Fallout: Equestria - Ciaphas Cain, Hero of the Wasteland

Chapters

Editorial Note
Chapter 1: Well, Frak
Chapter 2: In the Clutches of Chaos
Chapter 3: Frak This, We’re Outta Here!
Chapter 4: Conversations, Confessions, and Creepy Hospitals
Chapter 5: The Heart of the Mechanism, Part 1
Chapter 6: The Heart of the Mechanism, Part 2

Editorial Note

This, the latest extract from the Cain archive which I have prepared and annotated for those of my fellow inquisitors who may care to peruse it, is in much the same format as the first, with a few deviations that will quickly become clear.

Some among you may find this account rather unbelievable, even in comparison to the previous extract from the Cain Archive, largely on account of its depiction of Ciaphas Cain being turned into a xeno psyker and not immediately bestowing the Emperor’s Peace upon himself, his prolonged stay on a newly-formed Daemon World within an otherwise-unnoteworthy sector of the Ultima Segmentum, and the truly stunning plethora of allies he managed to recruit from the local xeno population.

As unbelievable as this may seem, and despite Cain's undeniable status as a somewhat unreliable chronicler of events, this is just as true as Cain’s account of the engagement on Gravalax; I was present for a sizable portion of it, and managed to confirm the parts I hadn’t been present for with the help of a reliable informant. And anyone who has met me or Cain in-person following the events described herein can attest to the fact that a physical transformation from a human into the particular race of xeno Ciaphas Cain can now count himself a member of is a definite possibility. Rest assured that those subjected to such a transformation are still human in mind and soul, if not body, as confirmed by individuals who are far more qualified to make that claim than myself.

As before, I have been largely content to let Cain tell his story in his own words, confining myself to annotating the original text to clarify occasional points and expand upon the wider background to the events he describes in hopes of compensating for Ciaphas' tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on things that affect him personally without much regard for the bigger picture. I have also formalized the loose 'chapters' established by the unique structure of this particular record; Ciaphas seems to have made use of a few more stylistic niceties this time around.

- (Honorary) Inquisitor Amberley Vail, Ordo Xenos.

Author's Note

So… decided to throw in notes from Amberley. The temptation to make a few more affectionate jabs at Cain, his predicament, and some of the formatting choices in most FO:E fics proved too strong to pass up.

Chapter 1: Well, Frak

“Oh fuck me with Celestia’s forehooves!”1

One would think that, after my whole ordeal on Gravalax2, I, Ciaphas Cain, bearer of the wholly undeserved title “Hero Of The Imperium”, would be able to get a brief respite and have a little R&R time, if only for the duration of the 597th’s trip through voidspace.

One would be dead wrong. I didn’t even get a full day’s rest; I went from settling into my quarters aboard the voidship that would be shipping me and my soldiers off to their next posting and collapsing on the cot in a dead faint to waking up in the latest hellish predicament the Emperor deigned to throw my way overnight, with not the faintest clue as to how that happened.

Of course, when I woke up the following morning, I didn’t know any of that. All I knew was that I had a doozy of a headache, the bed I’d been sleeping on had inexplicably been replaced with earthen, dusty ground, and all my clothes had abruptly become several sizes too large.

“Wh…whuh?” I muttered to myself, cracking my eyes open… and instantly regretting it as fiery light stabbed at my eyes. I flinched backward, my bewilderment growing exponentially as I picked up on several other oddities with regards to the sensory information I was getting. Like how my legs felt like they were folded under my stomach in a way that felt a lot more natural than it should have been. Or how I couldn't feel my fingers or toes. Or how I’d apparently sprouted an extra set of limbs from my back during my sleep…

I forced my eyes open again, blinking back my exhaustion as I tried to reach up and feel my back… and froze when, in doing so, I inadvertently brought my arms into view.

Or rather, the dark-blue, furry, hoof-tipped limbs that my arms had been replaced with.

“...what. The. FRAK!?” I exclaimed, my sleep-addled brain straining to make sense of the sight before me. As I’d stated earlier, I couldn’t remember anything between falling asleep in my cabin and waking up here, let alone anything that would explain where I got this horrible migraine and navy-blue hooves for arms.

“I have to be dreaming…” I groaned to myself while trying to rise, only to stumble as my legs didn't work right. I ended up falling on my face, further aggravating my headache. “Okay, nevermind, this isn’t a dream. This is a frakking nightmare.” I gasped, clutching at my head with the cloven-hoofed stubs that used to be my hands and arms. But my head wouldn’t be hurting so much if this were actually-

Nope. I shut that train of thought down hard before it could go any further. The last thing I needed was to lose my mind, and I had a sneaking suspicion that any further attempts to ascertain precisely what the frak was going on would, in all likelihood, not do very good things to my sanity. I cracked my eyes back open, looking for something else to focus on besides the state of my body… and promptly realized that there were more sanity-shattering things around me than the current state of my body.

I was staring up at an alien sky, straight up into a great mass of clouds rolling and churning above me, the color of the sort of smog you see on a battlefield engulfed by out-of-control wildfires. The unnatural-looking cloud cover wasn’t total; there were gaps here and there. But through those gaps, I could see churning maelstroms of violet and red and blue and other colors I couldn’t even begin to describe, and occasional glimpses of a pair of large, moon-like objects outlined with burning light, almost like suns in the middle of an eclipse. I’d never seen the sky of a Daemon World before today, yet it only took me a handful of moments to recognize it for what it was.

I responded to this revelation the way any sane and reasonable human being would; by screaming in mortal terror and making a beeline to the nearest location that looked even remotely safe.3

In this case, that location took the form of a small, decrepit farmhouse next to a bombed-out barn, both of which wouldn’t have looked out-of-place on a war-ravaged agri-world. I may not have been able to walk like this, but I could still crawl. And crawl I did, all six limbs flailing around wildly as I pulled myself toward the door to the building with a truly surprising amount of speed. Hardly the most dignified means of locomotion, but it got me to, through, and behind that aforementioned door before anything popped into existence from straight out of nowhere and ate me whole, so I wasn’t exactly in a position to complain.

I slumped against the now-closed door, sucking in a few long, deep breaths as I took a long, long moment to sort out my thoughts and kick my survival instincts into gear. I still wasn’t completely sure if any of this was real, but if it was, I didn’t have time for a protracted self-interrogation of my sanity, and assuming that this wasn’t real would be a good way to get my soul munched on by a hungry Daemon.

Okay, first things first; figuring out the condition of my body. Which in this case, meant figuring out what this place had done to it. I mentally braced myself as I wriggled my way out of my clothes and wargear, craning my neck in order to study my new body. Honestly, I’d rather not think about the fact that I’m now an inhuman freak, but I needed to know exactly what sort of inhuman freak I was and why my legs weren’t working properly if I wanted to stand even a fraction of a chance of escaping the next fresh horror I was bound to stumble into sooner or later.

Oddly enough, my body was a lot more, erm… easy on the eyes than I expected it to be, for lack of any better terms. Not in the sexual sense, not really. It’s just that I wasn’t as hideous as the vast majority of chaos-touched freaks I’d dealt with before, which is admittedly a pretty low bar. This was somewhat surprising though, considering the extent of the changes I’d undergone.

My body, as far as I could tell, was now that of a quadruped, animalistic creature nearly identical to a terran miniature horse, aside from a few glaring deviations. The biggest had to be the extra limbs I’d noticed earlier; a pair of feathered wings folded against my sides, the same shade of blue as my coat. Speaking of my coat, that was the next biggest deviation; the positively ridiculous shades of my coat and mane. On top of my coat somehow being the exact shade of navy blue found in the Commissar uniform I usually wore, I also had a mane and tail that were both possessed of an unnaturally garish shade of golden yellow, with multiple fiery red streaks running through both. And finally, there was some kind of sleek, black, rectangular device strapped to one of my front legs, the strap so comfortable I hadn’t even noticed it until now.4

Apparently, according to a small label on the thing, it was a ‘Pipbuck 3000-D’... whatever that was. I tried to pry the thing off of my arm, but the straps on it refused to budge, and I eventually gave up; I had more important things to worry about. Like taking stock of the interior of the structure I’d taken shelter in.

The place had obviously been ransacked; most of the furniture had been tossed about, the shelves were mostly bare, and the floors were covered with broken dishes and garbage. Some old bones and rags had been tossed in one corner, and a few newspapers lay in grubby heaps in another. ‘Princess Luna assassinated, body turned inside out!’ announced one headline, legible because it was somehow in low gothic, or a derivative of it so similar it might as well be the same language.5 ‘On the subject of severed relations, Seaquestria representative declared "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"’, decreed the one beneath, also in low gothic. And there were a few framed photos face down on the floor. I stumbled my way over to one, prodding at it with one of my hoofs, silently lamenting my lack of fingers as I tried to flip it over…

A faint yellow glow flickered to life around the painting as it slowly began to tip up a bit. I leaped backward with a yelp, half-expecting the thing to transform into some otherworldly horror or do something else undesirable… but the aura vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the frame falling to the floor once again. I glanced around frantically, my heart hammering in my chest as I scanned my surroundings for anything that might’ve caused the strange manifestation, but I couldn’t see anything out of place-

Wait… the picture frame only started glowing when I tried to lift it up…

…oh. Oh, frak.

My attention returned to the frame as I focused on it, imagining the frame rising up into the air. This was probably going to draw every daemon in the area to me like Tyranids to easy prey,6 but I needed to know for sure if my hunch was correct…

A yellow glow began to emanate from something jutting from my forehead as a similar glow once again enveloped the frame, flickering as I flinched back a bit but stabilizing once I regained my focus. And then, lo and behold, the thing lifted up into the air, flipping over at my mental command, its position in space now slaved to my whims.

Frak frak frak frak frak! Isn’t being a mutant freak stranded in some insane Daemon Lord’s personal playground enough? Do I really need to be a warp-damned psyker on top of that?! On a planet full of Daemons who eat psyker souls for frakking breakfast, no less?!

The picture frame clattered to the floor, now right side up. Apparently the answer is yes, and I’m even more completely and utterly screwed than I thought I was. I trotted over to my stuff, hastily folding up my clothes, grabbing my wargear, and strapping it all to my back with my belt. With that done, I threw my coat over my body and tied the sleeves around my neck like a child repurposing it as a cape. The end result looked more than a little ridiculous, I know, but I’d rather run the risk of a little embarrassment than wander around naked.

As I made a beeline for the door, I stole a glance at the photo in the picture frame I’d flipped over. The photo of another brightly colored equine like me, albeit with no horns or wings… and some kind of tattoo on her flank… reared up on her hind legs and holding a foal in her hooves… a foal with a bow tie in her hair…

…

…well, that explains all the horse puns in the newspapers, at least. Apparently the Daemon Lord in charge of this place is a big fan of talking technicolor ponies, and I’m the latest victim of his obsession.

*** *** ***

I opened a door on the other side of the house with a gentle push of my hoof, wincing as the old, rusted hinges creaked loudly. Nothing lunged at me, so I poked my head out, surveying the landscape before me.

As you can probably guess, I didn’t like what I saw. Outside, a scorched, fire-ravaged landscape stretched as far as I could see in every direction. Twisted, gnarly black things I hoped were just dead trees jutted from the ground in loose clumps, their limbs waving next to them in an unseen breeze. In the distance, I could see a small column of black smoke that obviously came from some sort of campfire, barely visible in the dim light. And make no mistake; despite what my eyes had been telling me a few minutes ago, it was dark out there. Not pitch black, mind you—I could still see— but dark enough to impair my vision and royally creep me out.

I struggled to repress a shudder. Make no mistake; I did not want to go out there. I am not a hero, despite what Imperial propaganda would have you believe7. In fact, look past all the undeserved glamor and glory heaped on to me, and you’ll find nothing but a sniveling, conniving bastard as cowardly as the Martian day is long.

But while I may be a quivering bowl of terrified self-interest through and through, let it never be said that I let that terror bully me into taking actions inimical to my own chances of survival. And sticking around in a building that’s probably going to be visited by a mob of hungry daemons seeking to feast on my immortal soul sometime soon is pretty frakking inimical to that.

I step the rest of the way out, doing my best to ignore the tingling sensation in the frogs of my forehooves8 as I set out toward the distant pillar of smoke, trying not to think about how I’m a lone commissar, stranded in a body I’m completely unfamiliar with on a world claimed by Chaos, with nothing to defend myself with save a chainsword and laspistol I’m not even entirely sure how to use anymore.

*** *** ***

…I gotta say, I didn’t expect this Daemon World to be this… well, sedate, for lack of a better word. So far, no Daemons had charged at me, no Chaos Space Marines had tried to lop my head off, nothing had interrupted my surprisingly leisurely stroll across its surface. Not that you would have been able to tell by the way I was glancing around like a man convinced everything was out to get him and jumping almost a foot in the air at the slightest sound. To be fair, most every account of a Daemon World I’ve read about is best summed up by the phrase “Everything trying to kill you”.9

Eventually, it got to the point where my curiosity started to override my fear, and I decided to experiment with my wings a little. And promptly discovered that flying is not as easy as birds make it look. The hard way.

On the plus side, I also discovered that the larger feathers in my wings are also very flexible, on top of being prehensile. In layman’s terms, I can hold stuff with them the same way I could hold stuff with my hands… somehow. At least that’s the question of how I’ll use my weapons out of the way…

I was dry firing my laspistol, trying to get used to its weight (I’d loaded a depleted power pack, because I’m not an idiot) when the tingling sensation in my hooves rapidly intensified to a full-on itch. I immediately dove behind a nearby rock, eyes darting across my surroundings. I couldn’t see anything overtly dangerous… but my hooves were still itching. And when I peeked out from behind the rock, I immediately saw why.

I’d reached the source of the thin column of smoke; a campfire, crackling merrily. A heavily modified Taurox with some kind of trailer attached to the end was parked nearby, and a number of shapes were visible gathered around the firelight. If not for the fact that those shapes were obviously xenos with bodies similar to mine, I’d probably have mistaken them for an Imperial Guard squad on some long-distance courier mission or something, having stopped for the night and set up camp.

Needless to say, this screamed “too good to be true” so loud I’d have noticed even if the familiar tingling in the frogs of my hooves wasn’t tipping me off to the fact that something was wrong. But I was lost on a Daemon World, had no provisions, and was getting more than a little thirsty; surely it couldn’t hurt to investigate this a bit, right? Maybe I’d be able to steal provisions or a map?

As I stowed my laspistol and did my level best to discreetly approach the campfire, the itching sensation intensified slightly. It was obvious that something was off. Something about the way one of the xenos gathered around the fire—the one with a black-and-red mane, pale fur, and a short, pointed nub jutting from her forehead—looked like it was squirming in discomfort, some tenseness in a few of the gathered xenos’ body language. But it wasn’t until I was close enough to feel the heat from the fire that I saw that two of the ponies were gagged, the flames glinting against the links of chains binding them in place.

“Ah, a weary traveler. Seems my friend’s hunch was correct.” One of the unbound xenos declared, turning to me. The thing had evidently concealed all the usual sigils that indicated its alignment with one of the ruinous powers beneath its cloak, but it had made no effort to conceal its glowing, slitted, bright blue eyes, and I knew Chaos Mutations when I saw them. “Come. Sit. Nopony here will mind the extra company-”

The struggling xeno finally succeeded in getting the gag out of her mouth. “THEY’RE SLAVERS!” Oh, they’re Chaos Cultists and slavers? Great, just great. “RU-!” The horn of the unbound pony sitting next to her flashed an unnatural shade of pink, a Shock Maul enveloped in the same pink glow emerging from its robes and striking the outspoken captive on the back of her head. Her warning gave way to a cry of pain as she toppled to the ground, rendered unconscious. The rest of the unchained ponies promptly brandished an alarming assortment of blades, clubs, and all sorts of other close combat weaponry, tossing aside all pretense that they were anything other than members of a Chaos Cult trying to lure in anyone too curious or foolhardy for their own good. And in this particular case, that “anyone” was me.

