make sure everything was fine, and not at all to sneak a bite of anything.
Twilight also set her own basket down with a raspberry-colored magical aura, looking around to see if anypony else was coming along.

Sure enough, she spots Rarity waving up at her, returning it with a happy smile and an equally enthusiastic wave, and the fashionista trotted up to Twilight. "It's good to see you again Twili! And a good evening to you as well Spike." She said, deflating her posh tone just slightly. "Oh Sparkle it's been just dreadful all cooped up in the Boutique as of late, I appreciated the invitation dear, I just couldn't stand another moment stuck fixing an infuriatingly stubborn hem." Taking a deep breath Rarity stopped her rant, and composed herself with little evidence of her sudden tangent. "So how has your day been?"
"Organizing books Rarity, there were a bit of backlogged orders I wasn't able to take care of when we were all busy," Twilight said, laying down to enjoy a bite of a cucumber sandwich. "I'm not done yet, more like ninety-eight percent done, as soon as I finish dealing with all the paperwork and forms." A slightly sour look on her face formed up at the mention of dozens of dozens of forms that were allowed to build up, unreturned library books, and organizing new orders and already returned books. 'Not at all looking forward to that.'
"Well cheer up dear, you're almost done with it, all right? That should stand for something, especially if you had time to come up with this sudden outing." Rarity paused, taking a look into one of the picnic baskets. "Oh, I almost forgot to bring them over!" She trotted swiftly just out of view and returned with a small bound bag that emitted small clinking sounds as it levitated over, dropping onto the blanket and opening up revealing an array of glittering gems. "Those are for you, Spike." "Really? Thanks, Rarity!"

Twilight smiled softly if a little unenthused about it. Just when was the last time any of them got a proper chance to be together without something just... Happening!

"Hi-ya! Sorry, I'm a little late everypony! Had to pick up Applejack from her chores! Ooh! But I brought plenty of super-yummy cupcakes! AJ even pitched in a little too!" Pinkie-Pie bounced into the scene with endless cheer, outpacing the orange pony trailing right behind by a few feet. "Howdy, y'all. I brought some apple fritters that Granny had whipped up recently." Pinkie had hurriedly placed her basket down and somehow pulled out an entire cakestand from it topped to the edges with cupcakes of various colors, some chocolate, some had sprinkles, fruits, and everywhere in between.

Applejack was more conservative since this wasn't a banquet, just a get-together with friends. a parcel of six still-warm fritters was all she needed when Pinkie was involved. Besides, it was mostly just for the variety. She flopped down, stretched, and righted herself back up again to sit down properly. "Ah'm lucky that I didn't have 'ta work at the stand today. Otherwise, I'd have missed out on spending time with y'all." Her southern accent turned thicker than usual for a moment, but it thinned out soon enough. "So what have y'all been up to?"

...

Shining Armor sat in his office, creating the rough draft of wanted posters. having collected the many testimonies of witnesses to that creature falling from the sky, and the many beat-up ponies he called a guard, he'd gleaned a description of the creature and its action, which for now seemed to be pure violence and not much more than he could've gotten. Yes, he'd already seen the being first-hoof, but still, a written description was needed for a much more artistic pony to come up with a drawing of them to put it in the posters.

WANTED:

All information relating to the unknown thief of the Crystal Heart is to be sent directly to Shining Armor or Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. In their absence, any information can be sent to the Canterlot Office Of Intelligence and subsequent legal branches. All caution should be taken when engaging or tailing them. The subject was last seen armed with a heavy hammer and mortar. Information about the location of the Crystal Heart that leads to its finding or bringing the Crystal Heart itself will be compensated.

Last spotted at The Crystal Empire, fleeing by unknown air travel.

REWARD - 60,000 BITS

It was bare, and straight to the point, and the tiniest naive part of him thought that a reward was beneath any good pony, but with just how... Hostile, and uncaring that thing seemed, it felt needed. He sincerely doubted the average pony was going to run after them. No, what was more likely was trained bounty-hunters and hired muscle going after it.
There was still another pressing problem, the absence of the Crystal Heart left them vulnerable to any assaults from the hostile conditions of the Frozen North, and while he doubted Queen Chrysalis, the queen of those vile shapeshifters, would be going after them anytime soon since the love powered artifact wasn't here, he still didn't think it impossible that maybe somehow, she'd caught wind of the situation and begun playing the long game and infiltrating them already. Maybe that thing and her were working together, stealing it so she could gain its power, then wait for them all to be frozen and weakened with the snowstorm to-

'Stop.' He thought, shaking his head briskly. 'How would she know about this place anyway? It only just came back. That line of negative thinking was not needed at all right now, what was needed more was a plan to evacuate all of these soon-to-be displaced ponies if the heart isn't returned soon, and a leader that was calm and collected.

Oh, Faust who was he fooling? This situation was a disaster. He could hardly deal with the logistics of moving entire cities worth of ponies, not to mention the supplies needed, and no-doubt all the furniture some would just refuse to leave behind, or if some were unaccounted for because they decided to double back and refuse to leave their homeland.

Hopefully, that letter would reach Celestia in time, he needed all the support he could get.

Author's Note

You may have noticed that this chapter was posted OUT OF ORDER! :pinkiegasp:

This was entirely on purpose, so dont worry about it all that much.

I'm also noticing I'm getting views on this while it was unpublished. Probably people reading ahead, or I accidentally submitted it. I'm still pretty new to handling Fimfiction.

Who Knows Where?

The kid stands at the center of a plaza, floating above the void. For the most part, it was walled off with buildings that lead nowhere in particular, and the only recognizable thing being a statue dedicated to the Star Of Caelondia, an outstretched hand holding a cog, the City Crest. There were some stone paths, a single tree, and grass patches, but aside from that it was nothing special.

Such was his dream. Specifically, the kinds where he used his mind as a proving ground for his fighting skills. One could call him a lucid dreamer, but the reality was it'd only really kick in with the help of a little something. So it was weird, out of place, to see this instead of something else. He'd probably get stirred from his dream when his body slammed into the ground again in the waking world, but until then he settled to sit tight, and he closed his eyes.

His eyes open, and he fully expects to wake up, and still nothing. Weird. He was still breathing and thinking, so as far as he cared he was still alive. Stuck in a dream but alive, unless the afterlife got ripped up by the Calamity as well.

Calamity... What a terrible event. Even harder to believe it happened a little less than a year ago, finding materials to keep their safe haven up took up a fraction of that time, a month at most of the work and constant fighting through shattered wilds and cities. Part of him regrets what he's done to get this far if only a little.

I'll see you in the next one...

For reasons unknown to him, he felt as though he was justified in not using the restorative function that the Bastion had. A weird sense of deja-vu in every step he had like he'd done the same song and dance with a few steps out of place and a bit of new dialog. But that just brought up some uncomfortable feelings... If he truly had gone back and done it all before then why didn't the feeling only show up during the calamity, why didn't he feel it all his life? How much had actually changed?

How much could have been prevented?

Rondy always wanted his ashes scattered here

How many could have lived if he remembered? If it had worked?

The Tunder Brothers...

The sight of four men, well-dressed with tall, proud top hats, all petrified and standing in place, gets brought to the forefront of his dreams, and it's all he can see. Frozen forever in a single moment.

Didnt make it.

They never were able to see what it was like beyond the cities walls, and they never will. He feels himself crack as the sight of plain frozen faces starts to surround him, and he finds himself back in the hanging gardens of Caelondia. Many were familiar to him in some way, and he has half a mind to strike them with his hammer and send them along with the rest of the ashes in the broken sky.

He doesn't much care to see 'em. Not like this.

He wanders the blue and white tile idly, trying to get his mind off things, to break the dream, the emotions that were bubbling up. Even just catching a glimpse of a person frozen in place like nothing wrong was happening was enough to make him freeze in place.

Nordy the bird boy...

Spotting the scene of another kid, maybe a few years younger than him just enjoying his time with a flock of birds, all washed out in monochrome and stained black with an ashy texture, destroying any previous trace of what material his shoes were, the color of his skin and hair, along with many defining details, save for his silhouette and pose.

He didn't make it.

Others his age were lucky enough to not have to transcribe themselves in military service just to scrape by.

And then... His gut ties into a knot, and he feels himself be engulfed by a deep pit of dread. His eyes were dull and lacked the determined fire they always blazed with no matter what. The Kid spots the core just inches away from him and can see nothing else. Nothing else except for the crowd of people, men, women, children, all surrounding the floating, brilliant blue core in a mixture of awe and prayer, some even placing a few things at the edge of the clustering gemstone's shadow.

He needs that core. He knows exactly what he needs to do. And with practiced skill, he draws his hammer, feeling more weighted than usual, like his strength was receding to stop him, to make him reconsider.

Kid does what he has to do.

The crowd disperses into ash, and the dread stops as he reaches out for the core, only for it to be filled with a familiar sense of uncertainty and worry. The dreams were walking him down his worst memories, casting him further into his dark abyss of unsettled feelings and transient thoughts.

And then it stops.

He isn't complaining though, he's quite glad to not have to deal with the situation and is content to bury it all back to the depths of his mind, slamming into any corners and recesses to disperse it thoroughly. But he's confused as to what's pulled him out of it. Looking around he finds himself in a plain grassy field, with the cities walls behind, made of heavy stone masonry and concrete, enforced and buttressed with ornate but efficient and effective bronze-colored alloy, with almost a gold-like luster and sheen to it.

Then he spots it, a giant horse that looked like it was cut straight out of the fabric of a night sky. The mane of the being flowed with the breeze of wind only it could detect, as the grass near it was unmoved, and as much as he thought it could pass as assistance from Yudrig, it certainly wasn't any help from the morning stallion that dragged him out of his stupor of turmoil, this horse seemed to be the complete opposite of how anyone would imagine them.

So naturally, he starts running after them for some answers, but the night-pony just takes flight, and he's left alone in the field again with nothing but his thoughts, and the sight of a marshal's badge in his hand instead of his hammer.

...Better wake up soon.

Yudrig - God of Impulse and Bravery

"The Morning Stallion affects the wishes of all people upon the break of each new day."

Every time the stallion stomps its hoof, someone out there makes up their mind. While not typically prayed to, it's still recognized for those who need a bit of bravery in their hearts and decisions, and a few reigns to temper the impulse of arrogant men and women.

Author's Note

Remember to read center-focused words in italic in the voice of Rucks, a narrational voice close to Morgan Freemans, its best you take a listen for yourself on your own time to get it.

The Queen & The Stranger

Compound was a changeling infiltrator hiding in the Crystal Empire, the one lone spy sent out after news of its return reached the hive. Since they were all low on options at the moment, it didn't take very long for Queen Chrysalis to send out at least someling to venture its frozen borders. The plan was to report back in three months, with some love stockpile and the basics for a small underground outpost so that if the journey had proved fruitful, the next groups of changelings could easily establish a strong foothold in the Crystal Empire.

Keyword, was, because now Compound was a terrified changeling. Guards had recently begun forming up in check-points as if they'd find the Crystal Thief with a simple magical scan. It was hardly going to do anything to find them, but just walking past them while they were in the process made her body feel like it was going to fall out of balance. The so-called scans were particularly powerful versions of the disguise removing spell, if she had any less strength in her, it would've been over, but a fed changeling is a strong changeling, and as such, she managed to resist it.

She avoided any checkpoints after that, even though it meant being publicly cut off from other parts of the city.

The crystal thief... Something had stolen the Crystal Heart, the one thing that she planned on reporting to Her Majesty as soon as possible. A giant enchanted gem, just bursting at the seams with love, enough to make a changeling sick. But it could be just the answer Her Majesty needed to the growing problems of hunger in the hive, just before taking over Equestria, possibly. She had a shelter hidden somewhere here, it wouldn't save her from freezing in the incoming storm, she was too far away to call for help through the hive, and if she allowed herself to get cut-off and become trapped in the snow grave, she would die trying to escape. Her next few days were spent jealously hoarding as much love as she could before the storm became too heavy to fly in.

Her Majesty needed to learn of this at once.

...

The frozen north was harsh, far harsher than she remembered as she was on her return trip directly to the hive. Yes, they might notice the disappearance of one Shining Emerald, a jeweler in the Crystal Empire, but it was not her concern. Her main concern was to avoid getting ice from forming upon her wings. This marked her fourth rest stop, every time she exerted herself the temperature difference caused beads of water to form on her slick chitin, freezing in the icy wind during flight. She could feel the link getting stronger, like a fuzzy feeling. Forcing her thoughts up to the surface of her mind and through the scattered link was uncomfortable; a faint ache in her horn forming up.

"Help, needed to close the distance. Lots of love brought to the hive, news for Her Highness.

She closed the link and waited for a response. Compound had to keep it brief, lest too many things get lost in translation with the broken connection. It was far, the original trip had taken three days for her to get this far, but it felt like she'd gone and flown dozens, hundreds of miles in the one day she'd been in flight. The difference between a fed changeling and a weak one was almost night and day, its power felt grand, and to feel the gnawing hunger wither away to the darkest recesses of her being was simply a blissful and comforting feeling. All of this power and she would never believe she could out-class a Queen though, that was treasonous, and as far as she cared impossible and unnecessary.

"...Here- We hear you, we... -location. Send- ...signal -you... closer.... commence escort. What... -news?

She had to get closer it seems. Something about an escort on its way with- No, on command of her signal. Not close enough for a clean link, but it was shoddy. Just a few more minutes and she could fly to the Hive. She could reach the Badlands soon.

...Five Days Later

At most, it had been two weeks or so. The Bastion was humming with life again, it had stopped suddenly in mid-air when they had arrived in this new world, the cause of which being a built-in failsafe, that it would save enough energy inside of itself to continue to hover instead of falling when running low on energy.

Rucks shook his head. By his estimation, there should have been enough power stored from all of those cores and shards to keep the sailing island running for five years at most. Any more would just be for the added velocity in traversing over the broken world or adding a little bit more onto that clock. But it had suddenly just stopped after a few months.
Possibly as a result of Zulfs outraged attacks on the Bastions monument, damaging its intake port would likely mean reducing the amount of energy it could extract successfully from the new power sources, the new cores. It was why he had explained the shards as little doses of medicine to make the Bastion all right again. Because really, he was using them as calibration while he repaired the monument, the intake. But that didn't explain why it was so low. Perhaps something had drained it faster than usual, or the sudden take-off? All the energy needed to rewrite the world itself with the echoes of the vibrant unbroken one, condensed into a single blast to turn the Bastion into a flying ship. Frustrating so was the fact that this was the second time a problem had reared its ugly head just to vanish back into the shadows without an explanation other than It just happened'. He had a few theories about all of this, but theory was all he had.

He felt there was another more important thing, where on earth were they? Was this some mishmash created by the calamity? Or something else entirely?

Either way, they would need more than just one shard to get the Bastion moving again. Still, they weren't entirely defenseless, the Kid was here, and when away they still had the mechanical bull, the descendant of the legendary anklegator, Queen Anne, one of the Squirt windbags, and himself, Rucks, while he was still past his fighting days, could still wield his choice weapons and was as capable as anyone else.

To say Rucks was concerned was an understatement, his wisened half was screaming at him, and his scientific half was attempting to assure themselves that they could hold their own in siege warfare, the Bastion, while not impenetrable, was hard to bring down, and there were plenty of places to hunker down. With some luck, the Kid would be back on his feet in no time at all. Right?

It had taken the remains of an entire country, an entire culture of decimated people that Rucks had regretfully pulled the trigger on, it had taken all of that and more to even put a stop to Kid and his unyielding determination, and not for very long. Despite how little they could care for an unconscious boy, he pulled through.

But this time was different. He wasn't waking up so quickly, he hardly even stirred, and the most they could get as a confirmation of life was a steady pulse, which would have meant waking up in a day or two of rest. But it had been two weeks since their arrival here, and a majority of that time had their sturdy muscle out of commission. Zia was worried, and while she wasn't much of a healer, she at least knew enough to patch someone up after a less-than-perfect expedition into the wild unknown. Zulf and his feelings about the situation were murky at best, it must be hard to be among the people you wanted to destroy so badly.

Wrenching himself free from his doubts he had gone to walk around the Bastion's main plaza, where the brilliant azure monument stood, sealed tightly with a faint blue glow, currently working on moving the core to the center of the safe-haven, to the center of its interworkings, carefully hidden somewhere below.

The armory stood truly empty of life this time around, normally he wouldn't be going walking around in such a place, but he felt as though something was tugging him here. Aside from all the dust building up one of some of the unused weaponry, and a carefully locked up prototype of the Calamity, there was nothing out of place. The only thing that truly caught his attention was just the antiquated hammer, stained with blue metal splotches now from its long time of being unused, uncared for. His hammer- and His rifle.

He was a fighting man, but not so much nowadays, he'd done enough without being on the front lines. But maybe carrying his own life-long friend around would be a comforting weight to the ever-so confusing world he continued to find himself in. A wistful gaze hung in his eyes as his hand reached out to grip its wrapped handle, how could he have just let his own friend sit here and rust?

Rucks later found himself underneath the heart of the bastion, stepping on wood planks that creaked gently under his weight. He was wearing his old officer's uniform, a deep vibrant blue pea coat, and brown trousers. On his front, he carried his rifle by its sling, and on his back sat his hammer. He was finding himself to have to get re-adjusted to lugging around so much weight again, but he could manage today and regret it in the morning. So far he was down here to content himself by becoming lost in his work once again, wanting to return to his theories on the world so he could at least have something to talk about with the Kid when they woke up, or another story to tell for Zia.

The power in the cores had mysteriously vanished with the wake of the Calamity, the most logical explanation to this was likely because of how much it had taken to keep all of the Bastion together, more accurately the heart of it which that he currently tampered with.