…look, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I was already below peak mental capacity from the shock of getting dumped into an alien body and stranded on a world claimed by the Immaterium! Can you really blame me for walking right into this one?10

“…no, thank you. Now I really must be going.” I responded, my ears drooping. And then I spun on my heels… erm, hooves, and bolted… and then just barely managed to skid to a stop before colliding with the actual, honest-to-throne human who’d just stepped out from behind the Taurox.

“And where, pray tell, do you think you’ll be going?” The blue-cloaked cultist asked sweetly as he brandished his own Shock Maul. Before I could react or even muster a response, he slammed the weapon down onto my muzzle.

I had about a fraction of a second to lament the inherent unfairness of that cultist getting to keep his human body while I was stuck with the body of a quadruped xeno before the electrical shock reached my brain and I lost consciousness.

New Game11

New Perk Added: Alicorn Physiology — So… you’re a pony now. On the plus side, you’re also a natural-born Alicorn, and quite possibly the last one still alive on this planet. You gain 7 additional SPECIAL attribute points you may distribute among your SPECIAL stats as you wish, and gain +10% radiation, poison, and damage resistance. You also have the strength of an Earth Pony, the wings of a Pegasus, and the powerful spellcasting of a Unicorn, all wrapped into a single package. Now you just have to figure out how to use those things…

Level 1, +7 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 3
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 3
Agility: 3
Luck: 10

1: These quotes appear to be brief excerpts from works Ciaphas Cain has read, penned by both Imperial sources and the xeno inhabitants of Equis I (the Daemon World he had been stranded on, titled as such following its discovery by Imperial forces). Cain was far more well-read than a typical Inquisitor. Why Ciaphas has opted to periodically include quotes from such outside sources is unknown, though their placement throughout this particular entry did make the task of dividing it into distinct chapters far easier for me.

2: For details on this, please see the previous entry in the Cain archive, entitled “For the Emperor”.

3: I cannot find any fault with this assessment. Too bad sane and reasonable human beings are in such short supply nowadays…

4: He also possesses a short horn made of a biological substance similar to keratin, which acts as a focus for the natural psychic abilities a sizable portion of his species seem to possess, though he won’t become aware of its presence for quite some time yet.

5: Aside from a truly obsessive amount of equine-themed puns woven into the language’s dictionary, Ponish, the language ponies speak, is so similar to Imperial Low Gothic as to be outright indistinguishable.

6: Ciaphas Cain was mistaken in this assumption. Admittedly, his conclusions seem logical even with the benefit of hindsight, given what little information he had on the precise nature of his abilities at the time.

7: I would beg to differ.

8: Before his transformation, Cain often demonstrated a knack for sensing trouble, crediting it to an itching sensation in his palms with an intensity that corresponds to the severity of the danger he was in at a given moment. This appears to have translated into the sensation described here following his transformation into a pony.

9: A chillingly accurate summary of literally every Daemon world I’ve visited and/or heard about, with Equis I being the only such world I have found so far that even comes close to being an exception. There’s a reason why forays onto a Daemon World’s surface are rare occurrences for the Inquisition, and are generally as short as possible.

10: I have made even stupider decisions once or twice over the course of my career as an Inquisitor, at times when I lacked any excuse as good as the one Ciaphas presents here, so I’m in no position to judge.

11: These extracts seem to consist of information taken from the “Pipbuck 3000-D” Ciaphas Cain has on. Apparently the things chart the wearer’s relative experience and physical capabilities, and also take note of his abilities and growth over time through the ‘perks’ described; the maxed-out Luck and high Charisma certainly fits what I know about his abilities. Why Pipbucks display this information in a form comparable to a menu interface in a holo-roleplaying game is unknown at this time, however.

Author's Note

Recently stumbled across Fallout Equestria, and I also happen to be a fan of Ciaphas Cain. So why not combine the two?

The original idea for the setting came from Daemon World Equestria by SuperSaiyanDiclonius, a silly short story detailing what Equestria might look like under the reign of the forces of chaos. The hellhole poor Ciaphas has been stranded in borrows far more heavily from the setting of FOE: Project Horizons than Daemon World Equestria, but the author still deserves credit for putting the idea into my head.

Oh, and something you should know about Cain; he's a natural alicorn, not an artificial one. While this means he's slightly more resistant to radiation, he's not immune to its negative effects like artificial alicorns in the original FO:E canon... and he certainly won't get any taller when exposed to lots of it either.

And finally... yes, the Valhallan 597th will appear in this fic, as will Jurgen.

Chapter 2: In the Clutches of Chaos

“What’s going on?”

“They’re slavers, you idiot.”

Gotta say, nothing wakes you up quite like your shoulders being tugged so hard they nearly dislocate.

Almost immediately, I became aware of several things. First; I was staring up at a metal-plated ceiling, probably the interior of the Taurox I’d seen parked next to the campfire. Second; I was buck naked (pun not intended) and gagged by something that was almost certainly a bridle. Third; several cold, hard metal loops were clamped around my neck and my torso, the one wrapped around the latter pinning my wings to my sides. Fourth; shackles were clamped around all four of my hooves, and those shackles were secured to the benches built into the Taurox, leaving me immobilized on my back with my furry belly completely exposed. Fifth; remember that human cultist with the shock maul? Guess who was leaning over my shackled forehooves, giving my chains a few testing (and painful!) yanks.

“There we go, nice and tight.” The cultist commented, a muffled whine slipping from my throat as I tugged on my restraints, trying in vain to free myself. “Don’t want our slave-to-be running off in the middle of an inspection, do we?”

Sixth, and finally; I was well and truly frakked!

“No, we don’t.” The same pony who’d whacked that one captive with his own Shock Maul chuckled to himself as he hopped up onto the bench, carefully stepping around my hind legs, his shadow creeping across my helpless form like something out of a xeno abduction holovid. The irony inherent in that comparison was not lost on me.

At this point, most Commissars would have started vigorously thrashing, screaming bloody murder through the bit gag and trying to snap their restraints so they could rip out some throats. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not most Commissars, largely by virtue of being primarily motivated by fear and self-interest rather than fanaticism or glory. I’m not going to be doing any sort of big, flashy heroics if I can help it,1 but I’m also far more reasonable in my decision-making than most of my peers. For example; it probably wouldn’t have occurred to your typical Commissar that trying to struggle right now would almost certainly be futile, and that it would be better to conserve their energy for when a better opportunity to attempt to escape cropped up.

So instead of trying to fight, I just clamped down on my urge to struggle and went limp, playing the part of a disoriented captive too terrified to resist as the cultist started poking and prodding and tugging at me all over, his pony helper occasionally using his xeno witchcraft to grab parts of me the cultist would have had trouble reaching and doing other little things to help. That pony was being awfully frivolous with the use of his psychic abilities, especially considering that such talents usually come with a not-insignificant risk of frying your brain or worse even in the absolute best of circumstances.2

“Hmm… an actual, natural-born alicorn… and one that’s free of Corruption, to boot.” The human cultist commented, snapping me out of my thoughts.

“Bet he’ll fetch quite the price among the more research-oriented warbands.” The pony added. Beneath the blue cloak, I could see that his coat was deep indigo in color, with a dark purple mane and creepy blue eyes I could swear were glowing. And there was something around his neck, something that looked an awful lot like the loop of metal currently clamped around my own, aside from the blue flame emblem inscribed on its front.

Surely you can imagine my confusion in that moment; here was another of those pony-like xenos, apparently made a slave, enthusiastically helping his sadistic, human master subject me to the same treatment he’d presumably been put through.3 Pretty much the only indication that he was a slave to a chaos cultist rather than a chaos cultist himself was that collar.

“Decent muscle tone, too.” The pony continued speaking, rubbing one hoof over my belly, and I had to actively fight the urge to try and jerk away. “Especially with regards to one particular muscle…”

…one particular muscle? What is he talking about…? I wondered to myself… and immediately stopped wondering when his hooves drifted lower down. Oh… oh throne… The next thing I knew, I was being groped by this disturbingly enthusiastic slave, and oh how I wish I was joking.

This time, I couldn’t resist the urge to jerk back reflexively, my chains jingling softly as I squirmed in their grip. A low, miserable whine slipped through the bridle around my throat. I saw a perverted smile blossom into existence on my attacker’s face, and clamped down hard on my shame; this pony seemed to be enjoying how much discomfort I was feeling, and the last thing I wanted to do was encourage him.

“You can help yourself to this slave-to-be tonight, Tentacles. After he’s settled.” The human cultist chided as he gently pushed the pony’s hoof away from my private parts, the casual tone with which he discussed raping me sending shivers down my spine. “Don’t want to hit him with too much at once; slaves driven to madness don’t sell quite as well, do they?”

“Right. Besides, I think the other stallion will be a lot more fun to play with.” ‘Tentacles’ responded, giggling playfully as his master scratched his ears like he was some kind of pet. Seriously, what the frak was wrong with that pony? Is he secretly a Slaaneshi cultist trying to pull a fast one on Tzeentch or something?4 “But I’ll have plenty of time for all that later. For now, let’s show our newest piece of property his accommodations.”

The slave who was way too enamored with her station in life stepped up toward the head of the table, his horn emitting an eerie blue glow as his telekinetic warp-sorcery pulled out a chain and a small, crystalline key that shimmered unnaturally in the Taurox’s interior lights. He inserted the key into the collar, prompting the piece of metal to create a small slurping noise as it's pushed into the metal, almost as if it’s sliding into a particularly viscous liquid. With that done, he somehow hooks up one end of the chain to my collar, and I struggle not to choke as he gives it a short, testing pull.

Next he moved onto my shackles, inserting that crystalline key into the metal cuffs and somehow unhooking the chain that secured them to the table. And finally, he pried off my bridle, leaving me free to speak… or so I thought. The shock maul that my captor pressed against my neck when I opened my mouth to talk made it pretty damn clear that wasn’t the case.

“Do you know what some slavers do to slaves-to-be who don’t know when to shut up?” I shake my head wordlessly; I don’t. But I can guess.

“They pump them full of pain-amplifying drugs, strap them to a table, and cut out their tongue. And then their vocal cords. Slowly.” Tentacles answered, still smiling as his voice dropped to a hiss. Yep, my guess was right. “Do you want to know what that feels like?”

I shook my head vigorously, not even daring to speak out loud. “You learn fast…” Tentacles chuckled as he tugged on the leash, pulling me off the table and onto my shackled hooves. The human cultist nodded with approval, before turning around and pushing open a nearby hatch, Tentacles following in his wake like a loyal Canis being led around by their owner. Again, the irony in how he was the one ‘holding’ my leash wasn’t lost on me.

*** *** ***

As it turned out, these slavers kept their captives in honest-to-throne cages; they stored the things in the trailer the Taurox was hooked up to. I have to admit, for something a bunch of insane Chaos Cultists came up with, it was a pretty sensible idea. After all, if you’re trying to lure in slaves-to-be by pretending to be ordinary travelers, you probably don’t want cages full of ponies sitting out in the open. And if that means your slaves don’t get anywhere near as much sunlight and fresh air as they’d like… well, they’re slaves. It’s not like you’re under any obligation to give a frak about what they want.

As I was led into one of those cages, I took another moment to silently rail against the unfairness of my plight. Wasn’t it enough for the mysterious Daemon Lord in charge of this hellhole to turn me into a frakking animal? Did he really have to have some of his cultists keep their human bodies so they can treat me like an animal too?

As usual, the answer was yes, at least if the way Tentacles was somehow securing the leash to one of the bars like I was some kind of frakking pet was any indication. I let loose a despairing huff as I lay down on the dirty straw, trying (and utterly failing) to get comfortable.

A moment later, my captor had finished affixing the chain to the back wall of the cage. For a second, I let myself hope that this was the end of the humiliation conga line, at least for now.

No such luck. Before leaving, Tentacles trotted over to me. He leaned in close, nuzzling my neck, one hoof grabbing my shackles seemingly just to make it clear there was nowhere I could flee to.

Every single fiber of my being was screaming at me to lash out, to scream for help, to kick Tentacles away and try to run, to do something, anything to put an end to this before it progressed into full-on rape. Fortunately, none of those screams weren’t quite loud enough to drown out my sense of self-preservation, and it was telling me to stay calm, stay still, and not do anything that might incur any kind of punishment. And that’s exactly what I did; I sat there, silently wallowing in discomfort and misery as Tentacles licked his way up my neck.5

“Sleep tight, don’t let the soul-eating Daemons bite…” Tentacles whispered in my ear, before giving it a very, very slimy lick. I could feel something twitching beneath his cloak, but at the time, I’d chalked it up to my imagination and discomfort. As you can probably guess, I was dead wrong about that.

Fortunately, Tentacles released my shackles and stood back up a few seconds later, leaving me free to scramble into the rightmost corner of the cage, curl into a ball, and spend the next minute or two reigning in my urge to puke.

Once my nausea had subsided to manageable levels, I looked up, taking stock of my cagemates for the first time. There were two other slaves locked up here, besides myself; one, a light-blue stallion to my left, was curled up in a back corner of my cage, discreetly fiddling with his chains as if trying to undo them somehow. The other—the same pale-furred pony who’d tried to warn me of what these cultists intended—was moping in the cage next to mine. A bridle had been clamped around her snout, wide, ragged lacerations crisscrossed their way down her spine, and her whole back had turned an unhealthy shade of purple in what was obviously very extensive bruising. Something told me that the cultists hadn’t liked that she’d managed to call out a warning, even one that came far too late.

“...so, I don’t suppose our captors will let us get a cold shower,” I commented, trying to lighten the mood. Yes, I was actively trying to fraternize with xenos, but it was possible I’d be stuck with these two ponies as my only true company for quite some time, and the better an opinion they had of me, the less likely they were to live up to the tales of backstabbing xenos depicted in Imperial Propaganda and murder me in my sleep.6

The pale pony snorted, a muffled chuckle slipping through her bridle. “I wish. I swear, that stallion gets off on our shame and misery.” The light blue pony grumbled, letting loose a sigh. “My name’s P-21, in case you were wondering. And that pale-furred idiot over there is named Blackjack. What’s yours?”

For a second, I panicked internally, briefly floundering for an appropriate alias. Haley? Sunset? Solaria? I didn’t know enough about the naming conventions of these xenos at the time to pick a name that seemed appropriate, so I just went with my own name. It’s not like these xenos have been reading Imperial propaganda, right? “Ciaphas.”

P-21 narrowed his eyes in suspicion, so I asked another question in an attempt to deflect attention from what was apparently an odd name for a pony. “What did Blackjack do to earn the title of ‘idiot’?”

“That warning she shouted out to you? The one that came way too late to be of any use to you? It earned her a flogging from our oh-so-gracious hosts. With a shock baton.7 Doing something that does nothing but get yourself hurt sounds like something an idiot would do, doesn’t it?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Blackjack wince like a human who’d been slapped on the face. The number of similarities between the body language of these xenos and the body language of humans were mind-boggling to behold.

“Hey, at least she tried.” I countered.