The Bastion was designed to be... Bigger, on par with an entire city, not just a small hamlet consisting of a few buildings that were vital to the Kid and his questing for more cores, likely its size was compromised when it was pulling through the calamity. This theory was further supported by the fact that when the Cores came back, it had actually brought more livable land to be on, to build on.

"Cores were shot surviving the initial wave of the Calamity, looks like even with all of my planning, it needed a bit more of an overestimation. I'm glad I did though, otherwise, none of us would be standing here together.

Now... Why had the Bastion run into another bump in the torn-up road? His best guess was that by detonating the supply of cores they'd amassed, they might have drained more than he had expected. Of course, though, his estimate was made after the Bastion's second purpose was realized, not before, and it had the unexpected and unaccounted variable of the Ura that had gone and dug in the seeds of something wrong in the Bastion, something wrong that had only recently cleared up.

He had to throw that theory in the bin, too many unknown variables.

The second one was that it had been losing more power keeping itself afloat and bringing out materials that were hard to find in the ruins of reality. That would explain some of it, he'd only approximated flight, not how their quality of life had been affecting it. But still, it wouldn't be enough to halt it entirely.

He stopped when he heard something metallic clink behind him, taking a glance behind him he spotted nothing except more wood and the blue glow from the cores hanging up above. No real cause of the noise, except for possibly the wind.

Another reason could be that the evacuation of all of them resulted in the Bastion finding a new world entirely, a new existence, anywhere that still remained, and that ripping a hole into a new plane of reality, and then sealing it to prevent his gutted world from spilling into this... New World... was what had drained the power. If that was true, it meant that they were the only humans alive at this point, no Ura countrymen to encounter out in the wilds, no survivors from Caelondia at the frontiers of his country.

This was it.

He felt his skin crawl at the thought, if this was a new world, then where would they go? What would they do? Start a city of a population of four and a few beasts? Who's to say the locals will be so friendly at strangers knocking on their doorstep and claiming a bit of land for themselves? Even more so when they had stolen a core from them, their reputation here was tarnished more than the metal windbags would be caught munching on.

Guess that makes two times you've stolen a cities heart, isn't it, Kid?

Attempting to banish his worry yet again he called his thoughts to the prototype of the Calamity that had been hesitantly handed off to the kid in his last stand, in the Tazal Terminals, the center of Zulf's people, the Ura homeland. That prototype had seemed to react when near the so-called Crystal Heart, which had prompted a day of studying the two thoroughly together, and the results were strange. The bright red shells that would be fired from it were more theoretically more accurate on account of the now stable energy it was drawing, which was coming from the Heart, something that should be impossible as the Calamity Cannon was one of the first few experimental weapons created by their tampering and refining of the forces of nature that made up their world, and it seemed that the only reason it was possible was on account of the two having a similar type, essentially being compatible.

What this boded for them, he was unsure. A warfaring people would study it, and inadvertently cause another Calamity due to the sabotaged notes and study behind the largescale version based on the prototype. It would be another world ended.

Rucks began the trek up a flight of stairs.

On the other hand, should it be discovered and its purpose revealed... Well, that reputation is going to be a lot more sullied than would be worth polishing up again. Small blessings that they kept all that wasn't in use under lock and key, and that as far as he knew, the Bastion was still hidden.

...

"This world has a lot more going for it in the prosperity sector, almost makes you wonder what it can be hiding, doesn't it? In any case, Zia, how has the kid been? Still snoozing?"

A girl with pale, almost snowy skin sat at the table, fixing up the blue bandana keeping black hair from spilling over her face after setting a plate on the table. Blue clothing and leather bracers, Zia was dressed up like a gilded sapphire. A gilded sapphire faded and worn from nothing but worry, reflecting in her once piercing brown eyes. Between the two of them, there is only silence.

"...He's alive. Still." The singer's voice was once melodious, now heavy with anxiety. "There's not much to say, aside from Zulfs turn to watch over him being up."

The silence fills with the gentle clanging of silverware, working its way slowly through the stew that had been painstakingly prepared. Too bad the sour mood has seeped into it. "I can look after him for a while again, it's the least I could do."

"Which one, Zulf, or him?" Zia said dryly.

"Aw, don't give me that. You know exactly which one of them I mean. Besides, we all have to stick together a whole lot more now, we can't afford to let a bit of mistrust break all of us again." Rucks chided, his low tone ringing through clearly as he took a few more bites of his stew.

What had happened before was a whole lot more than just a bit of mistrust, but it isn't polite to talk about that at the dinner table now is it?

"Don't you worry now, the kid will wake up soon, and it'll be all right."

"You said that last time when he was sent out, and when he came back with a back full of arrows." Zia said snappily.

"Well, I'm not the one who gave him the freedom to choose after did I?" Rucks replied, a faint grin forming up. "Yeah. I know, I know." Zia's anger deflated, and the table went quiet again with a much more natural silence.

"I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I said no to restoring the old world, but this" She gazed out into the open skyline, watching the twilight settle over the sky. It was weird seeing true twilight without seeing the liquid rock beneath the world's crust light up the sky from underneath. "-wasn't what I was expecting."

"I know Zia." Ruck rose from his seat. "I know."

As the darkness settled all around the Bastion, Rucks had gone down a set of stairs in a small hut out of view, and out of mind, behind the Pantheon. At night the Bastion seemed to lock itself up, the ground underneath that made the landing pad would sink into the land below and vanish, making it difficult to get in. Through the front door so to speak at least.

Coming down the stairs he sees the three rooms that were actually in use. Yes, he had his own room too, but he tended to stay up at the surface in his tent, keeping watch at all hours of the day, even if he couldn't be much use. The tiny bit of green fibrous material caught in a door hinge did not escape his vision as he opened the door to the kids' room, inside a pale man with ruffled black hair sat on a stool. "Turns up Zulf. Come on, head up to the dinner table." Zulf silently slipped away and out of sight.

The kid had a bit of the armor on him removed, revealing the simple black tee-shirt underneath all the loosely tied pieces of metal. It was at least comfortable to lay on, and should he awake, at least it wouldn't be with a cricked back.

Something wooden groaned in a corner, and Rucks sat down on the stool after taking a second to sweep some dust off of the collection of mementos the kid had garnered over the course of his journey here in the Bastion. Or at least, he would have, if there was any dust on them. The crystal barret that stood on top of a lonely wardrobe glinted in the light, as if polished once again, and it was doubtful Zulf or Zia would touch something that both didn't belong to them, and held a great deal of value to the kid, especially of the sentimental variety.

"I tried to let the Kid down gently. This is the Bastion all right, 'cept nobody else showed up."

Something he said a long time ago was pushed to the forefront of Rucks' mind, if only for a moment. The kids very own hammer was in his room, despite every other weapon being rightly locked up in the armory, this one was kept displayed in a corner, the bronze head shining cleanly as it stood upside down. Most of the things in this room hadn't been touched since they got the first core.

So why were things clean?

Warding the growing unease he just sighed and stared at the Kid's still form once again. "Just a stranger's voice to guide you, that hasn't even asked your name." Rucks thought to himself quietly. "I don't suppose a bit of the stranger's voice will get you to wake up again, will it?" His hands felt their way off his hammer and onto the grip of a finely cut maple stock, slowly weaving a finger into a loop, a gentle click sounding from metal falling into place. "Especially when we've got two o' them in the same room now don't we?"

His rifle pointed upward, as the slow stirring of warm air made itself be known to him despite his old ears. Something was hiding on the roof, and that something had better make itself be known before they get shown The Mercy.

"Hmm. And just when I thought you creatures would never notice." A strange dulcet chitter echoed from above, and Rucks snapped his attention to it, keeping his rifle by his side as he avoided striking first. Something with the vague silhouette of a horse held itself firmly to the roof by its hooves, with green eyes and a fibrous translucent green mane. The black chitin and twisted horn strapped to its head weren't helping, reminding him of the stones that sprouted sharply from the earth in areas that had been severely damaged by the calamity.

"And I suppose here lies the great Crystal Thief those pitiful ponies were fussing about. You look like you've seen better days." The being descended from the roof, righting itself in the process with a smooth motion of its limbs. Rucks noticed the fangs that protruded from the bug-beings mouth and the various holes in its legs.

"I don't think I've ever seen such a cruel fate be inflicted on someone other than my own kind before. I must ask then, how did this one escape?"

Rucks was quick to catch on to the question and cut through the pregnant pause swiftly. "The skyway sent him away before he could be captured." His neutral voice took precedent since for once, some creation from the wild unknowns wasn't out to fight, and could actually be reasoned with. Hopefully.

"...You seem to have a lot of knowledge about us, and the locals. Don't suppose you could actually wake him up, would you?"

The gaze of the bug made Rucks its target, the creature rose to its full height before addressing him. "I suppose I should apologize for the intrusion. I am Queen Chrysalis. Leader of the changeling swarm, and in the process of being hunted, much like you."

"Come again now Queen?" He raised a brow.

"Certainly." She said almost proudly. "You are correct in that I am knowledgable, and you seem to hold some I am interested in, as well as an object of... Importance, to me."