“Yeah. Just like how I spent my first few hours in here trying to find the locks on these shackles, and failing because there aren’t any.” P-21 snapped, and I glanced down at the shackles around my front hooves. To my alarm, there wasn’t a keyhole. Or a latch. Or a seam. Or anything suggesting the shackles hadn’t been forged right onto my hooves.

The light-blue stallion was saying something else, something about “trying” and “the good it’s done us”, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Panic was welling up in me as I pawed at the shackles with my hooves, feeling around for a latch or keyhole. I found nothing. I rolled onto my side and reached for my neck with my shackled hooves, gingerly feeling around the collar for the latch I’d assumed was there. Again, my hooves found nothing but smooth metal. I ran my hooves all along the collar for a second and third time, searching for some way to remove it. And again, there wasn’t any. Not because the mechanism to open it required a key or something, but because, just like with my shackles, that mechanism did not exist. There wasn’t a keyhole or seam or anything; everywhere my hooves touched, they felt nothing but smooth metal.

Giving up on getting the collar off, I instead turned my attention to the ‘leash’ it was hooked up to. It was a struggle to keep my breathing even as I ran my hooves around the collar again, finding where the ‘leash’ was hooked up to the collar and attempting to disconnect it. As you can probably guess, this worked out just as well as trying to get the collar or shackles off; the leash was connected to my collar in such a fashion that I couldn’t even figure out how it had been attached, let alone undo it. I felt my way up to where the leash was attached to the cage’s bars... and my blood froze in my veins.

The other end of the chain seemed to blend flawlessly into the solid steel bars. There wasn’t a latch, hook, or ring it was attached to. Hell, there wasn’t even a knot to untie; it was like the leash was originally part of the wall itself. Even if the cage door was opened and the cultists were being a little less careful than they should’ve been, my steel ‘leash’ would prevent me from trying anything. I was trapped.

I have to admit, there’s really no better term to describe my mental state at that moment besides complete and total panic. All my thoughts, rational and otherwise, promptly threw up an “out for lunch” sign, unilaterally declared “Frak this, I’m outta here!”, and took a headfirst dive right out the nearest window. In a matter of moments, my hooves were clawing desperately at the cold, hard loop of metal clamped around my windpipe. I was choking myself, and there were blue hooves tugging on my own, but none of those things mattered to me at that moment. I had to get these chains off, I had to get out of here, I had to-

“GAH!” I cried out as something tugged hard on my tail, the sharp pain snapping me out of my panic attack. I whirled around, instinctively kicking at whatever had pulled on my tail… and promptly let loose a yelp of pain as the frogs of my hooves impacted painfully on cold, hard metal bars.

“You okay?” It was only then that I registered P-21 standing over me… and the fact that my tail was poking through the bars of my cage and into Blackjack’s. And the alabaster white hoof on my tail.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, nodding. “Thanks, I guess.” Blackjack flashed me a small smile through the bridle around her muzzle as I climbed to my hooves, studying my shackles a little more thoroughly now that terror wasn’t clouding my thoughts. Sure enough, my restraints were all seamless loops of metal, with no visible seams or latches; they definitely wouldn’t be coming off anytime soon. “How the frak did they-” I started to ask.

“That horned purple pervert was the one putting us in chains. Take a guess.” P-21 responded. For a second, I just stared at him, not understanding how that supposed slave’s sexual harassment had anything to do with my restraints. And then my brain made the seemingly obvious connection between the chain getting fused to the wall and that pony using his psychic abilities to secure it in place. I allowed my head to drop, a cold, heavy dread settling into the pit of my stomach as I upped my assessment of the likelihood I’d be stuck with these two xenos from ‘possibly’ to ‘probably’.

“Yeah, I know, you don’t want to be here. Neither do I. But that doesn’t change the fact that we're here.” It was all I could do to stop myself from visibly flinching; normally I’m good at hiding my emotions, but apparently some of my despair had shown in my expression. “You should probably try to get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

I shuddered involuntarily at the idea of falling asleep here, of all places, but P-21 was right: I really needed to rest. The panic attack and my slipping grip on my otherwise-impeccable acting were evidence of that. I nodded as I shuffled over to the corner of the cage, curled up into a ball in an attempt to get comfortable, and did my level best to try and drift off to sleep.

*** *** ***

I awoke to a loud, ear-splitting CLANG. Oh for the love of… I grumbled to myself, forcing my eyes open. Stupid roll call…

Several more CLANGS rang out, sounding absolutely nothing like the bells on a voidship that marked the shift between the night and the day cycle. All of a sudden, I became acutely aware of the dirty straw I was lying on, the cold, hard metal wrapped around my torso and limbs, and the four hooves I had in place of my hands and feet.

“Wakey wakey, my little trick pony.” Oh, and the purple-furred pervert standing right outside the cage door.

Chains jangled as P-21 leaped to his feet. I, for my part, just pressed myself into the corner, cursing the fact that my mane and tail made me stick out in the trailer’s gloomy interior like a sore thumb. At least my coat was a darker color than everyone else’s.

“…how… how did…” P-21 sputtered.

“Listened to some of the entertainment on your marefriend’s Pipbuck. Apparently, she she keeps a whole frakton of recordings of you to jerk off to.” Tentacles declared casually, flicking his tail in the direction of the ‘marefriend’ in question. He didn’t pay attention to the expression on Blackjack’s face, preoccupied as he was with pushing open the door to our cage, but I did; it was a mix of surprise and bewilderment, untainted by shame. Something told me that whatever the purple pony stumbled across wasn’t her personal porn stash, contrary to his assumption.

“Makes me wonder how she’ll feel about being allowed to watch this.” Tentacles continued as his tail pulled the cage door closed behind him. All of a sudden, his false assumptions were the absolute last thing on my mind.

The light-blue pony looked confused for a moment, but that confusion quickly gave way to pure, mortal terror. All the color drained from his face; quite a feat, considering how pale his fur was to begin with. “No…” He whimpered softly. “You can’t… I don’t-”

“-want this?” Tentacles chuckled, cutting P-21 off with a small chuckle. “Then why is your cock going hard?”

P-21 glanced down at his now-erect cock. “I… I-” He sputtered for a few seconds, struggling to formulate a response. A small part of me was tempted to point out that an erection doesn’t necessarily indicate sexual arousal. If you’re scared enough, you can develop a boner from stress alone; I’m not ashamed to admit that, on the many occasions that I’ve found myself face-to-face with green-skinned psychopaths, betentacled chaos cultists, and remorseless killing machines, my cock is often rock hard, even though sexual intercourse is always the absolute last thing on my mind during such times.8

But another, larger, more craven part of me was telling me to shut the frak up. This pony had already proven that he was interested in me on a sexual level, and for all I knew he was also into threesomes. So instead of coming to P-21’s defense, I just pressed myself into the corner of the cage, watching in terrified, slightly guilty silence as Tentacles advanced on P-21 while his eyes weren’t on the purple stallion.

P-21 looked up and let loose a sharp cry as he caught sight of how close Tentacles had gotten, scrambling to his hooves and trying to press himself into a corner of the cage (other than mine, of course). “S-s-stay away fr-from me, or I’ll-” He sputtered, trying to sound confrontational and assertive; as you can probably guess, he wasn’t having much success.

Tentacles let loose another chuckle, louder than before… and a dozen other chuckles joined his own, all ever-so-slightly out of sync with each other. The unnatural voices caused P-21 to fall silent, Blackjack to recoil slightly, and me to shudder. And then, something beneath his cloak shifted, pushing it off of his back. P-21 let loose a shriek of terror, Blackjack reeled backward in horror as a similar cry slipped through her bridle, and I couldn’t help but flinch back.

And here I was wondering why that pony was named ‘Tentacles’…

Now that his cloak was off, it was obvious that he was no longer entirely a pony. Only half of his body was covered in fur anymore; the rest consisted purely of huge swaths of twisting, writhing, ever-shifting pink flesh. Tendrils jutted out from the patches of ever-changing tissues, writhing and dancing as if disturbed by an unseen breeze.9 Those tendrils were accompanied by eyes and mouths and other various facial features as senseless and impermanent as the rubbery pink flesh they were a part of, all twitching and squirming as if each and every extra orifice and organ had a mind of its own. Altogether, the mutant in front of me looked like some nightmarish cross between a pony and one of Tzeentch’s Pink Horrors.

“Do what?” The purple-furred freak asks, his extra mouths adding their voices to his own in a dissonant, out-of-sync chorus. And then the fun began.

I wanted to look away, but it’s never a good idea to take your eyes off a potential threat, especially when that “potential threat” is a mutated chaos cultist with questionable sanity. Instead, I forced myself to keep my eyes locked on Tentacles as his tendrils shot out, seizing P-21 and dragging him close, heedless of his screams. Forced myself to watch as he gripped his crystalline key with his warp-born telekinesis and slotted it into the cuffs around the thrashing stallion’s hooves, pushing the chains linking them into the floor of the cage and leaving the unfortunate rapee-to-be splayed on his back. To watch the tendrils begin poking and prodding at P-21’s orifices, the Shock Maul strapped to Tentacles’ back shifting as he mounted the thrashing blue pony…

All of a sudden, a plan popped into my head, a plan that would have me out of these cultists’ clutches in under an hour. But on the other hand, it was also a plan that entailed getting close to the half-pony monstrosity that was currently plowing P-21 and would probably plow me too if I drew too much attention to myself. And it also meant that I could forget ditching my new “friends” and running for the hills, at least if I didn’t want them calling out to the cultists and ratting me out…

It didn’t take me long to make my choice, but that didn’t make it any less hard.

I climbed to my feet, being very careful not to make the chains rattle too much as I crept up behind Tentacles, keeping my eyes locked on the shock prod strapped to his back and not the amorphous mass of pink rubbery flesh that his back was actually made off. Somehow, Tentacles didn’t notice my complete and utter failure to keep all those chains from jangling. Probably because he’d already mounted P-21 and was doing things to him with his tentacles and private parts that I won’t restate here, for reasons that should be plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain.10

In a matter of moments, I was right next to Tentacles, so close I could smell the mutant’s sweat and other bodily fluids. The urge to gag was almost overpowering, but I clamped down on it to the best of my ability as I grabbed the shock maul’s handle with my mouth, blocking out all thoughts of chaos contamination as I used my tongue to unclip the weapon from his back.

Maybe it was the sensation of the weight being lifted off his back. Or maybe one of his extra eyes spotted me. Whatever the cause, Tentacles had finally taken notice of me. He turned his head, but it was already too late.

“Ooh, seems like you want to join in on the fu-“ He doesn’t get a chance to finish the sentence; while he was wasting time chatting, I thumbed the shock maul’s activation switch with my tongue, and slammed the thing into his side. Tentacles cried out in pain, spasms wracking his body as he was knocked off of P-21, his namesakes emitting several lewd squelches as they were violently wrenched out of the light blue stallion’s orifices. P-21 let loose a final scream, scrambling away from his tentacled rapist and immediately curling up as tight as he possibly could. Unfortunately, I had more pressing concerns at the moment than making sure he was okay.

Like making sure the mutant who’d been raping him didn’t kill me. Said mutant was halfway to being back on his feet and ready to pounce (and halfway through the latest in an already-alarmingly-long series of vows to fuck my loved ones to death in incredibly painful fashion, among many, many other things) by the time I’d set the Shock Maul’s output level to the highest setting and brought it down on his skull.

There was something morbidly satisfying about hearing the kersplat that followed and seeing Tentacles’ head explode like it had just taken a bolt round to the brain. I was tempted to hit his corpse a few more times just to be thorough, but I had more pressing concerns at that moment. Like getting the frak out of here before all of Tentacles’ fellow cultists realized that their slaves were making an escape attempt.

I transferred the Shock Maul from my mouth to my hand-wing, snatching the crystalline key from Tentacles’ harness and inserting it into my collar. A few seconds of fiddling later, I'd figured out that twisting the thing like it was in a regular keyhole caused the collar to manifest a seam I could’ve sworn wasn’t there before and pop right open, and that the same was true of the metal loop around my chest and my shackles. With that done, I turned my attention to P-21’s curled, trembling form.

“Are you ok-” I stepped forward, touching the blue stallion on the shoulder… and just barely managed to sidestep the punch he threw.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” He shrieked at the top of his lungs, kicking and thrashing like his life depended on it. I tried to calm him down verbally several more times, but he wasn’t listening. Eventually I just gave up and pinned him down with one hoof while I used the key to remove his restraints, praying to Him on Terra that the cultists would just assume he was screaming from being raped and not from him being too panicked to realize that I was trying to undo his restraints.

The instant P-21 was free of his shackles, he dove out from under me, scurrying over to the corner of the cage opposite mine. For the first time, I noticed that he had a pronounced limp; one leg had purple splotches that indicated heavy bruising, and from the way he was limping that leg was probably broken. “Do you need-” I started to ask.

“D-don’t come any closer…” P-21 whimpered, promptly curling up as tight as he could, burying his head and flattened ears beneath his hooves, his tail firmly pressed between his legs. Just my luck, on top of being a cripple, he’s also managed to get saddled with a bad case of battle-shock without even getting into a battle.11 For a second, I was tempted to just move on to Blackjack and leave him, but these two were likely the only allies I’d find for miles, and I didn’t want to alienate Blackjack. And something told me that abandoning P-21 would be a quick way to do exactly that.

So instead, I tossed the key to Blackjack, trusting that she’d seen how I’d gotten P-21’s restraints off and would be able to do the same. With that done, I promptly did exactly what P-21 was telling me not to do, stepping forward and laying one of my wings on his shoulder, hoping that an unfamiliar sensation (in this case, the feeling of feathers on his coat) would snap him out it enough that he’d be able to pay attention to what I was saying. He flinched, eyes snapping open as his entire body tensed up, but he didn’t break my wing; that probably meant that whatever I was doing, it was working.

As you can probably tell, I had not the slightest frakking clue what I was doing. But I certainly wasn’t going to let that show. Especially right now.

“Look, we aren’t going to get a better opportunity to get out of here anytime soon, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get away with a stunt like that the next time something like this happens.” I explained, trying to strike a balance between keeping my voice soft and speaking firmly. “You’re feeling hurt and violated and scared right now, and you have every right to feel that way. But that doesn’t change the fact that if you want to get out of here, you need to get moving. Now.”

For the longest time, P-21 just lay there, completely unresponsive. For a moment, I found myself wondering if he’d even heard me. But then, his head bobbed up and down ever-so-slightly. He started to rise, a pained whine slipping from his throat as he did so. I instinctively moved up beside him, draping one of my wings over his shoulder… and was promptly reminded of what he’d just been through by the way he jerked away from me, toppling to the floor in the process.

“...need any help?” I offered.

P-21 nodded again, and slipped in beside me. Now that that matter was all sorted, I turned my attention back to Blackjack…

…

I was starting to understand why P-21 called her an idiot.

She’d figured out the key could be inserted into the metal loops, at least. But apparently, she had yet to puzzle out that you needed to twist the thing in order to cause them to snap open, at least if the way she was rolling around and yanking the short crystalline knob sticking out of her collar this way and that was any indication. I gotta admit, the sight of her wrestling with her restraints was kinda funny; I probably would have chuckled if I wasn’t preoccupied with getting us all the frak outta here.

I reached through the bars, grabbed the key, and twisted it. Blackjack froze as her collar snapped open, her head tilting down to watch as it clattered to the floor. For a brief second, an expression of embarrassment crossed her face. Fortunately, she recovered quickly, extracting the key from the collar and using it to undo the rest of her restraints, before moving onto the cage door (like the shackles, it was ‘locked’ with the same unnaturally fusible metal the collars were made of, and thus could be ‘unlocked’ in much the same fashion).

As Blackjack slipped out of her cage and moved onto mine, she stole a glance at Tentacles’ crumpled form. “Is… is that freak dead?”

“I reduced his head to a fine red mist. So yeah, I’m reasonably certain he’s dead.” I couldn’t possibly have been more wrong, but again, I didn’t know that at the time. And can you really blame me for failing to realize that the chunky salsa rule didn’t hold true for that particular pony? “Anyway, let’s get out of-”

“Wait.” Blackjack cut me off as she pushed the cage door open, stepping toward me. “You forgot about your horn ring.”

“Horn…ring?” I asked slowly.

“The ring on your horn. Y’know, the thing that’s stopping you from using your telekinesis?” The short, nublike horn poking through her mane flashed white, an equally white aura enveloping the key lifted up the crystalline key and inserted it into something on my forehead. An instant later, that something clattered to the floor.

I looked down at the small metal ring that had clattered to the floor, catching sight of something long, thin, and the same color as my coat jutting from the top of my mane. “...oh.” I said to myself, allowing a little embarrassment to creep into my voice.

“Eh, no biggie. I’ve done things that make forgetting you have a horn seem smart.”12 Yeah, like failing to realize that the key worked like a frakking key. “Anyway, let’s get out of here.”

She spun around, heading toward the back entrance of the trailer… and then stopped when I stepped out of the cage and grabbed her shoulder, gesturing to the door at the front of the trailer.

“Why would we-?” She started to ask, and I stifled an frustrated sigh.

“So we can steal the Taurox,” I deadpanned. When she just continued to stare at me in bewilderment, I added, “Y’know, so we can get out of here faster?”

Now Blackjack was the one who was looking embarrassed. “…oh.”

LEVEL UP!

Intelligence Attribute Increased By One

New Perk Added (Companion): Idiot Savant (Rank 1). Blackjack isn’t an idiot, she’s just… different. And maybe a little crazy. And now that she’s joined your party, you can tap into a bit of that craziness to your benefit! You now have a random chance to receive 3x XP from any action.

Level 2, +8 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 3
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 3
Luck: 10

1: Ciaphas’ track record for performing the exact sort of “Big, Flashy Heroics” he is showing such a disdain for here seems to disagree…

2: These risks are nonexistent for the abilities granted to ponies with horns (i.e. unicorn telekinesis). Unfortunately, Ciaphas hasn’t caught on to that yet.

3: I wish I could say I’m surprised by this. While it isn’t exactly common for slaves in service to the forces of chaos to become just as amoral, insane, and/or depraved as their masters, it is far from unheard of.

4: Probably not, unfortunately. Tzeentch’s followers have a concerning tendency toward sexual perversion; the exact reasons for this are unknown, though it probably has something to do with how one of the first warning signs a Planetary Governor has sold his soul to the Dark Gods (and Tzeentch in particular) is a high number of ‘Governor’s Couch’ incidents…

5: As unpleasant a situation as this must have been for Ciaphas, I’m impressed that he managed to remain largely calm and level-headed throughout. I must admit, when I found myself in a similar predicament during my first few hours on Equis I, my reaction to my circumstances wasn’t quite as well-thought-out or rational, and was far more violent. To be fair, I had implanted weaponry my Slaaneshi captors had failed to disable and thus the means to defend myself, and I doubt Ciaphas would have tolerated being sexually harassed like this if the same were true of him…

6: Some of my fellow inquisitors among the Ordos Xenos would likely demand that Ciaphas be executed for his failure to try and murder those xenos first. I, in response, would demand that said Inquisitors be executed for their complete and utter failure to exercise basic common sense.

7: While ‘flogging’ is usually done with a whip or cat-o-nine-tails, it can be done with other tools, such as a switch, a rod, or a baton. There is basically no precedent for flogging someone with a Shock Maul in Imperial society—contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing as overkill, particularly when it comes to corporeal punishment—but we aren’t dealing with Imperial society here, and these Chaos Cultists evidently aren’t concerned with going overboard on disciplining their slaves.

8: Ciaphas is not making this up. “Reflex Erections” are an actual thing, and I’m always surprised by just how many men do not know this.

9: Three guesses as to how this pony got nicknamed “Tentacles”…

10: Some of my fellow Inquisitors might be wondering what exactly that mutant was doing to P-21. Do yourself a favor and don’t bother asking. P-21 and Ciaphas filled me in on all the icky details in private, and trust me when I say that you don’t need to know and will be far better off in blissful ignorance.

11: For those of you unfamiliar with the term, ‘battle-shock’, also known as ‘shell-shock’, is essentially what happens when humans suffer more trauma than their minds can handle and their ability to think and act rationally starts to break down under the weight of all the stress they’re experiencing. Treatments vary wildly, ranging from ‘promotion’ to non-combat roles, to partial mind-wipes, to commitment to a mental asylum, and even servitorization, though summary execution is the treatment plan favored by most Commissars. Cain is an obvious exception to that mindset.

12: As someone (well, to use the pony term, somepony) who has met face-to-face with Blackjack and knows her fairly well, I second this statement.

Author's Note

Yeesh, this chapter was hard to write. Particularly the rape scene and its immediate aftermath. While there's plenty of material telling you how to handle a rape victim after the incident is over and the victim is someone safe, I couldn't find any about how to get someone who was raped less than a second ago back on their feet and out of immediate danger.

Oh, and if you have any constructive criticism to share, share it. This is the first time I've written a full-blown rape scene, and I'm not the sort of person who gets offended by legitimate, well-thought-out critiques. So please, if you think I did anything wrong and could've done better, don't be afraid to tell me.

Chapter 3: Frak This, We’re Outta Here!

“Running! Excellent idea.”

Going from the front entrance to the trailer to the back of the Taurox was hardly the most nerve-wracking task I’ve ever had to undertake, but it was definitely somewhere up there in the top fifty. The two hatches, when opened, faced the camp and thus hid us from the cultists as we crept out of the trailer and into the Taurox, but even so I couldn’t help but be convinced that any second we’d be up to our necks in cultists pointing guns, shock mauls, and other, more unpleasant things at my unarmored and unprotected face. Given that was exactly what was about to happen, I’d argue I was fairly justified in my paranoia.

Fortunately, the cultists didn’t pounce on us right this instant, and we reached the back half of the Taurox’s interior without incident. And keeping the cages tucked away out of sight at the back of the trailer seemed like the only half-smart idea they’d come up with so far, at least if the way my wargear and my companions’ things were packed away in a box conveniently placed right beneath the bench I’d been shackled to a handful of hours ago was any indication.

“Good. They didn’t think to keep our equipment in a place where they’d be able to see us stealing it back.” I commented as I reached into the box with one wing, pulling my chainsword out as I used my other wing to pass the Shock Prod to Blackjack. It was chipped, scruffed up, and looking a little too battered for my comfort, but then again, it had always looked that way, and it still looked to be in working order. Not that I was stupid enough to check if it was right this instant; the signature roar of a chainsword would be a dead giveaway to the fact that we were up to something…

“Is that a sword that’s also a chainsaw?!”

I glanced over at P-21. He’d been all but glued to my side following his… erm… encounter with Tentacles, but he wasn’t shivering anymore. And he’d recovered enough to pick up on the fact that my choice of melee weapon was apparently considered a little excessive amongst ponies. Knowing what I know now, it’s little wonder he’d recovered so fast; after all, someone whose career can be handily summed up by the phrase ‘breeding slave’ would have plenty of practice at dealing with being plowed.

“Yeah. It is.” I said, a little sheepishly, hiding the spike of panic that had just shot through me behind a layer of embarrassment like the well-practiced fraud I am.

“Has anyone explained the concept of “overkill” to you?” P-21 asked pointedly as I frantically wracked my brain for a way to avoid tipping these xenos off to the fact that I was really a human transformed into one of them through some incomprehensible warp-sorcery.

“Where I’m from, I’m usually the one doing the explaining. As far as most people I’m used to dealing with are concerned, there is no such thing as “overkill.” There is only “open fire” and “reload”.” Like all good lies, that one was partially true; you have no idea how much I’ve had to fight to get my colleagues to implement rational, common-sense solutions to problems, such as not engaging in morale-butchering summary executions to use a relatively recent example. I just left out the part about how ‘my people’ were a bunch of bipedal hyper-intelligent space-monkeys who’d founded a galaxy-spanning theocratic fascist regime with a morbid fear of any sapient creature that wasn’t them and an unhealthy fondness for lighting everything around them on fire. 1

P-21 raised an eyebrow. “People?” Frak. I’d completely forgotten about the unique quirks of the particular dialect of low gothic these creatures speak.2 “Why’d you say ‘people’ instead of-?”

“Found your Pipbuck!” Blackjack exclaimed, swiveling around as the ‘Pipbuck 3000-D’ that had been strapped to my leg lifted up out of the crate and drifted toward me, enveloped in the same telltale alabaster glow the mare’s horn was emitting. She’d found a black and navy-blue form-fitting jacket of some kind, the number “99” emblazoned on the side and the word “security” visible on its back. She also had a small baton strapped to her back along with the shock maul I’d given her.

For a second, I silently thanked the alabaster mare for inadvertently deflecting attention from my verbal slip-up… and then instantly took it back when Blackjack grabbed my leg with her telekinesis and slipped the Pipbuck onto it.

I reared backward with a yelp as my vision flashed red, various diagrams and rectangular notification boxes about “Broadcaster Connection Established”, “Downloading KTE-06” popping up in the edges of my vision. “Gah! What the-“ I started to exclaim, batting at the air in an attempt to dispel the strange xenotech-induced hallucinations… and trailed off into silence as I noticed the looks Blackjack and P-21 were giving me.

“You had that Pipbuck on your leg… but you never bothered to turn it on?” Blackjack asked, quirking an eyebrow. Another popup appeared in my vision and announced “Download Complete!”, the soft, cheery-sounding chime that accompanied it standing in stark contrast to the look of intense, unrelenting scrutiny P-21 was giving me.

“Seriously, what the fuck is up with-“ The light-blue pony started to ask.

Fortunately, my silent prayers for Him on Terra to cause something to distract my companions from my rapidly-crumbling facade as an ordinary pony were answered with atypical promptness. Unfortunately, they were answered in the absolute worst way possible; the distraction came in the form of a cultist opening the door leading to the Taurox’s cockpit, taking one look at the three of us, and then reaching for his bolt pistol. I spun around, making for the back exit… and then realized that a half dozen cloaked pony cultists were standing right outside the Taurox’s back, holding an impressive variety of autoguns, las-weaponry, and assorted melee weapons in their mouths, hooves, and telekinesis, all of them pointed right at my face. And standing behind them was the same blue-cloaked cultist who’d knocked me unconscious earlier.

Oh, and the Emperor chose this precise moment to throw yet another curveball my way. Another round of translucent, rectangular popups briefly filled my vision; “Pipbuck Broadcaster Activated.” “Connection Established.” “Remote Steering Enabled.”

At least this curveball worked out in my favor, for the most part.

“Did you really thi-” I don’t catch what the human cultist said next; he was cut off by the Taurox suddenly and energetically going into reverse, scattering the cultists like a bunch of squishy bowling balls and catapulting me, Blackjack, and P-21 into the two cultists up front, sending all five of us tumbling into the Taurox’s cockpit. The landing knocked the wind out of all of us; I was the first to recover, right as the Taurox reversed directions and began powering away from the camp with all possible haste. Thinking quickly, I leaned into the change in momentum, using it to hasten the process of staggering to my feet even as my finger-feathers curled around the handle of my laspistol and brought it to bear.

The recoil from the laspistol wasn’t much, but the weapon still had enough kick to catch me off guard and knock itself right out of my grip. That was little consolation for the cultist; the lasbolt the weapon produced before it fell from my feathery fingers still struck him right in the eye. If only I could take a holo-photo of the massive chunk the lasbolt took out of the cultist’s head; it would’ve been great to shove that photo into the face of anyone I caught making fun of the Imperial Guard’s standard wargear and point out that my dinky “flashlight” laspistol did that to him.3 Though even if I had gotten that photo, I’d first need to somehow skirt the usual Imperial punishment for being a xeno to do that…

Neither of my companions were anywhere near as pleased with that result as I was, if the expressions of horror on their now-blood-soaked faces were any indication. Unfortunately, I had more pressing issues to deal with than the fact that they’d obviously never witnessed a proper close-quarters duel to the death in all its horrifying splendor before. Such as my other opponent, who had brandished a crackling shock prod and was swinging it at my face.

Blocking the cultist’s attack with my chainsword was out of the question; the electrical charge would have traveled through the metal and into my wing, incapacitating me in an instant as my electrified body dropped to the deck like a ton of bricks. Instead, I ducked under his swing, rolling away from the cultist in hopes of buying myself time to snatch up my laspistol and snap off some more shots.

The insane machine spirit residing in my Pipbuck had other ideas. The Taurox abruptly swerved hard to the side, sending both me and my opponent stumbling toward one of the cockpit’s open windows. Acting on reflex, I moved with the sudden change in direction and threw myself at the cultist, taking a swing at his legs with my chainsword. The churning sawteeth sliced through the cultist’s knees like a hot knife through butter.

And then I slammed into the cultist’s chest, and his dismembered form was sent careening out the Taurox’s open window, vanishing into the cloud of dust the speeding Taurox was kicking up. I didn’t follow him out, thank the Emperor, but I did get the wind knocked out of me. And while I was getting my breath back, the first cultist—who’d somehow regrown the missing parts of his once-mangled head—climbed to his feet and leveled a bolt pistol at my face.4

But before he could pull the trigger, a shock maul wreathed in a familiar white glow swung through the air, impacting on his shoulder. Said shoulder promptly dislocated with a sharp, painful-sounding crack, the cultist letting loose a barely-human screech of pain as his aim was thrown off. The electric charge from the weapon only stunned him for a few seconds, but a few seconds was all that I needed to regain my bearings, perform a forward somersault and roll between his legs, swivel around on my front hooves and forcefully slam my hind legs into his back. The cultist was promptly sent flying through the same window as his companion, his neck snapping backwards into an angle no one with half a brain could ever call natural as his forehead impacted on the top of its frame. And then the cultist was gone, vanishing into the same dust that had enveloped the other cultist.

For a long, long second, the three of us just stood there, leaning against the walls of the Taurox, Blackjack and I panting from exertion as the adrenaline (at least, I assumed it was adrenaline) slowly worked its way out of our systems.5

“…you okay?” I finally asked the alabaster pony, having recovered from the latest in a long succession of near-death experiences to take note of the fact that her still-bloodsoaked face was going pale.

“Never better…” Blackjack murmured softly, before collapsing into a dead faint.

LEVEL UP! (3x)

Strength Attribute Increased by One

New Perk Added: Backstabber — Some might frown upon you for exercising this particular talent, but when shit hits the fan you gotta do whatcha gotta do! Your ranged sneak attacks do 2.5x normal damage and your melee sneak attacks do 4x normal damage.

New Perk Added: Cooler Under Fire — Your fire-forged reflexes allow you to make the most of your S.A.T.S.’s battery! Not that you even know what that is at the moment, but once you find out, you’ll find that all attacks you make with it cost 20% less action points!