"Suppose you'd like to make a trade then?" A little crevice made itself known at the corners of Queen Chrysalis' face. "Correct. Propose for a moment that I heal your 'Kid' here, wake him from the wasting spell those ponies have cast, and I..." She paused, pretending to think. "I, take the Crystal Heart that you have in your possession."

Rucks closed his eyes and took the rifle fully in his hands in thought. "We need that core to survive."

There was much to ask about why they were being hunted, but he had to play along lest the strange Queen suddenly vanish along with his answers. Or worse, attempt to force its way into stealing the core. "Suppose for a moment then, that if you let us hang onto the core temporarily, while we find a replacement, you can take the original."

The Queen seemed to stiffen if just for a moment, and returned to talking like nothing happened, if with just an iota more sympathy if it could even be called that in her voice. "The wait will be harsh on us, creature. But maybe I'll accept-" the grip on the rifle hardened as the changeling suddenly hovered in the air in front of him, grinning with disturbingly sharp teeth. "-if you can make a demonstration."

. . .

Anklegator - Anklegators were thought to be extinct because their eggs took decades to hatch and were easy prey. Capable of growing massive sizes, none know how they look like below ground, only their scarred horn and rumbling right before revealing a brightly colored scaly face of death. The largest one, Queen Anne, was notorious in the believed hatching grounds of the species, Roathus Lagoon. Rumor states the species is invulnerable unless it rains.

Stinkeye - A small creature made up of one eye covered in tough, green spiky skin, capable of floating. They only move when you aren't looking them in the eye, and often explode in a small cloud of pestilence and organic shrapnel when destroyed.

Author's Note

Sheesh, I pushed myself a lot making this chapter genuinely long and hopefully captivating to read. Still used to writing short stories.

...And here comes ol Chryssie, lets see how this pans out. Heres to honor among thieves!
~~personally ill be handling the Changelings a bit more like the fae~~
Since progress on the story can be pretty slow, im considering posting little scrapped chapters that may be remade later on, like spare breadcrumbs.

And Her Alliance

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Woah there, careful Kid, you've been out a while, don't rush to get up so soon just yet. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.

"A demonstration?" Rucks raised a brow.

"You claim to be capable of finding another object like the Crystal Heart. Therefore, a demonstration would be perfectly acceptable, would it not?"

Rucks was now standing up, taking slow steps to the foot of the bed, near the exit of the room. His rifle hung tensely from his back. "I'm afraid I'll need your help again with that Queen. But all I need in the direction of a mountain, or a quarry if there's anything like that here." He turned the knob, and the door opened with a creak...

Ponies hit you with something strange, didn't they? Well, something stranger still happened again, turns out in the time you were gone, someone took an interest in us. A little bit of talk between us and she was able to wake you up. In exchange for something.

Oh, don't give me that look.

The pair was now at the heart of the bastion, once again inside its inner workings. The heart was stored here, and it would seem that the Queen had a reaction to seeing this place, if the odd slight buzz of her wings was more than just an anxious tick.

"There's a series of ravines and basins in that direction," Chrysalis said, gesturing to the area with her hoof. Rucks aimed a telescope somewhere off to the north-western area that was pointed to. "Thank you kindly." Rucks worked with dials on the thing, propped up on a box on three supports with a variety of gears and rotating knobs fashioned from a brass metal. An eyebrow perched itself up high as he stepped back, taking a slip of paper and pencil and writing in an unreadable script of angular lines and dots. The language of the Caelondians.

"Well then. Seeing as how the land isn't broken it'll make finding it easier. But mining for it will take time." Rucks turned around, his focus taken away from comparing a blue gemstone to the readings he took from the telescope. Scouring all of Caelondia is one tough feat to find one measly core, hence the Detector was made in the unlikely event the Bastion was damaged.

He was very glad he had pitched the addition to the crew.

"Queen Chrysalis?" He asked softly, noticing the changelings stare at the conical wood housing that stored various blue crystal outcrops. The main heart of the Bastion. Great, he just had to have been foolish enough to lead a stranger into the Bastion's heart, and now he was going to pay the price for it.

Unless he was quick on the draw, and his hand flew...

Turns out they needed that Core you got too, and badly, from the looks of it. Originally I only thought to give her what she wanted soon after we picked up the new shard, but the Queen may have suggested an alternative.

A Bastion of their own.

...And stopped at her voice.

"How did you make this floating contraption? There's so much power inside of it, it's almost making me nervous." That buzzing voice was quiet, unlike the harsh tones it had naturally used. "I don't recall you ever told me the name of this floating rock."
"This here is the Bastion, and that-" He pointed to the structure she was staring at, glowing with faint blue lines running up and down its many cracks. "Is its heart. A sight to behold ain't it?."

"Why does it need the Crystal Heart, it seems it has much of the same gem inside of it already." The changeling reached out a hoof, feeling the pulsing light. "What purpose does this... Bastion, serve?"
Rucks was silent for a moment. "It's a mobile safe-haven... The Bastion was designed against sieges that would rip up the ground from under you, use the power stored in itself to keep the land together as best it could."
Slowly the elderly human approached the core construct, closing distance with the queen in tandem. "Not even calamity can bring it down, bring a core around a wasteland, it'll grow to what it once was again."

We talk for a spell.
Ol' Chryssie seems to be a shady character, but then again, so did we. The world we find ourselves in? Let's just say it's nothing like our own, and I don't just mean the lack of a calamity.
I'm more worried about the amount of space we'll have here on the Bastion for ourselves, we might be getting a few new tenants. They're a bit... Unique.

They call themselves changelings. Shapeshifting bugs that feed on emotions, as it turns out the pony reaction of attack first, ask later is nothing new, to them at least.

Rucks was slowly finding himself swayed in the tide of the conversation. The two found themselves in a sympathetic headlock, with both sides with an equally rough history.
The Changeling Badlands was once a vibrant hidden forest around a collection of brilliant lagoons, before its water was drained and the bug-ponies forced into the open and driven back. The four humans were the sole survivors of an event so catastrophic it shattered their land and forced them off to a new world.

The reason behind their evacuation was kept hidden, much like the changeling queen was doing with her own history no doubt. But even if so, he had come to an agreement, and surprisingly enough found himself growing excited on working on the creation of a new vaunted safe-haven for the changelings.

Besides, if they were being hunted, putting more of themselves in the sky would help hide the location of the true Bastion, a point that Queen Chrysalis made very clear to him. "Now just to repeat. You want one for your own hive?" The elderly man tampered with his spyglass, taking a glance to someplace far to the east while jotting something down in his mother tongue. "I won't deny you it, but I'll need workers."
"That can be arranged. You stated that the child would help find one of the cores needed for this project, I will need an estimate of when this will be completed." The Queen buzzed.
"He'll be up as soon as you know it, thanks to you," Rucks answered cordially, arching a brow as he turned the spyglass somewhere to the southeast. "Now that just leaves putting a piece of your home back to the way it was."
Logistically speaking he wasn't sure what to talk about aside from the cores. Though time was a good concern, seeing as how it was working against them when branded as hostile. "The Badlands is a large expanse far away from here, does this thing even fly?" She gazed scrutinizingly at what seemed to be a bundle of stitched-up sails hanging from the roof to the floor. Rucks just chuckled. "You'd be surprised. I can steer her there, but it may take some time. In the meanwhile, I've got some good news for you."

In the time they'd been speaking, Rucks took aside a large sheet of parchment with a menagerie of drawings, scripts, and diagrams...

I ended up finding two cores that day. It's hard to believe that one is inside of the Queen's home, the issue with that is it's just too young to be of use, and confused. But we did find the hum of one in a spot called Galloping Gorge. Find the Core at Galloping Gorge, we can wake up the one Chrysalis has, and maybe it'll be like Burstone Quarry. With fewer Rattletails to deal with, of course.

Ready to get back to work, kid?

There we go, that's the stern look we all see.

Author's Note

If anyones interested in what the game is, or just how Rucks sounds like, he's the narrator in the game. I have a link here! Rucks Narrator Bits!

Organization

The Queen had left via the sky-way in the night the other day, having gone out presumably to return with the other changelings she had mentioned, more accurately the ones Rucks had alluded to needing as helpers for the project.

The Kid had made himself useful and Rucks useless since not long after waking up, he decided to put up the guardrails Rucks had always talked about putting up. It'd been months since he'd said that, much more since he's ever lifted a hammer.
A bit of physical work and some spirits from the distillery made him full of vitality just like he ought to be while he tried to build some of the lost muscle.
Zia had once been in a mood during the beginning of all this, but it wore off quickly enough. The girl seemed happy to just have someone new to talk to, maybe even sing to. The mundane familiarity that had grown among the four survivors seemed to have made her anxious, for some reason. Possibly just the worry of no other survivors out there.

Next up was Zulf, the snow-skinned gentleman, dressed in a menagerie of colorful stripes on a flared suit. Once an ambassador for Ura-Cael relations, now a warmongering pacifist.

Contradictory, isn't it?

He'd felt varying degrees of shame and anger to himself and others after he sent his people after the Bastion, but it didn't matter much in the present. Finally being able to speak up for once, Zulf had quickly come to rationalize with Rucks about how reckless it was to bargain the value of life with a core, not to mention being excluded from the relations during their initial dealings.
Either he actually started caring again, or he was just embittered by not being able to do his previous job when a diplomatic situation had suddenly shown up, that could be solved without violence. After that, he locked himself up in his precious shrine.

That man made no sense sometimes.

...

It was midday when Chrysalis returned, with three squadrons of changelings trailing closely behind her. She was confused to be met with the sight of a single survivor playing a melody in a foreign tongue accompanied by the trill of strings. She hadn't had the faintest idea what was being said, but something in it stirred her up, made her crawl with the anxiety of adrenalin coursing in her flesh, invoking the same feelings she felt before her successful take-over of Canterlot. The other changelings seemed to fair a little worse in controlling themselves, subtly feeding on emotion in the air as their wings buzzed faintly.

The singer's voice trailed off, and opened her eyes to the sight of the Changeling queen, and with more changelings behind her than what people the Ura had sent in the initial siege of the bastion. The shock wore off and was filled with respect as she gave a silent bow in her puffy blue dress.
There was little to be said between the two if there was anything to be said at all. All she asked for was where Rucks might be, and left shortly after, leaving the twelve changelings in the presence of the singer.

Zia didn't exactly try to ignore the changelings, but she also didn't want to be rude and just gawk at them, so she tried to fine-tune her harp a little bit by playing something short, strumming it idly for a while in a warm tune. What was being talked about with Rucks and Queen Chrysalis probably wasn't going to involve her for a while, assuming Rucks decides to make it an open discussion with everyone instead of leaving them all in the dark.
Her fingers drifted across the strings as she felt a hum form up, and shortly die out when she couldn't shake a strange nagging feeling, that nagging feeling being the realization that she was being watched.

As much as she thought them to be strange, thinking on it, they probably thought she was just as weird.
It was a mildly comforting thought, but the staring was making her fingers lock up, especially when she realized she had been encircled in a crowd of the black-shelled beings. The lack of a pupil and instead the sapphire-blue insectoid eyes made her shrink a little. When she thought of new tenants she was expecting something that looked a little less cold.
Considering she'd reared far more frightening creatures, she wasn't scared because of their appearance, she was just nervous because none of them had spoken a word, instead just stared at her expectantly, completely oblivious to her inner turmoil.

"Could you maybe..." Zia rested the harp on her legs as she gestured with her freed hands in front of her. The crowd behind her formed up into a bigger one in front of her, now sitting down. "Ah. Thank you." She said awkwardly.

No response, just an expectant stare.

What what was she supposed to do? Sing?

Wait. Did she leave me here thinking me of some type of entertainer?

Taking a deep breath, she resisted the urge to think about punching something. She'd grown just a smidgen more violent over her time surviving the great big mess the new world was.

She started humming again, closing her eyes trying to lose herself again in her natural rhythm, the opening to an Ura war song, this time around translated to something her audience could understand.

"I dig my hole, you build a wall..."

"I'll dig my hole, you build a wall."

"One day that wall is gonna fall."

...

" Gon' build that city on a hill."

" Gon' build that city on a hill~"

" One day those tears are gonna spill~!"

Rucks sat somewhere in a room underneath the Bastion, surrounded by four oaken walls he'd been busy scrawling something on paper with nary a thought considering anything outside his work, or until the door was opened up by the Kid, the Queen stepping in shortly behind him. The Queen had originally been expecting him top-side, so naturally, she had to go looking for him.

Now was the time for a more proper discussion, just as soon as he had all the others with him. There likely wasn't going to be a way to change any details, by this point it was just to clarify with the four surviving humans.

"Guess it's time to find Zulf too, isn't it?"

"Correct," Chrysalis replied. Not wanting to keep everyone waiting the trio would walk through the halls, mainly being led around by Kid, until Rucks had taken lead to knock on another door. It was circular, fashioned similarly to the traditional hatches on Ura dens before they'd all been ripped up. He knocked three times and waited.
"So, while we wait, is it just you? Or have you brought others along?" Rucks asked calmly, his eyes glancing to the Kid.
The Kid was always unreadable, it was hard to say if any of this affected him, maybe he was just built too tough to fall to anything, or just too tough to fall on the outside only.
"I recall you needing a larger workforce, so I brought some." Was the swift reply. "Really now?" Rucks cocked a brow, and Kid just darted his eyes to focus on the queen. Then the door opened from the inside and out stumbled Zulf, dressed in puffy striped clothing in an arrangement of blues and yellows all striped and layered atop each other, with the only solid being the brown vest he wore, any evidence of his legs were erased by how much the coat dropped down and flared out, like a strange dress. Zulf blinked and took a step back.

"...You must be Queen Chrysalis." Zulf gave an effortless and shallow bow, "Rucks mentioned you."
The Changeling Queen gave a side-ways glance to Rucks before the Kid tapped the bottom of his hammer on the wooden floor. "We need to find Zia." The kid spoke, quiet, yet firm and loud.
The queen's wings buzzed slightly, but nothing else came from her. Rucks was the first to speak up again. "She's probably upstairs, which reminds me, you didn't tell me where you dropped off the workforce you were talking about." Rucks' tone hardly strayed from his usual baritone rhythm, if just a little more pointy and a tad lighter.

"Of course," She swayed a bit of green mane off to the side dismissively. "They're with..."

"But now you've got nowhere to run."

"So build that wall, and build it, strong cause-"

"-We'll be there, be-fore too long~"

"Zia?" Zulf said quietly, surprised. Though it was hard to tell what he was supposed to be surprised by, the number of bug-ponies on the bastions doorstep, or the fact Zia had probably been singing to them this whole time. She seemed to be handling the whole strangeness of the situation well enough though.
Chrysalis on the other hand seemed to have something similar to a proud and curiously calculating look smeared on her face, though to what, nobody knew. "That is correct, and it would seem she handled them well." Queen Chrysalis flew off towards the swarm, while the humans had dispersed to find a more open area to handle the talking in.

Zia had kept her eyes shut, only daring to crack them open once she heard the sound of dozens of hooves trotting off somewhere previously unseen. "I suppose I should thank you, but we'll have time for that later." Chrysalis gave a mockingly saccharine grin, and flew off, only pausing halfway to gesture to them to come, in a less than patient manner.

All of them had made their way to a long table made from a simple oak, with benches and round bar seats all around. If there was anything to make the meeting even slightly royal, it would be the purple patterned cloth that lay onto the length of the table, giving it a homely feel. Rucks glanced up to look around, noticing that all of the new tenants had grouped up around each of them in fours.

A homely meeting with some severely extended family.

"I am trusting Rucks told most of you of our deal, but I will repeat for everyone here. I am only here because I caught wind of your plight before the ponies discovered you. The result of which brings that one" A hoof was raised towards the younger white-haired human- "back up on their feet. In exchange, I require you to quarter the ones I've brought here as the necessary workforce for assisting Rucks with his development, protection, and the child's excursion to recover another 'Core'."

"Protection?" Zia was the first to speak up. "So. The ponies then, they're hostile?"

"Correct. Even if you hadn't taken that Crystal Heart, they would have attacked you. The only reason you stand here and not petrified would be as a result of the so-called 'Kid's swift action and the casting of a perception spell that has hidden you from their pegasi scouts."

"No chance of peace?" Zulf said briskly.

"They'd offer the hoof of friendship after a siege, just to indoctrinate you." The Queen said venomously. "That is if you're still standing by the end of it."

Zulf was thoughtful, Zia was merely being attentive, same as the kid, and Rucks... Rucks was at another end of the table, quietly waiting.
"If there's nothing else to ask about the ponies for now, I'll talk about the development that Chrysalis brought up." Withdrawing from a pouch was a teal schematic drawn in glimmering emerald green inks and the stark white contrast of lunar caustic. Illegible to the changelings, to Zia, to the Kid. Rucks and Zulf though got the basic understanding of what was being shown with all the fancy drawings.

"Chrysalis wants her own vaunted safe-haven, as well as a core. It's why the Kid's being sent out again. See, the ponies decided to shake things up in her land some long time ago, drank up their waters and dried their forests. She want's to see if it can be brought back, and a hope for her people." Rucks sighed, and Zulf glowered at him. "Alongside that, we'll all be getting some material to work with in expanding our own Bastion, as well as the construction of another."

Chrysalis abruptly butted in shortly after Rucks ended his piece. "I have brought several groups of changelings to work alongside all of you. While I am away attending to matters in my own hive, I am appointing a single group to some of you, and leaving four strictly under my command, for protection of this place, that is not to leave unless absolutely necessary."

All four humans at the table nodded their head. "Good. Four drones will work for you, Rucks. As for you child, I am placing partial command of the four sentinels garrisoned here in the event of a siege, while giving you your own group to bring with you on Excursions. I trust you will not disappoint." Four sets of wings buzzed and settled near Rucks, while another eight changelings fell in line behind the Kid. "As for you, tell me your name."

"Zia, Miss Chrysalis."