Level 5, +9 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 4
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 3
Luck: 10

1: A rather accurate (if highly generalized and less-than-flattering) summary of humanity writ large, I must admit.

2: As Ciaphas Cain already noted, Ponies generally say “ponies”, “anypony”, and “somepony”, as opposed to “people”, “anyone”, and “someone”.

3: Contrary to popular belief, Lasguns are far from the useless ‘flashlight’ firearms some Imperial propaganda pieces portray them as. A well-placed lasbolt shot to the spine can and will split an average human in half, as countless overconfident chaos cultists have learned the hard way.

4: Evidently said cultist benefited from ‘Skin-shifting’, a phenomenon that periodically affects those who serve the ruinous powers. Far as we can tell, it happens whenever the dark gods decide to squeeze a little more fun out of a fallen servant of theirs; whatever injury that felled them is promptly undone, thus bringing them back to life, though the process has a tendency to cause mutations and do a number on the recipient’s sanity. It is named for the way it causes an affected cultist’s skin and flesh to ‘shift’ as their wounds close up.

5: And he assumed correctly, oddly enough…

Author's Note

This chapter was originally meant to be part of the last one, but said chapter took longer than I’d have liked, so I decided to break them into two chapters.

Chapter 4: Conversations, Confessions, and Creepy Hospitals

"I’d rather not talk about it. She’s dead. I’ve escaped. I don’t want to remember that place."

After about an hour of the Taurox charging across the barren, smog-shrouded landscape at a pace that made Jurgen seem like a sane and reasonable driver, the vehicle screeched to a halt. Once I was reasonably certain it wouldn’t come to life again, I took a peek through the window.

Once again, I was pleasantly surprised by the banality of our surroundings. No ruins, no mobs of vengeful chaos cultists on our tail, nothing trying to murder me. It seemed that I’d hit a lull in all the horrific predicaments fate seemed hellbent on dragging me through, but I knew, from hard-earned experience, that such lulls never lasted long.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make the most of it while it lasted.

I started by taking stock of the foodstuffs we had on hand, tossing out all the rotten, discolored, or otherwise visibly corrupted provisions but keeping the rest. I’d have tossed them all out, but I wasn’t sure when we’d find any provisions that we could safely eat; the risk of chaos mutation would be a risk we’d have to take.

Next, I found a blowtorch, and set about getting rid of all the Chaos Cult iconography on the Taurox. Every time I found a Star of Chaos, blue flame sigil, or anything else that looked even remotely like a symbol of Chaos, I took the blowtorch to it, melting it off and searing the surface until not the slightest trace of the icon remained, and then using the blowtorch to deface the surface with a crude graffiti-esqué declaration of “not on my watch”, just to be thorough.1 In response to the odd looks my companions were giving me, I explained to them, in no uncertain terms, that those occult symbols have actual power and potential corrupting influence, and the less exposure we had to said influence, the better.

Naturally, this explanation and warning ended up segwaying into an extended conversation with my companions, from which I gleaned several exceedingly uncomfortable facts;

The name of the Daemon World I was stranded on, or at least the name of this particular continent of it, is Equestria.
These xenos were pre-warp, at least if the incredulous looks they were giving me in response to my questions about what ‘segmentum’ or ‘sector’ this world was in were any indication. So hitching a ride on one of their starships was out of the question, on account of the fact that they didn’t have any.
Surprisingly enough, they did have a passing familiarity with Chaos despite this, though not quite enough familiarity that they didn’t immediately comprehend why I was melting every last chaos sigil I could find off the Taurox’s hull. Apparently, their civilization had gotten into a protracted war with some kind of conglomerate of various Chaos Cults and Warbands, and had managed to hold out against them for over 25 years. Gotta say, they did better than most unsupported worlds on the receiving end of a Chaos Incursion…
As you can probably guess from the state of the world, the war didn’t exactly end favorably for the ponies. Fortunately, a sizable number of ponies had taken shelter in underground ‘stables’ shielded from the ravages of Chaos Corruption and the need to prostrate themselves before incomprehensible manifestations of all of sapienkind’s worst traits in order to not die.
Unfortunately, these ponies were from one such stable, and had been there up until three days ago, when a group of Heretic Astartes (not associated with the Chaos Cultists who’d tried to enslave us, apparently) broke in. Their sole experience with the ‘Outside’ consisted of fleeing for their lives from said Heretic Astartes, and then wandering aimlessly until they stumbled ass-first into the same bunch of Chaos Cultists that I would also stumble ass-first into a few hours later. Ergo, they had just as much of a clue how to survive on this Daemon World as I did.
Those Heretic Astartes were after something called “KTE-06”. Apparently it’s some kind of piece of software that Blackjack had on her Pipbuck. I say “had” because apparently it now resides in my Pipbuck. In other words, on top of being stuck with these two ponies now, I also have something Chaos-worshipping transhuman super soldiers were willing to break into a heavily fortified bunker to get their hands on strapped to my arm.
One of the ponies, Blackjack, is self-described as the “worst security mare in the stable”. She was the pony equivalent of an arbites… in job title and job title alone, largely on account of having none of the skills or ‘spells’ that were necessary for that job. Apparently she was born into the job; from what I could gather, jobs in her stable were inherited instead of being assigned by merit, stupidly enough.2
P-21 wasn’t much better. He hadn’t stopped shivering, kept dodging all my questions about what life was like in the stable for him with assorted variations of “I don’t want to talk about/think about/remember it.” And unlike Blackjack, he was smart enough to pick up on the fact that there was something undeniably different about me. He wasn’t asking pointed questions like he was before, but that would almost certainly change in the future.
Oh, and on top of all that, I’m apparently an ‘alicorn’, which is basically the pony equivalent of a primarch.3
All things considered, I was still well and truly frakked.

On the plus side, I did learn that using my telekinesis didn’t attract daemons,4 and that I could use my telekinesis to manipulate the Taurox’s controls.

*** *** ***

“…am I the only one who wants nothing to do with this place?” My rhetorical question was punctuated by a shower of sparks from a busted panel on the side of the building, briefly illuminating the left side of a large sign; “Fluttershy Medical Research Center”.

“Nope.” P-21 commented as I turned theTaurox’s steering wheel, the vehicle swinging around in response to my telekinetic inputs and driving away from the creepy-looking building at a relatively reasonable speed, at least compared to whatever had hijacked the Taurox during our escape from its previous owners.

“Good to know.” I deadpanned, pushing the gas pedal a bit harder. For a long, long minute, we drove in silence, Blackjack and I scanning our surroundings for anything of note. So far, nothing caught our eyes beside the everpresent orange smog and the occasional dead tree.

Eventually, the Taurox’s fuel gauge dipping into the red forced us to stop, right next to a small crop of dead trees. I was running low on (figurative) fuel as well, and the same could be said of Blackjack and P-21, so we stopped for the ‘night’ (insofar as night can even be a thing on a Daemon World with two perpetually-eclipsed suns that are always visible in the sky no matter where on the planet you are) and ate a quick, carefully-rationed meal.

Once that was done, P-21 began shuffling through whatever was in the Taurox in hopes of setting up some proper bedding, I’d found a fancy new use for my chainsword in the form of using it to cut down the dead trees and chop them up into logs as fuel for our vehicle,5 and Blackjack…

“So… do you want to have sex?”

May Him on Terra have mercy upon my poor, beleaguered soul; Blackjack was hitting on me. I’m not ashamed to admit the question made my jaw drop and my chainsword drop from my finger-feathers and tumble to the ground. “...what?”

“Y’know, get laid and all that?” Blackjack asked casually, as if having sex with someone she barely knew was something she did on a daily basis. Which, as I would soon learn, it was.

For what felt like an eternity, I stared at Blackjack as if she had suddenly sprouted two hundred extra heads, each and every one of which had independently yet simultaneously come to the conclusion that I was the illegitimate love-child of the God-Emperor of Mankind and Khrone, Slaanesh was my wet nurse, and I’d been raised by Tzeentch. “...no,” I responded, once I’d recovered enough from the shock of having Blackjack announce her desire to get down and dirty with me the way one might make a reservation for dinner at a restaurant with a newfound friend. “Just… No.”

Blackjack gave me a bewildered look. “…why not?”

“Look, I don’t know about where you come from, but where I come from, sexual intercourse is something you normally do only with a very specific special somebody.” I snapped, struggling to keep my tone even. “And it is never something you do with near-total strangers you met less than a few days ago. Besides, I’m pretty sure my special somebody will murder me if she finds out that I slept with you.”6

Blackjack returned the ‘you’ve sprouted a hundred extra heads’ look I’d given her a few seconds ago. “Where you’re from, not all stallions want sex?” She asked, as if the concept was as alien to her as walking on four legs had been to me a few days ago.

“I’ll bet where he’s from, not all stallions are breeding equipment either.” P-21 grumbled as he limped past the two of us. My heart skipped a few beats as two words he said stuck in my mind. …Breeding equipment?!

…

All of a sudden, I was very, very, very glad I hadn’t woken up in Stable 99.

Fortunately, my mind was pried from the dark, dark places it was going by another question from Blackjack, this time directed at P-21. “Umm… where are you going?” I shook the nightmarish mental images out of my head and glanced over at P-21, noting how he was hobbling away from us, his braced leg sticking out to the side as he moved toward the smog. “Shouldn’t we stick with the vehicle?”

P-21 looked back, fixing the two of us with a searing glare. “You want to do that? Go right ahead. I’m not going anywhere with her.”

“...really?” I countered, responding with Authoritative Glare #7 (good for not-so-subtly hinting at someone that you consider something they’re about to do to be immensely stupid). “Ditching the fastest means of transportation you’ll likely find for miles and a good inch or two of metal between yourself and anything that might be wandering around out here… just because you don’t want to share it with a certain pony?”

“I’ll be fiYAUGH!” Midway through P-21’s response, the brace he’d found for his bad leg popped loose, and he fell hard on his bad leg.

I let loose a tired sigh, stepping forward as I snatched up the brace with my telekinesis. “You think you’ll be ‘fine’ on your own, with a bad leg, on the surface of a Daemon World? Do you have a death wish or something?”

P-21 took a long, slow breath. “What should I do?” He whispered softly to himself. “What would he want me to do?” He? Oh frak, he’s angry at Blackjack for being complicit in the loss of a loved one, isn’t he? “Fine. Untill I can go on my own, I’ll stick with you and Blackjack.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I responded, using my telekinesis to reattach the brace. Hopefully by then, I reasoned to myself, I’d have found whatever passed for civilization on this warp-damned planet, and maybe a clue as to where the Valhallan 597th was and how to get back to them.

*** *** ***

“OUCH!”

“Sorry! Your leg-”

“Oh don’t worry, I’m not blaming you. I’m blaming the idiot alicorn who decided that sleeping in a big-ass heap was a good idea!”

“...you’re an alicorn? But you’re a stall-”

“Can we not talk about this right now?” I asked, pressing myself into the walls of the crate a bit in an attempt to give P-21 a little more space to stretch out. I had to admit, having all three of us sleeping in a crate with the lid on top and my oversized clothes serving as bedding was far from the most comfortable sleeping arrangement I could’ve come up with, especially considering my size.7 But it was the safest, and according to my personal creed, my safety (and by extension the safety of any human, or in this case equine shields in my company) comes before my (or their) comfort.

Next to me, I felt P-21 slide in next to me, pressing himself into my side. I could feel tremors shooting through his muscles; it was obvious the prospect of sleeping with a mare in close proximity did not sit well with him. “Umm, P-21? Are you okay?” Blackjack asked.

“I told you, I’m fine-”

“No. You’re not. And not just because you have a broken leg.” I interjected. Part of me wanted to have nothing to do with the upcoming conversation, but there was a not-insignificant chance that I’d be stuck with these ponies for weeks or even months, and the last thing I wanted was interpersonal issues driving a wedge between my companions. And such issues are best dealt with when those who have them are willing to talk about them.

Even in the near-total darkness of the crate, I could tell that P-21 was giving me a withering glare. “For the thousandth time-” He started to snarl.

“You don’t want to talk about it, you don’t want to think about it, you don’t want to remember it. I heard you the first thousand times” I cut him off, draping one wing over him in an attempt to comfort him. “I get that whatever happened to you in Stable 99 hurt you badly, and that you don't want to revisit that pain by talking about it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it still happened to you. Trying to pretend it didn’t won’t change that.”

“And you think making me dredge all that shit up by talking about it will?”

“No, but even I know that it’ll be healthier than keeping it all bottled up.” Hey, say what you want about the Schola, but they did force each and every commissar to get some rudimentary psychotherapy training. Not that most of us actually use that training…8

“...fine.” P-21 finally growled. “The ‘porn stash’ Tentacles stumbled across? Why don’t you take a look though it for me?”

“Wait… what?” Blackjack asked, sounding bewildered. “You wanna listen to some bumping flanks? Here? Now?”

“Yes. Specifically the bumping flanks in Audio Log BJ#1.” P-21 growled.

“…what are you talking about?” Blackjack asked as her Pipbuck lit up, the amber glow of its screen illuminating her face. “I’m pretty sure I’d remembe-” The alabaster unicorn abruptly fell silent, the words seeming to die on her tongue. For a long, long second, a pregnant pause filled the crate. And then, Blackjack’s Pipbuck emitted a click.

Some kind of mix between march and choir music erupted from the Pipbuck’s speakers, accompanied by the babble of many voices. It sounded like some kind of social gathering; probably something that had happened in Blackjack’s stable.

“Let’s go play with the stallions,” I heard a mare’s voice shriek. “Dibs on the unicorn!”

“Daisy! At least give me the unicorn. You take the blue one,” Blackjack’s voice whined, growing clearer. Blue one? Oh frak… “I mean, look at him! He looks defective. And he’s just P-1.”

“Too bad. I called the unicorn,” she laughed, and I heard hoofsteps on metal receding into the distance.

“Ugh, mule...” Blackjack’s voice whined in my ears. She sounded younger, more petulant. “Well, come on, you.”

“Please…” P-21 whispered softly, so quietly that I could barely hear his voice through the Pipbuck’s speakers. The sounds of the social gathering dimmed. A door closed.

“Help me get out of this party dress. I don’t want a work detail to cover a stain.”

“I…” P-21 stammered in a tiny, terrified voice.

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to do this… please don’t make me do this…” he whimpered. The despair in his voice called to mind the expression he’d been wearing, Emperor only knows how many years later, when Tentacles walked into our cage and made his intentions toward him clear.

“Ugh, are you actually talking?” I heard Blackjack grumble.

“I…”

“Look! Here’s the plan. You’re going to make me feel good. That’s your job. If you can’t do that, then get to medical and have them fix you till you can.” I gave a little annoyed sigh. “You don’t actually do anything here except breed, so the least you should do is be happy about it—“

Blackjack pressed her hoof to something next to the screen, cutting the recording off with another click. For a long, long second, dead silence reigned. Not that Blackjack needed to say anything. The expression on the pale unicorn’s face said it all.

“...it had been a horrible party. Daisy got the unicorn stallion. I got the P-1. The one who’d cried… the… whole… time…” Blackjack spoke softly and slowly, her tone calling to mind someone who’d blindly signed a form only to find out decades later that said form was the death warrant for her loved one. “That was all I remembered.”

P-21’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t recognize me?! At all?!”

“...no.”

*** *** ***

“Merciful Omnissiah, what are those things?!”

“It came through the wall! It came through the wall!!!”

“Regroup! Reform at once, you sons of-AAAUGH!”