"Good. As of now, I leave the remaining four under your guidance with reparation's in your home. Do with them as you wish."

Author's Note

Whoops! You weren't supposed to see this chapter yet! At the time of re-release this chapter should be 100% done!

On a side-note, here are images for all of the survivors in case my descriptions weren't enough. All Artwork is part of Supergiant, and tumblr user Chancekey,

Zia & The Anklegator

All the survivors together!

After the Siege i keep mentioning.

You should all look into Bastion, its a great game! Until next time!

A Day In The Life

Business as usual today. A faint arid breeze, a slightly cloudy sky.

And of course, around twenty changelings living with you.

Truly, what was she supposed to do to get a little bit of privacy around here? It used to be fairly easy, just go to a corner and all you'd have to do was stay out of sight of old man Rucks, and you could do almost what you pleased. But now? It was incredibly difficult having to avoid them on the surface, and avoiding them while going down narrow hallways was impossible. Once she even found one of the curious bugs in her room, trying to figure out the workings behind her harp guitar. Said bug was later enlightened on the use of an instrument as a blunt weapon.

Dusting off her dress, she inspected her favored instrument for any underlying damage to it or its strings and breathed a sigh of relief to find it unharmed. The silver metal that made up its frame was durable, but she wasn't sure how well it'd fare against a shapeshifting bug's chitin.

Yes, everyone had gotten some command over the changelings, and she really shouldn't be attacking their allies like that, especially after they'd helped bring a very important member of their group back on their feet, but she'd like to be able to relax before her round of chores without seeing bug eyes watching her every move. She didn't hold anything against them being insectile, just that they were way too curious for their own good. Not in the sense that she felt they were investigating her, more like they hadn't a single clue about anything she did.

For example, yesterday she'd been downstairs and up again collecting ingredients for a stew, wanting to get food ready and get back to some sense of normalcy considering that she still didn't know what exactly was agreed upon during the meeting, and she had a feeling that Zulf didn't understand either. The changelings the queen had dumped on them, she discovered, were playing with her stockpot! Rolling it around, throwing it with a strength she'd never admit to being jealous of, and for whatever reason, during the whole thing, two were inside of the darned thing! Her one cooking instrument to survive the calamity and these bugs were just tossing it like it was a ball of yarn! "STOP THAT! NOW!" She commanded with the force of a general. Just like that the bugs snapped to attention and dropped her pot at a short half inch above the ground, the changelings standing in formation stock still.

The Queen, or Chrysalis had put a few changelings under her command, but still, she did not fully comprehend the significance behind that order. Their reaction wasn't what she expected, maybe she was just downright terrifying when she yelled. She hardly ever did. Glancing at the sky she got a good feeling of the time, noticing it was roughly noon. Normally she'd call for Zulf to help with the kitchen, but he was busy with his own Changelings or with Rucks or whoever and whatever and was most likely unavailable. Same with the kid, he was undergoing a vigorous amount of training as a result of their time sleeping, and apparently had his changelings tag along too.
Zia stared at the skyway far out in the distance at the very end of the Bastion, she found herself feeling glad he hadn't gone out alone. She wasn't strong enough for field work, not her, nor Zulf or old man Rucks. It was just him, going out and always alone.

Exhaling as she prepared her pot for cooking, she took a deep breath.

"Listen up! You lot are gonna go and pick up some ingredients from storage!" Zia withdrew a ladle, holding it angled as if it were a machete, poised to strike.

"You two will bring me six carrots, six potatoes, and two pounds of salt-pork!" She glared at another changeling, handing it a bucket.

"Water. Fill this. Bring it back- HEY! Get back here! No sneaking off mister!" Snapping at another frightened bug just trying to sneak away, she ordered them to stay put just like a dog. Or at least until she found something for them to do.

"COME ON! I need these things NOW!" She swung at them and a trio of the bug equines dispersed to do their chores. She might not have much to do around here, but an army marches on its stomach, and there was nothing more important than keeping everyone here fed and healthy.

She dusted herself off and withdrew a flint and steel from one of her many concealed pockets, and worked to start a blaze to calm her down. The yelling was surprisingly nice, but it had hurt her throat considerably. The small embers began burning, and she realized as the little flame was born that those bugs had no idea where anything was.

Rucks was somewhere under the Bastion, his tent being too small to house all of what he'd come to privately call the Bug-Brains, his group of inquisitive changelings. Sure they weren't anywhere close to the esteemed and previously sharpest minds of a generation that made up the Mancers of Caelondia, but they were smart enough for him to attempt to talk shop with, and that was all he needed and more than he could ask for.

"Alright, one of you mind gettin' me a sheet o' paper?" The old man said aloud to nobody in particular. He had pencils of varying sizes and colors on a heavy wooden desk, and schematics written in something unintelligible. He waited patiently, mulling over a recent thought in his head when a very short stack of paper arrived. "I appreciate it Pathy. Now, ah, Finny was it?" Rucks pointed to a lone changeling, holding a pencil in their green magic and jotting down some numbers. "Come here a sec, would ya?"

Finny approached the main workstation, and Rucks withdrew a paper from the pile. "Your idea to increase space on our Bastion is a good one, especially if the material is as strong as you say, but there's just one small issue. It'd need to be anchored something fierce. There's a bit of power from every core flowing in the ground and buildings here, it's what keeps it propped up. Unless you and I can make it flow into the additions, it's just going to hang on it like a painting on a wall." Worked hands flew across the paper, etching out support beams and areas of possible weakness, and on a small corner of the page were numbers for something unknown.
"And it'll slow us down, since it's being carried around, right?" The changeling said.

"Bingo." Rucks drew up more plans, places that could do with expanding, places for guard rails that he still hadn't put up "Now I'm certain ol' queenie must have had some questions as to how and why this big hunk of rock flies. So..." The old man looked up and saw his crack team giving him his full attention. Bright blue bug eyes stared at him with the occasional twitch of a fin. "Why don't we all take a seat and have ourselves a story? It'll get us to work faster." He had chairs scattered around the room, now populated with members of his team. The sprawl of scientific instruments and papers had been tidied up into an engineering war room. The only problem with this part of the Bastion's underbelly was the low lighting, the blue orbs that hung from the abyssal ceiling only gave off so much light. Especially when the Bastion was in need of energy again.

You didn't think one core would be enough did'ja?

To his left was Toz, a quiet changeling that had few holes, but carried a sharply angled nick in their fins. So far he'd contributed the least to the group. On the right sat Pathy, he was just about the brightest mind in the room on account of being the only talkative one, something Rucks hoped would change sooner rather than later, one speechless Kid was enough to deal with. The changelings were set apart by minor details, like the shape of their shells or the damage to their fins. Pathy in particular had wide but shallow grooves that ran up and down their shell, and next to Pathy was a changeling who'd only introduced themselves as Lime, named after the green gradient his eyes had at the edges. Finally came Roath, a changeling that could be confused for Toz, if it weren't for his hind legs being riddled with holes as if one of Caelondia's finest had run dozens of pistol shots through him. Rucks wasn't quite sure how that worked, or if it was painful in any way.
"So. Why dont we get started with some questions? Anyone?"

A hoof went up, likely Toz judging by the holes. "Yes?" "Why did you make this thing?" The changeling gestured to the room, all around them. It'd be easy to just say they needed the space, but Rucks was smarter than that. Trying to hide the truth of things didn't end well.

It was what had caused Zulf to turn on them a while back after all.

Sighing, Rucks cracked the knuckles in his left hand, letting the pencil fall. "In case of trouble. Caelondia was a great city, with some... Unsavory relations with our neighbors. Nobody ever expected it to fall, though we knew it was a possibility."

"You mean this is a bunker?" Rucks scratched at his face lightly. That was one of its uses, yes. "The finest bunker of a whole world that went up in smoke, along with everyone else in it."

Loose paper was gathered up while he let his words hang in the air, letting them think about it as he drew up various images, sketched beings, otherworldly monsters and plants. His hands, while they swiftly flew across the papers they found did tremble, and his eyes seemed slightly misty. The changelings could tell what rough waters they would tread through for an explanation, though Rucks' face never once broke into a sad expression. "So... What happened? And how did you build this thing so tough it didn't fall?"

Rucks just seemed to chuckle at the voice of Roath, he'd never tell him that he was two letters away from being named after the god of thirst and plenty. "We didn't. The Bastion was a big place, big enough to house an entire city. Guess we just got too complacent, and parts of it shook apart. Then again, nobody else made it here. Except for us." Rucks paused for a moment to gauge his audience, a few insectoid eyes disbelieving in what they had heard. "The world suffered the calamity, a weapon that tore it to pieces, spat up the chunks to float in the sky, drank up the rivers and turned them to steam. Even turned our people to ash and statues."

"But that's enough doom and gloom. I bet you and your queen are all itchin' to learn how to make your own rock in the sky. Arent'cha?"

The various changelings in the room leaned closer, and Rucks gave a half-hearted chuckle. "Yeah, that's right. I don't know if you'll ever see a Calamity of your own, but I'll show you how to build a fort that'll stand strong against being blown to Mother on high."

"Anything to report?"

"No sir, Pegasi volunteers haven't managed to find anything, and our ground patrols aren't useful unless we know where to look, sir."

"Nothing at all? Nothing strange? I'll take anything that might have been overlooked in the reports."

"Well, Captain sir, the latest intel on anomalies from Equestria arrived three days ago, if you haven't found anything in those I don't think there's much we can do, sir."

"Then consider yourself dismissed and get yourself on the first train out of here, the Empire won't stay standing forever without a shield."

Shining Armor groaned inwardly, despite the attempts at keeping the snow storm at bay, it was all going to be for nothing unless they found the Heart to keep it away permanently. Sooner or later all of the unicorns in the Equestrian Volunteer forces would fall to magical exhaustion, and when that happens, the entire empire would be lost to the blizzard.
Not like it wasn't already happening, the empire was steadily losing ground in a vain effort of buying more time. As they tried to reduce the magical drain, they first decided that it was just the walls that weren't going to be covered by the magical dome, they didn't need a magical barrier covering them, then roads at the border, then homes.

All of that was foals play when compared to the fact that valuable information had just, happened to not reach him? He'd made sure that every pony under his command had known to send a missive whenever information arrived, no matter how small.

So why was he just now seeing documents about a low priority anomaly in the sky?

Micia - Goddess of Loss And Longing
'The lorn mother gave away her heart, and bears the star of Caelondia in her stead.'
The mourning star shines brightly alone in her temple, representing warmth, labor and sacrifice. It was said that her most devout followers and clergy women could wear robes and crowns made of stabweeds without drawing blood.

Somewhere Else

Prince Shining Armor had gone ahead to spearhead the investigation over the South Western Sky Anomaly, apparently, a patch of the sky that didn't have clouds no matter what, and gave off magical readings that were off the charts. Something about the place even attracted odd floating creatures never before seen in Equestria that were fortunately too small to be a threat to anything except anyone dumb enough to leave their food unattended.

And to think that it was so simple, all they had to do was follow the shimmer of magic in the sky. A few pegasi scouts tried to fly up but found the shimmer always being just out of reach as something directed their flight paths away from it. Magic was clearly at play, but since the damn thing had to be a floating anomaly, nobody could actually get close enough to dispel whatever charms were at play, even if they tried to have a unicorn mage get close enough on a cloud, it'd get diverted around it.

Whatever it was, it was massive, the size of Ponyville, maybe smaller, maybe larger. But his instincts told him that this is where that thief would be hiding now that he thought about it more. The biped disappeared into the sky from a gust of wind and was never seen again. This anomaly in the sky, which couldn't be reached even by the pegasi, was likely, not unrelated.

All he needed to do is figure out how he and his men were supposed to get up there. Or better yet, where it was going since it seemed to move over time. It was hard to notice at first with how it was always sending them in circles, but at one point the circling stopped. Another magical scan revealed it was on the move to... Somewhere.

"Sir! New activity reported near Galloping Gorge! Magical Influx detected by local patrols!"

The dry sun beat down on the Kid, the silver sheen of his white hair practically a beacon in the dusty canyon. The blued metal that made up a battered chest piece and bracers for his arms clung snugly to him, not a strap was loosened even though they felt as if they were beginning to sear the leather and skin beneath. Sure, the air blew a pleasant wind, enough to cool off the sweat he had started to build up, but it wasn't nearly enough to keep him comfortable underneath all the heavy equipment he had brought alongside him.

Fortunately, he wasn't much for complaining about comfort. Compared to other places that needed the Kid to explore, trekking through the sandy terrain at the bottom of the gorge was a walk in the part, unlike the time he flew headlong into the masonry that constituted the ruins of Cinderbrick Fort, where the place was covered in hot ash and where embers flew up in thick billows from below the fragments of the world.

It was odd, not having to watch his step all the time, it was even stranger having a battle buddy with him.
See, the kid was one of Caelondia's finest scouts once upon a time, the members of his unit trusted him to scout out farther than anybody, and he always came back even under the direst chances of return. Then came the calamity, not a true war, but while fighting hordes of beasts coming from wild forests and desperate countrymen he fought alone, simply because nobody else was fit to fight. Having Changelings as escorts was an odd thing indeed, but not unwelcome. They didn't interrupt the flow of the journey at all, they didn't try to make awkward small talk, it felt just like any other mission that had been thrust upon him, "Go find a core" "Go scout this area" "Go get Zulf."

At least he always knew what the cores were used for, he was just wondering why the changelings had decided to tag along. He wasn't a stranger to the occasional beastly companion tagging along, "Not every creature in the world is born bad" as Rucks would say, but none of them had really introduced themselves to him or talked, just buzzed their wings to fly around. Hell, not one of them even mentioned they'd be joining him on what he assumed would be just another journey alone. Still, the company they offered was not unappreciated, just questioned.

Stopping in the sandy ground, he felt the gear shaped crest on his back hum faintly, calling him to journey somewhere to the east, to go left. Since he had already stopped he fished around in a bag affixed to his belt, as he had brought along some munitions from the Armory of the explosive variety.

Hand grenades. The real secret skill in using these was how to pull them out of your sleeves in a fight without blowing yourself up, without having sleeves. He didn't want to rely on these too often, since they were fine quality explosives that would eventually run out. At least if the core was underground, these could maybe help out. The grenades didn't pride themselves on fragmentation, rather its ability to have a devastating explosion for when folks were just getting too close. Perfect for clearing out Ura tunnels.

...Though that last fact holds no matter now, with no more of humanity left.

With Inventory taken care of, and a full stock of tonics, he trudged forward in the dust. He could mind the heat, but he hated dust, he hated the sand. He kept seeing nothing but gray sculptures whenever he saw the stuff.

He had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for, if it was a cave, or just somewhere in the rock. These missions had never been easy, and it was why he'd brought the tools of a proud breaker and Caelondian navy mortarman. If his hammer couldn't bust it out, then it could trust that a finely tuned mortar would. With all of that heavy artillery on him, he was a one man demolition squad.

A tug from his crest made him look up at a great wall of stone, and he saw a fragment of familiar blue crystal. The objective found, now he only had to break it free.

Trouble is, was that it was about fifty feet high, and he couldn't hit that with his hammer. He dropped his hammer on the sand, letting it rest while he pondered the best way to break it free from the surrounding rock.

The easiest way would be his mortar, but he'd prefer to conserve the shells, and more accurately, he'd prefer to not telegraph his presence to anything nearby.

He pointed at the sparkling outcrop, the changelings had wings, and he wanted to see what they could do. He wasn't particularly afraid of the core breaking, they were tougher than iron and even when the Bastion was attacked, their supply of cores was untouched.

In a moment as the changelings followed the line of his finger, they flew up and started circling around it, chattering to themselves. Magical lines traced and dissolved the stone in slow increments, revealing the swirling blue undertones as the core was revealed.

It was still stuck. And it would take a while, even with three of them. Five minutes, maybe ten. As much as he'd love to offer his hammer, he had his doubts that they could lift it effectively, and he would never, ever, let his only melee weapon stray from him, especially his service weapon.

There was a thud and a plume of dust as a chunk of stone fell from the sky. Five minutes, he decided finally.

He could make that only one minute. The sooner he could haul that back to a skyway, the better. His mortar was withdrawn from his back, and adjusted and wound up before a ball round was placed inside for one well timed shot. He whistled twice to catch the attention of the changelings, then twice again to confirm what they heard as he gestured to his gun.

The changelings quickly flew clear before his gun thumped and out flew a brilliant blue shell, colliding with the stone in an explosion that send debris flying for yards. At last, the crystal they searched for fell free and sent sand in the air as it landed. For once, a collection mission was actually sped up by shelling the container.

Evidently he still held a grudge against every time he found one of those things stuck underneath a slow moving cage. The core was taken, and he felt himself tense and brace for the land below him to start rumbling and falling away.

Nothing happened. This world was intact.

Then the ground started shaking anyways. The changelings stopped moving and the Kid followed their example, as a great beast tunneled through the side of the explosion crater and away into the stone. Now it was time to leave. He'd seen everything.

This time all he'd need to leave was a flat space, as high up as possible, and a bit of wind for the mat he'd brought to work. The group walked further along the gorge, trying to quietly clear distance from whatever it was that they'd called with the blast. One minute and nothing happened. Two minutes, and they'd more than doubled their distance, three minutes, and some great white idiot shouted.

"Stop right there! By my position as Captain of the Royal Guard, I order you to-" The white pony barely had a moment to shout before a great red quarry eel jumped out from the sand underneath, no doubt catching him if he hadn't teleported away in a flash a moment early. Behind him were several more guards, no doubt shaken and entirely willing to turn tail and run.

"I order you" The captain said again, quietly this time. "To stand down, and surrender. You are outnumbered."

Four versus a company of armed force. Traditionally they would be outnumbered, but the thing about wildlife was that they didn't quite care about how big you were or how many you were.