I awoke with a jolt, shaking and breathing heavily, my fur utterly drenched in sweat. I reached over with a shaking hoof, for the bottle of amasec that I always kept on my nightstand… and my hoof ended up groping uselessly along the wall I was pressed up against, and I was reminded that amasec was not among the limited supplies in the Taurox.

Stripped of the familiar burning sensation in my throat accompanied by a swig of amasec that I usually took after a nightmare like that, I attempted to replace it with something else. I grabbed the coat draped over the three of us with my telekinesis, pulling it tightly over me and wrapping the side of it around myself tightly, hugging P-21’s shivering form close to me for comfort. “Just a nightmare…” I whimpered softly to myself, hating how . “Just a nightmare…”

It wasn't the first time I had that exact nightmare, and unfortunately, it almost certainly wouldn't be the last. Decades past my encounter with those soulless killing machines, and I still periodically woke up in a cold sweat; evidently being transformed into a five-foot tall pony didn’t change that.9

I was stirred from my thoughts once again by a pained groan from the furry mass next to me. It's only then that I noticed how much P-21 is shivering, how cold his body felt.

“P-21?” Blackjack exclaimed, alarm creeping into her voice as the two of us scrambled to our hooves. “What’s wrong?”

“Hurts…” The blue Earth Pony whispered, his voice raspy and weak. Using my telekinesis, I threw the lid off the crate… and Blackjack sucked in a shock breath.

To say his condition had worsened from last night would be an understatement. His fur had somehow gone even more pale, his half-lidded eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and his whole body was twitching in what looked for all the world like a prolonged, subdued epileptic seizure. He looked like someone from a drug-addict penal legion who was experiencing withdrawal…

…

…oh. “Oh, frak. He’s chem-dependent.”

“...chem-dependent?” Blackjack glanced up at me, her expression caught between terror and hope. It was an expression I’d seen plenty of times before, an expression whose meaning basically boiled down to “I don’t have a single frakking clue what’s happening, thank the Emperor you do!” Some things never change, do they?10

“It’s something that happens to habitual chem users,” I explained. “In a nutshell, chems do what they do by forcing parts of the body to temporarily function in ways they weren’t meant to. Use a chem enough, and your brain chemistry starts to adjust to the changes it induces, which leads to withdrawal symptoms when the chem runs its course and the body is left operating around the effects of a chem that’s worn off. And if you use the wrong sort of chem long enough, you can get to the point where your body literally doesn’t know how to function without it, and the withdrawal symptoms become lethal.”

“...whuh?”

I sighed. Apparently, she’d never been educated on the risks associated with out-of-control chem usage. “In layman’s terms, if you use certain chems too much, you can get to the point where if you stop getting regular doses of those chems, you die. And based on how he’s looking right now, P-21’s been getting shots of some kind of powerful opioid at least once a day. Maybe even more frequently than that, depending on how reckless the ponies in Stable 99 were with their usage of chems on him. If we don’t get our hands on a few doses of whatever he was getting in your stable, he’s probably going to die.”

Blackjack stared at me, taking a moment to process the info. “The very thing he’s been taking that’s made him this way could kill him if he stops taking it?!”

“Yes.” I responded. “Which means if we want him to survive, we should start looking for a dose of whatever he’s been getting in the stable. Now.”

Blackjack nodded as I spun around, heading toward the Taurox’s driver seat. “Got it. I’ll search the truck for Med-X…”

I didn’t catch the rest of what Blackjack was saying; my mind was too busy trying to figure out how the frak what I was seeing was possible. “...you have got to be kidding me…”

“No Med-X in…” Blackjack fell silent as she charged into the Taurox’s cockpit, her pupils and irises somehow shrinking to the size of pinpricks as she beheld the flagrant violation of euclidean geometry that sat before us.

Right outside the Taurox’s front windshield, in the space once occupied by nothing but flat ground and empty air, was a massive, vaguely rectangular building, it’s shape all too familiar. Almost as if the structure was actively trying to shove it’s identity in my face, a shower of sparks erupted from the exact same busted panel on the exact same side of the building, the brief light illuminating the “Fluttershy Medical Research Center” sign once again.

I glanced back toward where the stumps that my chainsword had reduced the dead trees to had been. Sure enough, they were still there; the Taurox hadn’t moved an inch.

In hindsight, I really shouldn’t have been surprised; this was a Daemon World, after all. Sure, a Daemon World that has waited until this exact moment to toss all laws of causality and physics right out the window, but a Daemon World none-the-less.11

“The sign says it’s a Medical Research Center…” Blackjack commented, and I stole a look at her.

“In my experience, if something looks too good to be true, it’s almost certainly exactly that, and then some. A hundred times over.” I shot back, hoping to nip the thought I thought she was having in the bud before it took root.

“Yeah, and even I can tell that this is too good to be true. I may be an idiot, but I’m not that much of an idiot.”12 Blackjack admitted. “But it’s not like we can just hop down to the Stable Infirmiary and ask for a couple Med-X syringes. This place might be the only place where we’ll be able to find some, and if we pass it up and it moves again while we’re gone…”

I was tempted to just ignore Blackjack, spin the Taurox around, and power away at maximum speed. My hooves were itching so badly they almost hurt, and it was pretty obvious where that sensation was coming from. And even if they weren’t, this place was screaming “I’M A TRAP!” so loud even Blackjack could tell that going inside might be a bad idea, to say nothing of the fact that it teleported in front of us after we’d ditched it for being way to creepy, right when we desperately needed something it might just have on offer.

But then again… Blackjack did have a point. P-21 needed a dose of this ‘Med-X’ stuff, and the Medical Reseach Center was the best place to find one. And if we passed it up, and P-21 died because of it… I didn’t think Blackjack would forgive me. I’d thought wrong, of course, but I didn’t know that at the time.

“Fine.” I muttered, turning and heading for the Taurox’s back doors. Call me a heretic, but the thought of Blackjack abandoning me and leaving me without any company—even xeno company—on this Daemon World terrified me far more than the thought of going inside the Medical Research Center did.

Apparently some of my trepidation had crept into my voice. Blackjack sidled up to me, pressing herself into my side in an attempt to comfort me. “Relax. It’s just a creepy building that teleports. How bad could it be?”

*** *** ***

The double front doors opened with a screech at Blackjack’s hoof, and the alabaster unicorn promptly stumbled backward, gagging on the coppery stench that billowed out from beyond.

A hallway stretched out before us, illuminated by light fixtures that glowed an unnatural shade of green, the color calling to mind the nightmare I had last night. The hallway ended in a T-intersection, and on the intersection’s singular wall, in flaking letters painted jet black by the unnatural green light, four words had been written as if by a paintbrush; ‘The Mechanism Must Endure’. The coppery stench and the equally-black stains splattered all around the message left absolutely no doubt in my mind as to precisely what sort of ‘paint’ the writer had used.

“You were saying?” I asked, attempting to distract myself from the disturbing sight.

LEVEL UP!

New Perk Added: Inspirational — You’re charming, charismatic, and possessed of a magnetic personality, whether you like it or not! Any allies in your presence deal 20% more damage while taking 20% less damage. Also, weirdly enough, your allies cannot hurt you unless they are actively trying to do so; stray friendly fire never seems to do any harm to you outside of superficial scratches and harmless scorch marks.

Level 6, +11 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 4
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 5
Luck: 10

1: Normally, Inquisition operatives don’t even touch wargear used by Chaos Cultists, due to the risk of Chaos Corruption. In the event that repurposing such wargear becomes essential for survival and/or mission success, however, the procedures for doing so are impressively similar to Cain’s approach to repurposing the Taurox. They're not a perfect match; we're supposed to replace symbols of chaos with the Imperial Aquilla, not a piece of “crude graffiti”, but then again it often doesn’t occur to most commissars and coronels to strip equipment reclaimed from a Chaos Cult of chaos-related iconography.

2: Not that certain corners of the Imperium are much better…

3: To elaborate further on this comment, there are three common subspecies of ponies: unicorns, which possess the ability to use their horn to actively alter reality the way a trained Primaris psyker can, pegasi, which can fly, and earth ponies, which have neither but compensate with above-average physical capabilities. An ‘alicorn’ is a very rare fourth subspecies that has the abilities of all three, on top of usually being given a leadership position of some kind by other ponies.

4: About time…

5: While the engines of the vast majority of Imperial Guard Vehicles were designed to run on promethium, they can run on pretty much anything flammable in emergency situations, including firewood from chopped-down trees. The Techpriests on Mars still haven’t figured out how they do that.

6: Ciaphas is mistaken here. Putting aside the fact that several brief conversations and a singular drunken fling in the aftermath of the Gravalax incident do not an engagement make, I’d never dream of killing him over something as petty as sleeping with someone else, even if we were married… though the look intense enough to wither an Astartes’ bones I’d give him, my raised eyebrow to end all raised eyebrows, and the exterminatus-grade sigh I’d unleash upon learning of what he’d done might just cause him to have a heart attack anyway.

7: Cain was always significantly taller and stronger than average, and his transformation into a pony did not change that. His alicorn body is a good head taller than most ponies even without considering the horn, and has musculature to match its size. I’ve heard other ponies compare his stature to that of a certain pre-war pony by the name of ‘Big Macintosh’ once or twice…

8: Ciaphas Cain is correct on both points here, unfortunately…

9: As stated earlier, humans ‘ponified’ like Ciaphas Cain are still human in mind and quite possibly soul as well, if not body.

10: Nope!

11: As spaces deeply entangled with the Warp, Daemon Worlds are under no obligation to adhere to the laws of physics, causality, or basic common sense.

12: I believe the technical term for individuals like Blackjack is ‘Idiot Savant’.

Author's Note

Another chapter goes up, and Ciaphas makes headway towards an issue it takes Blackjack 8 more chapters to notice in the original Project Horizons. Though another issue with a solution that isn't so readily available rears its head 36 Chapters ahead of schedule, and as the nightmare indicates, Ciaphas has issues of his own he'll have to grapple with...

Chapter 5: The Heart of the Mechanism, Part 1

“And I thought I was here to be a sеx slave!”

“What?! No! What a disgusting idea! …I'm simply going to harvest your organs!”

Step by cautious step we walked together, Blackjack leading up the rear and me in the front. All around us, the lights flickered and dimmed periodically, and I once again found myself thanking my upbringing on a hive world for the experience with badly lit, confined spaces it had granted me. Blackjack was similarly unperturbed by the claustrophobic corridors and the less-than-adequate illumination; apparently, aside from being a rape factory, Stable 99 also featured conditions similar to an underhive.

Messages similar to the first were painted on the walls every few feet, proclaiming such reassuring platitudes as ‘you walk among dead ponies’, ‘the mechanism sees everything’, ‘pLAYTIME!’, and in one particularly notable case, ‘it’s time to DIE’.1 I say notable because that last message was written next to a disemboweled brown-furred pegasus reclined backward against the wall, his chest and ribcage turned inside out and his internal organs scattered all along the floor.

Blackjack recoiled as we rounded the corner, and I clamped a hoof over her mouth right in time to stifle the ear-piercing scream that erupted from her throat.

I couldn’t really blame her for that; internally, I was screaming just as loud as she was. I guess being an unwitting war hero who has spent a not-insignificant portion of his life outfighting, outwitting, and fleeing in terror from the very worst a millennia-long galactic war can throw at someone meant I had a lot more practice with projecting an air of outward calm at times when I was anything but than she did.

It took a good thirty seconds for her muffled shrieks to subside to the point that I could let her open her mouth without letting everything in earshot know exactly where we were. The minute she did so, she started sucking in huge lungfuls of air. “What… what kind of sick fuckers would-” A drop of blood from a still-fresh message of “It Sees Everything!” landed in her mane, and she glanced back at said message, sucking in a tiny gasp as her ears went flat against her neck. “That’s… all those words were written in blood, weren’t they?”

“You didn’t notice?!” I exclaimed, struggling to keep my voice low.

“I thought it was just dark paint!” Blackjack cried out defensively, not even trying to keep her voice down.

“And the coppery smell?” My prehensile feathers curled around the hilts of my chainsword and laspistol; from the way Blackjack was shouting, I had a feeling that something undesirable was about to pay us an unwanted visit.

“I… I thought it… was just… the metal…” And then Blackjack started to hyperventilate; apparently the realization that she’d walked passed and quite possibly through a truly disturbing amount of blood had sent her into a full-blown panic attack. Frak.

“Calm down.” I instructed as I stepped forward, grabbing Blackjack’s shoulder with one hoof, my training for snapping individual soldiers out of Battle Shock without blowing their brains out kicking in. “Now is not the time to panic-”

I was cut off by a burst of static from our pipbucks, which quickly resolved into an eerie, oddly artificial-sounding melody. Blackjack began frantically fiddling with various knobs and buttons on her Pipbuck, her breathing becoming increasingly labored as her attempts to switch off the music failed repeatedly.

“You can’t turn it off, can you?” I asked, my voice low. Blackjack shook her head in agreement, her ears pressing tight against her head.

And then the singing started.

“Pony number one; he thought his armor would avert the end…”

A voice burst from the speakers of our pipbucks, warped, distorted, and slightly studdering like it was coming from a vox-caster that had been possessed by a Daemon.

“Pony number two; she lost all will to continue…”

An orange bar appeared on a curved bar in the bottom of my vision, a number popping up above it and ticking down from 99 as the bar moved back and forth across what I realized was a compass. Blackjack winced the moment it appeared, her head swiveling toward the direction it pointed.

“Pony number three; he locked himself up and starved away…”

“Oh fuck… Oh fuck…” Blackjack whimpered, her expression a near-perfect mirror for my emotions in that moment.

“Pony number four; she just couldn’t take it any more…”

The bar suddenly stopped moving, the countdown freezing at twenty five as the ghostly voice trailed off into silence. For a fraction of a second that felt like it dragged on for ten millennia, everything was still.

And then, the silence was broken by the screech of tires on metal floors, the countdown going from 25 into the single digits in half a second as the numbers and bar both turned a shade of red reminiscent of the emergency lights on a half-destroyed voidship. Acting on a hunch, I dove to the side, tackling Blackjack and bringing her along in the process. My hunch that the red bar was a display element for some kind of xenotech auspex was promptly proven correct; by the time the other half of that second had rolled around, the wall we’d been standing in front of had exploded in a shower of debris and dust, it’s collapse accompanied by a shriek of “HOLY SHIT!” from Blackjack as the thing that had shattered the wall came into view.

Looming over the two of us was a four-legged behemoth, at least as large as an Astartes in Terminator armor. One of its arms bore a weapon that vaguely resembled a far more compact version of a Scout-Sentinel’s multilaser, while the other carried what looked for all the world like a deranged union between an Astartes-grade Heavy Bolt Gun and an Emperor's Chainsaw.2 And atop it's oddly humanoid-looking torso, right where its head would be, was a translucent, cylindrical jar, containing a pulsing, apparently-still-living blob of pinkish flesh that looked just about the right size to fit in a pony’s skull.3

“Nevermind, time to panic!” I shouted as the two of us scrambled to our hooves and bolted, tires squealing as our surroundings burst into a roaring kaleidoscope of multicolored lasbolts and fiery detonations. I couldn’t hear Blackjack over the noise of the detonations, but I could read the words she was saying off of her lips. Or rather, the single word she was saying, over and over and over again; “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck-”. And somehow, over the screaming and explosions and sizzling, the deranged singling was still audible over the roar of the monstrosity’s guns.

“You want to live? Don’t make me laugh…”

“This isn't life, it's hell on Equis-uis-uis-uis-!”

The voice began looping like a busted vox-ghost repeating the same fragment of Imperial Gothic over and over and over again as something metallic and rod-shaped—Blackjack’s shock maul, I belatedly realized—struck it right on the canister that served as the thing’s head. The barrage of lasers and bolt rounds was reduced to nothing, the distance between the two of us and the temporarily-incapacitated robot growing rapidly as we rounded a corner…

And nearly collided with a heavy metal door.

“No no no no!” Blackjack shrieked, her hooves flying toward the handle on the door, the latch on it groaning as she tried and failed to move it. I did the same, adding my strength to hers, and that somehow did the trick. The door’s rusted locking mechanism let loose a loud, audible screech as it slowly began to shift…

“But don’t you fear, we're most humane…” The singing started up again, the massive wheeled robot rounding the corner, its gatling boltgun spinning menacingly. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for a painful end…

And with a final squeal, the bulkhead door flew open, my eyes snapping right back open as me and Blackjack tumbled through. For an instant, I was treated to the lovely sight of Emperor-only-knows how many tonnes of steel bearing down on me, its weapons leveled and warming up to fire…

You'll never feel a thing aga-!

And then my telekinesis seized the door and slammed it in its face.4

For a long second, we just lied still, sprawled on the floor we’d collapsed onto, gasping from exertion and trying to recover from running for our lives like our very souls were at stake.

And then there was an ear-splitting BANG, a dent appearing in the door, and the two of us scrambled to our feet. Apparently the killer robot on the other side of the door wouldn’t be satisfied until we were all dead. I frantically wracked my terror-addled brain for a plan to prevent that bloodthirsty piece of semi-sentient machinery from getting its wish beyond simply running for my life and hoping it ran low on batteries, but came up empty.

Fortunately, Blackjack didn’t come up empty. Her plan was pretty stupid, mind you, but it was at least better than mine.

“You find some Med-X and get out of here. I’ll distract the crazy robot.”

I swiveled toward the alabaster mare, my jaw dropping. “Splitting us up?! Have you lost it?!”

“Got any better ideas?” While I was floundering for an appropriate response, she added, “Together we’re a big target. You saw that thing coming, and I didn’t. If I use myself as bait, you can get what P-21 needs and get out of here while they’re preoccupied with me.”

“While you frakking DIE!” I shot back, all of the mare’s perfectly sound reasoning totally lost on my panic-addled mind. Another CLANG rang out, the hatchlike door buckling a little more as the Ultra-Sentinel continued to force its way through, as if to remind me that this pony was offering to sacrifice her life in my place, but some insane, delusional part of me was screaming at me not to leave her to die.

“It’s okay…” Blackjack tried to reassure me, even as she glanced at the door, visibly shuddering. “I have my shock baton, I’ll… I’ll be fine…” I could tell by the way her voice was quivering that no, she wouldn’t be fine, and she knew it.

I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell her that we’d find some way to lose that murderous machine in these twisted hallways, that she was throwing her life away for nothing, that I couldn’t lose her too and what the ever-living FRAK has gotten into me?!5

I clamped down hard on my oddly-uppity conscience. “Good luck.” I whispered, fighting back the tears welling in the corner of my vision. And with that, I turned and ran, fleeing like the craven excuse for a Commissar I am as one of the only two allies I had left turned to face her death.

*** *** ***

Pony number twenty-five; she never made it out alive…

Pony number twenty-six; his gun suffered a malfunction he just couldn’t fix…

Pony number twenty-seven; he couldn’t bring himself to abandon a friend…

Pony number twenty-eight; his screams sealed the former’s fate…

The inane singing continued to play over my pipbuck’s speaker as I staggered from shadow to shadow, keeping a half-eye on the auspex display in my hud as I fought the urge to curl into a ball and weep. It did more than unnerve me and give me an unpleasant reminder of what I’d done to save my rotten, mutated hide; it also covered up the sounds that wheeled mechanical monstrosity or anything else roaming these halls might be making. It could’ve been unintentional on the singer’s part, but I certainly wasn’t going to count on that.6

I pushed my way into a nearby office; my Pipbuck wasn’t showing any red bars, and I needed a moment to regain my composure. Dear Him on Terra, what was wrong with me?! I’d shrugged off worse sins like they were nothing before I’d wandered into this hellhole; why the frak was my brain choosing today of all days to have an existential crisis over the fact that I’d done what I’d had to do in order to survive?!

A nearby computer terminal of some sort had been left on, so I trotted over to it, half-hoping to find something to take my mind off of the sight of Blackjack standing on trembling legs as the door finally began to give way that had inexplicably seared itself into my memory. There was still some kind of text file open on the terminal, and I began reading it.

STABLE-TEC Standardized Operating System Ver. 2.075

Lieutenant Scootaloo

Entry… fuck it. Can’t remember the number of the last entry I wrote.

If whoever’s reading this happens to be one of the ponies back at Headquarters, do me a solid, cut this bit, and tack on the right number. It’s the least you can do for me after this clusterfuck.

You guys were right about this place being a treasure trove of pre-war tech. And I can’t really blame you for not knowing that said tech was semi-sentient and out for pony blood, or that it would be able to tear through ponies in power armor like they were made of tissue paper. How robots like that ended up in a fucking hospital, I have no idea-

Shit. I can hear one of those things coming. I can hear the screams from wherever it drags the ponies it catches off to, and there’s no way in fuck I’m going to let myself die like that. Whoever finds me, keep my Volkite Pistol; chances are it’ll do you a whole fuckton more good than it’ll do the cowardly idiots back at

Before I could read any further, all the lights in the room went off with a loud, jarring CHOOM, plunging me into pitch blackness. I froze, my blood chilling in my veins. My ears strained to hear whatever was coming for me, but they sensed nothing but dead silence; even the singing had stopped.

And then, the terminal lit back up, two lines of text appearing on the monochromatic screen

STABLE-TEC Standardized Operating System Ver. 2.075

The Mechanism Sees Everything

You included

There was a pregnant pause. And then...

"KILL ME!"

The flashing red lights and chorus of who-the-frak-knows how many ponies suddenly screaming in abject agony prompted a scream of mortal terror to erupt from my throat. I reared backward from the terminal, my laspistol flying up and blowing out the screen, plunging me into blackness once more. And then I lost my balance, toppled into a corner of the darkened room, and landed hard on something that felt vaguely like a pony-shaped mound of ceramite plating. I promptly curled up on top of that mound, too terrified and grief-stricken to do anything other than cry my heart out.

Yep, you heard that right. The Hero of the Imperium took some precious time out of his busy day to curl up into a ball and sob like a toddler whose cribmate was discovered to be a mutant and had to be put out of his misery. Believe me, you’re not the only one who was thinking “what the frak”; the whole time the rational part of me was screaming at me to shut the frak up, get back on my hooves, and get OUT of there, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to move my hooves.

I’m not entirely sure how long it took me to finally stop bawling like a baby and get back onto my feet, but when I did, I discovered that the thing I’d curled up on top of was another dead body, this one old enough to have rotted away until it was just a skeleton. It was clad in a worn, damaged suit of power armor, a glowing orange weapon with a shape that was vaguely reminiscent of a Mechanicus Gamma Pistol next to it. The armor was tarnished, dented, it’s helmet had a gaping hole where one of its photolenses was supposed to go, and the suit was currently being worn by a corpse, but if anything other than the helmet was damaged in any way that would affect its functionality, it was damaged in a way I couldn’t identify.

I’ll give you three guesses as to what I did next.

I know, I know, putting on a unknown set of power armor that I might not even be able to use, didn’t understand the mechanisms of, and definitely wouldn’t be conductive to staying stealthy and quiet, but to my terror-addled, grief-wracked brain putting a good solid half-inch or two of ceramite between myself and whatever might be coming seemed like an unquestionably brilliant idea.7

Fortunately, when I opened up the power armor, I found that its user had been wearing some kind of black bodyglove underneath it when they died, and the armor had protected said bodyglove from the ravages of time. The bodyglove, for its part, had kept the detritus of the corpse off of the armor’s inside; at least I wouldn’t also be wearing the remnants of the previous owner’s decayed flesh and coat. Not that that would’ve stopped me; if perfectly legitimate strategic concerns over putting on a random set of Power Armor in the middle of a mission that required me to be stealthy didn’t give me pause, then a little grime from a long-dead corpse certainly wouldn’t either.

I winced as the armor closed around me, contracting to a surprisingly snug fit. Even more surprising, the suit hummed to life, the hud my Pipbuck was somehow projecting directly onto my vision filling with a simplified diagram of the armor’s parts. According to the diagram, everything except a single back leg was damaged enough to merit being colored red, and the helmet was just an outline on account of the fact that I’d had to pry it off to fit my horn, but it was functional-

The sound of hooves scrabbling on the floor made me jump, the armor responding to my motions and launching me so high I nearly slammed into the office’s ceiling. I spun around, my telekinesis gripping my laspistol, chainsword, and the strange pistol as I leveled all three weapons… at a scrawny, grey-furred, pretty harmless-looking unicorn mare, staring up at me with wide, terrified green eyes. I sighed in relief, lowering my weapons as I opened my mouth to speak…

“Luna shitting moon rocks!” Back then, I had absolutely no clue who Luna was, but the loud, vulgar nature of the exclamation still made me reel backwards. That probably saved me from being reduced to a steaming pile of glowing green dust when she leveled her own pistol, the piece of xenotech letting loose a ray of baleful green fire that filled my whole world with equally green light.

50% to Next Level

Level 8, +11 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 4
Perception: 5
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 5
Luck: 10

1: Whoever came up with these messages certainly had a flair for the dramatic...

2: This is a reference to the Rotor Cannon, a multiple-barreled, ballistic rotary mini-gun favored by the Imperial Navy's Voidsmen-at-Arms. The weapon’s popularity has led to it accruing a fair number of monkiers.

3: I believe the name for this type of robot is an Ultra-Sentinel. Please note that, contrary to what you may have assumed, most Ultra-Sentinels don’t have a pony’s brain for a CPU.

4: Metaphorically, obviously. Ultra-Sentinels don’t have a face to slam a door into.

5: Maybe you’ve formed a true friendship with another creature besides Jurgen for the first time in your life and don’t want to lose that bond so soon?

6: Whoever said “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity” has obviously never been through what Ciaphas has.

7: Not that I'd fault Ciaphas for this, given all the duress he was under in that particular moment. In fact, given that he was a handful of minutes away from doing something even more irrational and heroic than normal, I’m willing to bet that suit of power armor was one of the main reasons he walked out of the Fluttershy Medical Research Center alive.

Author's Note

Only War GM: Oh, looks like abandoning the other PC's character hit you particularly hard. Make a Trauma Test.

(Dice Clatter. Alex rolls a one.)

Alex: ...crud.

Anyway, I'm going to break up major climactic chapters like this one into two parts. And in case the small stature and colorful profanity didn't tip you off, yes, the pony who nearly blows Ciaphas' head off in the end is Littlepip.

Credit to Harry101UK for the original version of the song that the Mechanism is singing. It was actually written for a Portal fan animation that got cancelled, but the creepy tune fits the atmosphere of the chapter perfectly, though I did have to change up the lyrics a bit.

Also, in case you were wondering what the pistol Ciaphas picked up from Scootaloo's corpse looks like, here's a pic to give you an idea of what sort of design I'm aiming for.

Chapter 6: The Heart of the Mechanism, Part 2

“Calm down, I’m not-”

“STAY AWAY FROM ME!” I ducked back behind the desk, stifling a yelp of terror as yet another ray of fiery green death sailed over my head, igniting the papers scattered all over the piece of furniture.

Just my luck. This was the first pony I’d seen here who hadn’t been murdered by the crazy robots… and said robots’ psychological warfare tactics had her so thoroughly freaked out that she was shooting everything that moved. Good for her chances of survival, but not so good for mine. Fortunately, the means by which she was shooting a weapon when she didn’t even have hands to hold it with gave me an idea…

Squeezing my eyes shut, I threw together a rough mental map of my surroundings, before mentally reaching out for the rough location of the pistol she was using. I was rewarded with a yellow glow from in front of the desk, a panicked shriek of “SHIT!!!”, and the sound of the silvery Necron-esque pistol she was using clattering onto the floor next to me, torn free of her own telekinesis.

The emerald green glow of her own telekinesis warned me that she was reaching for another weapon. Thinking quickly, I darted out from cover, my horn flashing as I used my telekinesis to grab hold of her shotgun. And her sniper rifle. And her auto gun. And her Needle pistol. And her knife. And her shovel. Seriously, how the frak does a pony that small manage to haul around so much ordinance?1

“NO! NO NO NO-” The mare wailed, her hooves scraping against the metal floor as she struggled to free herself from the various scraps and holsters securing her collection of guns and close quarters combat wargear to her sides and back. “You can’t do this to me! I’m-!”

“It’s okay.” I cut her off, speaking firmly yet gently as I plastered Frown #6 on my face (slightly perturbed without looking disapproving or upset, good for leaving people with the impression that you care about their well-being, particularly when you actually don’t).2 “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The mare froze, blinking once, then twice, as if only just now realizing that I wasn’t some slathering mutated horror seeking to jam its betentacled tongues in her you-know-what.3 An embarrassed blush blossomed into existence on her face as she realized that she’d been trying to incinerate the one creature loose in this building that didn’t want to murder her. “…sorry.” She said sheepishly.

“Happens to the best of us,” I responded, releasing my hold on her downright ridiculous assortment of guns. At least this time, the ‘friendly fire’ coming my way was purely accidental.4 “You okay?”

The mare nodded. “As okay as I can be, considering the past few weeks I’ve been having…”

"Yeah, same here.” Well, I’d only been on this Emperor-forsaken planet for two days, but I could still relate.

The green-eyed pony chuckled a little at that… and was that a slight blush on her face? “I’m-”

She was cut off by the CHOOM of the power turning back on, followed almost immediately by the baleful-green lights. “Y’know what? Let’s save the introductions for another time, okay?” I offered quickly, glancing at the auspex readout. Couldn’t see any red bars… but then again, auspexes, xeno-made or not, are nothing if not finicky and unreliable.

“Right.” The mare nodded, her expression hardening. “Sometime when we aren’t running for our lives from a buncha homicidal robots.”

*** *** ***

The scenery didn’t improve as the two of us ventured deeper into the facility, trotting past more charming platitudes such as ‘It will set us free’, splashes of blood and other, less pleasant substances, and the occasional nightmarish diorama made from posed corpses. I numbly noted that every single body we passed had a gaping hole in the back of its head and lacked both eyes and a brain; I had hit the ‘too much blood n' guts, stopped caring’ threshold at least an hour ago, but my self-preservation kept my eyes up and focused on my surroundings. With that accursed music still serenading us, I was reliant on senses other than sound, the pipbuck’s auspex-equivalent, and the waxing and waning of the tingling sensation in my hooves; I couldn't afford to let my eyes drop to the floor.

“You want to live? Don’t make me laugh!”

“This isn’t life, it’s hell on Equis!”

“But not to fear, we’re most humane…”

“You’ll never feel a thing again…”

“Got it.” The music’s volume was abruptly halved. I glanced over at my short-statured companion, noticing the rapidly-dissipating green glow that had enveloped her own Pipbuck moments before.

“How did you…”

“Finally managed to isolate and block the radio channel that was broadcasting that stupid tune.” The mare declared, with a smidge of pride. “Damn thing was a pain in the flank to pin down…”

“Can you do the same for my pipbuck?” I asked, extending the foreleg said pipbuck was clamped onto toward her.