Because the second that shell hit, they were all on the food chain. As the ground rumbled again in ferocity as doom approached, the kid withdrew his hammer. It would be just like old times.

Combat On The Sands

Combat erupted as a great big beast burst from the sand and earth, great snapping jaws reaching simply for any meat they could find. Soldiers scrambled to defensive positions as shields went up and changelings flew high in dazzling movements.

That of course, left the Kid on the ground with his boots. A single grenade had been dropped on the floor, as a discouragement to any approaching lizard-thing as he rolled out of the way of something rumbling below him.

As a shield shattered under the weight of the eel's great maw, he took a running jump off the sand to bring his hammer down on a spiked spine that poked up like a fin.

Big beast acted like a more wild and fish like version of an Ankle Gator. These were no Queen Anne's, but still a conquerable threat nonetheless.

The tunneling worms were known as Quarry Eels to the native pony population. Same went for the changelings that had accompanied the Kid on this souring supply run.

But he knew the eels as only one thing, his next target. He deposited the mortar and began to quickly crank the windlass that allowed the fuse to light. As soon as he heard a whooshing sound, the rest was up to fate and aim taught by Caelondia's finest navy mortarmen.

It hit squarely in the middle of the creature's body, causing a blast that rocked the world and turned the thing inside out as it collapsed with a wet thud on the sand. The force of the impact sent most of the guards reeling backwards and onto the floor.

And here he was thinking that they were at the very bottom of Galloping Gorge. But nope, there was even more of a drop some considerable distance away. Dropping unstable munitions on enemy targets is an unorthodox, but safe and effective method of disposal.

With a practiced motion, he hoisted the mortar up and then dropped the mortar down onto his back, while at the same time picking up his hammer. Now that the guards were suitably disorganized and in no condition to try to chase him, he turned tail and ran, calling out for the changelings to follow.

The sounds of pursuit would be heard in a few moments, but for now they were safely away, a quick leap would bring them to the canyon floor. It was far from safe. As the group of four made their way into the canyon's depths, a deep growling rumbled under the sand, and the earth began to tremble beneath them as the earth quaked.

The Kid glanced at the changelings, still in pursuit of him, and readied his hammer. This is where things got rough. The changelings had slowed to a halt as a great sandstone wall shattered in the distance before them. The great beast that had dug up from the sand below them roared and roared, and its cry would shake the canyon in great gusts of wind as the great eel broke the earth.

The air seemed to freeze, but only for a moment, before it was filled with a crackle of lightning as a shell struck the beast right in its gaping maw. A great blast of flame, sand, and gore filled the air as it fell to the canyon floor in a heap. The beast was dead, and the ground stilled for a moment, the wind ceased, and the eerie silence of death had begun to take hold.

The changelings stood as still as they were when the beast attacked, stunned by what they had seen.

Kid just marches on with a simple handwave for the others to follow. They couldn't afford a theatrical fight at the moment. The Windbags learned that the hard way.

Now that the kid had a core in hand, brilliant azure blue and thrusting with power, the next step was to avoid capture by the Equestrian Military- and subsequently extract back to the Bastion with the closest skyway they could find.

Changelings didn't really know the skyways, after all, they'd been built by the humans and they were usually hidden from the view of outsiders. While he had a good sense of direction, the canyon was vast and he was getting tired from running through it. Not like he would ever voice that complaint.

Changelings flew with their usual lazy buzz, and while it seemed as if they had gotten out of the canyon, the earth around them began to tremble. This wasn't good. He had his mortar, so he could make the best of this situation, but he was still disinclined to rely on munitions, so he picked up the pace, trying to run over the shaking ground, while the changelings followed suit, now visibly disturbed.

A rumble, followed by a crash as a massive eel broke free from the soil and fell towards the Kid, barely dodging the beast and rolling away from its charge. He stood up and swung his hammer, taking a good chunk of the beast as it charged past, hissing and thrashing as it tried to turn around and catch the 'pony' that had hurt it.

The beast would only be met with a blow to the head from a heavy alloy hammer, the kid striking wild and true. He delivered a second blow as it was distracted, and the eel fell back into the hole it came from. It wouldn't die quite so easily, he knew, but at least this one had been dispatched for now.

He walked over to the edge and stared down into the chasm, now that it was quiet, he could hear something deep below, but it wasn't the same something as before. Whatever it was, it wasn't digging up, at least for now, and he wasn't going to wait around to see what was coming.

Back to running away it would seem. He tried to think about where to go, but with all the twists and turns of the canyon, he could hardly find a place he'd remember. Besides that, his mind was preoccupied by how well his hammer had worked, the strength of his swing, and the lack of any kind of resistance from his strikes. It almost felt like the core had helped, he didn't know why or how, but it had felt good to use his weapon.

It had been so long since he'd felt the weight of a hammer in his hands. The sheer strength of it, the feel of wood as it gave way, the cold of metal against his hands. He felt whole again, the pieces of himself that he had lost returning after so long spent without his life long friend in action.

He could do this. The thought lingered in the back of his mind for a while as he fought, not even pausing to glance back at the eel, for he knew that the thing was down for now, even if he doubted that it wouldn't come back. Instead, he focused on keeping the changelings at his side. They had proven their value today. He couldn't have them killed just because he got into a situation he was over his head with. He was getting sloppy, and he would have to correct that.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like his actions from when he was on the Wall were being reflected here. He'd just let his instincts take over, and while that had been good enough to survive, it didn't solve the problems. He had to be smart now. Use his head, use his talents, use his strength. And above all, never stop moving.

So he kept running, not even glancing back as he reached the canyon's edge, leaping out with the changelings following after him. He still hadn't lost his direction though, he knew where he was going and he knew how to get there. All he had to do was use what he was taught, and he'd find his way back to Rucks.

With a several foot drop ending into a skillful and nearly harmless roll into more sand and pebble riddled ground, he got up and turned back. The changelings set themselves behind him, covering his sides. There was nobody, nobody at all following them.

Maybe they'd managed to give the pegasi the slip and left them infighting among the beasts.

Now all they needed to do was get back to the Bastion, deliver the core to Rucks, and let him... Do whatever it was that the old man did.

He turned back and took more steps that lead him forward, looking with his eyes and feeling the gentle tug of what power remained in the crest that rested upon his back to find a skyway. He searched for the faintest glimmer- the sparks of energy, of wind being gathered. A spark. A glimmer.

It was right there.

There were no tunnels here, no beasts, no traps. Just the single skyway that would take him back to the safety of the Bastion. He walked closer to the light, not even bothering to check for anyone before jumping on. It had always worked before, and he knew that it would work this time as well.

This time.

As he landed, he could hear the whooshing noise of a powerful gale. A whirlwind.

A moment later, he felt himself being swept off his boots and carried up, up, and away into the sky.

The changelings flew alongside him, buzzing in confusion and surprise. As they looked down, they could see the earth far below, the great stone wall that marked the edge of the gorge, the twisting canyon they had run through, and the great pit where the eel was waiting. It was only when the wind stopped that they looked up to see what was happening, and their buzzing got faster.

Skyways were a rather quick form of transport. One that the kid was well used to by now. This was how he'd come to the Bastion in the first place, and he had only gotten more accustomed to the experience with repeated usage. However, the changelings had taken the long way around to the Galloping Gorge, by flight.

So for possibly the first time, The Kid, though landing face first onto the grass- was not the only one. Several changelings preceded him, their wings buzzing quickly as the ground below came up to meet them. The landing wasn't too harsh, considering the softness of grass, but that didn't mean that it wasn't anything but pain for a moment.

The Kid got up, spitting some grass out of his mouth before standing up. They were back at the Bastion. Good. He felt the change of air pressure in his crest as it began to settle, the signal that their job was over, but as he turned to head inside, he was greeted by a familiar, but unwelcome sight.

He'd thought he'd have enough time to go inside, get cleaned up and return to Rucks for further orders, but his day had apparently not been going according to plan. Chrysalis stood there, with a clear expression of displeasure on her face.
"Do you have the core?" She asked simply.

With a firm face and a nod, he withdrew the jagged and glowing blue crystal, presenting it to Chrysalis with little fanfare. It wasn't as if she was asking him to show off, he had more than enough experience with less savory officers to know that she wanted a core, and the best thing for him to do right now was to give it to her.

"You did well... Kid." The emphasis she put on the name was something that he had come to expect, and was not surprised at all by the implied accusation of some sort of failure. "Your group is dismissed, now go and get yourself cleaned up. You have one hour." And with that, she turned to walk back into the Bastion.

The two changelings that had accompanied the Kid stepped forward to leave, but were stopped by a glance from him. The look in his eyes was a silent one, and after a few moments of silence, the two nodded their heads and left.

For the first time since he had returned to the Bastion, the Kid felt completely alone. And that made him uneasy. He knew why it was so empty, it was because everyone was off on other jobs or other missions. It would take some time before Rucks could get back with a proper plan to make the changelings their own Bastion, and until then they were all going to be out there working and risking their lives.

That was fine. He understood that. What he didn't understand, was why Chrysalis had made such a big deal about taking care of it herself.