“Sure.” Her bright-green telekinetic aura enveloped the piece of xenotech, and I clamped down hard on the urge to jerk away.5 In a matter of moments, the music fell completely silent; after who-the-frak how many hours of that creepy tune, the sudden silence was honestly a little jarring. “My Cutie Mark is a pipbuck, after all.”

Cutie Mark?6 I opened my mouth to inquire further… and my inquiries were promptly relegated to the back of my mind as a high-pitched, feminine scream reached our ears. I tensed, scanning my surroundings, but couldn’t find the source; whatever had prompted that outcry was far away from my general vicinity, and if I had any say in the matter it would stay that way.

Unfortunately, the grey-furred mare had a say as well. In the time it took for my gaze to return to her, she had taken off down a side corridor, toward the sound of yet more screaming.

…frak. “Wait!” I said out loud, breaking into a gallop as I trailed after the mare, chasing her through the facility’s twisted halls, toward the continuing screams of abject agony that were rapidly getting louder…

The yellow bar on the compass that presumably represented my newfound companion was suddenly joined by several red ones, and I hesitated, my stride faltering. I was only there for a few doses of this ‘Med-X’ stuff so that the only ally I had left didn’t kick the bucket. Was it really necessary to throw myself into virtually-assured death for a mare I barely know-

The screaming reached a fever pitch, accompanied by a yell of “VELVET!!!” from said mare I barely knew. Frak… I hissed silently to myself, some unknown compulsion urging me to follow in the mare’s hoofsteps.

In all honesty, even if I’d known what was awaiting me in the chamber up ahead, I’m not sure whether I would’ve done anything different.

I rounded another corner, and the source of the screaming promptly became horrifyingly apparent. The screamer was another unicorn, black with a yellow, red, and white mane, and the source of her distress was quite obviously the fact that she was in a surgical operating theatre turned into a slaughterhouse, having a morbidly familiar-looking hole drilled in her skull by a spider-like mass of arms holding scalpels, bonesaws and torturous-looking medical tools in a dozen gleaming articulated limbs. Said mass was suspended above a surgical table so drenched in blood it looked like it had been dyed a visceral shade of maroon, right in the center of the room.

As I watched, riveted to the ground by equal parts horror and fear, there was a final slice, a disgusting splurch… and then the black-furred mare went silent and limp, her brain now suspended inside the glass casing of one of the very same jars I’d seen atop the mechanical monstrosity that had tried to reduce me and Blackjack to a fine red mist earlier. The grey-furred mare in front of me wailed as if her soul had been ripped from her body, tears streaming from her eyes as she flung herself forward… and was promptly smacked out of the air by the aforementioned mechanical monstrosity, smashing against a wall and then crumpling to the floor, unconscious. With that done, the massive machine turned toward two smaller, pony-sized robots standing behind it… and, for the first time, I noticed Blackjack, slumped on the back of one of those robots. I didn’t need to be told why these things had decided to spare her.

And all of a sudden, I found that I just couldn’t stand still and watch anymore. In a flash, my chainsword and laspistol had all but leaped into my telekinetic grip, my hooves had thrown my body forward, and my mouth had opened wide as I started to sing.

“Crazy robot number one: smashed to a pulp by his own gun!” Yep, you read that right. As my telekinesis wrenched the gatling boltgun arm right out of its socket and violently slammed it into the casing of its mechanical bearer, instantly reducing it to oh-so-much scrap metal, I was belting out a far more uplifting spin on the same nightmarish tune that whoever or whatever was in charge of this place had been broadcasting to my pipbuck. Don’t ask me why I thought here and now would be a good time to demonstrate my abruptly not-so-nonexistent musical talent; I honestly have no frakking clue.7

“Robot number two: laid low by a humble laspistol!” The clear glass ‘head’ of one of the smaller, pony-like robots shattered beneath the force of a lasbolt from said pistol, the brain within splattered across the already-bloodsoaked walls as said robot crumpled to the floor.

“Robot number three: sawed in half by a chainsword’s teeth!” The other pony-like robot threw Blackjack off her back and launched itself at me, the tips of its steel hooves sparking with electricity… and slammed straight into the whirring teeth of my chainsword, the plaster teeth tearing through its body like a power sword through tissue paper.

“Robot number four: was dead before he even hit the floor!” An attempt to fire my Laspistol revealed that it was empty; in a move that only made sense in the sort of corny holodramas where combatants engaged in musical numbers in the middle of a no-holds-barred battlefield, I flung the weapon at an oncoming spherical robot with six spider-like limbs dangling from its hovering chassis, whipped out the xenotech pistol, drew a bead, and fired. Surprisingly, the ray of fiery orange energy that was issued from the weapon proved far more destructive than the detonation of the laspistol’s depleted power pack.

More robots were flooding into the operating theatre, but I couldn’t care less. The same was true of the golden glow at the lower corners of my vision, which I’d later learn were coming from my flanks. Like a servitor on autopilot, I’d fallen into the rhythm of battle, the assailants and their blows blurring together as I dodged and swung and shot like the Emperor himself had hopped into my hooves and was guiding my steps, all my attention and focus devoted to staying alive and taking my swarming opponents out. And that was probably for the best; to quote one of my favorite teachers, one Commander Sturkley, “Once you have entered close quarters combat, it is far too late to waste time and mental capacity wondering whether doing so was a good idea.”8

And somehow, despite the fact that there were much, much better things I could’ve been using my limited lung capacity for, I was still singing.

“You say you’re humane? Don’t make me laugh!”

“This isn’t humane, it’s a living death!”

“So let me show you what mercy truly means,”

“It’s time for this nightmare to come to an end!”

And with that, the last robot fell, and the lights abruptly cut off with another CHOOM. As I fell silent, I tensed, bracing for more attackers to leap at me from the dark… and then the red emergency lights clicked on, bathing my surroundings in dim red light, and revealing that the one new robot that had rolled into the chamber when the lights turned off was now slumped and silent, somehow deactivated.

Thank the Emperor… I whispered to myself, slumping into the steely grip of the set of power armor I was still wearing. I’d probably have collapsed right then and there if not for it.

Behind me, I heard the patter of hooves—organic ones—on the metal floor, and turned. “Woke up against the wall. I was going to go help you… but then I spotted this thing hooked into the device on the ceiling.” The grey-furred mare explained, lifting a glowing-green crystal about the length and width of her horn with her telekinesis as she spoke. “The lights turned out when I…” She trailed off into silence as she got a good look at the state I was in.

“...was I singing?” I asked. Yeah, hardly the most dignified response I’ve ever come up with, but then again I was half loopy, and from a whole lot more than just exhaustion and the adrenaline leaving my system.

“There’s a sword.” The pony said, her eyes wide with alarm. When I just gave her an uncomprehending look, she clarified further. “In your chest.”

I glanced down, only then noticing the blood gushing from the edges of the aforementioned blade and spreading across the floor, painted black by the sanguine lights. And all the alerts and warnings my Pipbuck’s HUD was flashing in my face. And the way my world was starting to black out along the edges of my vision.

Case. In. Point.

“Oh.” I deadpanned, my voice slurring even more than it already had. “That looks… fatal…”

Something in my power armor broke, and all of a sudden, I was pitching to the side. I didn’t remain conscious long enough to feel myself hit the ground.

*** *** ***

When I came to, I felt good. Alarmingly so, considering that last time I checked there’d been a sword jammed in my ribcage. Oh, and my power armor was gone.

“Good, you’re up.” Blackjack said from the side of the table I’d been laid out on as I sat up with a jolt, feeling for the spot that the robot-held blade had pierced my flesh. Both the blade and the wound it had created had inexplicably vanished.

“H-how-”

“Stimpaks.” The grey mare added, waving a cross-shaped syringe with some kind of gauge attached to the opposite end in my face. I took note of a glassy, fluid-filled canister strapped to her back, and the brain suspended within it.9 “Auto-injectors loaded with some really powerful healing reagents. Won’t fix broken bones or bullets in your body, but they can fix anything short of those. Oh, and my name’s Littlepip.”

“Good to know…” I said slowly, wisely deciding against commenting on the fact that some kind of xenotech drug had been given to me without my consent. Not that I was in a position to complain; without it, I’d probably be dead. “Anyway, we got the Med-X we came here for, right?” I asked, turning to Blackjack.

“...there’s something else we need to deal with first.” ‘Littlepip’ interjected again, cringing a little as she turned toward a door. One right next to one leading into the operating room, labeled “extracted brain storage”.

Sure enough, when Littlepip reached the door and opened it, it opened onto a room lined with rows upon rows upon rows of brains, loaded into jars identical to the one Littlepip was hauling around. Hundreds of the cylindrical canisters lined the shelves and walls, each one hooked into a tiny monitor displaying zigzagging lines, the brainwaves of a pony who’d been lured into this hellhole by the promise of medical aid it offered, just like we had. And near the back of the chamber, set into a steel pillar, was a terminal.

STABLE-TEC Standardized Operating System Ver. 2.075

Cerebral Preservation System Online.

Warning: Main Facility Power Offline. Emergency Power Active. Power Levels: 99.999%

Warning: Cerebral Preservation Canister Intercom System Offline

Deactivate Cerebral Preservation System? Y/N

…oh. Oh, frak me!

“No no no… fuck no!” Blackjack suddenly screamed, having apparently just reached the same conclusion I did. “We are not killing a thousand ponies who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time!”

“I… I was hoping we could take them with us…” Littlepip proposed, but I shook my head.

“Those jars look like they run on built-in powepacks of some kind. That means they need power to function.” I pointed out. “And if those powerpacks aren’t hooked into a steady source of energy, they’re going to need regular recharging. We could probably get away with bringing along one, but hundreds?”

“Then we can go out for help! Come back later for ponies who know how to fix this! Right?!” When Littlepip didn’t answer, Blackjack turned to me, her face split between desperation and despair. “Right?” She asked again, her voice softer.

“We’d have to find these ponies. And you remember how we got here, right? There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to find this place again.” I pointed out.

“And you want us to kill them instead?!”

“It’s either that or leave them here." Littlepip countered, before turning to me. "Are you willing to do that, on the vague hope that somepony who’s able and willing to save them will come along before the facility runs out of power?”

I blinked. “And why is that question directed at me?”

“You’re the tiebreaker.” Littlepip told me, bluntly. “I don’t want to leave them, she doesn’t want to kill them.” And you’re the alicorn in the room, her eyes seemed to say, that addendum left completely unspoken yet looming over the conversation none-the-less.

Frak… I whimpered silently to myself as I pressed one hoof to my face, struggling to decide what to do. Why is it that every time something like this comes up, everybody turns to me like I’m the designated hard call maker?! It’s not like I’m the only person in the room capable of deciding whether someone lives or dies, right-

“KILL ME!” The words I’d heard from that xenotech terminal I’d stumbled across earlier echoed through my head, my spiraling thoughts having reminded me of what I heard. And all of a sudden, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I trotted up to the terminal, casting one final, sweeping glance at the jars lining the walls as I did so. If I’d wound up in here, I’d want whoever came across this place to keep the power on. I’d want to cling to the slim chance of something coming along and finding a way to restore me to at least some vague semblance of life, even if that meant sitting blind, deaf, and bodyless on one of those shelves for 10 millennia straight.

But I wasn’t them. And they’d made what choice they would prefer all too clear.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice barely higher than a whisper as my hoof rose toward the terminal’s keyboard. ‘Y’ and ‘enter’.

The lights running down the length of the room turned off, one after another, the zigzagging readouts beginning to subside as I bestowed whatever passed for the Emperor’s Peace among these xenos upon hundreds of innocent souls.

“These poor ponies, all they knew… was how it feels to be alone…” Littlepup began to sing softly; I recognized the tune; it was the same song that this accursed place had been tormenting us with, the same song I’d turned on its head mere minutes before. Yet there was no malice or triumph in her voice; just sorrow. “Beyond help, left to rot… caged by glass, collecting dust…”

“Hundreds of lives, lost to madness incarnate…” Blackjack joined in as the last lights clicked off, leaving the room dark save for the jagged readouts on each pod, slowly but surely flattening out. “Dreams turned to nightmares, by a twist of fate…”

“You call this mercy? Don’t make me laugh…” I raised my voice, right in time to join in on the chorus. “This isn’t mercy, it’s a living death…”

“But not to fear, this ends tonight…” And then, one by one, the flat readings began to wink out, one after another. “It’s high time this sick charade came to a stop.”10

LEVEL UP! (3x)

Strength Attribute Increased By One

Endurance Attribute Increased By One

Agility Attribute Increased By One

New Perk Added (Quest): Omnissiah’s Own Disseminator — Your talent at social interaction is such that you can charm your way into the good graces of damn near anything… including things that by all rights should not be charmable! Mechanical opponents inflict 10% less damage on you in combat, and may be persuaded or intimidated just like an organic foe. Also grants unique dialogue options with machines capable of verbal communication.

New Perk Added (Spell): Celestia-Tier Telekinetics — Congratulations! You just found out that you have enough magical energy at your disposal to throw stuff around with telekinesis that would normally be way too heavy to even lift! Forget lifting an Ursa Minor; you could probably levitate twenty of them! At once!

Level 9, +14 to base Special

SPECIAL Stats
Strength: 5
Perception: 5
Endurance: 4
Charisma: 8
Intelligence: 4
Agility: 6
Luck: 10

1: A very good question, and one that still remains something of a mystery. My best guess is that her exceptional talent with telekinesis allows her to subconsciously reduce the weight of all that ordinance somehow.

2: Or so you claim…

3: Which, considering a certain… altercation with a certain creature Littlepip had been through prior to meeting Cain, and the fact that he had wings, a horn, and happened to be wearing a suit of power armor, is admittedly a very reasonable assumption.

4: Contrary to the implications of this line, I’m reasonably certain that Cain has never been on the receiving end of the ‘intentional’ variety of friendly fire, despite his status as a Commissar. Largely by virtue of him going to great lengths to ingratiate himself with the members of any regiment he serves with, but still.

5: Evidently he was still a little rattled from his… encounter with Tentacles.

6: For those of you who are as confused as Ciaphas was, Cutie Marks are a pair of identical pictures found on almost every pony’s rear thighs, which usually represent a pony’s special talent(s) through some kind of image. Usually the connection is obvious (Littlepip has a pipbuck for a Cutie Mark, representing her skill at hacking and technical aptitude), but sometimes it’s symbolic (Blackjack has an Ace and a Queen of Spades, which is a non-literal representation of her luck somehow being both exceptional and horrendous).

7: Probably unconscious self-preservation. Apparently, a pony’s combat effectiveness increases by as much as 250% when they’re doing a musical number.

8: This ‘Sturkley’ fellow is notable for having written a whole book full of similar maxims, entitled ‘Sturkley’s Guide to Serving the Emperor in a Sane and Reasonable Fashion’. It is a remarkably clever and insightful piece, and his unique brand of witty sarcasm is on full display throughout. In other words, go read it.

9: This was the brain of Velvet Remedy, the black-furred pony for whom Cain had the dubious honor of bearing witness to the vivisection thereof.

10: ...no, those stains on the pages aren't tears. It was raining, and there was a leak.

Author's Note

Finally, this chapter's done! Fair warning; probably going to be a bit before the next one drops.

In case you were wondering, "Sturkley" and his "Guide to Serving the Emperor in a Sane and Reasonable Fashion" is a reference to Murphy's Laws of Combat; the guy's named after the author.